A Cold Heart

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Sum my life up in one sentence, huh?”

  “A few sentences, sir.”

  Kipper unbuttoned his suit jacket. “We met right after we got to Rhode Island. Instant chemistry, within a week were living together. After graduation, we moved to New York and got married— fourteen years ago. Four years later, we got divorced.”

  “After the divorce, what was your contact with your ex-wife?” Milo’d avoided using Julie’s name in Kipper’s presence. Emphasizing the severed relationship.

  Kipper said, “Our contact was occasional phone calls, even more occasional dinners.”

  “Friendly phone calls?”

  “For the most part.” Kipper’s finger massaged the watch face. “I see where this is going. Which is fine. My buddies told me I’d be looked at as a suspect.”

  “Your buddies?”

  “Some of the other brokers.”

  “They have experience with the criminal justice system?”

  Kipper laughed. “Not yet. No, they watch too much TV. I suppose I’m wasting my time telling you I had nothing to do with it.”

  Milo smiled.

  Kipper said, “Do what you have to do but know this: I loved Julie— first as a woman, later as a person. She was my friend, and I’m the last one who’d ever hurt her. I have no reason to hurt her.” He slid his chair back several inches, crossed his legs.

  “Friendly phone calls about what?” said Milo.

  “Letting each other know what we were up to,” said Kipper. “And I guess what you’d term business calls, too. Around tax time. I needed to account the alimony and any other money I sent Julie. And sometimes she needed extra.”

  “How much extra?”

  “A bit here and there— maybe another ten, twenty grand a year.”

  “Twenty would be almost double her alimony.”

  “Julie wasn’t good about money. She tended to get into tight spots.”

  “Trouble living within her means?”

  Kipper’s big hands lowered to the granite surface of the table and lay flat. “Julie wasn’t good with money because she didn’t care about it.”

  “So in total, you were giving her nearly forty thousand a year. Generous.”

  “I drive a Ferrari,” said Kipper. “I don’t expect any merit badges.” His body shifted forward. “Let me explain Julie’s history to you: Right after graduation she had an initial burst of success. Got placed in a high-quality group show at a midtown gallery and sold every single painting. She got great critical notice, too, but guess what: It didn’t mean she made serious money. Her canvases were priced from eight to twelve hundred dollars, and by the time the gallery owner and her agent and every other gimme-type took their cuts, there was maybe enough to buy lunch at Tavern on the Green. The gallery kicked her price up to fifteen hundred a picture and told her to get productive. She spent the next six months working. Twenty-four hours a day, or it seemed that way.” He winced.

  “Tough regimen,” said Milo.

  “More like self-destruction.”

  “She have help keeping up her energy?”

  “What do you mean?” said Kipper.

  “We know about her drug problem. Is that when it started? Cocaine can be an energizer.”

  “Coke,” said Kipper. “She was into it way before that— in college. But yes, it got intense when the gallery demanded she make instant art at an inhuman pace.”

  “What pace was that?”

  “A dozen canvases within four months. A crap-monger could have splashed that together, no problem, but Julie was meticulous. Ground her own pigments, laid on layer after layer of paint, alternated with her own special glazes and varnishes. Was so picky that she sometimes made her own brushes. Could spend weeks making brushes. And frames. Each one had to be original— perfect for the painting. Everything had to be perfect. Everything became a project of immense significance.”

  “Her current works have no frames,” I said.

  “I saw that,” said Kipper. “Asked her about it. She said she was concentrating on the image itself. I told her it was a good idea.” One hand closed in a fist. “Julie was brilliant, but I don’t know if she would have ever achieved real success.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she was too talented. What passes for art now is pure shit. Video-installations, ‘performances,’ crap put together with ‘found materials’— which is art-bullshit language for garbage-picking. Nowadays, if you staple a dildo to a pop bottle you’re Michelangelo. If you actually know how to draw, you’re disparaged. Add to that Julie’s absolute lack of business sense and . . .” Kipper’s shoulders sagged. His black suit didn’t pop a wrinkle.

  “Not of this world,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Kipper. “She wasn’t keyed into her surroundings. Take the money thing, for example. I tried to get her to invest some of the alimony in low-risk bond funds. If she’d started investing back when I did, she’d have built up a nice little nest egg, could have plied her art in the way she wanted. Instead, she had to lower herself by doing commercial gigs.”

  “She didn’t like commercial art.”

  “She hated it,” said Kipper. “But she refused to take the steps that would’ve freed her. I won’t say she was masochistic, but Julie definitely had a thing for suffering. She was never really happy.”

  “Chronically depressed?” I said.

  “Except when she was painting.”

  “Let’s go back for a moment,” said Milo, thumbing through his pad. “The New York gallery that took her on— the résumé on her brochure lists The Anthony Gallery—”

  “That’s the one. Bloodsucking Lewis Anthony.”

  “Not a nice man?”

  “Few of them are,” said Kipper.

  “Gallery owners.”

  “Owners, agents, collectors.” Both of Kipper’s big hands had balled. “The so-called art world. We’re talking profoundly ungifted people— people so far from personal talent they wouldn’t recognize it if it chomped their gonads— living off the fruit of the gifted. Leeches on the body artistic. That’s what Julie and I called them. Talent’s a curse. Criminals get judged by their peers, but not artists.”

  His smooth, round face was deeply flushed.

  Milo said, “So Lewis Anthony pressured Julie to produce, and that kicked her coke problem up a notch.”

  Kipper nodded. “She used coke and speed to keep herself working, booze and tranqs to bring herself down. Unless I forced her to eat and sleep, she didn’t. It was hellish. I started staying away. Which was easy because I had my new career. Working my way up the corporate ladder and all that.”

  “Were you into drugs?”

  Kipper hesitated. “I dabbled,” he said, finally. “Everyone did, back then. But I never got hooked. I’m not an addictive personality. That probably has something to do with the lack of talent— not enough intensity up here.” Touching his crew cut.

  “The old genius-insanity link?” said Milo.

  “Let me tell you, that’s true. Show me a brilliant artist, and I’ll show you one serious basket case. And yes, I’m including Julie in that. I loved her, she was a terrific person, but her resting state was turmoil.”

  Milo tapped the pad. “Tell me more about Lewis Anthony.”

  “What’s to tell? The bastard pressured Julie, Julie doped herself to the gills and produced three canvases. Anthony berated her, sold all three, remitted a pittance back to Julie and told her he couldn’t handle her unless she acquired a better work ethic. She came home, OD’d, and ended up in rehab.”

  Kipper’s fingers opened and clawed black granite. “I’ve always felt guilty about that. Not being there when she needed me. When she came home with the check from Anthony, and I saw how puny it was, I went nuts— just lost it. Six months, watching her self-destruct— she lost twenty pounds preparing for that show— and all she had to show for it was two thousand bucks. I told her she was the chump of all chumps and went out to have a beer. When I came home, I found
her stretched out in bed and couldn’t revive her. I thought she was dead. I called the paramedics, and they took her to Beth Israel. A few days later, she was transferred to the psych ward at Bellevue.”

  “Involuntary commitment?” I said.

  “For the first few days, whatever the law was. But she stayed there even after she could’ve left. Told me it was better being in the nut ward than living with someone who didn’t care. What could I say? I’d bailed on her. Bellevue cleaned her up and sent her home, and I tried to reconnect with her. It was like talking to a block of stone. She couldn’t work— no spark— and that freaked her out. She started doping again, we fought about it. Eventually, I moved out. I was the one who filed the divorce papers, but Julie didn’t fight it— didn’t do a damn thing to protect herself financially. I volunteered to give her half my income at the time as alimony, which was a thousand bucks a month. My attorney thought I was nuts.” Kipper ran his hand through his crew cut. “As things got better for me, I upped it.”

  “Two thousand a month,” said Milo.

  “I know,” said Kipper. “For a guy with a Ferrari, that’s bullshit. But Julie refused to take any more. I offered to rent her a nice house— somewhere she could have a studio. But she insisted on living in that dump.”

  “The two of you stayed attached.”

  “Like I said, we had dinner once in a while.” Kipper hung his head. “Sometimes we made love— I know that sounds weird, but sometimes chemistry reared its nasty little head. Maybe we were meant for each other. Wouldn’t that be a laugh?”

  “A laugh?”

  “Living in a weird limbo,” said Kipper. “I didn’t want to cut her out of my life, why would I? And now she’s gone. And you’re wasting your time, here.”

  “Sir—”

  “Hey,” said Kipper, “you’ve got carte blanche. Come over to my house and tear up the fucking floorboards. But once you’re through with that, would you do me a favor and get serious about nailing the motherfucker who really did it? And if you do get him, tell him he’s a fucking savage who cut a chunk of beauty out of this fucking world.”

  Shouting. Red as a beet, the outsized hands white-knuckled.

  Kipper exhaled and slumped.

  Milo said, “I have a few more questions.”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

  “You attended the opening—”

  “I attended and bought two paintings.”

  “Your ex-wife didn’t mind that?”

  “Why would she?”

  “Being independent and all that,” said Milo, “weren’t you worried she’d view it as charity?”

  “I would’ve been worried, except that Julie and I had discussed the paintings a while back. I’d seen them at her place and told her I really wanted two. She wanted to give them to me for free, but I refused. I said she should hang them at the show, red-dotted. As a strategic move— this is hot stuff, come and get it.”

  “How late did you stay at the opening?”

  “Until a half hour before closing.”

  “Which would be?”

  “Nine-thirty, -forty.”

  “Where’d you go after you left?”

  “Ah,” said Kipper. “The alibi. Well, I don’t have one. I got into my car and took a drive. Sepulveda to San Vicente, over to Seventh and down into Santa Monica Canyon. I know the area because there’s a gas station that sells 100-octane hi-test gas and a supplement that boosts it to 104. There’s one in Pasadena, too. I thought of taking a beach drive, decided I wanted more curves— the Ferrari loves curves— turned around, took Sunset all the way to Benedict Canyon, had myself a little spin.”

  “Hi-test,” said Milo. “How much do you pay for that?”

  “Right now it’s four-fifty a gallon.”

  Milo whistled.

  Kipper said, “The Ferrari thrives on it.”

  “What model?”

  “Testarossa.”

  “Work of art,” said Milo.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Kipper. “High-maintenance. Like everything else in my life.”

  10

  “The grieving ex-husband,” said Milo, as I drove away from Century City, drifting past the ABC entertainment center.

  “Angry ex-husband. Big, strong hands and a temper, and once he starts talking about the art world he heats up.”

  “Leeches on the body artistic.”

  “And Julie remained in the body artistic.”

  “He bothers you.”

  “He’s worth looking at,” I said. “Smart, powerful. And he’d been to the gallery. Even by his account his relationship with Julie was convoluted. A marriage full of upheaval, off-and-on physical intimacy ten years after the divorce. When intimates want to fake sexual assault, they generally fail to go all the way. Pulling the panties down, not off. Kipper claims he had to talk Julie into taking money, but who knows. He could also be a very frustrated guy. He used to have serious artistic aspirations. Letting go of dreams isn’t always easy.”

  “Even with a Ferrari to soothe the angst?”

  “As he reminded us three times. A Ferrari that he pumps full of high-octane gas. Think about that: He pays a hefty premium to beef up an already high-powered engine. We’re talking an aggressive guy. Toss in a difficult ex-wife whom he continued to sleep with and money issues—”

  “Julie told the other artists the split was amicable.”

  “How well did they know her? Did she tell anyone about her suicide attempts?”

  “No,” he said. “She talked about being in rehab, but didn’t mention that. So, what, Julie reversed the terms and started hitting on Kipper for big money?”

  “Maybe she got tired of the starving-artist bit, stepped back, and realized how well Kipper was doing and decided to up her own lifestyle. Kipper could’ve liked being generous when he was calling the shots. Julie’s getting assertive would’ve been something else, completely. There was a good reason for Julie to take stock. She was entering middle age, and even her second try at art fame hadn’t made headlines. I know she sold paintings, but Light and Space isn’t a New York gallery, and the prices of her canvases haven’t gone up much since she started out. In fact, in twenty-year-old dollars, they’ve dropped. So perhaps reality finally sank in: making it solely as a painter was going to be a struggle, and she was tired of scratching by. Kipper alluded to her living in a dump. How bad was it?”

  “By his standards, a dump. By mine, basic. Two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, the east end, off Pico. The living room was her studio. Despite being an artist, she wasn’t much for interior decorating.”

  “That’s the tough part of Santa Monica,” I said. “Gangs, drug traffic.” Thinking about Robin’s place on Rennie. Tim Plachette was a nice man, a mild man, always courteous to me. Would he be of any use if things got tough?

  Milo was saying, “. . . I’ll talk to the neighbors again. Take a closer look at hubbie.”

  “See what you can learn about his financial situation. Sometimes investment pros get overconfident and reckless with their funds. If Kipper leveraged heavily on a deal and lost some big bucks, ditching his obligation to Julie might be tempting.”

  “Strong hands,” he said. “He’s a little guy but still bigger than Julie. He’d be tough enough to overpower her in that bathroom.”

  “Maybe he didn’t have to overpower her. She trusted him. That would’ve added to the element of surprise.”

  “Trusted him to what?”

  “He told us they were still having sex.”

  “A tryst in that scuzzy place?”

  “I’ve heard of stranger things,” I said.

  “So have I, but . . . I think your mind’s gotten eviler than mine.”

  I made a U-turn and headed back to Santa Monica Boulevard. “When Julie’s uncle asked you to take the case, did you talk to him about her?”

  “Sure.”

  “Was he aware of her background?”

  “To him she was just the sweet, talented niece who’d gone off to
New York. Far as her family’s concerned, she was Rembrandt.”

  “Nice to be appreciated.”

  “Yeah.” A moment later, he said, “Strong hands. Whoever strangled Julie didn’t rely on their hands, they used a wire.”

  “Good way to keep the hands clean,” I said. “In addition to using gloves. Reduces the risk of leaving trace evidence.”

  “Clean hands.”

  “In a manner of speaking.”