Jonathan Kellerman - Compulsion

“What, indeed,” I said.

Mavis Wembley placed a hand on my knee. “I like your style.”

Cardenas and I stayed with her for another half an hour and I did most of the talking, trying to tease out additional details about Leonora Bright’s dreaded half brother.

What I got was thin soup: either older or younger than Leonora and probably from San Francisco “because that’s where Leonora hailed from and she never said he didn’t.”

I thanked her and got up to leave.

She said, “Nice meeting you,” and took hold of Cardenas’s sleeve. “George, last night, I heard raccoons scratching out back near the garbage. Let’s set out some traps for them, as well.”

“She’s something, no?” said Cardenas, backing out the dirt driveway. “Shuffling cards is her idea of aerobics but she’s never sick. Claims her mother lived to a hundred and four.”

“Good DNA,” I said. “The rest of us jog and pretend.”

“You’ve got that right. Think the brother angle’s worth pursuing?”

“It’s all we’ve got.”

“What she said about Wendell does conform to what other people have told me. Didn’t want to get into that out of respect for the dead.”

“No reason. He’s not the issue.”

“So where are you heading now?”

“Back to L.A. unless you’ve got a suggestion.”

“Sorry, no. Want me to do anything?”

“If you’ve got the time to run background on Leonora’s addresses in San Francisco, that would be great.”

“Sure,” he said. “I was also thinking we should try to find the father’s death certificate, see if the brother’s name appears anywhere. Leonora being scared of an inheritance mess right before she died probably narrows the time frame on his passing.”

“Good point. An obituary search might be the easiest way to go. Was Bright her maiden name?”

“Think so.” He sat up straighter and pressed down on the gas. “This is different.”

“How so?”

“I’m working.”

I stopped in Santa Barbara for a late lunch on Stearn’s Wharf, the site of my aborted meeting with Donald Bragen.

The tourist stream was skimpy but enthusiastic-smiling, gorging people believing in immortality. Ducks and seagulls followed the food stream, content with the leavings. Out in the harbor, big gray pelicans floated, biding their time as they scanned the surface for prey. Their smaller brown cousins swooped and dove and sometimes came up with wriggle.

All kinds of ways to hunt.

I finished and continued up the pier, passing the breakfast place where Bragen said he’d meet me. Maybe he’d paid closer attention to Mavis Wembley’s lead than she believed but had come up empty. Or she was right and he had ignored her. Either way, flashbacks wouldn’t be as much fun as fishing.

Leaning over the railing and sucking in salt air, I phoned Milo’s cell.

Rick answered. “Hey, Alex. His phone ran out of charge so we exchanged. He told me if you called to tell you he’ll be tied up until ten or so, maybe later.”

“Any idea where?”

“Out on the job is all he said. I had the day off so we managed to schedule lunch. Soon as we ordered, he got a call and left. Something about finding a car. Made him grumpy.”

“Missing a meal does that.”

“He doggie-bagged.”

No one answered Rick’s cell. Milo sometimes switches off when he’s concentrating. I got back on the highway, tried a few miles later.

This time, his bellow rattled the little bones in my ear. “Found Kat Shonsky’s goddamn Mustang.”

“Yet, you are not happy.”

“Guess where the hell it’s been all this time? Department contract tow yard. Called in as an abandoned vehicle at five a.m. the same damn night she disappeared. Found midway up the Pass, just like you guessed.”

I said, “Any idea who called it in?”

“No record,” he growled. “They treated it as a routine nuisance call, sent a tow driver. Genius shows up, there’s no reg or insurance in the car and the plates are gone. He hooks it up anyway and dumps it in the yard. Where it’s been sitting.”

“What about the VIN?” I said.

“They got around to logging the VIN a few days later, filed and forgot. All this time, I’m checking bulletins, wasting my time on the phone, and the damn thing’s in plain sight, blocks from my office, accumulating birdshit and storage fees. If I hadn’t been nagging every yard the department does business with, it probably would’ve ended up at a police auction. As is, I just spent an hour untangling the paperwork to get it to the motor lab. Eyeballed it, first. No obvious blood or sign of mischief. And here’s another good guess for you, Professor: Gas tank was bone-dry, talk about wrong place, wrong time.”

“Or someone siphoned it in the club parking lot and followed her until she shut down.”

“There you go,” he said. “That’s why we’re buddies.”

“I have a suspicious mind?”

“You know how to think like a really evil person. Let’s see what the motorheads turn up, but with the tow driver and Lord-knows-who-else pawing it and a suspect careful enough to strip I.D., I’m not expecting much. I’m on my way back to where it was found right now. After that I’ll be driving the hillside roads again, narrowing it down to the immediate vicinity. If I can get K-9 to help, we’ll do a sniffathon tomorrow. So what’s up in Toonerville?”

I told him about Mavis Wembley’s tip.

“Scary brother,” he said.

“A lock picker could’ve fooled with the chain at the rental lot, freed the Mercedes. Toss in Mancusi and we’ve got two crimes featuring stolen black luxury cars, bloody knifework, and a possible inheritance motive.”

“Unfortunately, Tony’s a homebody leading us nowhere and the tips have dried up. In terms of his being ‘kinky,’ I wouldn’t be surprised if that was Lamp Guy – Hochswelder – or one of the other loving relatives finking on him for being gay just in case we didn’t get it the first time. With the Mustang showing up I’m gonna concentrate on Shonsky as a possible corollary homicide, and that gives me cause for a warrant on her apartment. Judge Feldman’s at a fundraiser, said if I meet him at his house at ten, he’ll sign the papers. Hopefully Kat’s mother didn’t straighten up too much. Speaking of which, if I have time, I am gonna ask her for that cheek scrape ’cause if the chief meant what he said, he’ll get the mitochondrial prioritized. But even if we get a match to the stain, it just tells us what we know anyway.”

“Kat’s dead.”

“I wouldn’t sell her life insurance. Lord, I’m busy.”

Not the time to remind him of his lament last week. “If the chief meant what he said, maybe you can get more help watching Tony.”

“Hard to see Tony having anything to do with Shonsky.”

I said, “The link doesn’t need to be direct. If Tony contracted his mother’s murder, someone could’ve hired the same killer to do Kat. And the women in Ojo Negro.”

“Traveling pro with a taste for stolen wheels?” he said. “What kind of money motive could there be for Kat? She wasn’t exactly an heiress.”

“From what we’ve heard she could be abrasive. Maybe that one was personal.”

“She blew the wrong guy off so he pays for an elaborate scheme to do her?”

“Or she blew the killer himself off,” I said. “Clive picked her up in a bar and there’s no reason to believe he was the only one.”

“Even really bad guys have feelings.”

“Everyone has feelings. Depends what you do with them.”

Big-rig mishaps and the usual Cal Trans idiocy stretched the drive back to L.A. and it was dark when I got home. I drank Chivas out by the pond, put Blanche in my lap, and tossed food to the fish. She wanted to watch them eat so we kneeled by the rock rim. The babies were almost big enough to swallow the pellets, kept worrying the bobbing circles until they disintegrated. The adults indulged their attempts and managed not to pull a Jonah.