Mystery: An Alex Delaware Novel Read online

  “How long have you been roomies?”

  “A little over two months. It’s a one-bedroom, Brenda—my friend—and I share, Neil sleeps on the sofa bed in the living room. We don’t charge him a full third. He’s really neat, so it’s been okay.”

  “How’d you guys get together?”

  “Craigslist,” said Tasha Adams, as if any other method was prehistoric. “Brenda and I are dancers, we came out from Chicago to audition for Rock On. We got hired then the show got canceled in preproduction but we already signed the lease and besides, we still wanted to try to break in somewhere. Brenda’s got a job teaching little kids ballet but I’m living off what I earned last year teaching modern. Neil pays on time and he minds his own business. Why do you want to talk to him?”

  “A temp job he did last night.”

  “That hotel.”

  “He told you about it.”

  “He said he finally got a gig through the temp agency but it was only one night, he might have to go back to McDonald’s or something.”

  “When did he leave the apartment this morning?”

  “Hmm,” said Tasha Adams. “I’d have to say forty minutes ago?”

  “Going to the 7-Eleven.”

  “That’s where he usually buys his drinks.”

  “Beer?”

  “No, soda. Neil’s straight as they come.”

  “What time did he come home last night?”

  “I’d have to say … eleven?”

  “Could it have been later?” said Milo.

  “Hmm … actually it was probably earlier … yeah, for sure, Teen Cribs was still on—but almost over. So just before eleven.”

  Milo scrawled.

  “Is there something you should be telling me?” said Tasha Adams. “He does live with us.”

  “A guest at that hotel ran into some trouble last night, Tasha. Neil’s not a suspect, we’re just gathering information.”

  “Trouble,” she said. “Like someone—oh, there he is. Hey, Neil, these guys want to talk to you. They’re the police.”

  Nelson Mutter in a T-shirt, baggy shorts, and flip-flops stopped short. He studied Milo, then me. Mouthed, Huh? In one hand was a plastic Dodgers’ cup big enough to wash a family of parakeets.

  Milo waved him over, shook his hand. “Neil? Lieutenant Sturgis.”

  Mutter kept looking at me.

  I said, “Nice to see you again, Neil.”

  “Chi-vash,” he said, as if downloading a memory file on a balky computer. “Lots of ice. You’re police?”

  “I work with the police.”

  Tasha Adams said, “It’s about your gig last night, Neil.”

  “Huh?”

  Milo said, “Let’s all go inside.”

  As promised, Mutter’s personal space—what there was of it—was spotless. The sofa bed was closed up, graced with three floral-print pillows. Mutter’s wordly possessions filled two duffels placed to the left of the couch. A glimpse into the single bedroom offered a view of exuberant girl clutter.

  Milo said, “Sorry to displace you, Tasha, but we need to talk to Neil alone.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Pouting, she entered the bedroom but left the door open. Milo went over and closed it, motioned Mutter to the sofa. “Make yourself comfortable, Neil.”

  “Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Directing the question to me.

  Milo said, “Sit, please,” and when Mutter complied, settled next to him. “Last night you served a woman in a white dress—”

  “The princess,” said Mutter. He blushed scarlet. “I mean that’s what I called her. I mean in my head, not out loud.” To me: “You can see that, right? She was kind of like a princess?”

  I said, “Sure.”

  “Yeah. She also talked like one—did you hear her talk?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Just like Princess Di. Or someone like that.”

  “British?”

  “Totally. Oh-right. Yes, of cawse. Aw-lihvs, please. Like class, you know? I couldn’t believe someone that class was getting flaked on.”

  I said, “She told you she’d been flaked on?”

  “Uh-uh,” said Mutter, “but she kept looking at her watch and the whole time no one showed up. Why would someone flake on someone that class and hot?”

  “The watch,” I said. “Pretty sparkly.”

  “Oh, man, total bling. She okay?”

  “Did she give you her name?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Did she pay her tab with a credit card?”

  “Uh-uh, cash.” He pinched his upper lip. Grubby nails were bitten raw.

  “How many drinks did she order?”

  “Just two. Hendrick’s Martini, twist, aw-lihvs on the side—also one of those little onions. Only we didn’t have Hendrick’s so I asked her if Gilbey’s was okay and she said Cuhtainly.” He repeated the word, pumping up the drawl. “Why are you guys asking about her?”

  “She had a misfortune, Neil,” said Milo.

  “Like a robbery?” said Mutter. “Oh, man, that watch? How about her sunglasses? She put on these sunglasses and I figured they were rhinestones but maybe they were diamonds, too.”

  I said, “You knew the watch had real diamonds because …”

  “I—because I just figured. I mean it looked class and she was class.” Looking from me to Milo. “I didn’t figure her for rhinestones.” Shrug. “But maybe the sunglasses were.”

  Milo said, “Sounds like you paid a lot of attention to the watch.”

  The color left Mutter’s face.

  “No, I’m just saying.”

  “Saying what, Neil?”

  “She kept checking it and it kept flashing, you know? Also, it was the only bling she had. Except the sunglasses.”

  “No rings, no earrings.”

  “Uh-uh, not that I saw.”

  “How late did she stay at the Fauborg?”

  “Maybe another half hour.” Mutter turned to me. “I mean after you and your lady left.”

  I said, “You’re sure no one showed up to join her.”

  “Totally.”

  “When did your shift end?”

  “Ten.” Mutter frowned. “Sherree—the bartender—got paid to stay later, like till twelve, but they didn’t want to pay me for longer than till ten.”

  I said, “I left around nine thirty so if she left half an hour later, that would be ten.”

  “Guess so.”

  “That means you and she walked out around the same time.”

  “Uh-uh, she left before me,” said Mutter. “My shift ended at ten but then I had to change out of that stupid jacket and clean the tables, then I had to walk to my car, which was like three blocks away in a city lot because the place had no parking.”

  “What street you park on?” said Milo.

  “Same street as the hotel but down near Wilshire.”

  “Crescent Drive.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have a parking stub?”

  “Why would I?”

  “You didn’t see her when you left?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where’d you go after you got your car?”

  “Where?”

  “Where was your next stop, Neil.”

  “There was no stop,” said Mutter. “I drove here.”

  “What time did you get home?”

  “Around … probably ten forty. Tasha was up watching TV.”

  “What was she watching?”

  “Teen Cribs.” He lowered his voice, smiled. “Lame, but she likes it. Sometimes I watch with her ’cause I can’t crash until she and Brenda are finished with the couch.”

  “Kinda inconvenient, Neil.”

  “I only pay two hundred a month. I don’t find a real job soon, I’m gonna have to head back to Omaha. What happened to Princess?”

  “For someone without a steady job, a diamond watch could solve a lotta problems.”

  Mutter’s eyes bugged. “Oh, no, no way, no way, no way. That’
s not the person I am, even when I worked for Mickey D I didn’t take an extra sesame seed, just what we got with the employee discount. Uh-uh, no way.”

  He crossed himself. Protest had firmed and deepened his voice. His chin seemed stronger, too, as if proclaiming his innocence had triggered a burst of testosterone.

  Shaking his head, he said, “Uh-uh, no way and I don’t know why you’re saying that, why would you say that?”

  “You were among the last people to see her.”

  “You can check my stuff, there’s no watch or nothing. You can put me on a lie-detector, whatever.”

  I said, “Did you notice anyone else at the bar who looked shady?”

  “Buncha old people,” he said. “And you guys.”

  Milo and I remained silent.

  “This is psycho,” said Mutter. “I served her two drinks, she tipped me twenty bucks and she left.”

  I said, “Did she give you any details about herself?”

  “Nothing. That was the thing.”

  “The thing?”

  “She was like super-nice and sometimes when people are like that it’s ’cause they want you to pay attention so they can talk about themselves. Not so much at Mickey D’s, people come in and out real fast. But at Marie Callender’s I was always hearing stories when I served the pie. But she was just nice to be nice.”

  “She didn’t want attention,” I said, remembering the theatrical posing.

  “It kind of makes sense if she’s someone famous. Not like stupid-famous—like brats on Teen Cribs, got their own house, Game Boys, rides.”

  “A different kind of famous.”

  “Like a princess but nobody knows her unless she wants, you know?” said Mutter. “First time I saw her, that’s what I thought. She’s probably famous but I don’t know enough.” Smiling. “She was nice and really hot. Hope she gets her watch back.”

  e left Mutter sitting on the sofa bed and drinking his Big Gulp.

  Milo slipped behind the wheel of the unmarked. “Unless Tasha’s lying for him, the time frame clears him.”

  “He was good for one thing,” I said. “Her accent. So maybe it will come down to a waylaid tourist.”

  “Let’s see what Big Brother has to say about recent entries of young, cute U.K. citizens.”

  He put in a call to “Ralph” at Homeland Security, got a voice-mail litany that necessitated six button-pushes, finally left a vague message about “the British invasion.”

  I said, “They’ve got that kind of data at their fingertips?”

  “So they claim. All part of the war on terrorism—’scuse me, the alleged struggle with alleged man-made disasters. Now let’s work on my disaster.”

  At West L.A. station, we climbed the stairs and passed the big detective room. Milo’s closet-sized office is well away from the other D’s, at the end of a narrow hall housing sad, bright interview rooms where lives change.

  Closet-sized allotment; he claims the privacy makes it worthwhile. Grow up in a large family, you appreciate any kind of space.

  His lone-wolf status began years ago, when he was the only openly gay detective in the department, and continued as part of a deal cut with a previous police chief, a man with a media-friendly demeanor and slippery ethics. Working a long-cold murder case handed Milo enough info to ruin the boss. The barter got the chief honorable retirement with full pension and earned Milo promotion to lieutenant, with continuation as a detective and none of the desk work that went with the rank.

  The new chief, brutal and statistics-driven, learned that Milo’s close rate was the highest in the department and chose not to fix the unbroken.

  When he closes the door to the office, it starts to feel like a coffin but I’m getting used to that. I’ve been slightly claustrophobic since childhood, a souvenir of hiding from an enraged, alcoholic father in coal bins, crawl spaces, and such. Working with Milo has been therapeutic on many levels.

  I wedged into a corner as he wheeled his desk chair inches from my face, swung long legs onto the desk, loosened his tie and suppressed a belch. A sudden reach for a pen knocked a pile of papers to the floor. On top was a memo from Parker Center marked Urgent. When I moved to pick up the sheaf, he said, “Don’t bother, it’s all trash.”

  He pulled a panatela out of a desk drawer, unwrapped, bit off the end and spit it into the wastebasket. “Any additional wisdom?”

  I said, “Mr. Walkie-Talkie intrigues me. Not a friendly sort. And his being gone doesn’t mean much, he could’ve ducked somewhere.”

  “Bodyguard turns on his charge?”

  “Or his charge was the person she was waiting for and he’d slipped away to attend to the boss. Someone she was eager to be with from the way she kept looking at her watch. Someone she was intimate with.”

  “Girl in designer duds and a diamond watch wouldn’t hang with Joe Sixpack. Some rich guy confident enough to keep her waiting.”

  “And Black Suit could’ve chauffeured the two of them—his clothes would fit a driver, too. Or he followed them in a separate vehicle. At some point, the date went really bad and the two of them shot her. Or the plan all along was to kill her. Either way, finding him might help and I got a good look at him.”

  “Lots of private muscle in town, but sure, why not.”

  Booting up, he searched, printed a list of L.A. security firms, made a few calls, got nowhere. Plenty of companies left to contact, but he swung his feet back to the floor. “Wanna see the crime scene?”

  On the way out, he picked up the fallen papers, checked the urgent message, tossed everything.

  “Chief’s office keeps bugging me to attend ComStat meetings. I’ve dodged most of them, including the one today, but just in case they bust me, let’s take separate cars.”

  He drove me home, where I picked up the Seville and followed him back to Sunset. We sped west and after a brief ride north on PCH, he hooked east and climbed toward the northwestern edge of the Palisades.

  He turned onto a street lined with stilt-houses defying geology. The residences thinned, vanished as the road narrowed to chasm-hugging ribbon furling the green mountainside. The sky was clear. The world was as bright and pretty as a child’s drawing.

  It took a while for him to stop. I parked behind him and we crossed the road.

  He stretched, loosened his tie. “Nothing like country air.”

  I said, “The ride from your office was thirty-eight minutes, allowing for the stop at my place. Beverly Hills is farther east, so even with less traffic at night, we’re talking about that much time. If Mutter was accurate about her leaving the Fauborg around ten and the time of death was closer to midnight than two, she was done quickly. That could indicate a premeditated abduction and execution. If, on the other hand, the TOD’s closer to two, the killer had plenty of time to be with her and we could be looking at something drawn-out and sadistic. Any ligature marks or evidence she was restrained?”

  “Not a scratch, Alex. If there was any disabling it wasn’t hard-core. Wanna get closer?”

  Like movie sets, crime scenes are elaborate but short-lived creations. Scrapings are taken, plaster casts harden, shells are searched for, bagging and tagging and photography ensue at a steady pace. Then the vans drive off and the yellow tape is snipped and the blood’s hosed away and everyone goes home except the flies.

  No flies, here, despite lingering blood on the dirt, dried to rust-colored dust. But for a slight depression where the body had rested and stake-holes for the tape, this was lovely California terrain.

  Under last night’s skimpy stars, it would’ve been ink-black.

  I recalled Princess’s face, the carefully crossed legs. The posturing, the blinding sunglasses. Smoking with aplomb.

  The spot where Princess had been found was a plateau just steps off the road, invisible to motorists. You’d have to walk the area to know about it. Maybe fifteen feet by ten, dotted with low scrub, pebbles, twigs.

  I said, “Not a scratch also means she wasn’t rolled or dum
ped, more like laid down gently. That also points to a prior relationship.”

  I paced the area. “It was a warm night, love under the stars might’ve sounded like a good idea. If she got out of the car ready to play, there’d be no need to restrain her.”

  “Instead of kissy-poo, she gets boom? Nasty.”

  “Nasty and up close and personal,” I said. “The darkness could’ve shrouded the gun, she might never have known what hit her. Can I see your phone again?”

  He loaded the pictures. I endured every terrible image. “The way she’s lying, she was definitely positioned. And except for that spillover on top, she’s pristine below the face. This was no robbery, Big Guy. Maybe the watch was taken because her hot date gave it to her in the first place.”

  “Bad breakup,” he said.

  “The worst.”

  Milo sniffed the air like a hound, jammed his hands into his pockets, and shut his eyes. A pair of raptors, too distant to identify, circled high above. One swooped, the other continued surveillance. The first bird shot up and nosed its mate with Look-what-I’ve-got exuberance and the couple glided out of sight.

  Something else had died; brunch was on.

  He said, “Robin also get a look at Black Suit?”

  I nodded.

  “And she’s an artistic girl. Think she could do me a drawing?”

  “I suppose.”

  “There’s a problem?”

  “She’s better than average but drawing’s not her thing.”

  “Ah.”

  “Also,” I said, “I haven’t told her anything.”

  “Oh.”

  Up on the road, I said, “I’ll have to tell her eventually, so sure, let’s ask her.”

  “If it’s gonna upset her, Alex, forget it. If you can describe him in enough detail, I can get Petra or one of our other sketch-demons. And if one of those rent-a-goon outfits gives me a lead, I might not need any talent at all. Let’s get outta here.”

  I walked him to the unmarked.

  “Thanks for the cogitation,” he said. “The whole intimacy thing, that’s feeling right.”

  “Ask Robin to draw.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Go for it.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever you say. I know you like to protect her.”