Yesterday's Echo by Matt Coyle Page B

suitcase with her when she showed up on Muldoon’s doorstep asking for my help.
    Unless Windsor broke in after Melody checked out, he must have been in her room when she returned to get her stuff. Was he lying on the floor with a needle jammed in his arm or a crack pipe lodged between death-clenched teeth or was he still alive?
    Some answers required Melody. Maybe she was giving them to the police right now. I’d have to wait for mine, but not locked up in my own house looking for distractions.
    I went outside, got into my car, pointed it toward La Jolla. I’d gotten Melody’s cell phone number over breakfast and now dialed it. Her voice mail came on immediately. I hung up. She’d been with the police for an hour and a half. Plenty of time if everything was just routine. Not nearly enough if it wasn’t.
    The sun had sweated off any remnants of fog and left the sky a crisp blue. I broke off Highway 52 up the ramp into La Jolla, breaching the first rolling hill that protected its east end. The ocean came into view out beyond a canopy of evergreen trees that hid homes with million-dollar views.
    I hit the bottom of the hill and merged onto Torrey Pines Road, winding up the next rise into La Jolla proper. Multimillion dollar homes clung to a hillside on the left, on the right a view of the coastline below arced its way from La Jolla Shores north to Black’s Beach. I turned right on Prospect Street, still not sure where I was going, but felt the pull of Melody at the La Jolla police station. A chill crept up my spine at the thought of going back inside the Brick House. I’d seen enough of that place and the people inside it.
    Restaurants, art galleries, and curio shops drifted by until I approached Muldoon’s. I thought about stopping in, but kept going. Turk’s putting the restaurant up for sale still stung. Muldoon’s no longer felt like a second home to me.
    Traffic was slow, and I got caught behind a Mercedes that was older than I was. A mop of blue-gray hair was just visible above the back of the driver’s seat, level with the steering wheel. Whether it was granny tanks or rentals driven by swivel-headed tourists, traffic was slow in La Jolla year-round.
    The Mercedes had a red, white, and blue Albright for Governor bumper sticker. It reminded me that the mayor was having a rally at the La Jolla Recreation Center at eleven a.m. I’d seen a headline about it in the paper this morning while I searched for the story about Adam Windsor. One local son made good and striving for more. Another, a ne’er-do-well done with striving, good or bad, forever.
    Melody had told me, way back when I could trust her, that she’d come down to San Diego to cover Mayor Albright’s run for governor. If that were true, she’d probably try to make his rally before she had to fly back up to San Francisco. That’s if she got out of the Brick House in time. And providing everything she’d told me since we met hadn’t been a lie.

Muldoon’s
C HAPTER E LEVEN
    The La Jolla Recreation Center was on the southern end of Prospect Street, a few blocks down from Muldoon’s. I’d played football there as a kid and still played in an occasional pickup basketball game there when my knee allowed. The Rec was old when I was young. Hell, it was old before my father was born and was now considered a historic site. That meant nobody wanted to spend the money to modernize it.
    Three to four hundred people sat on the recreation center’s truncated flag-football field in metal folding chairs and listened to Mayor Albright speak as he stood at a podium on top of a small wooden stage. Albright was in his early fifties and kept in shape, though his white hair and sun-worn face made him look older. Physically, he wasn’t a big man, but he had a powerful presence motored by nonstop energy that filled up any room he entered. Today it spread out over the football field.
    Behind him