Obsession

by Jonathan Kellerman

  She laughed. “Know a judge who’d sign a warrant based on that? Not that I’ve got a place to search.”

  I said, “There’s another candidate for Mary’s son. Blaise De Paine, the Music Sampler. Fisk and Grant were De Paine’s sidemen. I found pictures of him on the Web. He’s fair-haired like Whitbread. Dresses flamboyantly and parties with beautiful people, which makes him a good fit for flashy wheels.”

  “Let’s have a look at this sweetheart,” said Petra.

  We headed to my office. I downloaded the images.

  Petra said, “Looks like a kid playing dress-up…kind of a retro Sergeant Pepper thing going. Not that I’m old enough to remember…Mary Whitbread, huh? ‘Pain’ is ‘bread’ in French.”

  Silence.

  Milo studied Blaise De Paine’s poses. “Guy doesn’t dress, he costumes…a poseur. Which is Gallic for ‘bullshit artist.’”

  “Pretentious and a thief,” I said. “Wonder what else he’s hiding.”

  CHAPTER

  24

  Petra used her LAPD password to log onto NCIC.

  The system bounced back two felons named Whitbread: Francis Arthur, male Caucasian, seventy-eight years old, paroled from a twenty-year bank-robbery sentence forty-nine months ago and living in Lawrence, Kansas. Jerry Lee, male American Indian, fifty-two, serving the second half of an eighteen-year armed-robbery stretch at North Dakota State Penitentiary.

  An auto check pulled up Mary Whitbread’s license and that of Peterson Ewan Whitbread, issued four years ago, living at the same address on Fourth Street. Peterson’s DOB made him twenty-eight years old. Five seven, one thirty, blond and blue.

  Four years ago, he’d worn his hair long and lank. Half-shut eyes shouted boredom. Minus mascara, the spike-do, and club duds, just another bland baby-face aiming at sullen.

  Petra said, “Peterson Whitbread ain’t too hip-hop a moniker, I can see why he’d reinvent. Still bunking with Mommy at twenty-four wouldn’t be good for the image, either.”

  I said, “One of Robin’s sources thinks he lives on one of the bird streets.”

  “Business must be good. Which bird?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Who’s the source?”

  “No one reliable.” I filled them in.

  Petra leaned in closer to the screen. “He’s got on mascara…looks like nail polish, too. The albino Michael Jackson.” Sitting back. “A little showy guy like this would definitely use hired help for muscle. But if he did contract Lester Jordan’s murder because of something related to Patty, the motive has to stretch back to when Patty was taking care of Jordan. That would make Bread-Head anywhere from ten to sixteen.”

  Milo said, “Adolescence is just temporary psychopathy, right?”

  “Sometimes permanent,” she said. “So what kind of link between a bad-boy teen and a solid-citizen nurse would be worth killing over?”

  “The only thing I can see connecting a punk, a junkie, and a nurse is you-know-what.”

  She said, “If Patty did get involved with a felonious punk and peddled dope, why would she rent an apartment, years later, from the punk’s mommy?”

  I said, “Maybe the terrible thing happened after she moved to Fourth.”

  “Then what was Jordan’s connection?”

  “Just because she wasn’t Jordan’s neighbor doesn’t mean she broke off contact with him.”

  “An enduring relationship? Okay, fine. But let’s not forget that Isaac found no homicides on or near Fourth during the time Patty lived there.”

  “Isaac’s having second thoughts.” I switched to my mailbox and downloaded the e-mail from Bangkok.

  She read the letter. “That’s the high IQ talking, he’s never satisfied. But let’s go there for a sec, assume Patty’s big iniquity went down on or near Fourth but fell short of murder. So what, she exaggerated to Tanya because she was terminal, and impaired? And how would knowledge of a noncapital crime lead to Jordan getting killed?”

  I said, “Maybe what Patty meant by killing someone was she supplied him with dope that killed him.”

  “Her dealing wasn’t limited to her private patient? Yeah, that would make her a bad girl.”

  She and Milo looked at me.

  I said, “Take it wherever it goes.”

  Petra said, “Now I have to. Back to Bread-Head. This is a guy who steals music for a living and maybe peddles dope. He can’t be too worried about some juvey misstep more than a decade ago.”

  “What if a murder was committed?” I said. “Something that was never reported and that’s why Isaac didn’t pick it up. Patty didn’t participate directly but she conspired in a hush-up and it ate at her for years.”

  Milo said, “Before I’m willing to give her that pass, let’s see if her gun matches the slugs dug out of Leland Armbruster.”

  Petra swiveled away from the screen. “Guys, this is starting to sound like a Pick One From Column A situation with nothing on the menu that looks fresh. What I need is concrete evidence of a link between the participants.”

  I said, “What if the friends who brought Moses Grant into the E.R. were Whitbread/De Paine and Robert Fisk? Patty recognized De Paine from her time on Fourth. That exhumed her guilt. Shortly after that, she became ill, started to obsess about the road not taken, was driven to stir things up. For all we know, De Paine recognized Patty, too. It shook him and he laid low. Then we came around talking about the past and his anxieties reignited.”

  “Mommy told him you were asking about Patty?” she said. “But how does Jordan figure in?”

  “Maybe Jordan was a participant in whatever happened and she knew it. De Paine was worried he couldn’t be counted on to keep his mouth shut.”

  Milo said, “All these years he kept it shut.”

  “Don’t know,” I said, “but if De Paine was doing business with Jordan, it explains the crime scene. Jordan let De Paine in and De Paine unlocked the rear window and let Fisk in. Or maybe De Paine did it himself and had Fisk along for support. Jordan nodding off heavily would’ve been an easy kill.”

  Petra crossed her legs, rubbed an ankle. “De Paine’s that calculating but he doesn’t take Jordan’s dope?”

  Milo said, “He’s smart enough to be careful.”

  “Seems to me,” she said, “taking the drugs would’ve been smart, Milo. Easy misdirect to a heroin robbery.”

  I said, “But that ran the risk of leading us back to Jordan’s supplier. Who could be De Paine.”

  “So how does all this fit with Patty’s housing pattern? I understand her going from Jordan’s caretaker to the old man’s live-in nurse with a double in salary. But the same question remains: If she knew De Paine had been involved in a serious felony, why would she be his mother’s tenant? I realize she stayed less than a year but that’s still a long time to expose your kid to a super-bad influence.”

  I had no answer.

  Petra got up and fetched herself another cup of coffee. Milo phoned Rick and said, “Don’t wait up.”

  When she returned, they settled next to each other on my leather couch.

  Petra laughed.

  He said, “What?”

  “We look like patients—marital counseling or something.” She pressed her knees together, put on an exaggerated scowl. “Doc, I’ve tried to make the relationship work but he just won’t communicate.”

  Milo said, “Nag nag nag.”

  I said, “Time’s up, I’ll send a bill.”

  Their smiles didn’t last long.

  Milo said, “De Paine seems to be the glue in all this. He had to know Patty from when she lived on his block and he hangs with Robert Fisk.”

  I said, “Let’s turn it another way. Patty didn’t know De Paine before she lived on his block. Lester Jordan knew both of them, but Patty wasn’t aware of it until later.”

  “Then how’d Patty get to be Mary Whitbread’s tenant? Jordan referred her? Why would she take housing tips from a junkie?”

  “Maybe she knew him as more
than that.”

  “They were buds?”

  “She was a compassionate nurse, saw Jordan’s humanity,” I said. “After she moved out, they maintained communication.”

  Petra said, “Or continued to do business.”

  “That, too,” I admitted. “There’s another way Patty might’ve learned about the rental on Fourth. What if Myron Bedard helped her find new lodgings?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “She’d taken good care of his father.”

  “Benevolent Rich Guy?” she said. “What’s his link to Whitbread? And how does that tie De Paine to Jordan?”

  “The Bedards own property,” I said. “Could be Myron owned Whitbread’s duplex back then. Or some neighboring apartments. Or he was connected to Mary Whitbread in another way. Iona said he was a philanderer. Mary’s an attractive woman. Ten years ago she wouldn’t have looked any worse.”

  “Myron had a girlfriend,” Petra singsonged. “Killed two birds by sending her a tenant and easing his own guilt about evicting a single mom and her cute little kid?”

  She turned to Milo.

  He said, “It’s as good as anything else.”

  “Teenage punk hooks up with a junkie who just happens to be the brother-in-law of his mommy’s sugar daddy?”

  I said, “What do men talk to their mistresses about?”

  She said, “My wife doesn’t understand me.”

  “In Bedard’s case, my wife doesn’t understand me and she saddles me with a useless junkie brother-in-law. If Peterson Whitbread was a precocious teen criminal with a foot in the drug world, hearing that would’ve sparked his interest. He made contact with Jordan, the two of them ended up doing business. It’s possible Patty didn’t know about the connection when she moved to Mary’s building. She thought she was stepping up in the world, to a nice spacious duplex. Instead, she somehow got involved in a crime that involved the landlady’s son and Jordan.”

  Milo said, “Patty told Tanya she killed a neighbor. Nothing comes up on or near Fourth.”

  “What she actually said was a man ‘close by.’ Cherokee, Hudson, and Fourth span a wide range socioeconomically, but geographically, they’re spaced pretty closely.”

  I pulled a Thomas Guide from my bookshelf, thumbed to a page, drew three red dots, passed the book to Petra.

  She said, “Yeah, they are close…so we’d need to expand the geographical profile to what—all of Hollywood and Mid-Wilshire? Great.”

  “But if I’m right about the crime occurring when Patty lived on Fourth it narrows the time frame to less than one year. It would also explain why Patty didn’t stay at Fourth very long. She’d done or seen something terrible and wanted out.”

  “If she was that freaked out, why didn’t she leave town completely?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t a matter of personal safety, just guilt—wanting to get away psychologically.”

  The look that passed between them resonated. Predictably shrinky.

  Milo said, “What if encountering Whitbread in the E.R. was more than bad reminiscence. Suppose he made a threatening remark to Patty.”

  “How’s your little daughter doing, wink wink,” said Petra. “But why wouldn’t Patty report that immediately? Or use her little .22?” To Milo: “Find out yet when she registered it?”

  “She didn’t.”

  “By the time of the E.R. visit she was terminally ill,” I said.

  “Even better,” she said. “She knows she’s going to die. If she’s nervous about Whitbread hurting Tanya, why not find him and go boom?”

  I said, “You haven’t been able to locate him. Why would she have better luck?”

  “All those years of keeping mum and all of a sudden he’s threatening her?”

  “Maybe there was no overt threat, just a subtle remark that preyed on Patty’s mind. She had a special kind of mind. Obsessive, a brain racing nonstop. She learned to control it, some people do. But the tendencies remain and stress brings them out. Add cognitive problems due to her disease and there’s no telling how she’d process.”

  Petra chewed her lip. “My brain’s ready for a pit stop…her place on Culver Boulevard isn’t that far from the other three places—what, five miles southwest?”

  I said, “It’s a whole other page on the map. Literally and figuratively. More important, it had no link to the Bedards. She was out to disentangle herself.”

  She closed the Thomas Guide. “One easy thing I can do tomorrow is find out who owned Whitbread’s building back then. Myron’s name shows up on the deed, I’m a little more receptive.” She grimaced. “She’s going to love that.”

  “Who?”

  “Cruella. Much as it pains me to admit it, she was right. Finding and talking to her ex is a must-do. But if she calls me young lady again in that tone, I bitch-slap her to Canada.”

  We played with the computer for another hour, trying with no success to learn more about Moses Grant and Peterson Whitbread aka Blaise De Paine.

  Petra said, “Boys, my eyes are crossing, let’s kick it in.”

  I said, “One question: Tanya’s danger level.”

  “If you’re right about Peterson threatening Patty because of some deep dark secret, it’s significant. How’s her home security situation?”

  Milo said, “Decent. I gave her the lecture and she seemed to get it. I also did a few pass-throughs on her street. Nothing iffy, so far.”

  “Nineteen years old and living alone,” said Petra. “Don’t know how I’d handle that. What exactly does she know about all of this?”

  I said, “We told her about Jordan’s murder. She wanted to know if it was linked to her mother and we said there was no direct evidence of that.”

  “She bought it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well,” she said, “if what we’ve tossed around tonight is remotely right-on, you’re not going to be able to sell that story too much longer…you’re seeing her in therapy, Alex?”

  “No regular sessions, on an as-needed basis. How much do I tell her?”

  Petra looked at Milo.

  He said, “It’s your homicide, Detective Connor.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “I wouldn’t want her knowing every investigative detail but she needs to understand enough not to be careless. Is there some other place she can live if she has to?”

  “She has no other family,” I said. “Claims she has friends.”

  “Claims? You think she’s lying?”

  “She says she studies with other students but she’s never talked about any purely social relationships. And there’s nothing in her home that smacks of college life.”

  “Sounds old before her time. Losing a parent can do that to you. You’re wondering if the dam’s going to break?”

  “I’m keeping an eye on the water level.”

  “She’s got one relationship,” said Milo. “Kyle Bedard tracked her down in Facebook, claimed he got curious after we talked to him about when Tanya and Patty lived in his grandfather’s house. We warned her about getting too involved, but you know kids.”

  “Think he’s stalking her for an unhealthy reason?”

  “Probably not, but who knows? That a fair assessment, Alex?”

  I nodded.

  “Another Bedard entanglement,” said Petra. “Alex, maybe you should guide her away from him. Somehow get it across that this family seems to wrap its tentacles around everything.”

  “But give her no investigative details.”

  She exhaled and fooled with her hair. “We do have a moral duty to protect her but scaring the hell out of her for nothing can’t be good for her mental health. Can she be trusted not to leak to Kyle or anyone else?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then follow your instincts.”

  Milo said, “While you’re talking to her, maybe you can find out if she’s got any memories of Blaise De Paine.”

  “Will do.”

  Petra stood and rotated her neck. “Walk me to my chariot, gents.�
��

  The next morning at nine, I left a message for Tanya to call.

  By one p.m. I still hadn’t heard back. At ten after Milo phoned.

  “Finally a bingo. When Patty moved into the duplex on Fourth, Mary Whitbread owned it, along with Whitbread’s own building and two others nearby. But two years before, all the properties had been owned by the Bedard family trust.”

  “Myron sold them to her?”

  “The trust did. The trustees were the old man and Myron.”

  “Did she get a bargain price?”

  “Sweet deal for the mistress? I’m no expert but the numbers don’t seem deflated, maybe Mary had her own source of dough. Your guess about Myron sending Patty over there is looking better. The other monumental finding is that the bullets excised from Leland Armbruster’s corpse did not match Patty’s gun.”

  “Small blessing.”

  He said, “Raul and Petra got in early to track Myron down in Europe. So far, zippo. The final autopsy results on Lester Jordan aren’t too profound: method of death, strangulation, mode of death, homicide. Robert Fisk still hasn’t surfaced and Petra can’t find current addresses on Blaise De Paine or Moses Grant. But, hey, if life was too easy, we’d start thinking we were more than apes with thin pelts.”

  “No intelligent design for you?”

  “Not when I read the newspaper.”

  “Blaise De Paine is potentially accessible,” I said. “We know his mom.”

  “Petra’s view on that—and I agree—is that revisiting Mary Whitbread right now would sound too many alarms and raise the risk of another vanishing felon. What I came up with is back-tracing the Hummer to an address, it’s not a common vehicle. There’s no such beast registered to De Paine or Peterson Whitbread, but he could be using another aka. I’m waiting for DMV to fax me a list of all Hummer registrations. In the meantime, I’ve been calling around at dealers, no luck, yet. Seeing as De Paine likes to make an impression, I wondered if it could be a rental and started with the Budget lot in Beverly Hills because they do all sorts of thrills-for-a-day, a couple of birthdays ago I rented Rick a Lamborghini. Gave him a backache, but that’s another story. Unfortunately, the only black Hummer on their lot has been on long-term loan to a film outfit. The other three are silver, red, and there’s a yellow convertible, talk about tasteful. I’m about to call Hertz.”