Jonathan Kellerman - Guilt

“I’ve been shutting her out completely,” he said. “Now I do a total about-face.”

“Flexibility,” said Thomas. “It’s a sign of psychological strength, ask Delaware.”

“I see him, I might just do that.”

“Whatever. Now go meet with the bitch and stay in control. Any progress on the case?”

“Not much.”

“Then it’s no big deal. Feed her a steaming mound of bullshit, press-types are born with taste buds for it.”

Click .

I said, “Didn’t know Machiavelli was Irish.”

He laughed. “When you’re in love, laddie, everyone is Irish.” His head swiveled toward Beverly Drive. A car had pulled up in front of Gold Standard’s building.

Iron-gray Mercedes sedan. A curly-haired, middle-aged man in a navy suit got out and remote-locked the car. Bypassing the mailbox outfit, he opened the door to the second floor, stepped in and up.

Milo said, “Maybe he’s someone needs gift counseling but I’m smelling the musty aroma of lawyer.”

He swung another U, got behind the Mercedes, copied the tags. Continuing south into L.A., he crossed Pico, turned left on Cashio Street, parked, ran the numbers.

Floyd Banfer, home address on South Camden Drive in B.H.

A 411 call obtained Banfer’s professional listing: attorney-at-law, office on Roxbury Drive just north of Wilshire in B.H.

“Keeping it local,” said Milo. “Should I go back in there and confront them or give myself time to plan? I’m leaning toward wait and see.”

“Sounds like you know what to do.”

“Spoken like a master therapist.”

We headed back to the station. He continued past the staff lot, stopped where I’d parked the Seville, kept the engine running.

I said, “Playdate’s over?”

“I’d better get the meeting with LeMasters out of the way. I’d bring you along but she’ll probably make a big deal about the cop-shrink thing and I figure you don’t want the exposure.”

“More important, it’ll be good for Kelly to feel she’s getting your undivided attention.”

“That, too.”

“Anything I can do in the meantime?”

“Clean up your room and stop sassing your mother. What can you do … okay, here’s something: Figure out a way I can get into Premadonny-Land to look for Mr. Wedd.”

“Maybe you won’t need to,” I said. “If he’s holed up there, eventually he’ll leave.”

“Start surveillance on the place?” Out came his pad. “You remember the address?”

“No, but it’s easy to find. Coldwater north, about a mile past Mulholland on the west side of the road there’s an unmarked private road that leads up to a gate.”

“Your research included driving up there?”

“I’m an empiricist.”

“Some rep called you, huh? Wouldn’t it be something if it was Wedd?”

“It would,” I said.

“You’ve already thought about that.”

I wished him well, got out of the car.

He said, “Hooray for Hollywood.” Roared away.

My research on Premadonny had involved more than I’d let on to Milo.

After the call from the stars’ rep, I’d picked among millions of Web citations. Bios composed early in their careers aired bins of dirty laundry. Everything subsequent was P.R. pap programmed as carefully as a laugh track.

Clips from their films left no question about their physical perfection. A Renaissance artist would’ve submitted to indignity, if not outright torture, in order to paint them.

Prema Moon came across as a competent, occasionally impressive performer who could amplify or lower her sexuality as if equipped with an erotic rheostat. The only mention she made of her children was on a press release announcing her “hiatus from film work in order to concentrate on being a full-time mom.” Donny Rader lent his support to that move, calling his wife “the ultimate earth mother, protective as a mama lion.”

Rader’s acting was surprisingly one-note. His default mannerisms were the slow, theatrical lowering of hooded eyes and the tendency to slur his words.

The man who’d requested the appointment had begun talking in a choppy, agitated delivery but had shifted quickly to mumbly diction.

I replayed a few of Rader’s clips, heard the same elisions, over and over. If not identical to the man on the phone, awfully close.

Had it been a worried father phoning me about his child but choosing to hide that fact? Because A-list celebs weren’t supposed to do things for themselves?

Or was there a deeper motive for the deception?

Whoever the “representative” was, he’d skated away from naming the child in question, assuring me I’d find out soon enough then hanging up. His tension had been notable, and that could mean an especially worrisome problem.

I’d keyworded premadonny children .

Millions of hits on the parents but almost nothing on the kids.

An image search pulled up a solitary photo gone viral: a shot taken a few months before in New York of Prema and her kids attending a Broadway Disney musical.

Red-velvet, gilt-molded walls in the background supported the caption’s assertion that the group had been photographed in the theater lobby. But the space was otherwise unpopulated, which was odd for an SRO hit, and the lighting was dim but for a crisp, klieg-like beam focused on the subjects. Maybe Prema and her brood had been let in early. Or they’d arrived on a Dark Monday in order to be posed as carefully as a Velazquez royal sitting.

I studied the shot. Prema Moon, wearing a conservative, dark pantsuit that set off cascades of golden hair, stood behind the four kids. The lighting was gracious to her heart-shaped face and her perfect chin and her beyond-perfect cheekbones.

The oldest child, a boy of ten or eleven, had fine features and ebony skin that evoked Somalia or Ethiopia. A doll-like Asian girl around eight and a grave Asian boy slightly younger flanked a platinum-haired, pouting toddler with cherubic chubby cheeks and dimpled knuckles.

All of them were dressed in matching white shirts and dark pants, as uniformly clad as parochial school students. No names provided, just “Prema and her pretty quartet.”

“Pretty” was an understatement; each child was gorgeous. All but the youngest smiled woodenly. The collective posture, again excepting the toddler, was military-rigid.

Prema graced the photographer with the faintest smile-just enough parting of moist, full lips to imply the theoretical possibility of mirth. Her eyes refused to go along; laser-intense, they aimed at some distant focal point.

No physical contact between her and her progeny; her arms remained pressed to her sides.

I searched the kids’ faces looking for anything that might tell me whom I was scheduled to see. Not much of anything emotion-wise, which in kids meant plenty was going on.

Intrigued about what I’d encounter once I got behind the gates of the compound, I logged off.

A day or two after the cancellation, I remained curious. Then my calendar booked up the way it usually does and I was concentrating on murder victims and patients who actually showed up.

Now, nearly two years later, I drove home, curiosity re-ignited.

This time the computer was a bit more cooperative and I found a couple of hundred references to the children, including their names.

Kion, thirteen.

Kembara, eleven.

Kyle-Jacques, eight.

Kristina, four.

But not a single image. The theater-lobby shot had been expunged.

A closer reading of the citations proved disappointing. All of them discussed how zealously Premadonny protected their progeny’s privacy. A few snarky types bemoaned the couple’s “CIA approach to parenting,” but most of the chatterers and bloggers and gurus of gossip were supportive of the attempt to prevent the children from becoming “grist for the paparazzi mill.”