A uniformed rent-a-cop sat behind the counter, middle-aged, paunchy, playing with his phone.
Milo said, “Wait here,” went in, and talked to the guard.
Brief chat. “He’s the one found it, routine patrol.”
I said, “He seems unscathed.”
“Twenty years on the job in Pittsburgh, says he’s seen it all. He’s looking at nudes on his phone, couldn’t care less.”
—
Both cop cars were unoccupied. Their roof bars strobed the pathway red and blue.
After the first turn, we came upon four uniforms.
One said, “All the way at the end.”
“Thanks for preserving the scene.”
“Sure, sir. Nothing out here except bugs.”
Milo and I gloved up.
The cop said, “Let me know when you’re ready, sir.”
—
It hadn’t taken long for Uno to acquire the look of abandonment, screens removed from the porch, front door ajar and off kilter, window shutters splintering.
The steps to the porch deck mewled in protest. The deck was littered with leaves and dust and scraps of paper. Milo looked at each one of them, said, “Trash,” and turned to the right.
Looking at the big rattan peacock chair where Thalia had sat the first time I met her.
No Sydney Greenstreet bulk taxing the cane, no wispy centenarian dwarfed by the curvaceous throne.
Something in between.
A chubby woman with unfashionable curly yellow hair wearing a too-tight floral dress that had ridden up as she’d slid downward, revealing dimpled knees and feet turned away from each other, clumsy and duck-like.
Ricki Sylvester’s head lolled. Her skin was green-gray. A dry drool trail striped her chin.
On the floor to her right was an empty bottle of Svedka vodka. Next to that, a small amber pill bottle. Childproof cap.
Rules say you wait until the C.I.’s clear the body. Milo cupped Ricki Sylvester’s chin and lifted her face gently.
Nearly shut eyes, a sliver of gray glass barely visible.
Slack mouth, tongue drooping to the right.
He lowered her, still gentle. Crouched and shined his flashlight on the pill bottle’s label.
Sixty tabs of Percocet, legally prescribed by an M.D. in Santa Monica.
“All that and a bottle of booze,” he said. “Not exactly a cry for help.”
I said, “There’s an envelope wedged at her side,” and showed him.
“Protocol says wait for the C.I.’s. I already bent the rules.”
“You bet.”
“Hell,” he said, and fished out the envelope. “Anyone asks, we found it on the floor.”
Just to make sure, he rubbed it on the floor, picked up grime.
Business-sized envelope, with Ricki Sylvester’s name, degree, and office address at the top.
Closed but not glued. He lifted the flap.
Same information on the single piece of paper folded inside.
Below the letterhead, graceful handwriting in burnt-orange ink.
“Custom color, looks like a fountain pen,” he said. “Haven’t seen that in a while.”
We read together.
To whoever chances to find me, I’m doing this willingly and with peace. There’s always been pain but now it’s risen to another level and I need to leave.
Thalia Mars was dear to me and I let her down. Worse, I let myself down, getting swept away with emotions that turned out to be hollow. Philip Duke is an evil, manipulative murderer. He pretended to care about me and led me to a dark place where I did the unthinkable. Though I had no idea, absolutely NONE that it would go as far as it did. (Details are available in the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk in my office, the address of which is listed above.)
My last will and testament is also in that drawer, as is a list of referrals to other attorneys for my wonderful clients whom I leave with profound regrets.
But this needed to happen.
Warmly, Ricki.
CHAPTER
48
It took until the following day to gain access to the drawer. Milo notified Jared that his services would no longer be required.
The receptionist said, “What are you talking about? You can’t fire me.”
Milo explained.
Jared gathered up his teapot, his phone, the pleather jacket he’d draped over his chair, and hurried out.
Milo turned to me. “Onward, we know the route.”
—
The will was right where Ricki Sylvester said it would be.
No fountain pen but for her signature. She’d computer-typed concisely and clearly. The kind of lawyer you’d want if you could trust her.
For most of her life, she began, honesty had been her “byword. A tradition handed down by my grandfather, the noted attorney John E. ‘Jack’ McCandless.”
The grand exception to her moral stance had taken place during an “intoxicated state.” Agreeing to look for and eventually verifying the presence of a “57 carat ruby” in Thalia’s room.
At the request of her “seducer” Philip Duke.
I will not lie and say I expected nothing to happen vis a vis the gem. Philip Duke was clear about his belief that it belonged rightfully to his family and that he was going to own it. But I did turn down his request to actually take the gem during one of my house calls to Thalia.
I suppose I knew he’d attempt to acquire the ruby by stealth, however I rationalized that as only a minimal loss to Thalia, seeing as she’d left it in plain sight for decades and had never included it in her estate when she enumerated such to me, as her executor. In fact, it was only after Phil Duke alerted me to the visual characteristics of the gem that I was able to locate it, serving as a finial atop a lamp, a use that I chose to characterize as Thalia’s humorous belittling of the stone.
I am not offering an excuse, however I am emphasizing that in no way did I expect my transferring the information about the stone to Philip Duke to lead to homicide. When I learned of Thalia’s death, I was as shocked as anyone. Thalia was dear to me. It took a long time for me to integrate the terrible facts and to make sense of them. I finally realized that someone as callous as Philip Duke was likely to attempt to effect a similar end upon me. Frightened, I traveled to the Ojai Valley Inn where I spent two days contemplating my future.
Eventually perceiving that future as dim and hopeless, in addition to having lived with neuralgia and other sources of physical pain for years, and in the spirit of full atonement, I have decided to set my own punishment as capital punishment. In that same spirit, being of sound mind and body and lacking any natural heirs, I hereby bequeath my entire estate to the identical charities benefited by Thalia Mars’s estate, in identical proportions.
Sincerely,
Richeline (Ricki) Sylvester, J.D., Esq.
Below that, a description of her estate. Stocks, bonds, real estate. Not dissimilar from Thalia’s. Smaller but still substantial.
“Six mil,” said Milo. “Big Bird’s gonna be soaring.”
CHAPTER
49
Harold Saroyan looked at Elie Aronson. Elie looked at Milo and me. Both men wore the sad expression of parents forced to punish a usually well-behaved child.
Saroyan, a white-haired, mustachioed man in his eighties, bought and sold colored gemstones from an office in Elie’s downtown building. He’d come to the meeting in a tailored black suit, flawless white shirt, and extravagant yellow cravat, carrying a black leather case from which he drew out a jeweler’s loupe and a stereoscopic zoom microscope.
The meeting was in a high-security room in the crime lab’s property area, accessed by Noreen Sharp’s coded card. Noreen wasn’t there, called moments before to one of the loading docks where two cars, battered and blood-soaked due to a fatal crash on the 101, had just come in.
Just Milo, myself, and the gem dealers, arranged around a plain, gray table. In the center, a gleaming bit of gorgeous, faceted red s
at atop a black velvet bag supplied by Noreen. (“Shows off the color, no?”)
Saroyan had begun by holding the ruby up to the light and turning it between his fingers. Following up with the loupe, then the scope, before placing the ruby back.
He sighed. Looked at Elie, again.
Elie said, “Something to tell? Tell.”
Saroyan faced us. “I apologize for having to say this to you. It’s a spinel.”
Milo said, “Which is…”
Elie said, “Not a ruby.”
“It’s a fake?”
“If you tell someone it’s a ruby, it’s a fake. But it’s not glass, it’s another stone, called a spinel. S-P-I-N-E-L.”
Harold Saroyan said, “I knew the minute I held it up but to make you feel better, I had a look inside. No doubt.”
I said, “What did holding it up do?”
“Showed me it has no pleochroism—doesn’t break up light the way a ruby does. Rubies are double-refractive, the light divides at two different speeds. Spinels are single-refractive, you don’t get a prismatic effect. The look inside said the same thing. Spinels have eight-, sometimes twelve-sided crystals. Rubies have six. This one has twelve.”
Milo said, “What’s it worth?”
Saroyan: “Nice spinel, this size? A few thousand dollars. Maybe you could get five.”
“Thousand.”
Elie said, “That’s the point. Not millions.”
Milo sat back in his chair. He’d lost color. I knew what he was thinking.
All those lives for this.
He said, “Obviously, the British Museum wasn’t conned, so it was probably switched with a ruby sometime later.”
Saroyan tugged at the knot of his tie. “Not necessarily, Lieutenant. Dealers in Asia caught on a long time ago but Europeans took longer to get educated. Years ago, a nice blue stone was a sapphire, a nice red stone was a ruby. There’s a big spinel in the British Imperial State Crown that everyone thought was a ruby. Many other situations like that.”
Elie said, “Czars and kings thought they knew what they were getting. They didn’t.”
Saroyan lifted the gem, rubbed it between his fingers. “A little softer than a ruby, seven and a half, eight on the Mohs scale instead of nine for a ruby, but that’s still pretty hard. Making it more confusing, spinels are found where rubies are. They’re actually rarer than rubies. So why aren’t they more valuable?”
He shrugged. “That’s gemstones, it’s all about mystique. Like with women—models. Photographer wants a blonde, pretty brunettes don’t get hired.”
Milo said, “But sometimes brunettes are called for.”
Saroyan said, “True. But so far, the market wants only blondes.”
I said, “So there wasn’t necessarily a substitution.”
“I looked at the pictures of the museum exhibition, sir. No way to know for certain from an old photograph, but I took my time going over it and found facets that are identical to this stone. If I had to bet, it’s the one the Egyptian owned.”
Milo said, “No one would know different until they tried to sell it.”
“Maybe even after they tried to sell it, Lieutenant. Sometimes people aren’t careful. Sometimes they lie.”
“Okay, thanks, gentlemen,” said Milo. “Appreciate your coming down and sorry it was a waste of time.”
“Not a waste,” said Saroyan. “It’s an interesting story. My age, you start to collect stories more than money.”
—
The four of us exited Hertzberg together. Saroyan got into a gleaming black Mercedes S300, Elie into an equally pampered silver version of the same model.
I said, “So many opportunities for a swindle. Whoever sold it to the Egyptian and who knows how many before that, then onward to the jeweler who consigned with Drancy, Drancy, Hoke, Thalia.”
“Not Demarest,” Milo said. “Idiot. You think Thalia stuck what she thought was a fortune on top of a lamp?”
I said, “That’s the assumption I want to live with.”
“Why?”
“Her having a sense of humor.”
—
We reached the car. I asked him when I could go public.
He said, “What the hell, nothing to hide anymore.”
“Then hold on for a sec.”
I punched a preset on my cell. Maxine Driver answered at her office.
“Oh, hi,” she said. “About to start office hours. Whining sophomores wanting their grades changed.”
“Keep ’em waiting in the hall, I’ve got a story for you.”
I gave her the basics. Surprisingly short tale.
She said, “That was definitely worth waiting for. You’ve restored my faith in humanity.”
I hung up without comment. But as I drove out of the crime lab parking lot, I thought: What a wrong way to put it.
CHAPTER
50
Nearly a year after the murder of Thalia Mars, I was invited to a celebration at the Outpatient Division of Western Peds. Normally, I beg off that kind of thing. This time I put on a suit and tie and asked Robin to keep me company.
For the past eleven months, I’d tried to put Thalia behind me with pretty good success. After I’d arranged transfer of her tiny body from the crypt to the mortuary at Forest Lawn in Burbank, I’d selected a hillside plot with a view of a major TV studio, movie lots, and low-rise sprawl.
Scoring her a place near the love of her life would’ve been a nice touch but no room at Hollywood Legends.
No gravestones in this place, so I didn’t need to order one. Everyone got a generic brass plaque installed flat on the emerald turf.
I had composed the text, kept it simple. Name, dates of birth and death denoting an incredibly long life, a quote from Lord Byron. Because he’d sired a genius and was as good a poet as any.
I knew it was love and I felt it was glory.
And that was that.
—
“Good cause,” I told Robin. “Also, there’s seeing you in that red dress.”
She said, “What makes you think I’ll wear the red dress?”
“Why not?”
She laughed. “Why not, indeed. I do look hot in it.”
—
The party had been postponed several times, held up for months as Thalia’s estate was fine-toothed by the IRS and the state Franchise Tax Board. Every charity listed in the will vetted repeatedly and repetitively, in the hope of finding something unkosher and open to confiscation.
Ricki Sylvester had done a fine job as an estate lawyer but her implication in the murders gave both agencies an additional excuse to comb the will for symptoms of impropriety. Then there was the matter of Sylvester’s will and her instruction that both documents needed to be considered as “an entity.” After that, meetings, memos, a whole bunch of head-scratching at progressively higher levels of government authority.
I knew nothing about the logjam, was enjoying a bottle from the case of Chivas Blue that Milo had sent me right after closing the case, when Ruben Eagle called.
I’d held on to Milo’s gift card. Inscribed Early Christmas.
With him, it never stops.
Ruben’s call was about getting a neuropsych referral for a child with hard-to-categorize seizure disorder. I gave three names of great people, then asked how it felt to be well funded.
He said, “Not yet.”
“What’s holding it up?”
“No idea.”
I phoned the hospital’s chief lawyer for development, gave him a rundown of the Drancy robbery and the likely illegal federal confiscation of privately owned bijoux.
“That might be something I can use,” he said. “I assume you don’t want to be quoted.”
“Good guess.”
“Hmm…well I’m not sure how I can use it…but thanks.”
Two weeks later, the funds were released in full. Including the spinel, which sold to a gem broker in Atlanta for forty-five hundred dollars.
What happened to it
after that, I have no idea.
Same for whether or not my call actually had anything to do with freeing Thalia’s estate.
What I did know was that Phil Duke, claiming he’d never fired a weapon in his life and that Henry Bakstrom had shot Gerard Waters and been shot, in turn, by Deandra Demarest, had been allowed to plead down to voluntary manslaughter.
Eighteen-year sentence. At his age, that could turn out to be life.
His sole request: a prison “where they have a theater program.”
—
Robin and I arrived at the party ten minutes late.
Cake, soda pop, bottled water for the virtuous, everything set up in a room near the hospital chapel.
Ruben Eagle, a fine doctor and sterling human being, was no orator. But what his speech lacked in dynamism it made up for in sincerity. His eyes moistened as he held up the giant check facsimile created by the hospital’s public relations office. Impressive thing, full of zeros, Thalia’s signature a faithful reproduction.
Ruben spoke a little longer than he needed to, informing the audience—members of the hospital board, development honchos, the pediatricians who worked for him, residents and fellows not on call, a few med school deans, Robin, Milo, and myself—what a blessing Thalia had been for the department. How that blessing would grow in years to come. How this changed so much.
Several children—long-healed patients—had also been invited, along with their parents. Personalizing the good works the Outpatient Division did every day. They stood to the side, intimidated by suits and white coats.
But two of the kids, a boy and a girl, got to hold the giant check and a second girl was in charge of hoisting an enlarged photo of Thalia.
Black-and-white image, shot at Perino’s.
Leroy Hoke and Jack McCandless. A Martini glass cropped out, leaving the unlined, bright-eyed pixie face of a beautiful, happy young woman.
To Masha
Special thanks to Doreen Hudson and Laura Jorstad
Books by Jonathan Kellerman
FICTION
Heartbreak Hotel Page 30