Self-Defense

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “He says he hasn’t done it for years. If that’s true, it indicates self-control.”

  He continued skygazing. “Actually, that does amaze me. Living in the same city with them, believing they know something, and letting it go.”

  “Maybe his work keeps him going. He fills his days with good deeds.”

  “Food to the poor, huh?”

  “Could be I’m a chump, but he impressed me as a good guy, Milo. Trying to deal with his loss by finding some higher meaning. The only thing that bothered me was a picture he had hanging up in the kitchen over the sink. A Bible print—Dinah being abducted by Shechem. He was staring at it as he washed the dishes. I looked up the story when I got home. It’s in the book of Genesis. Dinah was Jacob’s daughter; Shechem was a Canaanite prince who kidnapped her and raped her. Two of her brothers took revenge by slaughtering him and his whole village.”

  “Nice image for a man of the cloth to meditate on.”

  “I don’t want to light any fires under him. I know what revenge can do.”

  He lowered his eyes and looked at me.

  “So what’s the theoretical scenario here? She took a nature hike on Friday night, ended up at Lowell’s place the day before the party, and got invited in?”

  “Not unless she was a serious hiker. We’re talking several miles up to the top of Topanga. But maybe she was hitchhiking and got picked up. And maybe the party started early—or it was informal. People drifting in at all hours.” I held up the clipping. “This makes it sound like a loose scene rather than some formal bash.”

  “All those big shots and people are just wandering in?”

  “You remember how things were back in the seventies. Peace, love, people playing at social equality. Best said that was one of the reasons the sheriffs didn’t take Karen’s disappearance seriously. Times were casual, kids on the road, everyone into free-and-easy.”

  He looked out at the baseball diamond and the rolling lawns beyond. “I spent the seventies grinding away in college, then shooting at guys in black pajamas, but I take your word for it.”

  “I was a grind too,” I said. “But I remember hitchhikers thicker than gulls on PCH. Best says Karen was a good girl, but she’d been away from home for almost half a year, and kids can change fast when they taste freedom. Plus, she wanted to be an actress. What if she was thumbing—or just taking a short walk up the canyon, unwinding after work. And a person with a famous face pulled alongside her—in a stretch limo. Telling her there’s a hot party up the hill, lots of other showbiz types, hop in. Would an aspiring actress turn that down?”

  “Guess it’s plausible,” he said. “If the partying started early. But even then, all you’ve really got is a dream and a missing girl.”

  “A girl who called home every week and then stopped. And was never heard from again.”

  He faced me once more. “I’m not saying she’s not dead, Alex. Sounds like she probably is. But that doesn’t mean she died up in Lowell’s place, and after all these years I don’t see how you’re gonna get any closer to it.”

  “I don’t either. God, I really hope I haven’t lit a fire under Best. At the very least, I’m giving him false hope.”

  “Well,” he said, “if you’re right about his being a man of faith, maybe it’ll carry him through.”

  “Maybe.” I sat forward on the bench. A tiny colorless spider had crawled onto my knee. I picked it up carefully, and its thread legs wriggled frantically. Placing it on the grass, I watched it disappear among the blades.

  Milo said, “Something has been bothering me, though. What you told me about brother Peter. Guy never travels, but he just happens to be out of town when she sticks her head in the oven? Unemployed, but he’s too tied up with business to get back? Then he takes the time to call Embrey and a half brother he hasn’t seen in twenty years but not Lucy? Then you tell me he’s weird. And now Lucy’s saying someone swiped her underwear, and he has a key to her apartment.”

  “You think he did it?”

  “I think it sounds like he’s running from something. Maybe nasty impulses. Maybe he’s close to her in a way that scares him, so he split to the desert to be alone with his goddamn thoughts.”

  “Oh, man,” I said. “Just what Lucy needs.”

  I thought about my brief meeting with Peter, trying to remember as much as I could about him. Pale face, sleepy voice. Cold hands. Bulky sweater on a hot day. Eager to get back to the car. Looking down at his lap. . . .

  “What if he’s running from something else?” I said.

  I described the brother.

  Milo looked at me. His big black eyebrows were up.

  “Junkie?”

  “It fits, doesn’t it? His unemployment, Lucy’s defensive attitude—evasive, actually. I remember her saying he was always trying to protect her “even though he’—and then she broke off the sentence. When I pressed she said, Even though he isn’t the toughest guy in the world. But it wasn’t what she started to say. I know it’s conjecture, but he really wanted to get back inside that car. When I glanced back, he was sitting low in the seat. As if he was doing something. Lucy looked back too, and that session she dropped her chronic smile. He could have been fixing right there. She could have known.”

  “Junkie,” he repeated. “Could be. Hungry hypes don’t wait for a corner suite and fresh linens.”

  “It would explain his cutting out on Lucy in her time of need. Talking to everyone else but her because she’d know he was traveling to make a buy, and he didn’t want to have to explain. Doesn’t lots of stuff come into New Mexico from the border?”

  He nodded. “But no shortage of stuff right here in L.A.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t buy here. Because he’d run up some serious debts—that could be why he left town. Avoiding creditors. The kind who don’t send overdue notices.” My stomach tightened. “For all we know, the creditors know about Lucy and are trying to use her as leverage. Maybe those phone hang-ups were real. Maybe someone really did break in and mess with her underwear.”

  “No one broke in,” he said. “She said there was no evidence of that.”

  “Okay, so they tossed Puck’s place and found the key to Lucy’s apartment.”

  “That’s awfully subtle for people like that,” he said. “They’d enjoy breaking in.”

  “Maybe it’s at a subtle stage. Intimidating him so he makes a big score for them and settles up. Maybe he’s a longtime seller. How else would he pay for his habit without a job? Lucy’s got a family trust fund that pays her a thousand dollars a month, so he might too. But with any kind of habit, a thousand a month wouldn’t go very far.”

  “Trust fund from Lowell’s side of the family or the mother’s?”

  “Lowell’s.”

  “Daddy abandons the kids, but supports them?”

  “It’s a generation-skipping thing set up by his mother for taxes. He may have no control over it.”

  “Leverage,” he said. “Yeah, be nice to blame it all on the dope demons and restore her credibility. But I still don’t see any connection to her head in the oven.”

  “What if someone drugged her and put her there? She’s a creature of routine, has a drink of juice, every night, watches PBS. That would explain the drapes being open—they wanted her to be found. Wanted to send a message to Puck. Wouldn’t that be something? We’re all assuming she’s lying or denying, and she’s telling the truth?”

  He rubbed his face. “It would absolutely be something, Alex. It would be Fantasyland, ’cause there’s no knot on her head and the hospital found nothing on her dope panel.”

  “What if they gave her something the panel doesn’t test for, like chloroform?”

  “Hey,” he said, “you wanna theorize, I say it’s more likely Pucky himself tried to gas her—pissed ’cause she wouldn’t give him dope money. Or maybe he’s just after her chunk of the trust fund and split town to give himself an alibi. And he’s calling Ken to find out if she’s dead. You like that one, I can m
ake up six more like it for a quarter. Couple more quarters, I’ll fill your day with fantasy.”

  Off in the distance, the retriever sniffed the air and bolted off after something. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m lapsing into wishful thinking because I’d just love it if she didn’t try to destroy herself. But she did. And for all I know, Puck never touched dope. Just a shy guy with circulatory problems.”

  “No,” he said, “there’s something off about him. I wanted to check him out on the computer this morning, but I got called to the market two-eleven at six-thirty. First thing I do when I get back is play computer games. Got an address for him?”

  “Ken said Studio City. Are you still going to check out Trafficant?”

  “Sure, why not? I’m already pushing buttons.”

  “Poor Lucy,” I said. “Another hurt.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Hurt seems to be on her dance card.”

  It was 1 P.M. when I got back to Malibu. While stopped at a red light near the pier, I caught a look at Shooting the Curl’s facade. White building, blued windows. A sign with fat white letters spelling out the name over a mural of a wet-suited surfer riding a big wave.

  Paradise Cove was ten miles later. A neon sign on a tall pole pointed toward the beach. THE SAND DOLLAR Breakfast Lunch Dinner. Impulsively, I turned off.

  A dipping road took me past an acre or so of wildflowers, then a trailer park shaded by huge shaggy eucalyptus. Between the trees, the water was flat and silver. Another hundred feet and I came up against a guardhouse and a lowered wooden arm. A sign said the beach was private and it would cost $5 to go any farther unless I was eating at the restaurant.

  The kid in the guardhouse stuck his head out. His nose was peeling and his sunglasses were mirrored.

  “Sand Dollar,” I said.

  “Five bucks.” He handed me a ticket. “Get this stamped and I’ll give it back to you when you leave.”

  I drove down the final slope to a big wide parking lot. The restaurant was down at the bottom, set on the sand, a wood-shingled shuttered thing with a Happy Hour banner above the door.

  Inside was a dark waiting area carpeted in red felt, paneled in cheap wood, and hung with salt-eaten nautical gear. No one was waiting, but a cigarette was smoldering in an ashtray. To the right was a cavelike bar with a couple of people bellying up and watching stand-up comedy on cable. Straight ahead was an empty host’s stand and, beyond that, the restaurant.

  The main room was gigantic, the way L.A. restaurants used to be before the land boom, with two long rows of red brass-buttoned booths and the same felt carpeting. The entire beach wall was glass. A big storm, several years ago, had sheared off one-third of the pier. The remains jutted over the water. A few tourists sat on the beach. The people in the restaurant looked mostly like locals, but there weren’t many of them and they were distributed thinly.

  A couple of waitresses were working, one young and redheaded, the other in her fifties with a squat face and cropped gray hair. Both wore pink blouses, black pants, and red aprons, their sleeves rolled up, their eyes tired. A busboy collected dishes from a table in the far corner.

  The host was a tall, heavy, white-bearded man. He noticed me and stopped talking to a busboy.

  “Lunch for one,” I said, and he took me to a window booth.

  The older waitress showed up a few minutes later, all business. I ordered the Angler’s Breakfast, $10.95 (Served All Day): deep-fried red snapper, eggs, hash browns, juice, and coffee. The food was good and I tried to eat slowly. By the time I finished, the restaurant was nearly empty and the waitress was nowhere in sight. I finally spotted her in the bar, smoking and watching TV, and gave a wave.

  She came over, looking peeved. Her name tag said DORIS.

  I handed her a twenty and the parking stub and she went to get change. Pulling out Best’s data sheet, I scanned the names of the restaurant staffers.

  Doris Reingold?

  When she returned, I said, “Keep five for yourself,” and got a big smile.

  “Thank you, sir, how was your meal?”

  “Excellent.”

  “The Angler’s one of our popular ones.”

  “I can see why . . . looks like things are pretty quiet today.”

  “It goes up and down. On Sunday no one gets in without a reservation.”

  “That so?”

  “All the Hollywood people show up—they’re over at their beach places for the weekend. Barbra Streisand sits in that corner. She’s tiny. We get chefs, too, like the guy who runs La Poubelle. They bring their kids. I keep telling Marvin to raise prices, but he won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. “Old habits. We’ll probably be closed down by next year anyway. Marvin’s not healthy, and they keep after him for the land. It’s worth a fortune.”

  “Too bad. I’ll have to come here more often while you’re still open.”

  “You do that. I could use customers like you.” She laughed. “Live around here?”

  “Just moved in,” I said. “Near the county line.”

  “On the beach?”

  I nodded.

  “Ooh, that’s pretty. I pass by there on the way home to Ventura. Own or rent?”

  “Rent.”

  “Me too. Only the millionaires own, right?”

  “Better believe it. Been working here for a while?”

  She pulled on a jowl and grinned. “It shows, huh? But I won’t tell you exactly how long, so don’t even ask.”

  I smiled back. “So what’ll you do if it closes down?”

  “I don’t know, maybe catering. All those chefs, there’s always something comes up. Not that I look forward to that.”

  “You don’t like catering?”

  “Big hassle. Used to do it years ago. Friend of mine—she worked here too—used to get catering jobs for herself and anyone else who wanted them. Good money, but a big hassle.” She winked. “Marvin never liked our moonlighting. We did it behind his back.”

  “I’m thinking of throwing a housewarming party, could use a good caterer. Who’s your friend?”

  She shook her head. “She doesn’t do it anymore. Got rich—owns her own business.”

  “Lucky her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind of business gets you rich nowadays?”

  She smiled at me. “You’re living on the beach, what do you do?”

  “Psychologist.”

  “Oh.” She winked again. “So maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

  “Don’t worry, off duty,” I said.

  “You know,” she said, “I wouldn’ta tagged you for that. I figured you for a lawyer or the music business or something.” Fingering her apron pocket, where the tip had gone.

  “I used to play in a band,” I said. “Cocktail lounges. I know what it’s like to depend on people’s generosity.”

  “Ain’t that the truth. And most of the time, people aren’t. That’s what I hated about catering parties. You see people at their worst; to them you’re a stick of furniture. And no tips. One collective service charge. If the boss isn’t honest, you’re sunk.”

  “Was your friend honest?”

  “Which—oh, her. Yeah, honest enough.”

  “You must have seen some interesting parties, though. Working around here.”

  She reached for a cigarette. “Mind?”

  I shook my head. She lit up.

  “Maybe to some it was interesting. All it was to me was serving and clearing and people sticking their hands in my face.” She shook her head and looked back. “Want more coffee? Maybe I’ll have some myself. Marvin’s in the john, as usual.”

  “Love the company,” I said.

  She got the pot and another cup. Sitting down opposite me, cigarette fuming, she poured for both of us.

  “It’s been real nice working here,” she said. “So close to the ocean.”

  “How’re things in Ventura?”

  “Dying. Who knows, maybe I’ll move. Got
two grown boys, both in the army. One’s in Germany, the other’s near Seattle. Or Nevada. I like Nevada; things are booming there.”

  “Your rich friend can’t help you find anything?”

  “Nah, like I said, she’s out of it. She and her husband own a surf shop—nothing for me to do there.”

  “Shooting the Curl?”

  “Yeah, you know it?”

  “I’ve passed by. Doesn’t look like a big business.”

  “Believe me, it is. They’ve got a place right on the sand at La Costa—own, not rent—and that ain’t Spam salad.”

  She took a deep drag as her eyes swung toward the window. “Here we go again.”

  I followed her eyes to the beach. A camera crew was setting up, sound trucks and vans were parked in the background, and a couple dozen people were standing around.

  “Commercials,” she said. “They come here all the time: suntan lotion, cars, Coca-Cola, you name it. Pay Marvin so much he doesn’t have to raise his prices—speaking of the devil.”

  She looked out toward the front of the restaurant. The white-bearded man was coming toward us, head down, scowling, arms swinging.

  She stood and held out a hand to him, smiling and muttering, “Hold your horses, Marvin.” He stared at her, then at me, finally turned around and returned to his booth.

  “Back to base,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “Nice talking to you.”

  “Nice talking to you too.”

  “Doris,” she said, touching her badge. “Ask for me the next time you come in. I’ll get you a beach seat. . . .”

  Catering jobs, contracted by Gwen Shea.

  For anyone who wanted them.

  All those chefs . . . contacts.

  Had Karen Best gotten a job at the Sanctum party?

  Gone up early to set up and never come back?

  I sat in the car and had another look at Best’s data sheet.

  Felix Barnard, the private eye, hadn’t noted anything about moonlighting.

  The others not telling him in order to hide it from Marvin?

  Or maybe Barnard just hadn’t asked the right questions.

  Best had said the detective was slow-moving, too laid back.