Jonathan Kellerman - Gone

The next block was McCadden, wide and peaceful and sunny. A vintage Mercedes rolled out of a driveway. A nanny walked a baby in a navy blue, chrome-plated stroller. Birds swooped and settled and chirped gratitude. Cold winds had been whipping the city for a couple of days but the sun had broken through.

Nora Dowd’s address put her half a block south of Beverly. Most of the neighboring residences were beautifully maintained Tudors and Spanish revivals set behind brilliant emerald lawns.

Dowd’s was a two-story Craftsman, cream with dark green trim.

Inverse color scheme of her acting school and, like the PlayHouse, girded by a covered porch and shadowed by generous eaves. A low rock wall at the curb was centered by an open gate of weathered iron grillwork. Splitting the lawn was a wide flagstone walkway. Similar old-school landscaping: birds of paradise, camellias, azaleas, fifteen-foot eugenia hedges on both sides of the property, a monumental deodor cedar fringing the double garage.

Barn doors on this garage, too. Nora Dowd’s house was twice the size of her school but anyone scoring above nine on the Glasgow Coma Scale could see the parallels.

“Consistent in her taste,” I said. “An oasis of stability in this hazy, crazy town.”

“Mr. Hollywood,” he said. “You should write for Variety. ”

“If I wanted to lie for a living, I’d have gone into politics.”

This porch was nicely lacquered, decorated with green wicker furniture and potted ferns. The pots were hand-painted Mexican ceramics and looked antique. The double doors were quartersawn oak stained dark brown.

Milky white leaded panes comprised the door window. Milo used his knuckles on the oak. The doors were hefty and his hard raps diminished to feeble clicks. He tried the bell. Dead.

He muttered, “So what else is new?” and stuck his business card in the split between the doors. As we returned to the Seville, he yanked his phone from his pocket as if it were a saddle burr. Nothing to report on Michaela’s Honda, or Dylan Meserve’s Toyota.

We returned to the car. As I opened the driver’s door, a sound from the house turned our heads.

Female voice, low, affectionate, talking to something white and fluffy, cradled to her chest.

She stepped out to the porch, saw us, placed the object of her affection on the floor. Looked at us some more and walked toward the sidewalk.

The physical dimensions fit Nora Dowd’s DMV stats but her hair was a blue-gray pageboy, the back cut high on the neck. She wore an oversized plum sweater over gray leggings and bright white running shoes.

Bouncy step but she faltered a couple of times.

She gave us a wide berth, started to walk south.

Milo said, “Ms. Dowd?”

She stopped. “Yes?” One single syllable didn’t justify a diagnosis of sultry, but her voice was low and throaty.

Milo produced another card. Nora Dowd read it, handed it back. “This is about poor Michaela?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Under the shiny gray cap of hair, Nora Dowd’s face was round and rosy. Her eyes were big and slightly unfocused. Bloodshot; not the pink of Lou Giacomo’s orbs, these were almost scarlet at the rims. Elfin ears protruded past fine, gray strands. Her nose was a pert button.

Middle-aged woman trying to hold on to a bit of little girl. She seemed well past thirty-six. Turning her head, she caught some light and a corona of peach fuzz softened her chin. Lines tugged at her eyes, puckers cinched both lips. The ring around her neck was conclusive. The age on her driver’s license was a fantasy. Standard Operating Procedure in a company town where the product was false promises.

The white thing sat still, too still for any kind of dog I knew. Maybe a fur hat? Then why had she talked to it?

Milo said, “Could we speak to you about Michaela, ma’am?”

Nora Dowd blinked. “You sound a little like Joe Friday. But he was a sergeant, you outrank him.” She cocked a firm hip. “I met Jack Webb once. Even when he wasn’t working, he liked those skinny black ties.”

“Jack was a prince, helped finance the Police Academy. About Michae- ”

“Let’s walk. I need my exercise.”

She surged ahead of us, swung her arms exuberantly. “Michaela was all right if you gave her enough structure. Her improv skills left something to be desired. Frustrated, always frustrated.”

“About what?”

“Not being a star.”

“She have any talent?”

Nora Dowd’s smile was hard to read.

Milo said, “The one big improv she tried didn’t work out so well.”

“Pardon?”

“The hoax she and Meserve pulled.”

“Yes, that.” Flat expression.

“What’d you think of that, Ms. Dowd?”

Dowd walked faster. Exposure to sunlight had irritated her bloodshot eyes and she blinked several times. Seemed to lose balance for a second, caught herself.

Milo said, “The hoax- ”

“What do I think? I think it was shoddy.”

“Shoddy how?”

“Poorly structured. In terms of theater.”

“I’m still not- ”

“Lack of imagination,” she said. “The goal of any true performance is openness. Revealing the self. What Michaela did insulted all that.”

“Michaela and Dylan.”

Nora Dowd again surged forward. Several steps later, she nodded.

I said, “Michaela thought you’d appreciate the creativity.”

“Who told you that?”

“A psychologist she talked to.”

“Michaela was in therapy?”

“That surprises you?”

“I don’t encourage therapy,” said Dowd. “It closes as many channels as it opens.”

“The psychologist evaluated her as part of her court case.”

“How silly.”

“What about Meserve?” said Milo. “He didn’t fail you?”

“No one failed me. Michaela failed herself. Yes, Dylan should have known better but he got swept along. And he comes from a different place.”

“How so?”

“The gifted are allowed more leeway.”

“Was the hoax his idea or Michaela’s?”

Five more steps. “No sense speaking ill of the dead.” A beat. “Poor thing.” Dowd’s mouth turned down. If she was trying to project empathy, her chops were rusty.

Milo said, “How long did Michaela take classes with you?”

“I don’t give classes.”

“What are they?”

“They’re performance experiences.”

“How long was Michaela involved in the experiences?”

“I’m not sure- maybe a year, give or take.”

“Any way to fix that more precisely?”

“Pree-cise-lee. Hmm…no, I don’t think so.”

“Could you check your records?”

“I don’t do records.”

“Not at all?”

“Nothing ’tall,” Dowd sang. She rotated her arms, breathed in deeply, said, “Ahh. I like the air today.”

“How do you run a business without records, ma’am?”

Nora Dowd smiled. “It’s not a business. I don’t take money.”

“You teach- present experiences for free?”

“I avail myself, provide a time and place and a selectively judgmental atmosphere for those with courage.”

“What kind of courage?”

“The kind that enables one to accept selective judgment. The balls to dig deep inside here.” She cupped her left breast with her right hand. “It’s all about self-revelation.”

“Acting.”

“ Performing. Acting is an artificial word. As if life is here”- cocking her head to the left- “and performance is out here, on another galaxy. Everything’s part of the same gestalt. That’s a German word for the whole being bigger than the sum of the parts. I’m blessed.”

Milo said, “With teaching- availing talent?”