I cashed in an RO (Remote Office) card, which allowed employees to work a few days a month out of their homes. Everyone loved these days because without the distractions of the office setting, they were able to be much more “productive.” In practice, that meant chiming in on a few emails to prove you were working, but otherwise, you were free to do whatever you wanted—play golf, do some Christmas shopping, or just watch I Love Lucy reruns.
I used my RO day to begin the search for Julie St. Jean.
Rebecca had a morning treatment, so I picked her up at the chemo center in Lincoln Heights and we headed over to the Omni Hotel so I could help her pack. The one condition I had stipulated before starting to help her was that she agree to switch hotels. As Rebecca slid the keycard into the slot and opened the door, I think both of us expected someone on the other side. I feared another run-in with the bowling ball man; I’m sure she secretly hoped to find Julie lounging on the bed.
The room was empty.
Rebecca packed her things while I made several trips to the car. The exile from the Palos Verdes home—self-imposed or otherwise—had clearly been a long one. The rift I imagined she had had with Julie widened with each additional bag I loaded into the trunk of my car.
“You can take those boxes down,” she instructed while she dumped the tray of prescription bottles into her purse. Nothing is more unmistakable than the rattle of pills in plastic bottles.
I recognized the boxes stacked in the corner as containing the binders for the latest Power of One workshop. It was an unnerving reminder that I still needed to resolve the issue at work with them. As I did with most problems in need of immediate attention, I decided to let it marinate and hoped a magic solution would appear later.
“Jesus,” I yelped, as I hefted the first box of binders onto the bellhop cart. Who knew nonsense weighed so much, I mused, massaging my lower back. That’s when I noticed the red light on the room phone.
“There’s a message,” I told Rebecca.
She looked at me.
“All of mine were from the other day. You never returned them.”
Rebecca ignored my jab and hurried over to the phone. I watched her expression go from hopeful to disappointed as she listened to the voicemail.
“Just the front desk,” she said. “They have my umbrella.” She gave a puzzled look at the door, where an umbrella was leaning in the corner. “Must be a mistake,” she reasoned.
On the final load out, I swung by the front desk but no one there seemed to recall a missing umbrella. The lost and found box didn’t contain one either.
“Try the valet,” the receptionist suggested. “Folks sometimes leave things in the courtesy cars. They have their own lost and found.”
That piqued my interest. I recalled the development that Julie’s Bentley was found parked at Union Station. The police likely assumed she fled the city on a train. But Union Station was only a short walk from the Omni Hotel. Julie might have used that as a ruse to throw the police off her trail.
I made my way out to the main entrance and asked around until I found a valet who worked on Saturday.
“A guest used one of the courtesy cars,” I told him. “Do they get them through you guys?”
“We pull them up from the garage.”
“If I gave you a description of a guest would you be able to get the car she used?” I asked.
“If it’s still here,” he said.
I described Julie St. Jean to him but didn’t get past the words “woman with white hair.”
“Talks like a man?” he asked. “Yeah, I remember her. Nice lady,” which meant she had tipped him well. “She took the Lincoln.”
“Was she with anyone?”
“Not that I remember.”
“How long did she have the car?”
“I never saw her come back but the office in the garage would know.”
“Or you could get that information for me,” I suggested, and made a move for my wallet. The punk waited for me to actually get it out and start thumbing through the larger bills before he replied.
“Happy to be of service,” he said, smiling.
“Do you use this bank?” I asked Rebecca.
We delayed checking her in to another hotel until we followed up on the leads from the navigation system in the hotel courtesy car. I was able to narrow down the timeframe when Julie had used the vehicle so that Rebecca and I could retrace her steps on Saturday afternoon in the hopes that a narrative would emerge. One did, but it wasn’t exactly a welcome one.
The trail began at a chain drugstore in Highland Park and then led to the mall in Glendale. After that it was a sporting goods store just north on Pacific. The following entry brought us across the 134 to an address on Lake Avenue in Pasadena. It housed an old bank with a name that recalled the agrarian times of its founding. The only thing “agricultural” remaining in Pasadena these days were the pots of organic basil growing on condominium balconies.
Rebecca shook her head as we idled in the red zone across the street from the bank.
“I’ve never used it.”
A clear but disheartening picture of the hours after Lois was murdered was forming—it was of someone preparing to go on the run. The next stop put to rest any doubts I might have had of that fact.
The address led us to a large shopping center in El Monte, just off the 10 Freeway. It was anchored by a car dealership and ringed by auto accessory parts stores and cut-rate insurance outfits. We stared at the rows of new and “like new” cars on display and the markdown prices screaming in fluorescent green numbers across their windshields.
“Maybe they’ll tell us what kind of car she bought,” Rebecca suggested, pointing at the small collection of cheap suits huddling under large golf umbrellas. The pack had already picked up our scent and was starting to disperse.
Rebecca had apparently come to the same conclusion as I had about Julie going on the lam.
“They might not give us information on a customer,” I said, watching the chubby alpha male make a beeline for our car.
“We could bribe them,” said Rebecca.
“Have to figure out which is the crooked one.”
I watched the approaching man lean over to give a peekaboo smile. He looked at us like wounded prey that he couldn’t wait to get to overpay on a vehicle with a dirty title. Naturally, that car would be pitched as having had a single, elderly owner who kept it in a covered garage and only took it out for weekly bingo nights.
“Easier to pick out the honest one,” Rebecca reasoned, and got out to greet the man. She cut right to the chase. I watched her describe Julie with an outstretched hand denoting her height and a sweep of the hair describing her white mane. The man nodded and disappeared inside. He returned fifteen minutes later with a slip of paper, which was exchanged for some agreed-upon amount of money.
“A 2001 tan Saturn,” Rebecca told me.
This was the side of Rebecca I knew best. It was the only side I knew, really. While Julie St. Jean was the face of, and brains behind, Power of One, Rebecca made sure it all ran well. For that she was given the thankless label of “the person who gets stuff done.”
In a lot of ways this arrangement was no different than the one I endured at work. The common complaint among the “idea guys” in upper management was that they needed more time to strategize, but they were constantly being dragged into too much execution. The worst label anyone could levy on another leader was to refer to them as “tactical.”
I deeply resented this view. As someone who’d made a career with the proverbial shovel digging the proverbial ditch—albeit our ditch was in a climate-controlled skyscraper and didn’t involve any real physical labor—I vowed that should I ever get to their level, I would do things differently. Recently granted a new role in upper management, I proceeded to do no such thing.
Strategizing was just too damn easy.
But I still felt guilty. And because of that I found myself overextending my role when I offered to knock on the door of the final address on the list from the navigation system. The house was on a flat, unkempt street in Baldwin Park. The rains had brought lush patches of weeds to its otherwise barren front yard and washed away a year’s worth of dust from the once-white stucco walls.
I was starting to regret my offer to take the lead. This wasn’t the best of neighborhoods and the house itself was less than inviting. Near the door was a large sign that informed trespassers they weren’t wanted. And if that warning wasn’t heeded, there was another sign featuring a German shepherd who didn’t look the friendly type. A third sign lay against the railing and appeared to advertise a for-sale-by-owner vehicle.
I skirted several puddles on my way to the entrance. Faced with a larger puddle, I secretly wished I hadn’t worn my nice shoes. I attempted a casual hop but came up a half-foot short and a splash of muddy water soaked my pant bottoms.
“Damn it,” I muttered, wiping at some of the large spots with my hand. When I finally looked up I was greeted with a blank stare from a rail-thin Latino with a shaved head. He stood under the overhang of the roof and the rain had drawn a dark line a few inches from where his bare feet stood on a dry step. He carried a baby in his arms. He or she lay limply against the man, lost in a deep sleep. The few drops of rain that caught the pudgy bare leg didn’t seem to bother either of them. For some reason, the man was more threatening holding a newborn than he would have been holding a weapon.
“I’m looking for someone. Older lady with white hair, talks like a man. About this high,” I said, and gestured up to a midpoint on my chest. “I think she might have visited you on Saturday.” And just for the hell of it, I added, “She’s wanted in connection with a murder.”
Of all the responses he could have made, this one surprised me.
“That abuelita couldn’t kill no one,” he said dismissively.
“So you know her?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t say I know her, but I talked to her,” he explained.
The man suddenly got very chatty. He told me how he’d run a classified ad for a portable grill that Julie was apparently interested in. He described the exchange, but there weren’t any details of much significance, except that he did drop repeated bits about the long drive to Reno she was apparently planning.
“She mentioned needing chains on her car tires or something,” he said. “I’m from LA, man. I don’t know shit about the snow.”
I began to feel bad for the baby, whose legs were turning a splotchy crimson in the cold air. I interrupted the man and thanked him for his time.
Back in the car, I turned the heat up. My clothes were now wet from standing in the drizzle. I cupped both hands over one of the vents.
“Well?” Rebecca asked.
“Well, we know what kind of car she’s really driving,” I said, pointing to the for-sale sign. “A 2003 silver Nissan Sentra. And we know the one place she isn’t heading for is Reno, Nevada.”
Julie would have known that buying a car from a dealer, even a disreputable one like the lot we visited earlier, would have required certain documents that she couldn’t afford to produce if she wanted to keep her movements secret. A private purchase made much more sense. I reasoned that she met the man at a public place and the dealer parking lot right off the freeway made a likely spot.
“Then what’s this the guy gave me?” Rebecca asked, holding up the slip of paper from the used-car salesman.
“He made a quick hundred off of you,” I told her.
“It was only fifty,” she said, but still looked disappointed.
The transaction between Julie and the vehicle’s owner probably happened right there in the lot. And given the nature of the transaction, it should have ended there. But according to the time on the courtesy car’s navigation, she went to the seller’s home address two hours later. I had an idea what that could mean but didn’t share it with Rebecca.
My suspicion was that there were two transactions that day—one for the car and one for something else that required a little time to get. That chatty seller with the obvious attempts to throw me off Julie’s scent convinced me that whatever she bought wasn’t legal and didn’t require an ID and a three-day background check to purchase.