John Miller - Too Far Gone

Knowing when people are lying is a blessing and a curse. In any event, hunches were not admissible in court, or valid cause for a search warrant.

Kyler Kennedy pulled up out front of the Wests’ home. “You want me to come in with you?” he asked, violating his silence. “Mrs. West knows me, feels comfortable with me since I’ve interviewed her already.”

“Thanks, but this needs to be a girl-to-girl thing,” Alexa said as she climbed from the car, taking her shoulder bag with her.

She closed the door and Kennedy roared off down the street like a teenager who’d just been jilted. Alexa walked to the gate, which was opened by a man built like a professional boxer. He locked his intense eyes on her. “May I help you?” he asked, but his body language said that being accommodating was dead last on his list of things he wanted to do.

Alexa reached into her purse, which caused the man to slip his hand deeper inside his jacket, until she pulled out her badge case. He scrutinized her FBI identification and stepped aside, saying, “Mrs. West is expecting you.” Alexa wondered what the man would have done if she had come out with her Glock instead of her badge. There was no way he could have drawn his gun before Alexa had blown his heart out. Standing so close, he should have kept his right hand free so he could use it to disarm her, were she so inclined to pull a weapon.

Grace, Casey’s assistant and best friend from childhood, opened the front door. “Casey’s taking a shower. She didn’t sleep at all. She thought she looked terrible. Like that’s possible.”

Deana trotted up the hall, hugged Grace’s leg, and, sticking out her bottom lip, peered up at Alexa.

“Hello, Deana,” Alexa said, smiling.

“She’s acting out because of the thing. Come on back to the den,” Grace said, leading the way. Deana took off, running ahead of them, but Grace scooped her up and held her to her side as the child squealed and kicked violently to free herself.

“Me-do-ee!” she protested.

“No, Aunt Grace will help you, Deans. She’s at the age where she wants to do everything herself, like she’s capable. It slows everything to a crawl. Gary spoils her by caving in to her whims. But who am I to say that isn’t how I’d do it?” As they passed by the dining room, Alexa saw a man seated at the table with a tape-recording device in front of him. Grace said, “He’s monitoring the phone in case there’s a ransom demand.” The man looked up from the magazine he was reading and stared at Alexa as she went by. “Casey told me she went to see you at your hotel. We are absolutely thrilled you’re on the case. Casey says she can’t live without Gary, and if anything has happened to him, I’m afraid of what she’ll do to herself.”

Alexa sat on the sleek Italian leather sofa. The coffee table was a long slab of rose-colored hardwood with several lighter wood butterflies to keep the cracks from enlarging. Alexa couldn’t remember the maker’s Japanese name, but she knew he had worked in a studio in the Pacific Northwest and his work was very collectable and valuable. Alexa was familiar with the Avedon image of Andy Warhol’s scarred torso. In the picture Warhol’s hand held up his black leather jacket to allow Richard Avedon’s view camera to capture the damage to his chest that a psychotic woman inflicted by shooting him several times point-blank for not making her a movie star, or some imagined slight. The Frankenstein-like stitching on the lily-white torso-this one enlarged to four-by-five feet, and framed by black lacquered wood-was a visual jackhammer that dominated the warm, sunlit room like a rogue elephant.

Deana went straight to a box of her toys and started lifting them out one by one and throwing them behind her without seeming to care where they landed.

“Casey tells me you two have known each other for a long time.”

“We’ve been thick as thieves since second grade,” Grace said. “Casey is the kindest, most generous person who ever lived, and the most thoughtful. I hung out with her-of course, everybody wanted to, but most of the time it was just us two. Mrs. LePointe, Casey’s grandmother, started taking me with them all over the world when we were twelve-Casey insisted because she was always bored to death when she was with her family by herself. We got in our share of girlish mischief. We were as close as twins.” Grace smiled. “Casey could do no wrong, of course. When she went to boarding school, she begged to take me along, but my parents wouldn’t hear of it. Mrs. LePointe would have paid for it, but my parents wanted me at Blessed Heart because it’s a family tradition.” At that, Grace’s eyes seemed to lose their focus for a split second and her facial muscles shifted. Alexa read her last statement for an exaggeration maybe the woman almost believed.

“We wanted to go to college together, but I went to LSU and she went to Harvard, like everybody in her family does. Then about six years ago, Casey was getting so much interest in her work, she needed someone to organize her life, so I left my job-I was an executive assistant buyer at Bloomie’s-and started working with her full time. Like she needs anyone to organize anything. She’s brilliant and totally focused. Always has been. Oddly enough, I’m the disorganized one, but for her I somehow organize the organized.”

“So you’re Casey’s employee.”

“Technically speaking, you can say I am, but she treats me like her sister. I get a generous salary, but I do work hard and I’m totally dedicated to Casey and her career. Loyalty is something you can’t buy. I’d do what I do for nothing, but unfortunately I can’t devote my life to anything without financial compensation. I’m not independently wealthy.”

“You keep regular hours?”

“I don’t punch a time clock or anything. It’s not set up as an hourly arrangement. I liken coming to work every day to what a priest must feel upon entering the Sistine Chapel and looking up. You’ve seen Casey’s art?” Grace’s eyes brightened.

“No. Are you a fan of Gary’s plays?”

“I guess I’m his biggest fan after Casey. Casey’s art is in a class of its own.”

“I thought she was a photographer?”

Grace frowned. “Her photography elevates the medium to art.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure.” Alexa looked around hoping she might see a portrait that Casey had done hanging in the large room. Counting the torso, there were seven Avedons on the walls-all were Avedon’s portraits that Alexa was familiar with from his books.

“She doesn’t have any of her own work hanging here. She doesn’t have an ego. My apartment is completely done in her portraits. Another advantage of my position is that she gives me whatever prints I want. The frame shop that does her framing does them for me for practically nothing, because Casey uses only one frame stock-which she designed, and has it manufactured exclusively for her photographs. They keep a ton of it in stock for her work only. Nobody else gets any of it but me unless they buy a portrait. Would you like to see?” Grace’s excited eyes were lit up like Christmas bulbs.

Deana had gone to the window and was beating on the glass with a rubber dog toy that emitted a sharp squeak with each blow. This seemed to fascinate her, because she kept doing it. “Eeep, eeep, eeep, eeep.”

“Didn’t you just say there wasn’t any of her work here?”

“Not on the walls,” Grace said softly. She went to the bookshelf and took out a large book and, after removing it from its cloth slipcover, handed it to Alexa. “She owns the most extensive collection there is of the most important photographers, from Brady to Avedon. She has most of it out on loan or donated to museums, or in a climate-controlled storage facility in Manhattan. This volume of her own work just came out two weeks ago, in a very limited edition of five hundred copies. One thousand dollars per. I don’t have one, but I will, because it’s being reprinted in a larger and less expensive edition next month. Casey only got three of these for her own use, because it was completely presold. Gary has one, of course. And Casey has two-one locked up for Deana, and this one.”