Jonathan Kellerman - Gone

He extended a palm.

I said, “Better find yourself a decisive shrink.”

“Fear of commitment?”

“So I’ve been told.”

He laughed and drank and ate. “Anyway, that’s the extent of the weird stuff. There was no sexual penetration or fooling with the genitalia or overt sadism. Not much blood loss either, most of it settled, and the lividity showed the body was on its back for a while.”

“Manual strangulation,” I said. “Look in her eyes and choke the life out of her. It takes time. Maybe it’s enough to get you off.”

“Watching,” he said. “Peaty’s thing. With him and Billy being a couple of arrested-development losers- immature- I can see them fooling with a body but being afraid to dig too deep. Now you’re telling me ol’ Billy’s got a temper.”

“He does.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“You’re not convinced.”

“I don’t see Billy and Peaty being clever enough. More important, I don’t see Billy setting up Peaty with that call.”

“Maybe he’s not as stupid as he comes across. The real actor in the family.”

“Brad can obviously be fooled,” I said, “but he and Billy lived together so I doubt to that extent. Learn anything new about the stolen cell phone?”

He flipped the attaché case open, got his notepad. “Motorola V551, Cingular wireless account, registered to Ms. Angeline Wasserman, Bundy Drive, Brentwood. Interior designer, married to an investment banker. The phone was in her purse when it got stolen the day of the call- nine hours before. Ms. Wasserman was shopping, got distracted, turned her head, and poof. Her big concern was the whole identity theft thing. The purse, too- four-figure Badgley-something number.”

“Badgley Mischka.”

“Your brand?”

“I’ve known a few women.”

“Ha! Wanna guess where she was shopping?”

“ Camarillo outlets,” I said.

“The Barneys outlet, specifically. Tomorrow, when it opens at ten, I’ll be there showing around pictures of Peaty and Billy, the Gaidelases, Nora and Meserve, Judge Crater, Amelia Earhart, anyone else you wanna suggest.”

“Nora and Meserve may be cavorting as we speak.” I told him about the travel brochures, my calls to the private jet outfits.

“Another subpoena called for, if I had grounds,” he said. “The paper for Ms. Wasserman’s cell came in fast because it’d been reported stolen but I’m still waiting on the phone booth trace. Hopefully I’ll have it in hand tonight.”

“Night owl judge?”

His smile was weary. “I’ve known a few jurists.”

I said, “Meserve’s hoax conviction won’t help with the passenger logs?”

“Misdemeanor offense pled down to community service? Not hardly. You’re liking him and Nora better now? Nor more Andy and Cathy as psychos?”

“Their leaving town puts them in my radar.”

“Nora and Mr. Snow Globe. He hid his own car in Brad’s treasured space, just like Brad assumed, left the globe there for a screw-you.”

“If he and Nora targeted Peaty, they could’ve learned about Peaty’s unregistered van. Left the second globe as a misdirection.”

“Rape kit too?”

“Why not?” I said. “Or it was Peaty’s. Everyone at the PlayHouse seems to have known about Peaty’s staring and Brad knew about Peaty’s arrest record, so it’s not a big stretch to assume Nora could’ve found out. If Nora and Dylan wanted a scapegoat, they had a perfect candidate.”

“Years of picking off the weak ones and then they just decide to leave for the tropics?”

“Been there, done it. Time to explore new vistas,” I suggested.

“Brad told you that Nora would have to come to him for serious dough.”

“Brad’s been wrong about lots of things.”

He took the coroner’s file back, leafed through it absently.

I said, “Dylan had Michaela bind him tight around the neck. He pretended to be dead so effectively it scared the hell out of her. She also said pain didn’t seem to be an issue for him.”

“The old psychopath numbness,” he said.

A young, black, cornrowed waitress came over and asked if we were okay.

Milo said, “Please wrap this to go, and I’ll try that brownie sundae.”

Closing the file. The waitress caught the Coroner label.

“You guys in TV?” she said. “ C.S.I. or something like that?”

“Something like that,” said Milo.

Deft fingering of cornrows. Eyelid flutter. “I’m an actor.” Big smile. “Shock of shocks.”

“Really?” said Milo.

“ Extremely really. I’ve done a ton of regional theater in Santa Cruz and San Diego – including the Old Globe, where I was a main fairy in Midsummer. I’ve also done improv at the Groundlings and a nonunion commercial in San Francisco, but you’ll never see that. It was for Amtrak and they never ran it.”

She pouted.

I said, “It happens.”

“It sure does. But, hey, it’s all good. I’ve only been in L.A. for a few months and an agent at Starlight is just about ready to sign me.”

“Good for you.”

“D’Mitra,” she said, extending her hand.

“Alex. This is Milo. He’s the boss.”

Milo glared at me, smiled at her. She sidled closer to him. “That’s a great name, Milo. Pleased to meet you. Can I leave you my name and number?”

Milo said, “Sure.”

“Cool. Thanks.” Leaning in, she rested a breast on his shoulder and scrawled on her order book. “I’ll bring your brownie sundae right now. Totally on the house.”

We set out for the outlets at nine a.m.

Taking the Seville because “you’ve got leather seats.”

Beautiful day, sixty-five, sunny- if you had nothing on your mind you could pretend California was Eden.

Milo said, “Let’s do the scenic route.”

That meant Sunset to the coast highway and north through Malibu. When I approached Kanan Dume Road, I lifted my foot from the gas pedal.

“Keep going.” Slouching, but his eyes had fixed on the odometer. Imagining the trip from a killer’s perspective.

At Mulholland Highway we crossed over the Ventura County line. Sped past the beach house I’d rented with Robin years ago. The 8:15 call I’d walked out on last night had been from her. No message other than to phone. I’d tried. Not home.

The road compressed to two lanes and continued through miles of cliff-bordered state parkland and oceanfront campgrounds. At Sycamore Creek, the hills were pillowed by wet-year vegetation. Lupine and poppies and cactus played on the land-side. To the west was crashing Pacific and milkshake breakers. I spotted dolphins leaping twenty yards offshore.

“Glorious.”

Milo said, “All that green stuff, when the fires take hold it’s a barbecue. Remember a few years ago when this was charcoal?”

“Good morning to you, too.”

An eastward turn on Las Posas Road took us through miles of vegetable fields. Green leafy rows in some of the acreage, the rest was brown and flat and dormant. U-pick sheds and produce stands were shuttered for the off season. Combines and other metal monsters perched out past the furrows, awaiting the signal to chew and churn and inseminate. At Camarillo ’s western edge, a southerly cruise on Factory Stores Drive led us to a peach-pink village of commerce.

A hundred twenty stores divided into north and south sections. Barneys New York occupied the western tip of the southern wing, a compact, well-lit space, attractively laid out, staffed well, nearly empty.

We’d walked three steps when a spike-haired young man in all black came up to us. “Can I help you?” He had sunken cheeks and mascaraed eyes, wore a cologne full of citrus. The platinum soul patch under his lip right-angled with each syllable, like a tiny diving board.