Jonathan Kellerman - Heartbreak Hotel

Milo and I gloved up.

The cop said, “Let me know when you’re ready, sir.”

It hadn’t taken long for Uno to acquire the look of abandonment, screens removed from the porch, front door ajar and off kilter, window shutters splintering.

The steps to the porch deck mewled in protest. The deck was littered with leaves and dust and scraps of paper. Milo looked at each one of them, said, “Trash,” and turned to the right.

Looking at the big rattan peacock chair where Thalia had sat the first time I met her.

No Sydney Greenstreet bulk taxing the cane, no wispy centenarian dwarfed by the curvaceous throne.

Something in between.

A chubby woman with unfashionable curly yellow hair wearing a too-tight floral dress that had ridden up as she’d slid downward, revealing dimpled knees and feet turned away from each other, clumsy and duck-like.

Ricki Sylvester’s head lolled. Her skin was green-gray. A dry drool trail striped her chin.

On the floor to her right was an empty bottle of Svedka vodka. Next to that, a small amber pill bottle. Childproof cap.

Rules say you wait until the C.I.’s clear the body. Milo cupped Ricki Sylvester’s chin and lifted her face gently.

Nearly shut eyes, a sliver of gray glass barely visible.

Slack mouth, tongue drooping to the right.

He lowered her, still gentle. Crouched and shined his flashlight on the pill bottle’s label.

Sixty tabs of Percocet, legally prescribed by an M.D. in Santa Monica.

“All that and a bottle of booze,” he said. “Not exactly a cry for help.”

I said, “There’s an envelope wedged at her side,” and showed him.

“Protocol says wait for the C.I.’s. I already bent the rules.”

“You bet.”

“Hell,” he said, and fished out the envelope. “Anyone asks, we found it on the floor.”

Just to make sure, he rubbed it on the floor, picked up grime.

Business-sized envelope, with Ricki Sylvester’s name, degree, and office address at the top.

Closed but not glued. He lifted the flap.

Same information on the single piece of paper folded inside.

Below the letterhead, graceful handwriting in burnt-orange ink.

“Custom color, looks like a fountain pen,” he said. “Haven’t seen that in a while.”

We read together.

To whoever chances to find me, I’m doing this willingly and with peace. There’s always been pain but now it’s risen to another level and I need to leave.

Thalia Mars was dear to me and I let her down. Worse, I let myself down, getting swept away with emotions that turned out to be hollow. Philip Duke is an evil, manipulative murderer. He pretended to care about me and led me to a dark place where I did the unthinkable. Though I had no idea, absolutely NONE that it would go as far as it did. (Details are available in the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk in my office, the address of which is listed above.)

My last will and testament is also in that drawer, as is a list of referrals to other attorneys for my wonderful clients whom I leave with profound regrets.

But this needed to happen.

It took until the following day to gain access to the drawer. Milo notified Jared that his services would no longer be required.

The receptionist said, “What are you talking about? You can’t fire me.”

Milo explained.

Jared gathered up his teapot, his phone, the pleather jacket he’d draped over his chair, and hurried out.

Milo turned to me. “Onward, we know the route.”

The will was right where Ricki Sylvester said it would be.

No fountain pen but for her signature. She’d computer-typed concisely and clearly. The kind of lawyer you’d want if you could trust her.

For most of her life, she began, honesty had been her “byword. A tradition handed down by my grandfather, the noted attorney John E. ‘Jack’ McCandless.”

The grand exception to her moral stance had taken place during an “intoxicated state.” Agreeing to look for and eventually verifying the presence of a “57 carat ruby” in Thalia’s room.

At the request of her “seducer” Philip Duke.

I will not lie and say I expected nothing to happen vis a vis the gem. Philip Duke was clear about his belief that it belonged rightfully to his family and that he was going to own it. But I did turn down his request to actually take the gem during one of my house calls to Thalia.

I suppose I knew he’d attempt to acquire the ruby by stealth, however I rationalized that as only a minimal loss to Thalia, seeing as she’d left it in plain sight for decades and had never included it in her estate when she enumerated such to me, as her executor. In fact, it was only after Phil Duke alerted me to the visual characteristics of the gem that I was able to locate it, serving as a finial atop a lamp, a use that I chose to characterize as Thalia’s humorous belittling of the stone.

I am not offering an excuse, however I am emphasizing that in no way did I expect my transferring the information about the stone to Philip Duke to lead to homicide. When I learned of Thalia’s death, I was as shocked as anyone. Thalia was dear to me. It took a long time for me to integrate the terrible facts and to make sense of them. I finally realized that someone as callous as Philip Duke was likely to attempt to effect a similar end upon me. Frightened, I traveled to the Ojai Valley Inn where I spent two days contemplating my future.

Eventually perceiving that future as dim and hopeless, in addition to having lived with neuralgia and other sources of physical pain for years, and in the spirit of full atonement, I have decided to set my own punishment as capital punishment. In that same spirit, being of sound mind and body and lacking any natural heirs, I hereby bequeath my entire estate to the identical charities benefited by Thalia Mars’s estate, in identical proportions.

Sincerely,

Below that, a description of her estate. Stocks, bonds, real estate. Not dissimilar from Thalia’s. Smaller but still substantial.

“Six mil,” said Milo. “Big Bird’s gonna be soaring.”

Harold Saroyan looked at Elie Aronson. Elie looked at Milo and me. Both men wore the sad expression of parents forced to punish a usually well-behaved child.

Saroyan, a white-haired, mustachioed man in his eighties, bought and sold colored gemstones from an office in Elie’s downtown building. He’d come to the meeting in a tailored black suit, flawless white shirt, and extravagant yellow cravat, carrying a black leather case from which he drew out a jeweler’s loupe and a stereoscopic zoom microscope.

The meeting was in a high-security room in the crime lab’s property area, accessed by Noreen Sharp’s coded card. Noreen wasn’t there, called moments before to one of the loading docks where two cars, battered and blood-soaked due to a fatal crash on the 101, had just come in.

Just Milo, myself, and the gem dealers, arranged around a plain, gray table. In the center, a gleaming bit of gorgeous, faceted red sat atop a black velvet bag supplied by Noreen. (“Shows off the color, no?”)

Saroyan had begun by holding the ruby up to the light and turning it between his fingers. Following up with the loupe, then the scope, before placing the ruby back.

He sighed. Looked at Elie, again.

Elie said, “Something to tell? Tell.”

Saroyan faced us. “I apologize for having to say this to you. It’s a spinel.”

Milo said, “Which is...”

Elie said, “Not a ruby.”

“It’s a fake?”

“If you tell someone it’s a ruby, it’s a fake. But it’s not glass, it’s another stone, called a spinel. S-P-I-N-E-L.”