“What did she ask you to do?” Davie asked.
“Find Blasdel. He owed her money, but she didn’t want the police involved because she was embarrassed. She’d loaned him a lot of cash and she just wanted it back.”
For a person who barely remembered the job a moment ago, Salinas suddenly had amazing recall of the details. “Did you locate him?”
“Of course I did. I used to be a cop. The guy wasn’t hard to find. I did a fifteen-minute search and gave Gerda his phone number. That’s when she told me she couldn’t pay until she got her cash back. What I did for her wasn’t worth a lot of money, so I figured she was good for it.”
Her trust level was unusually high for a former cop. Davie would never have accepted that deal. “Did you do any surveillance of Blasdel or stake out the gunstore?”
“I told you before, I searched through a few databases. I should have had Gerda sign a contract before I started the work, but I was new back then and I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“Did she ever pay your fee?”
Salinas studied her red-polished fingernails. “No. She asked if I’d consider bartering—my services for hers. It wasn’t worth pursuing.”
Davie studied the woman’s well-manicured eyebrows. “So you never took her up on the offer?”
Salinas seemed to wrestle with the answer. “Maybe once. A facial. It was a mistake, I know. When my boss found out I’d done work for free, he was furious. I thought he was going to fire me. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to him. He might still give me the boot. That’s how mad he was.”
She assumed Salinas had used the company’s database subscriptions to access Blasdel’s information and probably did so on company time. Then she accepted payment for herself in the form of beauty services. Davie doubted one long-ago misstep would jeopardize her job now unless there had been other lapses in judgment since then. For all she knew, Salinas had a thriving side business she ran through her employer’s office.
“Ms. Pittman told me after you found Blasdel you followed him and watched his store, possibly for up to a week.”
Salinas struggled to swallow. “I may have driven past the store to verify the address, but if you’re asking did I sit in my car with a pair of binoculars, the answer is no.”
Davie nodded. “Do you have the date of that drive-by?”
She clutched her cross necklace. “I’m not sure I even made a note of it. It didn’t seem important.”
Davie leaned forward in the chair. “Did you remember seeing anything unusual at the store?”
She frowned as she inspected a chip in one of her fingernails. “What do you mean by unusual?”
“Perhaps a person running away from the location? Police activity?”
“I don’t remember anything like that. When my boss told me to back off the case, I did.” She checked her watch again and stood. “I’m sorry, but I have to get ready for my client.”
In a perfect world Salinas would have witnessed what happened the day Sara Montaine died. Now Davie would have to dig deeper into the minutiae of the case because she was convinced that eventually the evidence would show Montaine had been murdered.
Davie stood, too, and met Salinas’s gaze. “By the way, why did you leave the Beverly Hills PD?”
Salinas’s expression hardened. “I got a better offer.”
Davie doubted it was that simple. She handed Salinas her business card and invoked the standard line that ended most of her interviews. “If you think of anything I forgot to ask you, please give me a call.”
On the walk back to the car, Davie asked Vaughn what he thought of Salinas.
“What a babe! Not as hot as you, but a close second. You think she likes homemade Fagiano Col Risotto?”
Davie grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. “I’m serious, Jason. What did you think?”
He squinted as he met her gaze. “She was nervous. She knows way more than she told you about Gerda Pittman and Jack Blasdel.”
On the ride back to the station, Davie thought about Bear’s old admonition—you can love the job but the job will never love you. Davie loved her job. It would be difficult to leave it. Every day she put on her badge she thought of Alice Stebbins and how challenging life must have been for the LAPD’S first female police officer. The department hired Alice in 1910, forty-one years after they started patrolling the streets of L.A. Davie was grateful to her for paving the way.
Natalie Salinas had left the Beverly Hills Police Department. A career in law enforcement wasn’t for everybody, but to Davie, that still made her a quitter. She had a feeling her partner was right. Salinas was also a liar.
18
As soon as Davie and her partner entered the squad room, Giordano marched toward her, clutching a fistful of papers.
“When one of my peeps is assaulted, I expect a call,” he said. “Day or night. So, I’m wondering why I had to hear about what happened last night from the captain.”
Davie glanced at her partner just as he ducked his head behind the partition wall to avoid any fallout that might drift his way.
“It was late,” she said. “I was fine.”
“I read the report. You said you were fine. But now I’m looking at that bump on your head and I’m thinking maybe you aren’t so fine after all. You should have called me.”
Giordano was her boss, so she swallowed the urge to defend herself. “Got it.”
He walked toward his desk. Over his shoulder he said, “Don’t let it happen again. Capisce?”
“Capisce.”
Davie understood Giordano’s concern. He felt responsible for every member of his team. What he didn’t grasp was that her father had also been an LAPD detective, and Bear had his own set of rules, the first being Thou shall not whine. Her father had trained her to rely on her instincts and not to ask for help unless she’d exhausted all options on her own. But Bear was not her D-3, so bringing his philosophy into the mix was counterproductive.
Davie settled into her desk chair. While she waited for the call from prison officials about the Felix Malo interview, she searched for information on Jack Blasdel. Striker had offered to help locate him, but he was busy with his own cases and she couldn’t afford to wait. Two more days had passed with no new homicides in Pacific Division. That gave her space to keeping investigating Sara Montaine’s death, but a ticking clock hung around her neck like a giant albatross. She was under pressure to make progress or get bounced from the case.
Blasdel was a man who scammed money from gullible divorcees like Gerda Pittman, so he was probably guilty of other capers, too. First Davie checked the Wanted Person System. Blasdel didn’t have any outstanding warrants. He also had no restraining orders issued against him, no California driver’s license, and no cases pending with the District Attorney’s office. He’d once applied for a gaming license from the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to work in Atlantic City, but Davie couldn’t tell if he’d ever landed a job. Gerda Pittman mentioned a billionaire he’d met there, but without the man’s name Davie wasn’t sure how that made finding Blasdel easier.
Blasdel once had a Florida driver’s license, but that had expired over a year ago. She studied the old photo—sour expression, sparse hair, and a scar above his thin lips. She wondered what Gerda Pittman had found attractive about him. It must be true what people said—there’s someone out there for everybody.
Blasdel didn’t have a criminal record, but that could just mean he’d never been caught. Maybe he’d talked his way out of trouble before it became a police matter, as he’d done after scamming Gerda out of her fifty grand. But trouble had touched his life. Three of his businesses had failed, all as he’d drifted from state to state. Court records revealed bankruptcies for a used car dealership in Missouri, a carwash in Florida, and Black Jack Guns & Ammo in L.A. She gave Blasdel credit for his entrepreneurial sp
irit, but his business skills left much to be desired.
Opening a gunstore took money. The inventory alone had to have cost a bundle. After the two previous bankruptcies, he must have struggled to pull together enough cash or credit to close the deal. Then along came Gerda Pittman and that romantic Mexican cruise. The Palm Springs condo purchase had either fallen through or it was a lie from the beginning. Gerda’s fifty grand made the gunstore purchase possible. Still unanswered was how he’d raised the capital to buy his other businesses.
Davie had grown stiff from sitting at the computer. She stood and rotated her shoulder in a stretch. It still hurt. She realized the injury could jeopardize her running program. Giordano had just made a fresh pot of coffee, so she joined him at the credenza behind his desk, waiting as he filled her cup.
“What’s happening with the Montaine case?” he said.
Davie was relieved he no longer seemed angry with her. She told him about the meeting with Robert Montaine and what he’d said about the watercolor Sara had donated to Four Paws.
“I don’t know the value of Montaine’s estate,” she said, “but I suspect it’s substantial. It was a petty thing for him to do.”
“You think the stepson killed her?”
Davie took a sip of her coffee and considered his question. “They were estranged and he all but admitted he wanted her dead. He was in New York when she died, so he didn’t pull the trigger, but he could have hired somebody to do the job. There was a lot of money at stake. Maybe he wanted his inheritance sooner rather than later.”
Giordano returned to his desk. “Good stuff. Work faster.”
She returned to her computer to search for Jack Blasdel. After thirty minutes, she finally located him through a fictitious business license he’d registered at the L.A. County Clerk’s office a few months before. He was now hawking mani-pedis at Salon de Manucure. She glanced around the squad room and saw her partner walking out the back door with a Deputy City Attorney from the Airport Court. She considered asking somebody else to go with her, but instead she glanced at her ragged cuticles and decided they could use attention. She signed out and headed to the San Fernando Valley.
19
Salon de Manucure operated out of a building on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. Despite the fancy French name, the shop wasn’t exactly a destination for the Avenue des Champs-Élysées crowd.
The place was a small, no-frills rectangular room with four reclining chairs. Each station had a nail dryer connected by extension cords to a socket extender that was plugged into a wall outlet. A customer with her feet submerged in a plastic tub of water occupied one of the stations. At another, a petite Asian woman brushed teal polish on a customer’s toenails. Two other manicurists lounged on chairs in the rear of the store. They both smiled and beckoned to Davie, competing for her business.
In the back corner, two chairs were shoved against a round table that displayed items for sale—tarot cards, crystals, and books on Wiccan rituals. A crystal ball lit from below was plugged into the same socket extender. A sign pinned to the back wall announced tarot card readings were available by appointment on Saturdays between ten and two, cost—sixty bucks for forty-five minutes. She doubted Blasdel did double-duty as a psychic or he would have foreseen Gerda Pittman’s bulldog pursuit of her stolen money.
One of the manicurists walked up to her and pointed to a carousel filled with nail polishes. “You pick color.” She nodded to an empty station. “Sit here.”
Davie identified herself and told her she was looking for Jack Blasdel. The woman frowned as she glanced toward a back room closed off by a plastic shower curtain. “He no here. What you want?”
Davie heard glass shattering and moved toward the sound. As she pushed back the curtain, she saw a man standing over a broken bowl. She recognized Jack Blasdel from the photo on his expired Florida driver’s license—five-nine with sparse hair and a scar on the left side of his thin lips. His face had aged since the photo but not that much. He looked like a throwback to the 1980s: a paunch straining the seams of his partially buttoned silk shirt, pleated trousers with no back pockets, and a thick gold chain around his neck.
Blasdel’s eyes widened as he stared at her. He must have heard her introduction to the manicurist, because a moment later he ran toward the rear door. Davie was taken aback. She shouted for him to stop, but he kept going.
She bolted into the alley behind the store in time to see Blasdel jogging toward a side street perpendicular to Ventura Boulevard. She didn’t know where he was headed but doubted he’d turn left and risk having to run through the traffic light.
Her shoulder ached as she vaulted over a waist-high cinderblock wall and crossed the parking lot of a pizza parlor before reaching the street. Her weapon was still holstered, even though she was ready to break leather if needed. Chasing a man on a public street with a gun in her hand was risky. She could accidentally shoot a bystander or herself. Even worse, when she caught up with Blasdel she would have only one free hand to restrain him.
Blasdel ran past an apartment building a half block in front of her. Davie picked up speed until she grew closer. It was easier to push in the direction of his momentum than to grab his coat and pull him backward, so she planted her hands on his back and shoved, reigniting the pain in her shoulder. Blasdel stumbled onto his hands and knees. His face was flushed. His skin looked gray and greasy from sweat. He was clutching his heart and breathing hard. The last thing she needed was for him to flatline on the sidewalk in front of her.
“Stand up,” she said. “Put your hands on the side of the building and spread your legs.”
Blasdel’s voice was high-pitched and whiny. “Okay, okay, I give up. But I could use a break here, Detective. I know I promised my ex-wife I’d pay her as soon as I had the money, but if you arrest me, I can’t work and she’ll never get a dime from me.”
“I’m not here because you’re a deadbeat.”
He grunted as he struggled to his feet. “Then why are you hassling me?”
An elderly man with a cane stopped to gawk. Davie gestured for him to move along before returning her focus to Blasdel.
“Hands on the building.” She kicked his legs apart and patted him down but found no weapon. “Tell me about Sara Montaine.”
He craned his neck to make eye contact. “Sara who?”
Davie could barely hear his breathy response over the traffic noise. “We can talk about it here or I can hook you up and take you to the station. Your choice.”
He hesitated before answering. “Okay, maybe the name rings a bell. She’s that dead chick, right? The one who killed herself in my store? She ruined me. I never want to hear her name again.”
“Memory’s a strange thing, isn’t it? Coming back so quickly.” Davie snapped her fingers to emphasize the point.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
A nerdy-looking teenage boy slowed to watch the action. Davie turned so he could see her holstered gun. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” He bolted across the street.
“Can I put my hands down?” Blasdel asked. “People are watching. It’s bad for my reputation.”
Davie doubted he had much of a reputation to protect. “Turn around slowly. Don’t move away from the wall.”
Blasdel turned toward her and straightened the collar of his shirt. “I don’t have anything to hide. I told the cops everything back then. Nothing’s changed.”
“Let’s head back to your shop and go over the details again. Maybe the exercise will jog loose a few more of those repressed memories.”
“No,” he said, his tone panicky. “We can’t go back there. I don’t want my girls to see me with the police. I’ve got a business to protect. Look, there’s a coffee shop down the street. It’s a pit. Nobody ever goes there. We can talk in private.”
Davie weighed the pros and co
ns of going to the cafe with him. She didn’t have backup but she’d patted Blasdel down and knew he wasn’t armed. He seemed harmless. The worst-case scenario was he’d try to run again. The best-case outcome was he’d be in a comfortable location and more apt to give her information that helped the investigation.
20
Davie followed Blasdel to a hole-in-the-wall cafe with rickety wooden tables and chairs. He purchased a cup of coffee from the kid at the counter while Davie avoided touching the sticky tabletop. When he sat down, she glanced at his chipped ceramic mug and imagined mutant strains of germs trapped in its crevices. She’d postpone coffee for some in her own cup at the station.
“Tell me about the day Sara Montaine died,” she said.
Davie listened as Blasdel slowly recited details of what had happened. Halfway into the story, she realized it all sounded very familiar. He was using almost the exact language from the statement he’d given to Ralph Sarlos a year ago. Maybe the trauma of Montaine’s death was indelibly imprinted on his brain or else Blasdel had rehearsed the story so often it was committed to memory.
Davie already knew the answer to her next question but asked it anyway, just to see what he’d say. “You said you were talking on the phone to a vendor that day. Who was it?”
He seemed taken aback by her question. “You expect me to remember that? It’s been a year. What the hell difference does it make now?”
“You seem to remember every other detail about that day.”
“I don’t remember that one.”
“Let me jog your memory. Gerda Pittman? You told Detective Sarlos she sold you cleaning products.” Davie paused to let that sink in.
“I don’t remember her.”
“Interesting. She said you two were lovers.”
Blasdel’s eyes darted left, right, and back to center. “Our relationship was over. I gave the detective her name. Isn’t that enough? What happened between us was nobody else’s business.”
The Second Goodbye Page 9