Jonathan Kellerman - Flesh And Blood

“Any idea where?”

“Nope.”

I left my name, hung up, and went out for a run. When I got back the sun had set and Milo hadn’t called back. I showered and changed, and Robin phoned a few minutes later, telling me she’d gone out to Saugus to look at a rumored store of seasoned Tyrolean violin maple that had turned out to be wormed and worthless – and oak to boot.

“Now I’m stuck on the freeway,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“Guess it’s not a bad day compared to other people’s.”

“Like who?”

“You don’t know?”

“Good point,” I said.

“You all right, hon?”

“I’m fine. Want to go out or should I fix dinner?”

“Sure.”

I laughed. “Which?”

“Either. Just feed me.”

“That seems reasonable,” I said.

“You’re not getting into anything iffy, are you?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Good question.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Love you.”

“Love you, too,” she said. But there was something other than affection in her voice.

I was grilling steaks and feeling quite useful when the phone rang again and Milo said, “What’s up?”

“Anything new on Dugger?”

“Talked to his ex-wife,” he said, sounding rushed. “Located her in Baltimore – English professor at Hopkins. And guess what: She loves the guy. Not romantically. As a person . ‘Ben’s a terrific person .’ No serious personality defects that she was willing to divulge.”

“Why’d they divorce?”

“‘We grew in separate directions.’”

“Sexually?” I said.

“I didn’t ask, Professor Freud,” he said with exaggerated patience. “It wasn’t appropriate. Bottom line: She was amused that the police would be interested in him.”

“He probably alerted her to the fact that you’d be calling.”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t think he did. She sounded genuinely surprised. Anyway, something else just came up. Citywide homicide sheets came in this afternoon, and a downtown case caught my eye. Two bodies left in an alley near Alameda late last night or during the early morning, the industrial area east of downtown. Man and a woman, shot in the head, then doused with lighter fluid and torched. The woman had only one arm. The right one. At first they thought it was burned off, but the bodies hadn’t burned long enough to do that.”

“Michelle.”

He kept reciting: “Coroner says an old amputation, they’re trying to roll prints off what’s left of the right hand, but whatever skin hasn’t been broiled is sloughed and messed up and it doesn’t look promising. Hopefully, she’s got a dentist.”

“The day after we talked to her.”

“Same thing vis-à-vis prints on the male, but they did find some scorched blond hairs. White male, six foot or so.”

“The junkie she lived with,” I said. “Lance.”

“I asked Ramparts Narcotics to pull up users named Lance. Hopefully I’ll have something soon.”

“You’re talking as if there’s a doubt,” I said.

Silence. “It’s them, and now I’m wondering if my visit signed their death warrant.” Using the singular. Shouldering the blame.

“Someone who didn’t like Michelle talking about Lauren?”

“On the other hand, a girl like Michelle could’ve been into anything. That place she lived, dope was flowing in and out, those tough guys next door. Or someone was watching her apartment, made me for what I am, figured Michelle had squealed. I wouldn’t have noticed – I wasn’t looking out for surveillance.”

I said, “Gretchen knew you were looking for Michelle. She gave you nothing, but Ingrid came up with Michelle’s last name. It’s not a stretch to think Ingrid told Gretchen.”

“Yeah,” he said, with forced calm. “The possibility occurred to me, so I called in a favor, asked one of the other detectives in the office to keep an eye on Gretchen’s movements for the next day or so. So far, it hasn’t come to much. She had a late lunch at the same place, again with Ingrid, went back to her boutique, stayed till three, then got in her little Porsche Boxter and drove to the beach-”

“Dugger’s place?”

“No, no, hold on. She bypassed Santa Monica completely, took Sunset straight to PCH, broke the speed limit all the way to Malibu, turned off at Paradise Cove. One of those big gated estates that front the highway. The top was down on the Boxter, the whole time she was gabbing on the cell phone, looking carefree. Even when she was waiting at the gate she was yapping. It didn’t take long for her to get buzzed in. And my guy didn’t need a map to know where he was. He’d worked security for a party there several times. The Duke estate – the palace Tony Duke built on mammaries. Talk about your Silicone Valley. Apparently Duke hires off-duty cops all the time. Contributes to the police benevolent fund, part of the whole respectability thing. I guess it’s no surprise Gretchen would know Duke. Back when she was riding high, she was on every A party list.”

“Tony Duke,” I said. “Maybe there’s more to it.” I told him what I’d learned from Adam Green.

“You’ve been busy too,” he said evenly.

“I didn’t see the harm.”

“No harm done,” he said. “All this kid saw was some skin shots, he doesn’t know they were for Duke .”

“Shots hidden in an issue of Duke . Tony Duke has a thing for young blondes, doesn’t he? Both Shawna and Lauren fit that bill.”

“I’m sure Tony Duke has blondes lining up to be Treat of the Month, but his rep is for screwing them, not killing them. And why would he go for a call girl like Lauren?”

“No accounting for taste,” I said.

“I suppose, but some college kid’s screenplay fantasies and Gretchen taking a drive to Malibu doesn’t exactly get my heart beating.”

“Malibu’s where Lauren placed those calls to the pay phone.”

“Exactly. You see Tony leaving Xanadu to take calls at a gas station?”

“Can you tolerate more hypotheses?”

“Sure, hit me.”

I gave him my older-man theory, rambled about power and dominance, the vulnerability that Shawna and Lauren might’ve shared.

“Tony Duke,” I ended. “Talk about an older man.”

“So you’re trading Dr. Dugger for the Sultan of Skin?”

“I adapt to changing circumstance. Fifty plus thousand in Lauren’s account would be chump change for Duke. He’d also have a good reason to want her laptop.”

Milo didn’t reply. In the background a siren wail climbed like a slide trombone solo, then dopplered into silence.

“Tony Duke,” he finally said. “Christ, I hope you’re wrong. That’s just what I need.”

“What’s that?”

“Big game, small gun.”

FOR FORTY YEARS Tony Duke had preached the gospel of meaning through pleasure, converting a generation and scooping millions from the collection plate.

The easy life was his creed. For forty years every issue of Duke had splayed that dogma above the masthead.

Over four decades Duke pictorials had grown a bit more daring, but the magazine’s format hadn’t changed much since its first issue: golden-toned, milk-fed female nudity personified by the Treat of the Month, combined with suggestive cartoons, big-brotherly advice on dress, drink, and the acquisition of toys, token ventures into political journalism.

When Duke published his maiden issue, photographic essays of bare breasts, pouting lips, and willing thighs were nothing new. Pinup calendars had been gas station fixtures for years, and “nature pictorials” had occupied a stable market niche since the invention of the camera. But all that was under-the-counter stuff, supposedly for guys in raincoats and lowered fedoras – sex as dirty, in the finest American tradition. Marc Anthony Duke’s revolutionary act had been to veneer the skin rag with respectability. Now Suburban Dad could purchase T & A at the corner newsstand and be regarded as classy rather than creepy.