Jonathan Kellerman - Flesh And Blood

Silence.

Jane Abbot said, “She was going places. With her work, her education. Didn’t have the time for relationships.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“She told Mel that. When she’d come over, he’d say, ‘You’re so gorgeous, doll. Why no stud on your arm?’ Or something like that. She’d laugh and say she didn’t have time to waste on a man, and Mel would make cracks about if only he were two hundred years younger… When – If he figures out what happened, it’ll crush him.”

Her nose began to run, and I handed her a tissue.

“Her work,” said Milo.

“Modeling – she freelanced, saved up quite a bit of money. It allowed her to go back to school.”

“No time for boyfriends,” he said. “Not a single one.”

“No one that I ever met.” Her eyes shifted to the floor, and I knew she was holding back. Aware of Lauren’s real profession?

“Busy with her studies,” said Milo.

“Yes. She loved her classes. Loved psychology, planned to go all the way – get a Ph.D.” To me: “You inspired her. She thought you were great.”

Milo said, “In addition to classes, did she do any psychological work?”

“You mean like volunteering? I don’t think so.”

“Volunteering, research.”

“No,” said Jane. “Nothing that she mentioned.”

“What about travel?”

“She took off from time to time. But only for a day or two. Not a week – that’s how I knew something was wrong. Andy – her roommate – knew it too. I could tell when I spoke to him. He was worried. He knew this was wrong.”

“Andy,” said Milo. “Lauren and he get along pretty well?”

“Famously, like two peas. He finally got Lauren to spruce that place up. He has a great eye – most of them do.”

“Them?”

“Gays. They’re clever that way. It was a smart arrangement. I told Lauren that. No hanky-panky, and he had a great eye for decorating.”

“What did she say to that?”

“She agreed.”

“So,” he said, “you’re not aware of any conflict between her and Andy?”

She stared at Milo. “ Andy? You can’t be – No, no, ridiculous. He’d have no reason – He’s more of a girl than a boy. They were like two sorority sisters.”

“No reason for conflict because no sexual tension.”

She blanched. “Well, yes – aren’t so many things like this… physical – men hurting women because they’re… twisted?”

“You think this might’ve been a sexual crime?”

“Well, no,” she said. “I don’t think anything – what do I know? Was there – Did someone abuse her?”

“Nothing points that way, ma’am, but we’ll have to wait for the coroner.”

“The coroner.” Jane began crying again. I was ready with another tissue, and Milo wrote in his pad. I hadn’t seen him take it out.

“When Lauren went off for a few days, where’d she go, Mrs. Abbot?”

She looked up. “I don’t really know.” Another eye shift, and something new had come into her voice. Wariness. Milo had to have heard it, but he kept his eyes on the pad.

“So she never told you details, just that she was taking off,” he said.

“Lauren was twenty-five, Detective.” Long bout of crying. “Sorry. I was just thinking: She’ll never be twenty-six… Lauren was a private person, Detective. I knew I had to respect that if I wanted to… keep getting along. We had… a history. Dr. Delaware can fill in the details. Lauren was a really rebellious teenager. Even as a small child, if I pushed, she’d pull. If I said black, she’d insist it was white. Then my ex walked out on us and we got poor overnight and Lauren didn’t want to know about that. She ran away when she was sixteen, never lived with me again. For years, I barely heard from her. I tried…” She looked at me for support.

I mustered a nod.

“We reconnected,” she went on. “All those years of barely hearing from her, and she wanted to reconnect. I was afraid if I bugged her, I’d lose her. So… I didn’t. And now… maybe if I’d…”

“No reason to blame yourself,” I said.

“No? Do you mean that, or is that something you just say to all the… whatever I am?”

Her head dropped into her hands. The nape of her neck was moist with sweat. I thought about the lunch that had sent Lauren home upset. Complaining Jane was trying to control her. At odds with Jane’s speech about restraint.

She sat up suddenly, flushed, cold-eyed. “What I’m trying to say is I was trying to get to know her again. To know my daughter. And I thought I was doing pretty good. And now… I should be able to tell you more but I can’t. ’Cause I don’t know – it’s come to this and I don’t know !”

“You’re doing fine, ma’am.”

She laughed. “Sure I am. My baby’s dead and the one upstairs will be beeping me soon. I’m doing fantastic, just fantastic.”

“I’ll do everything I ca-”

“Find whoever did this, Detective. Take this seriously and find him – not the way the cops took it like a joke when Lauren went missing-”

“Of cour-”

“Find him! So I can look him right in the eye. Then, I’ll slice his balls off.”

MILO QUESTIONED HER a bit longer, honing in on Lauren’s finances, any jobs she might’ve worked between seventeen and twenty-five, any business acquaintances.

“Modeling,” said Jane. “That’s the only work I know about.”

“Fashion modeling.”

Nod.

“How’d she get into that, ma’am?”

“I guess she just… applied and got work. She’s – was a beautiful girl.”

“Did she ever mention an agent? Someone who got her work?”

Jane shook her head. She looked miserable. I’ve seen the same thing happen to other surviving parents. The pain of ignorance, realizing they’d raised strangers. “She paid her own way, Detective, and that’s more than you can say for a lot of kids.”

She unlaced her hands, glanced toward the elevator. “I don’t like it when he gets too quiet. As is, I barely sleep – always worried about something happening to him.” Sickly smile. “This is a bad dream, right? I’ll wake up and find out you were never here.”

She sprang up, ran to the elevator. We saw ourselves out, trudged back to the Seville. From somewhere in the hills, an owl hooted. Plenty of owls in L.A. They eat rats.

Milo looked back at the house. “So she knows nothing. Think it’s true?”

“Hard to say. When you asked her about Lauren’s travel, her eyes got jumpy. Also, when she began talking about Lauren’s modeling. So maybe she knows – or suspects – about how Lauren really paid the rent.”

“Something else,” he said. “She was quick to tell us about her prenup with Mel. But even if she did marry him for the loot, I can’t see what that has to do with Lauren. Still, I think I’ll follow the money trail – Lauren’s finances. This one smells like money.”

“Sex and money,” I said.

“Is there a difference?”

I got behind the wheel and turned the key. The dash clock said 1:14 A.M. “Too late for Lyle in Reseda?”

He stretched the seat belt over his paunch. “Nah, never too late for fun.”

I drove back to Van Nuys Boulevard, turned right and picked up the 101 west at Riverside. The freeway had nearly emptied, and the exits before the Reseda Boulevard off-ramp zipped by like snapshots.

As I got off, Milo said, “Daddy and Mommy live pretty close. Wonder if they had any contact.”

“Mommy says no.”

“So near and yet so far – nice metaphor for alienation, huh? Not that I’m in any mood for that kind of crap.”

Lyle Teague’s street was a scruffy, treeless stretch, south of Roscoe, smelling of infertile dirt and auto paint. Apartments that looked as if they’d been put up over the weekend mingled uneasily with charmless single-family boxes. Old pickups and cars that had rolled off the assembly line without much self-esteem crowded curbs and front lawns. Crushed beer cans and discarded fast-food containers clumped atop storm gutters. My slow cruise brought forth a chorus of canine outrage. Dogs that sounded eager to bite.