Serpentine

by Jonathan Kellerman

  She was working on two projects: rescuing a 1789 Vinaccia mandolin abused by a faculty committee at the U. that had failed to safeguard a donated collection, and tweaking a 1937 Martin D-45 guitar worth 300K for a former folksinger turned property mogul in Connecticut.

  The mandolin was all squinty handwork, the guitar past the power-tool stage, so the studio was quiet as she sat assembling specks of inlay.

  Painstaking work. I stood back until she put down her tweezers, lifted her magnifying specs, and flashed me a gorgeous smile. Her auburn curls were tied back loosely. Today’s bib overalls were red, over a black tee and jeans. She’s five-two on a good day and special-orders them at a safety-clothes place in Idaho. They’re tough and functional and relent when confronted by her curves.

  Blanche remained in place. Long a shop companion, she also knows enough to kick back when the work gets delicate. Once Robin walked toward me, she padded along. The two of them reached me the same time.

  “Hi, girls.”

  Blanche stood on her hind legs and hugged my knees.

  Robin said, “Make your choice and live with the consequences.”

  I swooped Blanche into my arms and let her lick my face as I kissed Robin full and long.

  When we unclenched, Robin laughed. “Playing both ends, very devious, darling. Ever consider the diplomatic corps?”

  “I prefer honest labor.”

  “Good point, I prefer you honest. Coffee? It’s half-caf.”

  I touched my gut. “No room for anything.”

  “How come?”

  “Lunched with Big Guy. À la Big Guy.”

  “You gave in to temporary loss of control? I like that. Where’d this gluttony go down?”

  “Musso.” I gave her the details.

  “Sand dabs, I’m jealous. Does that mean a decent dinner’s out of the question? I was planning something nice.”

  “Sure, where do you want to go?”

  “There.” Pointing at the house. “You cooking.”

  “No prob, I’ll put something together.”

  “No need to be theoretical,” she said. “I read your mind and bought two steelhead fillets.”

  “Mentalism,” I said. “That explains the vibrations here.” Tapping my forehead.

  “Does it? What about the throbbing here? And here? And here?”

  I looked over her curls at the shop clock on the far wall. “Appointment in forty-five minutes.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” she said. “I’ll see to it.”

  CHAPTER

  6

  By eight thirty p.m., I’d finished two court reports and begun charts on the two kids I’d seen in the afternoon. Robin was back in the studio checking out the mandolin’s progress, Blanche was snoring in her open-door crate. I returned to my computer.

  Neither Ellie Barker nor Milo had found a thing on Dorothy Swoboda but I looked anyway. Google pulled up one woman by that name, dead since 1895, gravestone in Missouri.

  I switched to a broad-based Nexis periodicals search, found only the Times squib. Switched the subject to Stanley Richard Barker and got three hits.

  Two were puff pieces from the East Bay Times. Forty-two years ago, “Dr. Stan” had been lauded for donating eye exams and glasses to underprivileged schoolkids. Not in Danville, the paper was quick to point out. In “less affluent neighboring communities.”

  One year later, Barker had attracted similar praise for opening up a second branch of his SEE-RITE optometric shop in Oakland.

  The third reference was a nineteen-year-old obituary in The San Francisco Examiner: The body of a Danville man had been discovered by hikers in a gully below a trail in the Las Trampas Regional Wilderness. Stanley R. Barker, sixty-four, a Danville ophthalmologist (sic) had been reported missing a week before by an unnamed receptionist.

  I looked up the locale, found descriptions on several travel sites specializing in outdoor recreation: five-thousand-plus acres of regional park consisting of two ridges sprawling across Contra Costa and Alameda counties, the nearest city, Danville. Sections had been left wild, others featured marked trails.

  Beautiful place according to every source but, with drops approaching a thousand feet, best suited for “highly athletic, experienced hikers under favorable meteorological conditions.”

  I rechecked the Examiner piece. July 15, so probably mild weather, unless Barker had gotten lost and ended up stranded in the dark.

  In the photo I’d just seen, Barker was soft-looking. Wearing a suit outdoors. I supposed he could’ve embraced fitness at an advanced age, but his death-site seemed curious.

  What I also found curious was that Ellie Barker hadn’t mentioned his unnatural death.

  Maybe when balanced against her mother’s murder, a fatal accident seemed benign. Or there was just so much bad karma she could tolerate at one time.

  Mom in a car, shot and burned and rolled over into a ravine.

  Dad found, decaying, in a gully.

  There was a certain confluence.

  I looked up Wikipedia’s description of the park, stopped short at the end of the first paragraph.

  Trampas was Spanish for “traps.”

  I called Milo.

  * * *

  —

  He picked up sounding sleepy.

  I said, “Another Martini?”

  “Wine at dinner. Rick cooked and he picked a really nice Rioja, how could I say no? What’s up?”

  I told him about Barker.

  He said, “Nineteen years. Seventeen after Dottie, not exactly a pattern.”

  “True.”

  “But they did both go over cliffs.”

  “And Ellie didn’t mention it.”

  “Maybe she wanted to concentrate on Mommy. Speaking of Mommy, Petra called right after I dropped you off. She did come through with something, God bless her. Not the case file, but better than nothing—listing of three D’s who worked it.”

  “Together or in sequence?”

  “Passed from one to the other, there was never a task force. The first guy was before my time, D III named Elwin McClatchy. He was on it for six years, retired, died soon after. I know all this because googling him brings up a big departmental funeral, apparently he’d done some heroics as a patrolman. After McClatchy, the case sat there for three years before going to a guy I do know from when he worked at Pacific briefly before retiring. Drone named P. J. Seeger, we talked about a gang case that leaked over to West L.A. and then he was gone.”

  “Any idea why the case got reactivated?”

  “Not yet. This was before cold cases were a thing so it could’ve been routine housecleaning—new captain comes in, wants to clear the cobwebs. Or the department ran an audit and Hollywood wanted good stats.”

  “Or Seeger got curious.”

  “Maybe, but P.J. wasn’t an inquisitive guy and the fact that it was given to him tells me it wasn’t prioritized.”

  “No Sherlock.”

  “A dim bulb with low energy. Taaawked-liiike-thiiis, when I got off the phone with him I felt like shooting speed. He held on to Swoboda for five years before transferring so by the time he took his pension, the case was fourteen years old. I didn’t expect much from talking to him but no stone and all that, so I dug up the last home number in his file and talked to his widow. Chatty lady lives in the same house in Granada Hills. Turns out P.J. celebrated his newfound freedom by buying a Harley that he crashed fatally a month later.”

  “She know anything about Swoboda?”

  “Nope, Philly never brought his work home. Right after he transferred to Pacific, the case went to a name I don’t know, D I named Dudley Gallway.”

  “Lower-grade detective,” I said. “That mean anything?”

  “Probably. Haven’t found paper or internet info on Gallway yet but I
don’t feel like attacking the issue under the influence of Spanish wine. Tomorrow I’ll ask Petra for some old-timer contacts, maybe take her to Musso as a gesture of gratitude. Speaking of which, lunch was pretty good, no?”

  “Great,” I said.

  “My imagination or did the portions get smaller?”

  CHAPTER

  7

  I heard from him at eleven thirty a.m. the following day.

  “Petra got more info, the angel. I offered her a repast but she had a big breakfast, all she wants is ice cream. Hour and a half, McConnell’s on the boulevard, if you can make it.”

  “It’ll be nice to see her,” I said.

  “You bet, form and function. The PC squad comes knocking, I never said that.”

  * * *

  —

  The ice cream parlor sported white brick walls, golden hardwood floors, and a spotless freezer case. The ground floor was for ordering and takeout, the eat-in tables upstairs.

  I’d taken a while to find parking, arrived to find D III Petra Connor spooning something from a cup as Milo, his back to me, assaulted an unseen target with rapid scooping motions. The only other patrons were a large group of Nordic tourists eating and talking gutturally and guffawing, all in slo-mo.

  Petra’s one of Hollywood Division’s best homicide investigators, promoted via fast-track based on smarts, dependability, and an eye for detail honed during her civilian career as a commercial artist.

  Her model-thin frame, ivory angular face, and gleaming black hair created an interesting, borderline-comical counterpoint to Milo’s rumpled bulk and assorted convexities. She was dressed, as usual, in a tailored dark pantsuit, this one charcoal, mandarin-collared, buttoned to the neck. An oversized black knit leather bag rested in her lap. When there’s a gun in your purse, you don’t leave it dangling over your chair.

  She saw me and finger-waved. Milo turned around for a moment, resumed eating. The object of his fury was a hot fudge sundae topped with pineapple, maraschino cherries, and sliced almonds.

  I pulled up a chair. He said, “You didn’t order?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Petra said, “This is Turkish Coffee, Alex. Has a real coffee taste.”

  “Maybe also real caffeine,” said Milo. “If you’re flagging.” He squinted at me.

  “Wide awake. What’s up?”

  Milo said, “Ms. Ace came through with data.”

  “That makes it sound like more than it is,” said Petra.

  “It’s a start, kid.” He turned to me. “My guess about an audit was right. Found one bemoaned in the police union rag, just before Seeger got the case. And turns out Seeger is recalled by an old-timer.”

  Petra said, “I knew a guy, Maurice Jardine, went off the job fifteen years ago pushing seventy and is alive and well in Desert Hot Springs. I called him, he’s got a sharp memory and his impression of Seeger fits Milo’s. Slow-moving, slow-thinking, unlikely to solve anything but an obvious.”

  I said, “Does Jardine have any memory of Swoboda?”

  “None,” she said. “Seeger never mentioned the case and there were definitely no meetings on it.”

  Milo said, “Bureaucratic housecleaning leads to a low-priority bullshit-assignment.” He wiped his lips and looked at Petra.

  She said, “Jardine also remembered the next link in the chain, Dudley Gallway. Who he thought was Gall-o-way, but couldn’t be sure.”

  Milo said, “Plenty of lousy spellers in the department so I checked both of them. Nada.”

  Petra said, “Guy’s probably not worth talking to anyway, Jardine said he was a new transfer from somewhere, totally green, didn’t stick around long.”

  “Are we sensing a pattern, Alex? Whatever was done is probably irrelevant. And no paper on Gall-whoever might mean he’s also dead. I did look for a certificate and didn’t find one but if he met his maker overseas there might not be.”

  Petra smiled and spooned ice cream. “Tell him your hypothesis.”

  “What—nah, what’s the diff?”

  She put her spoon down and turned to me. “I’ll do my best to quote faithfully, Alex.” She lowered her voice to basso. “ ‘Guy probably bit it south of the border after years of tequila, vanilla, fiestas, and siestas.’ ”

  I pretended to study the sundae. “Vanilla your thing? Looks like chocolate to me.”

  Milo said, “German chocolate with cookie bits, if you must know.”

  Petra said, “However…”

  Milo groaned.

  She said, “I learn so much from my superiors, Alex. The lieutenant informs me that in Spanish idiom, vanilla can also mean ‘sex.’ ”

  I said, “Really. Never knew fun on the beach was your fantasy.”

  Milo said, “I’m talking a theoretical individual, not personal vida loca.”

  We both looked at him.

  He said, “Think what you like but I sack out too long on la playa, the Coast Guard gets called out on a beached whale.”

  “Aw,” said Petra, touching the top of his hand. “Nothing fish-like about you. You’re a man of earthy substance.”

  “Whales are mammals, kid, but I’m not gonna quibble seeing as I owe you for taking the time.”

  “Consider it an even trade.”

  “What’d you get out of it?”

  “It’s what I didn’t get,” she said. “Swoboda died on my patch, there but for the grace.”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  Another hand pat. “I commiserate, I really do. Being ordered around by brass monkeys isn’t a—ahem—day at the beach.”

  Fighting back laughter, she ate a third of a spoonful of ice cream. “Though it might’ve been cool working with Ellie Barker. What’s she like?”

  Milo said, “Why?”

  “You said she was the brains behind Beterkraft. I love their stuff, wear it when I run, Spin, hike, anything active. Super-comfortable, flattering, moisture-wicking.”

  “You sweat?”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  “Well,” he said, “if you feel like opening some serious pores, I can ask the brass monkeys to—”

  “That’s kind, sir, but no thanks. However, should additional questions regarding miscellaneous details arise in the future, feel free to have your people call my people. Assuming the proper forms have been filled out in triplicate.”

  Milo extended his arm in a flourish. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how she ended up a superstar.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  When Petra was gone, his smile faded. “Good intentions but I thought she’d have more. Guess I will have to trek to the archive and waste a bunch of time. Unless you have other ideas.”

  I shook my head.

  “Then mea culpa for bringing you out here. As compensation, let’s go downstairs and you buy an ice cream on me, unlimited toppings.”

  “I’ll bring some home to Robin.”

  “Get a quart—forget that, a gallon. Ten gallons, we’ll pretend we’re in Texas.”

  “A pint’ll be fine.”

  “Discretion,” he said, hitching his trousers. “One day I’ll understand the concept.”

  * * *

  —

  Driving home, a pint of Turkish Coffee on the passenger seat, I found myself wondering about accidental death.

  Nothing deductive or fact-based, just the kind of mental lint that settles in an unsatisfied brain.

  Dorothy Swoboda’s murder had been staged as a car-crash immolation.

  Fourteen years later, a detective assigned to her case had perished on his motorcycle.

  Three years after that, Swoboda’s widower had tumbled off an isolated cliff.

  With all that time separation, a pattern was far-fetched. But…how common were fatal accidents? When I got
home I’d check.

  I’d also try alternative spellings for Dudley Gallway/Galloway, a man Milo figured was deceased.

  Wouldn’t it be interesting if he’d died from something other than illness?

  * * *

  —

  I popped back to Robin’s studio and told her about the ice cream. She kissed me, said, “Something to look forward to, thanks,” and returned to mandolin micro-surgery.

  This time Blanche trailed me back to the house, pausing to take care of business near an azalea bush. One of her customary spots; the blooms were especially lush.

  I said, “I thank you for the flowers,” and continued to my office.

  * * *

  —

  The previous year, 1,314,000 Americans had succumbed to the three most commonly lethal maladies: Heart disease had claimed 630,000 lives, cancer, a little over 600,000, diabetes, 84,000.

  Deaths on motorcycles totaled 5,000. On the face of it, a substantial statistic, but when you did the math, less than a third of one percent of the disease total.

  Falls while hiking were so rare they barely registered: 35.

  A freak event had taken the life of a man who posed outdoors in a suit.

  * * *

  —

  I began searching for the vanished Dudley Gallway/Galloway, adding lapd detective to the subject box and coming up empty. Tacking on retired didn’t help. Neither did spelling out los angeles police department, appending Dorothy Swoboda’s name, or repeating the entire process using dudley galway.

  But dudley galoway popped up in three paragraphs retrieved by Nexis.

  Ten-year-old article from a weekly called The Piro Clarion. Bookmarking, I looked up the town. Fifteen miles north of Simi Valley, population 2,340. Once agricultural, now a golf community.

  A decade ago, the descendants of a farming family who’d homesteaded thirty acres of citrus on the outskirts of Piro back in the late 1800s had applied for a zoning variance in order to build “mixed-income housing.” Public opinion had immediately massed against the idea with the exception of a city council member named Dara Guzman, who bemoaned “NIMBY small-mindedness. The workers who service our town deserve decent housing.”