Джонатан Келлерман: Serpentine

“My family,” she said. “Alien concept.” A hand poked her breast. “Hey, Lone Star folk, here’s your mystery baby.”

A few moments passed. “Benni. Cute name…you guys aren’t lying to me, are you? About her being a good person.”

“A good person and an innocent victim,” I said.

“So the bitch ruined her,” she said with sudden savagery. “You want to know something? This is starting to make me feel better. About her. How I’ve always felt about her in the back of my head and couldn’t admit. That photo of her and Dad. The look on her face, so hard. Now I know it was worse than that, it was cruelty. It always bothered me. Feeling off about her. I figured it was resentment because she abandoned me. That’s what the other shrinks said. Now I know I had an inner sense. That my judgment’s not as messed up as I thought.”

I nodded. “Good instincts, Ellie.”

“We’re not just talking cruel,” she said. “We’re talking evil. An evil, horrible, amoral slut just like Dad told me that time…okay, enough, I don’t want to waste precious breath on her.”

She stopped. “Oh, no. Is she alive?”

Milo said, “No, and she reached a very unpleasant end.”

“Such as?”

“She was terminally ill and starved to death, alone and abandoned.”

“Well that’s pretty unpleasant,” she said. “When and where?”

“No need to get into details, Ellie. Like you said, wasted breath.”

I slid a sheet from the thin stack on the couch and handed it to her. The Azalea photo, everything cropped but an enlargement of Benni Cairn’s smiling face.

“This is her?” she said, sniffing. “She’s pretty …so young…kind of pure-looking…her eyes look soft. Yes, I can see the vulnerability…look at that smile. She thinks she’s got a future.”

Rush of tears. Another study of the image.

“I don’t see a resemblance…maybe I look like my father. You think there’s a good chance I can locate him?”

Milo said, “No way to know but if you’re interested, it’s worth a try.”

“Why not, it’s come this far,” she said. “Okay, can you get me one of those ancestral geneticists? I don’t want to make the wrong decision like I did with those slicksters who wasted my money.”

I handed her another piece of paper. “This is a referral from a pathologist at the coroner’s office who’s been extremely helpful. She’s worked with him before and says he’s first-rate.”

She said, “William Wendt, Ph.D., genetic counseling and forensic geneaology…impressive sounding…I guess I could learn something I didn’t want to know but it’s better than wondering. May I keep the photo?”

“Of course.” I passed a third sheet over. “Here’s the match between your DNA and Nancy’s.”

“Strattine…the link is maternal. What’s my real name?”

“Holcroft.”

“Eleanor Holcroft.” She smiled. “Sounds like something out of Jane Austen…I think I’ll stick with Barker, Dad was my everything…maybe I’ll use Holcroft as my middle name.”

She burst out laughing. “Maybe I’ll dye my hair blond and start talking in a Texas accent and learn to ride horses and eat a lot of barbecued brisket.”

I said, “A world of opportunities.”

“Yeah, this could get interesting.” Full smile. “Thanks so much. Both of you. As long as we’re being earth-shattering is there anything else?”

Nothing you need to know.

Milo said, “Nope, that’s it, Ellie. It’s been good working on this.”

“Really? Even though you were pushed into it?”

“Like the doctor just said, opportunities. I like learning and you’ve been a peach.”

“What a lovely thing to say.”

She stood, this time gracefully. Shook her hair loose and straightened her spine and held her head high. “You’re a peach, too—both of you are.”

She laughed. “We’re a regular fruit basket. Let me see you out.”

—

At the door, Milo said, “Oh, yeah, Deirdre’s safe returning to her house.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” said Ellie Barker. “Right now we’ve got some trips scheduled. Santa Barbara, tomorrow, then we’ll keep going to San Simeon. With Mel. Even though we are safe, he’s a great driver and he’s got a beautiful singing voice.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“A good plan,” she said. “Places I wanted to see, anyway.”

CHAPTER 44

We hadn’t told her about the box.

Finding it hadn’t resulted from ace detective work during the search of the house Du Galoway and Martha Dee Ensler had shared for twelve years. It filled the middle drawer of the nightstand where her medications sat.

Fifteen inches long, a foot wide, hardwood covered in genuine crocodile hide dyed green. A bilious shade slightly lighter than the bedcovers and the serpentine necklace.

Milo said, “Reptiles. No comment, too easy.”

The interior of the box was lined in amber velvet. On the inside lid was the incised gold stamp of a luxury goods store in Brentwood, long defunct.

The contents, like the house, neat and organized.

Chronological order.

At the bottom was the Lolita article from Dark Detective protected by a plastic bag. On top of that, two similarly shielded articles from The Jefferson Parish Times in Metairie, Louisiana, and the Houston Chronicle, both brief accounts of homicides stingy on details.

Sharing space in that bag were a set of silver and turquoise cuff links and a half-used matchbook from The C’mon Inn, Bissonnet Street, Houston.

The victims were middle-aged men, a salesman and an accountant, found shot to death in their cars on the outskirts of town. The first crime had occurred when Martha Ensler was nineteen, the second two years later, making her release from the girl’s reformatory at eighteen likely.

“Getting right back in practice,” said Milo.

The next trophy was the Pasadena Star-News article on Arlette Des Barres’s fatal horse tumble. Here, someone had annotated in the margin. A single word in red ink, the kind of ragged cursive that results from inadequate schooling.

Neeeiiigh!!!!

After that: the L.A. Times account of a dead woman burned in a car on Mulholland Drive.

Sizzle!!!!

Nothing for five years and three months, when the San Francisco Chronicle reported the shooting deaths of a well-to-do couple, both physicians, in the book-lined den of their Orinda, California, house. A trove of jewelry and art, taken along with cash and bearer bonds from a safe.

The victims had been last seen having cocktails in the company of another “well-dressed, middle-aged” couple, as yet unidentified.

Milo did follow up on that one. Still open.

Four years and eleven months after that was a clipping on a strikingly similar couple-slaughter in Portland, Oregon. This time the victims were two male antiques dealers who’d been together for twenty-eight years.

Unsolved.

Another stretch of quiet, then a plastic bag containing a key, later identified as operating Phil Seeger’s motorcycle. No one at the scene of Seeger’s “accident” had wondered about the lack of such.

A year after that: a hefty gold chain in a smaller bag. Engraved on the underside of the clasp: Tony.

Repeat burglary of Anton Des Barres’s jewelry. Maybe an anniversary gift to herself, or she’d somehow learned he was terminally ill and vulnerable. She’d somehow gained entry to the mansion—my guess was an old key she’d taken during the first heist—and made a smooth exit.

Let the devil in…

Unlike the others, she’d left Des Barres alive. Maybe because he was ill and in pain and she enjoyed the notion of him suffering.