Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 17 - A Cold Heart

by A Cold Heart(Lit)

  'Few of them are,' said Kipper.

  'Gallery owners.'

  'Owners, agents, collectors.' Both of Kipper's big hands had balled. 'The so-called art world. We're talking profoundly ungifted people - people so far from personal talent they wouldn't recognize it if it chomped their gonads - living off the fruit of the gifted. Leeches on the body artistic. That's what Julie and I called them.

  Talent's a curse. Criminals get judged by their peers, but not artists.'

  His smooth, round face was deeply flushed.

  Milo said, 'So Lewis Anthony pressured Julie to produce, and that kicked her coke problem up a notch.'

  Kipper nodded. 'She used coke and speed to keep herself working, booze and tranqs to bring herself down. Unless I forced her to eat and sleep, she didn't. It was hellish. I started staying away. Which was easy because I had my new career. Working my way up the corporate ladder and all that.'

  'Were you into drugs?'

  Kipper hesitated. 'I dabbled,' he said, finally. 'Everyone did, back then. But I never got hooked. I'm not an addictive personality. That probably has something to do with the lack of talent - not enough intensity up here.' Touching his crew cut.

  "The old genius-insanity link?' said Milo.

  'Let me tell you, that's true. Show me a brilliant artist, and I'll show you one serious basket case. And yes, I'm including Julie in that. I loved her, she was a terrific person, but her resting state was turmoil.'

  Milo tapped the pad. 'Tell me more about Lewis Anthony.'

  'What's to tell? The bastard pressured Julie, Julie doped herself to the gills and produced three canvases. Anthony berated her, sold all three, remitted a pittance back to Julie and told her he couldn't handle her unless she acquired a better work ethic. She came home, OD'd, and ended up in rehab.'

  Kipper's fingers opened and clawed black granite. 'I've always felt guilty about that. Not being there when she needed me. When she came home with the check from Anthony, and I saw how puny it was, I went nuts - just lost it. Six months, watching her self-destruct - she lost twenty pounds preparing for that show - and all she had to show for it was two thousand bucks. I told her she was the chump of all chumps and went out to have a beer. When I came home, I found her stretched out in bed and couldn't revive her. I thought she was dead. I called the paramedics, and they took her to Beth Israel. A few days later, she was transferred to the psych ward at Bellevue.'

  'Involuntary commitment?' I said.

  'For the first few days, whatever the law was. But she stayed there even after she could've left. Told me it was better being in the nut ward than living with someone who didn't care. What could I say? I'd bailed on her. Bellevue cleaned her up and sent her home, and I tried to reconnect with her. It was like talking to a block of stone. She couldn't work - no spark - and that freaked her out. She started doping again, we fought about it. Eventually, I moved out. I was the one who filed the divorce papers, but Julie didn't fight it - didn't do a damn thing to protect herself financially. I volunteered to give her half my income at the time as alimony, which was a thousand bucks a month. My attorney thought I was nuts.' Kipper ran his hand through his crew cut. 'As things got better for me, I upped it.'

  'Two thousand a month,' said Milo.

  'I know,' said Kipper. 'For a guy with a Ferrari, that's bullshit. But Julie refused to take any more. I offered to rent her a nice house - somewhere she could have a studio. But she insisted on living in that dump.'

  'The two of you stayed attached.'

  'like I said, we had dinner once in a while.' Kipper hung his head. 'Sometimes we made love - I know that sounds weird, but sometimes chemistry reared its nasty little head. Maybe we were meant for each other. Wouldn't that be a laugh?'

  'A laugh?'

  'living in a weird limbo,' said Kipper. 'I didn't want to cut her out of my life, why would I? And now she's gone. And you're wasting your time, here.'

  'Sir-'

  'Hey,' said Kipper, 'you've got carte blanche. Come over to my house and tear up the fucking floorboards. But once you're through with that, would you do me a favor and get serious about nailing the motherfucker who really did it? And if you do get him, tell him he's a fucking savage who cut a chunk of beauty out of this fucking world.'

  Shouting. Red as a beet, the outsized hands white-knuckled.

  Kipper exhaled and slumped.

  Milo said, 'I have a few more questions.'

  'Yeah, yeah, whatever.'

  'You attended the opening-'

  'I attended and bought two paintings.'

  'Your ex-wife didn't mind that?'

  'Why would she?'

  'Being independent and all that,' said Milo, 'weren't you worried she'd view it as charity?'

  'I would've been worried, except that Julie and I had discussed the paintings a while back. I'd seen them at her place and told her I really wanted two. She wanted to

  give them to me for free, but I refused. I said she should hang them at the show, red-dotted. As a strategic move-this is hot stuff, come and get it.'

  'How late did you stay at the opening?'

  'Until a half hour before closing.'

  'Which would be?'

  'Nine-thirty, -forty.'

  'Where'd you go after you left?'

  'Ah,' said Kipper. 'The alibi. Well, I don't have one. 1 got into my car and took a drive. Sepulveda to San Vicente, over to Seventh and down into Santa Monica Canyon. I know the area because there's a gas station that sells 100-octane hi-test gas and a supplement that boosts it to 104. There's one in Pasadena, too. I thought of taking a beach drive, decided I wanted more curves -the Ferrari loves curves - turned around, took Sunset all the way to Benedict Canyon, had myself a little spin.'

  'Hi-test,' said Milo. 'How much do you pay for that?'

  'Right now it's four-fifty a gallon.'

  Milo whistled.

  Kipper said, 'The Ferrari thrives on it.'

  'What model?'

  'Testarossa.'

  'Work of art,' said Milo.

  'Oh, yeah,' said Kipper. 'High-maintenance, like everything else in my life.'

  'The grieving ex-husband,' said Milo, as I drove away I from Century City, drifting past the ABC entertainment center.

  'Angry ex-husband. Big, strong hands and a temper, and once he starts talking about the art world he heats up.'

  'Leeches on the body artistic' 'And Julie remained in the body artistic' 'He bothers you.'

  'He's worth looking at,' I said. 'Smart, powerful. And he'd been to the gallery. Even by his account his relationship with Julie was convoluted. A marriage full of upheaval, off-and-on physical intimacy ten years after the divorce. When intimates want to fake sexual assault, they generally fail to go all the way. Pulling the panties down, not off. Kipper claims he had to talk Julie into taking money, but who knows. He could also be a very frustrated guy. He used to have serious artistic aspirations. Letting go of dreams isn't always easy.' 'Even with a Ferrari to soothe the angst?' 'As he reminded us three times. A Ferrari that he pumps full of high-octane gas. Think about that: He

  pays a hefty premium to beef up an already high-powered engine. We're talking an aggressive guy. Toss in a difficult ex-wife whom he continued to sleep with and money issues-'

  'Julie told the other artists the split was amicable.'

  'How well did they know her? Did she tell anyone about her suicide attempts?'

  'No,' he said. 'She talked about being in rehab, but didn't mention that. So, what, Julie reversed the terms and started hitting on Kipper for big money?'

  'Maybe she got tired of the starving-artist bit, stepped back, and realized how well Kipper was doing and decided to up her own lifestyle. Kipper could've liked being generous when he was calling the shots. Julie's getting assertive would've been something else, completely. There was a good reason for Julie to take stock. She was entering middle age, and even her second try at art fame hadn't made headlines. I know she sold paintings, but Light and Space isn't a New York ga
llery, and the prices of her canvases haven't gone up much since she started out. In fact, in twenty-year-old dollars, they've dropped. So perhaps reality finally sank in: making it solely as a painter was going to be a struggle, and she was tired of scratching by. Kipper alluded to her living in a dump. How bad was it?'

  'By his standards, a dump. By mine, basic. Two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, the east end, off Pico. The living room was her studio. Despite being an artist, she wasn't much for interior decorating.'

  'That's the tough part of Santa Monica,' I said. 'Gangs, drug traffic' Thinking about Robin's place on Rennie. Tim Plachette was a nice man, a mild man,

  always courteous to me. Would he be of any use if things got tough?

  Milo was saying, '... I'll talk to the neighbors again. Take a closer look at hubbie.'

  'See what you can learn about his financial situation. Sometimes investment pros get overconfident and reckless with their funds. If Kipper leveraged heavily on a deal and lost some big bucks, ditching his obligation to Julie might be tempting.'

  'Strong hands,' he said. 'He's a little guy but still bigger than Julie. He'd be tough enough to overpower her in that bathroom.'

  'Maybe he didn't have to overpower her. She trusted him. That would've added to the element of surprise.'

  'Trusted him to what?'

  'He told us they were still having sex.'

  'A tryst in that scuzzy place?'

  'I've heard of stranger things,' I said.

  'So have I, but... I think your mind's gotten eviler than mine.'

  I made a U-turn and headed back to Santa Monica Boulevard. 'When Julie's uncle asked you to take the case, did you talk to him about her?'

  'Sure.'

  'Was he aware of her background?'

  'To him she was just the sweet, talented niece who'd gone off to New York. Far as her family's concerned, she was Rembrandt.'

  'Nice to be appreciated.'

  'Yeah.' A moment later, he said, 'Strong hands. Whoever strangled Julie didn't rely on their hands, they used a wire.'

  'Good way to keep the hands clean,' I said. 'In addition to using gloves. Reduces the risk of leaving trace evidence.' 'Clean hands.' 'In a manner of speaking.'

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

  Juliet'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 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 th
e 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 musicians' union 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 LA. 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.