Gone

by Jonathan Kellerman

  I made the calls the following morning. Arlene Giacomo was a thoughtful, sane woman.

  She said, “Lou drive you nuts?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He needs me,” she said. “I want him home.”

  I let her talk for a while. Eulogizing Tori but providing nothing new. When I brought up the dating issue, she said, “A mother can tell, believe me. But I’ve got no details, Tori was really into being free, no more girl talk with Mama. That was something her father couldn’t grasp, he always bugged her.”

  I thanked her and punched in Michael Caravanza’s number. A woman answered.

  “Hold on— Mii-keee!”

  Moments later a slurred, “Yeah?”

  I explained why I was calling. He said, “Hold on— one second, babe. This is about Tori? You found her?”

  “Her remains were identified yesterday.”

  “Remains— oh, shit, I don’t wanna tell Sandy, she knew Tori.”

  “Did she know her well?”

  “Nah,” said Caravanza, “just from church. What happened?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Did you have contact with her after she moved to L.A.?”

  “We were divorced, but we were getting along, you know? Like they say, amicable. She called me a coupla times, maybe the first month. Then it stopped.”

  “No more loneliness.”

  “I figured she hooked up with someone.”

  “She say that?”

  “Nah, but I know— knew Tori. When she had that voice it meant she was excited about something. And it sure wasn’t her acting career, she wasn’t getting shit. That she told me.”

  “No idea who she was seeing?”

  “You think he did it to her?”

  “Any lead would be helpful.”

  “Well,” said Michael Caravanza, “if she did what she said she was gonna do, she hooked up with some movie star. That was the plan. Go to Hollywood, the right clubs, whatever, meet some movie star and show him she could be a star, too.”

  “Ambitious.”

  “Ambitious is what split us up. I’m a working guy, Tori thought her shit was— she thought she was gonna be Angelina Jolie or something— what’s that— hold on, babe, just a sec— sorry, Sandy’s my fiancée.”

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna try the marriage thing again. Sandy’s nice and she wants kids. No big church deal, this time, we’re just gonna do it with some judge then go off to Aruba or something.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “Hope so. Don’t get me wrong, Tori was a nice girl. She just thought she could be someone else.”

  “The few times she did call,” I said, “did she say anything that could help us?”

  “Let me think,” said Caravanza. “It was only three times, four, whatever...what did she say...mostly she said she was lonely. That was basically it, lonely. In some shitty little apartment. She didn’t miss me or want to get back together, nothing like that. She just wanted to tell me she was feeling shitty.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, I listened. Mostly that’s what I did when I was married. She talked, I listened.”

  * * *

  I reached Milo’s cell and reported both conversations.

  “Hooking up with a movie star, huh?”

  “Maybe she settled for someone who looked like one.”

  “Meserve or another PlayHouse Adonis.”

  “With her level of naiveté, someone who’d been around just a bit longer could’ve seemed impressive.”

  “Wonder how long Meserve’s been getting insight from Nora Dowd.”

  “Longer than two years,” I said. “He was there before Michaela arrived.”

  “And when Tori showed up. So where the hell is he...okay, thanks, let me toss this around while I wait for Michaela’s landlord.”

  * * *

  The day floated by with all the importance of a cork in the ocean. I considered calling Allison, then Robin, then Allison again. Settled for neither and filled Saturday by running and sleeping, doing scutwork around the house.

  Sunday’s balm and glorious blue skies made matters worse; this was a day to be with someone.

  I drove to the beach. The sun had brought people and cars to the coastline. Golden-haired girls promenaded in bikini tops and sarongs, surfer dudes peeled in and out of wetsuits, tourists gawked at natural wonders of all types.

  On PCH, a conspicuously crawling highway patrol car lowered the pace to race-walk from Carbon Beach to Malibu Road. The southern entry to Latigo Canyon was closer but that meant more miles of winding road. I kept going to Kanan Dume and turned off.

  Alone.

  I tooled up the canyon, both hands on the wheel as the twists tested the Seville’s mushy suspension. Despite being up here years ago, the sharpness of the curves and the dead drops if you steered wrong surprised me.

  Not a spot for a leisurely cruise and after dark the route would be treacherous unless you knew it well. Dylan Meserve had hiked up here and returned to play out a fraudulent kidnapping.

  Maybe because of the isolation. I had yet to encounter another vehicle challenging the mountains.

  I drove another few miles, managed to turn around on a skinny ribbon of asphalt, hooked right on Kanan, and drove into the Valley.

  Tori Giacomo’s last known address was a dingy white multiplex. Old cars and trucks filled the street. True to her father’s description, the people I saw were mostly brown-skinned. Some were dressed for church. Others looked as if faith was the last thing on their minds.

  Laurel Canyon south led me back into the city and Beverly Boulevard east took me to Hancock Park. No Range Rover in Nora Dowd’s driveway and when I walked up to the door and knocked, no response.

  Go west, aimless man.

  * * *

  The weeds where Michaela had been dumped had fluffed, obscuring any history of violence. I stared at plants and dirt, got back in the car.

  On Holt Avenue, I spotted Shayndie Winograd and a young, sparsely bearded man in a black suit and a broad-brimmed hat walking four small children and steering a double stroller north toward Pico. The allegedly ailing Gershie Yoel was the picture of health as he tried to shinny up his father’s trousers. Rabbi Winograd fended him off, finally lifted the boy and slung him over his shoulder like a sack of flour. The kid loved it.

  A short drive away, on Reynold Peaty’s block of Guthrie, I looked for Sean Binchy but couldn’t find him. Was the guy that good? Or had born-again obligations prevailed on Sunday?

  As I coasted past Peaty’s building, a young Hispanic family came down the stairs and headed for a dented blue van. Definite church garb, including three chubby kids under five. These parents looked even younger than the Winograds— barely out of their teens. The father’s shaved head and stone-faced swagger were at odds with his stiff gray suit. He and his wife were heavy. She had tired eyes and blond-streaked hair.

  Back in my intern days, the psych staff had favored a smug, knowing line: Kids having kids. The unspoken tsk-tsk.

  Here I was, driving around by myself.

  Who was to say?

  I’d stopped without meaning to in front of Peaty’s building. One of the little kids waved at me and I waved back and both parents turned. Shaved-head Dad glared. I sped off.

  No action at the PlayHouse, same for the big cantaloupe-painted complex on Overland that Dylan Meserve had left without notice.

  Shabby place. Rust streaks beneath the gutters I hadn’t noticed the first time. Front grid of stingy little windows, no hint anyone lived behind them.

  That exhumed memories of my student days living on Overland, alone and faceless and so full of self-doubt that entire weeks could slog by in a narcotic haze.

  I pictured Tori Giacomo mustering the courage for a cross-country move and ending up in a small, sad room on a street full of strangers. Fueled by ambition— or delusions. Was there a difference?

  Lonely, everyon
e lonely.

  I recalled a line I’d used on girls back then.

  No, I don’t do drugs, more into the natural low.

  Mr. Sardonic. Every so often, it had worked.

  * * *

  Monday morning at eleven, Milo phoned from his car. “Damn landlord stood me up Saturday, too much traffic from La Jolla. Finally, he tells me I can get a key from his sister who lives in Westwood. Asshole. I waited for the techies, just finished doing my own toss.”

  “Learn anything?”

  “She wasn’t living large. No food in the fridge, granola bars and canned diet shakes in the pantry. Mydol, Advil, Motrin, Pepto-Bismol, Tums, a little marijuana in her nightstand. No birth control. Not much of a reader, the extent of her library was back issues of Us and People and Glamour. TV but no cable hookup and the phone was dead. My subpoena for her calls is paying off in a few days but like I said her land line was disconnected for nonpayment and I can’t find any cell account. One thing she did have was nice clothes. Not a lot, but nice, she probably spent all her dough on duds. Manager of the restaurant she worked at said she was fine, no problems, didn’t make much of an impression. No guys he remembers seeing her with. Meserve’s shoe-store boss said Meserve was unreliable and could be snotty to customers. Anyway, we’ll see if any interesting prints come up. No signs of violence or struggle, doesn’t look as if she was killed there. How was your weekend?”

  “Quiet.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  I told him about driving up to Latigo, left out the rest of my motor tour and the memories it had evoked.

  He said, “No kidding. I was up there myself, early in the morning. Pretty, no?”

  “And out of the way.”

  “I talked to a few neighbors, including the old guy Michaela scared when she jumped out naked. No one had ever seen her or Meserve there before. Also, I got Mr. Albert Beamish on the phone this morning. Saturday and Sunday he spends at his place in Palm Desert. Sunshine did nothing for his disposition. What he was itching to tell me was he spotted Nora’s Range Rover leaving her house Friday around nine.”

  “Right after our meeting at Brad’s house.”

  “Maybe Brad advised her to take a vacation. Or she just felt like some down time and didn’t bother to tell her students because she’s an indolent rich girl. I asked Beamish to keep an eye out, thanked him for being observant. He barks back at me, ‘Show your gratitude by doing your job with minimal competence.’ ”

  I laughed. “Did his powers of observation lead to checking the Rover’s occupants?”

  “If only. Meserve’s car still hasn’t shown up but if he’s with Nora, the two of them could be using hers and stashing his. As in Nora’s garage, or the one at the PlayHouse. Maybe I can pry a door and take a peek. On a whole other tack, Reynold Peaty is being true to his loser-loner self. Stayed in his apartment all weekend. I gave Sean Sunday off because he’s religious, so it’s possible we missed something. But I did watch the place in the afternoon around four.”

  Missing me by a couple of hours. Again.

  “Last and possibly least,” he said, “Tori Giacomo’s building has changed ownership twice since she lived there. The original owners were a couple of nonagenarian sisters who passed on naturally. The property went to probate, a speculator from Vegas picked it up cheap then resold to a consortium of businessmen from Koreatown. No records of any old tenants, the aroma of futility fills the air.”

  “When are you heading over to Nora’s?”

  “Pulling up as we speak...” A car door slammed. “I am now heading for her door. Knock knock— ” He raised his voice to an androgynous alto: “Who’s there? Lieutenant Sturgis. Lieutenant Sturgis who?...Hear that, Alex?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Exactly. Okay, now I’m at the garage...no give, locked...where’s a battering ram when you need it? Tha-tha-that’s all, folks, this has been a presentation of the Useless Travel Channel.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Tuesday morning, I called Robin, got her machine, hung up.

  In my office, a dusty stack of psych journals beckoned. A twenty-page treatise on the eye-blink reflex in schizophrenic Hooded rats lowered my eyelids.

  I went down to the pond and fed the koi. For fish, they’re smart, have learned to swarm the moment I come down the stairs. It’s nice to be wanted.

  Warm air and sloshing water put me under again. The next thing I saw was Milo’s big face crowding my visual field.

  Smile as wide as a continent. Scariest clown in the known world. I mumbled some kind of greeting.

  “What’s with you?” he said. “Snoozing midday like a codger?”

  “What time is it?”

  He told me. An hour had vanished. “What’s next, white shoes and dinner at four?”

  “Robin naps.”

  “Robin has a real job.”

  I got to my feet and yawned. The fish sped toward me. Milo hummed the theme from Jaws. In his hand was a folder. Unmistakable shade of blue.

  “A new one?” I said.

  Instead of answering, he climbed back up to the house. I cleared my head and followed.

  * * *

  He sat himself at the kitchen table, napkin tucked into his collar, dishes and utensils set for one. Half a dozen slices of toast, runny Vesuvius of scrambled eggs, sixteen-ounce glass of orange juice, half emptied.

  He wiped pulp from his lips. “Love this place. Breakfast served any time.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Long enough to rob you blind if such were my intention. Why can’t I convince you to lock your door?”

  “No one drops in but you.”

  “This isn’t a visit, it’s business.” He stabbed the egg mound, slid the blue folder across the table. A second file separated from the first. “Read ’em and wake.”

  A pair of missing persons cases. Gaidelas, A. Gaidelas, C.

  Consecutive case numbers.

  “Two more girls?” I said. “Sisters?”

  “Read.”

  Andrew and Catherine Gaidelas, forty-eight and forty-five, respectively, had disappeared two months after Tori Giacomo.

  The couple, married twenty years with no children, were owners of a beauty parlor in Toledo, Ohio, called Locks of Luck. In L.A. for a spring vacation, they’d been staying in Sherman Oaks with Cathy’s sister and brother-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. Barry Palmer. On a clear, crisp Tuesday in April the Palmers went to work and the Gaidelases left to go hiking in the Malibu mountains. They hadn’t been seen since.

  Identical report in both files. I read Catherine’s. “Doesn’t say where in Malibu.”

  “Doesn’t say a lot of things. Keep going.”

  The facts were sketchy, with no apparent links to Michaela or Tori. Was I missing something? Then I came to the final paragraph.

  Subject C. Gaidelas’s sister, Susan Palmer, reports Cathy and Andy said they were coming out to Calif for vacation but after they got there talked about staying for a while so they could “break into acting.” S. Palmer reports her sister did some “modeling and theater” after high school and used to talk about becoming an actress. A. Gaidelas didn’t have acting experience but everyone back home thought he was a handsome guy who “looked like Dennis Quaid.” S. Palmer reports Andy and Cathy were tired of running a beauty parlor and didn’t like the cold weather in Ohio. Cathy said she thought they could get some commercials because they looked “all-American.” She also talked about “getting serious and taking acting lessons” and S. Palmer thinks Cathy contacted some acting schools but doesn’t know which ones.

  At the rear were two color head-shots.

  Cathy and Andy Gaidelas were both fair-haired and blue-eyed with disarming smiles. Cathy had posed in a sleeveless black dress trimmed with rhinestones and matching pendant earrings. Full-faced, with plump shoulders, she had teased platinum hair, a strong chin, a thin, straight nose.

  Her husband was a tousled gray-blond, long-faced and craggy in a white button-down shirt tha
t exposed curls of pale chest hair. I supposed his off-kilter grin had a Dennis Quaid charm. Any other similarities to the actor eluded me.

  All-American couple well into middle age. They might qualify for Mom and Dad parts on commercials. Pitches for dog food, TV dinners, garbage bags...

  I shut the file.

  Milo said, “Wannabe stars and now they’re gone. Am I reaching?”