Jonathan Kellerman - Flesh And Blood

“Must be your boyish charm,” muttered LeMoyne.

Salander’s hand balled. “Once upon a time you thought so! Stop picking at me!”

LeMoyne brought the script closer to his eyeglasses.

Salander said, “You’re a grump, but I still love you, Justin.”

LeMoyne whispered something.

“What?” said Andy.

“Love you, too.”

Salander smiled. “Thank you.”

Low grumble. “Welcome.”

Milo said, “So the source of Lauren’s money puzzled you. Did she ever talk about any other jobs she’d held? Before the research thing?”

“Modeling,” said Salander. “She said she’d modeled – I told you that, didn’t I?”

“Anything besides modeling?”

Salander stared down at the bedspread. “No. Like what?”

“The girl was a hooker ,” said LeMoyne. “I keep telling you that.”

“You don’t know that, Justin!”

“Oh, Jesus, Andrew, I met her. She had hooker written all over her.”

Milo said, “How many times did you meet her, Mr. LeMoyne?”

“Two or three times – in passing. But that was enough to know what she was. She was high-priced – no doubt about that. But she had the moves – the look, the walk, the whole phony-class thing going on. For all I know, she was trained by Gretchen Stengel.”

“You know Gretchen Stengel?”

“I know of her,” said LeMoyne. “Everyone in the industry does. We’ve never lunched, but I’ve certainly seen her around. And run into many of her little vixens. Back when Gretchen was plying her trade, you couldn’t go anywhere that was anywhere without tripping over them.”

“Easy to spot,” said Milo.

LeMoyne rolled his eyes. “Even for you, Sherlock. Gretchen went for a type – cool but remotely friendly, the ready rap, the body, the clothes. The clothes were always the tip-off. A girl who shouldn’t have been able to afford five grand worth of couture but wore it well.”

LeMoyne smiled and closed the script. “Not that it helped. If you knew the difference between real class and bullshit. Every one of those girls had a certain… commonness. Trailer-park trying to morph into Grace Kelly.”

He crossed his legs. “Beleeeve me, Detective, that takes more than aerobics and a crash course on what fork to use. Still, you can fool most of the people…” To Salander: “She was a hooker , Andy.”

Salander gazed up at Milo.

Milo said, “She did have that in her past, Andy.”

“Oh…” Another labored sigh. “I’m très naïve , aren’t I? I guess it was right there in front of me, but I just didn’t want to know – Not that it would’ve mattered. I don’t judge, why should I judge? And I swear the whole time we lived together she never did anything illegal or brought anyone home – I guess when she took those long weekends she was… She told me… I can’t be blamed for believing her. Okay, fine, I’m naïve and stupid.” Staring at LeMoyne.

LeMoyne shook his head and reopened the script.

Milo said, “What did she tell you about the long weekends, Andy?”

Salander squirmed. “I didn’t say anything when you first came around because I wasn’t sure – And it looks like now maybe it didn’t have anything to do with it. Now that you’re telling me she was… The thing is, I didn’t want to make things complicated-”

LeMoyne’s laughter cut him off. “You’re babbling, Andrew. They have no clue what the hell you’re talking about.”

Milo edged closer to Salander.

“What, Andy?”

“Her family,” said Salander. “Her real family. She said she was going out to Malibu to reconnect with them. Since she’d learned who her real father was. Tony Duke. I guess she was… fantasizing, right? It’s the world’s greatest fantasy, right? Live your life one way and then find out all of a sudden that you’re on a whole different level.”

Milo sat down on the bed.

So did I.

Milo’s notepad was out. His tie was loose. “When and how did she learn about this, Andrew?”

“ When was last year,” said Salander. “Maybe a year ago – just before we started rooming together. How is her mother told her. The two of them had started relating again. They hadn’t talked for a long time, and then Jane started making overtures and they began trying to patch things up. Slowly – having lunch once in a while. It was at one of those lunches that Jane told her. They’d finished off a bottle of wine, gotten all girlie-chatty, and Jane just spilled it out. She said she’d met Duke while working as a flight attendant on a jet Duke had chartered – taking some models and a bunch of other people to the big island of Hawaii for a big photo spread and partying. Jane ended up serving Duke personally, and he invited her to spend the layover at some mansion he was renting. And… it happened . Jane and Lo’s dad – the one she thought was her dad, the asshole – were going together but hadn’t decided to get married. When Jane found out she was pregnant, she convinced him to marry her.”

“Talk about your false pretenses,” said Justin LeMoyne. “It really does have story elements.”

“The funny thing,” said Salander, “finding out about Duke caused things to make sense for Lauren. Like why she couldn’t stand her father – the one who raised her. She said she’d never related to her father, she’d always felt like a stranger to him – like there’d been this wall between them. Now she understood it.”

“Jane never told him about Lauren’s true paternity,” I said.

“Lauren said no way, his temper was too bad for that. The marriage broke up anyway, but Jane told Lauren the whole time she was pregnant, she was paranoid he would find out, do something violent. Luckily, Lauren resembled Jane.”

“Paranoid, but she kept the baby,” I said.

“She told Lauren she’d always wanted a baby.”

Tish Teague’s outburst came back to me. Recounting Lauren’s cruel parting comment: “You don’t deserve a damn thing from me – you’re not even my family and neither is he and neither are your rugrats.”

No blood connection between Lauren and Lyle’s little girls, yet Lauren had sought them out, brought them Christmas presents, only to withdraw. Ambivalent. How lonely she must’ve been…

“So Jane told Lauren about a year ago,” said Milo. “When did Lauren tell you?”

“Soon after I moved in – maybe a couple of months later. At first, after we started rooming together, she was real up – happy all the time. Probably ’cause she’d just found out. But then her mood changed – she slid way down. Being a natural listener, I kept trying to help her open up… When she did, it was after I’d cooked this big Italian dinner and we’d finished a whole bottle of Chianti – cheap wine’s the great conversation starter, right?”

Milo shifted his bulk. “What was her mood when she told you?”

“At first she was kind of giddy about it – like isn’t that cool, my real dad’s a zillionaire. But then she got real quiet. I thought maybe because she felt she’d missed out on stuff – all those years she could’ve been a princess. I said something to that effect, but she said, no, that wasn’t it at all. She wouldn’t trade her life with anyone’s, but the whole thing had just thrown her off balance. And – this was the main thing – after Jane told her, she got all freaked out and started pressuring Lo to forget about it, not to try to get in touch with Duke. Lauren thought that was cruel and manipulative, and she was right, don’t you think? You can’t just go and dump something on someone then try to hold them back. Lo was furious at Jane.”