The Second Goodbye

by Patricia Smiley

  “For cleaning products he’d purchased from you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t sell cleaning products to gunstores.”

  Davie chalked that up as another of Jack Blasdel’s lies. “How did you meet him?”

  She hesitated before answering. “On a cruise to Mexico. I’d just lost my second husband and I was feeling sort of low.”

  “My condolences.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Bud didn’t die. He cheated on me and I kicked him out. Funny how a guilty conscience can turn into a nice divorce settlement.”

  “So you were on the cruise … ” Davie prompted.

  Pittman picked up a square of cloth sprouting dark hairs from a thick coat of wax—probably from the kid’s back. “I was sitting at the bar, feeling sorry for myself, when Jack slid onto the stool next to mine and offered to buy me a drink.”

  “And what happened then?”

  Pittman threw the hairy cloth into a trashcan. “Are you kidding me? Who turns down a free drink from a nice-looking man? Look, I don’t want you to think it was some cheesy shipboard romance. He was classy, a real gentleman. The next day he sent me flowers from the ship’s gift shop. When we got back to L.A. he took me out to dinner at a nice Mexican place in the Marina. He was charming. The sex was good, too. He took his time, if you know what I mean. I appreciate that in a man. What can I say? I fell hard.”

  In a personal setting Davie would have considered that TMI, too much information, but professionally this case might turn into a homicide investigation so she needed the woman to keep talking, especially since Blasdel had lied about the reason for Pittman’s call that day.

  “How long did you know Jack Blasdel before he asked you for money?”

  Pittman put her hand over the wax warmer to check the temperature and gestured for Davie to sit on the facial chair. Davie declined. Pittman paused for a moment and then shrugged.

  “A couple of months,” she said. “He was raising money for a real estate deal. He already had a bunch of investors lined up but he wanted to give me an opportunity to get in on the ground floor.”

  “What was the deal?”

  Pittman dipped a stick into the wax and applied it to her own upper lip with guidance from a wall mirror. “He wanted to buy a condo complex in Palm Springs. He told me he used to work scouting investment opportunities for a Miami billionaire, so he knew this was a good deal.”

  “What was this billionaire’s name?”

  “No idea, but he met the guy at a casino in Atlantic City,” she said. “Jack told me he could get the Palm Springs building for a song. He already had a buyer who’d take it off his hands for double the price he was going to pay. He promised to return my investment in a couple of months along with a nice profit.”

  “Did you see the place?”

  Pittman pressed a strip of cloth over the wax and ripped it off in one quick gesture. Davie winced at the sound.

  “He showed me pictures. It looked nice.”

  “How much money did you give him?”

  She patted her upper lip and applied cream from one of the jars arranged on a white towel on the counter. “Nothing at first. You know what they say—if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, right? He kept telling me if the market went haywire, my nest egg could be gone in a flash, but real estate is always a good bet. He finally wore me down. I gave him fifty grand. A week later, I called to find out if the condo owner had accepted his bid. Jack told me he was on his way to Palm Springs to sign the papers and he’d let me know as soon as the deal was finalized. I didn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks, which was weird. I got worried so I drove to his apartment. He’d moved out.”

  “Did you ever get your money back?”

  “Yeah, I got my money back.” Her words chewed the air like a buzz saw. “But I had to hire a private eye. It took a while, but she finally found him and gave me his number. I phoned Jack at the gunstore and told him to pay me back or I’d report his Bunco scam to the cops. He knew I’d do it, too. He begged me to give him a few days. Said he was expecting a payment and also needed to sell some inventory. I didn’t trust him, so I told him my PI would be watching. If he tried to split again, he’d be sorry. He finally came through, but I had to keep reminding him, including the call the day that woman died.”

  Davie wondered why Blasdel didn’t just disappear with Pittman’s cash plus the money he made from selling the gunstore inventory. She also wondered who had bought his guns on such short notice. After the shooting, he’d closed the store and moved on, probably because repaying Pittman had left him with limited capital. Despite having an angry ex-girlfriend on his case, once he’d returned Pittman’s money there was technically no victim and no crime. If Pittman filed a police report, Blasdel could claim he borrowed the cash with her consent and repaid it as promised.

  “Did Mr. Blasdel ever get violent with you?”

  Pittman pulled a small plastic bag from a drawer. It crackled as she began filling it with skincare samples and tiny vials of oil. “Jack doesn’t push women around. He flatters them and tells them tall tales. He told me he made his sister a bundle by managing her investment portfolio and that he’d rescued some guy from drowning in a riptide. Jack even claimed he once helped a woman disappear so nobody would ever find her. I got the impression he was really into her but she wasn’t interested. He seemed bitter about that, especially given all he’d done to help her.”

  Davie knit her brow. She assumed Blasdel was exaggerating his resume. It was difficult for a person to disappear without a trace, short of being poured into the concrete pillar of a freeway overpass or falling into a volcano. It was also Davie’s experience that many families never gave up searching for their loved one.

  Davie shifted her position away from the wall. “Did Mr. Blasdel mention this woman’s name?”

  The bag was full. Pittman added her business card from a stack on the counter. “Forget it. Those stories were all a bunch of hooey. Just Jack’s lame attempt to impress me.”

  “Did you know Sara Montaine or did you ever hear Mr. Blasdel mention her name?”

  “Nope.”

  Davie pulled a business card from her notebook and handed it to Pittman. “If you remember anything else, please give me a call.”

  She accepted the card and held out the bag of cosmetic samples. “Here, take these. They’re free.”

  Davie withdrew her hand. “Sorry, I don’t accept gifts from citizens.”

  “I bet you would if it was a six-pack of donuts. Look, they’re just samples. They aren’t worth anything. If you’re not interested, give them to your girlfriends. I’m always looking for new clients.” She paused. “You have girlfriends, right?”

  Davie thanked her but declined the samples. “One more thing. When you were on the phone with Mr. Blasdel, did you hear the gunshot?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know what it was. I asked Jack but he’d already hung up on me.”

  Davie stood for a moment processing the information. “I need the name of your private investigator.”

  Back in the car, Davie called Pittman’s PI, Natalie Salinas. The receptionist at Norton Investigations told her Salinas was “out in the field,” possibly a euphemism for “I’m not going to give you details so don’t ask.” Salinas’s office was in downtown L.A. Afternoon traffic would be jammed, and Davie couldn’t risk missing her appointment at the station with Alma Velez. The interview with Natalie Salinas would have to wait until tomorrow.

  8

  Davie walked into the station through the back door near the Kit Room, eager to tell Giordano about what she’d learned. She found him in Records, searching through a file cabinet. He looked up when she entered.

  “Hey, kid, what’s up?”

  She told him about her interview with Trevor Lofaro of Four Paws, the photo of Sara Montaine, and th
e Gerda Pittman interview.

  “Interesting,” he said, his tone noncommittal.

  Davie’s shoulders slumped. “The gun was found in Montaine’s right hand, but she was left-handed. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  “Even if she was left-handed, that doesn’t make her death a homicide. Maybe she was ambidextrous or maybe somebody moved the weapon.”

  His flippant dismissal caused her voice to rise. “Why would anyone do that?”

  He shut the file drawer with more force than necessary. “Any idiot at the scene might, including the store owner. Everybody claims they didn’t touch anything, but people forget. They also lie.” Giordano grabbed his file and headed toward the hallway. Over his shoulder he said, “Keep digging.”

  Those were the same words Gerda Pittman had said about Jack Blasdel. Davie returned to her desk. A moment later her thoughts were interrupted when she heard footsteps and looked up to see her partner gritting his teeth as he walked into the squad room.

  Jason Vaughn’s sandy hair and toffee-colored eyes were inherited from his Northern Italian mother. Davie wasn’t sure which gene pool accounted for his tall, slim frame but his build was the perfect clothes hanger for the designer suits he preferred. She’d known Vaughn since their academy days but had worked with him for only six months at Pacific Homicide. He was her age—thirty-one—but his corny jokes and the pet names he called her—like a ghetto gunslinger and green-eyed ninja—were a tad too high school for her taste. That said, he was the best partner she’d ever had.

  “How was your interview?” she asked.

  He slammed his leather briefcase on the desk. “A big fat zero. Plus, on my way back from Tarzana there was a brush fire on the side of the 101. I had a hard time convincing the fire crew to let me pass through the roadblock.”

  “Glad you’re safe.”

  “CRO is having a pancake breakfast in the parking lot. Seven bucks. We can talk about it while we wait in line.”

  Davie glanced at her watch. “It’s almost noon. That’s lunch.”

  “Lunch. Brunch. Whatever. Let’s go.”

  The Community Relations Office worked out of a doublewide trailer in the parking lot. Half the space belonged to CRO; Senior Lead Officers occupied the other half. The SLOs acted as liaisons between the department and the Pacific community. CRO periodically put on fundraisers for events like Pacific’s annual holiday party, but Davie knew they were eating fried dough for only one reason: Vaughn had a crush on one of the P-2s in CRO, a leggy brunette with a crop of freckles and a full-throated laugh that Davie’s partner found intoxicating. He wanted to impress her and was willing to invest seven bucks just to see her smile.

  The garage mechanic was pouring batter onto a sizzling griddle fitted to a rusty metal half-barrel topped with briquettes. A dozen officers and civilian personnel were milling around holding plates. The P-2 emerged from the trailer carrying a tray of diced fruit.

  Davie saw immediately that the scene was not conducive for talking. “I’m going back to my desk. I have an interview at five and a ton of work to do before then.”

  Vaughn leaned over and whispered. “If pancakes aren’t your thing, I have an Italian sandwich on homemade bread at my desk. My mom made it but nobody has to know it wasn’t my talent with yeast and flour.”

  “Until I rat you out.”

  He tapped his finger on her nose. “You’d never do that, but I love the way your green eyes sparkle when you lie.”

  “Don’t try that cheesy line on your P-2. She’ll laugh you out of the CRO trailer.”

  Vaughn chuckled and headed toward the buffet table.

  Davie spent the next few minutes looking for information on the Four Paws embezzlement investigation. When she checked the Detective Case Tracking System she found that Burglary/Theft detectives at Wilshire Division had investigated the theft and discovered Four Paws wasn’t the only victim. In four years, the accountant had embezzled over a half-million dollars from various clients.

  The case required the services of a forensic accountant to audit bank statements, cancelled checks, and online payments. Divisional detectives didn’t have the resources for complex cases, so Wilshire Burglary had transferred the file to the Commercial Crimes Division. CCD detectives put the case together and the District Attorney’s office had filed charges. An arrest warrant was issued months ago, but law enforcement hadn’t been able to locate the suspect. His whereabouts were still unknown.

  Davie wondered if the embezzlement scam was connected to Montaine’s death. There was no evidence of that at the moment, but Davie couldn’t rule it out, either.

  For the next fifteen minutes she reviewed the Montaine file again. Fingerprints had been taken by the coroner’s office, but they’d never been run through AFIS. Instead, they’d identified Montaine by comparing the body to the information and photo on the California driver’s license in her purse. Her stepson Robert Montaine had confirmed her identity from images taken at the morgue. No further effort was made.

  Davie decided to start from scratch and approach the case as if it had just happened and nothing was known. The first step was to run Sara Montaine’s prints. The Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, was a national database maintained by the FBI. Its master file held fingerprints and criminal histories of 55 million bad guys and millions more civilians. It might be a waste of time, but Davie found it best to be thorough. Maybe the search would turn up something that wasn’t known before—records that hadn’t been found because a clerk had misspelled Sara Montaine’s name or some other mixup.

  Davie called Sharonda West, an analyst she knew at the latent print unit of the Scientific Investigation Division to ask what she knew was a big favor—move Davie’s AFIS request to the front of the line.

  “Send the prints ASAP,” Sharonda said, “but just so you know, there’s a processing backlog. Nonviolent offenses are low priority. You know what’s lower than that? Suicide cases that aren’t even open, like yours. I’m just warning you, it might take a while before I can get back to you.”

  “I understand, Shar. I know it isn’t a homicide now, but I have a feeling it will be. Just do what you can. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I’ll do my best, Davie.”

  Davie cradled the receiver and leaned back in her chair, plotting her next move. She nodded to Vaughn as he arrived at his desk looking glum. Things must not have gone well with the P-2.

  He handed Davie a sheet of paper from the fax machine. “This was on my desk, but it belongs to you.”

  The paperwork was in response to a search warrant for records she’d written ten days ago for another one of the Homicide detectives. At the bottom was a notification that no records had been found. The detective was in training for the next two weeks, but the court required Davie to return the warrant to the clerk’s office before then.

  She accessed the correct form on her computer and entered the required data. It would take an hour or so to drive to the Airport Court and back, including time spent standing in line at the window. She checked her watch. She could just make it to court and back before Alma Velez arrived for the interview.

  9

  Davie entered the front door of the Airport Court building, flashed her badge, and waited for security to wave her around the metal detector.

  “Richards?”

  She turned to see Detective Jon Striker huddled near the elevator with an attractive woman in a business suit. Her badge and gun told Davie she was also in law enforcement.

  Striker was assigned to the Homicide Special Section of the elite Robbery Homicide Division headquartered in downtown L.A. They’d worked a case together a month or so ago. She’d found him to be a smart and tenacious investigator. She hoped he felt the same about her.

  Davie raised her hand in a quick wave and kept walking. He leaned over and said something to the woman. Davie was to
o far away to hear his conversation, but the woman turned her head with a loud sigh. A moment later he headed toward Davie.

  At six-one, Striker towered over her by a foot, forcing her to look up to meet his gaze. The sun beaming through a nearby window highlighted the premature gray in his dark hair and the deep blue of his eyes.

  Davie wasn’t sure how to greet him. After what they’d gone through on the case they’d worked together, a handshake seemed too formal. A hug was definitely out of bounds, especially in a Superior Court lobby with attorneys, jurors, and law enforcement looking on. A fist bump? Not her style.

  “I’m surprised to see you so far from home base,” she said. “What brings you here?”

  “A subpoena.” He scrutinized her expression. “Haven’t seen you for a while. What have you been up to?”

  Davie glanced toward the clerk’s office and saw there was a long line of people waiting at the window. “Work. You?”

  “Are you still running?”

  Davie had been preparing for the Baker to Las Vegas relay race, an LAPD team competition that promoted physical fitness among its officers. She hadn’t run distances since her academy days, but one of the Pacific Autos detectives had talked her into competing in the event, so she’d hit the road in a new pair of running shoes. The next event wasn’t until the following spring, but she figured it would take her that long to get into shape, considering the limited time she had to train.

  “I’m up to ten miles,” she said.

  He whistled. “Impressive. On your way to a marathon.”

  She glanced at the line in the clerk’s office. It was shorter now. “Not sure about that. Baker to Vegas is good for now. What about you? Why not join us? It could be fun.”

  The creases around his eyes deepened. “I have other ways to stay in shape.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I’d love to know what they are.”

  He grinned. “You might be surprised. So what are you working on?”