Free The Closers by Michael Connelly Page B

have stopped calling me I haven't been able to think right. I am very worried about you and that job of yours. Things around here were never really the best and I know I didn't do everything right. But I don't think that you shouldn't tell me if you are all right. Please call me if and when you get this.
    Love, Morn
    He read it twice and then refolded the page and returned it to the envelope. More than anything else in the apartment, including the rotten fruit, the letter stabbed Pierce with a sense of doom. He didn't think the letter from V. Quinlan would ever be answered by a phone call or otherwise.
    He closed the envelope as best as he could and quickly buried it in the pile of mail on the floor. The intrusion of the mail carrier had served to instill in him a sense of the risk he was running by being in the house. He'd had enough. He quickly turned and headed back down the hallway to the kitchen.
    He went through the back door and closed it but left it unlocked. As nonchalantly as an amateur criminal can be, he walked around the corner of the house and down the driveway toward the street.
    Halfway down the side of the house he heard a loud bang from up on the roof and then a large pine cone rolled off the eave and landed in front of him. As Pierce stepped over it he realized what had made the startling noise while he had been in the house. He nodded as he put it together. At least he had solved one mystery.
    Lights."
    Pierce swung around behind his desk and sat down. From his backpack he pulled out the things he had taken from Lilly Quinlan's house. He had a Visa bill and a bank statement and the phone book.
    He started paging through the phone book first. There were several listings for men by first name or first name with a following initial only. These numbers ran the gamut of area codes. Many local but still more from area codes outside of Los Angeles. There were also several listings for local hotels and restaurants, as well as a Lexus dealer in Hollywood. He saw a listing for Robin and another listing for ECU, which he knew was Entrepreneurial Concepts Unlimited.
    Under the heading "Dallas" there were several numbers for hotels, restaurants and male first names listed. The same was true of a heading for Las Vegas.
    He found a listing for Vivian Quinlan with an 813 area code phone number and an address in Tampa, Florida. That solved the mystery of the smeared postmark on the letter. Near the end of the book he found an entry for someone listed as Wainwright that included a phone number and an address in Venice that Pierce knew was not far from the home on Altair.
    He flipped back to the Q listings and used his desk phone to call the number for Vivian Quinlan. A woman answered the phone in two rings. Her voice sounded like a broom sweeping a sidewalk.
    "Hello?"
    "Mrs. Quinlan?"
    "Yes?"
    Uh, hi, I'm calling from Los Angeles. My name's Henry Pierce and "
    "Is this about Lilly?"
    Her voice had an immediate, desperate tone to it.
    "Yes. I'm trying to locate her and I was wondering if you could help me."
    "Oh, thank God! Are you police?"
    "Uh, no, ma'am, I'm not."
    "I don't care. Someone finally cares."
    "Well, I'm just trying to find her, Mrs. Quinlan. Have you heard from her lately?"
    "Not in more than seven weeks and that just isn't like her. She always checked in. I'm very worried."
    "Have you contacted the police?"
    "Yes, I called and talked to the Missing Persons people. They weren't interested because she's an adult and because of what she does for a living."
    "What does she do for a living, Mrs. Quinlan?"
    There was a hesitation.
    "I thought you said you knew her."
    "I'm just an acquaintance."
    "She works as a gentleman's escort."
    "I see."
    "No sex or anything. She told me she goes to dinner with men in tuxedos mostly."
    Pierce let that go by as a mother's denial of the obvious. It was something he had seen before in his own family.
    "What did the police say to you about her?"
    "Just that she probably went off