After a brief discussion with the receptionist, Commander Chung came out to greet us. Six-two, with an athletic body, perfectly coiffed black hair and a California tan, Chung could have been an actor or model. Los Angeles was growing on me.
"Deputy Chief Bruskewitz called me about this," he said warmly. "Come on back."
Commander Chung showed us back into his office, which was bigger than Bruskewitz's, but lacked the view of the hills and downtown. A family photo on his desk showed what I assumed was his wife and three kids, which burst my momentary infatuation bubble. Of course he's married, you idiot, I told myself. He's got a great job and looks awesome in a uniform.
"I pulled the file up," Chung began. "It's a sad case, but the kind of thing that happens every month or so around here. The wealthy aren't immune from these tragedies."
Mike spoke up. "So was there any sign that she had company, or that anything other than the obvious happened here?"
Chung looked serious for a moment. "I paged through the report. We're still waiting on the tox results, of course, but it looks as if it was heroin, or some other opioid. The examiner said the actual cause of death was lack of oxygen, which is common with those drugs. Essentially, when you fall asleep you get so relaxed that your body forgets to breathe."
"Not a bad way to go," I said. "If you have to go."
Chung shrugged. "Yeah, you're not kidding. Some of the other kinds of overdose are incredibly painful. And then you have the hallucinogens, which make you think you can fly, until the pavement says otherwise."
I cringed, involuntarily.
"Sorry," he said. "When you're in this line of work, you tend to get a little callous about these things."
"I understand," I said. "So were there any needle marks?"
"No marks, but again that doesn't mean no heroin. You can eat it or drink it. It just takes longer to get the effect."
I was processing everything when Mike spoke up again. "So basically no red flags is what you're saying. Nothing to suggest that anything else happened here other than a run-of-the-mill overdose?"
Chung nodded. "Am I missing something? Do you have a reason to think something else was going on?"
I paused before answering. "It's just that she hired me only a few days before she died. It's rare enough for a twenty-something girl to hire a private investigator. But then to end up dead soon after…" I trailed off, letting my thoughts get the better of me.
"And may I ask why she hired a Las Vegas PI?" Chung asked, his eyes twinkling.
I didn't see any reason not to tell him. "She was wondering about her boyfriend. A guy who lived in Vegas but told her he was part of the British royal family, and she wasn't exactly buying it."
Chung's eyebrows shot up. "Interesting. So you think the boyfriend got wind of this and helped her overdose herself?"
"I think it's unlikely. But there's no evidence she was a drug user, is there? I just want to make sure, that's all."
Chung thought for a few seconds. "And what about her husband? Did he know about all this?"
Mike and I looked at each other. Mike beat me to the punch. "Her husband?"
Chung nodded seriously. "You didn't know?" He thumbed through his sheaf of papers.
"They were married?" I asked, incredulous. "When? Who?"
Chung shrugged. "I don't have that in here. She didn't tell you that?"
"No," I said. "In fact, she made it seem as if the guy I'm looking at was her boyfriend, or at least potential boyfriend. She said he asked her for a loan because he was in expensive litigation back in England, and she wanted to know if he was legit or not."
Chung leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers together. "None of this is in the report, of course. I can't give you the report yet, since the case is still open." Chung began scribbling on a piece of paper. "But I can give you the name and number of the detective who was at the scene. If there's any detail I'm missing, he'd be the one to know. The house was just about a mile from here up in the hills. I wonder what he'll make of everything you just told me."
I pocketed the slip of paper. "Thanks for all your help," I said.
Chung nodded and stood up. "Good luck," he said, showing us out of his office.
Mike and I were silent on our walk to the car. We both climbed in, not knowing what the next step was.
"Well that was weird," he finally said.
"No kidding. I can't believe she's married, but she was considering this relationship with Kent."
"You had no idea at all?" Mike asked. He didn't intend for it to be critical, but it came out that way.
"No. As I said, she wasn't even sure if he was her boyfriend or not. My take was that she liked him and wanted to get closer, but she was skeptical of the whole royalty thing. The next step was going to be the loan, but only if everything checked out."
Mike looked at me. "You're assuming she was married to someone else, it sounds like. Maybe she and this Kent guy were already married."
"Why would she hide that from me, though?"
"It's kind of embarrassing, I would guess. To want to investigate your own husband? After you get married to him? Maybe she just wanted it to seem like a casual boyfriend kind of relationship so you wouldn't think she was an idiot."
He had a point. Covering up the fact that she and Kent were already married was much more plausible than the idea that she was married to someone else. Especially at her young age.
"Do you think her family knew?" I asked.
"This wasn't one of those society weddings, that's for sure. You would have found something online about it already, I assume."
I nodded. "Yeah, nothing I've read about her suggested she was hitched already."
Mike looked at me. "Did you talk to her about what we found about Kent?"
"No, I left a message but she didn't return it. She might have been dead already, for all I know."
Mike let out a deep breath. "Well, do you want to call the detective?"
"Let's get lunch first," I said. "We can process all this a lot better if we have some food in our system."
"If you say so," Mike said, making no effort to hide his skepticism.
I punched a few keys on my smartphone and pulled up a map. "Head north," I told Mike. He fired up my car and found his way to Highland Avenue. I told him to find a parking place when I saw Sunset Boulevard up ahead.
"Where are we going?" he asked, pulling into a tight spot.
"In-N-Out Burger," I said, matter-of-factly.
"You eat that stuff?"
I sighed. "Mike, you know I eat that stuff. It's nourishing, and it's real."
Unimpressed, Mike remained silent as we walked the block and a half to the restaurant. It was coming up on noon, so I expected a crowd. I wasn't disappointed.
Mike was a model of quiet suffering as we stood in the seven-person-deep line to order. He kept scanning the menu above the counters, and my mind-reading abilities told me he was panicking about what to order. "I'll order for you, Mike. Don't worry."
He rolled his eyes. "Um, that's even scarier. What are you going to get me?"
"My little secret. One hint, though. You won't find it on the menu up there."
He frowned, now more concerned than ever.
"Why don't you just go and find us a table. I'll treat," I said.
He cocked his head, considered the proposal, and disappeared. Five minutes later, I found his table and plopped a big tray down in front of us. His reaction was exactly what I was hoping for.
"What the hell is this?"
I smiled. "Settle down, you're making a scene. This is called an animal-style burger. It's not on the menu."
He looked at it skeptically. It wasn't so much a traditional hamburger shape as it was a globe of gooey goodness, which happened to have a hamburger and a bun somewhere in the mix. "Extra sauce, grilled onions, pickles. And then they fry that right onto the burger itself," I explained. "Same with the fries."
He was shaking his head. "How do you kno
w all this?"
I smiled, grabbing my tray. The fries were extra crispy today. "It's common knowledge," I said. "Among food aficionados, anyway."
He sighed, eyeing the burger with a mixture of skepticism and horror. But then he surprised me by not whining anymore and taking a hesitant bite.
"This shit is good," he said.
My eyes got big. "Did you just use profanity? I've never heard you say anything even remotely dirty before."
He shrugged, wolfing down another bite.
"You're growing on me," I said. "I like when a man is willing to admit he's completely wrong."
Mike smiled back at me, still chewing. He grabbed a couple of French fries, which were also doused in sauce and ketchup. "When in Rome," he said, his mouth still full of food.
I joined in the frenzy, adding a few fries to my burger just for overkill. Five minutes later, we were both stuffed. My Diet Coke wasn't going to be enough to stave off the food coma I felt coming on, so I picked up a large coffee for the road.
We were waiting for a fresh pot of coffee to finish. "So have I converted you yet?" I asked.
Mike grinned. "Close. I could see doing that maybe once, twice a year. Just as an indulgence."
"Well, it's a start," I said, slurping at my coffee as we headed outside and basked in the California sunshine. Mike offered to get the car and pick me up, so I whipped out my phone and dialed the number Commander Chung had given me. Detective Weakland answered with a gruff "yeah," but softened when I explained that Chung had given me his number. Weakland was out of the office, but he said I could meet him on scene. I etched the address in my memory bank and then typed it into my phone after I hung up.
Mike swung by with the car, and I hopped in.
"Where are we headed?" he asked.
"913 North Laurel Avenue," I said. "Wherever the hell that is."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mike fiddled with the GPS and got directions. It turned out we were only about a mile and a half northeast of there, so we found the place in no time. The house was one of those small but oh-so-cute Mediterranean jobs, with white stucco all around the outside and curved red tiles on the roof. The black iron gate was open, and a squad car was double-parked out front. Mike carefully squeezed my car into a tiny non-spot about a half a block up the street.
A couple of uniforms were lollygagging around in the front parlor, and almost in unison they put up their hands and tried to shoo us away. I explained we were sent by Chung, and they backed off and pointed to the rear of the house, where Detective Weakland apparently was doing all the work.
We found Detective Weakland enjoying a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, where he was punching feverishly at his smartphone. He paid us no attention until he finished, and when he finally looked up he cocked his head to the side and contorted his face into a crinkled mess.
"You're the girl I talked to on the phone?" he asked, brimming with skepticism.
"Yeah." I decided to let the "girl" comment slide.
He peered long and hard at me, glanced at Mike, and then turned his attention back to me. "Just give me a minute," he said, waving us away with his hand.
Mike and I exchanged looks and then backed out of the kitchen. Eavesdropping, we heard him talking in hushed tones to Chung, or someone on Chung's staff. When he hung up, he yelled at us to come back in. Apparently we had passed the test.
"Chung says you're on the level. And he's my boss. Actually, he's my boss's boss. So what can we talk about here? Want some coffee?"
I had left my cup in the car, so I accepted. Weakland found me a mug and filled it. He was an all-business kind of guy, with light brown hair thinning on top, and pretty fit for his age, which seemed about fifty.
While he was delivering my coffee I looked around the room, which opened into the small living room. My blood turned cold, and I elbowed Mike. He looked in the direction I was pointing and cringed. Next to the sofa, a human figure lay on the floor, draped in a white sheet. Detective Weakland sensed our alarm.
"She was ninety-eight," he said, as though that made it any better. I wondered what the poor old woman would think about us casually helping ourselves to her coffee while she was lying under a sheet in the next room. "Anyway, you wanted to know about young Miss Melanie, right?"
I nodded, taking a sip of coffee. I cringed involuntarily at the bitterness.
"Yeah," Weakland confided, "it's pretty bad, isn't it?"
"I suppose we can't be picky," I said. "It's her coffee."
He flashed me a thin smile. "So, what can I tell you? We got a call from her husband saying he hadn't been able to reach her. We told him to be patient, but he was pretty insistent. So we sent a squad out there to her apartment, about a half a mile from here. Nobody answered, but they were able to get in through an open window. And there she was."
"Dead?" Mike asked.
Weakland nodded. "She was long gone. We didn't even call an ambulance. Just like here," he said, tilting his head over at the corpse in the next room.
"Did you speak to the husband?" I asked.
Weakland slurped some more coffee. "Of course. They lived apart, so it was a little suspicious, at least at the outset. But we didn't think anything of it, really. He was going to school in Vegas, and they visited each other all the time."
"Was he surprised?" Mike asked.
He thought for a moment. "Well, yeah. I mean, she was twenty-three years old."
Mike smiled impatiently. "I mean was he surprised about the drug use?"
Weakland shook his head. "No, not at all. He told us about the clubs they used to go to and all the stuff she'd gotten into over the years. He was a little surprised she'd gotten back into heroin, though."
I piped up. "So you think it was heroin? The tox report isn't in yet."
He nodded. "Almost certainly. No needle marks, but there are lots of ways to ingest heroin. And of course, there was the little packet of the stuff we found in her kitchen." He spread his hands, as if to say it was a sure thing. The tox report was just a formality.
My brain was running on overdrive trying to think of anything else to ask him. He seemed very nonchalant about the whole thing, as though Melanie's death was one of the least interesting cases he'd worked in years.
Mike beat me to the punch. "So nothing about her death seemed out of the ordinary, or worth digging any deeper?"
Weakland choked down another gulp of the deadly brew and then tried to shake it off. "Not that I can think of, no. No sign of foul play. No reason to suspect it either. Unless you have a reason you're not telling me."
I smiled faintly. "No good reason, no. It's just that when someone hires a private investigator and then dies unexpectedly, the investigator might get a little, well, I don't know…" I trailed off, not sure where I was going.
"Paranoid?" Weakland asked.
"Yeah, I guess that's it. I know it's self-centered, but it's human nature to try to find a connection between two events, even if they're not related at all."
He nodded. "I used to be that way. Trying to out-sleuth the whole department, even when the death was some ninety-four-year-old guy on life support. I'd ask myself, who had something to gain here? But ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a death is just a death. Or, as the doctors say, if it looks like a horse and neighs like a horse, it's a horse. It ain't a zebra."
"Huh?" I wasn't following.
He smiled. "My brother's a gastroenterologist. He says that it's very common for medical students and young doctors to always search for the exotic disease or tumor that's afflicting their patient, when in fact it's usually just a common virus, or bad eating habits, or poor posture, or a vitamin deficiency or something boring like that. In other words, if it looks like a horse, it probably is a horse and not some exotic animal like a zebra."
"Got it," I said. "Anything else, Mike?"
He shook his head, and we stood up to leave Detective Weakland to his unfortunate work and bitter coffee. I asked him for his card in case anythi
ng else came up.
On our walk back to the car, Mike started groaning a bit.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"As soon as we stood up, I felt a little queasy. My stomach isn't used to that kind of greasy food. I'm not sure I'm going to—"
I cringed and turned away as Mike keeled forward and retched up his lunch into a cute little hedgerow of shrubs in front of an adorable, pale blue bungalow. An old woman with a visor was kneeling in the dirt directly in front of her house. She turned to look at us at exactly the wrong moment. A look of horror crossed her face as she realized what was going on, then she put a hand to her own mouth and scampered inside the house, presumably to reprise what Mike had just done.
Mike shook his head back and forth, clearly in agony. "Let's get out of here!" he hissed.
Not having any better idea, I joined him as we bolted the last half a block to my car. He handed me the keys, and I vroomed us out of there, as though we'd just knocked over Fort Knox. Both of our faces were beet red.
Safely stopped at a light about three blocks away, I exhaled a deep breath. "Well that was exciting."
Mike grimaced. "I hope that was it."
Once the excitement faded, guilt began to set in. "I feel bad for that lady," Mike murmured. "She was just minding her own business, and then…"
"Thanks," I said. "Now I'm replaying the image in my mind. Don't worry—it's probably like fertilizer. Imagine how nice those shrubs will come in this year!"
He chuckled. "You're really awful, you know that? You could rationalize just about anything."
"It's not rationalizing, it's finding the silver lining," I protested, even though I knew he was dead right. I was awful. And he didn't even know how funny I thought it was.
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