A Cold Heart

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Anyone else’s blood?”

  “I should be so lucky.”

  “A struggle,” I said. “How big a woman was she?”

  “Small,” he said. “Five-four, hundred and ten.”

  “Any skin under her fingernails?”

  “Not a molecule, but we did find some talcum powder. As in the stuff they use inside rubber gloves.”

  “If that’s what it means,” I said, “it implies careful preparation. How long after hours did it happen?”

  “The show closed at ten, and Julie stayed behind to clean up. One of the co-op artists helped her, a woman named CoCo Barnes. Who I don’t see as a suspect because A, she’s in her seventies and B, she’s the size of a garden troll. Just after eleven, Barnes went back to check and found Julie.”

  “Is she hard of hearing, as well?” I said. “All that thrashing around?”

  “No mystery there, Alex. The gallery’s one big front room, but the bathrooms are out back, separated by a solid-core door that leads to a small vestibule and a storage area that feeds to a rear alley door. Plus the bathroom door’s also solid. Top of that, there was music playing. Not the jazz combo, they’d already packed out. But Julie had brought a stereo system and backup tapes for when the band took breaks. She switched it on while they straightened. Barnes not hearing a thing makes total sense.”

  The smiling woman brought shallow, round stainless-steel trays crowded with small saucerlike dishes. Basmati rice, lentils, green salad, okra, nan bread, tandoori chicken. A ramekin of mango chutney.

  “Nice variety, huh?” said Milo, picking up a chicken wing.

  “You’re assuming the killer got in through the alley. Was the rear door forced?”

  “Nope.”

  “How soon after ten did Julie go back to the bathroom?”

  “CoCo can’t recall. She remembers realizing Julie’d been gone for a while just before she checked. But the two of them had been busy cleaning. Finally, she had to go herself, made her way back there and knocked on the bathroom door and when Julie didn’t answer, she opened it.”

  “Self-locking bathroom?”

  He thought. “Yeah, one of those push-button dealies.”

  “So the killer chose not to lock up.”

  “Or forgot.”

  “Someone who brings gloves and ambushes his victim would remember.”

  He rubbed his face. “Okay, so what’s the insight?”

  “Showing off,” I said. “Aiming for display. You said there was sexual positioning.”

  “Panties down to the ankles, legs spread, knees propped. No bruising or entry. Lying on her back between the toilet and sink. She had to be squeezed in there— it’s not how you’d fall naturally.” He brushed hair off his brow, resumed eating.

  “What was her mood that night?”

  “CoCo Barnes says she was flying high because of how well she’d done.”

  “Six out of fifteen paintings sold.”

  “Apparently that’s great.”

  “Flying high,” I said. “With or without aid?”

  He put down his fork. “Why do you ask?”

  “You said Julie’s career flagged after her initial success. I’m wondering if personal habits got in the way.”

  He picked up what remained of the chicken wing, studied it, began crunching bones. He must’ve ground them fine enough to swallow, because nothing emerged. “Yeah, she had problems. As long as we’re at it, Dr. Clairvoyant, got any stock tips?”

  “Stash your money in the mattress.”

  “Thanks, . . . yeah, back in her New York days, she messed around with cocaine and alcohol. Talked openly about it, all the other co-op artists knew. But everyone I’ve talked to so far says she’d straightened up. I tossed her apartment myself and the most addictive thing in her medicine chest was Midol. Strongest thing in her system the night she was killed, according to the coroner, was aspirin. So it looks like she was flying on self-esteem.”

  “Until someone brought her down,” I said. “And planned the fall carefully. Someone familiar enough with the gallery to know the bathroom would be a relatively safe place to get the job done. Is there any indication Julie arranged to meet someone after the party?”

  “She didn’t mention any appointment to anyone, and her book was clear except for the party.”

  “Posing but no assault. That could be someone wanted to make it look sexual.”

  “That’s the vibe I get. The whole thing is too damned contrived for a rape-murder.”

  “Almost like an art piece,” I said. “Performance art.”

  His jaws bunched.

  I said, “Why’d you take this one?”

  “Personal favor. Her family knew my family back in Indiana. Her dad worked steel with my dad. Actually, he was one of the guys my dad supervised on the line. He’s dead, and so is Julie’s mother, but the dad’s brother— Julie’s uncle— flew out to ID the body, got hold of me, and asked me to take it. Last thing I wanted was something with a personal connection, but what choice did I have? The guy was coming on like I was some goddamn Sherlock.”

  “You’re famous in Indiana.”

  “Oh, joy,” he said, forking a wad of okra, then changing his mind and flipping the gooey mess back on the plate.

  “Was the wire ligament left behind?”

  “No, that was the coroner’s surmise from the marks on her neck. It sliced through the skin, but the killer took the time to remove it. We canvassed the area, found nothing.”

  “More careful planning,” I said. “This is a smart one.”

  “Ain’t we got fun.”

  9

  We finished up and got into my car and Milo directed me to Light and Space’s address on Carmelina, just north of Pico. I knew the neighborhood: storage facilities, auto body shops and small factories, just a stroll from L.A.’s western border with the city of Santa Monica. If Julie Kipper had been strangled a couple of blocks away, her uncle’s appeal to Milo would’ve been futile.

  As I drove, Milo balanced a toothpick between the tips of his index fingers and radar-scanned the passing world with cop’s eyes. “Been a while since we did this, huh?”

  Over the past few months we’d seen each other less and less. I’d put it down to his backlog of cold files and my workload. That was denial. There was mutual isolation going on. “Guess, you didn’t have enough weird ones.”

  “Matter of fact, that’s true,” he said. “Just the usual, and I don’t trouble you with the usual.” A second later: “You doing all right? In general?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “Good.” A block later: “So . . . everything with Allison’s . . . things are working out?”

  “Allison’s wonderful,” I said.

  “Well, that’s good.” He picked his teeth, kept surveilling the city.

  His first contacts with Allison had been professional: wrapping up the Ingalls file. She told me he’d been deft and compassionate.

  His first reaction upon hearing that we were seeing each other had been silence. Then: She’s gorgeous, I’ll grant you that.

  I’d thought: What won’t you grant me? Then I figured I was being touchy and kept my mouth shut. A few weeks later, I cooked dinner for four at my place: a mild March evening, steaks and baked potatoes and red wine out on the terrace. Milo and Rick Silverman, Allison and me.

  The surprise was Allison and Rick knew each other. One of her patients had been brought into the Cedars-Sinai ER after a car wreck and Rick had been the surgeon on duty.

  They talked shop, I played host, Milo ate and fidgeted. Toward the end of the evening, he drew me aside. “Nice girl, Alex. Not that you need my approval.” Sounding as if someone had prodded him to make the speech.

  Since then, he’d seldom mentioned her.

  • • •

  “A few more blocks,” he said. “How’s the pooch?”

  “I hear he’s fine.”

  A moment later: “Robin and I got together a couple of times for
coffee.”

  Surprise, surprise.

  “Nothing wrong with that,” I said.

  “You’re pissed.”

  “Why would I be pissed?”

  “You sound pissed.”

  “I’m not pissed. Where do I turn?”

  “Two more blocks, then a right,” he said. “Okay, I keep my trap Crazy-Glued shut. Even though all these years you’ve been telling me I should express my feelings.”

  “Express away,” I said.

  “That guy she’s with—”

  “He has a name. Tim.”

  “Tim’s a wimp.”

  “Give it up, Milo.”

  “Give what up?”

  “Reconciliation fantasies.”

  “I—”

  “When you saw her was she pining for me?”

  Silence.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  “Right turn here?”

  “Yeah.”

  Light and Space’s neighbors were a plating plant and a wholesaler of plastic signs. The gallery’s warehouse origins were obvious: brick-faced, tar-roofed, three segmented steel overhead doors in front, instead of a window. Black plastic letters above the central door read LIGHT AND SPACE: AN ART PLACE. Stout combination locks secured the outer doors but the one in the middle was held in place by a single dead bolt that responded to a key on Milo’s ring. He pushed, and the metal panel slid upward into a pocket.

  “They gave you a key?” I said.

  “My honest face,” he said, stepping inside and flicking on lights.

  The interior was five thousand square feet or so. Walls painted that vanilla white that brings out the best in art, gray cement floors, twenty-foot ceilings thatched by ductwork, high-focus spotlights fixed upon several large, unframed canvases.

  No furniture except for a desk up front, bearing brochures and a CD player. The nearest wall was lettered in the same black plastic used on the outside of the building.

  Juliet Kipper

  Air and Image

  Same title on the brochures. I picked one up, skimmed a few paragraphs of art-speak, flipped to a black-and-white headshot of the artist.

  Juliet Kipper had posed in a black turtleneck and no jewelry, her face pallid against a gray matte background. Squarish face, not unpretty under chopped, platinum hair. Pale eyes, deep-set and watchful, challenged the camera. Her mouth was grim— tugged down at the corners. High, uneven bangs exposed a furrowed forehead. Concentrating hard. Or burdened. She’d made an effort to look the part of the troubled artist, or it had come naturally.

  Milo was pacing the gallery, setting off echoes as he drifted from painting to painting. I began doing the same.

  • • •

  A smug psycho-prediction of Julie Kipper’s art based upon the cheerlessness of her photo would have fallen flat. She’d created fifteen luminous landscapes, exuberantly colorful and textured, each marked by a master’s control of composition and light.

  Sere arroyos, fog-shrouded, razor-hewn mountains, furious waterfalls emptying to mirror-glass streams, deep green forests pierced by gilded bursts that promised distant discovery. Two ocean nocturnes were livened by cerulean blue heavens and lemon moonglow that turned the tide to froth. Every painting bore the confident brushstrokes of someone who’d known how to move pigment around the canvas. Layers of color seemed to fluoresce; in lesser hands, the work would’ve veered into tourist kitsch.

  Prices ranged from two to four thousand. I examined the canvases with another eye, searching for familiar locales, but finding none. Then I read the title tags: Dream I, Dream II, Dream III . . .

  Juliet Kipper had created her own terrain.

  I said, “To my eye, she was a major talent.” My voice bounced around the near-empty space.

  Milo said, “I like her stuff, too, but what do I know? C’mon, let me show you where she died.”

  The bathroom was too small for both of us, and Milo waited outside as I checked out the grimy spot where Juliet Kipper had been strangled.

  A nasty little space, windowless, dank. Cracked sink, oxidized spigots. Black threads of mold curled in the corners.

  With all that dirt, the series of faint brown smudges on the cement floor would’ve escaped my notice if I hadn’t known better.

  I backed out of the room and Milo showed me the rest of the rear space. A large storage area to the left was filled with unframed paintings and office supplies and random pieces of cheap-looking furniture. The men’s room was no more generous or attractive.

  The gallery’s rear door was striped by a push bolt.

  “Another self-locking mechanism,” I said. “Another deliberate attempt to invite discovery.”

  “Exhibitionist.”

  “But he keeps it in check. Someone very measured.”

  He pushed the bolt, propped the door open with a block of wood left there for that purpose, and we exited the building. An asphalt strip was backed by a ten-foot block wall. A Dumpster took up the far corner.

  “What’s on the other side of the wall?”

  “Parking lot of a plumbing supplies outfit. The ground’s higher on their side— two feet or so, but it would still be a climb. And there’d be no reason for the killer to scale it because all he had to do was walk right in.” He led me around the north side of the gallery and pointed down another tarred passageway that bordered the plating plant and opened to the street. Fumes rose from the plant; the air smelled lethal.

  “Not much security,” I said.

  “Why would a bunch of artists need any?”

  We returned to the propped-open door, and I had a closer look at the lock.

  “Same key as the front?”

  “Yup.”

  “I assume all the co-op members have keys.”

  “Access is no mystery, Alex. Motive is. Like I said, I’ve already talked to all the co-op members, and none of them even remotely twangs my antenna. Fourteen out of twenty are women and of the six guys, three are of CoCo’s vintage. The young ones seem like your basic, head-in-the-clouds creative type. We’re talking the Venice crowd, here. Make art, not war. No one’s being evasive. I ran checks on all of them, anyway. Clean. I’ve been fooled too often to think it can’t happen again, but I’m just not picking up any serious vibes from this bunch.”

  We reentered the gallery, and I had another look at Julie Kipper’s paintings.

  Beautiful.

  I wasn’t sure that meant much in the art world, but it meant something to me, and I wanted to cry.

  I said, “When was she divorced?”

  “Ten years ago. Three years before she moved out here.”

  “Who’s the ex?”

  “Guy named Everett Kipper,” he said. “He used to be an artist, too. They met at Rhode Island, but he switched careers.”

  “She kept his name.”

  “Julie told people the split was amicable. And Kipper was at the opening. Everyone I spoke to said they looked friendly.”

  “What career did he switch to?”

  “Bond broker.”

  “From art to finance,” I said. “Does he pay alimony?”

  “Her bankbook shows monthly deposits of two grand, and she has no other obvious means of support.”

  “So with her gone, he saves twenty-four grand a year.”

  “Yeah, yeah, like any spouse he’s the first suspect,” he said. “I’ve got an appointment to talk to him in an hour.”

  “He’s local?”

  “Lives in South Pasadena, works in Century City.”

  “Why so long to get to him?”

  “We played phone tag. I’m heading over there, next.” He fingered the knot of his tie. “Businesslike enough for Avenue of the Stars?”

  “No business I’d want a part of.”

  As we returned to the Seville, an old blue VW bus drove up to the gallery. SAVE THE WETLANDS sticker on the rear bumper. Above that: ART IS LIFE. A tiny white-haired woman sat low in the driver’s seat. A yellow-and-brown dog on the passenger side stared
at the windshield.