Mystery_ An Alex Delaware Novel Part 4

"Not a scratch, Alex. If there was any disabling it wasn't hard-core. Wanna get closer?"

Like movie sets, crime scenes are elaborate but short-lived creations. Sc.r.a.pings are taken, plaster casts harden, sh.e.l.ls are searched for, bagging and tagging and photography ensue at a steady pace. Then the vans drive off and the yellow tape is snipped and the blood's hosed away and everyone goes home except the flies.

No flies, here, despite lingering blood on the dirt, dried to rust-colored dust. But for a slight depression where the body had rested and stake-holes for the tape, this was lovely California terrain.

Under last night's skimpy stars, it would've been ink-black.

I recalled Princess's face, the carefully crossed legs. The posturing, the blinding sungla.s.ses. Smoking with aplomb.

The spot where Princess had been found was a plateau just steps off the road, invisible to motorists. You'd have to walk the area to know about it. Maybe fifteen feet by ten, dotted with low scrub, pebbles, twigs.

I said, "Not a scratch also means she wasn't rolled or dumped, more like laid down gently. That also points to a prior relationship."

I paced the area. "It was a warm night, love under the stars might've sounded like a good idea. If she got out of the car ready to play, there'd be no need to restrain her."

"Instead of kissy-poo, she gets boom? Nasty."

"Nasty and up close and personal," I said. "The darkness could've shrouded the gun, she might never have known what hit her. Can I see your phone again?"

He loaded the pictures. I endured every terrible image. "The way she's lying, she was definitely positioned. And except for that spillover on top, she's pristine below the face. This was no robbery, Big Guy. Maybe the watch was taken because her hot date gave it to her in the first place."

"Bad breakup," he said.

"The worst."

Milo sniffed the air like a hound, jammed his hands into his pockets, and shut his eyes. A pair of raptors, too distant to identify, circled high above. One swooped, the other continued surveillance. The first bird shot up and nosed its mate with Look-what-I've-got Look-what-I've-got exuberance and the couple glided out of sight. exuberance and the couple glided out of sight.

Something else had died; brunch was on.

He said, "Robin also get a look at Black Suit?"

I nodded.

"And she's an artistic girl. Think she could do me a drawing?"

"I suppose."

"There's a problem?"

"She's better than average but drawing's not her thing."

"Ah."

"Also," I said, "I haven't told her anything."

"Oh."

Up on the road, I said, "I'll have to tell her eventually, so sure, let's ask her."

"If it's gonna upset her, Alex, forget it. If you can describe him in enough detail, I can get Petra or one of our other sketch-demons. And if one of those rent-a-goon outfits gives me a lead, I might not need any talent at all. Let's get outta here."

I walked him to the unmarked.

"Thanks for the cogitation," he said. "The whole intimacy thing, that's feeling right."

"Ask Robin to draw."

"You're sure."

"Go for it."

He shrugged. "Whatever you say. I know you like to protect her."

"She's on a project with a deadline, I didn't want to distract her."

"Sure," he said. "That was it."

I followed him back to the station, where he called a few more security companies with no success. I used the time to check for messages.

Despite the joys of mechanization, I keep an answering service because I like talking to actual people. Lucette, one of the more durable operators, said, "Hey, Dr. Delaware. Looks like I got...five for you."

A family court judge I'd never heard of wanted to confer about a custody case. His surname had lots of consonants and I had her spell it.

The second call was from a Glendale pediatrician who'd interned at Western Pediatric back when I was a psych fellow. She wanted advice on a failure-to-thrive infant that might be Munchausen by proxy.

Lucette said, "The other three are all from the same person, came in starting at nine, half an hour apart. And I'm talking thirty minutes precisely. Ms. Gretchen Stengel." She read off the number. "The first two were just her name and number, the third was kind of a strange conversation. If you don't mind my saying."

"Strange, how?"

"She sounded pretty nervous, Dr. Delaware, so I asked her if it was an emergency. She went quiet, like she had to think about that, finally said she couldn't honestly say it was an emergency and nowadays she needed to be honest. To me that sounded like some kind of twelve-step thing, you know? But you know me, Dr. Delaware, I'm just here to help, never put my two cents in."

The last time-the only time-I'd met the Westside Madame was almost a decade ago.

Restaurant on the trendoid stretch of Robertson just below Beverly Boulevard. A few storefronts north of Gretchen Stengel's short-lived boutique.

Her play at legitimacy. Lack of crime did not pay.

I'd been tagging along with Milo as he worked the death of a beautiful young woman named Lauren Teague who'd once been part of Gretchen's call girl stable. Gretchen had just finished serving two-thirds of a thirty-two-month sentence for tax evasion. Still in her thirties, she'd come across prematurely aged, sullen, unkempt, quite likely stoned.

Her arrest and trial four years previous had been nectar for the media and every wrong turn in her life had been retracted, probed, and aspirated like a surgical wound.

She'd grown up rich and privileged, the daughter of two high-powered lawyers at Munchley, Zabella, and Carter-a firm since diminished and eventually destroyed by malfeasance and corruption, so maybe character issues had laced the family's chromosomes.

Education at the Peabody School, summers in Venice and Provence, frequent-flier status on the Concorde, socializing with celebs and the people who created them.

All that had distilled to drug and alcohol abuse by adolescence, six abortions by age fourteen, dropping out of college to take on self-abasing roles in bottom-feeder p.o.r.n loops. Somehow that had led to a seven-figure income running beautiful, fresh-faced girls, some of them Peabody alumnae, out of the better lounges and hostelries of prime-zip-code L.A.

Gretchen's trick-book was rumored to be hours of fascinating reading but somewhere along the line it vanished and despite rumors of LAPD enmity, her eventual plea bargain was a sweetheart deal.

Now she was calling me. Three times in one morning. On the half hour precisely; shrinks and hookers are both good at sticking to time-tables.

Not an emergency. I need to be honest.

That did sound like rehab-talk.

Milo slammed the phone down, studied the single-s.p.a.ced list of rent-a-cop outfits. The place his finger rested said he'd barely made a start.

"This is gonna take time."

"If you don't need me-"

"Yeah, yeah, sure, go have a life, someone should."

On the way home, I phoned the judge and the pediatrician. The custody case sounded ugly and probably futile and I begged off. The failure-to-thrive lacked any hallmarks of Munchausen by proxy and I gave the doctor some differential diagnoses and suggested she get gastro and neuro consults on the baby but continue to keep an eye on the parents.

That left Gretchen Stengel.

Eager to talk to me. But no emergency.

I shut down the hands-off, put on music, took the long way home.

Wonderful sounds filled the car. More than music; Oscar Peterson doing impossible things with a piano.

L.A. rule number one: When in doubt, drive.

*obin cried.

Wiping away tears, she laid her chisel down, stepped away from her workbench. Laughed, as if that would reverse the emotional tide. "No sense staining a nice piece of Adirondack."

A finger traced the edge of the spruce slab she'd been shaping. The beginning of a guitar top. Spec job, no deadline.

I said, "I figured you'd want to know. Sorry if you didn't."

"I'm being a baby, she was a total stranger." Spots appeared on sawdust and she swiped at her eyes again. "d.a.m.n."

Blanche waddled over and nosed the shavings. I bent down and petted her. Her eyes remained fixed on Robin.

"When did it happen?"

"A few hours after we saw her."

"That's crazy," she said. "How'd you figure out it was her?"

"Milo came by this morning, showed me crime scene photos."

"How'd she die?"

"Shot."

"Where?"

"That's important?"

"You know me, baby. I code the world visually."

Exactly.

I said, "In her face."

She flinched. "How vicious. Such a beautiful face. And now you're on it?"

"Mostly I've been tagging along."

"Sure, I'll draw, but I don't know if I can come up with anything good. If I don't, I'll sit down with a real artist."

"I could do that."

"So can I," she said. "I'd like to do something." Leaning on her bench. "Poor, poor thing. It's like we were predestined to be there, Alex."

I put my arm around her.

She said, "Whenever they want me, let me know."

"Okay."

I kissed her.

She said, "You didn't tell me earlier because..."

"I needed to digest it, myself."

"Sure. That explains it."

"I-"

"I love you, too, baby." She walked to her drafting table. "I'm going to give it a try, right now."

Four attempts were crumpled. Examining the fifth, she said, "This'll have to do."

Spare but accurate likenesses of the girl in white and the man in black. More than enough for the evening news.

I said, "A-plus."