Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 12

by Stalker

“I don’t want to think about that.” He wrinkled his nose. “But it’s a good idea.” He punched in Oliver’s pager and waited, pacing until he heard the phone come to life. Decker picked up the receiver with shaking hands. “Yo.”

  “What’s up?” Oliver answered. “Is Cindy okay?”

  Decker’s heart sank. If Oliver was asking, it meant she wasn’t with him. “I certainly hope so. I thought that maybe she was with you.”

  Oliver hesitated. Now there was a real change of heart. But at this point Deck was probably so nervous, he’d accept any kind of protection. Oliver figured he fell somewhere between a territorial ape and a pit bull in Decker’s mind. “She’s not with me,” he said. “I’ve been at the Camry’s crash site with Marge for the last three hours. Is there a specific problem with her?”

  “No. She’s just not home. Maybe I’ll swing by just to make sure.”

  “Marge and I have about fifteen, twenty more minutes here. I know it’s your Sabbath. If you want, we’ll go by. Save you the bother…if you want.”

  Trying to be diplomatic by asking him, Decker thought. “Did you see her this morning, Scott?”

  Oliver inhaled sharply. Was Decker about to grill him? But before Scott could answer, Decker said, “I was wondering if she told you anything new. Anything she didn’t feel comfortable telling me?”

  Okay. So that was it. Decker was scared shitless, taking help from anyone because Cindy was his daughter, a cop, and a reckless kid. “Actually, I did stop by around six. I made her breakfast, but she fell asleep before I was done cooking. No, she didn’t tell me anything new.”

  “That’s unfortunate.” Decker shifted the phone into his other hand. “Find out anything at the crash site?”

  “Amazingly, the techs pulled a couple of prints off the driver’s wheel.”

  “When was this?”

  “No more than a half hour ago. With this new computerized national fingerprint network, if the prints are there, we’d know something in a couple of hours if this was a weekday. As it is, we’ll have to wait until Monday.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing you probably don’t know. Yes, it appears that the car was pushed and doused with an accelerant. An amateur job, though, because too many things were left to chance. Someone was depending on the explosion to ignite the accelerant. A pro would have had some kind of remote device just in case it didn’t burst into flames. If we trace the driver through the fingerprints, maybe we can open some doors to the jackings. Provided we can find the driver. I’m sure Cindy got a better look at him than she remembers.”

  “Probably. I’d ask her about it if I could find her. I’ve tried her pager, her cell phone, her personal phone. I’d try her at work, but first off, she’s not on duty, and second, if it got out that I was calling to check up on her, she’d explode. You don’t carry the baggage I do. Maybe you could call up Hollywood for me.”

  “Sure, if that’s what you want.”

  Trouble was, Decker didn’t know what he wanted. He said, “Did you ever get hold of Elizabeth Tarkum?”

  “She’s away for the weekend.” Oliver made a snorting noise. “Now there’s a novel idea. People taking off work on weekends. I’ll try Tarkum on Monday morning.”

  “Marge tell you about her conversation with Dexter Bartholomew?”

  “That he got off on flirting with Crayton’s wife. And he didn’t want anything to do with his wife’s jacking, or, for obvious reasons, with Crayton’s death. We started kicking around some possibilities. First, a thing between Dexter Bartholomew and Lark Crayton. Then we thought about an affair between Crayton and Elizabeth Tarkum, which makes more sense because they were both victims.”

  “Dex popping Crayton as revenge, then having his wife carjacked to teach her a lesson. Kind of a stupid plan. Carjacking is a weird way to perpetrate a revenge crime. And two similar carjackings of two socially acquainted people would automatically throw suspicions on the spouses. Which is exactly what’s happening.”

  “Except that we didn’t connect them for over a year because the crimes happened in two different divisions. We might not have ever put the two together. It’s only because we’ve got a bunch of recent unsolved jackings that forced us to look elsewhere. An arrogant guy like Dex probably thought he got away with it.”

  “And now that we’re digging this up again?” Decker asked.

  “People who might have known something about the original Crayton jacking would watch their ass. That could include Cindy. I’m sure she doesn’t know jackshit about Crayton. But if Dex thinks she does, that might…you know what I’m saying.”

  Indeed Decker did. But hearing it so concisely gave his already wired nervous system a start. “What about Stacy Mills? You said you felt she was hiding something. Why don’t you and Marge go track her down? Impress upon her the need to be forthright. Maybe she was a friend of Lark or Armand, and one of them confided in her.”

  “I have no problem with that, but what about Cindy?”

  Decker held back a sigh. “I’ll swing by her place simply because I’m too nervous sitting here and doing nothing. It’s probably a total waste of time. She’s not home. I don’t know what I expect to accomplish.”

  “Peace of mind maybe.”

  “Oliver, I gave up on that romantic notion a long time ago.”

  24

  Oliver and Dunn reached the condo development right as the sun was setting, bleaching white a dozen low-profile pink stucco buildings that were topped with Spanish tile roofs. The apartments were scattered over golf-course-type acreage with lots of rises and dips made green by liberal use of lawn sprinklers. Not a lot of flowers or bushes, but there were several lily ponds, a couple of swimming pools, a quad of tennis courts, and many bubbling Jacuzzis. The structures were identical and it took the duo a few passes before they found Stacy Mills’s specific abode, which had been christened The Windsome.

  The aerobics instructor lived on the second floor: a two-bedroom, two-bath unit with a niche that passed for a state-of-the-art kitchen. She answered the knock, her expression sour and suspicious. She was a wiry thing in black latex, her arms well defined if not big. She seemed very nervous, her eyes skipping between the two cops. Her eggplant-painted lips were pressed against each other as if glued shut. “Since you’re not going away, you might as well come in.”

  She led them into her carton-size living room, which held two mullioned French doors leading out to a patio. The walls held several prints of saccharine-sweet sunsets; the floor was covered in cream-colored pile carpet. The furniture was chunky and square, the couches and chairs upholstered in what passed as chic. But to Marge’s eyes, the cloth looked more like Granny’s white slipcovers. There were no throw pillows atop the couches, only two white, long-haired, ennui-stricken cats, which blended in with the fabric.

  Oliver chose one of the chairs; Marge abutted one of the bored cats. It lifted its head, then decided to roll over. Marge stroked its belly and it purred contentedly. Stacy’s eyes narrowed, regarding the cat like an errant lover.

  “How long is this going to take?” Stacy snapped. “I have clients.”

  Marge settled into the couch. She wore a plain white blouse tucked into gray slacks; her jacket was midnight blue and unstructured. She pulled out her notebook from a floppy straw bag. “What kind of work do you do?”

  “I’m a personal trainer. I work with many important people—industry people.”

  Industry meaning Hollywood. Oliver said, “How long have you worked as a PT?”

  “What is this? A job interview?” Stacy exhaled, clamping her arms across her chest. “Why am I talking to you? You haven’t recovered the car, right?”

  “Right,” Marge answered.

  “So what good are you? I’ve got a dinner date in a few hours. Can you leave?”

  Oliver said, “How long have you worked as a personal trainer?”

  Stacy regarded him with steely eyes. “Didn’t you just ask me that?”

  “Yes,
but you haven’t answered the question.” He reached for his notebook tucked into the inside pocket of his lightweight gray jacket—a previously owned Valentino that he picked up at a fraction of its retail cost, probably a discard from someone in the Industry. He completed the designer blazer with a sky-blue shirt, patterned tie, charcoal pants, and black tie shoes. “It’s a simple question, Ms. Mills.”

  “About ten years.”

  “Really?” Oliver smiled. “You started your field while still in your teens?”

  “Ha, ha, ha…” But the compliment wasn’t lost on Stacy. “I work hard at looking good. It’s my stock-in-trade.”

  “I’ll bet,” Marge said. “No one wants to get advice from someone who doesn’t look the part. Like your obese doctor telling you to lose weight.”

  Stacy said, “Can we dispense with the chitchat and get down to business? Exactly why are you here?”

  Marge said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Armand Crayton—”

  “I knew it!” Stacy began to pace, arms swinging like rotor blades, her feet squashing the white nap of her carpet. “I didn’t know him. But if it’ll get you out of here quicker, I’ll say I did.”

  Marge said, “You didn’t know him?”

  “That’s right!”

  “Did you ever meet him?” Oliver asked.

  Stacy glared at him. “Yes.”

  “And you still insist you didn’t know him?”

  “I exchanged hellos with him. ‘Hello, how are you. Hi, how you doing? Hey, what’s up?’ That’s not knowing a person.”

  “Sounds to me like you saw him on a regular basis,” Marge said. “Would you care to explain?”

  “Not really.”

  Abruptly, Oliver sat up. “I interviewed Lark Crayton. She takes good care of herself. She’s one of your clients, right?”

  “Was,” Stacy corrected. “I stopped working with her after he died. First off, she was in no state to train. Secondly, money became tight.”

  “Did you like her?” Oliver said.

  “She paid her bills. For me, that constitutes liking a person.”

  “Did you have a personal relationship with her?”

  “No.” Stacy stopped walking about. “Anything else?”

  “People tell their trainers all sorts of personal stuff, don’t they?” Marge said.

  “Yes, they do.”

  “You must feel like a shrink half of the time.”

  “Yes, I do,” Stacy said. “But a good trainer, like a good shrink, keeps confidentiality.”

  “But unlike a shrink,” Marge said, “you’re not bound by rules of confidentiality.”

  “It gets out I talk about things, I lose my clients, Detective.”

  “It doesn’t have to get out,” Oliver said.

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “Because you’re perceptive,” Oliver answered. “I’m a rotten guy for a boyfriend, but an honest cop.” He turned to Marge for confirmation.

  “I can vouch for the honest cop part,” Marge answered. “Look, we all know that the carjacking scared you—”

  “Of course, it scared me! It terrified me! You want to get me to trust you, solve the damn crime. And don’t tell me you need my help to do that. You should be able to do that without my help. That’s why I pay taxes!”

  Oliver said, “Ms. Mills, your clients pay you to help them stay in shape or get into shape. But no matter what you do, if they don’t exercise and watch their diet, you’re not going to work miracles. That’s all we’re asking. If you give us a little background, it could go a long way.”

  Marge said, “We know Lark was dissatisfied with Crayton. Fill us in on the details.”

  Stacy checked her watch. Then she marched over to the fridge and took out a water bottle. She gulped greedily as if Crayton had sucked out her life force. “What do you want to know? She was unhappy with her marriage. So what else is new in this city?”

  “What were her specific complaints?” Marge asked.

  “He worked too hard, he worked too long. He wasn’t around, he had women on the side. He didn’t make enough, though she seemed to have lots of money to my eye. But I’ve worked long enough to know that lots of SoCals live on the edge, especially those in the Industry. Even the ones who make it can’t seem to hold on to it. It’s amazing how fast they go through the millions. If it’s not cars, it’s clothes. If it’s not clothes, it’s jewelry. Actually, if they’d stick to clothes and jewelry and fancy cars, they’d be okay. It’s the lavish parties, the chartered jets, the hundred-foot yacht, the three vacation homes along with the residence in Holmby Hills and the apartment in New York. You think they live in any of the zillions of houses? I have this one client…he’s got a four-thousand-square-foot Upper East Side apartment in New York with a view of the park that was decorated by some Architectural Digest biggie. I think the place was featured in Architectural Digest. Do you think he stays in the apartment when he’s in New York? No, of course not. That would make too much sense. He rents out a suite at the Carlyle because he likes the room service. If he stays at his apartment, he’s gotta get a cook and a maid and a valet and a haircut guy and a gym guy: It’s easier to use the hotel’s services. So I ask him, ‘Why do you keep the apartment? It must cost a fortune in upkeep.’ You know what he says?”

  “What?” Marge duly responded.

  “He’s says he uses it for entertaining—for his parties. Can’t have a dinner party at a hotel. But when the party’s over, his hired help cleans up, and he goes back to a clean hotel room. Can you beat that?”

  Marge smiled. “Maybe you can borrow it from him at a reduced rate?”

  “He’s offered to take me more than once. Supposedly to keep him in shape when he’s in New York. Yeah, to keep his pecker muscles in shape.” She bent down and picked up a cat. The feline was passive and drooped in her arms like a muffler. “Let me tell you something. I earn my money honestly. I’m nobody’s whore.”

  Oliver said, “You have a lot in common with us. We’re pushed around all the time—”

  “Who says I’m pushed around!” Stacy sounded resentful.

  “Maybe you aren’t, but we are,” Marge answered. “We can’t move without worrying about the ACLU or the IAD or some other citizens’ group bringing charges against us. And it’s hard to be methodical when arresting someone who’s drunk or stoned or irrationally angry.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t bleed for cops,” Stacy said, stroking her pet.

  “And you shouldn’t,” Marge said. “I’m not bitching. I knew the job when I got into it. I imagine that you did, too. You tell people you work for all these rich movie stars who offer you perks and free trips and whatnots. They think you got it made. But everything has a price, right?”

  Stacy said, “Excuse me, but what does all this have to do with Crayton?”

  “You tell us,” Oliver said. “You’re the one who reacted so strongly when we mentioned his name.”

  Stacy turned away, placing the cat back onto the sofa. “Okay. This is it. Armand was a typical case in point. With a little charm and a lot of ambition, he pyramided his way up. He had the house, the beautiful wife, the clothes, the Rolls, the parties, and the clients who invested with him. But beneath the surface it was built on quicksand, just waiting to cave in.” A breath, then an exhale. “Lark told me she was worried. He was up to his neck in shenanigans.”

  “What kind of shenanigans?” Oliver asked.

  “Lark didn’t get into specifics, only that Armand was behind in payments and needed some quick cash. His lifestyle was eating him up. But he couldn’t sell off his stuff because that would alert people that he was in trouble. Meanwhile, she’s spending a hundred bucks an hour to have me watch her sweat. Lark kept obsessing on the car. The Corniche was leased, of course, and the payments were taking a hefty bite out of his wallet.”

  “Why didn’t he walk away from it?”

  “He couldn’t get out of the contract without stiff penalties, let alon
e ruin the image. When people see you desperate, they chuck you out like vomit. Look, I’m not totally innocent of that kind of thing. I have to keep a certain face for show. I drive a Beemer…well, I used to drive a Beemer. You need a good car for show, but I got mine at a very good price—all cash. Now it’s gone, but insurance’ll take care of me. I could easily be in hock like the rest. But I’m not because I’m the bargain-shopping queen.” She turned to Oliver. “Like your jacket. It looks like Valentino. I could get that today for seventy-five percent off retail because it’s last year’s style.”

  Oliver said, “I didn’t do badly. I got it last year for sixty off.”

  “No, that’s not bad at all. Where’d you get it?”

  “Retails for Less.”

  “I’ve been there. Off-seasons and seconds.”

  “And previously owned.”

  “Good for you. If Hollywood had your money sense, movies wouldn’t cost twelve bucks a pop.”

  Marge said, “Getting back to the Rolls. Armand wanted to get out of the lease?”

  “According to Lark, yes. All my information about Armand was according to Lark. So if it turns out to be bullshit, don’t blame me.”

  Oliver said, “Did Armand have any ideas on how to break the contract?”

  Stacy sighed. “She mentioned something to me about him faking an accident…you know, ramming it into a wall and totaling it. She asked me if I thought that would look suspicious.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her I thought it was a real dumb idea. It not only would look phony but he could hurt himself. Crashing into walls to total cars isn’t something that should be done by amateurs.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She dropped the subject.”

  “And that was that?” Oliver said.

  “No,” Stacy admitted. “A couple weeks later she asked me if I knew anyone who’d be willing to not only steal a car but to get rid of it. Like because I train lots of people, I know a big criminal element.” She stopped talking, again folding her arms across her breast. “I was really insulted.”