The Dollmaker's Daughters (Bo Bradley Mysteries, Book Five) (36 page)

In her head Bo felt a roaring of Celtic blood which loathed dishonor infinitely more than it feared death. A Celtic identity which held each individual soul accountable for its every act in life.

"I'm sorry, Madge," she said, and left.

Back in her own office she crumpled the photo and its copy into a manila envelope, carried it outside to the far edge of the parking lot, and set the envelope aflame with a cigarette lighter. When it had burned, she stirred the ashes into the ground beneath a pyracantha shrub with a ballpoint pen. She'd come too close to doing evil, she acknowledged, shaking. Irreparable evil, to herself. Something about Janny Malcolm's case infected everyone associated with it. And Madge was going to be no help. Madge was just another pawn, broken and frightened by guilt. And by something using that guilt.

Bo gave herself the rest of the day to track that something. There would be no more time. Because by tomorrow morning, Janny Malcolm would be gone.

Chapter
25

The fax machine on Pete Cullen's desk beeped and droned as additional information arrived. The medical examiner's report, faxed up to Julian a half hour earlier, said the old man had probably died of smoke inhalation. There were no indications of suicide, although the arson squad had easily determined that the fire was set. Someone merely doused the porch and the wooden side door to Malcolm's studio with five gallons of gasoline and struck a match. Even dampened by rain, the old Victorian house had gone up in minutes.

An exterior door off a storage room at the house's rear northeastern corner had not figured in the arsonist's plan and could have provided escape if the old man had been able to reach it before being overcome by smoke in his studio. The gasoline had been transported in gallon plastic milk bottles, found on the scene without fingerprints. They were from a regional dairy and distributed through all three major food store chains serving San Diego. They had originally contained chocolate-flavored whole milk.

Cullen jammed the heel of his right hand against his twitching dead eye and read the new fax as it fed in jerks from the machine. It was from Jasper Malcolm's attorney, hard copy to follow by mail.

"The design for each Jasper Malcolm doll is purchased outright by a single buyer, P
alm Valley Doll Works," it said. “
Palm Valley holds the copyrights as well as the subsidiary rights to these designs. At the discretion of Palm Valley's marketing director, individual doll heads, although not the wigs, costumes, accessories or packaging which were attached to the dolls when first released as "collectibles," may be and routinely are sold to a variety of other toy manufacturers. This practice effectively recoups for Palm Valley the sizable fees paid to Mr. Malcolm for his designs.
”

“
Neither Jasper Malcolm, his estate, nor Palm Valley Doll Works is in any way liable for damage caused by inappropriate use of these heads by subsidiary buyers. Jasper Malcolm designed and sold toys. Any public suggestion that the work to which he devoted his life was, in its intent, salacious, harmful to children in any way, or criminal will be met by aggressive legal action on behalf of his estate.
”

"So sue my ass," Cullen snarled at the photograph of a letter.

Things weren't falling into place as he'd thought they would. Malcolm should have been a suicide, but wasn't
.
And despite months of work in five states and three foreign countries, no direct link between Jasper Malcolm and the doll porn network had been established. What it looked like was what Malcolm's lawyer said. The old guy just designed the damn dolls and sold them.

None of which meant the murdering bastard hadn't shoved his wife down the stairs, diddled his daughters, and smashed the
brains out of one of his granddaughters. It sure as hell didn't mean he hadn't dispatched her mother the same way o
nly yesterday evening. The littl
e dots on Tamlin Lafferty's face were proof, and a message meant for Pete Cullen alone. Nobody else still around would remember that Dorothy Malcolm's face had been tattooed with rose thorns. It was Jasper Malcolm's way of thumbing his nose one last time at the bloodhound who'd snuffled behind him for thirteen years.

Rage seeped from Cullen's gut to the rest of his body like ink in a sponge. It had been a battle of wits, and he'd lost. The need to walk, to pound the bitterness into mountain trails with his feet, was desperate. But not yet. He was still a cop, would always be a cop, and a final crime had been committed. Somebody had torched Jasper Malcolm, cooked him like the pig-in-a-hole he was. Cullen felt sure he knew who'd slopped gasoline against that old house and then dropped a match. The question was whether to keep the information to himself. Malcolm's death met Pete Cullen's criteria for justice, but not
the
criteria for justice. And civilization, he had always believed, lay in a clear understanding of the difference.

Slipping the Sig Sauer under the waistband of his jeans, he set the house alarms and grabbed a jacket. He was going down the mountain into San Diego, although he wasn't sure why. It would become clear, he decided, soon enough.

Bo pulled the Pathfinder to a stop in front of the Mandeer residence and got out. There was only one car in the drive. She hoped it was Mary's.

"Mrs. Mandeer," she said at the door. "I need to talk to you. I need your help."

Mary Mandeer tucked a strand of graying, reddish brown hair behind her ear and nodded.

"I'm packing," she said conversationally. "You'll have to come to the bedroom. Dan's off burning sage to his ancestors in Mission Trails Park, but as soon as he gets back we're driving up to Big Sur for a few days and then spending the weekend in San Francisco. We're going to have to leave pretty soon to avoid the afternoon traffic in L.A. I'm not surprised to see you, Ms. Bradley. What is it that you want me to tell you?"

Bo followed the woman into a spectacular bedroom dressed in Indian blankets and unbleached cotton linens. Its patio doors afforded a view of low desert hills to the east Mar
y Mandeer was efficientl
y folding her husband's shirts and socks into a small suitcase. On the floor an identical one was already packed, strapped, and ready to go.

"Why was Rick Lafferty living with his parents when Kimberly Malcolm was attacked? Why was Tamlin left alone with three small children? Was it a court order? Was CPS responsible for that?"

"Yes," Mary said, eyeing the frayed heel of a sock and then throwing it and its mate into a wastebasket beside the bed. "It was my case. The original referral came from a battered women's shelter. When children are involved, the shelter staff are mandated reporters."

"Of course," Bo urged.

“
Tamlin Lafferty was not then the woman you saw in a Julian convent," Mary went on, the skin around her eyes crinkling in distaste. "She and Rick married young and never seemed to be able to grow up despite the births of their children. They were both immature in a way that made them vulnerable to, well, distortions in the usual patterns of married love."

"You mean they were into kinky sex," Bo said. "Mary, please, I work where you did. You know there's nothing I haven't seen. What happened?"

"Fights. The game fights. I'm sure you're familiar with it. They got sex mixed up with violence and had to get in fights in order to fall in bed and make up. After a while, of course, nothing else worked and the level of violence necessary for arousal increased. They never really hurt each other, but they broke a lot of dishes and furniture. Tamlin took to diving through windows, screaming for the police. It was all part of the game, but momentarily real. By then it was out of control."

"I've seen it," Bo agreed. "So the neighbors called the police, and they took Tamlin and the kids to a shelter where she stayed two hours, refused to bring charges against Rick, and then called him to come and take her home."

"That's the one," Mary said with distaste. "After five or six emergency runs to the shelter and increasingly serious stories of abuse and fear, the shelter called the hotline and we got the case. The standard practice—"

"Is to remove the father and have the mother get a restraining order," Bo finished, "after which both parents are asked to attend parenting classes voluntarily."

"As if the problem had anything to do with parenting," Mary agreed. "Of course Rick violated the restraining order, which Tamlin never wanted in the first place. The games continued, the case was handed over from voluntary to court intervention. My recommendation was that Rick move out to avoid our placing the children in foster care. The usual, basically."

"Did Rick ever hurt the children?" Bo asked.

"Not directly. Jeffrey was cut by pieces of a thrown beer bottle, and there was
some question about a liquid burn
on Kimberly's arm at one point, but it was never clear who did the throwing in these instances. Later Tamlin crawled through a window carrying the twins and scraped Janny's leg in the process. That kind of thing. But neither of them ever abused
the children directl
y. Rick wasn't close to the children, couldn't father them, but he didn't hurt them. Tamlin was torn between mothering and her out-of-control relationship with Rick, and eventually dragged the kids into the sex games as shills."

Bo studied the design of a hand-woven vest Mary was folding into the suitcase. "Do you think Tamlin went over the edge that night and bashed Kimberly?" she asked.

"I've always thought so," Mary answered. "At first I was convinced that wa
s what had happened. You know th
e pattern—immature, incompetent mother overwhelmed by the sole responsibility for small children. And in the weeks after Kimmy's injury Tamlin had that strange, glassy-eyed distance from the reality of the situation that you see in people who can't face what they've done and still live. Madge and I did worry about Tamlin committing suicide when it finally hit her, but it never did. The next thing we knew, the paternal grandparents had moved away with Jeffrey, Kimmy was in Kelton, and Tamlin had joined this religious community in Julian. Rick went into hiding in his parents' house and refused to attend any of the court hearings regarding Janny's custody. The police went after him pretty hard for a while, and the grandfather, too."

"Jasp
er Malcolm," Bo said. "I know th
e cop who tried to convict him of assault with intent to kill on Kimmy. He couldn't do it, but he still thinks Jasper Malcolm is guilty of Kimmy's murder as well as his wife's. He thinks Malcolm intended to kill every remaining member of his family yesterday after the FBI cracked a pornography ring involving baby dolls. Jasper Malcolm's dolls."

"I thought I'd heard everything," Mary said, shuddering. "That's a new one. Does this cop think it was Jasper Malcolm down on that beach last night when Dan was there?"

"He doesn't know about that," Bo answered. "Do you think it was? How well did you know Jasper Malcolm?"

Mary Mandeer dropped an enormous pair of athletic shoes into her husband's suitcase and then walked to the patio doors. The sun burned off the last of the morning haze as she stood looking out. In the harsh light, Bo thought, the woman looked both old and quite lovely.

"Not very well," she answered thoughtfully.

"But Madge Aldenhoven did," Bo pushed. "I know about their affair, and I assure you this is the single time I will mention it to anyone, including Madge herself. But Janny's life is on the line here, Mary. My supervisor and I are not friends. At times we literally hate each other. But despite that I cannot believe Madge would, or even could, feel affection for a man who abused children. You know about Beryl's claim that he molested her. I have to assume that Madge knew it, too, and didn't believe it. So what happened back then, Mary? Tell me what really happened so I can help Janny Malcolm have a life."

On a desk beside the patio doors was a framed photograph of a little boy with thick black hair and Mary Mandeer's large, pale blue eyes. Bo watched as the older woman touched the photo's sand-cast silver frame with one finger, tracing its edge as if she were touching the face of the child inside.

"A life, yes," she said quietly. "Of course, that's right."

Bo remained motionless, her eyes downcast. Mary Mandeer was going to tell her something. The thing to do was clear the air between them of every extraneous thought, make a tunnel in that space, just go blank. Not easy for a brain that could not, even when comfortably medicated, stop generating thoughts, imagery, words, and sounds. A brain that could not stop its almost palpable interest in absolutely everything. But
Bo could do it, in an emergency. Could pull a sort of falcon's hood over the very chemistry of which she was made. In the spill of sunlight reaching in from desert hills, Bo went blank.