Jonathan Kellerman - Guilt

Beautiful child.

Finally, the bones had a face.

Cordelia .

My throat clogged.

Milo raced out of the room.

Melvin Jaron Wedd’s quarters veered toward messy but smelled okay. Probably the Armani cologne in his medicine cabinet.

The fragrance shared space with Viagra for fun, Lunesta for sleep, five varieties of caffeine pills for energy. Tube of lube in the top nightstand drawer. In the second, a short stack of gay porn.

Nothing interesting in the dresser until Milo kneeled low and pulled a small blue leatherette spiral notebook out of the bottom, right-hand drawer. Stashed under a stack of beefy sweaters too warm for L.A.

The book bore the gold-imprinted legend of an insurance broker with an office in Beverly Hills. Probably one of those Christmas giveaways.

Inside was an appointment calendar, complete with holiday notations, dated the previous year. Wedd hadn’t used it to organize his schedule; the pages were unmarked.

Milo leafed through. Toward the end, several blank pages headed Notes contained just that.

Mel Wedd’s penmanship was impressive. Nice straight columns, too. Two side by side per page.

Cheryl, Jan 3–7: 1000.00

Melissa, Jan 6–7: 750.00

Shayanne Jan 23: 750.00

Forty-nine women’s names, fifteen of them occurring twice or more. Monthly totals approached ten thousand dollars but always fell slightly short.

“Simone” showed up sixteen times over a two-year period.

First payment: three hundred dollars. An increase to six hundred, then six notations of eight fifty.

Milo said, “Merit raise-whoa, look at this.”

Sudden boost on the eighth payment: $4,999.99. Seven more of those, each dated the first of the month.

Milo said, “She takes up a whole bunch of the ten-grand limit, leaving less for other girls. Guy’s a superstar, would have to come begging for dough, talk about demeaning.”

I said, “He’s Prema’s bad child.”

He looked at me. “Been carrying around that insight for a while?”

“Just thought of it.”

“She couldn’t raise him properly, moved on to real kids?”

“She’s invented her own world.” I took a longer look at the log. “Eight big payments conforms to the final months of Qeesha’s pregnancy. Up to that point, she was figuring out what to do, by the fourth month she couldn’t hide it any longer, decided to take action. Donny told her to abort, she strung him along, kept delaying as he kept paying. Then it was too late and she had the baby and her hold over him was telling Prema. She continued to live here, got Prema to hire Adriana for backup. To serve as an insurance policy if things got ugly.”

“Adriana didn’t turn out to be much insurance.”

“When Qeesha and the baby disappeared, Adriana suspected the worst. But going to the police wasn’t an option. Child-care aide makes accusations against mega-celebs, no evidence to back it up, how far would that get? So Adriana decided to stick around and snoop. Then the baby skeleton showed up under Holly Ruche’s tree and it made the news and someone heard about it and thought it would be a grand idea to ditch a second set of bones not far from there so the police would think some sort of serial ghoul was at work.”

“Fifty years between dumps is a serial?”

“Not well thought out,” I said.

“Not a genius,” he said. “Aka Donny.”

“He’s the one with the wax and the knives and the bugs. And the guns.”

“According to Prema.”

“All verifiable accusations.”

“And I’m the verifier.”

We left Wedd’s room. Milo carried the appointment book away from his body. “Gotta get an evidence bag for this … Here’s something else to chew on, Alex: Donny dumping his own kid’s bones and doing Adriana the same night seems like a challenge for someone supposedly that dumb.”

I said, “Agreed. Had to be a two-person job. Donny and Wedd. That way there’d be no need to schlep Adriana across the park. Wedd was Prema’s guy by day, but Donny’s pimp and paymaster and who-knows-what-else by night. The maids knew about it, everyone knew about it except Prema. Wedd was a wannabe actor, wanted to emulate the star-drove the same kind of car as the star. He wasn’t ridiculing Donny when he imitated him over the phone. He was pretending to be him.”

“Hell, Alex, maybe it was more than that: What if Wedd had a crush on Donny? So when Donny asks him to take care of nasty business, he’s fine with it. Unfortunately, Donny grew uncomfortable with his knowing too much and took care of him .”

I said, “Nighttime drive, weed and a bong. Sure, it fits. Wedd probably figured he’d be partying with his idol.”

“Power of celebrity,” he said.

“It even got the best of a wily, manipulative woman like Qeesha. If her head had been clear, she’d have known from the way Donny shut out four kids that he wouldn’t take well to fatherhood. To being pressured.”

“Playing her usual game,” he said. “But out of her league.”

Footsteps at the mouth of the corridor made us turn.

Tyler O’Shea held a tired-looking Sally at the end of a slack leash.

Milo said, “Anything?”

O’Shea gave a thumbs-down. “Only dead thing in that forest was a really gross, rotting squirrel way at the back, that’s what was attracting her. Sorry, El Tee.”

“No big deal,” said Milo.

“You knew already?”

“I never know, kid. That’s what makes the job fun.”

“Oh. Okay. So we’re finished?”

“Not even close.”

We came upon Morry Burns and Prema leaving the big house. Burns walked ahead of her, wheeling his dolly, now piled high with boxes. When he saw us, he picked up speed. Prema stopped, stood there for a second, walked back through her front door.

When Burns reached us, Milo said, “You’re really starstruck, Morry.”

Burns said, “Huh?”

“What’d you learn?”

“Her system stinks.” Burns cocked a head at the mansion. “All that dough, the kids have rooms like a Broadway production, and she cheaps out on crap hardware. I could get technical but it wouldn’t mean anything to you, so leave it at crap. Nothing’s linked, real pain to go through each machine.”

“Same question.”

“Huh?”

“Learn anything?”

Burns tapped a metal case. “Nah. But I took her hard drive, will dig deeper. Also drives from other machines they use-get this-to buy groceries. Or-gah-nic arugula. No need to encrypt that.”

“What about the kids’ computers?”

“Two desktops for four of them.” Burns cackled. “Maybe they’re learning how to share. She’s got them on every parental lock known to mankind, they’re lucky to get the weather. Maybe that’s why they hardly ever go online.”

I said, “Could be they like to read.”

Burns stared at me as if I’d talked in tongues. To Milo: “We through here?”

“Not even close.”

O’Shea and Burns took a lunch break near the pool. Take-out Mexican Milo had brought along.

We found Prema in her cavernous kitchen, sitting at a granite-topped counter drinking tea. No maid in sight. The CCTV screens remained inert.

Milo said, “Do you have those real estate documents?”

“You need to actually see them?”

“We do.”

She left, returned a few minutes later. “Here’s the trust deed on the entire property.”

Milo read carefully, per Deputy D.A. John Nguyen’s instructions.

“As you can see, I’m the sole owner,” she said. “I bought it before I knew him.”

A divorce lawyer would laugh at that but for Milo’s purposes, the deed was sufficient.