Jonathan Kellerman - Deception

"How old was she?"

"A teenager… maybe fifteen."

"Did you let her know you'd seen her?"

"No way, I wanted her to like me."

"Did she lie to anyone but your father?"

"Sure," she said. "She cheated in school, stole old tests and sold them. I found out because a boy who'd bought one bragged about it to his friend. That night, I searched Elise's drawers, found a wadded-up bunch of money. I didn't count it but it looked like a lot. She never got caught, at graduation she won honors and commendations for character."

"Did your father ever figure out she was pranking him?"

"Not a chance. In his eyes, Elise could do no wrong. She was the clear favorite."

I said, "Too bad for her."

Sandra Stuehr turned to me. Her eyes were wet. "Good, bad, right, wrong. Sometimes it all gets scrambled. You're sure she didn't suffer?"

Further questioning produced nothing and we were preparing to go when a soft knock sounded on the front door.

Sandra Stuehr said, "It's open, honey, come on in."

The man who entered was midtwenties, good-looking, Asian, with expensively spiked hair. He wore a white silk Nat Nast bowling shirt with blue vertical stripes, cobalt linen slacks, brown hand-stitched deck shoes, and a rose-gold Rolex.

She got up, took his hand, kissed his lips lightly. "Perfect timing, we're finishing up."

Milo introduced himself.

"Will Kham."

Sandra Stuehr said, "Will Kham, M.D. Chief resident in rheumatology at Cottage Hospital."

Kham toed the floor. "It's okay, Sandy- "

"Will's been on call for three days, finally has a day off. I'm sure you guys won't mind if we get going."

Milo said, "Thanks for your time, Ms. Stuehr. If you think of anything else, please let us know."

"Of course," she said. To Kham: "They don't think she suffered, baby."

Kham said, "That's good."

As we closed the door, she was saying, "I'm thinking San Ysidro Inn, baby, that new chef they've got is fantastic."

Milo scanned the clippings on Cyrus Freeman's murder before slipping them back into the sleeve. "Nothing more than Sandy just told us." Flipped the sleeve onto the backseat and checked his Timex. "Four hours of freeway for the Sister Who Knows Nothing."

"And yet she told us so much," I said.

"Elise might've killed Daddy? Maybe so, Alex, but I'm not curious enough to find out."

"I meant Elise developing her lying skills early, as a survival strategy. Faking illness to avoid getting raped was as good a ploy as any, but there's always collateral damage. That's consistent with chronic depression, drinking, using sex as a means of control, and hooking up with a hustler like Fidella. Same for concocting an extortion scheme involving her sexuality. But what really interests me is her selling tests back in middle school. That kind of thing would come in handy at a place like Prep."

Traffic slowed along the beach. We caught the long stoplight at State. More tourists, easels full of sidewalk art, a few homeless guys lounging on the grass, playing critic.

He said, "She peddles exams, then tries to beef up the take with a little extortion?"

"Picking the wrong sucker could be hazardous to your health."

"Wonderful. Even if I put the rape aside, I can't avoid the damn school."

He closed his eyes, rested his head against the seat. "Best way to find out if she was raking in a lot of extra dough are those goddamn financials."

Another set of calls made him smile. "On their way and her phone records are on my desk. What do you think about Elise two-timing Sal with a young guy, and Sandra leaving her husband for a young guy? Some sort of symbolic distancing themselves from their old man?"

"Could be," I said. "Or they just prefer younger men."

"For that I need a pal with a Ph.D.?"

We were back at his office by three thirty p.m.

To the left of his computer sat a loose stack of paper. He began pawing, crumpling and tossing departmental memos, sheet after sheet of the city and county junk mail taxpayers pay for but never read.

Toward the bottom, eighteen months of Elise Freeman's bank records at Wachovia and her phone history for sixty days.

The financials elicited an immediate "Whoa." Ninety thousand and some change in a passbook account, most of it accounted for by sixteen five-thousand-dollar deposits posted irregularly over the last three years.

"It ain't buried treasure but it's a lot for a teacher making thirty a year," he said. "Wonder what five grand buys you at Prep."

Turning to the phone records, he used two felt-tipped markers to highlight. Yellow, pink, pink, pink, yellow. The end result was a cheery zebra: thirty-two yellow stripes for Sal Fidella's 818 number, seventeen pinks for someone in 626. The rest was uninteresting.

" Pasadena," he said. Phoning the number, he listened, wide-eyed, hung up. "Caltech, some chemical engineering lab. Everyone's out at this time-probably blowing something up-but leave your name blah blah blah."

"Far be it from me to stereotype," I said, "but Elise's young guy wore a pocket protector."

"Mr. Not-quite-a-nerd." He found the Caltech website, zeroed on chemical engineering. The only bios were of faculty members but a few more clicks brought up an account of a research presentation two months before. A quintet of doctoral students summarizing their research projects. No pictures.

Ellen Choi, Vladimir Bobrosky, Tremaine Franck, Mitchell Yamaguchi, Arlen Arabian.

He said, "Long years of detective training tells me it's unlikely Ms. Choi has undergone a sex-change operation, same for Mr. Yamaguchi undergoing surgery to look Caucasian. So let's pare down and see what MySpace has to offer."

Within seconds he'd pulled up a trio of pages. "Guess even brainiacs crave their fifteen nanoseconds of fame."

Arlen Arabian was mid- to late thirties, with Brillo hair and a rabbinic beard already graying. Skin-headed Vladimir Bobrosky was built like the super-heavyweight power lifter his page claimed him to be.

Tremaine L. Franck was young, slim, pleasant-looking in a doe-eyed, anemic way. Long, lank brown hair swept diagonally over a broad, unblemished brow.

"So he peroxided to blend in with the dudes at County Line." He Googled Franck, found the young man's name in a Windsor Prep newsletter dated the previous year, and pumped his fist.

After completing Harvard, summa, in three years, Trey's been accepted at Caltech for Ph.D. studies in chem-eng and looking forward to getting back to sunny Southern California. But he admits he will miss the bonhomie of Cabot House, as well as selected undergraduate courses, particularly those of Professor Feldheim, who was a shining beacon of erudition, coherence, and tolerance despite Trey's attempts to convince him of the benefits of application as opposed to pure cogitation.

"Couldn't agree more," said Milo. "Pure cogitation gives me gas."

He switched to the LAPD data bank, plugged in his departmental password, got to work on Trey Franck's stats.

No criminal record, a few parkers, one speeding ticket two years ago. Twenty-two years old, five eleven, one fifty-two, blond, blue.

"First he darkens, then he lightens," said Milo. "Embrace change."

"Look at his address," I said.

South side of Brentwood, an apartment number.

"Not the high-priced spread," he said, "but close enough to Prep. Maybe Franck was one of their deserving scholarship students. Elise started four years ago when he was a senior. Maybe she liked 'em real young and tutoring turned to something else."

"He doesn't sound like the type who'd need tutoring."

"Not in math or science, Alex. But Elise coached English. I need to meet this genius and screw due process."

He used his personal cell to contact a source at the phone company, and copied down the landline matching Franck's address.