Seacrest came in drying his hands with a paper towel. He had on a gray V-neck sweater over a brown-checked shirt and gray knit tie. The sweater’s cuffs were frayed and his eyes looked filmy.
Walking around me, he sat down behind the desk and looked at the sandwich.
“Morning,” I said.
He picked up the sandwich and took a bite. “What can I do for you?”
“If you’ve got time, I have a few questions.”
“About?”
“Your relationship with your wife.”
He put the sandwich down. He hadn’t invited me to sit and I was still on my feet.
“My relationship with my wife,” he repeated softly.
“I don’t want to intrude—”
“But you will, anyway, because the police are paying you.”
He broke off a small piece of bread crust and chewed slowly.
“Good racket,” he said.
“Pardon?”
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“Why are you willing to intrude?”
“Professor, if this is a bad time—”
“Oh, spare me.” He tilted back in the chair. “You know, it wasn’t until that little nocturnal visit you and Sturgis paid me that I realized I was actually a suspect. What was the purpose of that, anyway? Trying to catch me off-guard? Hoping I’d somehow incriminate myself? Is it abad time?
It’salways a bad time.”
He shook his head. “This goddamn city. Everyone wants to write his own tawdry tabloid story.
Tell Sturgis he’s been living in L.A. too long, should learn to do some real detecting.”
His face had turned scarlet. “I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. No doubt there’s some idioticdetective manual that says suspect the husband. And those first two stooges were hostile from the beginning. But why injectyou into the process? Does he really think I’m going to be impressed by your psychologicalacuity ?”
Shaking his head again, he ate more of the sandwich, striking at it with hard, sharp movements, as if it were dangerous but irresistible.
“Not that being under suspicion matters to me,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to hide, so root around to your heart’s content. And as far as my relationship with my wife, neither of us was easy to get along with so the fact that we stayed together should tell you something.
Furthermore, what reason would I have to harm her? Money? Yes, she made a fortune last year, but money meansnothing to me. When her estate clears I may damn well donate all of it to charity. Wait and see if you don’t believe me. So what other motive could there be?”
He laughed. “No, Delaware, my life hasn’t improved since Hope died. Even when she was alive I was a solitary person. Losing her has left mecompletely alone and I find I no longer want that.
Now kindly let me eat my lunch in peace.”
As I headed for the door, he said, “It’s a pity Sturgis is so uncreative. Following the manual will only reduce whatever small chance he has of learning the truth.”
“You’re not optimistic.”
“Have the police given me reason to be? Perhaps I should hire a private investigator. Though I wouldn’t know where to turn.” He gave a low, barking laugh. “I don’t even have an attorney.
And not for lack of opportunity. Someone must have given my phone number to the Sleazy Lawyers Club or perhaps the bastards just sniff out misery. Right after the murder I had several calls a day, then it tapered off. Even now, they occasionally try.”
“What do they want from you?”
“To sue the city for not trimming the trees.” He barked again. “As iflandscaping were the issue.”
“What is?”
“The total breakdown of order—too bad I can’t work up a healthy lust for profit. Write a book
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that would sell—wouldn’t that be charming? The grieving widower on the talk-show circuit.
Following in Hope’s footsteps.”
“Hope was pretty good at it.”
“Hope was good ateverything. Do you understand that? The woman wasexceptional. ”
I nodded.
“Actually,” he said, “she despised the publicity game but knew it was useful.”
“She told you that.”
“Yes, Delaware. She was mywife. Sheconfided in me.”
Popping the top of his soda can, he peered into the opening. “Oh, Christ, why am I wasting my time with you—can you even imagine what it was like sharing my roof with someone like that?
Like living with a borrowed masterpiece—a Renoir or a Degas. One knows one can never own it, or even fully understand it, but one isgrateful. ”
“Borrowed from whom?” I said.
“God, the Fates, choose your superstition.”
He drank soda and put down the can. “So now he thinks: Was he jealous? The answer is no, I was in awe, but a loving awe. Next question in his psychoanalytic mind: What did she see in him?
And the answer is sometimes I wondered myself. And now, she’s gone . . . and your boob police friend thinksI’m the culprit—have you studied much history, Dr. Delaware?”
“Not formally since college but I try to learn from the past.”
“How admirable. . . . Have you ever thought about what historyreally is? An accounting of failure, iniquity, errors of judgment, character flaws, bloody cruelties, obscene missteps. Human beings are suchlow things. What greater support of atheism is there than the repulsive nature of those scraps of flesh and weakness allegedly created in God’s image? Or perhaps thereis a master deity and he’s an incompetent boob like everyone else. Wouldn’t that be a hoot—now please leave mealone !”
It was good to get back out in the sunlight.
Pretending the warmth could melt the bitterness I’d absorbed up in his office.
Real pain and anger or an act to prevent me from probing?
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Confronted with a question about his and Hope’s relationship, he’d never said it had been good, only that they’d both been hard to live with and their endurance proved something.
Then he’d admitted he was jealous but turned it into worship.
Living with a masterpiece . . . that could wear thin.
I thought of the sudden way he’d flushed. Short fuse.
People with severe temper-control problems often betray themselves physiologically.
Root around to your heart’s content.
Secure in his innocence or a psychopath’s catch-me-if-you-can challenge?
The meeting at Kenneth Storm Sr.’s office in Pasadena was at one. Julia Steinberger would be finished teaching in twenty minutes.
I used a library phone and gave Casey Locking’s home another try. Same tape.
Late evening in England, but still a civil hour to call Hope’s other student, Mary Ann Gonsalvez.
Once again, the phone just kept ringing.
Back to the world of real science.
Julia Steinberger was heading for her office, flanked by two male graduate students. When she saw me, she frowned and told them, “Could you give me just a minute, guys? I’ll come by the lab.”
They left and she unlocked the office. She was wearing a knee-length black dress and black onyx necklace and looked troubled. When the door closed behind us, she remained standing.
“I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing,” she said, “but the first time you were here there was something I left out. It’s probably not relevant—I find the whole thing distasteful.”
“Something about Hope?” I said.
“Yes. Something—remember how I told you I’d had an intuition about her possibly having been abused?”
“The fierce look.”
“That was true,” she said. “She had that look. But . . . I—there was something else. It was last year—at the Faculty Club. Not the welcoming tea, something else—some guest lectureship, who remembers.”
Walking to her desk, she braced her palms on the top. Looked at the doll she’d fondled the first
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time, but made no move toward it.
“We chatted a bit, then Hope moved on to circulate and Gerry and I found someone else to talk to. Then, maybe an hour later, at the end of the evening, I went to the ladies’ room and she was in there, standing at the mirror. There’s an entry room before you get into the main bathroom, also mirrored, and the way it’s set up, you can get a look into the bathroom as you pass. It’s carpeted, I guess she didn’t hear me.”
She lowered her eyes.
“She was in there, examining herself. Her arms. Her dress was cut low on the shoulders but with elbow-length sleeves. I’d noticed it, very elegant, figured it had cost a fortune. She’d pulled one of the shoulders down and was looking at her upper arm. There was a strange look in her eyes—almost hypnotized—and her expression was blank. And on the arm was a bruise. A large one. Black-and-blue. Right here.”
She touched her own bicep. “Several marks, actually. Dots. Finger marks. As if she’d been squeezed very hard. Her skin was extremely white—beautiful skin—so the contrast was dramatic, almost like tattoos. And the bruises looked fresh—hadn’t yet turned that greenish-purple color.”
She hurried back to the door, fighting tears. “That’s it.”
“How’d she react when you walked in?” I said.
“She yanked up the sleeve, her eyes came back into focus, and she said, “Hi, Julia,’ as if nothing had happened. Then she made happy talk and put on her makeup. Chatting on and on about how different things would be if men were expected to always be in perfect face. I agreed with her and weboth pretended nothing had happened. What was I supposed to say? Who did that to you?”
She opened the door. “Maybe it was nothing. Maybe she just had delicate skin, bruised easily
. . . but when she asked me to be on the committee, I just felt as if I owed it to her.”
Dark bruises on white skin.
Seacrest’s sudden anger.
I got back in the Seville and onto the 405 north.
Pasadena eats more than its share of smog but today the air was clean and the office buildings on Cordova Street shone as beautifully as a Richard Estes painting.
Storm Realty and Investment was a one-story neo-Spanish surrounded by brilliant flower beds and jacaranda trees still in purple bloom. The accompanying parking lot was pristine. I pulled in next to Milo’s unmarked just as he got out. He was carrying his briefcase and a tape recorder and was wearing a gray suit, white button-down shirt, red-and-blue rep tie.
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“Very GOP,” I said, looking down at his desert boots and trying not to smile.
“When in businessland, do as the businessmen. Speaking of commerce, I found a couple of Sunset Strip bars Mandy Wright just might have frequented.”
“Might?”
“No ID yet but a couple of promising maybes. We’re talking big hair, perfect bodies, so an ugly girl would have stood out better. As is, I was lucky to find two bartenders who’d been working there a year ago. Neither would swear it was her, just that she looked familiar.”
“Was she working or hanging out?”
“Her line of work, is there a difference? And if she was working, they wouldn’t admit it and jeopardize the liquor license. The thing that makes me think it could be a valid lead is the places were only a block apart, so maybe she was cruising. Club None and the Pit. Trouble is, neither barkeep can remember seeing her with anyone.”
“But it does put her in L.A.”
He crossed his fingers. “The other thing is, I spoke to Gunderson, the Temple City detective who handled Tessa’s complaint against her old man. He’s an assistant chief now, barely remembered the case, but he pulled the file and said his notes indicate they never took the complaint seriously. Considered Tessa a head case. He started to remember the father vaguely.
As a nice guy—admitted to a juvenile record when he didn’t have to, very up-front about everything. So Muscadine is looking increasingly righteous and let’s finish with the damned committee—ready for Master Storm?”
“Before we begin, I’ve got some evidence of Hope being abused.” I told him Steinberger’s story, then my few minutes with Seacrest.
“Bruises and a bad temper,” he said, frowning. “What, specifically, got him so pissed?”
“He was pissed at the outset, got red in the face when I told him I wanted to talk about the relationship.”
“Good. Maybe we’re getting under his skin. MaybeI should work him a little more. . . .
Wouldn’t that be something, he roughs her up for years and she writes the book telling women how to defend themselves.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I said.
“For what?”
“Style over substance. Little boxes. But if she and Seacrest were having problems, the book, all the attention it got her, could have crystallized her dissatisfaction, made her decide to finally break away. Maybe in that sense, famewas her death sentence. But as to what that has to do with Mandy Wright, I still can’t come up with anything. And here’s another complication: Last night I took another drive by Cruvic’s office. He wasn’t in but Nurse Anna was. Along with Casey Locking.”
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I told him about the Mulholland house and he copied down the address.
“Shit,” he said. “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into hypothesisland—okay, I’ll find out who owns it. Meanwhile, let’s go persecute a mouthy kid.”
We crossed a long, quiet reception area to get to Kenneth Storm Sr.’s office, past a pair of secretaries who looked up from their keyboards resentfully, talk radio in the background.
The Storms were a testament to genetics, both bull-necked and wide-shouldered with sandy crew cuts and small, suspicious eyes that locked in place for long stretches.
Senior was fiftyish with the dissolute, puffy look of a fullback gone sedentary. He wore a navy blazer with gold buttons and a Masonic pin in the lapel. Junior’s jacket was dark green, his buttons as bright as his father’s.
They were both positioned behind Senior’s canoe-shaped blond-oak desk, which had been cleared of everything but a cowboy bronze and a green onyx pen-and-pencil set. The office was too big for the furniture, walled in oak veneer and carpeted in beige shag. Real-estate and life-insurance achievement awards were Senior’s idea of self-validation. A cigar smell filled the room but no ashtrays were in sight.
Standing in front of the desk was a rangy, hawk-nosed, gray-haired man wearing a three-piece charcoal suit, French-cuffed powder-blue shirt, and a silk tie in someone’s idea of power pink.