i 9fb2c9db4068b52a (8 page)

Zebediah waved at the bikinied skater again as she rolled past them, going the other direction. “My guess is, any money he gets goes straight up his nose or into his veins.”

“Good point. Okay, first things first. I haven’t examined the suicide note yet. I’ve been waiting, hoping to find some good block printing samples for comparison. Ivan is sending Lindsey’s files over, so I’ll need to finish going through them and decide whether she actually wrote the note or not. The handwriting on those photos Nelson gave me was done too long ago to be useful, except for one thing. It’s block printed, which tells me that block printing
is
a style of writing within Lindsey’s personal range of variation.” Claudia sighed. “I need to find out whether a police expert actually examined the handwriting on the note, as they told Ivan.”

“Do you know any of the detectives at the PD in her district?” Zebediah asked.

“No, that would be Wilshire or Beverly Hills. I’ll call my contact at Pacific Division and see if she can find out for me which detective was assigned to Lindsey’s case.”

“Do that, sweetie. Who knows? He might be just what you need.”

Dialing the number for the Pacific Division police station an hour later, Claudia couldn’t get the images of the young Lindsey and her abuser out of her head. What she had learned about Earl Nelson and Preston Sommerfield turned her stomach and had put Lindsey in a totally different light. Her appalling childhood experiences explained so much of her behavior. “Records,” a formal voice said. “Jackson speaking.”

“Hey, Dana, what’s up?”

The voice relaxed as Dana Jackson recognized her caller. “Don’t
even
ask. It’s been crazy around here, all the gangs shooting each other and anyone else who gets in the way.”

Pacific Division was responsible for a twenty-four-square-mile territory covering Venice Beach, Oakwood, Mar Vista, Playa de la Reina, where Claudia lived, and Westchester, an area attractive to tourists, and rife with gangs and drug dealing.

“Keeps you in a job,” said Claudia. “Yeah, thank you so much, Ms. Citizen,” Dana said sarcastically. “Hey, I’m glad you called. Much as I hate to admit it, I’m dating another cop. I’ve got some of his handwriting to show you.”

“Send it over,” Claudia said with sudden envy. Lately, it seemed as if all her friends had new loves in their lives. They all wanted her to analyze their handwriting samples, while
she
hadn’t dated anyone steadily in more than a year. In fact, over the last few months she had dated very little. Her personal life seemed to be headed nowhere. She could practically feel her allure slipping away.

“I need a favor, too,” Claudia said. “I have to find the investigator on a case I’m working. He’s either from Wilshire or Beverly Hills. His name’s... hold on.” She read the note she had scratched to herself during her last update with Ivan Novak, where she had filled him in on her meeting with Nelson, and her lunchtime conversation with Zebediah. “It’s Vanderbosh. Detective Eugene Vanderbosh.”

“Vanderbosh?” Dana repeated. “Sorry, girl, he’s in the hospital. Last I heard, he’s not expected to make it.”

“No shit? What happened? Shot in the line of duty?”

“Nah, heart attack. Too many donuts.”

“Your compassion is touching, Dana.”

“Aw, he’s a fat fuck. No one around here’s sheddin’ a whole lot of tears.”

“My client didn’t think much of him, either,” said Claudia, idly doodling boxes around the edges of the electric bill that lay on her desk. “Listen, this is a suicide case. The heirs want me to look at the handwriting on the note. Can you find out if someone examined it on your side?” Dana gave a contemptuous snort. “Knowing Vanderbosh, he probably just made something up. That’s the kind of hardworking sumbitch he is. Was.” Claudia heard her fingernails clicking on her keyboard. “Someone has to be filling in for him on his cases. Let me find out who it is and get back to you.”

“Can you get me the autopsy report, too?”

“Why do you need that?”

“For the tox screens. I need to know exactly what drugs were in her system. If she actually wrote the note, the drugs would have an effect on her handwriting.”

“I get it. Okay, I’ll see what I can do. I can probably get you a cleansed copy of the Incident Report, too.”

“Cleansed?”

“The witnesses’ names are redacted. That’s blacked out to you.”

“What’s the point of that?”

“Hey, if someone got pissed off about something they read in our report and went after a witness, we’d be in deep shit. Gotta protect our asses from lawsuits, you know?”

“Yeah, I bet. Okay, thanks, Dana, I owe you.”

“That’s right, you do. I’ll fax you my guy’s writing when I send the reports. Just tell me the bad stuff. I already know the rest.”

Claudia was rinsing out the plastic tray from her frozen lasagna when the phone rang and Kelly’s number popped up on Caller ID. She hadn’t heard from her friend since the funeral reception on Saturday.

“Where have you been?” asked Claudia. “I’ve been calling you.”

The boozy voice that answered was an instant red flag. “You gotta help me, Claudia.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You have to tell me what to do. I’m scared. I don’t know what to do.
Help
me!”

“Take it easy, Kel, just tell me what happened.”

“I don’t... I can’t... just forget it, I’m hanging up now.”

Claudia sighed inwardly. Kelly after a few cocktails could do drama better than Meryl Streep. “Don’t hang up, Kel; just tell me what’s wrong; everything’s going to be okay.”

Famous last words.

Kelly began weeping convulsively, big, heaving sobs. “I... oh my God. Claudia... I think I killed Lindsey.”

Claudia stared at the phone as if it had suddenly taken on a life of its own. “What the
hell
are you talking about? She committed suicide, remember?”

“You don’t know what happened. I’m so... so scared.”

Something in Kelly’s voice warned Claudia not to blow this off as her usual run-of-the-mill theatrics. “Just tell me what happened,” she repeated gently, feeling like a therapist. “Start at the beginning.”

Through the phone, she could hear glass clinking on glass. Kelly, pouring another martini. Extra dry, two olives.

Claudia paced the room, pausing at the open door that led out to the deck. Autumn in California was fire season, and smoke from a blaze twenty miles up the coast in Malibu had painted a stunning sunset of feathery pink-and-gold fingers on the evening sky.

Kelly began to speak in a shaky voice. “It started last month. Remember that guy I was seeing, Sean?”

It would take a score-card to keep up with Kelly’s dates. Tearing her gaze away from the scenery, Claudia made herself concentrate, replaying conversations they’d had over the past few weeks. Kelly liked them young, she was fond of saying, so she could train them. Was Sean the one who resembled Orlando Bloom, or Jason Patric? “Sean’s the actor, right? He plays a doctor on
Tender is the Night?
”

“Well, yeah,” Kelly said, as if Claudia should have known. “I had to dump him.”

“And, this is connected to Lindsey’s death how, exactly?”

“Wait, I’m getting there. The week before Lindsey... died, Sean and I went to Busby’s for drinks. We’re at the bar and lo and behold,
she
shows up.”

Claudia knew the club. Popular with the upwardly mobile Westside singles crowd, Busby’s boasted go-go girls, pool tables, and abundant couches on which to snuggle, if that was what you were looking for.

“So, what happened?”

“I might as well have been invisible. She was on him like a bitch in heat; kept leering at his crotch.”

For a millisecond, Claudia had the urge to ask what was so special about Sean’s crotch, but she thought better of it and let Kelly continue her story.

“She never would have looked at him twice if he hadn’t been with me. Why was she like that, Claud? She could have ten guys crawling all over her, but if she saw
me
with someone, she’d go after him instead.” The bitterness in Kelly’s voice brought back their conversation at the gravesite. Hatred had sprouted like a prickly shrub and was bursting into full, thorny bloom.

“Sounds like insecurity to me,” Claudia offered, thinking of Preston Summerfield, and Earl Nelson’s repulsive photo gallery. But Kelly knew nothing of that. “Insecurity my ass. I got her into the ladies room. Told her to keep her goddamn hands off this one. I said, ‘I’ve had enough of you fucking up my life.’”

Kelly’s anger dissolved into sobs. “Like always, she thought it was a big joke. Then she called him
the next day
and asked him out, Claud. And he
told
me about it. He was actually flattered! She told him she’d introduce him to Spielberg. Like that was ever gonna happen.”

“Creep,” Claudia agreed automatically, wishing Kelly had more discriminating taste in men.

Look who’s talking. Like you’ve done any better
.

“That bitch had more balls than a two-pecker billy goat. Can you believe she’d go after him like that?”

“We’re talking about Lindsey, here.”

“God, I hated her.”

“I get that, honey, but what makes you think you
killed
her?”

“This isn’t easy, Claud. Gimme a minute.” Kelly paused, catching her breath. Claudia could hear her gulping her cocktail, then she started talking, faster and faster until the words ran together. “I couldn’t get it out of my head, what she’d done with Sean;
all
the things she did. I thought about my wedding; about what she did to you. By Friday night I was going crazy. I thought... I thought, maybe if I saw her face-to-face, I could make her understand that... hell, I don’t know. I just went over to her apartment and started banging on the door. She wouldn’t open it; probably saw me through the peephole.

“I could hear music inside. I started yelling and kicking the door. Shit, I know I was acting like a baby, but I
couldn’t
let her get away with screwing me over that way again. Sean was the last straw. I wanted to kick her skinny ass.”

Under other circumstances, the idea of petite Kelly going ten rounds with the much taller Lindsey like a couple of mismatched boxers would have made Claudia laugh, but Lindsey’s death had changed so many things. She leaned her head back against the cushions and closed her eyes. “Did she open the door?”

“No, but she was there.” With the stability of a yo-yo, Kelly’s mood shifted back to anger. “She called the cops on me! Must have taken them all of three minutes to get there. I guess you have to live in a penthouse to get that kind of service. They busted out of the elevator, pointing their guns at me and yelling! God knows what she told them. It was a nightmare. I thought they were going to shoot me.”

“Holy shit, what time was that?”

“What time?”

“Yes, about what time were you pounding on her door?”

“Around eight, I guess. Why?”

“The police report would show what time they arrived and that they saw her alive then. Were you arrested?” Kelly would surely have told her if she’d gone to jail, even if it had been just long enough to post bail. But Kelly had kept surprisingly quiet about the entire episode.

Claudia flopped full-length on the couch and put her hand over her eyes, as if that would blot out the scene that her friend had described. “Please tell me that this is the
whole
story. That you just turned around and left. You did, right?”

“Well I
had
to leave. She kept laughing that stupid donkey laugh of hers. She said she wasn’t going to press charges... for what? I didn’t do anything! They escorted me downstairs and told me to go home. It was all so humiliating.”

Kelly
sounded
humiliated, but Claudia wondered uncharitably if she hadn’t enjoyed the drama, just a tiny bit. “I have a sinking feeling there’s something else,” she said.

Silence, then the sounds of a glass being refilled.

“Kelly?”

“Yeah, there’s more. I went back later. I...”

“You went
back?
”

“I know, I know, it was a stupid thing to do. It was a couple hours later.”

A couple of hours. That had given Kelly enough time to knock back a few more martinis.

Media reports had put Lindsey’s death sometime between midnight Friday and dawn Saturday. The condition of the body had made it difficult for the coroner to be more exact. “I drove around for a while and just got madder.” Kelly gave a humorless laugh. “I went back and the police cars were gone. I was expecting the guy at the desk to stop me, but he was eating; hardly even noticed I was there. I went up and knocked on her door again. Not like before, just a regular knock. She opened up right away, like she was expecting someone. She was wearing this black satin
come-fuck-me
bustier and garter belt.”

Claudia could visualize the scene: Lindsey flinging open the door, anticipating a late-night visitor, certainly not expecting to find Kelly on her doorstep again.

“What’d she do?”

“She was shocked to see me. I pushed past her and went inside. She asked what the hell I thought I was doing.”

“And?”

Long pause. “I said I was through with her messing up my life. I said... I said, if she didn’t stay away from me... I said I’d
kill
her.” Kelly’s voice cracked. “She just laughed at me again. Why did she always do that, Claudia? Why’d she always have to laugh at people that way?”

That godawful mocking, nails-on-a-blackboard laugh.

Claudia rolled off the sofa and took the phone out to the deck. It was too dark to see the ocean, but she could hear the shushing of the waves, feel the mist on her cheeks. “What happened after that?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What do you mean, you don’t remember?”

“I... I blacked out.”

Kelly had begun drinking in middle school, where she’d discovered that alcohol could deaden the pain of dealing with a drug-addicted mother who was often out of touch with reality for days at a time. As the eldest child, the responsibility of parenting four younger siblings had fallen on Kelly’s young shoulders. Neighbors of theirs for years, Claudia’s parents had tried to help fill in the gaps so that Child Welfare wouldn’t split up the children in foster care, and Kelly had become an unofficially adopted member of Claudia’s family.