Jonathan Kellerman - Heartbreak Hotel

Vicki Vasquez said, “My Jimmy Choos,” and burst into tears.

I said, “Here you go.”

Instead of taking the box, she crossed her arms. “I— I— I...”

“So sorry to barge in,” said Milo. I’d never seen him more avuncular. That and his badge offered subtly did nothing to calm her.

She said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I said, “We don’t want you to, either.”

She gaped. Nice teeth. Even with the chattering.

I chanced inching closer to her, kept my voice low and soothing, my speech slow and rhythmic.

Hypnotic induction voice. Back when I was helping kids deal with pain, I could do ten inductions a day, leave the hospital sleepy and serene.

Vicki Vasquez didn’t seem impressed but a second later, she did reach out for the box. Hugged it to her bosom and maybe that was enough temporary comfort because she stopped retreating.

I said, “There’s absolutely no need to talk about what happened to you, Vicki. This is something different.”

She continued staring. Finally: “What?”

No sense being abstract. “The people who assaulted you are suspected of murder.”

Milo’s arched eyebrows said, That’s psychology?

Vicky Vasquez said, “Charlie’s right.”

“Charlie—”

“My soulmate. He says I’m lucky.”

“He’s right, you sure are.”

“Who did they murder?”

“Someone involved in a business deal,” I said.

“Nothing to do with me.”

“Absolutely nothing. But if we could show you some photos—”

Vicki Vasquez looked down the road. “Out here?”

“If you’ll allow us, we’re happy to come inside—”

“Let me see that badge again.”

Milo complied, showed her his card, as well.

She said, “Homicide. Okay, that’s not my problem. Come in.”

The house was more gray stucco inside and out, the flat roof white pebbly stuff. The interior was one sprawling space backed by glass and floored in slate. A few randomly placed pieces of bright-red and blue furniture carved from foam coexisted with molded-resin tables. Italian contemporary, probably uncomfortable, probably expensive.

The glass let in sky and hillside and the real estate dreams of homeowners lower down in the hillside pecking order, most content with postage-stamp lots. Altitude reduced patio furniture to matchsticks. Lawns and swimming pools were colored mosaic tiles.

Vicki Vasquez crossed halfway across the room, placed her package on one of the tables, refolded her arms across her chest. No art, no books, no cooking implements visible in the kitchen. A seventy-inch flat-screen took up the largest masonry wall, wires dangling. A single photograph was propped on another table. Vasquez in the merest black bikini standing next to a skinny guy in his forties wearing baggy swim-trunks. Ruffalo had thin dark hair, gray temples, a hangdog face unrelieved by a Bucky Beaver smile so wide it threatened to bisect his head.

Moving back inside seemed to shore up Vicki Vasquez’s confidence. She tossed her hair, clamped her hands on her hips, turned so her body formed an hourglass framed by glass.

Panorama drama.

She said, “Show me what you got.”

Gerard Waters’s and Henry Bakstrom’s mugshots narrowed her eyes. She flipped the bird, made a raking motion with her other hand.

“Motherfuckers. Catch them and kill them.”

Milo showed her Alex Shimoff’s drawing of the blonde.

Her nostrils flared. A screech escaped from somewhere deep inside her.

“You know her, Vicki?”

“Duchess. Fucking bitch, I hate her the worst.”

“Duchess.”

“That’s what they called her.”

“What’d she call them?”

“I never heard none a their names.”

“But the men called her Duchess.”

“That’s no name, anyway,” said Vicki Vasquez. “Right? That’s like a... a...”

I said, “A title.”

“Yeah, a fucking title. Like she’s a queen or something. Fuck that, she ain’t. She’s a fucking bitch.”

I said, “You especially hate her because—”

“She’s a girl. She should be on my side.”

That let loose a storm of obscenity and a quick march across the picture window and back. When she returned, Milo said, “What else can you tell us about them?”

“You didn’t find my car?”

“Not yet.”

“I don’t give a,” she said. “It was crap, Charlie’s buying me a Mustang.”

“Good for you. Anything else you remember?”

“They need to die. ” She stabbed air. “Charlie knows kickboxing, he could smash their fucking brains and shove it up their asses.”

“Glad you have someone to protect you.”

“Charlie loves me.”

“Is there anything you can—”

“If I knew something, I’d tell it. I want you to catch them.” She grinned. “So you can do what you do.”

Milo said, “What do we do?”

“You guys ?” she said. “The po- lice? You find ’em, you shoot ’em.” She flashed a gang sign. “LAPD. Baddest homeys in the hood.”

We left her posed in the doorway, drinking a can of Fresca and playing with her hair.

As we passed out of earshot, I flashed the same sign. “Yo, Homey.”

Milo said, “Nice to be appreciated. Maybe she was on to something. Blondie’s in charge, sees herself as royalty.”

We got back in the car.

I said, “The way they assaulted Vasquez has similarities to burking, no?”

“Three-on-one teamwork, a helpless body.” He stuck out his tongue. “All the stuff I’ve seen and you can still creep me out.” He started the engine. “Yeah, you could be right.”

“Teamwork,” I said, “but no team spirit. First Waters got cut from the roster, then DeGraw. The Duchess and Bakstrom are the core — directing and producing. The others were likely expendable right from the beginning.”

He pulled the same three-point turn as the UPS driver but avoided landscape assault. “Same old story. The good-looking popular kids rule.”

As we passed through the Strip, Elie Aronson called my cell.

“No one’s talking about a big ruby, Doctor, stolen or legal. But that doesn’t mean nothing, if they took it out of the country fast. I talked to an Armenian, specializes in colored stones. He says the same thing I told you. That size, unless it’s garbage, for sure millions.”

“Thanks, Elie.”

“The Armenian,” he said. “He says he could handle something like that, you ever find it and it’s legal to sell it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Elie.”

“Just passing it along.”

Forty minutes after leaving Vicki Vasquez, we were back in Milo’s office. He tossed his jacket on the floor and speed-rolled his desk chair to his keyboard.

Several “Duchesses” in the moniker file, all young gang girls, except for a six-foot-six career burglar named Clarence Bearden inexplicably nicknamed Duchess C.

NCIC and other rosters gave up a couple dozen more pretenders to nobility but none came close to fitting Blondie.

Milo said, “What you said before, it’s a production. Maybe I’m looking for bad in all the wrong places. How about an actress?”

“No shortage of them on the Westside.”

“Especially the ones that don’t make it and get real hungry.”

No shortage of stage productions and movies with “Duchess” in the title or roles featuring noblewomen. An old English play, The Duchess of Malfi, was saturated with violence but bore no obvious link to the case.

One contemporary actress popped up, Duchess Ella, a star in the industry known as Nollywood.

Nigerian cinema. Not a blonde.