Chapter 66 Jordan
SIXTY-SIX
JORDAN
Well I never did see so many TV stars
And I never did see so many rented cars
—Loudon Wainright III, “Hollywood Hopeful”
Cara Campbell was no longer at the Beverly Hills Hotel—if indeed she ever had been. Jordan tried not to let the disappointment get to him, indeed tried not to feel anything at all as he made his way through the lobby, past a comically oversized floral arrangement, toward the front doors.
Wen was interviewing the restaurant server who claimed to have seen Campbell, which gave him a few minutes to call Beto back. He walked outside, down the long red carpet under the portico, and found a few feet of privacy shaded by the hotel’s lush green foliage.
“That was forty minutes,” Beto said when he answered.
“You honestly wouldn’t believe LA traffic.”
“Unless they had a bus crash and a brush fire, I really don’t want to hear about it. Look, the leak was . . . Gracia.”
“You have got to be joking.”
“She’s in the next room. Wait a second and I’ll put you on.”
Jordan watched a powder-blue Bentley convertible roll past Wen’s double-parked Explorer.
A valet opened the door for its driver, a young woman dressed entirely in pale pink leather.
She climbed out, then lifted two leashed pets from the passenger seat.
Jordan thought at first glance the two furry animals were dogs.
A second look, however, convinced him the bushy, wrinkly-faced creatures were in fact some breed of exotic cat.
She carried them into the hotel while one blank-faced bellhop took her suitcases out of the trunk and a valet climbed behind the wheel.
“You’re on speaker, Sheriff,” said Beto, coming back. “I’m in the room with Gracia.”
Jordan could hear her crying and her distress wounded him. She was a beloved member of the staff, almost the last person he would have suspected of wrongdoing. He waited until her sobs became sniffles before he started.
“Beto says you have something to tell me, Gracia.”
“I didn’t mean it,” she said, almost too quietly to hear. “I didn’t think this would happen. I’m just so sorry, Sheriff.”
“Tell me what you said and who you said it to.”
She honked her nose into a tissue and then her voice grew louder.
“I know you told us not to talk about the case to anybody. But, I mean, I’m nobody, so I didn’t think anyone would care what I said.
My knitting circle meets twice a week, and you know, everybody has been pestering me with questions.
They just wouldn’t stop. So I gave them little updates, you know.
After a while, it was like we were all playing this guessing game.
We all just wanted to figure out where she was. ”
The valet pulled away in the Bentley, driving it a little roughly, as a Mercedes SUV with blacked-out windows pulled in behind it.
“Who’s in your knitting circle, Gracia?” Jordan asked.
She paused, then blew out a breath. “I didn’t even know it, but my friend Katie cleans houses for Troy Silverman, his rentals, and I guess she thought it would be good for her if she got on his good side. So she told him everything I said.”
Jordan hardly listened as she kept talking, trying to minimize her mistake.
He felt guilty about all the deputies he’d mentally accused of disloyalty.
He was angry at Gracia, too, an anger mitigated by her simple human need to be the center of attention at her knitting group.
He knew that if she had perceived her loose talk as being actually dangerous to him, she wouldn’t have done it.
“Gracia, I’m going to have to write you up for this,” he said, interrupting her. “Don’t violate any other rules for a year, and I’ll take it out of your file. But if you talk to anybody at all about any of our investigations going forward, there will be serious consequences. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” she sniffled.
“Good. You’re a valued member of our staff and I want to keep it that way.”
“Sheriff?”
“What is it?”
“There’s one more thing you should know. My friend—my ex-friend—told me something about Mr. Silverman you may want to know. She said he’s going to LA to find Cara Campbell himself.”