Heartbreak Hotel

by Jonathan Kellerman

  That took half a decade to accomplish, after which a young Dubai-based sheik with a penchant for totaling seven-figure supercars scored the site at an even lower price. He hired a “cutting edge” architect who designed a “postmodern tower merging with the psycho-structural suggestion of the original wing as an exemplar of stylistic incest.”

  Nothing since then.

  How much of the parade had Thalia witnessed? Kurt DeGraw claimed she’d scored a bargain and maybe she had. But living through the changes only to end up smothered in bed seemed a steep price to pay.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Milo phoned at four twenty-three P.M.

  “I’m here at the scene, just went over the bungalow. No evidence she kept a safe but I did find a little under three grand in cash in her underwear drawer, so it doesn’t look like burglary. She wasn’t sexually molested, either. I’m open to suggestions about motive.”

  I said, “Maybe someone enjoys beating God to the punch.”

  “A psycho with a thing for the elderly? Crossed my mind so I checked for similars over the past ten years. Nothing remotely like Thalia. Every elderly vic was either collateral damage in a drive-by or dispatched to the next world by a loving relative. A lot of the family cases were arguments that escalated, the rest were rotten kids trying to inherit early. The money crimes tended to be staged burglaries. This one’s just the opposite, everything peaceful, no misdirection, not even a drawer pulled out. With those bruises, the murder would have been detected soon enough. Why not try to mask it as a burglary?”

  “Maybe the bad guy was overconfident, felt he’d masked it as a natural death. Or showcasing the murder was the thrill.”

  “Like one of those trusted nurses, turning off respirators or shooting crap into I.V. lines? You know where that leads.”

  “Refugia or another staffer.”

  “Refugia,” he said, “is judged honorable by everyone she ever worked with. More important, she’s alibied for last night until six in the morning, when she left for work. Per her sister and brother-in-law, but there’s nothing to say they’re lying. I asked DeGraw how many other people had regular contact with Thalia and he said he had no idea. I suggested he do everything in his power to speed up the investigation because the media would love to do an ironic story about the murder of a helpless old woman. He thought I made an excellent point and promised to get back to me. Obviously, we need to know about a will, if she had one. I found a checkbook in her nightstand drawer with two business cards clipped to the cover. Lawyer and money manager, put calls in to both. Her balance is impressive, Alex. Over four hundred thousand.”

  “Five years of rent in reserve. What else did she spend on?”

  “Not much for the past year except a check written to you, dated a coupla days ago.”

  The day before I’d met her. Confident woman. “Six-grand retainer.”

  “Why so much up front?”

  “No good reason,” I said, “that’s why I haven’t cashed it. I told her it was way too much and inappropriate. She claimed I was doing her a favor by keeping her bookkeeping simple. Then she joked that if she didn’t live long enough I’d profit and if that bothered me I could donate the overage to charity.”

  “You’re sure she was joking about not making it to the end?”

  “It seemed that way but now I’m not sure.”

  “Well,” he said, “don’t see why you shouldn’t get paid for your time. Especially now since we know how generous the department is.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Meaning mind my own business.” He laughed. “What else…I had our locksmith install padlocks on the porch and the door and one of our carpenters is due any minute to nail the windows shut. DeGraw tried to talk me out of all that, promised to ‘maintain vigilance.’ ”

  “The way he looked out for Thalia.”

  “Exactly. I’ve got uniforms stationed for a day or two but my captain says that could end if he needs personnel. I’ve put in the order for Thalia’s stuff to go into storage at the crime lab, director’s doing me a favor but that’s also time-limited so it’d be nice to find out if there are heirs.”

  I said, “I picked up a few factoids,” and recapped the Aventura’s history. “The earliest she moved in is probably ’50 or ’51, after the squatters were evicted and it became a hotel again. She’d have been in her thirties, rates had dropped, she took advantage of it. But even good deals come with escalator clauses so eventually it climbed to eighty-four thou a year.”

  “Deal or no deal,” he said, “if she could come up with that kind of dough, why not invest in a nice full-service condo? Instead, she bunks down in her little slice of heaven even while the ground’s shaking and everything around her is crumbling?”

  I said, “Let’s hear it for clapboard. She was clearly a woman with her own personal vision, manipulated me so skillfully that I didn’t mind.”

  “Because she was old and adorable,” he said.

  “That plus people skills she was probably born with.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’m glad she had her moments in the sun, watching them take her away was pathetic. One of the crypt guys made a crack about wishing they were all so light—hold on, someone trying to call in.”

  Seconds later: “Thalia’s lawyer, all broken up and ready to see me. I’m gonna give the carpenter another fifteen and if he doesn’t show, I’ll head over. I’m assuming you’ll want to join me.”

  “Name and address.”

  “Richeline Sylvester, calls herself Ricki. Olympic Boulevard west of Sepulveda.”

  —

  The building was eight stories of suntan-colored glass, the three bottom levels, parking.

  A smooth, silent elevator rocketed me to Richeline Sylvester’s office on the seventh floor. Her name only on the door.

  Milo sat in the waiting room checking his phone and drinking something dishwater-colored from a frosty glass. Minimal waiting room; white walls, charcoal carpet, no windows, a single blotchy blue flower print.

  A bearded man in his twenties wearing a plaid shirt and a red tie sat at a clear plastic desk. He smiled as if he knew me and pointed to a pitcher resting on a tray. “Iced jasmine tea? Freshly brewed.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Milo said, “Try it, it’s delicious.”

  The young man beamed. His phone beeped. He picked up, listened, said, “Sure.” To us: “Boss is ready for you, to the right, guys.”

  A right turn was the only possible route to twenty feet of hallway. Doors to the left were marked Supplies, Restroom, Library. The right wall conceded a couple of windows but the tinted glass blurred an already hazy eastern panorama.

  Like viewing the world through murky pond water.

  The last door was held open by a well-padded woman in her fifties with curly blond hair shaped into an unflattering bowl. She wore a rust-brown mock turtle over a knee-length tan skirt and flat white sandals. Turquoise in her ears and around her neck, no makeup, reading glasses on a chain.

  She examined both of us, settled on Milo. “Lieutenant? Ricki Sylvester.” He introduced me and she gave me a longer look. “You’re also a detective?”

  Someone curious enough to ask. Or maybe I just wasn’t giving off a cop vibe.

  Milo said, “Dr. Delaware is our consulting psychologist.”

  “There’s something psych-y about what happened to Thalia?” She grimaced. “I’m not sure I want to hear about that.”

  “Nothing gruesome, Ms. Sylvester. With certain cases, we try to be extra thorough.”

  “What constitutes ‘certain’?”

  “No obvious motive. Can you think of one?”

  “I wish I could.” She motioned us inside. “I’m glad you’re being thorough, Thalia deserves your best effort. Not that everyone doesn’t. But she was…” Her voice caught. “No, I can’t think of a motive. What kind of monster would destroy such an amazing person?”

  —

  The dimensions
of her office made up for the skimpy prelude, an easy six hundred square feet with a wall-of-glass view of a city squirming with activity. A massive carved rosewood desk old enough to be worn at its gilded base spanned a healthy section of the space. A vintage red leather tufted couch looked as if it had come with the desk. A cheap-looking black tweed sofa with three matching chairs didn’t. Same for the round, fake-wood conference table in a corner.

  As if the room had been slapped together using valuable hand-me-downs and cheap closeouts.

  Two other walls were blank. The one behind the desk sported the expected paper: bachelor’s from Penn, law degree from the U., specialty certificate in trusts and estates. No photos of loved ones, nothing personal on the desk but a file folder thick as a dictionary, an empty drinking glass, and an identical pitcher of jasmine tea that hadn’t been touched.

  Ricki Sylvester said, “Either of you want some of this? Jared used to be a barista, I humor him.”

  She sat down behind the desk. “I still can’t get over this. Do you have any idea who?”

  Milo said, “Not yet, that’s why we’re here.”

  “I’ll do anything to help.” She patted the file. “This is a copy of everything I have on Thalia, it’s yours to take.”

  “Appreciate it, Ms. Sylvester. How long did you handle Miss Mars’s affairs?”

  “For my entire professional life. My grandfather ran an estate and trusts practice and I began working for him right after I passed the bar. My initial contact with Thalia was small assignments—notarizing, drafting forms. When Grandpa died three years later, I inherited the practice. So thirty years ago, if you’re asking when I actually began operating as her attorney. Most of the clients from back then are deceased but Thalia hung on. You do know how old she was.”

  “Nearly a hundred.”

  Ricki Sylvester shook her head. “The woman seemed immortal. She was never sick, I can’t recall the last time she ran up a medical bill. I remember asking what her secret was. She laughed and said, ‘Stay healthy.’ One time I told her, ‘Thalia, disease lost and you won.’ She said, ‘Lucky roll of the genetic dice.’ ”

  “Speaking of which,” said Milo, “what can you tell us about her family?”

  “When I took over she hadn’t gotten around to writing a will—Grandfather said he’d suggested it several times but she’d put it off. When I suggested it, she agreed. Maybe because she was already seventy. I inquired about heirs and she said there were none, she had no family at all. When I expressed surprise, she laughed and said, ‘How do you know I was born? Maybe I sprouted like a mushroom.’ ”

  Milo said, “What kinds of legal issues have you handled for her?”

  “Not much, really. The will, making periodic changes to keep up with the law. She was a CPA so she handled her own taxes back when she was working. By the time I took over, she was retired and her taxes were minimal.”

  “Was she involved in any lawsuits?”

  “You’re wondering if someone bore a grudge against her? Absolutely not. She’s never sued anyone or been subject to litigation.”

  “Going back to your grandfather,” I said, “is there any particular reason a civil servant would need an estate lawyer?”

  Ricki Sylvester’s eyes rose and fell. She fooled with her eyeglass chain. “It’s a common misconception, Doctor, that only the extremely wealthy need estate counseling. Anyone with assets to speak of benefits from counsel.”

  “They must’ve turned into pretty big assets by now,” said Milo. “How did a retired civil servant come up with eighty-plus thousand a year to live in the Aventura?”

  The chain jangled as Ricki Sylvester gave a small start. Her eyes yo-yoed again. “I can understand your confusion but it all boils down to simple math. Read the file.”

  She nudged it closer. Milo took it.

  “I’ll definitely be reading it, Ricki, but if you don’t mind summarizing?”

  “All right, I’ll keep it simple. When I took over from Grandpa, Thalia was already a woman of means, with a net worth just shy of four million dollars. By then, most of her money was in municipal bonds and she was earning over two hundred thousand per year, tax-free. She plowed the bulk of the interest back into munis, making her money work for her. As of this morning, per Joe Manucci, her broker at Morgan-Smith, she was worth a little over eleven million and earning close to half a million a year.”

  She smiled. “How did she accomplish that working in the public sector? If you’re thinking dishonestly, guys, think again. Thalia Mars did it the old-fashioned way: rising through the ranks quickly so she earned a respectable salary, living responsibly, and making sound investments over a really long time. It’s like building a quality art collection, people who bought Picassos when he was cheap. Start with good taste and get old.”

  Milo said, “What kind of investments?”

  “Every penny she didn’t need to live on went into quality stocks and real estate. As an example, she was able to cash in a whole bunch of IBM that had split a gajillion times. Joe Manucci can give you more details but from what I understand most of her equities were the bluest of the blue chips. The shift to munis began around fifty years ago. She sold all her properties, paid her capital gains taxes dutifully, and began a new phase of her life clipping coupons.”

  “What kind of properties did she own?”

  “Mostly vacant lots and foreclosures. Her position at the assessor and other agencies gave her access to information. Back then, acreage in the Valley and Santa Monica could be had for a song. She held on until she got an offer she liked, then traded up—what we call 10–31’ing, so there was no tax burden or depreciation payment until she cashed out completely. She was no trust-fund tycoon, we’re talking small steps. But it adds up if you live within your means and last nearly a century.”

  She put a fingertip to the pitcher, drew a ragged circle in the frost. “If I were still teaching trust law, I’d use her as an object lesson. It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. That was Grandfather’s philosophy and he passed it along to me.”

  She waved a hand. “I practice what I preach. Like this place. I could pay three times as much to be a couple of miles east in Beverly Hills, not to mention an exorbitant monthly for parking. I could lease an ostentatious suite in order to feed my ego, hire staff I don’t need. Who needs the complication? That was Thalia’s forte. She knew how to focus on what was important and she kept things simple.”

  Including writing a far-too-generous retainer check.

  Milo said, “She seemed to be living pretty stylishly.”

  “I’m not saying she was a skinflint. When she wanted something, she bought it. And she appreciated quality. But she never shopped for shopping’s sake. She told me a few years ago, ‘Live long enough and everything becomes vintage.’ She also said, ‘Live long enough and your interests narrow.’ ”

  “What interested Thalia?”

  She frowned. “I suppose doing what she felt like.”

  Milo said, “She had half a million a year coming in, spent a sixth on room and board. Where did the rest go?”

  “Back into munis with some left over for charity. And charity’s where her entire estate is bound, as you’ll see when you read that.”

  I said, “Where she was born?”

  “Somewhere in the Midwest—Missouri, I think.”

  “My home state.”

  Ricki Sylvester said, “You’re a show-me guy? I guess that would be helpful for a psychologist. What exactly do you do for the police?”

  Milo said, “He has an interesting brain and we like to tap it. So no idea at all about Thalia’s roots?”

  “Lieutenant, asking the same question repeatedly won’t change the answer.”

  “Got it, ma’am. It’s just that knowing the victim is a big part of closing a case and after all these years, I was wondering if something slipped out.”

  Ricki Sylvester drew a triangle on the pitcher. “Let me clarify my relationship with Thalia.
I adored her and I believe she liked me. But we didn’t interact much. With some clients, you need to adopt a more hands-on approach, get involved in their personal lives. Some even want you hovering. Not Thalia, she glided along just fine.”

  Her lips trembled. “Until now. Who would do such a thing? And what exactly happened? All you said over the phone was you suspected an unnatural death.”

  “Can’t discuss details, yet. I can tell you there wasn’t any significant pain involved.”

  “Significant? So there was some?”

  “No reason to think there was any,” he said.

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “How about her social life?”

  “I wasn’t aware that she had one,” she said. “But as I said, our face-to-face contacts were infrequent. There wasn’t much to do on her estate, period. She never mentioned friends or acquaintances. She used to travel but stopped. Had no interest in joining clubs or associations. She told me so in no uncertain terms when I suggested she might want to get out once in a while.”

  “When was that?”

  “Years ago…around ten?”

  “You were concerned about her.”

  “As I said, I rarely saw her but when I did I was taken by how much time she seemed to spend in her suite. Lying like a pixie queen in that giant bed of hers, going nowhere other than walking from her bungalow to the front desk and back. It wasn’t always that way, she used to take luxury cruises all over the world. Then she just stopped. When she turned ninety—I guess it was exactly ten years ago.”

  “Any idea why she stopped?”

  “She said she’d seen everything she wanted to see.”

  I said, “Did she cruise alone?”

  “Always. Booked a cheap room, said it made no difference for sleeping.”

  “People can make friends when they travel.”

  “Are you asking if she met a silver fox at sea and recreated a bit? It’s a nice thought.” She coiled her eyeglass chain around a finger. “But as far as I know, no lasting relationships developed.”