“Watched what?”
I hesitated, the instinct to protect rearing its paternalistic little head. Back in the old days, I’d avoided talking about police cases. A couple of breakups and makeups later, I had a new appreciation for sharing.
I gave her the basics.
She said, “The marsh? Where we tried to take a walk?”
“None other.”
“You know, the place was kind of creepy.” Same thing Liz Wilkinson had said.
“How so?”
“It’s nothing I can really pinpoint. Unfriendly, I guess. Where were the bodies left?”
“The most recent one was right near the eastern entrance. The others were submerged farther up the path.”
“Drive up and dump,” she said. “A car would’ve been conspicuous, Alex. And all that development looking down on it.”
“Nighttime dump, turn off the headlights, you’d fade into the darkness. Including the view from above.”
She pushed her plate away. Mixed herself a cranberry juice with a splash of Grey Goose. “Three sunken bodies and one left right out in the open. What does that mean?”
“Maybe a new level of confidence.”
“Bragging,” she said. “Like it’s something to be proud of.”
The dot-com guy had sent Robin a box of Audrey Hepburn movies. We’d made our way through most of the DVDs, had saved Charade for a long quiet night.
Ten minutes into the film, the phone rang. I ignored it, drew Robin closer. Seconds later, the clanging resumed. I put Cary Grant on pause.
Milo said, “You free tomorrow at ten, right? Selena’s mom is due.”
“Sure.”
“Everything okay?”
“Absolutely.”
“I interrupt something?”
“High intrigue featuring gorgeous people.”
“A movie,” he said.
“Ace detective.”
“Sure ain’t real life. Go back to Cinema Dreams. I’ll tell you about the bones tomorrow.”
“What about the bones?”
“Hey, far be it from me to take you away from Robin and Doggie and fictitious gorgeous people.”
“What?”
“Dr. Hargrove got a quicker fix than she thought. All three of the submerged victims are complete skeletons, minus the right hand. Jane Doe Number Two is also a black female, same age range as Jane One with the broken leg, also probable strangulation. From the length of her femurs, at least five seven, and strain marks indicate she was probably significantly overweight. Hargrove is guessing burial for maybe half a year, but she won’t commit. Number Three’s a white female, older than the others—closer to fifty, average size, another broken hyoid, nothing much in the way of distinguishing marks. Could be the same TOD as Jane Two, or longer, hard to say. The other tidbit is San Diego PD has a missing black female named Sheralyn Dawkins. Twenty-nine years old, arrests for solicitation and dope, and she broke her leg in a car crash five years ago and limped.”
“Hundred and twenty miles away,” I said. “Our boy’s a traveler?”
“Just what I need. I told Reed to find family, drive down, and notify. Give him a sense of accomplishment, boy’s got low self-esteem, no?”
“He have any luck with the Vanders’ accountants?”
“Not a lick. Global Investments referred him to Vander’s lawyer where he got shunted to a secretary. Who sent him to her secretary. Who put him on hold, then informed him she’d get back to him. No nasty stuff on Travis Huck or Silford Duboff, either. And no links show up between the two of them.”
I said, “The thrilling world of sleuthing.”
“Let’s see what Reed learns from Sheralyn Dawkins’s family. Maybe she moved to L.A. and we can establish some kind of connection to someone.”
“If she did move, here’s something to consider: The marsh isn’t that far from the airport, and the area around LAX is full of streetwalkers.”
“Hmm . . . I like that. Okay, go back to your movie,” he said. “Which one?”
“Charade.”
“Cavorting in Paris and snappy dialogue. If only crime were that much fun.”
“Want to borrow it when we’re through?”
“Nah,” he said. “Right now I can’t afford fantasy.”
CHAPTER 9
I arrived on time for the meeting with Selena Bass’s mother. The civilian clerk told me, “They already started. Room D, upstairs.”
The door was unlocked. The A.C. blasted. Milo sat opposite Emily Green-Bass. His tie was knotted neatly and his face was soft. I’ve seen him practice in front of a mirror before meeting with grief-stricken relatives. Loosening his muscles. Keeping the wolf-glare out of his eyes.
Emily Green-Bass’s white hair was now long and French-braided. She wore a black mock turtle over a long gray skirt, and black suede flats. Jewelry dealer, but no baubles. Her features were laser-cut, too sharp for beautiful. A handsome woman during good times. Now she was icy statuary.
Two bulky men in their thirties sat at the side of the table. The older one wore a yellow golf shirt, brown slacks, deck shoes. Reddish blond hair was side-parted executive-style. Close-shaved, bullnecked, three-martini nose.
The younger one was darker, just as husky but with a bonier face. He wore a faded gray David Lynch Rules sweatshirt, wrinkled cargo pants, high lace-up boots. Wavy brown hair hung to his shoulders. A triangular soul patch was white-blond. A chromium chain drooped from a rear pocket, and when he turned to me it jangled.
Milo introduced me. “These are Selena’s mom and brothers, Dr. Delaware.”
Emily Green-Bass held out a long, white hand that felt as if it had just left the freezer. I encased it briefly with both of mine and her gray eyes got wet.
Polo Shirt said, “Chris Green.”
Soul Patch muttered, “Marc.”
“We were just going over Selena’s life in L.A. Marc had some contact with Selena after she moved here.”
“She visited me in Oakland,” said Marc. “Said she was doing fine. She e-mailed the same thing to Mom.”
Emily Green-Bass hadn’t taken her eyes off me. “I’m glad a psychologist is here. What happened has got to be psychotic. There hasn’t been anything extreme in Selena’s life. Not for a long time.”
Marc Green said, “There never was. It was basic adolescent crap.”
“If you say so, Marcus.” Wan smile. “It sure didn’t seem that way when I had to contend with it.”
Marc’s shoulders rose and fell. His chain jangled and he reached behind to quiet it. “I did the same crap and so did Chris. Only difference is we were better at covering up.”
Looking to his brother for confirmation.
Chris said, “Uh-huh.”
“Unfortunately for Selena,” Marc went on, “she had a compulsion to confess everything. Right?”
Chris smiled sadly. “Like a Catholic thing. Except we’re not Catholic.”
“First she’d try out the script on us,” said Marc. “ ‘I smoked a joint.’ ‘I watched an X movie on cable.’ ‘I lied about where I was to Mom.’ We’re like, don’t tell us, stupid. And for sure don’t tell Mom. So of course she did.”
Emily Green-Bass began crying.
Milo said, “Typical teenage stuff.”
Marc Green said, “This is a waste of time.”
Chris said, “She was into the whole music thing.”
“So what!”
“Chill, Marc. I want them to have all the facts—”
“The facts are she was in the wrong place, wrong time, ran into Ted Bundy’s reincarnation.”
No one spoke.
Marc Green said, “This may be news to all concerned but being into the whole music thing doesn’t make her a freak. Her basic mind-set was conventional. When she met some of the people I have to hang with, she thought they were weird.”
Milo said, “Which people are those?”
Marc said, “From work.”
“Which is where?”
“
That relevant?”
His mother said, “Marcus, he’s trying to help.”
“Good for him.” To Milo: “I work wherever they pay me.”
Emily Green-Bass said, “Marc has a degree in acoustical engineering.”
“I do sound recording and amplification, mostly concerts and indie films. And as long as we’re doing the official family bio thing, Big Bro Chris works for Starbucks. That’s an obscure coffee company in Seattle.”
Chris said, “Marketing and distribution.”
I said, “When did Selena visit you, Marc?”
“A year ago and maybe six months after that. The first time, I was working on a picture and she trailed along. That’s when she told me the people I hung with were bizarre. Which was true of that particular crew, I guess. Half the dialogue was in Italian, the rest was pantomime—some sort of tribute to Pasolini but nobody actually knew Italian.”
His brother said, “And the Oscar goes to.”
“Hey, we can’t all ride the caffeine train.”
Milo said, “Selena’s second visit . . . ”
“Was when I asked her up for the weekend so I could introduce her to Cleo—then my lover, now my wife. We just had our first baby. Which is why I should be home. Can we move this along?”
Milo sat back and crossed his legs. “If you’ve got nothing more to tell us, feel free to go.”
Marc rubbed his soul patch, shoved hair behind his left ear. Blue and green ink washed across his neck. Cleo, amid a wreath of vines. I hoped the marriage lasted.
“What the hell,” he said. “I’m booked on a nine p.m., no sense changing it.”
Chris said, “Selena saw you twice, huh? That’s two more times than she bothered to call me back.”
“Guess she was too busy for corporate chitchat.”
Chris turned away from his brother.
Milo said, “You called her . . .”
“Just to see how she was doing.”
“When was the last time you spoke to her?”
“I dunno . . . two years ago.”
Marc said, “Obviously we’re a close-knit family.”
Emily Green-Bass said, “Chris and Marc’s father and I broke up when the boys were one and three and he hasn’t been heard from since.” Frowning at her sons as if the fault was theirs. “I met Selena’s dad a year later. Dan was good to you guys.”
No argument.
“Dan passed away when Selena was six. I raised her alone and I’m sure there are some people would say I screwed it up.”
Chris said, “You did fine, Mom.”
Marc said, “Can we stay focused on Selena?”
Silence.
“Why get distracted?” he said. “Selena was talented, but as essentially straight as they come. I’m not saying she never puffed a doobie. But even when she and Mom were doing their hostility thing, she never did anything spiteful, like hooking up with someone iffy. Just the opposite. We used to call her Sister Cee. As in celibate.”
“She’d call herself that,” said Chris.
Milo said, “What about boyfriends?”
Marc said, “Nope.”
“Mrs. Green-Bass?”
“No, I never saw anyone.”
She covered her face. Marc reached out to pat his mother’s shoulders. She drew away.
“Oh God,” she said, through her fingers, “this is so horrible.”
Marc’s lip trembled. “All I’m saying, Mom, is that Selena didn’t bring it upon herself. Shit happens, life sucks. Like stepping off a curb and some asshole comes barreling down. That just happened to me. Right after Cleo gave birth to Phaedra. I left the hospital to get some champagne, was floating on air. I step off the curb and this fucking San Francisco Examiner truck comes out of nowhere, misses me by a millimeter.”
“Marcus, don’t tell me those things! I don’t want to hear them!”
Milo said, “So no boyfriend anyone’s aware of. What about friends? People she hung with here in L.A.”
No answer.
Emily said, “She did seem to be happy about her work. That’s what she finally e-mailed me about.”
“Teaching that rich kid,” said Marc. “She said it was a dream gig. She called to tell me because I’m into music, too. Used to play bass. Not that I was ever close to Selena’s level. I’m competent, she’s brilliant. Sat down at the piano when she was three and just played the fucking thing. By five, she was doing Gershwin by ear. Give her anything, she could play it. I watched her pick up a clarinet cold and run off a scale. She got the breathing right away.”
“Sounds like a prodigy,” said Milo.
“No one used that word, we just thought she was amazing.”
Emily Green-Bass said, “I was so busy supporting us, I was happy she had something to occupy her.”
Marc said, “One day I come in—I’m talking years ago, when Selena was eight or nine. She’s in the living room strumming my guitar. The guitar was new, a birthday present, I got pissed that she took it without my permission. Then I realize she’s actually making music on it. Never had a lesson and she’s taught herself a bunch of chords and her tone’s better than mine.”
Emily said, “When she was eleven I could see piano was something she wanted to stick with, so I got her a teacher. This was back when we lived in Ames, Iowa. Ames Band Equipment had a program for the schools. Selena outgrew the first teacher they gave her, then two others. They said I needed to find someone with serious classical training. When we moved to Long Island, I found an old woman in the city who’d been a professor in the Soviet Union. Mrs. Nemerov—Madame Nemerov, she was ancient, wore ball gowns. Selena studied with her until she was fifteen. Then one day she just quit, said she hated classical music. I told her she was wasting her God-given talent, she’d never play again. She said I was wrong. It got pretty—that was one of our biggest . . . disagreements. It was a tough time, Selena had totally abandoned her schoolwork, was getting D’s and F’s. She claimed she was learning more from life than any stupid school could teach her.”
Marc muttered, “No shit.”
I said, “Did she stop playing?”
“No. I was wrong. She actually played more, just not a lot of classical pieces. Though every so often she’d do a little Liszt or Chopin, whatever.” Sad smile. “The Chopin études. She liked the ones in minor keys. Or at least that’s what she said, I don’t know a thing about music. Selena got her talent from her father, he played guitar, banjo, you name it. Did that bluegrass stuff, he was originally from Arkansas. Madame Nemerov said Selena was one of the quickest sight readers she’d ever taught, had perfect pitch. In her view Selena could’ve been one of the great concert pianists, if she’d wanted to.”
Marc said, “She thought touring around and playing Beethoven for stuffed shirts would rob her life of normalcy.”
“So this was better?” said Emily. “Doing absolutely nothing until she was twenty-one, then packing up and moving to L.A. without telling me? Without any job prospects?”
Milo said, “She ran away?”
“When you’re not a minor they don’t call it that. I came home and she’d packed her bags and left a note that she was moving to ‘the coast’ and not to try to stop her. I was frantic. She phoned a few days later but wouldn’t tell me where she was. I finally pried out the fact that she was in L.A., but she refused to say where. She claimed she was supporting herself with ‘gigs.’ Whatever that meant.”
Marc said, “She got some club dates, playing backup keyboard.”
His mother stared at him. “Well, that’s news to me, Marcus.”
“Then it’s good that I’m here to inform you.”
Emily Green-Bass’s hand rose and arced toward his face. She checked herself, shuddered. “Lieutenant, the fact that Selena and I weren’t in regular contact was her choice, not mine. She shut me out completely. I have no idea what she’s been doing all these years. It’s been hellish not knowing. If I didn’t have a business to run, I’d have come out here and trac
ked her down. I called the police but couldn’t provide an address, so they couldn’t tell me which station to contact. And since Selena wasn’t a minor and she had left voluntarily, there was nothing anyone could do. Their big suggestion was I contact a private detective. Besides being expensive, I knew that kind of snooping would irritate Selena, so I minded my own business, kept telling myself she was all right.”
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