“Anything, Jessica. Flip burgers at McDonalds.”
“What about Johnny Rockets? It’s, like, close by.”
“If you can get a job at Johnny Rockets, that would be great.”
“I never flipped burgers.”
“What have you done?”
“I danced.”
“Ballet?”
“Topless.”
“I’m sure you were great on the pole, Jessica, but that’s not going to help you.”
He walked away. The girl didn’t.
I moved from behind the door and said, “Afternoon.”
Montez turned. The girl had her back to the wall, as if pressed there by an unseen hand. “Go look for a job, Jessica.”
She flinched and left.
I said, “Did Michaela say anything about Dylan and Nora Dowd having a relationship?”
“You stalking me, Doc? Or is this happy coincidence?”
“We need to talk— ”
“I need to go home and forget about work. That includes you.” He took hold of his luggage rack.
“Meserve’s missing,” I said. “Given the fact that your client was murdered last week, you might reconsider being a glib wiseass.”
His jaw tightened. “It sucks, okay? Now leave me alone.”
“Meserve could be in danger or he could be a bad guy. Did Michaela tell you anything that would clarify the situation?”
“She blamed him for the hoax.”
I waited.
“Yeah, he was fucking Dowd. Okay?”
“How’d Michaela feel about that?”
“She thought Meserve had lost it,” said Montez. “Going for a senior citizen. I believe her precise phrase was ‘tired meat.’ ”
“Jealous?”
“No, she had no feelings for Meserve, just thought it was gross.”
“Was there any indication Nora was in on the hoax?”
“Michaela never said so but I wondered. Because she was fucking Meserve and he didn’t get kicked out of her school. You think he killed Michaela?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Would you look at that,” he said. “Finally I get a shrink to be direct.”
“Is Marjani Coolidge back from her trip to Africa?”
“She’s right there.” Pointing down the hall to a short, thin black woman in a powder-blue suit. Two tall, gray-haired men were listening to what she had to say.
“Thanks.” I turned to leave.
Montez said, “Just to show you I’m not the asshole you think I am, here’s another tidbit: Dowd called me right after I got the case. Offered to pay any bills the county wasn’t covering. I told her the county could handle it, asked her why the generosity. She said Meserve was a gifted artist, she wanted to help him and if that meant clearing Michaela, she’d do it. I could smell the hormones through the phone. She good-looking?”
“Not bad.”
“For her age?”
“Something like that,” I said.
He laughed and wheeled his cart away and I walked toward Marjani Coolidge. The two men had left and she was examining the contents of her own lawyer-luggage. Double-case, scuffed brown leather, stuffed so tight the stitching was unraveling.
I introduced myself, told her about Michaela’s murder.
She said, “I heard about that, the poor kid,” then interrogated me about my association with LAPD. Appraising my words and my body language with huge brown eyes. Her hair was elaborately braided, her skin smooth and taut.
I said, “Did Meserve tell you anything that could shed light on the murder?”
“You’re serious.”
“Something nonincriminating,” I said. “Anything that could help locate him.”
“Is he a suspect?”
“He could turn out to be a victim.”
“Of the same person who killed Brand?”
“Maybe.”
She smoothed her skirt. “Nonincriminating. Last I heard that animal was extinct.”
“How about this,” I said. “Without divulging content, can you tell me if Meserve’s someone to be scared of?”
“Was I scared of him? Not in the least. Not the brightest star in the constellation but he did what he was told. That girlfriend of his, on the other hand...”
“Which girlfriend is that?”
“The acting teacher— Dowd.”
“She caused problems?”
“Battleax,” said Coolidge. “Phoned me right at the outset, said she’d hire a private attorney if I didn’t give Pretty Boy high priority. I felt like saying, ‘Is that a threat or a promise?’ ”
“What did you tell her?”
“ ‘Do what you want, ma-dame,’ then I hung up. Never heard from her again. I represented Meserve the way I do any other client. Turned out just fine, wouldn’t you say?”
“Meserve’s codefendant’s dead and he’s missing.”
“Irrelevant,” she said. “We settled, my obligations are over.”
“Just like that,” I said.
“You better believe it. My job, you learn to stay in your own orbit.”
“Orbit, constellation. You have an interest in astronomy?”
“Majored in it at Cornell. Then I moved here for law school and found out you can’t see anything because of all the light pollution.” She smiled. “Civilization, I think you call it.”
CHAPTER 24
I exited the courthouse parking lot and took Rexford Drive through the Beverly Hills municipal complex. The light at Santa Monica was long enough for me to leave a message on Milo’s cell.
Driving home, I wondered about the affair between Meserve and Nora. Partners in the worst kind of crime or just another May-December romance?
Wouldn’t it be nice if Reynold Peaty got caught doing something nasty, confessed to multiple murder, and we could all move on.
I realized I was driving too fast and slowed down. Switching on a CD, I listened to Mindy Smith’s clear, sweet soprano. Waiting for her man to arrive on the next train.
The only thing waiting for me was mail and an unread newspaper. Maybe it was time to get another dog.
As I turned off Sunset, a brown Audi Quattro parked on the east side of Beverly Glen pulled behind me and stayed close. I sped up and so did the Audi, as it rode my tail close enough for a rear-view of bird dirt on the four-ring grille. A tinted windshield prevented further clarity. I swung to the right. Instead of passing, the Audi downshifted, drove alongside to my left for a second, then sped off in nasal acceleration. I made out a driver, no passengers. A rear bumper sticker sported red letters on a white background. Too brief for me to read the whole message but I thought I’d seen the word “therapy.”
When I reached the bridle path that leads to my street, I looked for the car. Nowhere.
Just another friendly day on the roads of L.A. I’d been an obstruction and he’d felt compelled to tell me.
* * *
The phone was ringing as I walked into the house.
Robin said, “Sorry I missed your call.”
That threw me for a second. Then I remembered I’d called her this morning, hadn’t left a message.
She understood the pause, said, “Caller I.D. What’s up?”
“I was just saying hi.”
“Want to get together? Just to talk?”
“Sure.”
“How about talk and eat?” she said. “Nothing too intense, name the place.”
Long time since she’d been in the house that she’d designed. I said, “I could make something here.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather go out.”
“When should I pick you up?”
“How about seven— seven thirty? I’ll wait outside.”
Meaning don’t come in? Or did she crave fresh air after hours of sawdust and varnish?
Did it matter?
* * *
Rose Avenue sported a few more boutiques and cute cafés tucked among the laundromats and fast food stands. The ocean a
ir that blew through windows was sour but not unpleasant for that. The night sky was a swirl of gray and indigo, textured like pigments mixed haphazardly on a palette. Soon the the cute cafés would be overflowing, pretty people fortified by margaritas and possibilities spilling out to the curb.
Robin lived minutes from that scene. Did she ever participate?
Did that matter?
Her block on Rennie was quiet and inconsistently lit, lined with neatly tended little houses and side-by-side duplexes. I spotted the flower beds she’d planted out front before I saw her step out of the shadows.
Her hair bounced as she beelined to the car. Nighttime turned auburn rosy. Her curls reminded me, as they always did, of grapes on the vine.
She wore a second-skin top in some dark shade, form-fitted light jeans, boots with nasty looking heels that clump-clumped. As she opened the door the dome light told all: chocolate brown tank top, textured silk, one shade lighter than her almond eyes. The jeans were cream, the boots mocha. Silvery pink gloss ripened her lips. Blush on her cheekbones created something feline.
Those curves.
She flashed a wide, ambiguous smile and put on her seat belt. The strap cut diagonally between her breasts.
“Where to?” she said.
I’d taken her at her word about “nothing intense.” Haute cuisine meant ritual and high expectations and we could do with neither.
Allison liked haute. Loved rolling the stem of a wineglass between manicured fingers as she engaged in earnest discussion of an elegant menu with snooty waiters, her toes trailing up my trousers...
I mentioned a seafood joint in the Marina that Robin and I had patronized back before the Ice Age. Spacious, dockside, no-sweat parking, nice view of a harbor full of big white boats, most of which seemed never to go anywhere.
She said, “That place. Sure.”
We got a table outdoors, near the glass wall that keeps the wind out. The night had turned cool and butane heaters were switched on. The sports bar up front was packed but it was still early for the Marina dinner crowd and more than half the tables were empty. A chirpy waitress who looked around twelve took our drink order and brought Robin’s wine and my Chivas before we had a chance to get awkward.
Drinking and gazing at the yachts postponed that a while longer.
Robin put her glass down. “You look fit.”
“You look gorgeous.”
She studied the water. Black and sleek and still, under a sky streaked with amethyst. “Must’ve been a great sunset.”
“We had a few of those,” I said. “That summer we lived at the beach.”
The year we’d rebuilt the house. Robin had served as the contractor. Did she miss the place?
She said, “We had some spectacular ones at Big Sur. That crazy Zen place that was supposed to be luxurious, then they stuck us with chemical toilets and that terrible smell?”
“Rustic living.” I wondered if the place had been on the resort list Milo and I had just run down. “What was it called?”
“The Great Mandala Lodge. Closed down last year.” She looked away and I knew why. She’d gone back. With him.
She drank wine and said, “Even with the smell and the mosquitoes and that splinter in my toe from that stupid pinecone, it was fun. Who knew a pinecone could be lethal.”
“You’re forgetting my splinters,” I said.
Oversized incisors flashed. “I didn’t forget, I chose not to remind you.” Her hand made circular motions in the air. “Rubbing that ointment into your cute butt. How could we know that other couple would be watching? All that other stuff they could see from their cabin.”
“Should’ve charged them tuition,” I said. “Crash course in Sex Ed for the honeymooners.”
“They did seem pretty inept. All that tension at breakfast. Think the marriage lasted?”
I shrugged.
Robin’s eyes turned down a bit. “The place deserved to tank. Charge that kind of money and smell like a cesspool.”
More alcohol for both of us.
I said, “Nice to be with you.”
“Just before you called this morning, I was thinking.” Brief smile. “Always a risky thing, no?”
“Thinking about what?”
“The challenge of relationships. Not you and me. Me and him.”
My gut twinged. I drained my scotch. Looked around for the baby-faced waitress.
Robin said, “Me and him as in What Was I Thinking.”
“That’s rarely useful.”
“You don’t engage in self-doubt?”
“Sure I do.”
“I find it good for the soul,” she said. “That old Catholic girl resurfacing. All I could come up with was he convinced himself that he loved me and his intensity half convinced me. I was the one who broke it off, you know. He took it really hard— but that’s not your problem. Sorry for bringing it up.”
“He’s not a bad guy.”
“You never liked him.”
“Couldn’t stand him. Where is he?”
“You care?”
“I’d like him to be far.”
“Then you got your wish. London, teaching voice at the Royal Academy of Drama. His daughter’s living with him— she’s twelve, wanted the switch.” She tugged at her curls. “It was rude, bringing him up.”
“He’s a twit,” I said. “But the problem wasn’t you and him, it was you and not me.”
“I don’t know what it was,” she said. “All this time and I still can’t figure it out. Just like the first time.”
Breakup number one, years ago. Neither of us had wasted time finding new bed partners.
I said, “Maybe that’s the way it has to be with us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Eons together, centuries apart.”
Somewhere out in the open water a ship’s horn sounded.
She said, “It was mutual but for some reason I feel I should ask your forgiveness.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“How’s Allison?”
“Doing her thing.”
Soft voice: “You two are really kaput?”
“That would be my bet.”
“You’re making it sound like you have no control,” she said.
“In my limited experience,” I said, “it’s rarely been necessary to make a formal announcement.”
“Sorry,” she said.
I drank.
“You really see it as mutual, Alex, and not my fault?”
“I do. And I don’t understand it any more than you do.” Ditto for the break with Allison. Maybe with any other woman I’d find...
“You know I was never untrue to you. Didn’t touch him until you and I were living apart.”
“You don’t owe me any explanation.”
“Everything we’ve been through,” she said, “I can’t figure out what I owe you.”
Footsteps approaching the table rescued me from having to answer. I looked up, expecting Ms. Chirpy. More than ready for another drink.
A man loomed over us.
Big-bellied, ruddy, balding, fifty or so. Black-framed eyeglasses slightly askew, sweaty forehead. He wore a maroon V-neck over a white polo shirt, gray slacks, brown loafers. Florid jowls settled over the shirt’s soft collar.
Swaying, he placed broad, hairless hands on our table. Sausage digits, some kind of class ring on his left index ring finger.
He leaned down and his weight made the table rock. Bleary eyes behind the specs stared down at us. He gave off a beery odor.
Some joker who’d wandered over from the sports bar.
Keep it friendly. My smile was wary.
He tried to straighten up, lost balance, and slapped a hand back on the table, hard enough to slosh water out of our glasses. Robin’s arm shot out before her wine toppled.
The drunk looked at her and sneered.
I said, “Hey, friend— ”
“I. Am. Not. Your. Friend.”
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