by Amore, Dani
Fallon bowed his head, as if saying a silent prayer for his deceased patient. But Mary could tell he was pissed.
“Yes, I did hear about Mr. Locher’s death. But you realize that I can say very little. Patient confidentiality still exists even if the patient is no longer living.”
“I understand that, doctor,” Mary said. “I’m just curious to know if you can tell me anything that might help in my investigation.”
“Who hired you?” the doctor said.
Mary smiled. “Client confidentiality, I’m afraid.”
His look told Mary that he wasn’t surprised at her answer.
“I’m afraid I don’t have anything to say, Ms. Cooper. Yes, he was my patient, but nothing in our work together would have given me concern that he might be involved in anything dangerous. His issues were quite normal, and very commonplace. If he had been in danger, or if he had been a danger to someone else, then I would have been lawfully required to report it. I did no such thing because I saw no cause for concern. If you have any other questions, I suggest you forward them to my attorney.”
Fallon looked at his big watch. A not-so-subtle hint to Mary that the time he would allow her was drawing to an end.
“No idea who might want to hurt him?”
Fallon shook his head. “I really won’t say anymore. At least, not here.” He gave her another not-very-subtle appraisal, his eyes lingering on her chest area. “Perhaps over a drink you might be able to loosen my tongue.”
Mary felt like groaning. The reference to his tongue was intended. It was probably supposed to turn her on. But it did just the opposite.
“If your tongue is stiff, it could be an early sign of mad-cow disease,” Mary said. “Might want to have a doctor look at that.”
Dr. Frank gave her a disappointed look that did little to disguise his anger.
“Like I said, it would have been my duty to report any signs of harmful intent regarding Mr. Locher. Now, if there’s nothing else I can do for you, I’ve got a patient waiting.”
Mary wondered if it was true, and if so, how did he know that? She didn’t see a corresponding red blinking light anywhere.
He showed her out of his office without a word and she left through a different door than the one she’d entered.
It took her down a narrow hallway that led back to the main hallway. As she passed the door, a woman with a shock of white hair, cut short, and dressed to the nines, did a double take when she saw Mary’s face.
“Hello,” Mary said.
“Hi,” the woman answered, then ducked into the doctor’s waiting room.
You came to the right place, Mary thought.
Twelve
Mary sat three blocks away from a group of police cars with their lights flashing. The squad cars were in front of a tony home near Beverly Glen and Westwood.
She ordinarily would have walked right up to the crime scene and talked her way past the crime scene tape, but when Jake had called her he had mentioned two things. The first was that a body had been discovered that might have something to do with the case she was working on. And two, Sergeant Amanda Davies was there and Mary should hold off on arriving until The Shark was gone. For once, Mary agreed, sort of. She actually, desperately, wanted to go up and give Davies a few zingers. But Mary also didn’t want Davies to know that she was working on the case. It would just cause interference.
Besides, there would be another opportunity to insult Davies. And if there wasn’t, Mary would create said opportunity.
So she waited for the text message from Jake that it was all clear.
Mary wondered how Jake knew that this crime might be related to Craig Locher’s murder.
She looked up and saw The Shark climbing into an unmarked cop car. It was easy to pick the woman out, she was always so pale she practically glowed in the dark. Like a ghoul. Davies drove away in her unmarked car and Mary climbed out of her own car.
Her cell phone buzzed at the same time and she smiled. Jake was right on time, as usual.
She locked the car, and walked up to the crime scene. A uniform stopped her, but she told him she was working with Detective Cornell and he let her through.
Mary found Jake standing next to the body of a woman. Mary immediately saw why Jake had called her.
The woman was dressed up like a doll. Pig tails, giant freckles painted on her face, kid shoes with white socks pulled up high, and a ridiculous doll’s dress, hiked up above her body, showing that she had nothing on underneath.
“No need to state the obvious,” Jake said.
“No.”
“However, a techie checked her phone and there were a lot of calls between her and your other murder victim, Craig Locher.”
“Ah,” Mary said. “Thanks for calling me.” She took a careful look at the dead woman, noted the bruising around the victim’s neck.
“Strangled?”
“Looks that way,” Jake said. “No other signs of trauma. But the medical examiner will tell us more,” Jake said. “The Shark put this one on the front burner, now that she knows there’s most likely a pattern.”
Mary looked at the dead woman. She had been a beautiful young woman, with dark hair, and a classic face.
“Yeah, there’s a pattern all right,” Mary said. “But what the hell does it mean?”
Thirteen
Mary plugged the address of the house where the body had been discovered into her reverse database. The information that came out revealed the home was owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Toomey. Mary used another service to confirm they still owned the home and that the Toomeys had no children and were aged 77 and 79.
The dead woman had been in her early thirties, Mary figured.
Jake was being Mr. Goody Two Shoes and not giving her the name of the vic. He had brought her to the crime scene but he wouldn’t give her the name. What kind of sense did that make? Mary thought he just wanted to lure her to dinner with the information.
Her phone rang and she looked at the caller.
Mary picked up the phone and spoke before he could get a word out.
“Yes, Jake, dinner is fine. Just be sure to bring that name with you.”
She locked up the office, then drove to a little cantina a block from the ocean.
Mary ordered a Modelo, Jake a Dos Equis and guacamole. A woman with a gorgeous skirt came to the table and made the guacamole fresh.
“You like it spicy?” she said.
“Absolutely,” Mary answered. The woman threw in some jalapenos, finished the guacamole, and put it on the table.
Mary dug in with fresh chips.
“Delicious,” she said.
Jake scooped up some guacamole with a chip and shoveled it into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, then looked at Mary, alarmed.
“Wow, that’s hot!” he said, and gulped some ice water. A line of sweat had broken out across his forehead.
The funny thing was, Mary knew that he loved spicy food, he just couldn’t handle it.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked.
“You.”
“What about me?”
“You and spicy food don’t go together. You should stick with mashed potatoes.”
“I love spicy food, it just doesn’t love me.”
“Is that the attraction?”
Jake smiled at her.
“Are we still talking about food?”
Mary shrugged her shoulders. She had no problem with the guacamole. Her threshold for hot food was very, very high.
“So what can you tell me about our victim?” she said.
Jake signaled the woman in the pretty skirt back and they both ordered. He chose the enchiladas, Mary the green chile tacos.
Once the woman had replaced their depleted beers with fresh ones, he finally answered.
“Valerie Barnes,” he said.
“Vitals?”
Jake shook his head. “All I can tell you is that she had a DUI two years ago, otherwise her record is clean. Her em
ployer was an accounting firm and she was apparently a partner. That’s all I’ve got so far.”
“What is the size of the accounting firm? She seemed pretty young to be a partner.”
“I’m sure the detectives are looking into it.”
“No sign of mental health issues?” Mary asked.
“Only the DUI.”
Mary leaned back as the tacos were placed in front of her. She could smell the fiery chiles.
“Have you heard anything else?” Mary prompted.
Jake was putting salt and pepper on his enchiladas. Why, Mary didn’t know.
“Not a peep,” he said. Jake began splashing hot sauce all over his dinner.
“This is going to end badly,” Mary said.
“Yeah, but if I’m going to go out, I’m going to go out in style.”
He shoved a forkful of enchilada into his mouth and began sweating.
Fifteen
Jake was assigned stakeout duty for a case he was working on, so Mary went back to her condo.
It was late, and she changed into sweats and a UCLA sweatshirt.
It was a long shot, but Mary was feeling lucky. She dialed the number of Dr. Paulette Blevins, her client, and waited for voicemail.
“Doctor, this is Mary Cooper. I wanted to run a name past you. Valerie Barnes. She was recently murdered and I’m calling to see if you have ever heard of her, especially with regard to Craig Locher. Please call me back when you get a chance.”
Mary thanked the woman and hung up, then went into her office and fired up her computer.
She fed the name Valerie Barnes into the various person locator programs she had on her desktop. Some were legal, some weren’t. One of the best programs now had a slightly outdated database because its creator, one of Mary’s former clients, had once again fallen off the grid. He was a hacker and lived life in the shadows. When he reappeared, if he ever did, Mary would see about an update. She was guessing it wouldn’t be high on his list of priorities.
The collective programs spit out a lot of information on a variety of women named Valerie Barnes. It was something private investigators knew all too well: no matter how unusual a name might sound, and Valerie Barnes wasn’t all that unusual, there was always more than expected.
In this case, seventeen names alone in the greater Los Angeles area.
Mary collated them into a spreadsheet with all of the pertinent details and began editing.
She cast a wide net with ages. For one thing, it wasn’t always easy to tell exactly how old a person was, especially in Los Angeles. Secondly, the woman had been cut up pretty thoroughly. Nonetheless, Mary was fairly confident in placing the age of the victim between twenty-five and forty. Forty seemed a little on the high side, but again, this was Los Angeles. Botox, surgery, crazy-ass diets, and health food. She’d met some women who were fifty that looked no older than thirty-five.
With that age frame in mind, Mary was able to throw out eleven of the seventeen names.
That left her with six.
Next, she checked ethnicity. Her Valerie Barnes was definitely Caucasian. She was able to eliminate two African-American Valerie Barneses.
Down to four.
One Valerie Barnes was currently incarcerated in a minimum security prison near San Bernadino.
Three.
Mary studied the details.
Two had DUIs.
She threw out the one that didn’t.
That left two.
Mary printed out the names and addresses. She would run them down first thing tomorrow morning.
Now, it was almost midnight. Mary poured herself a small glass of white wine and went out to her balcony. Across the street, the Pacific Ocean moved with a quiet rhythm that soothed her.
She sat in one of her patio chairs and put her feet up on an empty flowerpot that she’d been meaning to fill with some colorful plant for the past few years.
Mary was starting to get a bad feeling about this case. Most of the time, victims of crime were chosen because of some type of vulnerability. Maybe they’re old, or young, weak, or distracted.
The thing that Craig Locher and Valerie Barnes had in common might be the vulnerability of mental illness. How sick they’d been was the question. If it was garden-variety psychological problems, well, that would be half of Los Angeles.
If, however, their mental problems were more severe, that would make them better targets for a predator.
The question was, what was the killer after? The thrill of murder? Or something else?
Mary finished off her glass of wine, went inside, and locked the sliding glass door.
As always, she was tempted to sleep with the window open.
And, like every night, she would decide against it and lock up before she went to bed.
There were a lot of crazies out there.
Sixteen
Lately, Mary had been favoring coffee from Del Monde, made with chicory. She had had a fitful night’s sleep and needed a shot of something strong to wake her up.
The coffee was thick and a touch bitter, which was exactly what she needed.
Mary drank her coffee, made a quick breakfast of toast and a hardboiled egg, then showered, dressed, and went out to her car.
Her vehicle of choice was now a gray Honda Accord, albeit with a souped-up V-6 and a stiffer suspension coupled with thick performance tires.
She wasn’t exactly an auto enthusiast, but there had been moments in her life when she’d gunned it after some low life and had wished for more power, better handling, and armor plating. Kind of a James Bond fantasy.
Instead, Mary had bought the Accord new, then taken it to a mechanic who modified cars for the Hollywood big shots and had him give it the once over. So while it wasn’t going to win the Indy 500 anytime soon, the car was a lot faster than it looked.
Which is all that mattered to Mary.
That, and the customization that had gone into the car was all tax deductible as it was her work car.
Always had to think about the tax man.
Mary double-checked the first address, the closest, on Bristol Avenue in Brentwood.
By the time she got there, the morning rush was over and the sun was warming the tree-lined streets.
It was a beautiful area with wide landscaped lots, gates and thick foliate out front, providing only partial views of the impressive homes.
Mary supposed that a partner in an accounting firm, if the firm was big enough, probably made some serious coin.
And if Valerie Barnes lived here alone, in one of these homes, she would have to be pulling down some major bucks.
Mary found the right address, pulled into the driveway, rolled down her window, and pressed the button on the intercom.
There was no answer.
The gate remained closed.
Mary looked up and down the street.
No sign of anyone, other than a small blue pickup truck with paint splatters all over it and a ladder sticking out the back.
Mary rang the bell again.
And waited.
This was not the kind of neighborhood where neighbors kept close tabs on each other. The lots were too big, the homes too spacious, the landscaping too dense. She couldn’t even knock on doors because of the gates.
Mary rang the bell one more time.
She waited another fifteen minutes, sitting in the driveway, before she put the car in reverse and headed to the second address.
Seventeen
There were no gates in front of the homes of Studio City. The houses were smaller, the space between lots much tighter, and cars were parked on the street as opposed to palatial garages and circular driveways.
Mary double-checked the address and stopped her car in front of a humble Cape Cod with brick on the lower half of the house and white aluminum siding on the upper half.
A row of boxwoods in need of water ringed the front of the house, and the grass had small brown patches. Either some sort of grass disease or a dog with hig
hly acidic urine.
Unlike the beatific quiet of Brentwood, this stretch of Studio City near Davana Terrace was loud. In fact, it was so loud that Mary quickly realized there was a fight going on in the very house she needed to approach.
Cops hated domestic disturbances and so did Mary.
She had a .38 in a holster tucked into the back of her jeans and she was reassured enough to park the Accord and approach the house.
The fighting was going strong. Mary heard the word ‘bastard’ used several times by a woman and the rejoinder ‘bitch’ employed by a male in matching numbers.
“Wonderful,” Mary said.
She rang the bell.
The fighting stopped.
“Great, now the cops are here you idiot,” the man said.
“Shut up Paul you dumb-ass moron,” the woman said.
The door cracked open and Mary saw a sweaty female face with strips of wet hair strung across the forehead.
“I’m looking for a Valerie Barnes,” Mary said.
“What, are you a cop?” the woman said.
“No. I’m a marriage counselor,” Mary said. “Sounds like I got here just in time.”
The woman looked at her.
“Who the hell is it?” the man said.
“Some chick says she’s a marriage counselor,” the woman said.
“Tell her to go to hell, we’re doing fine,” the man said.
“Not in my professional opinion, sir!” Mary called out. She spoke to the woman. “So, are you Valerie Barnes?”
“What if I am?”
Mary sighed.
“Look, I’m not a marriage counselor, although it sure sounds like you could use one. I’m actually a private investigator and I’m here because a girl was killed yesterday. Her name was Valerie Barnes,” Mary said. “I’m just trying to learn more about her and if you’re the Valerie Barnes who lives here, then I can cross you off the list.”
“Tell that bitch to get lost!” the man called out from somewhere in the house.
The woman in front of Mary sighed.
“Yes, I’m Valerie Barnes,” the woman said. “Unfortunately.”