Джонатан Келлерман - Serpentine

“Huh. I’m visualizing black ninja p.j.’s on stage.”

“It varies. Last time was a set of antique Japanese armor. He looked like Darth Vader.”

“All that metal,” he said. “I’d worry about electrocution.”

“I’ve mentioned it to him,” she said. She crossed her fingers.

He said, “You lead a different life, kiddo.”

“Only vicariously. Mostly I’m in a room all day sawing and gluing.”

He regarded the spoon, mumbled “too damn small” and put it down. “Raw horsemeat.” He looked at me. “Must be our day for quadrupeds.”

I drummed a horse-hoof clop on the table.

Robin said, “What does that mean?”

I explained.

She said, “Maybe another fake accident? Interesting.”

Milo clutched his head. “That word again.”

Robin looked at me.

I said, “He’s developed an allergy to ‘interesting.’ ”

“Ah. I think you can get shots for that.”

He laughed, fiddled with the sprig, licked his lips. “No aftertaste of Trigger, so far, so good.” Eyeing what was left of the ice cream. “You guys full?”

Robin said, “All yours.”

“Why not?” he said. “All in the name of recycling.”

When he’d finished every dollop, she said, “I don’t want to give you a migraine but can I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“You always say you start with the victim. Since the case started I’ve heard a lot about suspects but not much about her.”

“That’s ’cause there’s not much to know, kiddo, can’t even get biographical basics.”

“Mystery woman,” she said. “Hiding something?”

“She ended up in California, which is where everyone comes to reinvent, so good chance. Does it tie in to her murder? Who the hell knows? All I can work with is facts on the ground. They keep piling up but nothing’s really clarifying.”

I said, “Making it worse, Ellie has no early memories. She was a baby when the relationship with her stepdad began and a toddler when Dorothy walked out.”

Robin said, “Leaving a little kid behind to hook up with a rich guy? Not exactly a world-class woman.” Metal in her voice. Her relationship with her own mother had always been a challenge.

I said, “The older Des Barres brother said other women in the mansion tried to ingratiate themselves with him and his sibs. Dorothy didn’t bother. Just the opposite, she was aloof.”

“She sounds pretty unlikable.”

Milo said, “Worst type of victim.”

“Why?”

“Too many potential enemies.”

“Do you think she just landed in L.A. and started hunting for a sugar daddy? Or had she been involved with Des Barres before?”

“Good question,” said Milo. “ They keep popping up, too.”

He drained his beer.

Robin said, “One more thing?”

“Hit me.”

“Ellie’s boyfriend getting shot. If the goal was to dissuade her, why not simply target her? And if there really was a woman on horseback bumping off the competition, she’d have to be, what—late fifties minimum, more likely sixties by now. It’s hard to see someone like that lurking in the bushes. How, for that matter, would she even know about the investigation?”

“The Des Barres sibs know about it, thanks to me, and rich folk are used to delegating. Val Des Barres’s butler has a bit of a record, so I watched him for a couple of days. So far the worst thing he’s done is glide through a boulevard stop.”

He caught the waiter’s eye and mouthed, Check.

This time I got there first with a credit card.

“Aw c’mon.”

“Nope.”

“At least let me do the tip.” He began to reach for his wallet.

Robin placed her hand on his. “We’re your support group. Accept the love.”

The following morning at ten, I got a text from Maxine Driver.

Found something but probably not useful.

Open to anything. Can you send?

Not great condition, might be better to hand over in person.

Name the time and place.

An hour, the pizza place?

Perfect. Thanks, Maxine.

You’ll find a way to pay me back.

—

The “pizza place” was Gipetto’s, a student hangout on Westwood Boulevard, two blocks south of campus. Questionable beer by the pitcher was the star, everything else, the supporting cast.

I’d have sprung for somewhere nicer but Maxine has a thing for pizza. The basic American pie, nothing designer. Her Korean-immigrant parents forbade it when she was small.

I’d asked what they were worried about.

“Anything new.”

I arrived first. At eleven in the morning the place was nearly empty, a few groggy-looking sophomores praying to their phones.

A waitress who was probably their peer came over. “Oven just got to the right temp, orders won’t be ready for fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.”

“No problem. Large mushroom whenever.”

“Cool attitude,” she said. “Are you a prof? I’m looking for a comfortable elective.”

“At the med school across town.”

Shrug. “That doesn’t help me.”

—

At ten after, Maxine strode in carrying an oversized tan leather bag and wearing a black wrap dress swirled with purple and a string of pearls too large to be real.

She’s a tall, slim woman just turned forty but looking younger, pretty without the self-consciousness of someone who’s traded on her looks. She wears her hair in a flapper-type bob that fits her fascination with the past.

L.A.’s criminal past, in particular, a topic that stymied the History Department because she refused to infuse her conclusions with “analyses of contemporary hot-button topics.” Instead, she plugged away like a true scholar, piling up more awards and peer-review publications than could be ignored, making tenure unavoidable.

Her life’s work also baffled her parents. (“Bad people should be forgotten.”) Another insult added to the familial injury Maxine had inflicted by forsaking premed. Marrying a physician had blunted the issue but hadn’t erased it. (“I’m sure they’re convinced David will leave me for someone younger and appropriately obedient, I’ll be poor and be unable to take care of them.”)

She waved as she approached. “Did you order?”

“The usual.”

“Excellent.” We shook hands and she sat. “How’s it going on the case?”

“It’s not.”

“Sorry. Like I said, this is unlikely to change that.”

Out of the bag came a brown, marbleized folder. Out of the folder came a page-sized color photo that she slid across the table.

Back in the pre-digital days, photographs could be stunningly sharp when developed by pros in darkrooms, clouded and blurry when amateurs clicked their Brownies and Polaroids or pretended to comprehend their Nikons. Acid-laced paper, ultraviolet rays, and the passage of time didn’t help.

This was clearly an amateur effort, deteriorating to white space at the edges and blunted further by enlargement. A few pinpoints of missing pigment freckled sections of the subjects.

Four subjects, seated at a bright-red table loaded with massive cocktails in tulip glasses, the liquids within garishly tinted. The wall behind the quartet was silver foil patterned with flowers. Crude, unidentifiable, blue and mustard-colored blossoms.

Older man, one younger woman to his right, two others to his left.

His face was the least damaged. Ironic because time had done just fine on its own.

Hatchet face covered by coarse, slack, too-tan skin. Marsupial pouches tugged at bleary, heavily lidded eyes. Thinning hair was brushed back Dracula-style and tinted the same unlikely matte black as a pointy goatee. A chunky gold link chain hung across the hairless triangle created by three undone buttons of a pink-and-orange paisley shirt.