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  She gave a full smile. “He cleaned me out thirteen months after we were married. Left me with the baby in diapers and went down to Louisiana to work the deep-sea rigs. Got killed soon after in a fall that they said was an accident. Never took out the right insurance for himself, so I got nothing.”

  She smiled wider. “He had a temper on him. All my men do. Roddy's got a fuse on him, too, though it takes a while to get it lit. He's a Mexican, but he's the best of the lot.”

  She patted the T-shirt pocket that held the cigarette pack. “Sugar and bad tempers and cancer sticks. I really go for all the good things in life, huh?”

  Her eyes watered again. She lit up.

  “All the good things,” she said. “All the blessed good things.”

  She kept the cigarette in her mouth, busied her hands by squeezing them together, letting go, repeating the motion. The lanyard lay on the grass, neglected.

  “There's no room for your guilt,” I said.

  She yanked the cigarette out of her mouth and stared at me. “What'd you say?”

  “There's no room for your guilt. All the guilt belongs to Donald Dell. One hundred percent of it.”

  She started to say something, but stopped.

  I said, “No one else should carry that burden, Evelyn. Not Ruthanne for going with him that night, and certainly not you for the way you raised her. Junk food had nothing to do with what happened. Neither did anything but Donald Dell's impulses. It's his cross to bear now.”

  Her eyes were on me, but wavering.

  I said, “He's a bad guy, he does bad things, no one knows why. And now you're having to be a mom, all over again, when you weren't planning on it. And you're going to do it without complaining too much and you're going to do your best. No one's going to pay you or give you any credit, so at least give yourself some.”

  “You talk sweet,” she said. “Telling me what I want to hear.” Wary, but not angry. “Sounds like you got a temper on you, too.”

  “I talk straight. For my own sake—you're right about that. All of us do what we think's best for us. And I do like to make money—I went to school a long time to learn what I do. I'm worth a high fee, so I charge it. But I also like to sleep well at night.”

  “Me, too. So what?” She smoked, coughed, ground out the cigarette with disgust. “Been a long time since I slept peacefully.”

  “Takes time.”

  “Yeah . . . how long?”

  “I don't know, Evelyn.”

  “Least you're honest.” Smile. “Maybe.”

  “What about the girls?” I said. “How do they sleep?”

  “Not good,” she said. “How could they? The little one wakes complaining she's hungry—which is a laugh, 'cause she eats all day, though you wouldn't know it to look at her, would you? I used to be like that, believe it or not.” Squeezing her thigh. “She gets up two, three times a night, wanting Hersheys and licorice and ice cream.”

  “Does she ever get those things?”

  “Hel—heck no. There's a limit. I give her a piece of orange or something—maybe a half a cookie—and send her right back. Not that it stops her the next time.”

  “What about Chondra?”

  “She don't get up, but I hear her crying in her bed—under the blanket.” She looked over at the older girl, who was sitting motionless in the center of the pool. “She's the soft one. Soft as jelly.”

  She sighed and looked down at her coffee with disdain. “Instant. Shoulda made real stuff.”

  “It's fine,” I said, and drank to prove it.

  “It's okay, but it's not great—don't see great around here too often. My second husband—Brian's dad—owned a big place up near Fresno—table grapes and alfalfa, some quarter horses. We lived up there for a few years—that was close to great, all that space. Then he went back to his drinking—Brian, Senior—and it all went to—straight down the tubes. Ruthie used to love that place—especially the horses. There's riding stables around here, too, out in Shadow Hills, but it's expensive. We always said we'd get over there but we never did.”

  The sun dropped behind the cloud bank, and the yard dimmed.

  “What're you gonna do to us?” she said.

  “To you?”

  “What's your plan?”

  “I'd like to help you.”

  “If you wanna help them, keep them away from him, that's all. He's a devil.”

  “Tiffani called him an instrument of Satan.”

  “I told her that,” she said defiantly. “You see something wrong with that?”

  “Not at all.”

  “It's my faith—it props me up. And he is one.”

  “How'd Ruthanne meet him?”

  Her shoulders dropped. “She was waitressin' at a place out in Tujunga—okay, it was a bar. He and his bunch hung out there. She went out with him for months before tellin' me. Then she brought him home and the first look I got I said no, no, no—my experiences, I can spot a bad apple like that.” Snap of fingers. “I warned her, but that didn't do no good. Maybe I gave up too easy, I don't know. I was havin' problems of my own, and Ruthie didn't think I had a single intelligent thing to say to her.”

  She lit another cigarette and took several hard, fast drags. “She was stubborn. That was her only real sin.”

  I drank more coffee.

  “Nothing to say anymore, doc? Or am I boring you?” She flicked ashes onto the dirt.

  “I'd rather listen.”

  “And they pay you all that money for that? Good racket you got there.”

  “Beats honest labor,” I said.

  She smiled. First friendly one I'd seen.

  “Stubborn,” she said. She smoked and sighed and called out, “Five more minutes, then into the house for homework, both a you!”

  The girls ignored her. She kept looking at them. Drifted off, as if she'd forgotten I was there. But then she turned and looked at me.

  “So, Mr. Easy Listener, what do you want from me and my little girls?”

  Same question she'd asked me the first time she met me. I said, “Enough time to find out exactly how they've been affected by their mom's death.”

  “How do you think they've been affected? They loved their mama. They're crushed to dirt.”

  “I need to get specific for the court.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I need to list symptoms that prove they're suffering psychologically.”

  “You gonna say they're crazy?”

  “No, nothing like that. I'll talk about symptoms of anxiety—like the sleep problems, changes in appetite, things that make them vulnerable to seeing him. Otherwise they're going to get swept up in the system. Some of it you can tell me, but I'll also need to hear things directly from them.”

  “Won't that mess them up more, talking about it?”

  “No,” I said. “Just the opposite—keeping things inside is more likely to create problems.”

  She gave a skeptical look. “I don't see them talkin' to you much, so far.”

  “I need time with them—need to build up their trust.”

  She thought about that. “So what do we do, just sit here jawing?”

  “We could start with a history—you telling me as much as you remember about what they were like as babies. Anything else you think might be important.”

  “A history, huh?” She took a deep drag, as if trying to suck maximum poison out of the cigarette. “So now we've got a history . . . yeah, I've got plenty to tell you. Why don't you get out a pencil and start writing?”

  CHAPTER

  6

  She talked as the sky darkened further, letting the girls play on as she recounted nightmares and weeping spells, the terrors of orphanhood. At five-thirty Bonnie came out and switched on floodlights that turned the yard sallow. It stilled her mother's voice, and Evelyn stood and told the girls, “Go in the house, you.”

  Right after they did, a man came out, rubbing his hands together and sniffing the air. Five three or so, in his late fif
ties or early sixties, low waisted, dark skinned and weak chinned, with long, tattooed arms. Bowlegs gave him a tottering walk. His eyes were shadowed by thick, gray thatches, and a drooping, iron-colored Zapata mustache obscured his mouth. His bushy gray hair was slicked straight back. He wore a khaki workshirt and blue jeans with hand-rolled cuffs. His hands were caked with plaster and he rubbed them more vigorously as he approached.

  Evelyn saluted him.

  He returned the gesture and looked at me, stretching to stand taller.

  “This here's that doctor,” she said. “We been having a nice talk.”

  He nodded. The shirt was embroidered with a white oval tag that said “Roddy” in red script. Up close I saw that his face was severely pockmarked. A couple of crescent-shaped scars ran down his chin.

  I held out a hand.

  He looked at his palm, gave an embarrassed smile, and said, “Dirty.” His voice was soft and hoarse. I put my hand down. He smiled again and saluted me.

  “Dr. Delaware.”

  “Roddy. Pleased to meetchu.” Boyle Heights accent. As he lowered his fingers, I noticed tattooed letters across the knuckles. L-O-V-E. Homemade job. On the other hand was the inevitable H-A-T-E. In the fold between his thumb and forefinger was a crude blue crucifix. Next to that, a tiny red-eyed spider climbed a tiny web above the legend NR.

  He put his hands in his pockets.

  “How's your day?” Evelyn asked him. She looked as if she wanted to touch him.

  “Okay.” He sniffed.

  “Hungry?”

  “Yeah, I could eat.” The tattooed hands emerged and rubbed together. “Gotta wash up.”

  “Sure, patron.”

  He went into the house.

  “Well,” she told me, “I'd better get into the kitchen. Guess it's too late for you to talk to them, but you can come back tomorrow.”

  “Great.”

  We walked inside. Chondra and Tiffani were on the sofa in the rear den, watching cartoons on TV. A cat was being cheerfully decapitated. Tiffani held the remote control.

  “Bye, girls.”

  Glazed eyes.

  “Say bye to the doctor.”

  The girls looked up. Small waves and smiles.

  “I'm leaving now,” I said. “I'll be coming out here tomorrow—maybe we can get a chance to talk.”

  “See you,” said Tiffani. She nudged her sister. Chondra said, “Bye.”

  Evelyn was gone. I found her out in the kitchen, pulling something out of the freezer. Rodriguez was stretched back in the velveteen recliner, eyes closed, a beer in his hand.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said.

  “One sec.” Evelyn came over. The package in her hand was a diet frozen entree. Enchilada Fiesta. “Better be the day after—I forgot there's some things I got to do.”

  “Okay. Same time?”

  “Sure.” She looked at the frozen package and shook her head.

  “How 'bout New York steak?” she called out to her husband.

  “Yeah,” he said, without opening his eyes.

  “He likes his steak,” she said quietly. “For a fella his size, he's a real meat eater.”

  She followed me all the way out to the front lawn. Looked at the TV dinner in her hand. “No one likes this one. Maybe I'll have it.”

  I hit bad traffic on the western end of the 210, and by the time I pulled into the carport, it was after seven. When I got in the house, the dog greeted me, but he had his head down and looked subdued. I smelled the reason first, then saw it, on the service porch floor near the door.

  “Oh,” I said.

  He drooped lower.

  “My mistake for locking you in.” I rubbed his neck, and he gave me a grateful lick, then trotted over to the fridge.

  “Let's not push things, bucko.”

  I cleaned up the mess, reflecting on the responsibilities of pet foster-parenthood, and phoned in for messages, wondering if anyone had responded to my ad. No one had. Nothing from Shirley Rosenblatt, Ph.D., either. Or Mr. Silk. The operator gave me a few business calls. I decided to put the tape out of my mind, but the child's chant stayed there and I couldn't sit still.

  I fed the dog and was contemplating what to do about my own dinner when Milo called at eight-ten.

  “No prints on the tape except yours. Any mail problems today?” He sounded tired.

  “No, but I did get a call.” I told him about the giggling man.

  “Silk, huh? Well, that's a pisser.”

  “What is?”

  “Sounds like you've got a nutcase on your hands.”

  “You don't think it's serious?”

  Pause. “Most of these guys are cowards, like to stay in the background. But to be honest, Alex, who knows?”

  I said, “I think I may have found what “bad love' means,” and filled him in about the symposium.

  “Seventy-nine,” he said. “Nut with a real long memory.”

  “Think that's a bad sign?”

  “I—let's put our heads together and hash it out. You eat yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “I'm over in Palms, got to finish up a few things. I could meet you at that place on Ocean in about half an hour.”

  “Don't think I'd better,” I said. “Left my guest alone too long already.”

  “What guest? Oh, him. Why can't you leave him? Is he lonely and depressed?”

  “It's more of a gastrointestinal issue,” I said, rubbing the dog behind the ears. “He just ate and will be needing easy ingress and egress.”

  “Ingr—oh . . . fun. Well, get a dog door, Alex. Then, get a life.”

  “A dog door means sawing a hole. He's only a short-term lodger.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I'll put a door in—Robin wants a dog anyway. How about you bring one over, I'll install it, and then we can go out.”

  “Where the hell am I gonna find a dog door at this hour?”

  “You're the detective.”

  Slam.

  He arrived at nine-fifteen, pulling an unmarked Ford into the carport. His tie was loose, he looked wilted, and he carried two bags—one from a pet store, the other from a Chinese restaurant.

  The dog came up and nuzzled his cuffs and he gave the animal a grudging pat and said, “Ingress and egress.”

  Removing a metal and plastic contraption from the pet store bag, he handed it to me. “Seeing as I don't feel like manual labor before dinner and the handy resident of this household is out of town, I figured we'd better do takeout.”

  He went over to the fridge, dog following.

  Watching his slow trudge, I said, “You look wiped. New blood buckets?”

  He got a Grolsch, opened it, and nodded. “Armed robbery, what I was working on in Palms. Little mom-and-pop grocery. Pop died a few months ago, mom's eighty, barely hanging on. Two little shits came in this afternoon, flashed knives, and threatened to rape her and cut off her breasts if she didn't hand over the cashbox. Old lady puts them at around thirteen or fourteen. She's too shook to say much else, chest pains, shortness of breath. They admitted her to St. John's for observation.”

  “Poor thing. Thirteen or fourteen?”

  “Yeah. The timing of the robbery might mean the little assholes waited till after school to do it—how's that for your extracurricular activities? Or maybe they're just your basic truant psychopaths out for a fun day.”

  “Urban Huck and Tom,” I said.

  “Sure. Smoke a corncob of crack, gangbang Becky Thatcher.”

  He sat down at the table and sniffed the top of the beer bottle. The dog had remained at the refrigerator and was looking at him, as if contemplating approach, but Milo's tone and expression stilled him and he came over and settled at my feet.

  I said, “So no one else's prints were on the tape.”

  “Not a one.”

  “What does that mean? Someone took the trouble to wipe it clean?”

  “Or handled it with gloves. Or there were prints and they got smeared wh
en you touched the tape.” He stretched his legs. “So show me this brochure you found.”

  I went to the library, got the conference program, and gave it to him. He scanned it, “No one named Silk here.”

  “Maybe he was in the audience.”

  “You look intense,” he said, pointing to my photo. “That beard—kind of rabbinic.”

  “Actually, I was bored.” I told him how I'd become a co-chair.

  He put down his bottle. “Nineteen seventy-nine. Someone carrying around a grudge all this time?”

  “Or something happened recently that triggered a recollection from seventy-nine. I tried calling Katarina and Rosenblatt, to see if maybe they'd gotten anything in the mail, but she's closed up shop in Santa Barbara and he's no longer practicing in Manhattan. I found a psychologist in New York who may be his wife and left her a message.”

  He examined the brochure again. “So what could the grudge be about?”

  “I have no idea, Milo. Maybe it's not even the conference, maybe it's someone who sees himself as victimized by the therapist—or the therapy. Maybe the grievance isn't even real—something paranoid—a delusion that would never occur to you or me.”

  “Meaning we're normal?”

  “Everything's relative.”

  He smiled. “So you can't remember anything weird happening at the conference.”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “This de Bosch—was he controversial in any way? The kind to make enemies?”

  “Not that I know, but my only contact with him was through his writings. They're not controversial.”

  “What about the daughter?”

  I thought about that. “Yeah, she could have made enemies—a real sourpuss. But if she's the target of someone's resentment, why would I be? My only link to her was the conference.”

  He waved the brochure. “Reading this, someone could believe you were esteemed colleagues. She hemmed you in, huh?”

  “Expertly. She had clout with the medical director of the hospital. My guess was that it was because she'd treated one of his daughters—a kid with problems—and called in a marker. But it could have been something else completely.”

  He put his beer bottle down on the coffee table. The dog looked up, then lowered his chin to the floor.