Jonathan Kellerman - A Cold Heart

Detective Fiorelle of the Cambridge police remembered me as a “pushy guy, one of those intellectuals- I know the type, plenty around here.” The facts of Angelique Bernet’s murder did nothing to support any link with Baby Boy or Julie: The dancer had been stabbed half a dozen times and dumped in an area of the college town that was well traveled during the day but quiet at night. No strangulation, no sexual posing; she’d been found fully clad.

The detective who’d worked the Wilfred Reedy case was dead. Milo got a copy of the file. Reedy had been gut-stabbed in an alley like Baby Boy, but strong indications of a drug-related hit had surfaced at the time, including the name of a probable suspect: a small-time dealer named Celestino Hawkins, who’d fed the habit of Reedy’s son. Hawkins had served time for assault with a knife. He’d been dead for three years.

China Maranga’s file was thin and cold.

Milo phoned Julie Kipper’s uncle and told him not to expect any quick solve. The uncle was gracious, and that made Milo feel worse.

Allison and I spent more time at each other’s houses. I bought Guitar Player and read the profile on Robin. Spent a long time staring at the photos.

Robin in her new shop. No mention there’d ever been another one. Gorgeous carved guitars and mandolins and celebrity endorsements and big smiles. The camera loved her.

I wrote her a brief congratulatory note, received a thank-you card in return.

Two and a half months after Julie Kipper’s murder, the weather warmed and the case file froze. Milo cursed and put it aside and resumed excavating cold cases.

Few of them were solvable, and that kept him grumbling and occupied. The times we got together, he never failed to mention Julie- sometimes with that forced blithe tone that meant failure was eating at him.

Soon after that, Allison and I drove up to Malibu Canyon to watch a meteor shower. We found an isolated turnoff, lowered the top of her Jaguar, reclined the seats, and watched cosmic dust streak and explode. Shortly after we got home, at 1:15 A.M. the phone rang. I was skimming the papers, and Allison was reading V. S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men . She’d pinned her hair up. Tiny, black-framed reading glasses rode her nose. As I lifted the receiver, she looked over at the nightstand clock.

Most of the early-morning calls were hers. Patient emergencies.

I picked up.

Milo spit, “Another one.”

I mouthed his name, and she nodded.

“Classical pianist,” he went on, “stabbed and strangled after a concert. Right behind the venue. And guess what: This guy was on his way up, career-wise. Record deal pending. It wasn’t my call, but I heard it on the scanner, I went over and took over. Lieutenant’s prerogative. I’m here at the scene. I want you to see it.”

“Now?” I said.

Allison put the book down.

“Is there a problem?” he said. “You’re not a night owl anymore?”

“One sec.” I covered the phone, looked at Allison.

“Go,” she said.

“Where?” I asked Milo.

“Hop, skip, and jump for you,” he said. “Bristol Avenue, Brentwood. The north side.”

“Moving up in the world,” I said.

“Who, me?”

“The bad guy.”

Bristol was lovely and shaded by old cedars and marked by circular turnarounds every block or so. Most of the homes were the original Tudors and Spanish Colonials. The murder house was new, a Greek Revivalish thing on the west side of the street. Three square stories, white and columned, bigger by half than the neighboring mansions, with all the welcoming warmth of a law school. A flat green lawn was marked by a single, fifty-foot liquidambar tree and nothing else. High-voltage lighting was blatant and focused. A stroll away was Rockingham Avenue, where O. J. Simpson had dripped blood on his own driveway.

A black-and-white with its cherry flashing half blocked the street. Milo had left my name with the uniform on duty and I got smiled through with a “Certainly, Doctor.”

That was a first. Lieutenant’s prerogative?

Four more squad cars fronted the big house, along with two crime-scene vans and a coroner’s wagon. The sky was moonless and impenetrable. All the shooting stars gone.

The next uniform I encountered offered standard-issue cop distrust as he called on his walkie-talkie. Finally: “Go on in.”

A ton of door responded to my fingertip- some sort of pneumatic assist. As I stepped inside, I saw Milo striding toward me, looking like a day trader whose portfolio had just imploded.

Hurrying across a thousand square feet of marble entry hall.

The foyer had twenty-foot ceilings, ten percent of that moldings and dentils and scrollwork. The floor was white marble inset with black granite squares. A crystal chandelier blazed enough wattage to power a third-world hamlet. The walls were gray marble veined with apricot, carved into linen-fold panels. Three were bare, one was hung with a frayed brown tapestry- hunters and hounds and voluptuous women. To the right, a brass-railed marble staircase swooped up to a landing backed by gilt-framed portraits of stoic, long-dead people.

Milo wore baggy jeans and a too-large gray shirt and a too-small gray herringbone sport coat. He fit the ambience the way a boil fits a supermodel.

Beyond the entry hall was a much larger room. Wood floors, plain white walls. Rows of folding chairs faced a raised stage upon which sat a black grand piano. Several scoop-shaped, gridlike contraptions hung from the corners of the curved wooden ceiling- some sort of acoustic enhancement. No windows. Double doors at the rear blended with the plaster.

A pedestal sign to the left of the piano read SILENCE PLEASE. The piano bench was tucked under the instrument. Sheet music was spread on the rack.

The double doors opened and a thickset man in his sixties burst forth like a hatchling, trotting after Milo.

“Detective! Detective!” He waved his hands and huffed to catch up.

Milo turned.

“Detective, may I send the staff home? It’s frightfully late.”

“Just a while longer, Mr. Szabo.”

The man’s jowls quivered and set. “Yes, of course.” He glanced at me, and his eyes disappeared in a nest of creases and folds. His lips were moist and purplish, and his color was bad- mottled, coppery.

Milo told him my name but didn’t append my title. “This is Mr. Stefan Szabo, the owner.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said.

“Yes, yes.” Szabo fussed with a diamond cuff link and offered his hand. His palm was hot and soft, so moist it verged on squishy. He was soft and lumpy, bald but for red-brown fuzz above floppy ears. His face was the shape of a well-bred eggplant and the nose that centered it a smaller version of the vegetable- a pendulous, plump, Japanese eggplant. He wore a white silk, wing-collared formal shirt fastened by half-carat diamond studs, a ruby paisley cummerbund, black, satin-striped tuxedo pants, and patent loafers.

“Poor Vassily, this is terrible beyond terrible. And now everyone will hate me.”

“Hate you, sir?” said Milo.

“The publicity,” said Szabo. “When I built the odeum, I took such pains to go through every channel. Wrote personal notes to the neighbors, assured everyone that only private affairs and very occasional fund-raisers would be held. And always, the ultimate discretion. My policy’s always been consistent: fair warning to everyone within a two-block radius, ample parking valets. I took pains , Detective. And, now this.”

He wrung his hands. “I need to be especially careful because of you-know-who. During the trial, life was hell. But beyond that, I’m a loyal Brentwoodite. Now this .”