Brian Freeman - Stripped

“I don’t know who,” Karyn said, reluctantly breaking her eye contact with Amanda and turning back to Stride. “MJ was the gravy train. He was the one paying all the bills. Who’s going to mess with that?”

“He never lost his temper?”

“MJ? No. He was a little kid. He wanted everyone to like him. The only time I ever heard him arguing with anyone was with his dad. They went at it all the time.”

“His dad is a movie producer in Canada, right?” Stride asked.

“Sure, like Tom Hanks is some actor,” Karyn replied dismissively. “Everyone in the business knows Walker Lane. Hell, I admit it, I first came on to MJ because I thought he would put in a good word for me with the old man. But I learned fast enough that MJ didn’t want anything to do with Walker, except take his money.”

“He tell you why?”

“No, but it was always something. They argued about money. They argued about his mom. They argued about MJ living in Vegas. I was at MJ’s condo a few weeks ago when Walker called. MJ went ballistic. Took the phone and threw it against the wall. I’d never seen him like that.”

“Do you know when he last talked with his dad?” Stride asked.

“Sure. Last night.”

“What were they talking about?”

Karyn shrugged. She played with a scrap of paper on the desk, rolling it into a ball and rubbing it between two long nails.

“I don’t know. But MJ was pissed. So was I. We took a break from the blackjack tables and went up to my suite to fool around. I was really in need of a good fuck, you know? But we barely got started when MJ’s cell phone rang. It was Walker. They yelled at each other for a few minutes, and MJ wasn’t in the mood anymore. So I left. I told him to grow up.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. I went to a club, was there until almost five. I hear MJ went back to the tables and kept drinking. And then he went out to find a hooker. Bad choice, huh? If he’d stayed with me, this never would have happened.”

Or you’d be dead, too , Stride thought.

“I’d really like to know what he and his father were arguing about,” Stride told her.

“And like I told you, I don’t know. You’d have to ask Walker. But here’s something for you. I mean, I heard something MJ said to his dad. Pretty ironic, given what happened to him.”

“What did he say?” Stride asked.

Karyn gave him a catlike smile. “He called Walker a murderer.”

Serena felt it as soon as Linda Hale let her inside her Summerlin home. Grief.

It hung in the air, multiplying like a virus. It clung to the furniture, gathered in the deep carpet, and threw a blurry film over the lights. Each room carried a tiny echo of loss, unmistakable, heartbreaking. There were toys still littering the floor in the den. A kid-sized Wilson football. PlayStation cartridges. A Harry Potter book. No one had picked them up, Serena knew, because no one could bear to touch them. You’d get grief on your fingers.

The silence was the worst of all. It wasn’t meant to be a quiet house. Twelve-year-old boys made noise. Shouted. Turned up the volume on the stereo. But there wasn’t a sound anymore. Right now, a marching band could have come down the hallway, and Linda Hale would have smiled.

They sat around a solid oak breakfast table, in a porch off the kitchen that looked out on a small, carefully landscaped cactus garden. Linda clutched a mug of coffee with both hands. There were family photos, a lifetime collection of memories, strewn across the table, dumped from an old shoe box.

“We found the car used in the hit-and-run,” Serena told her.

Linda nodded but didn’t react. She was staring at the photos, shiny eyes moving from one to the next.

Like Serena, she was in her midthirties. Her blond hair was cut in a short bob, a functional cut for a stay-at-home mom, quick out of the shower and off to Peter’s soccer practice. She didn’t need much makeup, but she wore silver earrings and a slim silver chain around her neck. She had on a stylish Kuhlman shirt with the cuffs folded back.

“Your husband is an executive at Harrah’s, is that right?” Serena asked.

“Yes,” she replied softly. Her mind was still on the photos. On the past.

The house was large for a family of three. Linda kept it well appointed, frequent trips to Pottery Barn, every china knickknack carefully placed and dusted. Precise. Ordered. She probably used to have trouble getting Peter to pick up after himself. Once upon a time, it must have driven her crazy.

Serena studied the photos. They spanned decades. She picked up one, staring at a little boy’s glowing eyes. He was at the beach.

Linda brightened. “That’s Cocoa, on the east coast of Florida. We took Peter with my mom to Orlando five years ago.” She slid another photo in front of Serena. “Here he is with Mickey. He was so scared at first. Then he gave him a big hug.”

More pictures. Peter on a bicycle with training wheels, his dad beside him. Peter in a soccer uniform. Linda’s mother-it had to be; the resemblance was striking-nose to nose with her grandson at Christmas. Husband and wife in a hospital room, Linda looking tired, holding her new baby.

“Peter looks happy,” Serena told her. It was something to say.

“Very.”

“You look a lot like your mom,” she added, hating small talk, especially with a mother who had lost her son.

“I know, everyone says it. But I’m not glamorous like her. She has showgirl looks, like you.”

“Maybe a decade ago, I did,” Serena said, smiling.

“No, no. You’ve got it, of course you do. So does Mom. Me, I just get older.” She shuffled through the pile and found an eight-by-ten print among the family photos. It was a black-and-white publicity shot of a dancer in full costume, wild with silk and sequins. The girl in the photo, who looked about twenty years old, was a dead ringer for Linda Hale.

“See? Forty years later, and my mom still can have any man she wants.” She laughed. “Usually does, too.”

“Is your dad alive?”

She shrugged. “Oh, yeah. Somewhere. Mom’s on number four now. Number one was a lot of years ago. Stepdad two was as close to a father as I got. That’s one of the reasons my husband and I worked so hard to give Peter a normal up-bringing. Why I stayed home with him.”

She took a sip of coffee and put it down on a wooden coaster. She was distant again. Asking questions, Serena thought. Talking to God. Why us when we did all the right things? Made the sacrifices?

“You said you found the car,” Linda said. Serena watched her emotions shift. Despair became anger, and her jaw hardened. “Does that mean you know who did this?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“I don’t understand,” she replied.

“The owner of the car wasn’t driving it at the time Peter was killed. He has an alibi. Someone stole his car and then abandoned it after the accident.”

“What does that mean?”

Serena explained. “One possibility is that Peter was struck while the driver of the car was fleeing from somewhere, or rushing to get someplace. Another is that we’re dealing with a psychopath, who set out to kill someone, and Peter was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the other-well, the other is that Peter was the target. That someone killed him deliberately.”

“But that’s crazy! He’s just a little boy.”

Serena nodded. “I know. We have to consider the possibility that someone was trying to inflict pain on you . That’s why I wanted to ask whether it was possible the two of you had any enemies.”

“Enemies who would murder our child?” She shook her head. “There’s nothing remotely like that.”