“To who?”
“Someone who might be able to put you up temporarily.”
“I can’t afford to pay one of those Air-Bee-Bees.”
“I know that. Gimme a sec to take a look inside and then I’ll see what I can arrange.”
He loped to the house, emerged a few minutes later, during which Deirdre Seeger clenched and unclenched her hands and fought back tears.
“He seems like a good man. I’ve got a nose for that. Phil was a good man. He always tried his best.”
I said, “Last time you spoke to Lieutenant Sturgis, you mentioned Phil’s books and magazines. Were any of those taken?”
“That junk, why would they be? Besides, they’re out in the garage, which I keep bolted.” Her lips trembled. “I keep the house locked, too, but they just ripped the rear door off its hinges. Phil put a good bolt on the garage because he kept his bikes there plus parts. People tell me it’s worth a lot, one day I’ll sell them but not now, that’s for sure. I can’t have bikers or who-knows-who coming by. Sir, I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe again!”
“You will.”
“How do you know?”
“Experience.”
“Have you ever felt alone and scared?”
It’s called being the child of a raging alcoholic.
I said, “I have.”
“Really?”
I touched her arm. “Absolutely.”
“Well…maybe.”
When she’d remained silent for a while, I said, “Would it be possible for me to get into the garage?”
“You might be interested in the parts?”
“I’d like to take a look around.”
“Is this something that could help catch the bad guys?”
“It could be, Mrs. Seeger. Every little bit helps.”
“Hmm. Okay, you also seem like a nice guy. Nice goes with nice, Phil and I were like that. Everyone said it. He’s nice, she’s nice, adds up to a nice couple.” Sniff. “We were happy together.”
Milo joined us. “All arranged if you’re agreeable, Deirdre.”
“What is?”
“A comfortable bedroom in a nice big house in Los Feliz, totally free.”
“Big empty house? Uh-uh, no way, too spooky.”
“No, there’s a woman living there and she’s got a full-time guard looking after the premises.”
“Why? Why does she need a full-time guard?”
He explained.
Deirdre Seeger said, “Oh…so her mother’s the one Phil tried so hard to figure out? I don’t know…oh, shoot, why not? If Phil cared, that means she was worth caring about and like I just told this other detective, nice goes with nice so the daughter’s probably also a good person.” A beat. “Is she?”
“Lovely person,” said Milo. “She didn’t hesitate to say yes.”
“Los Feliz. I don’t even know how to get there.”
“You have GPS?”
“Hate computers.”
“How about this, then: I’ll drive you and have an officer bring your car.”
“Hmm. Okay, it’s a deal.” As if doing Milo a favor. “Now go talk to Miss Mulhern so she’ll let pack some of my stuff, it’s already a mess on the floor, I’ll just toss it into a suitcase. And I’ll also get the key to the garage for your nice partner.”
Milo looked at me.
I said, “Thought I’d check out Phil’s books and such.”
That answered nothing but he said, “Ah,” and walked Deirdre into the house.
* * *
—
They returned ten minutes later, Milo toting two large suitcases, Deirdre Seeger lacing a bony arm around his sleeve. He loaded the luggage in the trunk of the unmarked after removing a shotgun to make space and placing it in the clamp at the front of the car. Deirdre was guided to a rear passenger seat and left there with the door open.
He jogged back to me.
I said, “What’s it like inside?”
“Like Mulhern said, total trash job, valuables taken, does look real. She’s gonna do the usual: neighborhood canvass, see who has cameras, ask about vehicles that don’t belong, check if there has been anything similar in the Valley.”
He held out a ring of keys, removed one. “That’s her wheels over there, I called Moe and he’s sending Arredondo over.”
Pointing to a silver Honda Civic parked a few yards up. “This one, the Medeco does the garage. Better lock than on the damn house but the back door’s a piece of crap, nothing woulda helped. Now tell me why you want to get in there.”
“Long shot,” I said. “Quick thinking, asking Ellie. Are you hoping for more than good-deed credits?”
“Such as?”
“Ellie and Deirdre get to know each other, Deirdre remembers something.”
“Wish I was that smart but nah, just doing the bleeding-heart thing. Deirdre gets a safe place, Ellie gets some company, maybe it’ll draw her out of her mood.”
I said, “Emotionally smart. Wish I’d thought of it myself.”
“Give yourself good-influence credits.”
No sense wasting time debating but I knew he was wrong. He didn’t need me or anyone else to do the right thing.
He said, “So why the garage?”
* * *
—
Ducking under the tape, keys in hand, with Milo following, I passed through an open wooden gate to the left of the house. The backyard was a meager square that mirrored the front lawn: grass, lemon tree, orange. Boxed by smog-pocked block walls that reduced it even further. A tech kneeled on the rear stoop, dusting the splintered remains of a sixty-year-old service door.
The garage was a single, taking up the left-hand corner of the property. The lock was gamy but I managed to key it open.
Manual door. The hinges groaned. I made sure it was stable in the open position before entering.
In front of me was a three-foot ribbon of empty space backed by clutter. Nothing messy or soiled, just too much stuff in too little space.
A good deal of the area was taken up by hacked-up sections of three Harleys that brought to mind butchered carcasses. The rest consisted of cartons, piles of them, sealed and neatly labeled in black marker. Saddlebags, lids, fenders, fire ext., clutches, brk levers, tappets.
The right-hand wall was lined with bolt-together steel shelves filled with smaller boxes. Screws, bolts, nuts, nails, hand tools.
For all of his rep as a sloppy detective, Phil Seeger had kept it organized at home.
A section of shelves in the far corner was my goal. It took some time clearing a path to reach it.
Floor-to-ceiling magazines that reminded me of my mother’s collection. The way she sat pretending to read when I tried to escape my father’s wrath.
I pushed that lovely memory aside and examined the periodicals. National Geographic, Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest.
What I was after was stacked at the bottom, which took more clearance time and some cramp-inducing kneeling that felt oddly prayerful.
Fifty or so luridly covered magazines, pulpy covers falling apart.
The front pages of a type: screaming headlines and paintings of minimally clad, voluptuous women on the verge of victimhood.
The titles were an exercise in adjective manipulation: True Detective, Shocking Detective Stories, Ace Detective, Amateur Detective, Official Police Detective.
I was prepared to remove the entire stack but Phil Seeger had made my life easy. A small yellow triangle extended from the third magazine from the top.
Corner of a yellow Post-it, !!! written on it in the same black marker.
Third from the top was where you’d stick something you wanted to shield from casual eyes but didn’t want to waste time searching for.
I pulle
d out the issue, careful but unable to prevent a dandruff puff of acid-ruined paper dust.
Dark Detective, June 1976.
Turning to the tabbed page induced another dirt-fall but the interior of the magazine, shielded from the weather, was in surprisingly good shape, print and images still clear.
Bloody Trail of the Lolita Murderess! The Shocking Tale of an Orgy of Forbidden Love and Violence!
In the right-hand margin, Phil Seeger had written: HER!!!
* * *
—
A brief scan gave me the basics of the story.
Martha Maude Hopple, a fifteen-year-old girl from the rural southern tip of Illinois, had teamed up with a thirty-four-year-old ex-con named Langdon “Mike” Leigh and embarked on a four-month, multistate crime rampage. Eight people wounded, including a seven-year-old, plus six fatalities.
Plenty of black-and-white photos to go with the overheated prose.
Mike Leigh glared at the camera, scrawny, jug-eared, and with the flat eyes of a shark and a barely visible wisp of mustache trailing the top of a sneering mouth.
Martha Maude Hopple was equally hostile to the camera, managing to harden an adolescent face still larded with baby fat.
Compressed eyes, flaring nostrils, the barest upturn of lip.
Pretty girl once you got past the anger and the mannish, chopped haircut Mike Leigh had given her as a disguise.
A caption below his arrest photo proclaimed the habitual felon’s intention to “take the rap, she didn’t do nothing.”
A caption below Martha Maude’s portrait quoted her proclamation of innocence and the fact that “he forced me.”
The twitchy partial smile—enjoying a private joke—suggested otherwise.
HER!!!
I didn’t need Seeger to educate me.
Puberty, plastic surgery, and long-term aging can alter appearances radically, but short of that, facial proportions don’t change.
I said, “Look.”
Milo said, “Oh, shit.”
Both of us staring into the smug, psychopathic, teenage face of the woman who’d called herself Dorothy Swoboda.
* * *
—
I’d half expected, half hoped, but my heart rate had kicked up anyway. Milo was breathing fast. I heard his teeth grind.
He took the magazine, examined the title, the photos, the first paragraph of text. A droplet of sweat formed on his brow and rolled down to the magazine, forming a little gray dot on the browning paper. He wiped his face angrily with his hand.
“How the hell did you connect to this?”
“Small steps, nothing dramatic,” I said.
“Screw the modesty. Tell me.”
“When Strattine told us about an older bad girl Benni had fallen in with before she left town I flashed on the Azalea shot and Dorothy being a few years older than the other two women. Then I started thinking about the photo, itself.”
I brought up the image on my phone. “She’s apart from the other two. Not just physically, but emotionally. Apart from Des Barres, too.”
“Everyone’s having a good time except her.”
“Grim,” I said. “Same expression as in the forest shot with Stan Barker.” I tapped the article. “Same as this, back when she was fifteen and committing violent crimes.”
He studied all the screens. “Oh, man, once you point it out it’s obvious…I’m seeing more than grim. That’s perp anger—those eyes. Still, how’d you figure to find the story here?”
“Like I said, a long shot. You know I’ve been wondering on and off about all the accidents. Including Phil Seeger dying on his bike shortly after he retired. What if he’d learned something as a private citizen and died because of it? Then Deirdre mentioned he’d collected detective pulps. Why would a cop read about crime? So maybe he went digging into the past and discovered something. The final straw was the break-in. Maybe just a burglary, but what if it wasn’t? Long as we were here, I figured couldn’t hurt to look.”
“How your mind works…so our gal is Martha Maude. Who the hell’s Dorothy Swoboda?”
“Most likely the usual,” I said. “Name on a gravestone. When the investigation started, I looked her up and the only thing I found was a woman who’d died in the 1800s.”
“Me, too,” he said. “Didn’t figure it was worth mentioning.” He swabbed his face again. “It’s like a sauna in here, let’s get the hell out.”
The temperature felt fine to me. I said, “Sure. Want the magazine?”
“You carry it, I might drop it.”
CHAPTER
32
Deirdre Seeger was slumped in the backseat of the Impala, head down, mouth open, snoring.
People under stress do that, the body trying to recoup energy. Victims and suspects. Experienced detectives know that the guiltier the suspect, the easier the slumber.
Milo retrieved his attaché case from the front passenger seat. Moving the shotgun gingerly, even though the safety was on. Good habits pay off.
Popping the case, he took the magazine from me and laid it atop the blue file folder, shut the case, and placed it horizontally on the front seat. Leaving the door open, he motioned me away from the car, strode to the taped walkway, and crooked a thumb at the house.
“Looks like a bona fide burglary but maybe not if they were looking for Seeger’s source material.”
“That would be my bet.”
“Who would know I talked to Deirdre about Seeger? No one I can think of. Or am I missing something? I could understand if I’d said something to Val Des Barres. She phones her brothers, they dispatch someone. Or she handles it herself via Sabino, guy’s got a record, busting a door and rooting around wouldn’t be a leap.”
I said, “Actually, you did talk to one person about Seeger and a missing woman from the mansion. Someone with police experience who’d know to make a break-in look real.”
“Who—” He went pale. “Galoway? That was…four, five days ago.”
“Four.”
“Plenty of time to plan. Shit.”
He stomped away, paced, returned, mopping his face repeatedly. “Bad-guy detective? That’s a nightmare scenario…goddammit. Anyone else I blabbed to and forgot about?”
“Nope.”
“Galoway,” he said. “Mr. Helpful.”
I said, “Pseudo-helpful. He’s the one who directed us to Des Barres, which could’ve been a distraction from focusing on Dorothy Martha Maude, whoever.”
“He knows her?”
“Be worth finding out. The timing works. Galoway caught the case shortly after Seeger retired, and we know they talked. He made sure to let us know Seeger was incompetent and had learned nothing. Another misdirection. Now we know Seeger had stayed curious and found the article. That was you, what would your next step be?”
“Call the new guy…the Harley…Jesus. So Dorothy’s alive and well and evil?”
“Keep turning the prism,” I said, “and there’s no real evidence she died. Burnt-up body, no DNA back then, quick cremation. If so, who got immolated in the Cadillac? Likely another woman who lived at the mansion. We know of two others who went missing, but there could be more. And one more thing: Martha Maude grew up in a rural area, being comfortable on a horse doesn’t seem a giant step.”
“Mommy’s a psychopath.” His big chest heaved and swelled. “Just what Ellie needs to boost her mental health.”
He walked away, paced past two houses and returned. “I need time to clear my head and make sense out of this, Alex. Meanwhile, let’s get Deidre out of here and in a safe place.”
He turned grim. “You think her being with Ellie is safe?”
I said, “What’s the alternative? A random motel? Boudreaux seems to know what he’s doing.”
“Yeah, he’s solid, I’ll tell him what he
needs to know.” Wolfish, tooth-baring smile. “Guess the only alternative would be my place. Or yours, but who knows if she likes dogs?”
* * *
—
The shotgun and the attaché case rode in front. Deirdre Seeger and I shared the backseat.
I said, “Everything okay?”
Her look said, What a stupid question.
Milo drove more slowly than usual. No one spoke all the way to Hollywood.
When he drove north on Western, Deirdre said, “This is a lousy neighborhood.”
Milo held up a wait and see finger and drove faster.
“Slow down. I get carsick.”
“Yes. Ma’am.”
Extruding the words like a machine. If she heard the tension, she didn’t let on.
When he turned off Los Feliz into the luxury enclave, she said, “Big houses but surrounded by a lousy neighborhood. You’re sure it’s safe?”
“Movie stars live here.”
“They’re not exactly good citizens.” A beat. “Which ones?”
“Not sure about now but back in the day Rudolph Valentino had a mansion not far from here. And Cecil B. DeMille built a bunch of houses.”
“I liked The Ten Commandments.” Folding her arms across her chest, she relapsed into silence.
* * *
—
When we were a block away, Milo texted Mel Boudreaux. We pulled up to find Boudreaux waiting in the doorway, filling most of the space. He wore a tight black T-shirt, black cargo pants, black sneakers, sidearm again displayed in a black mesh holster.
Deirdre Seeger said, “Him? He’s…bl—big. That’s a good thing. I guess.”
“He’s extremely well trained.”
“If you say so.”
Milo carried her bags and I followed with Deirdre. During the brief walk to the house, her elbow bumped my arm several times. Balance problems or one of those people with hazy concepts of personal space.
Boudreaux said, “Ma’am, welcome. We’re going to take care of you.”
Serpentine: An Alex Delaware Novel Page 24