Body Copy
B O D Y C O P Y
M I C H A E L C R A V E N
Contents
Chapter 1
Donald Tremaine, the ex-pro surfer, the ex-husband, the current private…
1
Chapter 2
Standing in front of the trailer’s door, the woman said,… 5
Chapter 3
The first person Tremaine needed to call was his old…
13
Chapter 4
Tremaine went for another cup of coffee and thought, no,…
17
Chapter 5
Tremaine walked over to his neighbor’s trailer.
The guy who…
21
Chapter 6
The next day, a big packet arrived via messenger from… 33
Chapter 7
Tremaine and Nina Aldeen decided to meet at noon at… 38
Chapter 8
Two days later, Tremaine got up, went for a surf,…
47
Chapter 9
Mary O’Shaughnessy and Tremaine sat in a small conference
room…
53
Chapter 10
Jack Sawyer was a man Laurie had told Tremaine he…
61
Chapter 11
Tremaine walked back to Laurie Donnelly’s office after a long…
67
Chapter 12
The next morning, Tremaine woke up in the trailer,
slammed…
73
Chapter 13
Tremaine’s hangover, from his night with Lopez, made the Jumble…
81
Chapter 14
Tremaine pulled the Cutlass up to Evelyn Gale’s palatial house…
95
Chapter 15
Tremaine pulled the Cutlass onto Rialto in Venice.
He was…
102
Chapter 16
Tremaine woke up, 7:00 A.M., feeling good, feeling rested,
lying…
108
Chapter 17
Tremaine pulled into the trailer park at dusk. He went…
118
Chapter 18
The next morning, even before walking Lyle, Tremaine dialed up…
124
Chapter 19
On the way back from LAX, Tremaine heading home to… 136
Chapter 20
That night, at the Lobster, a restaurant right by the…
139
Chapter 21
Wendy Leahy said, yeah, sure, I’ll talk to you, when…
148
Chapter 22
Tremaine was driving along, thinking, thinking first about Wendy Leahy…
154
Chapter 23
Tremaine knocked on Marvin Kearns’s door.
This time, he was…
160
Chapter 24
It was noon. Tremaine was back at the trailer park,…
168
Chapter 25
The three of them, Tyler, Marvin, and Tremaine, were now…
174
Chapter 26
Tremaine was on his way down to the karate place.
181
Chapter 27
Tremaine left the strip mall and drove two miles west,… 187
Chapter 28
Tremaine was on the roof of his trailer in Malibu,…
192
Chapter 29
The next morning, Tremaine woke up in the trailer. He’d…
199
Chapter 30
Kelly Burch had lived on North Harper, in Hollywood. Tremaine…
204
Chapter 31
Finding Evan Mulligan was, in a word, easy. Vicky Fong… 215
Chapter 32
The next day, a Saturday, Tremaine got up, and instead…
223
Chapter 33
The next day, driving toward the Hollywood Hills, toward Dean…
232
Chapter 34
Tremaine got home at about seven. He sat in the…
242
Chapter 35
Tremaine got back to L.A., tired from driving through
the…
254
Chapter 36
Tremaine got home. Exhausted. Confused. Angry.
Now was the time,…
260
Chapter 37
Tremaine got in the Cutlass instantly.
266
Chapter 38
After leaving Gale/Parker, still in his car, Tremaine called John…
270
Chapter 39
Tremaine pulled the Cutlass into Crystal Point, into the Malibu…
274
Chapter 40
Sitting at Nina’s house two nights later, Tremaine could feel…
282
Chapter 41
A week later, Tremaine was up on the roof of…
287
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
C H A P T E R 1
Donald Tremaine, the ex-pro surfer, the ex-husband, the current private eye and Malibu trailer park resident, looked in the mirror and said, “Happy birthday, old man.”
He was thirty-nine. He didn’t feel thirty-nine, though.
He didn’t. He felt forty-six. But that was because he’d celebrated the night before with a couple friends and more than a couple cocktails.
Tremaine dropped to the floor and cranked out fifty push-ups. As he finished number fifty, he said, “Ouch.”
His morning routine hurt a little more than usual. That was also because of the previous night’s activities, not because he was officially one year older. That’s what he told himself, anyway.
Still down on the ground, he looked over at his ancient English bulldog, Lyle, sleeping in the corner. Back in the Michael Craven
old days, Lyle would come over and lick his face when he did push-ups, but not any more. Nowadays, Lyle would just look at him then go right back to sleep. He wouldn’t even consider trotting over.
“Where’s the love?” Tremaine would say.
But Tremaine knew Lyle was just old, a lot older than thirty-nine. At least on the dog scale.
Tremaine was in a good mood despite the sting in his head. He was giving himself a nice birthday present. Real nice. Two months in Australia surfing the best waves the continent had to offer. He needed it, too. He’d worked a lot of cases in a row, and he was tired and ready to get out of L.A. for a while.
Nice thing about being a private investigator, you could usually get out of town when you needed to. When business was slow or when he wanted to clear his head, Tremaine would hop in his car and drive down or up the coast—sometimes just for the day—and surf the California spots he’d been surfing all his life. But not this time. This time he was headed across the globe to ride waves he hadn’t seen since he quit surfing professionally.
How long had it been, man, fifteen years?
Tremaine, up on his feet now, looked down at his big surfboard bag. All packed. Clothes and equipment for two months, and three different surfboards. All he had to do was drop Lyle at the neighbor’s and head to the airport.
But not yet. It was only 9:00 a.m. He had some time to kill before his flight. So he grabbed the
New York Times
—the Gray Lady—and a cup of coffee and walked outside. He then climbed the ladder on the side of his trailer, coffee in one hand, paper under his arm.
2
B O D Y C O P Y
Tremaine stood on the roof of his trailer looking due west. He had a clear view of the ocean, just one of the perks of living in the Old Colony Trailer Park in Malibu, California. Sure, you could also see a McDonald’s and a row of Dumpsters just off the Pacific Coast Highway, but boy, could you see that ocean. The Pacific. Big—giant—
and right there. Just down the hill and across the two-lane highway. The vast, blue-green mass was practically his backyard.
Tremaine had a couple chairs and a table set up on the roof, so he sat down and got to the paper. First up, the front page. Then sports, then the arts.
It was quiet. The wind rustled his paper a little, and a car or two zoomed by down on the PCH, but for the most part it was quiet. Nice and quiet. Just Tremaine, his paper, his coffee, and his slowly disappearing hangover. Then that quiet was broken.
A black Volvo station wagon pulled up next to his trailer and parked in the guest spot. A young woman got out of the car and looked up on the roof at Tremaine, who was looking at her.
“Excuse me, I hope this isn’t a bad time. I’m looking for Donald Tremaine. Are you Donald Tremaine?”
Tremaine looked at the stranger. A brunette, early to mid-thirties, a shadow across her face as she shielded her eyes from the sun. And, Tremaine couldn’t help but notice, attractive. Quite attractive. He was a P.I.; he noticed these things.
“Shit,” he said under his breath.
“Excuse me?”
Tremaine thinking, this is someone coming to me with 3
Michael Craven
a case. It sure as hell wasn’t a groupie from his old surf tour days. The random groupies had stopped showing up a while ago. Shame about that. No, this had to be a case. Tremaine normally didn’t turn down cases, almost never, but he was going on vacation no matter what. Yes, she was attractive, but that absolutely did not matter. That wouldn’t affect his decision. It wouldn’t.
Tremaine said, “Yes, I’m Donald Tremaine. How can I help you?”
“I wanted to talk to you about hiring you. Should I come up?” she said.
Tremaine liked that she wasn’t afraid to do business on the roof of a trailer. But it might be a little more professional to talk inside, even though he wasn’t taking the case.
He stood up and said, “I’ll come down.”
4
C H A P T E R 2
Standing in front of the trailer’s door, the woman said,
“I’m Nina Aldeen.”
Tremaine gripped her extended hand and officially introduced himself, “Donald Tremaine.”
Tremaine observed her, processing his first impression.
He noticed he was wrong about her being a brunette. Well, she was a brunette, but her hair was very dark, almost black. It accentuated her slightly pale skin and pretty blue eyes. Pretty blue eyes, Tremaine noticed, that held a hint of sadness.
Tremaine said, “Come on in. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
Inside, Nina sat down, sipped her coffee, and said, “I have to say, I don’t think I’ve been in a trailer before, but Michael Craven
this is quite nice. I didn’t realize they came with hardwood floors.”
“I put them in when I moved in. It came with sky blue shag carpet.”
Nina said, “Like you see in somebody’s basement.”
“Or van, even.”
“I bet you got it out of here immediately,” she said.
Tremaine had lived with it for more than three years.
He said, “Yeah, right away.”
Nina looked around a bit more. Tremaine looked at her looking around. At the floors, at the art on the walls, at the book collection. Tremaine thought, no need for the tour now, she’s seen everything.
She said, “I really like it in here.”
She meant it, he could tell.
“Thanks,” he said.
“It’s nice and spare. I always let things pile up.”
Tremaine nodded and said, “How’d you hear about me?”
“From John Lopez.”
“Great guy. Great cop. We grew up together.”
“He told me that.”
Then Tremaine said, “I don’t want to hear anything about the case.”
Some surprise registered on Nina’s face and she said,
“Oh. Why not? John told me you’d take the case if I paid you your fee. He told me what it was, I’m fine with it.”
Lyle, who had been in a deep sleep, picked his head up and looked in the direction of the woman. Lyle considered the stranger, squinting his eyes at her and sniffing the air in her direction. Within seconds, his head was back down and he was off to sleep.
6
B O D Y C O P Y
“That’s Lyle. You probably thought he was dead.”
“It might have crossed my mind,” she said. “Why don’t you want to hear about my case?”
“Because I can’t take it. I’m going on vacation. See that big bag over there?”
“I was wondering what that was.”
“Those are my surfboards,” he said. “I’m going on a surf trip.”
“John said you were a surfer. He said you used to be a pro.”
“Yeah, a pretty long time ago.”
“He said you were the world champion.”
“It was a pretty long time ago.”
Tremaine felt some anxiety in his chest. He didn’t want to talk about the tour, didn’t want to hear the question that people always seemed to end up asking:
Why’d you quit?
She didn’t ask.
She said, “Well, it’s okay if you’re going on vacation. I’ll hire you when you get back.”