Jonathan Kellerman - Guilt

Milo said, “Do you have the recordings?”

“Sorry, everything was uploaded to my computer at work and once I was confident Adriana was okay, I deleted the file and got rid of the system.”

Donald said, “We removed the cameras when Adriana was out walking May. We didn’t want her discovering them, thinking we hadn’t trusted her. Though, of course, we hadn’t. Trust needs to be earned.”

I said, “And Adriana earned it.”

“In spades,” said Lilly. “She was a gem.”

Same term Susan Van Dyne had used.

Donald said, “For someone like that to be murdered is astonishing. Do you have any idea who did it?”

“Not yet, Doctor,” said Milo. “What else can you tell me about her?”

Donald turned to his wife. She shook her head.

I said, “Where did she sleep?”

“In the spare bedroom.”

“Could we see it?”

“There’s nothing of hers left in there, it’s all the current nanny’s stuff and she’s sleeping in there.”

“How’s the new nanny working out?”

“She’s nice,” said Lilly.

I said, “But no Adriana.”

“Corinne’s pleasant, May seems to be attaching to her. But Adriana had something special. A real kid person.”

Donald said, “Corinne’s also not much for cleaning, now we do bring a maid in once a week.”

I said, “Did Adriana talk about herself?”

“Not really,” said Lilly. “She wasn’t rude but she had a way of … I guess deflecting would be the right word.”

“How so?”

“With ambiguous answers, then changing the subject. ‘Oops, there’s a stain on the counter,’ and she’d get busy cleaning. I wondered if her personal history was painful, maybe a past relationship that had hurt her.”

Donald stared at her. “Really?”

“Yes, darling.”

He said, “I always thought she was just shy. What specific evidence of being hurt did you pick up?”

She smiled. “No evidence at all, it was just a feeling.”

I said, “Did you pick up signs of her worrying about anything?”

Lilly thought. “Like depression?”

“Depression, anxiety, or just plain worry.”

“No, I couldn’t say that, she wasn’t moody at all. Just the opposite, she was even-tempered, never raised her voice. I just felt she wanted her privacy and I respected that.”

“Unemotional,” said Milo.

“No, I wouldn’t say that, either. Her default mood was … even is the best word I can come up with. Going through her day, pleasant, never complaining. Once in a while-infrequently-I’d catch her with a remote look on her face. Like she was remembering something troubling. But, honestly, it was nothing dramatic.”

I said, “She lost a fiance to a farm accident.”

“Oh, my. Well, that could be it, then.”

Donald put his arm around Lilly’s shoulder. “Honey, you’re an emotional detective. I’m impressed.”

A beep sounded on the monitor. Both Changs turned to the machine.

Silence.

“Back to sleep,” said Donald, crossing his fingers.

Lilly said, “That’s really all I can tell you about Adriana. Would you like to collect her belongings?”

Donald said, “So to speak.”

Milo said, “Not much in the way of worldly possessions?”

“Let’s put it this way, guys. Everything fit into two boxes and one of them’s small. That’s not much of a life, is it?”

Donald Chang took us down in the elevator to a parking garage filled with vehicles save for a section cordoned by a mesh gate. Behind the mesh was a wall lined with storage lockers.

Chang unlocked the gate and one of the lockers and stood back. “The two in front are Adriana’s, everything else is our stuff.”

Milo drew out a cardboard wardrobe and a carton of the same material, around two feet square. Both boxes had been sealed cleanly with packing tape and neatly labeled Adriana Betts’s Belongings .

Chang said, “Can’t tell you what’s in there, Lilly packed. Do you want to go upstairs to look at them?”

“Thanks, but we’ll take them back to L.A.”

“Forensic procedure and all that? Makes sense. Good luck, guys.”

Milo gave him a card. “In case you or your wife remember something.”

Chang tugged a mustache end. “I don’t want to demean the dead but my opinion is Adriana was a bit odder than you just heard from Lilly.”

“How so, Dr. Chang?”

“My wife sees the good in everyone, puts a gloss on everything. The way I perceived Adriana she was a total loner, no life at all other than caring for May and cleaning like a demon.”

I said, “Except for that one time the red car picked her up.”

“Yes, that would be the exception, but outliers don’t necessarily say much, do they?”

Milo said, “When she got back from the date she looked okay.”

“Nothing stood out but bear in mind that neither of us was psychoanalyzing Adriana, our priority was that May stay calm during the drive home.”

Another mustache tug. “I certainly don’t want to put Adriana down just because she stuck to herself, lots of the people I worked with in computer sciences at Yale were like that. And I’m not complaining about her work, as Lilly said Adriana was a dream employee, great with May. But once in a while, I wondered about her.”

“Wondered about what?”

“Her being too good to be true. Because I’ve observed people like that-the ones who come across totally dedicated to the job, single-minded, no outside life. Sometimes they’re fine but other times they end up cracking. I’ve seen it on high-pressure wards, your saintly types can turn out to be horrid.”

I’d learned the same lesson working my first job as a psychologist: the plastic bubble unit on the Western Peds cancer ward where I finally figured out the most important question to ask prospective hires: What do you do for fun?

Milo said, “So you were waiting for the shoe to fall, huh?”

“No, I’m not saying that, Lieutenant. Not even close, I liked Adriana, was pleased with the order she brought to our lives. I’m just a curious person.” He smiled. “Maybe overly analytic. I didn’t want to say any of this in front of Lilly. She was totally enamored of Adriana, hearing about the murder was pretty traumatic for her. I know she looked fine to you but two hours ago she was sobbing her heart out. It’s an especially soft heart, my wife likes to believe in happy endings.”

I said, “You’re a bit more discriminating.”

“Maybe I’m just a distrustful bastard by nature, but when Adriana flaked on us-what we thought was flaking-Lilly was surprised but I wasn’t.”

Milo said, “You figured something stressed her out.”

“I figured she was like everyone else: Something better comes up, you bail.” Chang smiled again, wider but no warmer. “That’s a California thing, right?”

We placed the boxes in the back of the unmarked and headed back to L.A.

Milo swerved into the carpool lane and kept up a steady eighty-five per, jutting his head forward, as if personally cutting through wind resistance.

At Del Mar, he said, “Adriana goes on her one and only date with someone in a red car. So maybe the SUV little Heather saw isn’t relevant. Hell, what’s to say any of it’s relevant?”

I said, “Something drew Adriana to that park.”

“Something drew her to L.A., amigo. I’d say a better gig but bailing on the Changs for extra dough doesn’t sound in character.”

“A friend in need might have lured her. Someone with a baby.”

“It was Mama in a red car, not a date?”

“Mama in a red car who called Adriana for help because something scared her. If those fears were justified, Adriana could have lost her life because she got too close to the situation.”