Mystery

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Robin said, “Seconds ago.”

  “Great ... er ... so ... welcome to the Fowlburg. Can I get you guys something?”

  “We guys,” I said, “will have a Sidecar on the rocks with light sugar on the rim, and Chivas neat, water on the side.”

  “A Sidecar,” he said. “That’s a drink, right? I mean, it’s not a sandwich. ’Cause the kitchen’s basically closed, we just got nuts and crackers.”

  “It’s a drink,” I said. “Any wasabi peas left?”

  “There’s no vegetables anywhere.”

  “That’s a bar snack. Peas coated with wasabi.”

  Blank look.

  Despite Robin’s soft elbow in my ribs, I said, “Wasabi’s that green horseradish they put on sushi.”

  “Oh,” he said. “We don’t got sushi.”

  “We’ll just take whatever you have.”

  “I think we got almonds.” He ticked a finger. “Okay, so it’s Champagne and a ... Sidecar.”

  “A Sidecar and Chivas,” I said. “That’s a blended whiskey.”

  “Sure. Of course.” Slapping his forehead. “I never did this before.”

  “You’re kidding.” Robin kicked my shin.

  “A Sidecar,” he said, repeating it again in a mumble. “They just called from the temp agency yesterday, said there’s a place closing down, you got five hours to get over there if you want it, Neil. Mostly I work in places with no drinking.”

  “McDonald’s?” I said.

  Kick kick kick.

  “That was in the beginning,” said Neil. “Then I did two years at Marie Callender’s.” Grin. “All the pie you can eat, man I was getting fat. Then I lost that and signed up with the temp agency and they sent me here. Too bad it’s only one night. This is a cool old place.”

  “Sure is. Too bad they’re tearing it down.”

  “Yeah ... but that’s the way it is, right? Old stuff dies.”

  “We’ll take those drinks, now. And those almonds, if you have them.”

  “Last time I checked we did, but you never know.”

  As he turned to leave, the girl in white slipped on oversized, gold-framed sunglasses with lenses so dark they had to be blinding her. Sucking on her cigarette, she twirled the holder, stretched coltish legs, ran a finger along the side of a clean, smooth jaw. Licked her lips.

  Red Jacket watched her, transfixed.

  Robin said, “She is beautiful, Neil.”

  He wheeled. “So are you, ma’am. Um ... oh, man, sorry, that came out weird. Sorry.”

  Robin touched his hand. “Don’t worry about it, dear.”

  “Um, I better get you those drinks.”

  When he was gone, I said, “See, you’ve still got it going on.”

  “He probably looks at me like I’m his mother.”

  I hummed “Mrs. Robinson.” She kicked me harder. But not enough to hurt. Our relationship’s not that complicated.

  he Sidecar devolved to a Screwdriver, the Chivas was a whiskey slushy, overwhelmed by crushed ice.

  We laughed and I tossed bills on the table and we got up to leave.

  From across the room, Neil held up his palms in a What-me-worry gesture. I pretended not to notice.

  As we passed Snow White, her eyes met mine. Big, dark, moist. Not seductive.

  Welling with tears?

  Her lower lip dropped, then clamped shut. She avoided my glance and smoked single-mindedly.

  Suddenly her getup seemed sad, nothing but a costume.

  Neil nearly tripped over himself bringing the check but when he saw the cash, he detoured to Snow White’s table.

  She shook her head and he slinked off.

  A commercial for ecologically sound detergent rasped the smoky air.

  When we got back outside, Dudley Do-Right was gone.

  Robin said, “Guess we were wrong about Snowy being his charge.”

  “Guess we were wrong about taking a final jaunt on the Titanic. Let’s go somewhere else and try to redeem the night.”

  She took my arm as we headed for the Seville. “Nothing to redeem. I’ve got you, you’ve got me, and despite those killer legs, that poor little thing has no one. But sure, some real drinks would be nice. After that, we’ll see what develops.”

  “Mistress of suspense,” I said.

  She tousled my hair. “Not really, you know the ending.”

  I woke at six the following morning, found her at the kitchen window, washing her coffee cup and gazing at the pines and sycamores that rim our property to the east. Polygons of pink and gray sky cut through the green; intensely saturated color, bordering on harsh. Sunrise in Beverly Glen can be brittle splendor.

  We walked Blanche for an hour, then Robin headed to her studio and I sat down to finish some child custody reports for the court. By noon, I was done and emailing recommendations to various judges. A few were likely to listen. As I put the hard copy in a drawer and locked up, the doorbell buzzed.

  Shave and a haircut, six bits, followed by three impatient beeps.

  I padded to the living room. “It’s open, Big Guy.”

  Milo pushed the door open and stomped in swinging his battered, olive-vinyl attaché case wide, as if preparing to fling it away. “Step right in, Mr. Manson, then hold the door for Mr. Night Stalker.”

  “Morning.”

  “All these years I still can’t convince you to exercise normal caution.”

  “I’ve got you as backup.”

  “That and a Uzi won’t buy you a Band-Aid if you ignore common sense.” He marched past me. “Where’s the pooch?”

  “With Robin.”

  “Someone’s thinking right.”

  My best friend is a gay LAPD homicide lieutenant with inconsistent social skills. He’s had a key to the house for years but refuses to use it unless Robin and I are traveling and he checks the premises, unasked.

  By the time I made it to the kitchen, he’d commandeered a loaf of rye bread, a jar of strawberry preserves, a half gallon of orange juice, and the butt-end of a four-day-old rib roast.

  I said, “Hey kids, beef ’n’ jam, the new taste sensation.”

  He cast off a gray windbreaker, loosened a tie the color of strained peas, and settled his bulk at the table. “First conundrum of the day: carbs or protein. I opt for both.”

  Brushing coarse black hair off a lumpy brow, he continued to stare at the food. Bright green eyes drooped more than usual. Where the light hit him wrong, his acne-pocked pallor was a hue no painter had ever blended.

  I said, “Long night?”

  “The night was fine, it was the damn morning that screwed things up. Four a.m., why can’t people get their faces blown off at a civil hour?”

  “People as in multiple victims?”

  Instead of answering, he troweled heaps of jam on three slices of bread, chewed the first piece slowly, inhaled the remaining two. Uncapping the juice, he peered inside, muttered, “Not much left,” and drained the container.

  Contemplating the roast, he sliced, cubed, popped morsels of meat like candy. “Got any of that spicy mayo?”

  I fetched some aioli from the fridge. He dipped, chewed, wiped his mouth, snorted, exhaled.

  I said, “Male or female bodies?”

  “One body, female.” Crumpling the juice carton, he created a waxed paper pancake that he pulled out like an accordion, then compressed. “And for my next number, ‘Lady of Spain.’ ”

  A dozen more pieces of roast before he said, “Female, and from her figure, young. Then again, this is L.A. so maybe all that tone came courtesy of surgery, let’s see what the coroner has to say. No purse or I.D., the blood says she was done right there. No tire tracks or footprints. No jewelry or purse and her duds were expensive looking, some designer I never heard of. Patrice Lerange. Ring a bell?”

  I shook my head. “Robbery?”

  “Looks like it. She had on fancy undies, too, silk lace—Angelo Scuzzi, Milano. So maybe she’s European, some poor tourist who got waylaid. The shoes were
Manolo Blahnik, that I heard of.”

  He chewed hard and his jaw bunched. “Looks like we’re talking two killers. The C.I.’s found shotgun pellets and wadding in the wound but also a .45 cartridge on the ground and the slug behind her, exactly where you’d expect it to be after blowing out the back of her skull.”

  He ate more roast, contemplated a rare piece, put it aside.

  “The major damage was to the face with a little pellet spray at the top of the chest. But they left her hands intact, so I’m not sure the face thing was hiding her identity, just plain old evil.”

  “Your money or I shoot,” I said. “On second thought, I shoot anyway.”

  “Goddamn savages ... I know the face can mean personal, but this could come down to a really ugly jack. Hollyweird at night, all those spacey Euro types are wandering the streets, thinking they’re gonna catch movie stars. If she was a tourist, she could’ve wandered into the wrong neighborhood.”

  “Where was she found?”

  “The Palisades, less than a mile short of Topanga. Bad guys had any consideration it woulda been the sheriff’s problem.”

  I said, “That’s a ways from wrong neighborhoods, and expensive clothes don’t say naive tourist. Maybe she got waylaid on the Strip, or somewhere else on the Westside.”

  “Wherever she started, she ended up far from the city. We’re talking mountains, ravines, open space, not much traffic. Maybe that was the point. She was left just off the road, a spot where the descent isn’t that steep. I’m figuring the bad guys walked her out of the car, took her goodies, had target practice.”

  “Bullet and pellets.”

  “All in the face. Almost like a ritual.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Some eighty-nine-year-old retired Unitarian minister combing for fossils.”

  “Fossil hunting at four a.m.?”

  “Three fifteen a.m. to be exact. He likes to do it when there’s no traffic, brings a flashlight, takes his time. Only thing he ever sees is animals—raccoons, rabbits, coyotes—and they’re not into archaeology. He said the entire area used to be submerged under seawater millions of years ago, he still finds stuff. He had two spiral seashells in his sack, some petrified snails, too.”

  “But no shotgun or .45.”

  “I should be so lucky. No, he’s righteous, Alex, really shaken up. I had an ambulance brought just in case but they said his heart was strong for his age.” He drummed the table, wiped his face with one hand, like washing without water. “One mile south it’d be tan-shirts yanked out of a beautiful dream.”

  “What were you dreaming about?”

  “Not getting yanked out of bed at four a.m.”

  “Lately you’ve been kind of bored.”

  “Like hell I have. That was Zen-serenity.”

  He ate more roast, topped with extra aioli.

  “Spicy.”

  “So what can I do for you?”

  “Who says anything? I came to visit the dog.” Reaching into a pocket of the windbreaker, he drew out a nylon chew-bone. “This okay for her?”

  “She prefers truffle-marinated elk ribs, but it’ll do in a pinch. She’s out back with Robin. I’ve got some mail to catch up on.”

  “Had your breakfast yet?”

  “Just coffee.”

  Swinging his attaché onto the table, he flipped it open, drew out his cell, downloaded a screen of thumbnail photos. Enlarging one, he handed the phone to me. “No breakfast, nothing to lose.”

  The body lay on its face, supple-limbed even in death.

  Wind or impact had lifted the hem of the dress nearly crotch-high, but the legs hadn’t been spread, no sign of sexual posing.

  Short dress. The flow of white silk.

  Same for the blood-and-gore-splotched white scarf that swaddled what had once been a face. One backless silver shoe remained in place.

  What had once been the face was a clotted horror.

  Milo said, “You just turned a really bad color. Sorry.”

  “Any idea what time she was killed?”

  “Best guess is midnight to four and the old guy was there by three fifteen, so that narrows it.”

  “I saw her from nine to nine thirty. She was young—twenty-five or so, sat ten feet from Robin and me. Extremely pretty, big dark eyes, but I can’t tell you about her hair because it was completely covered by the scarf. She was wearing a diamond watch, carried a white silk clutch, smoked a cigarette in an ivory holder and used a matching lighter. A few minutes in, she put on rhinestone-framed sunglasses. She seemed to be waiting for someone. There was a theatrical aspect to her behavior. Robin thought she was channeling Audrey Hepburn. No need to show Robin these pictures.”

  He inhaled deeply, placed his hands flat on the table. “Where. Did. This. Happen?”

  I described the Fauborg’s final night.

  “Hotel swan song,” he said. “Hers, too. Oh, man ... so maybe she was staying there and I’ll get a name from the register.”

  “Good luck but doubtful, no one was working the desk and the place looked cleaned out.”

  “Someone’ll have a record.” He scratched the side of his nose. Sweat stained the table where his paw had rested. “This is weird, Alex.”

  “All the cases we’ve worked, maybe it was due.”

  “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  “There was a guy out in front with a Secret Service thing going on—black suit, white shirt, black tie, two-way radio, what looked like a gun bulge. Robin and I assumed it was for her benefit because no one else in the bar looked like they needed protection.”

  “Why’d you figure she did?”

  “We didn’t, she was just the most likely candidate. It’s not that she projected vulnerability—maybe she did. She also looked like someone who should be famous but neither of us could place her. She kept checking her watch but when we left no one had showed up. And Mr. Black Suit was gone so maybe his gig had nothing to do with her.”

  He pulled out his pad. “What’d this guy look like?”

  I told him and he scrawled. “The waiter might know if anyone showed up. He was paying pretty close attention to her. Some temp named Neil. She vamped for him and he bought it pretty hard.”

  “When was closing time?”

  “I don’t know. You’re wondering if they were both there till the end and he tried to pick her up and something went bad?”

  “Her clothes and the watch say she was way out of his league but some guys don’t convince easily. Give me a detailed physical on this amateur.”

  ead people don’t answer questions. Sometimes the same goes for dead businesses.

  Milo’s attempts to get info from the former owners of the Fauborg Hotel proved fruitless. Marcel Jabotinsky’s heirs had relocated to Zurich and New York and London and Boulder, Colorado. The hotel had been unoccupied for two months with most of the fixtures sold at auction and the records dumped. No one knew a thing about the temporary staff who’d worked the bar’s final night.

  A niece in Colorado thought the evening had been coordinated by her cousin in Scarsdale. That woman denied any involvement but believed that an uncle in Switzerland had hired an event-planning outfit.

  “Waste of money far as I’m concerned, but Hermann’s senile and sentimental.”

  Hermann didn’t answer his phone. Cold calls to local event coordinators pulled up nothing.

  I said, “Neil said he got the gig through a temp agency.”

  Plenty of those on the Westside. Brite-Quick, the twelfth company Milo reached, admitted supplying two people to the Fauborg at the request of Madame Estelle Jabotinsky of Park Avenue.

  “She sounded pretty old,” said the owner. “If I’m remembering correctly, the deal was to honor the guy who built the place or something. But she didn’t want to spend anything and all she’d go for was two people.”

  “Could I have those two names, please?”

  “They in trouble?”

  “Not at all.”

 
“Let me emphasize,” said the owner. “We background-check, they had to come up clean.”

  “That’s great. The names?”

  Sherree Desmond, 43, bartender, address in Mount Washington.

  Nelson Neil Mutter, 22, waiter, Gower Street, Hollywood.

  No criminal history for either. Sherree wasn’t fond of paying parking tickets. Nelson who preferred Neil had just applied for a temporary license, requesting reciprocity from DMV Nebraska.

  Nebraska said Mutter had been driving since the age of sixteen, maintained a clean record.

  “Careful driver,” said Milo. “Given the state of her face, that doesn’t mean much.”

  We drove to Mutter’s address on Gower. The building took up a third of the block, rising five off-white stories and shading its neighbors. Newish construction but already shabby, with rain streaks smirching the windowsills and stucco peeling at the corners. Potted plants, satellite dishes, and assorted junk filled narrow balconies. Nearly a hundred units behind the iron security gate. With no alphabetization, it took a while to find Mutter, N on the button-studded panel.

  Unit 105, shared with Adams, T and LaScola, B.

  The door pickets offered a glimpse of a cramped lobby and a red-door elevator. A female voice answered Milo’s button-push. “Yes?”

  “Nelson Mutter, please.”

  “Sorry, he’s out.”

  “This is Lieutenant Sturgis, L.A. Police. Any idea when he’ll be back?”

  “Is Neil okay?”

  “Far as I know, ma’am. I need to talk to him. Where is he?”

  “Um ... I think he went to the 7-Eleven to get some drinks. Or something.”

  “You’re his roommate?”

  “One of them.”

  “Could you come out for a second? Or you can beep us in.”

  A beat. “I’ll come down.”

  The girl was black, gorgeous, with round gray eyes, apricot curls, and a slim body encased in a hot pink unitard. Sweatband just under the hairline. Sweat on her cute little button nose. Her arm muscles glistened.

  Milo flashed the badge and she opened the gate.

  “Thanks,” he said, “Ms....”

  “Tasha Adams. I don’t really know Neil, we’ve just been rooming together.” Not a trace of irony.