'Interesting twist,' I said.
'You know different?'
'He broke the lieutenant's jaw because the lieutenant endangered his life.'
'Well,' she said, 'I guess that's a reason, too - so why no social conscience? He never answers calls from fund-raisers or march organizers, never joins anything. Same with that doctor boyfriend. Studs like that, they could do some good.'
'Maybe he feels he already is.'
She looked me up and down. 'Are you bisexual?'
'No.'
'So what's the connection?'
'We're friends.'
'Just friends, huh?' She laughed.
'Like Hope and Cruvic?'
Her laughter died.
'I understand your wanting privacy,' I said. 'But in a case like this everything gets examined.'
'Then get a court order - look, what if they were doing each other three times a day on top of his desk? And I'm not saying they were. Who gives a shit? Mike didn't kill her, who cares who screws who? She got killed because she got famous and pissed off some pig to the extreme.'
'Any idea who the pig could be?'
'Too many out there to count. I shall reiterate: She was minimally involved here. I'm sorry when any woman's killed but there's nothing I can tell you about this woman.'
Rising with effort, she made her way around the desk to the door.
'Say hi to Mr Legend. Tell him no matter what he does for his bosses, he'll never be anything to them but a queer.'
Back in the waiting room, neither girl was there, only the little blonde's mother. She looked up from her reading as I passed. The magazine was Prevention.
I was back at my Seville when I saw her running toward me in a pinched trot. Short and slight, she had a high waist and a hunched upper body. Her lower lip was thin, its mate nonexistent. She wore baby-blue jeans, a white blouse, flesh-colored sneakers.
'The nurse told me you're a psychiatrist?'
'Psychologist.'
'I was just wondering...'
I smiled. 'Yes?'
She came closer, but carefully, the way you approach a strange dog.
'I'm Dr Delaware,' I said, extending a hand.
She looked back at the clinic. A roar sounded overhead and she jumped. A Cessna flying low, probably a takeoff from the private airport in Santa Monica. She watched it head out over the ocean. When the noise faded, she said, 'I was just - are you by any chance gonna be working here?'
'No.'
'Oh.' Dejection. 'Okay, sorry to bother you.'
She turned to go.
'Is there some way I can help you?' I said.
She stopped. One hand began twisting the other. 'No, forget it, sorry.'
'Are you sure?' I said, touching her shoulder very lightly. 'Is something the matter?'
'I just thought maybe they were finally gonna get a psychologist here.'
'For your daughter?'
Her hands kept working.
'Teenage problems?' I said.
She nodded. 'Her name's Chenise,' she said, tentatively, as if prepared to spell it for some bureaucrat. 'She's sixteen.'
She patted her breast pocket. 'Quit smoking, keep forgetting - yeah, teenage problems. She drives me crazy. Always has. I - she's - I been all over with her - a million clinics, all the way to the County Hospital. They always gimme some student and they can't never handle her. Last time, she ended up in the guy's lap and he didn't know what to do. The schools won't do nothing. She's been on all kinds of medication since she's little, now it's gotten... Dr Cruvic - he's the doctor here who operated on her - said she should see a psychologist and he brought one over. A lady. Real good, she had Chenise's number right away. Smart. So of course Chenise didn't like talking to her. But I made her go. Then...' - lowering her voice - 'something happened to her - to the psychologist.' Shaking her head. 'You don't want to know.' Anyway, better be getting back, she's probably almost through with her checkup.'
'The psychologist Dr Cruvic had her see, was that Dr Devane?'
'Yes,' she said, breathlessly. 'So you know what happened?'
'As a matter of fact, that's why I'm here, Mrs-'
'Farney, Mary Farney.' Her eyes opened wide. Same blue as her daughter's. Pretty. Once she might have been, too. Now she had the trampled look of someone forced to remember every mistake.
'I don't understand,' she said.
'I'm a psychologist and I sometimes work with the police, Mrs Farney. Right now I'm working on Dr Devane's murder. Did you-'
Terror in the blue eyes. 'They think it had something to do with this place?'
'No, we're just talking to everyone who knew Dr Devane.'
'Well, we didn't really know her. Like I said, she only saw Chenise a few times. I liked her, she took the time to listen to me, understood Chenise's games... but that's it. I gotta get back.'
'What about Dr Cruvic?'
'What about him?'
'Did he understand Chenise?'
'Sure, he's great. Haven't seen him since - in a while.'
'Since the operation.'
'No reason to, she's fine.'
'Who's checking Chenise out today?'
'Maribel - the nurse. Gotta go.'
'Would you mind giving me your address and phone number?'
'What for?'
'In case the police want to talk to you.'
'No way, forget it, I don't want to get involved.'
I held out my card.
'What's this for?'
'If you think of something.'
'I won't,' she said, but she put the card in her purse.
'Thanks. And if you need a referral for Chenise, I can find one.'
'Nah, what's the use? She wraps people around her finger. No one catches on.'
I drove away.
Surgery. Given Chenise Farney's promiscuity, it wasn't hard to imagine what kind.
Cruvic and Hope working together on abortions.
Cruvic calling for a psychological consult because he cared? Or another reason?
Promiscuous teenager with low intelligence. Minor patient below the age of consent. Maybe too dull to. give informed consent? Cruvic covering his rear?
Cruvic and Hope...
Holly Bondurant had assumed the two of them had something going and Marge Showalsky's angry dismissal of the issue confirmed it.
I realized Cruvic had lied to us - implying he'd met Hope at the fund-raiser when Holly was certain they'd known each other previously.
Milo's hunch confirmed.
More than a business relationship.
But in light of Mandy Wright's murder, so what? The Vegas case pointed to a stranger homicide.
A psychopath, still out there, stalking, watching, planning. Waiting to perform a knife sonata under the cover of big, beautiful trees.
I was at Overland when I spotted a coffee shop with a lunch counter and pulled over. I bought a morning paper, read it while I had a hickoryburger and a Coke, then pulled out the list of students involved in the sexual-conduct board.
Might as well finish up.
Three who hadn't been interviewed yet - four, really, because the encounter with panicked Tessa Bowlby didn't qualify.
I called the number for Deborah Brittain in Sherman Oaks. A machine told me to wait for the beep. I decided not to.
Reed Muscadine had dropped out of school, so his class schedule was no longer relevant.
I called him. His tape said, 'Hello, this is Reed. I'm either not here or I'm working out and unwilling to interrupt the burn. But I do want to talk to you, especially if you're my golden opportunity - pant pant. So please please please leave your name and number. Starving actors need love, too.'
Cheerful, mellow, modulated. The kind of voice that knew it sounded good.
If he was HIV-positive it hadn't dampened his spirit or his attempts to stay fit. Or he hadn't changed the tape.
Starving actor... even after getting the soap-opera job?
Had something gotten in the way of
the job?
His address was on Fourth Street. If I was lucky, I'd catch him after the burn faded and learn about his health and his feelings about Hope Devane and the conduct committee.
If my luck really held, perhaps I could find out what was scaring the hell out of Tessa Bowlby.
His address matched a white stucco cottage with castle pretensions: two turrets, one oversized over the front door, the other a vestigial nipple atop the right corner. An old woman wearing a wide straw hat stooped on the sidewalk, removing weeds by hand. By the time I cut the Seville's engine, she was upright with her hands on her hips. She wore brown canvas gardening pants with rubber kneepads and had sueded skin and judgmental eyes.
'Hi, I'm looking for Reed Muscadine.'
'He lives in back.' Then she stiffened, as if regretting telling me that much. 'Who're you?'
I got out of the car and showed her my police ID.
'Ph.D?'
'I'm a psychologist. I work with the police.' I looked down the driveway. An apartment sat on top of the garage, accessed by steep, skinny front steps.
'He's not in,' she said. 'I'm Mrs Green. I own the place. What's going on?'
'We're questioning him with regard to a crime. Not as a suspect, just someone who knew the victim.'
'Who's the victim?'
'A professor at the University.'
'And he knew her?'
I nodded.
'I lived here forty-four years,' she said, 'never knew a victim. Now you can't step outside without getting nervous. A friend of mine's nephew's a policeman in Glendale. He tells her there's nothing the police can do till you're hurt or killed. Told her to buy a gun, carry it around, and if they catch you it's like a traffic ticket. So I did. I've also got Sammy.'
She whistled twice, I heard something slam shut, and a big, thick-set, fawn-colored dog with a sad black face ambled around from the back of the house. Bullish face - cousin to Spike? But this creature weighed at least 100 pounds and its eyes were all business.
Mrs Green held out a palm and the dog stopped.
'Mastiff?' I said.
'Bullmastiff. Only breed ever designed specifically to bring down people - they raised 'em in England to catch game poachers. Come here, baby.'
The dog sniffed, lowered its head, and walked over slowly, shoulders rotating, massive limbs moving in fluid concert. Drool dripped down its dewlaps. Its eyes were small, nearly black, and they hadn't left my face.
'Hey, Sammy,' I said.
'Samantha. The females are the really protective ones - c'mere, puddin'.'
The dog made its way over, examined my knees, looked at Mrs Green.
'Yeah, okay, kiss him,' she said.
A big mouth nuzzled my hand.
'Sweet,' I said.
'If you're right, she is. If you're wrong, well...' Her laugh was as dry as her skin. The dog rubbed her thigh and she petted it.
'Any idea when Reed will be back?'
'No, he's an actor.'
'Irregular hours?'
'Right now it's night hours, he's waiting tables out in the Valley.'
From soap opera to that? I said, 'No luck in the acting department?'
'Don't fault him,' she said. 'It's a tough business, believe me, I know. I did some work back a ways, mostly bit parts, but I did have a walk-on in Night After Night - that's a Mae West film. Classic. They made her out to be some wild hussy but she was smarter than all of them. I should've bought real estate when she did. Instead I got married.'
She brushed her pants and kneaded the dog's thick neck.
'So some professor got killed. And you're talking to all the students?'
'We're trying to be as thorough as possible.'
'Well, like I said, Reed's an okay kid. Pays the rent pretty much on time and always lets me know if he can't. I give him a break because he's big and strong and handy and fixes things. Real good with Sammy, too, so when I go away to my sister in Palm Springs
I've got someone to take care of her. Tell the truth, he reminds me of my husband - Stan was a movie grip, know what that is?'
'They move sets around.'
'They move everything around. Stan was all muscle. Did stunt work till he broke his collarbone working for Keaton. My daughter's in the business, too, reads scripts for CAA. So I have a soft spot for anyone dreamy enough to still want to be part of it. That's why I rented to Reed with just a first month down. Usually I get first and last. And he's been a good tenant. Even when he got laid up, he didn't laze around too long.'
'Laid up how?'
'Few months ago. He slipped a disc, lifting those weights he's got - well, looky here, you can talk to him yourself.'
A battered yellow Volkswagen pulled into the driveway. Rust fringed the wheel wells.
No Porsche, yet.
The man who got out was older than I expected - thirty or so - and huge. Six five, tanned deeply, with very pale gray eyes and long, thick, black hair brushed back and flowing over a yard of shoulder. His features were strong, square, perfect for the camera. The cleft in his chin was Kirk Douglas-caliber. He wore a heavy gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off to expose side-of-beef biceps, very brief black shorts, and sandals without socks. I tried to picture him with Tessa Bowlby.
He shot me a quick look, the gray eyes curious and intelligent; Tarzan with an IQ. A brown paper bag was in one hand. Handing it to Mrs Green, he added a milk-fed smile.
'How's it going, Maidie. Hey, Sam.' Stroking the bullmastiff, he looked at me again. The dog's neck bulged and furrowed as she tilted her head back at him. Her eyes had softened. A big pink tongue bathed his fingers.
'Fine as rain,' said Mrs Green. 'This fellow's from the police, Reed, but no cop. A psychologist, isn't that something? He's here to talk to you about some murdered professor. What'd you go and do now, kid?'
Muscadine's thick brows curved and he squinted. 'My professor?'
'Hope Devane,' I said.
'Oh... Those are fresh today, Maidie.'
'From where, that health-food place?'
'Where else?'
'Organic' She snorted. 'Did you ever figure maybe the reason I lived so long is all the preservatives I took pickled me like a deli cake?'
She looked inside the bag. 'Peaches out of season? Must have cost a fortune.'
'I only got two,' said Muscadine. 'The apples were actually cheap, and look at that color.' He turned to me. 'A psychologist?'
'I work with the police.'
'I don't understand.'
'I'm looking into Professor Devane's committee work.'
'Oh. Sure. Want to come up?'
'Devane,' said Mrs Green, scratching her nose. 'Why is that name familiar?'
'She was murdered in Westwood,' said Muscadine. 'What was it, three months ago?'
I nodded.
'Oh, yeah, the one who wrote a book,' said Mrs Green. 'She was your professor, Reed?'
'She taught me,' said Muscadine, looking at me.
'A professor.' She shook her head. 'In a neighborhood like that. What a world - thanks for the fruit, Reed.'
'My pleasure, Maidie.'
Muscadine and I started up the driveway.
Mrs Green said, 'But don't spend like that, again. Not till you become a star.'
As we reached the stairs, he said, 'Guess how old she is?'
'Eighty?'
'Ninety next month, maybe I should take preservatives.' He vaulted the steps three at a time and was unlocking the front door when I reached the top.
The apartment was a single front room with a closet-sized kitchen and a rear bath.
Two walls were mirrored, the others were painted true white. An enormous chrome weight machine took up the center, flanked by a pressing bench, a curl-bar and, against the wall, a rack of dumbbells arranged by poundage. Iron discs for the bench-bar were stacked like giant black checkers. A double window bordered by ridiculously dainty gingham curtains looked down on blossoming orange trees. Facing the glass were a motorized treadmill, a stair
-stepper, a cross-country ski machine, an exercise bike, and wedged in the corner, a double-sized mattress and box spring and two pillows.
Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 11 - The Clinic Page 14
