Jonathan Kellerman - Self-Defence

Milo told me, "The motel was one of those places rented by the hour. So you can see why Mo assumed that."

"The police assumed it," she said. "Even though the motel clerk said he hadn't seen any woman go in with Felix. But of course, he could've lied. Felix was once a policeman himself. Just for a short time, in Baltimore; that's where he grew up. I met him in San Bernadino. He was working for an insurance company, investigating accident claims. I was a records clerk at city hall. He got let go right after we got married, and we moved to L.A."

"Did you work for the city here, too?" I said.

"No, I got a job doing the books for Fred Shale Real Estate, over in Pacific Palisades. I did that for thirty-one years. Felix and I lived in Santa Monica, near the Venice side. Felix's office was out here in Malibu, but this last year's the first time I've actually lived in Malibu. My sister and her husband own this place, but he's got bad lungs so they moved over to Cathedral City, near Palm Springs."

Milo said, "The interesting thing is, Mo feels Felix may have come into some money about a year before he was killed."

"I'm pretty sure of it," said Mo. "He denied it but the signs were there. I thought he was keeping someone on the side." Her cheeks colored. "Truth be known, he'd done that before, more than once. But in his younger days. He was sixty-three by then- ten years older than me, but when I married him I thought he was mature." She chuckled and said, "Hand me a Krackel bar, will you?"

Milo did.

"What signs did you notice?" I said.

"First of all, his retiring. For years he'd talked about it, but he always complained he couldn't get enough money together- always griped about my having health benefits and a pension from San Berdoo and from Shale, and he was out on his own with nothing. Then, all of a sudden, he just walks in and announces there's enough in the kitty. I said, "What pie dropped out of the sky, Felix?' He just smiled and patted my head and said, "Don't you worry, Sugaroo, we're finally going to get that place in Laguna Niguel.' We were always talking about buying a condo down there, but we didn't have the money. We might have been able to afford one of those retirement communities, but Felix never saw himself as old. When he turned fifty, he bought himself a too pay and contact lenses. I guess he figured being so much older than me- I used to look like a kid, people would sometimes mistake me for his daughter- he should do something about it. The other thing he did that made me suspicious was get a new car, a cherry-red Thunderbird, the Landau model, the vinyl top. Which was their top of the line. We had a big fight over that, me wanting to know how we could afford it and him saying it was none of my business."

She shook her head. "We fought a lot, but we stayed together thirty-one years. Then he got himself killed and there was no big money in his bank account, just a little over three thousand dollars, and I figured he'd spent whatever he had on the car. And whores. I drove that car for fifteen years, finally junked it."

"Did he leave any business records behind?" I said.

"You mean his detective files? No, I told Mr. Sturgis he wasn't much for keeping records- truth is, he was pretty disorganized in general. After he died, I went through his things and was surprised how little there was- just scraps of paper with scrawls. I figured, his line of work, there might be things there that would embarrass people. I threw everything out."

"What kind of cases did he work on?"

She looked at Milo. "Same questions- no, I don't mind. I don't really know what kind of cases. Felix didn't talk about his work. Truth is, I don't think there were too many cases, toward the end. I know he did some work for lawyers, but for the life of me I can't remember the names of any of them. I wasn't part of his work, had my own job to do. I'm no feminist but I always worked. We never had kids, both of us just went and did our own job."

I nodded.

She said, "I don't mean to paint him as some kind of bum. Basically, he was a nice guy, didn't raise his voice, even when we fought. But he could be a little… easy around the edges, know what I mean?"

"Cutting corners."

" 'Zactly. The first time I met him he tried to pay me five dollars to release an accident record to him without filling out the proper forms and paying the county fee. I turned him down and he was real good-natured about it. Laughed it off- he had a great laugh. I was only nineteen, should have known better anyway, but I didn't. He came back the next day and asked me out. My parents hated his guts. Six months later we were married. Despite all the problems, he was a pretty good husband."

"So he never discussed Karen Best?"

"Never," she said. "Truth is, we didn't discuss much, period. We kept different hours. I'd be up at six, walking the dogs- we used to have miniature poodles- in the office at eight, back by five. Felix liked to sleep late. He claimed a lot of his work had to be done at night, and maybe it was true. He was gone a lot when I was home and vice versa." She grinned. "Maybe that's how we stayed together thirty-one years."

The grin dropped from her face.

"Still, his being killed was the worst thing ever happened to me after my parents passing away." To Milo: "When you first called, I didn't want to talk about it. But you were a gentleman, and then you told me maybe Felix didn't die because of whoring around. That would be nice to know."

She showed us two pictures of herself and Felix, saying, "These are the only ones I have. When you go mobile, you keep things to the minimum."

The first was a wedding portrait, the young couple posed in front of a painted backdrop of the Trevi Fountain. She'd been a pretty dark-haired girl, but even at nineteen her eyes had been wary. Felix wasn't much taller than his bride, a spare man with slicked hair and Clark Gable ears. He'd worn a pencil mustache, like Gable, but had none of the actor's strength in his face.

The second snapshot had been taken two years before Barnard's murder. The mustache was gone and the PI was stooped, his face lined, the toupee embarrassingly obvious. He wore a gray sharkskin suit with skinny lapels and a white turtleneck and held a cigarette in a holder. Mo's hair was bleached blond and she'd put on some weight, but despite that she did look young enough to be his daughter. The picture had been taken in a back yard, their faces shaded by a big orange tree.

"Our place in Santa Monica," she said. "I rent it out now. The income along with my pension's what keeps me going."

Milo asked to borrow the more recent photo, and she said, "Sure." We thanked her and left. As we stepped out of the trailer, she said, "Good luck to you. Let me know if you find out anything."

"Nice lady," I said, as we walked down to our cars.

"She fed me dinner," said Milo. "Beans and franks and potato chips. I was ready for camp songs. Before she really opened up, we watched Jeopardy. She knows a lot about presidents' wives."

"How long were you there?"

"Since six."

Four and a half hours. "Dedication."

"Yeah, beatify me."

"How'd you learn about Barnard's murder?"

"Social Security said he was deceased, so I checked county Death Records and it came up homicide, which needless to say surprised me. According to the autopsy report, he got shot in the back of the head in that motel, just like she said. What she doesn't know is that his pants were down around his ankles, but there was no evidence of sexual activity and he hadn't ejaculated recently."

"Was the place an outright bordello?"

"More of an anything-goes place. I knew it well from when I used to ride Westside patrol. Drugs, assaults, all-around obnoxious behavior. The detectives on the case assumed Barnard was a john who got in trouble."