The Wedding Guest

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Sleep came by way of a bright-blue futon against the wall. Perpendicular to the mattress was the same kind of portable clothes rack as in the main house. Seven red dresses hung neatly from padded black silk hangers. Orderly color progression: arterial blood to maroon. An equal number of tops in the same color progression was followed by a dozen pairs of blue, black, and gray skinny jeans and leggings.

  Light from a dormer in the roof cast a fog-colored beam rife with dancing dust.

  Across the room were shoe boxes stacked three-high, a pair of brown metal four-door cabinets, and a collection of orange cardboard box-files laid horizontally. Bottles of cosmetics and perfume sat on one of the cabinets.

  First Lotz’s hole, now this.

  Milo spent a while snapping photos with his phone, then handed me gloves and pointed to the shoes. “Do me a favor.”

  I checked each box. Size eight and a half, a few hotshot designer labels, others I hadn’t heard of. Stilettos, pumps, sandals, spangled sneakers, all blood red.

  I said, “Nothing but footwear.”

  “Hmph.” He’d moved on to the orange files. Opened the first and said, “What?” Then: “That’s a first,” as all the boxes gave up their contents.

  Precisely folded thong underwear, socks, and pantyhose. Red and black.

  At the bottom of the last box were three pairs of body shapers like the one Kimbee DaCosta had worn the last day of her life.

  “Why the hell would she need these?” he said.

  I figured that as rhetorical and didn’t answer.

  “No, I mean it, Alex. She had a dancer’s bod, what the hell was she covering up? Give me something psychological. I need to understand this girl.”

  I said, “She made her living from her looks. Maybe she saw it as maintenance.”

  He grumbled again. “She was sure maintaining at the wedding. To me that says she figured to meet someone who mattered.”

  I thought: Or just force of habit.

  I said, “The Brain?”

  “Garrett Burdette’s pretty smart and he makes decent money. They break up a year ago but maybe library time means she was still trying to impress him.”

  “She told Serena and Claire she’d ended the relationship. Why crash his wedding?”

  “She was the one who got dumped and was saving face.”

  “You’re figuring she was planning to humiliate him.”

  “I’m figuring she pressured him with some sort of ultimatum and deadline before the wedding and he didn’t give her satisfaction. Best guess is the ‘or else’ involved either coming back to her or money.”

  “Pay me to keep quiet about the affair.”

  “Look at this place. Better than Lotz’s hole but that’s all you can say about it. She wasn’t exactly raking it in.”

  He rearranged the orange boxes, walked over to the brown metal cabinets and tried a drawer.

  No give. Same for all of them.

  “Locked. Good. We’ll save the best for last.”

  He inspected the makeshift bathroom.

  Liquid soap and four types of expensive shampoo on the floor of the shower. The mirrored cabinet held analgesics, lotions, additional cosmetics and their applicators, shampoo, brushes, combs. A small bottle of Windex explained the spotless mirror.

  On the floor were a hair dryer, a curling iron, and a box of rollers.

  “Not a single damn narcotic,” he said. “Where are the weak-willed victims when you need them.”

  I took a look at the interior of the medicine cabinet. “No birth control, either.”

  “Autopsy said she wasn’t pregnant, never had been. Maybe after a few interesting years she decided to try celibacy.”

  He eyed the locked cabinets. “Gimme your car keys.”

  * * *

  —

  He returned with the crowbar I keep in my trunk. Took photos of the brown cabinets, muttering, “Chain of evidence,” then nosed the tip of the bar into the seam between the top drawer of the right-hand cabinet and the frame. One hard move and flimsy metal surrendered. Releasing the top drawer triggered some kind of latch and all six slid open. He looked inside.

  “Undies in a box-file, now this?”

  Emptying every drawer, he placed the contents on the floor.

  Books.

  Nothing but.

  Hardcovers and large-format paperbacks, all with bland covers.

  Upending every volume, he flipped pages and checked endpapers. “Introductory sociology? Western philosophy? Why the hell would she lock these up?”

  “Maybe she’s saying, This is important to me.”

  “A dedicated intellectual who models and strips.”

  Why not?

  I said, “It’s consistent with what the Valkyrie and the bouncers told us. In her spare time, she read. And once upon a time she did ballet, so maybe she had a taste for the classics.”

  “You know anyone at Juilliard?”

  “Robin probably does.”

  “Por favor?”

  * * *

  —

  Robin said, “Just Sharon Isbin, she’s head of the guitar department. If all you’re after is enrollment, why doesn’t Milo just call the ballet department?”

  “Higher-education folk tend to distrust the police and if they tell him no, it could take weeks.”

  “Okay, I’ll see if Sharon can point him in the right direction. Too late to try now, tomorrow morning.”

  “Thanks, hon.”

  Milo called out, “Thanks, darling!”

  Robin said, “Someone’s in a good mood. Progress?”

  I said, “Small steps.”

  “Like most things that matter.” I clicked off.

  Milo fished out another book and shook it. “Here’s a racy one, Civilization and Power…nothing personal in this whole damn place.”

  As he made a second circuit of the garage, I had my own look at the volumes Kimbee DaCosta had sequestered.

  Textbooks and nonfiction for the educated layperson. A sprinkle of yellow Used stickers brought back my starving student days. But no inscriptions, stamps from campus stores, or indication where any of the books had been sold or resold.

  Still, the collection felt like college reading material and I said so. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and it was the U. and Maxine can snoop around.”

  “How about getting telephonic with her again?”

  Voicemail at “Professor Driver’s” office and personal cell. I asked her to call.

  Milo said, “Here’s another possibility: Amanda knew Kimbee from school and fixed her up with Garrett. Because she thought Baby was a dolt and figured one brain deserved another.”

  I said, “Do we know for a fact that The Brain was male?”

  “The girls just referred to him as a boyfriend.”

  “Maybe they were assuming. A girlfriend would explain no birth control.”

  “You just turned up the spotlight on Amanda. Talk about a juicy motive, Alex. Being exposed as gay at her brother’s nuptials.”

  He pushed the brown cabinets back in place. “Time to get this place dusted for prints and DNA.”

  I said, “There goes the neighborhood.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Like the girls said, this is quiet suburbia. The tech van will attract attention. You ready to go public on a street where neighbors are used to complaining?”

  He tapped a foot. “Let’s see if the lab can give me one tech in a low-profile car.”

  “Peggy Cho might welcome the opportunity.”

  He phoned Cho, hung up smiling.

  “Inspired, Alex. She’s finishing up a robbery in Granada Hills, is thrilled to go quote unquote ‘longitudinal,’ can be here in twenty. Meanwhile, let’s see if I can do something about the A-H up on Loma B
runa.”

  * * *

  —

  A phone chat with a North Hollywood lieutenant named Atkins elicited a promise to crack down on the party house.

  I said, “That was easy.”

  “Uniforms have been going out there for months. Each time, there’s immediate compliance so they don’t push it.”

  “Now there’s a change in policy?”

  “Now there’s a change in Ben Atkins’s consciousness. He just remembered a favor I did him, don’t ask.”

  “The power and the glory.”

  “The first is useful, the second is bullshit.”

  * * *

  —

  We returned to the main house. Serena and Claire were back on the floor drinking apricot-colored smoothies.

  Milo told them about Peggy Cho’s impending arrival.

  Serena said, “CSI? Can we watch?”

  Milo said, “Only one tech’s coming and she likes to work alone. We’d actually like to avoid being noticed, period. So no one else in the neighborhood will know.”

  “A girl CSI, cool,” said Serena. “So only us is in on it.”

  “If that’s okay.”

  “Sure—Cee?”

  Claire said, “I can keep secrets. Been doing it my whole life.”

  * * *

  —

  We waited outside for Cho. When she arrived, a drape on a front window lifted and Serena gave a thumbs-up.

  When we got inside, Cho’s nose wrinkled. “My brother rented something like this. Chemical john, not too hygienic.”

  She began to work and we returned outside where Milo slim-jimmed the Honda and used an internal lever to pop the trunk.

  Flares, a spare tire, a jack, a wrench.

  He said, “And here I was expecting the Oxford English Dictionary.”

  Back to the car’s interior. The clothing on the backseat was more casual than the duds in the garage. One pair of jeans; one pair of slim-cut sweats—black, not red; a red sports bra, a red baseball cap with no insignia, white athletic socks banded with red at the top, red-and-white Nikes.

  I pictured Kimbee DaCosta taking a run. Exhilirated by a balmy evening breeze.

  The glove compartment gave up a pair of Ray-Ban aviators in a soft case, a registration slip listing the same address, and one shred of possibility: proof of insurance, a company named BeSure.com.

  Milo closed the car, googled, found the company had gone out of business last year. We returned to the garage.

  Peggy Cho said, “Not much by way of prints, so far, just what look like the same set in the logical places. I can tell because the thumb’s distinctive and I remember it from Saturday.”

  “My victim.”

  Nod. “But not much of her,” said Cho. “Like she was here but she really wasn’t.”

  * * *

  —

  We returned to the Seville. I said, “Where to?”

  He said, “The world of ideas.”

  CHAPTER

  26

  The nearest public library was the Studio City branch on Moorpark, white stucco under a swooping half dome of pale blue. Airy inside, gray carpeting and golden wood furniture and shelves.

  We walked past a sandwich board advertising upcoming events.

  L’Ecole French Conversation Group; Laughter Yoga; Rolfian Deep Tissue Massage as a Pathway to the Center of Consciousness; Baby & Toddler Story-Time.

  Milo said, “Yoga can make you laugh? Yeah, probably, if you saw me in yoga pants.”

  A sprinkle of people sat at tables working laptops and phones. One woman read a book: S&M porn for the middle-aged.

  A single librarian, thin, brunette, around thirty, with sleeve tattoos and black, dime-sized gauges in her elongated earlobes. A slide-in sign in a slotted holder said Stevie L. Dent.

  She’d watched us since we stepped in. When Milo introduced himself, her eyes narrowed. When he showed her Kimbee DaCosta’s photo she shook her head, primed to respond.

  “We don’t give out information on patrons.”

  “As well you shouldn’t. However, this patron is dead.”

  Stevie Dent’s mouth dropped open. “You’re serious.”

  “Nothing but serious. We’re trying to learn what we can about her.”

  “I see…well, I guess you’ll need to prove she’s deceased, Officer. We’re a primary community data hub and our strict policy is guarding against unauthorized release of personal information.”

  “Good policy,” said Milo. “And no problem proving it to you. How about we take you to the morgue? You won’t be allowed to view her body but you can examine her paperwork.”

  Stevie Dent gulped. “Who murdered her?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. We’ve been told by her friends that she used the library. Was it here?”

  Hesitation. Minimal nod. “She came here to read.” As if clarification was necessary. Maybe, in a world of deep tissue massage and hilarious Eastern exercise, it was.

  “How often?”

  “Maybe once a week,” said Dent. “Sometimes less, sometimes more? I really can’t say.”

  “Any particular day or time?”

  “The afternoon. I figured she had a flex job, maybe an actress. Because of how she looked and dressed. All in red.”

  Milo said, “A little theatrical?”

  Stevie Dent shifted in her chair. “That’s an adjective. I’m not judging. All I’m saying is she was possibly used to being noticed. I had a roommate in college who majored in theater and she was like that. Clothes you’d notice.”

  I said, “Did you ever see anyone noticing her?”

  “Never. She sat over there and read and minded her own business.” Pointing to the farthest corner of the main room. Close to the stacks but visible from the desk.

  I said, “What contact did you have with her?”

  “Just to see her come and go.”

  I said, “She didn’t check out books?”

  “No, she just took them from the stacks and put them back. We don’t encourage that, volumes get misfiled, but as far as I know she never caused problems.”

  “What kind of books did she go for?”

  Dent shook her head. “Couldn’t tell you.”

  “Was she ever with someone?”

  “Always by herself.”

  “How long would she stay?”

  “An hour, maybe two?” said Dent. “I wasn’t spying on her. She was upright.”

  Milo said, “In what way?”

  “Sometimes she’d bring her own books and she’d make sure to show them to me inside her backpack. So I’d know she wasn’t stealing.”

  Milo said, “Books to the library, coals to Newcastle.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Did you find that unusual? Bringing her own reading material?”

  “Not at all,” said Dent. “People come with laptops and devices, everyone’s welcome, we want to satisfy a diversity of needs—we just installed a charging station outside for hybrids and electrics.”

  “Making yourselves relevant,” I said.

  “We’ve always been relevant, sir. We just need to market our brand.”

  “Got it. Anything else you can tell us about Kimbee?”

  “That’s her name?”

  “Suzanne Kimberlee DaCosta. Her friends call her Kimbee.”

  “Cute name,” said Dent. “Sweet, fits. She seemed like a sweet girl.”

  We waited.

  She said, “That’s it.”

  Milo said, “Thanks. How’s your Hardy Boys selection?”

  “What’s that?” said Stevie Dent.

  * * *

  —

  I took Moorpark to Van Nuys, headed south, and merged onto the Glen. As we began climbin
g, Milo sent a long text.

  When he was finished, he said, “Today’s bucket list.”

  “What comes after scaling Everest with no supplemental oxygen?”

  “The really challenging stuff,” he said. “Looking for Kimbee’s relatives, following up with Homeland on Garrett, then, depending on what I find, maybe another chat with Garrett when his wife’s not around. That I could use you for. How’s your schedule?”

  “Late afternoon would work best.”

  “Let’s see how it shakes out.” He sat back, stretched his long legs, closed his eyes.

  I said, “If COD on Cassy Booker’s suicide turns out to be heroin and fentanyl, it might bear a closer look.”

  “You called Lopatinski. Any reason for me to take over?”

  “Only if you have a problem with me following up.”

  “None whatsoever, amigo.” His eyes shut again. “While you’re talking chemistry, ask her about Lotz’s—anything on the bloods, has she been able to change their mind about the autopsy.”

  “Will do. I’d also like to look into Pena’s assistant, Pete Kramer. He handled the situation with Booker before he was made redundant.”

  “You think there’s a connection?”

  “I think former employees can be helpful same as exes.”

  “Ah, the fine art of cultivating hostility. Sure, delve.”

  Then he slept.

  * * *

  —

  I dropped him at the station, took Pico to Westwood Boulevard, where I sat in burgeoning traffic that lasted well into the Village. Students jaywalking obliviously didn’t help. Neither did random road work. Trailing the lower rim of the U.’s city-sized campus, I continued the northward trek onto Hilgard and hooked east on Sunset. Every turn slowed the mph, as if some sadistic traffic Satan were churning chrome butter, and by the time I entered the Glen, the trip was long stretches of inertia peppered by momentary spurts of forward movement.

  Faster to walk the three miles to my house, but I was stuck with a combustion engine. I never use the phone while driving but this was driving like prison’s a hotel. I began the search for Peter Kramer.