A Cold Heart

by Jonathan Kellerman

  • • •

  I dropped him off, drove home, and booted up the computer. Half a dozen search engines pulled up very little on either Everett or Julie Kipper.

  Three hits for him: talks he’d given at private-client seminars run by MuniScope. The identical topic each time: for high-income individuals buying tax-free bonds, going for premiums rather than discount, could actually save money in the long run.

  Julie’s name came up only once: Six months ago, one of her early paintings had been sold at a Sotheby’s Arcade auction. Eighteen hundred dollars for a ten-year-old oil-on-canvas entitled Marie at Her Kitchen Table. No accompanying photo. The sale had brokered low-ticket items, few of them illustrated.

  The provenance of the painting told me little I couldn’t have guessed: From the Lewis Anthony Gallery, N.Y., to a “private collector.”

  I looked up Anthony. Fifty references. He’d died five years ago, but the gallery was still in business.

  I thought about the pathway Julie Kipper’s life had taken. Putting herself through a drug-stoked work jag to meet the demands of the gallery owner. Three paintings.

  And now one of them had been dumped by its owner for less than it had cost.

  Demoralizing, if she’d known.

  My bet was that she had. Somehow, someone would’ve told her.

  Yet, she’d decided to chance a comeback. Perhaps the sale had spurred the comeback.

  Had she created what she believed to be her best work, hoping for a second chance with another high-powered gallery, only to settle for Light and Space?

  Low output meant no resale market.

  Low demand for her work eliminated one possible motive for murder: someone trying to up the value of an investment because dead artists often fetch higher prices than live ones. That only applied to artists who mattered. As far as the art world was concerned, Juliet Kipper had never existed, and her death wouldn’t elicit a blink.

  No, this one had nothing to do with commercial intrigue. This one was personal.

  A bright killer. Forward-thinking and outwardly composed, but inside . . . rage tempered to something cold and measured.

  When he’d first called me, Milo had called it a “weird one,” but the killer wouldn’t see it that way. To him, twisting a wire around Juliet Kipper’s neck would seem eminently reasonable.

  • • •

  I had a beer, thought some more about Julie’s luminous paintings and snuffed-out talent, and got on the phone.

  The Lewis Anthony Gallery was listed on Fifty-seventh Street in New York. The woman who answered the phone enunciated the way clippers snip through cuticles.

  “Mr. Anthony passed several years ago.” Her tone implied knowing such should be a prerequisite for American citizenship.

  “Perhaps you can help me. I’m looking for works by Juliet Kipper.”

  “Who?”

  “Juliet Kipper, the painter. She was represented by the gallery several years ago.”

  “How many is several?”

  “Ten.”

  She snorted. “That’s an eon. Never heard of her. Good day.”

  I sat there wondering what it would be like dealing with that kind of thing, full-time. Growing up with a head full of beauty and the gift of interpretation, being told how brilliant you were by the people who loved you— getting hooked on the oohs and ahs— only to enter what passed for “the real world” and learn that love didn’t mean a damn thing.

  Julie Kipper had faced a frigid universe that regarded the gifted as fodder.

  The kindness of strangers, indeed.

  Despite all that, she’d reached deep within herself again and produced works of transcendent beauty.

  Only to be garroted and laid out and posed in a filthy bathroom.

  Finding the person who’d done that suddenly seemed very important.

  • • •

  It wasn’t until hours later— after finishing and mailing reports, paying some bills, making a run to the bank to deposit checks from lawyers— that something else hit me about Julie.

  A gifted, damaged soul snuffed out violently, during the first blush of comeback.

  The same could be said about Baby Boy Lee.

  I compared the two cases. Both had been Saturday night, back-alley killings. Five weeks had lapsed between them. Neither Milo nor Petra— nor anyone else— had seen any link because there were no striking similarities. And as I checked off the differences a nice-sized list materialized on my scratch pad.

  Male vs. female victim.

  Late forties vs. midthirties.

  Single vs. divorced.

  Stabbing vs. strangulation.

  Outdoor vs. indoor crime scenes.

  Musician vs. painter.

  I decided I was being overly analytic; no sense calling Milo. I went for a forty-minute run that challenged my heart and lungs but did little to clear my head, got back on the computer, and searched for murders of creative types within the last ten years.

  Despite setting that arbitrary limit, a lot of extraneous material cropped up: scads of dead rock stars, mostly, almost every demise self-inflicted. The West Hollywood stabbing death of Sal Mineo, too. That had gone down in 1976, well before the one-decade cutoff. Mineo’s murder, long a subject of film-biz intrigue and believed to be related to his homosexuality, had turned out to be a street burglary gone really bad.

  The actor had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe that’s how Baby Boy— and Julie— would shake out.

  I kept searching and refining, ended up, hours later, with four possibles.

  Six years ago, a potter named named Valerie Brusco had been bludgeoned in an empty field behind her studio in Eugene, Oregon. I found no direct reporting of the crime, but Brusco’s name came up in a retrospective of Pacific Northwest ceramic artists, written by a Reed College professor, in which her violent end was noted. This one had been solved: Brusco’s boyfriend, a cab driver named Tom Blascovitch, had been arrested and charged and incarcerated. But murderers get out of prison, so I printed the data.

  The second case was the stabbing death of a saxophonist named Wilfred Reedy, outside a Washington Boulevard jazz club, four and a half years ago, documented in the obituary column of a musician union’s magazine. The obit lauded Reedy’s gentle nature and improvisational skills and noted that, in lieu of flowers, contributions to the widow could be made care of the union.

  Reedy, sixty-six, had been a friend of John Coltrane and played with many of the greats— Miles Davis, Red Norvo, Tal Farlow, Milt Jackson. I logged into the L.A. Times archives and found a back-page squib on the crime and a single follow-up paragraph one week later. No leads or arrests. Anyone with information to call Southwest Division.

  Homicide number three was the three-year-old stabbing of a twenty-five-year-old ballet dancer named Angelique Bernet in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bernet had been part of a touring New York company performing in Boston, and she’d left her hotel around 2 A.M. Friday evening and never returned. Two days later, her body was found behind an apartment on Mt. Auburn Avenue, not far from the Harvard campus. Cross-references to the Boston Herald and the Globe pulled up brief accounts of the crime but no arrests. Something else the Globe reported caught my eye: Bernet had recently been promoted to stand-in for the prima ballerina and had, in fact, performed her first solo the night of her disappearance.

  The final hit took place thirteen months later— another Hollywood murder. During an all-night recording session, a punk-rock vocalist named China Maranga had unleashed a drunken tirade at her backup band over what she viewed as lackluster playing, stomped out of the studio, and vanished. Two months later, her skeletal remains were discovered by hikers, not far from the Hollywood sign, barely concealed by brush. ID had been made using dental records. A broken neck and the absence of bullet holes or stab wounds suggested cause of death as strangulation, but that was about all the coroner could come up with.

  China Maranga’s teeth had been easy to identify— as a y
oungster, she’d undergone extensive orthodontic work. Her birth name was Jennifer Stilton, and she’d grown up in a big house in Palos Verdes, the daughter of a grocery-chain executive and an interior decorator. She’d earned good grades in prep school, where a sweet soprano earned her a starring role in the glee club. Admitted to Stanford, she majored in English Lit, got hooked on alternative music and whiskey and cocaine, amassed a collection of tattoos and piercings, and assembled a band of like-minded sophomores who joined her in dropping out. For the next several years, she and China Whiteboy toured the country, playing small clubs and garnering cult status but failing to get a record contract. During that period, China morphed her sweet soprano to a ragged, atonal scream. A tour in Germany and Holland garnered larger audiences and brought about a deal with an alternative label back in L.A. Sales of China Whiteboy’s two albums were surprisingly brisk, the band began attracting attention from people-with-clout, rumors of a deal with a major label were rife.

  China’s murder ended all that.

  China could barely play guitar, but she wielded one as a prop— a battered old Vox teardrop that she treated rough. I knew that because two members of the band— a pair of slouching, inarticulate wraiths named Squirt and Brancusi— were serious about their gear, and when they needed repairs, they came to Robin. When China snapped the Vox’s neck during one of her more ebullient stage tantrums, the boys passed along Robin’s number.

  I remembered the day China dropped by. A particularly unpleasant July afternoon, strangled by West Coast pollution and East Coast humidity. Robin was working in back, and I was in my office when the doorbell rang. Eight times in a row. I padded to the front and opened the door on a pallid, curvaceous woman with spiked hair as black and shiny as La Brea tar. She hefted a guitar in a soft canvas gig bag and looked at me as if I was the intruder. Parked below the terrace was a big, dusty Buick the color of ballpark mustard.

  She said, “Who the hell are you and am I as lost as I feel?”

  “Where do you want to be?”

  “In Paradise feasting on boy virgins— is this the guitar lady’s place or not?”

  She tapped her foot. Rolled her shoulders. Her left eye ticced. Her features were unremarkable but might’ve been pleasant if she’d relaxed. Some of the pallor came from ashy pancake makeup, laid on thick, and set off by kohl-darkened lids. The rest implied unhealthy habits.

  Black ink tats— snaky, abstract images— covered what I could see of her left arm. A blue-and-black iron cross marked the right side of her face, where the jawline met the earlobe. Both ears sagged under an assortment of rings and plugs. All that and the eyebrow pierces and the nose studs said Notice Me. Her blue, pinpoint Oxford button-down shirt implied a forage in Daddy’s Ivy League closet. The shirt was tucked into a plaid miniskirt— the kind parochial school girls are compelled to wear. Topped off by white knee socks stuffed into high, laced combat boots, the outfit said, Don’t even try to figure it out.

  “The guitar lady’s out back,” I said.

  “Where out back? I’m not prancing around without knowing. This place freaks me out.”

  “Why?”

  “There could be coyotes or some other shit.”

  “Coyotes come out at night.”

  “So do I— c’mon, man, my eyes hurt, show me.”

  I walked her down the terrace steps, around to the side of the house, and through the garden. She had very little stamina and was breathing hard by the time we reached the pond. As we approached the water, she overtook me and raced ahead, swinging the gig bag. Stopped and stared at the koi.

  “Big fish,” she said. “All you can eat sushi orgy?”

  “Be an expensive meal,” I said.

  A grin turned her crooked mouth straight. “Hey, Mr. Yuppie, no need to reach for the Xanax, I’m not gonna steal your little babies. I’m a voodgetarian.” She eyed the landscaping, licked her lips. “All this yummy yuppie greenery— so where is she?”

  I pointed to the studio.

  She said, “Okay, dollar-boy, you did your good deed for the day, go back to the stock pages,” and turned her back on me.

  Hours later, when Robin came into the house, alone, I said, “Charming clientele you’ve got.”

  “Oh, her,” she said. “That’s China Maranga. She shrieks in a band.”

  “Which one?”

  “China Whiteboy.”

  “Squirt and Brancusi,” I said, remembering two skinny guys with cheap electrics.

  “They’re the ones ratted me out to her. We’re going to have a little chat.”

  She stretched and went into the bedroom to change. I poured myself a Chivas and brought her a glass of wine.

  “Thanks, I can use that.”

  We sat on the bed and drank. I said, “Does the young lady shriek well?”

  “She’s got great range. From nails on chalkboard to nails on chalkboard even harder. She doesn’t play, just swings her guitar around, like she wants to hurt someone. Last night, she assaulted a mike stand, and the neck broke off. I kept telling her it wasn’t worth fixing, but she began crying.”

  “Literally?”

  “Real tears— stomping her feet like a spoiled little kid. I should’ve sent her to talk to you.”

  “Outside my expertise.”

  She put down her glass and ran her fingers through my hair. “I’m charging her my max fee to bolt on one of those Fender necks I got at the bulk sale and taking my time about it. Next week, she’ll have something even uglier to ruin, and she’d better pay cash. Now enough of this chitchat and let’s get down to business.”

  “What business is that?”

  “Something well within the range of your expertise.”

  • • •

  When China came by to pick up the guitar a week later, I was in the studio having coffee with Robin.

  This time she wore a greasy motorcycle jacket over a long lace dress, once white, now soup-bone beige. Pink satin high-heeled pumps. A black tam o’ shanter capped the black spikes.

  Robin fetched the hybridized Vox. “Here you go.”

  China held the instrument at arm’s length. “Ugleee— I’m supposed to pay you for this?”

  “That’s the routine.”

  China stared at her, shifted her glare to me, then back to Robin. Reaching into a pocket of the leather jacket, she pulled out a crumpled mass of bills and dropped them on the workbench.

  Robin counted the money. “This is forty dollars too much.”

  China marched to the door, stopped, flipped us off. “Buy yourself a fucking fish.”

  • • •

  Her murder had elicited a headshake and a “How sad,” from Robin.

  China differed from Baby Boy and Julie Kipper in that she’d lacked substantial talent. But there was the matter of a rising star snuffed out mid-ascent.

  I wondered if Robin had made any connection, years later, between the killings. Two clients of hers, one beloved, the other quite the opposite.

  If she had, she hadn’t let me know.

  Why would she?

  11

  Juliet Kipper’s house was one of two ugly gray boxes squeezed onto a skimpy lot. No backyard. The front was an oily mesa of concrete. Curling tar-paper roofs provided the only green in sight.

  Bars on the windows. A rusted iron fence blocked entry to the property. Yellow tape across the rear unit billowed in the ocean breeze. I got out. The fence was locked. No doorbell or call box in sight. A shaved-head kid of sixteen or so sauntered down the street, walking a red-nosed pit bull leashed to a pinch collar. Both owner and dog ignored me, but the two older, shaved-head guys who drove by a few moments later in a chopped-and-lowered Chevy Nova slowed and looked me over.

  No reason for me to be there. I returned to the car, took Pico to Lincoln, drove south to Rose Street, in Venice, where I crossed over to the good side.

  • • •

  Robin’s place was a white cottage, shake-roofed and gabled, way too cute by half. Pretty flowers in
front hadn’t been there months ago. I’d never known Robin to garden. Maybe Tim had a green thumb.

  His Volvo was parked in the driveway behind Robin’s Ford truck. I considered leaving.

  “To hell with that,” I said, out loud. “Paternal rights and all that.”

  • • •

  I was hoping she’d answer the door, but he did.

  “Alex.”

  “Tim.”

  Tight smiles, all around. Cursory handshake. He had on his usual outfit: long-sleeved plaid shirt, khaki Dockers, brown moccasins. Mr. Laid Back. Rimless eyeglasses gave his blue eyes— true blue, deeper than my gray-tinged irises— a dreamy look.