Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly

immediately he saw a shadow move behind the closed blinds of the living room window. Someone was going to the front door.
    A blade of sheer panic sliced through Pierce. He didn’t know whether to hide or run down the hallway and out the back door. Instead, he couldn’t do anything. He stood there, unable to move his feet as he heard a footstep on the tiled stoop outside the front door.
    A metallic clack made him jump. Then a small stack of mail was pushed through the slot in the door and fell to the floor on top of the other mail. Pierce closed his eyes.
    â€˜Jesus!’ he whispered as he let out his breath and tried to relax.
    The shadow crossed the living room blinds again, going the other way. And then it was gone.
    Pierce stepped over and looked at the latest influx of mail. A few more bills but mostly junk mail. He used his foot to push the envelopes around to make sure and then he saw a small envelope addressed by hand. He bent down to pick it up. In the upper left corner of the envelope it said V Quinlan but there was no return address to go with it. The postmark was partially smeared and he could only make out the letters pa, Fla. He turned the envelope over and checked the seal. He would have to tear the envelope to open it.
    Something about opening this obviously personal piece of mail seemed more intrusive and criminal to him than anything else he had done so far. But his hesitation didn’t last long. He used a fingernail to pry open the envelope and pulled out a small piece of folded paper. It was a letter dated four days earlier.
    Lilly,
    Â 
    I am worried sick about you. If you get this, please just call me to let me know you are okay. Please, honey? Since you 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.
    Â 
    Love,
    Mom
    Â 
    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 pinecone 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.

9
    â€˜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