The Closers by Michael Connelly

with one of these fellows and that I'd probably hear from her soon."
    "When was that?"
    "A month ago. You see, Lilly calls me every Saturday afternoon. When two weeks went by with no phone calls I called the police. They didn't call me back. After the third week I called again and talked to Missing Persons. They didn't even take a report or anything, just told me to keep waiting. They don't care."
    For some reason a vision bled into his mind and distracted him. It was the night he had come home from Stanford. His mother was waiting for him in the kitchen, the lights off. Just waiting there in the dark to tell him the news about his sister, Isabelle.
    When Lilly Quinlan's mother spoke, it was his own mother.
    "I called in a private detective but he's been no help. He can't find her neither."
    The content of what she was saying finally brought him out of it.
    "Mrs. Quinlan, is Lilly's father there? Can I talk to him?"
    "No, he's long gone. She never knew him. He hasn't been here in about twelve years- ever since the day I caught him with her."
    "Is he in prison?"
    "No, he's just gone."
    Pierce didn't know what to say.
    "When did Lilly come out to L.A.?"
    "About three years ago. She first went to a flight attendant school out in Dallas but never did that job. Then she moved to L.A. I wish she'd become a flight attendant. I told her that in the escort business even if you don't have sex with those men, people will still think that you did."
    Pierce nodded. He supposed that it was sound motherly advice. He pictured a heavyset woman with big hair and a cigarette in the corner of her mouth. Between that and her father, no wonder Lilly went about as far as she could get from Tampa. He was surprised it was only three years ago that she left.
    "Where did you hire a private detective, there in Tampa or out here in
    L.A.?"
    "Out there. Not much use to hire one here."
    "How did you hire one out here?"
    "The policeman in Missing Persons sent me a list. I picked from there."
    "Did you come out here to look for her, Mrs. Quinlan?"
    "I'm not in good health. Doctor says I've got emphysema and I've got my oxygen that I'm hooked up to. There wasn't much I could do comin' out there."
    Pierce reconstructed his vision of her. The cigarette was gone and the oxygen tube replaced it. The big hair remained. He thought about what else he could ask or what information he might be able to get from the woman.
    Lilly told me she was sending you money."
    It was a guess. It seemed to go with the whole mother-daughter relationship.
    f*i
    "Yes, and if you find her, tell her I'm getting real short about now. I'm real low. I had to give a lot of what I had to Mr. Glass."
    "Who is Mr. Glass?"
    "He's the private detective I hired. But I don't hear from him anymore. Now that I can't pay him anymore."
    "Can you give me his full name and a number for him?"
    "I have to look it up."
    She put down the phone and it was two minutes before she came back and gave him the number and address for the private investigator. His full name was Philip Glass. His office was in Culver City.
    "Mrs. Quinlan, are there any other contacts you have for Lilly out here? Any friends or anything like that?"
    "No, she never gave me any numbers or told me about any friends. Except she once mentioned this girl Robin who she worked with sometimes. Robin was from New Orleans and they had stuff in common, she told me."
    "Did she say what?"
    "I think they both had the same kind of trouble with men in their family when they were young. That's what I expect she meant."
    "I understand."
    Pierce was trying to think like a detective. Vivian Quinlan seemed like an important piece of the puzzle, yet he could not think of anything else to ask her. She was three thousand miles away and was obviously kept literally and figuratively distant from her daughter's world. He looked down at the phone book on the desk in front of him and finally came up with something to ask.
    "Does the name Wainwright mean anything to