Guilty— she had to have been tormented. Yet it hadn't led her to finally open up. Worrying about her own safety. Justifiable fear.
And maybe something else: Lies had been the poisonous glue that held this family together.
“The time line fits,” I said. “Lauren was arrested for prostitution in Reno when she was nineteen, called Lyle for bail money but he turned her down. I always wondered why she phoned him and not Jane, but maybe it was because she still cared what Jane thought. Still, stuck in jail, she might've turned to Jane. And maybe Jane came through. But she didn't give Lauren any of the money she'd collected from Tony Duke because she didn't think Lauren could handle it. Instead, she tried to reconnect with Lauren. It was a slow process— Lauren had been on the streets for three years, was sitting on a lot of anger, and she continued to hook and strip. But Jane persisted, and some kind of bond must've been formed. Because two years later— when Lauren was twenty-one— Jane did give her the money, using the Mel Abbot cover story. You remember how Jane emphasized to us how well Lauren and Mel got along.”
He nodded. “Mel being a nice guy made it easier for Lauren to believe.”
“Shortly after Lauren received the hundred thousand, she set up her investment account, went back to school, got her GED, enrolled in community college, quit working for Gretchen. Maybe all of that was part of a deal with Jane, or Lauren really wanted to get her life together. Every year after that she invested another fifty-thousand-dollar annual payment.”
Milo said. “A deal. Give up the life, get rich.” His hand landed on my shoulder, and his eyes took on that sad, sympathetic droop— the look that comes over him when he delivers bad news.
“I know,” I said. “Lauren continued to freelance. Cash income, most of which she never declared and used for spending money.”
Big tips. Expensive tastes. Rapprochement with her mother or not, Lauren had remained a very angry young woman. About missing out on all those years as Tony Duke's daughter. About the trade-offs she'd made.
What Andy Salander had called every little girl's fantasy had become Lauren's reality— only to twist and abort.
“Maybe it wasn't blackmail,” I said. “Just Lauren claiming her birthright— stepping forward and upsetting the family applecart.”
“What, someone tied her up and shot her because she wanted emotional validation?” Milo's hand got heavy, then it lifted. His eyes remained sad, and his voice got soft. “I know you want to believe something good about Lauren, but cold execution and all those other people dying says she tried to use her birthright to hit on the old man big-time. A fifty-grand-a-year allowance is one thing, a chunk of Duke Enterprises is another.”
“Maybe I am denying,” I said. “But think about it: Blackmail would only have worked if Tony Duke had something to hide, Milo. He sent money to Jane— and by extension to Lauren— for years. If he wanted to eliminate nuisances, why not do it right and have them killed right at the beginning?”
“Because he was dealing with Jane and Jane was reasonable. But once Lauren knew the truth, things got nasty— O impetuous youth. Jane knew what Lauren was capable of. That's why she tried to hold her back from contacting Duke. That's why when Lauren disappeared she suspected something was off. Not that it led her to tell me the truth.”
“Jane tells her who her daddy is, then holds her back,” I said. “It was manipulative.”
“Or just a screwup. People make mistakes. Salander's right about cheap wine. Jane had been living with the secret for over twenty years. Her inhibitions finally dropped and she ran her mouth. Then she realized what she'd done, tried to get the Furies back in the box.”
“Still,” I said. “Dr. Maccaferri's presence at the estate says Duke's seriously ill. Why would he be worried now about acknowledging Lauren's paternity? On the contrary, wouldn't he want to connect? But there are people who'd view Lauren as the ultimate threat: a giant slice cut out of the inheritance pie.”
He jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. “Dugger and his sister.”
“Lauren carried a gun but never used it. My theory was that she knew and trusted the killer. Half sibs would fit that bill. Especially a half sib like Ben Dugger— outwardly such a nice guy. Lauren thought she had him pegged, let down her guard. She thought she was the actress and he was the audience. That delusion cost her.”
A pizza delivery truck sped into the lot, stopped, checked the address, continued toward the front door, and screeched to a halt in a No Parking zone. A kid wearing a blue baseball cap got out toting two flat white boxes.
Milo said, “Yo!” and waved him over. The kid stood there, and we jogged to his side. Hispanic, maybe eighteen, with hair cropped to the skin, Aztec features, puzzled black eyes.
“Here you go, friend,” said Milo, peeling off two twenties. “Room two fifteen, just knock and leave it outside the door. And keep the change.”
“Thanks, man— sir.” The kid sprinted for the hotel, shoved at the door, vanished.
Milo said, “The Pizza Olympics. Offer enough positive reinforcement and we'd have ourselves a winning team in track and field.” He motioned toward the unmarked, and we started walking across the lot.
I said, “Lauren probably thought she was after the money, but she was searching for Daddy. Pathetic.”
“I wonder,” he said, “if Lyle ever suspected Lauren wasn't his kid.”
“Why?”
“Because it's just the thing Lauren might have told him out of spite. His finding out would explain how hostile he was when we notified him. Also why he's eager to pump me about Lauren's will. Not being her blood relative, he knows he's got no legal right to anything she left behind. But with Jane gone, who's gonna argue with him, and under the law his paternity's presumed. The Duke family's sure not gonna protest if he ends up with the money in Lauren's investment account. And even if he does manage to connect Lauren to Duke, he'd keep his mouth shut about it, 'cause that would squash his claim to three hundred grand. To them, that's chump change. To Lyle, it would be the windfall of his life.”
“Lauren did made a crack to Tish Teague about her daughters not being family, so I can see her taunting Lyle. But he told us he and Jane had tried to have other kids, but all they could squeeze out was Lauren. So it was obviously Jane's problem. Still, if Lauren did take a dig at his manhood, it could've led to something else. Lyle's an angry guy who likes to drink and surrounds himself with firearms. He could've just lost it. Gone after Lauren, then Jane. Revenge for the lies. And now he hopes to profit.”
“An alternative scenario,” he muttered. Five steps later: “Nah, I don't like it. If Jane suspected Lyle had killed Lauren, that's something she would've been happy to spill. And Lyle doesn't connect to Michelle and Lance— he'd have no way to know them. No, the way Lauren was dispatched wasn't a crime of passion. Lyle's just a circling vulture who never gave a shit about Lauren— this girl had some life.”
“Short life,” I said, and my eyes began to hurt.
We reached the car.
“Lauren sitting at her computer,” he said. “Researching her family tree.”
“Discovering Ben Dugger. Learning about his experiment. She applied to be a paid subject— not for the money, for the connection. Got a confederate job instead, because she was beautiful and poised. Used her looks and her charms to wangle her way into Dugger's confidence. He sweated, got irate, when you pushed him about having a personal relationship with Lauren. Maybe she turned him on sexually, took advantage of that because that was her specialty. But eventually she sprang the truth on him.”
“Guess what, I'm your sister.”
I nodded. “As family reunions went, it was a bust. The money, but maybe also something else. I've always thought Dugger had some kind of sexual hang-up— at the very least he's sexually unconventional. If Lauren aroused him, discovering she was his sister could have ignited some serious incestuous panic. And rage. Toss in Lauren trying to horn in on his inheritance, and she was finished. She couldn't ha
ve picked a worse time to surface.”
Big tips. Lauren deluding herself that she was the dancer, knew the steps. But her life had been choreographed for her.
He opened the car door and got in. “Inheritance makes me wonder about something else, Alex. That story Cheryl Duke told you about the gas leak. What if that was no accident but an attempt to eliminate another couple of slices?”
My throat got tight, and my breath caught. “Baxter and Sage. The dead dog tipped Cheryl off— she and the kids got lucky. But they also ended up back at the Duke estate. Under the control of the Duke family. It puts a whole new flavor on Kent Irving's remark about Cheryl being a neglectful mother: setting the stage so no one's shocked when the kids fall in the pool or tumble over the cliff or have a grisly mishap on that funicular or drown in the ocean.”
“Cheryl fell asleep on the beach, so she's giving them more to work with.”
“True,” I said. “She's no genius. But why should she suspect? People without the capacity for evil can't imagine the worst of intentions.”
“People who can't imagine become sweet targets.”
“Those kids.” I pictured high walls, metal gates, closed-circuit TV. Riptides.
He shook his head.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said.
“Look, Alex, these people are bad, but they're not stupid. Bumping off the kids is gonna be messy, period. Doing it so soon after Lauren's death would be foolish— on the chance that anyone ever connects them to Lauren.”
“But there might be some time pressure here. Tony Duke dying, wanting to tie up loose ends before the will's read. Isn't there some way in— just enough to scare them off?”
“What I can do right now is call Ruiz and Gallardo and ask for a look at Jane's finances. If some sort of money link between her and Duke can be verified— if she made copies of those letters she wrote him— that'll go a ways toward establishing a motive and justifying another visit to Dr. Dugger and hinting around. The risk, of course, is that Dugger and Anita and Brother-in-Law pull up their tents, get rid of evidence, hide behind lawyers, do whatever they have to do.”
“Money and power,” I said. “Some things never change.”
He started up the car. “People in their position . . . Why should I lie to you? Getting to them is not going to be easy.”
34
ROBIN WASN'T HOME. That bothered me. It also made me feel relieved, and that ate at me further.
She'd left a message on the machine. “Alex, I'm still tied up with you-know-who. Now his publicist wants me to stick around for some photographs— showing him how to hold the guitar, finger chords accurately. . . . Silly stuff, but they're paying by the hour. . . . After the photo session, which could be late, we may go out to dinner. A bunch of us— he's got an entourage. Maybe at Rue Faubourg, over on Hillhurst, you can try me there later. Or sooner, here at the studio— we've moved from the manse to Golden Horse Sound, here's the number. . . . Be well, Alex.”
I phoned the recording studio, got voice mail, left a message. Was thinking about Baxter and Sage when Robin called back.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi. Sorry for the long day.” She sounded tired and distant and not the least bit sorry.
“Everything okay?”
“Sure, how about with you?”
“You're not still angry?”
“Why would I be angry?”
“I don't know, maybe I've been a little absent recently.”
“Well,” she said, “it's not like I'm not used to that.”
“You are angry.”
“No, of course not— Listen, Alex, I really can't talk right now, they're calling me—”
“Ah, stardom,” I said.
“Please,” she said. “We'll talk later— we need to get away, together. I don't mean dinner and an orgasm. Real time— time away— a vacation, like normal people take. Okay? That fit your schedule?”
“Sure.”
“Are you? Because whatever you've been involved in— that girl— has taken you to another galaxy.”
“I always have time for you,” I said.
Silence. “Look, I won't go to dinner with the gang. They make a big deal about it— Elvis and his hangers-on. Like summer camp, everyone does everything together. But I'm not part of it, I don't need to participate.”
“No,” I said. “Finish up, do what you need to do.”
“And leave you all alone? I know you need solitude, but I think I've been giving you too much— that's what I'm trying to get across. Both of us have let things slip.”
“It's me,” I said. “You've been fine.”
“Fine,” she said. “Damning with faint praise?”
“Come on, Robin—”
“Sorry, I guess I am . . . feeling a little displaced.”
“Finish up and come home, and then we'll fake out being normal and plan a vacation. Name the place.”
“Anywhere but here, Alex. There's nothing going on that a little mellowing out won't cure, right?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Everything will work out.”
* * *
I waited until well after Robin's phone call— until the sound of her voice, the tone, and the content had finally stopped resonating— before pulling the scrap of paper out of my wallet.
Nine-fifteen P.M. My office windows were black, and I'd been imagining a black ocean, small faces bobbing in the waves, sucked down, the circling of sharks, a mother's endless wail.
Cheryl Duke answered on the fifth ring. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Wow. You called.”
“You sound surprised,” I said.
“Well . . . you never know.”
“Oh,” I said, “I don't think you get ignored too often.”
“No,” she said, merrily. “Not too often. So . . . ?”
“I was thinking maybe we could get together.”
“Were you? Hmm. Well, what did you have in mind?”
“It's a little late for dinner, but I could handle that if you haven't eaten. Or maybe drinks?”
“I've eaten.” Giggles. “You've been thinking about food and drink, huh?”
“It's a start.”
I've been thinking about your babies murdered. About finding some way to warn you.
“Got to start somewhere,” she said. “Where and when were you thinking?”
“I'm open.”
“Open-minded, too?”
“I like to think so.”
“Bet you do. . . . Hmm, I just got the kids down. . . . How about in half an hour?”
“Where?”
Another giggle. “Just like that, huh? Johnny on the Spot Agreeable?”
“When I'm motivated.”
“I'll bet,” she said. “Well . . . how about no drinks, just some intelligent conversation?”
“Sure. That's fine.”
“Just conversation. At least for now.”
“Absolutely.”
“Mr. Agreeable.”
“I try,” I said.
“Try and you'll succeed. . . . Um, I can't go too far— the kids.”
“How about the same place— the Country Mart?”
“No,” she said. “Too public. Meet me up the beach from where I am, down by the old Paradise Cove pier. Down where the Sand Dollar used to be— where you got your kayak. It's quiet there, nice and private. Pretty, too. I go down there by myself, sometimes, just to look at the ocean.”
“Okay,” I said. “But there's a gate arm down by the old guard shack.”
“Park along the side of the road and walk the rest of the way down. That's what I do. You'll see my Expedition pulled to the side and know I'm there. If I'm not, it means something came up— one of the kids woke up, whatever. But I'll do my best.”
“Great. Looking forward to it.”
“Me too, Alex.”
* * *
At night the drive was an easy glide, and I pulled off PCH onto the Paradise Cove turnoff at 9:55. I navigated the s
peed bumps and drove slowly, searching for Cheryl's Expedition. No sign of the SUV as the gate arm came into view, and I pulled to the left, parked, sat for a while, tried to figure out how I'd transform what she thought was a date into the scariest conversation she'd ever had.
A date. I hoped I'd get back before Robin got home. If I didn't, I'd just say I'd been driving.
I remained in the Seville awhile longer, coming up with no easy script, wondering if Cheryl would actually show and, if not, would that be enough for me to drop the whole thing and leave town with Robin . . . be normal.
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