Jonathan Kellerman - Heartbreak Hotel

The bad check earned her probation and community service at a local preschool, due to “the absence of prior arrests and exigent circumstances.”

Milo said, “Her and toddlers, there’s a smart move.”

I said, “Isn’t Ossining where Sing Sing is?”

“Sure is. Another con-romance, huh?”

“Good bet,” I said. “With Louisville on her record, why no priors, there?”

He said, “Shitty record keeping, no one talks to each other. Also ‘exigent circumstances’ is D.A.-speak for ‘I’m letting you off, honey.’ Maybe she got wiggly and impressed some prosecutor. Preschool. Brilliant.”

He pointed to the pair of mugshots. “She does have the equipment to impress.”

Mugs bring out the worst in their subjects; even movie stars come across desperate and eroded. Deandra Demarest’s smile said the booking process was just another modeling session.

Both times she’d held her head up high, rotated her face to create a flattering contour, squared her shoulders, flashed perfect teeth. Her smile was a strange mix of wholesome and sinful.

The kind of blitheness that comes with getting away with too much for too long. In her case, biology helped: perfect oval face, cute cleft in her chin, widely spaced blue eyes with enormous irises that would make her appear appealingly confused when she was anything but. All of that crowned by a creamy sweep of wavy hair — brunette at nineteen, blond at twenty-nine.

They say eyes are the true mirrors to the soul but Deandra Demarest’s eyes projected a softness that did nothing but lie. The kind of earnestness and implied vulnerability that could sell anything.

The photos offered no view of the body she’d worked to impress Montoya but the stats said plenty: no change in over a decade: five-five, one hundred nineteen, “slender build.”

A lithe structure free of scars, tattoos, or distinguishing marks. Eschewing ink because she knew what she had, wanted to keep it pristine.

Milo said, “In both shots she looks younger than her age.”

I said, “Easy to preserve yourself when others are doing the dirty work.”

“No aliases or nicknames, she must’ve added the Duchess bit later.”

He ran a DMV search; no license or registered vehicles. No employment history, per Social Security. “Guess preschools don’t report.”

I said, “For all we know she’s doing the same thing here under an assumed name.”

He shook his head. “DeeDee Demarest. So much for the Drancy hypothesis.”

I said, “Wrong family but the correct theory. I wonder how she sprouted on a cop’s family tree.”

Information on LAPD Commander Raynard Gordon Demarest was easy to come by.

In 1951, at age fifty, the former “high-ranking police official and one-time driver for Mayor Frank Shaw” had been arrested, tried, and sent to prison the next year. Every local paper had covered the story.

Milo said, “A tree with rotten roots.”

A ragout of charges had been leveled at Demarest, creating a legal tsunami that washed him to San Quentin on a thirteen-year sentence. Notable lack of character references, pre- or post-conviction, including by family members.

No mention of family, period, and recently appointed Chief William Parker’s characterization of Demarest as “exactly the kind of morally degenerate character we’re striving to eliminate from our midst” hadn’t helped.

Neither had a parade of victims with grievances stretching to Demarest’s early days as a Central Division patrolman and chauffeur for Shaw, the most corrupt mayor in L.A. history.

“Numerous business owners” recalled how Demarest had strong-armed them for protection money. “Citizen witnesses testifying behind barriers for fear of recrimination” remembered being physically threatened and intimidated. Several “colored and Mexicans” accused Demarest of racially motivated beatings.

Violence didn’t appear in any of the indictments but as an assemblage they were damning. Larceny, fraud, perjury, obstruction, false report by peace officer, false affidavit, peace officer misconduct, contempt of court, conspiracy.

I said, “Appealing all that would take years. Someone wanted him gone.”

“Classic Bill Parker,” said Milo. “Upright and merciless. Shaw represented everything he hated and Demarest having anything to do with Shaw made him an obvious target.”

I said, “The kind of degenerate who’d go along with a jewel-grab.”

“Easily.”

“Demarest was probably chosen to write the report because he was involved in the confiscation. The handwriting on the back could’ve been a note he wrote to himself because the ruby was missing and he intended to look for it. First step would’ve been pressuring Thelma. Luckily for her and unfortunately for him, Parker went after him first.”

He said, “If the bastard did go looking, he was out of his element.”

“How so?”

“Too much time strong-arming, not enough learning how to detect.”

The final article on Demarest covered the day he was shipped off to San Quentin. Identical LAPD photo in every paper: tall, broad, fair-haired man in jail clothes, head-down and cuffed, escorted by two plainclothesmen to the van that would transport him to Northern California.

Shortly before Christmas of 1952. Some holiday.

Milo said, “Let’s find out what happened to him.”

County records told that story.

Not Marin, where the prison sat. L.A., where the body of Inmate Raynard Gordon Demarest had been shipped to a mortuary in Boyle Heights.

He’d served less than a year of the thirteen before expiring in the prison, due to “cranial injury following a fall.”

I said, “Prison showers can get slippery. Especially when it’s the prison housing Hoke. If Demarest was behind the jewel confiscation and tried to pressure Thalia, it wouldn’t have sat well with her true love.”

“The long arm of Leroy,” said Milo. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Shades of Drancy’s tumble off that building.”

“But his clan didn’t care about revenge. Or the ruby.”

“Or he had no family to speak of. But Demarest’s relatives passed down a fable: Grandpa wasn’t a corrupt bully, he was a knight errant on a quest for a priceless jewel who’d been railroaded. Marinate it over enough generations, they’d start believing they were entitled to the ruby as reparation.”

I tapped Deandra Demarest’s mugshots. “Like I said, it took until now for the right descendant to come along. Even with that, Deandra needed to ripen criminally. She also had to track down Thalia. Not easy — even if she did have a copy of Demarest’s report, she’d be looking for Thelma Myers. Things fell into place once she learned the name of Hoke’s lawyer. That led her to Jack McCandless’s granddaughter, who either succumbed to pressure or was recruited willingly.”

He re-read Deandra Demarest’s arrest record. “Her first bust. Back at nineteen she had a thing for jewelry.”

I said, “And she did that with a pair of cons who ended up bearing the brunt. Sound familiar?”

“On the other hand,” he said, “the bad-check thing was a solo act.”

“So she’s versatile. Or the records are inaccurate. Either way, she’s developed a talent for manipulating men and discarding them.”

“No bets on Bakstrom’s longevity, huh?”

“Not an insurance policy I’d write. The same goes for Ricki Sylvester. We saw how emotional she can get and that makes her unreliable. If she complained to Deandra that you’d come by again and displayed anxiety, she might already be gone.”

He said, “Manipulating men... the older guy Sylvester had dinner with. He could turn out to just be a blind date or he is another piston in DeeDee’s engine. This femme is way past fatale.”