Self-Defense

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “What do you want?”

  “The truth about Karen.”

  “Why don’t the police come themselves?”

  “Oh, they will,” I said, turning to go again.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “You work with the police, but you’re not working with them now?”

  “Right now I’m here because Karen’s important to me.”

  “You knew her?”

  “I’m not going to say more, Mrs. Shea. But I will give you some advice. Some people think you and Tom were involved in her murder. If you were, we have nothing to talk about and I really need to get out of here. If you’ve done nothing but obstruct, I might be able to run interference for you. Lying about it won’t help, because the evidence is piling up; it’s just a matter of time. And if you do make it to Mexico, the police will impound your house and this place.”

  A group of teenagers went into the sandwich shop. Happy, shouting. Travis’s age.

  She said, “I don’t know about any murder, and that’s the God’s truth.”

  “Why did you try to leave town tonight?”

  “Vacation.”

  “No luggage? Or was Tom supposed to handle that, too, along with the tickets?”

  She remained wooden. I shrugged and walked toward my car.

  “What if I don’t know anything?” she called after me. “What if I can’t help anyone with what I know?”

  “Then you won’t be able to help yourself.”

  “But I don’t! That’s the truth! Karen—she—”

  She broke down and hid her eyes with her fingers. Travis looked at her, then at me.

  I smiled at him. His return grin was quick—more of a grimace, his eyes clouded and dull. Most people with cerebral palsy are intellectually normal. The eyes told me he wasn’t. Despite the contortions he was almost handsome, and I could see traces of the young man he might have been. A faint, almost holographic image of a golden Malibu kid.

  His mother kept her face concealed.

  I walked up to the chair. “Hey, pal.”

  He started to laugh, gulping and whooping. Did it louder and tried to clap his hands.

  “Shut up!” Gwen screamed.

  A crestfallen look wormed its way among the boy’s involuntary facial movements. He began stabbing with his arms and kicking his feet. His lips twisted like an out-of-hand garden hose, and a deep, foggy noise issued from his mouth.

  “Aa-nglm!”

  Gwen embraced him. “Oh, I’m so sorry, honey! Oh, honey, honey!”

  I felt like surrendering my license.

  Gwen said, “He needs me. No one knows how to take care of him properly. Have you seen the kind of places they put kids like him?”

  “Lots of them,” I said.

  “But you’ll put him in one without thinking twice.”

  “I won’t put him anywhere. I have no official power, other than the fact that the police sometimes ask my advice. Sometimes they even listen. I got involved in Karen’s case, and I’m going to see it through.”

  “But I don’t know about any murder. That’s the truth.”

  “What do you know?”

  She turned away, facing PCH.

  “You know something valuable enough to get paid off for your silence,” I said.

  “Why do you keep saying I’ve been paid off?”

  I looked at her.

  Travis rolled his head out from under her embrace.

  She said, “That was twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty-one this August.”

  She looked ill. “All I know is she went off with some guys at that party and I never saw her again, okay? Why’s that worth anything?”

  “You tell me.”

  She looked at the asphalt.

  I said, “Other people were paid off, too. Some of them were murdered. Now that the net’s tightening, what makes you think you’re safe? Or Tom, for that matter, wherever he is in Mexico?”

  A new fear pierced her eyes. She’d been beautiful a long time ago, one of those lithe, laughing beach girls for whom bikinis were invented. Life had glazed her like pottery, and I’d added a few new cracks.

  “Oh, God.”

  A car pulled into the shopping center. As its headlights washed over us, she jumped. The car was going to the sandwich place. An old Chrysler four-door. Two pony-tailed, tank-topped men in their thirties got out. Surfboard clamps were attached to the roof, but no boards.

  One of the men cupped his hands and lit a cigarette. Gwen turned her back on them. Not afraid, embarrassed.

  “Old customers?” I said.

  She stared at me, then at her keys in the lock.

  “Inside,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  39

  Keeping the lights off, she pushed Travis to the back of the store and unlocked a door. Inside was a small neat storeroom: metal shelves filled with merchandise, a desk, and three folding chairs. Positioning Travis in a corner, she pulled a box down and gave it to him. A diving mask. He began turning the package over and over, working hard at holding on to it, studying a photograph of a girl snorkeling as if it were a puzzle.

  She started to go behind the desk. I got there first and checked all the drawers. Just papers and pens and staples and clips.

  She gave a weak smile. “Yeah, tough old me’s gonna shoot you.”

  “I’m sure you can be plenty tough.” I looked at Travis.

  She sat down heavily. I took a chair.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  “Promise me they won’t put him away.”

  “I can’t promise, but I’ll do my best. If you had nothing to do with Karen’s murder.”

  “I keep telling you, I don’t know about any murder. Just that she disappeared.”

  “From the Sanctum party.”

  Nod.

  “You hired her to work at the party.”

  “So what does that make me, a criminal? I hired her as a favor. She needed the money. Her tips weren’t that good because she wasn’t the greatest waitress, kept getting orders wrong. And that hypocrite father of hers didn’t approve of her being an actress, so he never sent her a dime. I helped her, so now people are getting murdered and I’m being treated like a criminal?”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “How can I remember? It was twenty-one years.”

  “Try.”

  Silence.

  “In the middle of the party,” she said. “I don’t know what time it was. We were all working; I wasn’t paying attention to her.”

  “You never told anyone she was there, did you?”

  More silence.

  “Did the sheriffs ask?”

  “They came around the Dollar, a few days after she was gone. They thought she was lost up in the mountains. They had helicopters looking for her.”

  “And you didn’t tell them any different.”

  “Who says it was any different? She could have left the party with someone and gone to the mountains.”

  “In the middle of work?”

  “She wasn’t the most reliable person—used to call in sick at the Dollar so she could go to Disneyland. Coming out here was a big vacation for her.”

  She bit her lip. “Look, I’m not putting her down. She was a nice kid. But not too bright.” Tears filled her eyes. “I never wanted to see anything happen to her. I never did anything to hurt her.”

  She put her hands over her face again. Travis had managed to turn himself around and was looking at her, fascinated. The box slid down his lap and landed on the floor. He reached for it but the leather belt restrained him, and he started to shout.

  Gwen uncovered her face and started to get out of her chair.

  I retrieved the box and gave it to him, tousling his hair.

  “Aa-gaah,” he said, grinning. “Aa-gaamnuhuh.”

  Gwen said, “It wasn’t any big intense investigation or anything. A deputy just dropped in and asked if anyone’d seen her; then he sat around and had
coffee.”

  “What about the private eye Karen’s family hired? Felix Barnard. What did he ask you?”

  “He was weird. An oily old guy.”

  “What did he ask you?”

  “Same stuff the police did: When did we last see her?”

  “And you told him Friday night, after her shift at the Dollar.”

  “He was a sleazeball. I didn’t want anything to do with him.”

  “He found out Karen had been at the party. How?”

  “I don’t know, but it wasn’t from me,” she said. The way she looked away quickly let me know she was hiding something. I decided not to push, right now. Thinking of the unaccounted-for time between Karen’s leaving the Dollar and the party the next day, I said, “Why did Karen go up to Sanctum early?”

  “The caterer needed someone to set up chairs and tables before the food got there.”

  “And you picked Karen even though she wasn’t reliable?”

  “I felt sorry for her. Like I said, she needed the money.” She blinked several times.

  “Is that the only reason?”

  She took a deep breath and turned to Travis. “You okay, honey?”

  Ignoring her, he continued to study the box.

  “What’s the real reason you chose Karen to go up early, Gwen?”

  “Someone called. Wanted us to send the best-looking waitress up early.”

  “Who?”

  Long silence. “Lowell.”

  “And Karen was the best-looking waitress.”

  “She was cute.”

  “Why would looks be important if all he wanted was for her to set up?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t like he mentioned that first. More like, As long as you’re sending someone, send a good-looking one, and some other stuff—crazy words I don’t remember—something about eternal beauty. I don’t know why, maybe he had big shots over and wanted to make an impression—it was none of my business. What difference did it make to me who set up? Karen was happy to do it.”

  “Happy to be with big shots.”

  “Definitely. She was still a tourist—going over to Hollywood Boulevard, looking for movie stars.”

  “How’d she get up to Sanctum?”

  “Someone picked her up.”

  “At the Dollar?”

  “No, on PCH.”

  “Where on PCH?”

  “PCH and Paradise Cove.”

  “Right at the turnoff to the Dollar?”

  Nod.

  “Who picked her up?”

  “I don’t know.” Another look away.

  “This isn’t very helpful, Gwen.” Travis was staring at me. I winked at him. He laughed, and the box slipped from his fingers again. I returned it to him, then stared at Gwen. Making it a hard stare was no effort.

  “I saw a car,” she said. “We did—Tom and me. Pulling away just as we got there. But that’s all. I couldn’t see who was in it. I don’t even know if that’s the one that picked her up. She left twenty minutes before we did. Someone else could have picked her up.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “Tom said a Ferrari.”

  “Tom said?”

  “He’s into cars. To me it was just a car and taillights. Tom was all excited.”

  “What color?”

  “It was nighttime—Tom thought it was red. He said most of them are red, it’s Ferrari’s racing color.”

  “Convertible or hardtop?”

  “Convertible, I think, but the top was up. We couldn’t see who was inside.”

  “Did you ever see the car again?”

  She played with her earrings and twisted her fingers, as if wringing them out. “There was one up there.”

  “Up where?”

  “The party. There were all kinds of fancy cars there. Porsches, Rollses. Valets parking them up and down the road, total chaos.”

  “Who did the Ferrari belong to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I stared at her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What do you want me to do, make something up?”

  “Did it have customized plates?”

  “No . . . not that I noticed. I couldn’t have cared less, cars don’t interest me. My head was into the party, making sure everything went okay.”

  “Did it?”

  “What?”

  “Did the party go okay?”

  “People seemed to be having fun.”

  “What about Karen?”

  “What about her?”

  “Was she having fun?”

  “She was there to work,” she said sharply. “Yeah, she seemed happy.”

  “All those big shots.”

  She shrugged.

  “Did she sleep at Sanctum on Friday night?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When did you go up?”

  “Saturday morning.”

  “Was she there?”

  Nod.

  “How early in the morning?”

  “Seven-thirty, eight. We drove up early to start getting the food ready. She was already up and running.”

  “What kind of mood was she in?”

  “A good one. She’d set up the tables and chairs and was goofing around.”

  “How?”

  “Playing with some kids.”

  “Whose kids?”

  “Lowell’s. At first, I thought they were his grandchildren, ’cause they were so little, but Karen said no, they were his. She was jazzed about that.”

  “About what?”

  “That she was playing with a famous guy’s kids. That’s the way she was, really starstruck. She started telling me how famous the guy was, won the Nobel Prize or something. Everything was a big deal to her.”

  “Pretty impressed with Lowell, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What else did she say about him?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Did you get the feeling they’d spent the night together?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did she mention any other people she’d met?”

  Headshake.

  “How many of Lowell’s kids was she playing with?”

  “Two.”

  “How old were they?”

  “Little, three or four, something like that.”

  “Boys or girls?”

  “I don’t remember. Why?”

  “Boys or girls?” I repeated.

  She shrugged. “Probably girls. They both had these long mops of blond hair. Cute kids.”

  “And Karen was baby-sitting them.”

  “No, just playing around with them—laughing, chasing them. She wanted to baby-sit instead of serving. Said Lowell’s regular baby-sitter got sick, some kind of emergency operation. But she was too ditzy, so I said no.”

  “So who baby-sat the kids?”

  “Another girl.”

  “Name?”

  Hesitation. “Another waitress.”

  Short dark hair. Grumpy.

  “Doris Reingold?”

  She opened her mouth. Closed it.

  “Why Doris?” I said.

  “She was older, had two of her own. I figured she’d know what to do.”

  “Were there any other kids around?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  But I knew of two. Locked in their cabin.

  “So what did Karen do then?”

  “Worked with the food, like the rest of us. We slaved like dogs. It was a huge party, four hundred people, tons of stuff. The ice ran out and Tom had to make a bunch of trips down to Malibu to get more. The caterer was some little gay guy with a bad temper, brought in some illegals to help out, no one spoke any English. Then all these bands started showing up. Setting up their equipment, doing sound checks, trying to see who could play loudest. Portable fans and lights, a generator, electrical cables all over the place. By the time the people started coming, it was already getting dark. Berserk. Unless you’ve worked food service, you wouldn’t understand.”

/>   “Was there a lot of dope and booze?”

  “What do you think? But none of the staff messed with it—I had a rule about that. You’re behind a buffet table, spooning out coleslaw, you can’t be freaking out.”

  “Was Karen behind the buffet?”

  “At first. Then the caterer started screaming for someone to pass around the hors d’oeuvres trays, so I had her do that. That’s the last time I saw her: going into the crowd with a tray. Not that I looked for her. I was like a chicken with my head cut off, it was so crazy. I worked till five in the morning. The cleanup was outrageous; the caterer split with all his Mexicans and left it to Tom and me.”

  “Were you back on shift at the Dollar on Sunday?”

  “Sunday evening.”

  “Was Karen supposed to be on, too?”

  “Yes, but like I said, she always took time off, so her not showing up was no big deal.”

  “When did you first realize she’d disappeared?”

  “A couple of days later, I guess. I didn’t think much about it. I wasn’t her mother.”

  “When did Lowell call you?”

  “Who said he called me?”

  “We know he did, Gwen. To arrange the payoff. Our information is that it was three days after the party. Is that true?”

  She turned one of her earrings, then reversed the circuit. “More like four or five, I don’t know.”

  “Tell me about his call.”

  She turned to Travis. “You okay, baby?”

  The boy played with the box and giggled.

  I said, “He’s fine, Gwen.”

  Another turn of the earring. She cleared her throat, coughed. Picked something out of one nail.

  I crossed my legs and smiled at her.

  “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. He didn’t say anything about any payoff,” she said. “He asked for Tom and me to meet him, said he had a bonus for us. For doing such a good job at the party.”

  “Where’d you meet him, at Sanctum?”

  “No, out in the Valley. On Topanga Canyon Boulevard, just before Ventura.”

  Upper-middle-class residential area. “Where on the boulevard?”

  “It was—I guess you’d call it a turnoff. A piece of empty land.”

  “Right on Topanga?”

  “Just off new Topanga, actually. Around the corner from Topanga—some side street. I don’t remember the name but I could probably show it to you.”