That was when a friend introduced her to Dr Roberts – to Nikki. For the first time since the early days with her husband, Anne felt that she had someone in her corner, someone looking out for her and protecting her, only this time in a good way. A healthy way. Therapy was the answer, she felt sure of that now. Nikki was the answer. She just had to keep going, to stay strong.
Lifting her bow, she dived back into the music with renewed devotion, each note elevating her to a higher plane, to a future full of hope and promise and wonder.
Nikki checked her reflection in the rear-view mirror as she pulled into Tigertail Road.
I look old, she thought. Old and exhausted.
It was hardly surprising. She’d had a tough day. A tough month. A tough year, in fact, since Doug died. But at some point, these were all excuses. That’s what Doug would have said, anyway. ‘Snap out of it, Nik! You’re better than this. Where there’s life, there’s hope, right? We’re blessed.’
That was a catchphrase of his. ‘We’re blessed.’ And they had been. At least, Nikki thought they had been.
No. To hell with that. We were blessed. Just because Doug kept secrets from me, it doesn’t take all that away. We were blessed. I still am blessed.
That was the key point, surely? Doug might be dead. His blessings were over. But Nikki was still very much alive. Still here, still helping people, still doing important work. Where there’s life, there’s hope. That was another of Doug’s catchphrases, one he used to trot out to the recovering addicts at his clinic all the time. He was always so upbeat, the bastard. Those junkies must have hated him for that, in all the moments when they weren’t throwing themselves at his feet as their lord and savior.
The truth was, although Nikki struggled to admit it, it wasn’t only grief over losing her husband that had etched the lines around her eyes or punched the two dark, plum shadows underneath them. It was also Anne Bateman.
Anne. Beautiful, talented, weak, volatile, intoxicating Anne – was threatening to go back to her husband. A man who, by Anne’s own account, she was afraid might kill her. A man whose jealous, controlling nature had so crushed her spirit that Anne had arrived at Nikki’s office three months ago, starvingly thin and shaking, like a dog that had been dumped on the freeway, terrified to make even the smallest decision about her own life, such as what to eat for dinner or which skirt to wear to a performance. Nikki had taken her in, comforted her, helped her. Nikki had rebuilt her, piecing back together Anne’s shattered ego, her wasted sense of self, and returning it to her intact. And all for what? For her to hand it back to her bastard husband, to be stamped on and broken all over again?
Nikki knew she shouldn’t take it personally. But God it was frustrating when patients did this. When all their hard work – all Nikki’s hard work – was for nothing. Doug used to deal with it all the time, working with addicts at his clinic. The recidivism, people sliding back into the depths of hell after months, years, sometimes even decades clean, for no apparent reason at all. Love, especially toxic love like Anne Bateman’s for her controlling ex, was an addiction like any other. With her professional hat on, Nikki knew that.
The problem was that, with Anne, her professional hat kept slipping. Nikki’s feelings for Anne Bateman went well beyond professional boundaries. They exhausted her, and kept her up at night, and aged her horribly, as her reflection grimly attested. To be honest, they embarrassed her. They weren’t sexual, at least not overtly. But they were certainly obsessional and unhealthy and … Eeeugh.
Pulling up to one side of her driveway gates, Nikki got out of her car to punch in the code. Nothing happened. She was rocking on her heels, waiting for the stupid panel to reset, when her cell phone rang.
‘It’s happened again.’
Anne’s voice was ragged, fearful.
‘What’s happened?’
Nikki felt a wave of protective feelings rise up inside her.
‘The man. He’s back. He’s following me again!’
Poor thing, thought Nikki. Years of living under her husband’s Stasi-like surveillance had left Anne deeply paranoid, jumping at her own shadow. She was constantly complaining of being ‘followed’ but never seemed able to describe the cars or surveillance operatives in question, or any way in which she was being threatened.
For the next few minutes Nikki spoke to her soothingly, talking her down from the ledge, as she always did when her fears took hold. ‘This isn’t real, Anne,’ she said. ‘None of it’s real. It’s only your ex, getting into your head. This is why you need to escape him. For good.’
‘Maybe …’ Anne wavered. ‘But what if it is real, and nothing to do with him? I mean, there have been two murders.’
‘Anne. No one is following you.’
‘You say that. But how do you know? The police said we should all be on our guard, all your patients. That if we see anything suspicious we should report it.’
‘But, Anne, you haven’t seen anything, have you? This is only a feeling you get. A sort of sixth sense that someone’s tailing your car, that something sinister is over your shoulder?’
‘Well, yes. I suppose so. But …’
Nikki took a few more minutes to reassure her before she hung up. As always after speaking with Anne, she felt conflicting emotions. Happiness, that Anne had chosen to turn to her for advice; and frustration that she still allowed her husband so much power over her life. There was something indefinable about Anne – her youth and vulnerability, combined with her huge talent and an overpowering, almost tangible neediness – that spoke to Nikki in a way that other patients didn’t. Perhaps, at its core, her attraction to Anne was about need. Anne Bateman needed her. At this chaotic juncture in her own life, Nikki needed to be needed. Perhaps that was her drug of choice.
Whoosh!
A gust of air was the first thing Nikki felt: hot and fast and very close.
Then the noise. The scream of an engine.
A car.
She turned – half turned, for it all happened so quickly, in a fraction of a second. An SUV, big, and black with tinted windows, coming towards her at breakneck speed. There was no time for anything, not even fear. Instinctively Nikki flattened herself back against the wooden gates, closing her eyes.
Another screech of brakes and it swerved, missing her by millimeters.
Nikki opened her eyes. What just happened? The driver must have come in at an angle, swinging violently to the left as he hurtled down the narrow road. Had he lost control? Rooted to the spot, her heart pounding, Nikki watched in mute horror as the car skidded to a halt, turned, and came at her a second time, this time backing up very deliberately, straightening up so that it would hit her head on, the engine revving like a maddened bull about to charge.
This was no accident.
She looked desperately to left and right for a means of escape, but about three feet of jutting garden wall hemmed her in on both sides of the gate. By the time she maneuvered around it, the car would have hit her. Above her was a small wooden ledge she could conceivably grab onto and try to pull herself up, but it was too high for her to reach.
I’m trapped! Nikki thought helplessly. I’m going to die.
Everything slowed down – her senses, her perceptions, her heartbeat. Even the car’s roaring engine seemed to go quiet, drowned out by the low, deep thud of her pulse.
Right as this peaceful sense of acceptance was settling over her, a red sports car suddenly appeared around the corner. Nikki watched as if it were a dream, or an out-of-body experience as both drivers slid across the road, their brakes squealing as they frantically tried to avoid a side-on collision. Being so much lighter, it was the sports car that spun out of control, shooting past Nikki like a bright red child’s spinning top before miraculously coming to rest, tail end first, in Nikki’s neighbor’s hedge.
A momentary silence fell. Then the SUV backed up, turned and disappeared down the hill.
The owner of the red car staggered out into the road, shaken but un
hurt. ‘Holy shit!’ A young Iranian man in his early twenties, he was well dressed and handsome in the way that LA’s privileged youth so often were. Good dentistry. Good skin. Good body, courtesy of some expensive private gym membership. ‘Did you see that maniac? He was coming straight at you!’
Nikki tried to speak but no words came out.
‘Are you OK?’ the young man asked.
Nikki shook her head. ‘Not really,’ she gasped. ‘I think somebody’s trying to kill me.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Badens’ return to Los Angeles was a low-key affair, unreported by the media and distinctly fleeting. Willie’s private jet touched down in Burbank on a Tuesday night, and his pilot had instructions to fly his boss back to Cabo first thing Friday morning. Mrs Baden would stay in town a little longer, through the weekend, to take care of some loose ends at her charity offices downtown. But their lawyer made it plain to the LA police department that if detectives wished to interview the couple, then Wednesday would be ‘the only convenient day.’
‘Doesn’t it bug you?’ Goodman asked Johnson, as his partner headed off to Willie’s apartment to interview the billionaire Rams’ owner about his affair with the victim. ‘All this special treatment for the rich?’
They’d agreed to quiz the Badens separately, with Goodman meeting Valentina at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills while Johnson grilled her husband.
‘Depends.’ Johnson shrugged. ‘Old man Baden’s been good to the department. Plus he flew back of his own free will to talk to us. So in this case, no.’
It was an open secret that Willie Baden was one of the LAPD Benevolent Fund’s largest ‘anonymous’ donors, a fact that carried a lot more weight with Johnson than it did with Goodman. It was also strongly rumored that Willie had effectively shut down an investigation into his wife’s charity’s finances a year or two ago – some ‘oversight’ on taxes and unreported income. Nothing had ever been proved but the nascent case against Missing was dismantled before it began. The whole thing left an unpleasant taste in Goodman’s mouth.
‘You be nice to Mrs B now,’ Johnson taunted his partner. ‘Don’t let your liberal outrage about “special treatment” get the better of you or you’ll have the chief to answer to.’
‘I’m always nice,’ growled Goodman.
It turned out to be easier to be nice to Valentina Baden than Goodman had expected. Rising from her poolside seat in the Beverly Hills Hotel’s iconic Polo Lounge to greet him, in a simple white shirtwaister dress, Willie Baden’s wife was a lot less flashy and high maintenance than he’d expected. She wore minimal make-up, and her gray-streaked hair was tied up in a casual topknot. She was also disarmingly apologetic about the time it had taken her to return to the US.
‘Unfortunately, it’s not always easy with Willie’s business. We can’t move as freely as we’d like,’ she explained. ‘And it has been a difficult time for me personally, having to process my husband’s infidelity in the full glare of the media.’
‘Of course,’ Goodman said understandingly, accepting a proffered glass of Pellegrino. ‘We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.’
‘I must admit, I was a little surprised that you wanted to interview me,’ Valentina observed coolly. ‘I mean, obviously Willie had a relationship with the girl who was killed, so I knew you’d want to talk to him. But I knew nothing about her. Lisa Flannagan.’
She turned the name over on her tongue, like an unusual and potentially unpleasant-tasting fruit.
‘The affair was a total surprise, then?’ Goodman asked guilelessly.
‘Well,’ Valentina admitted, leaning forward and enveloping Goodman in a cloud of Gucci perfume, ‘I knew my husband had affairs, naturally. I’m not a fool, Detective. But this specific girl I had never heard of. So I’m not sure what I can add to your investigation.’
‘You accepted your husband’s affairs?’ Goodman raised an eyebrow.
Valentina smiled sadly. ‘I never said that. Marriages are complicated things, Detective. Elements of my marriage have brought me pain. But other elements have been … more positive. I have a lot of freedom to pursue my own interests and passions. My charity work, for example,’ she clarified, although Goodman could have sworn he detected a certain tongue-in-cheek element to this response.
‘Have you heard of a young man named Brandon Grolsch?’ he asked, deciding to steer clear of the tax-evasion rumors surrounding her charity and focus on the matter at hand.
Valentina sat back, startled. ‘Brandon? Yes, sure I have. What has Brandon got to do with this?’
‘Would you mind telling me how you know him?’ said Goodman, ducking the question.
‘Well, I never knew him, as such. I know his mother, Fran. Poor woman,’ Valentina shook her head sadly.
‘Poor in what way?’ Goodman played along.
‘Well, Brandon went missing. That’s how I got to know Fran, through my charity. I assume you’re aware of our work?’
Goodman nodded. ‘I know the basics. You raise awareness of missing person cases?’
‘Oh, we do a lot more than that, Detective,’ Valentina said knowingly.
Is she daring me to ask her about the tax investigation? Goodman wondered. There certainly seemed to be an air of challenge in Mrs Baden’s tone that was borderline flirtatious. But again, he let it go.
‘Tell me more about the Grolsches.’
‘I’m afraid theirs was a familiar story,’ Valentina sighed. ‘Brandon had substance abuse problems. No one takes it seriously when an addict falls off the grid. It happens all the time, right? But we at Missing took his disappearance seriously.’
There was a fierceness in Valentina Baden’s voice and expression that impressed Goodman. This was not your run-of-the-mill rich wife, throwing herself into charity work to stave off boredom between shopping trips. This was a lioness, passionate about her cause. Whether or not she’d fiddled her taxes, this woman cared about Missing like a mother with a child.
‘We helped Fran to search for her son when nobody else would – including your colleagues at the police department, I might add. Even though the outcome was tragic in that case, and not what any mother would hope for, I think Fran appreciated our efforts. Between you and me, Nathan, her husband, is a difficult man. Very cold. I don’t think he loved Brandon, and he couldn’t begin to understand what his wife was going through.’
‘You said the outcome was tragic?’ Goodman coaxed.
Valentina Baden sighed. ‘Yes. We received a letter from a young woman known to my staff: Rachel, someone we’d contacted who’d been close to Brandon. Rachel was a heroin addict herself. She was with Brandon when he died from an overdose. Somebody with him gave him Narcan, but it was too late.’
‘Mmm hmm.’ Goodman sipped his water. ‘Do you know Rachel’s last name?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Valentina, with a smile that clearly implied that she wasn’t about to divulge it to Goodman, whether she knew it or not.
‘Other than this letter, did you find any physical evidence to suggest that Brandon Grolsch had, in fact, died?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Valentina admitted. ‘But then again, we didn’t look for any. Fran did ask us to keep searching for Brandon, but our resources are limited, Detective, and the truth is we had no reason to doubt the story Rachel told us. We already knew from hospital records that Brandon had overdosed before, at least twice. At some point, the heart simply gives out.’
‘Did the letter say where this happened? Or when?’
Valentina shook her head. ‘There were no specifics.’
‘So you don’t know what happened to Brandon’s body?’
The question seemed to surprise her. ‘I assume it was taken away by the police. I’m not sure what the procedure is after that. You’d know better than I would, Detective. If I might ask you – what is all this about? Is there some sort of connection between Brandon Grolsch and my husband’s … and Lisa Flannagan?’
‘There might be,’ Go
odman answered cautiously. ‘We’re not certain about anything at this stage, Mrs Baden. But the information you’ve given me today was very helpful. Just to be clear: do you, personally, believe that Brandon Grolsch is dead?’
‘I’m certain of it,’ Valentina said firmly. ‘I only wish I’d been able to convince his mother. You know, Detective, I watched my own parents waste decades of their lives on false hope for my sister. Since then I’ve seen countless other families do the same. Part of what we do at Missing is searching for lost loved ones. But a bigger part is helping the families to let go, once we know someone isn’t coming back.’ Leaning back in her chair, she looked Goodman square in the eye. ‘You can take my word for it, Detective. Brandon Grolsch is not coming back.’
A few hours later, Goodman and Johnson compared notes over a beer at Murphy’s on Santa Monica Boulevard. Evidently, Willie Baden had been a lot less transparent than his wife, reading from a prepared statement with his attorney by his side and refusing to be drawn a millimeter from his script.
‘I got a timeline of his affair with Lisa, some bank statements showing cash he’d given her and the deeds for her condo, and he volunteered fingerprints and a cheek swab. But that was it. According to him, the only thing they did together was have sex. He claimed not to know any of her friends or family, or how she spent her time when she wasn’t with him. He confirmed Lisa had ended the relationship in the weeks before she died, but he said he was fine with that, it had “run its course”, whatever that means.’
‘Was he believable?’ Goodman asked.
‘Not really,’ admitted Johnson. ‘But his alibi’s rock solid. I don’t know. My gut is he wasn’t involved. I don’t think he cared enough about her to pay someone to cut her up like that.’
‘You call that “caring”?’ Goodman spluttered on his beer.
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