The Wedding Guest Page 8

  A wrist-snap lob landed the trashed brown cylinder in the wastebasket.

  I said, “No net. Impressive.”

  “Huh.” He crumpled a few departmental memos and shot them in, too.

  A third cigar emerged. How many could he fit into a pocket?

  He studied it, put it back. “So let’s sum up blue Monday. Lotsa talk, no solid info.”

  I said, “Everyone gave a consistent picture of her.”

  “But they can’t even agree on her name.” He swiveled and faced me. “Any of them could be lying and what happened is related to the club and someone knows it. Or they’re leveling and it’s still related to the club. Or the wedding. Or the bachelorette party. Or something else completely. Why the hell would she go back there?”

  He shot to his feet like a bottle rocket, leaving the chair creaking in relief. Stretching, he grazed his fingers on the ceiling. Sitting back down heavily, he set off a new chorus of squeaks and pressed a finger to his pocked brow.

  “Know what’s flashing in here? My two least favorite words: ‘Anything’s possible.’ Tell me something that narrows it down. You can lie, too.”

  I said, “The description of her street clothes, her backpack, and her books makes me wonder about a moonlighting student.”

  “Moonlighting coed? Kind of a cliché.”

  “Clichés endure because they’re often based on truth.”

  “Using her spare time to catch up on classes,” he said. “Or Johnson was right and she was doing puzzles.”

  “Maybe both,” I said. “In any case, we just met another student who’s sweet as a wolverine.”

  “Little Amanda. My my my.” He sat back and grinned. “Could you lend me some neurons?”

  * * *

  —

  He phoned the campus police at the U., spoke to a fellow lieutenant named Morales and asked about missing students.

  Only one active case, a young man from Shanghai who’d taken a trip to San Diego a week ago and hadn’t returned.

  “If you can solve that, I’m your new BFF,” said Morales. “Chinese consulate’s calling me daily, along with various Feds and an intern for some assemblyman from San Gabriel. Like we control the brats when they’re here, let alone when they leave. If your girl’s not Chinese, please don’t tell me she’s some other kind of foreigner.”

  “Don’t know what she is,” said Milo. “Don’t even have a name.”

  “Oh, man, you’re at square minus one,” said Morales. “Good luck.”

  Glib, no curiosity. Busy with his own problems.

  Milo said, “I do have some possible names. Kimba, Kimby, Kimmie-Lee, Kimberly.”

  Morales said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Wish I was.”

  “Nah, none of those ticks any boxes here.”

  “One more: Amanda Burdette.”

  “Whole different name for the same girl?”

  “Different girl and Burdette’s definitely a student,” said Milo. “It’s possible she knew my vic.”

  Morales said, “Got forty-three thousand two hundred seventeen students to deal with—hey, here’s a fun idea: Let’s go down the list, one by one. By the time we’re ten percent done, we’ll be pension-eligible.”

  He laughed. “Not trying to make your life difficult, my friend, but no Kims or Amandas are on our radar and I can’t help you. Unless your girls are part of that anti-fascist pain-in-the-dick bunch, likes to bust things up for stupid reasons. We got four of those idiots being naughty on CC last week. Breaking windows at a ninety-year-old professor’s house because he brought some speaker to class they didn’t approve of, thank God he didn’t have a heart attack. Skinny little assholes in those Guy Fawkes masks, a couple move like they’re probably females.”

  “Masks,” said Milo. “Good luck on that one.”

  “Ha,” said Morales. “Now you’re getting even.”

  * * *

  —

  During the conversation, I’d googled missing u. student and paired it with Kim-names.

  Only one hit, on a crime history site: Twenty-two years ago, a local girl named Kimberly Vance had vanished. Not from the U., from the old school across town where I taught pediatric psych. Ancient history but I told Milo about it, anyway.

  He said, “Guess what, I worked that one.”

  “That’s Southwest Division.”

  “So it is.”

  “How’d it become a West L.A. homicide?”

  “It became a West L.A. non-homicide. Rich sorority girl, ran off with a married professor, he took her to a free-love weekend up in Big Sur, got some weed in her, took her clothes off, and then she had second thoughts and hitchhiked back. Took her three days to reach L.A. Besides the prof, the biggest danger was getting run over by a semi.”

  “Same question: Why’d you work it?”

  “Special request from above.” He smiled. “You’ll notice there was no follow-up story.”

  “Family with influence.”

  “Family who donated to the mayor’s reelection committee.”

  “Too bad our girl has no obvious connections,” I said.

  “Our girl’s business as usual,” he said, loosening his tie. “Give me your tired, your poor, your dead.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  The ride from the station to my home in Beverly Glen ranges from fifteen minutes to an hour, depending on the whims of the commuting gods. This time I made it in twenty, snaking up the unmarked road on the west side of the canyon and hooking onto the former bridle path that sometimes turns to slush before connecting to my private road. All in a two-wheel-drive vehicle not meant for the ride. The Seville’s been good to me; I reciprocate.

  The house that Robin and I share is a crisp white piece of geometry surrounded by green. She designed it and contracted the build when the little wooden thing I bought soon after I began working was burned to the ground by a psychopath. The lot sits high, smaller than it looks but benefiting from the borrowed landscape of unseen neighbors. On clear days you can catch glimpses of ocean above the pine-tops. When the haze sets in, the contours of trees soften and that’s not bad, either.

  I parked next to Robin’s truck and climbed to the entry terrace. We decided to under-furnish because stuff can get the best of you and neither of us likes to cull. Daylight is inevitably kind and the oak floors still echo, creating a comforting, musical prelude to solitude.

  I called out Robin’s name, got no reply. Changing into sweats, I sorted some mail in the kitchen and drank coffee from the pot she’d left. Walking out back through the kitchen door, I stopped by the rock edge of the fishpond, netted a few pine needles, tossed pellets to the koi, and enjoyed their conditional love. When the slurping ended and the fish began to meander, I continued to Robin’s studio.

  She stood over her bench, wearing magnifying eyeglasses and a shop apron with four front pockets. No music from hidden speakers this afternoon. Both of her hands were occupied and her greeting was a brief smile before she returned to the work at hand.

  Special concentration required for delicate work: sealing a crack on the face of a 1938 Martin D-45 guitar. Three-hundred-thousand-dollar instrument. The man who’d owned it for seventy-two years had picked it up in a Bakersfield pawnshop and played it in cowboy bars running up and down California’s interior spine. He’d died on stage, ninety years old, smoking Luckies and breathing through a tracheotomy hole. Rasping the first verse of “Amazing Grace” as his heart gave out.

  His heirs couldn’t wait to cash in.

  The crack was long and threatening to open and not in a good location: treble side of the sound hole, trailing to the bridge, requiring a micro-surgical splice. Robin had spent a week locating the right sliver of Adirondack spruce in Nashville, giving the wood time to get used to L.A.

  Today: the
operation. I’d walked in at a crucial time.

  I kept my distance from the bench and headed for the sagging brocade couch where Blanche—our little blond French bulldog—stretched, decorously inert. I sat down beside her, rubbed her knobby head. She rolled said cranium into my lap, gave my hand a single comprehensive lick, and molded her twenty-pound sausage body against mine.

  Robin said, “Not only do you play around with another woman, you flaunt it?”

  “What can I say? Charisma.”

  She allowed herself a pause for a laugh. Readjusted the magnifiers and peered at the splice. “I’d ask you about your day but I need to focus.”

  “Want more alone-time?”

  “No, no, just…bear…with me…another…minute.”

  Ten minutes passed before she stepped back and assessed the repair. I didn’t mind the chance to decompress.

  “Okay, so far so good.” To the Martin: “You rest here and heal up, Daisy.”

  “It’s got a name?”

  “Orville christened all his instruments,” she said. “His Broadcaster’s named Molly. In the case was a cassette of him singing, back in the sixties. Buck Owens with more bottom. End of an era, none of the old guys are left. Remember how he used to bring her here in that Studebaker? The alleged case.”

  Pointing to a soft-shelled black thing held together with duct tape and decals from national parks.

  Robin took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. “Somehow Daisy never got hurt.”

  I said, “What I remember is him spitting his chaw in the garden when he thought no one was looking.”

  “That, too.” She inspected the guitar again. “Fingers crossed.”

  I walked over and had a look, trying to locate the repair. “Invisible.”

  “Oh, I see it, babe. But not bad.” Removing her apron. “She’s a supermodel, we can’t be having scars. Know what he paid for her?”

  “Couple of hundred?”

  “Fifty bucks. Now his conspicuously unmusical offspring will profit and it’ll probably go to some trophy hunter who keeps it in a vault.” She wiped her face, then her hands, removed the bandanna from her head, and shook out a wealth of auburn curls. “I need coffee. How ’bout you?”

  * * *

  —

  The three of us left the studio and crossed the garden. At the kitchen door, Robin stopped and kissed me. What began as a peck but ended up a serious lip-lock, her hand shifting from my waist to the back of my head.

  When we broke, I looked at her.

  “Yes, I can feel you-know-who. And the answer to your arched eyebrow is you bet,” she said. “I need some relaxation and you’re the sedative.”

  To Blanche: “Sorry, my little rival. You’ll have to make do with a liver snap out in the hallway.”

  * * *

  —

  After sharing a shower, we went out to the terrace, ate Asian mix and peanuts, and drank. Sidecar for her (“don’t skimp on the XO”), Chivas for me. The sun sank lazily. We stayed there, bathed in burgeoning blue darkness as the day eased offstage.

  I’d given Robin the basics Saturday night, after returning from the scene.

  She’d said, “Weddings. Everyone’s at their worst. Amazing it doesn’t happen more often.”

  I sipped scotch and reached for her hand. Our fingers fit like teeth in a cog. She lowered her head to my shoulder and I breathed in cinnamon and crème rinse and wood dust.

  The two of us have been together forever, minus a couple of minor disconnects.

  All these years, never formalized with paper.

  The topic of marriage has never been taboo but it comes up less often as time stretches. Neither of us pushes the issue. I suppose that’s a type of decision.

  I don’t wonder much why but sometimes the question mark slithers into my head.

  The best I’ve come up with is we both endured miserable childhoods. Robin’s an only child who needed to learn how to coexist with her mother; my father was a sometimes-vicious alcoholic, my mother chronically depressed, and my relationship with my older sister nonexistent.

  Marriage aside, the topic of children never comes up. Despite working with kids my entire adult life, I’m happy the way things are.

  Maybe I’m missing the paternity gene.

  Maybe the status quo is working too well.

  Maybe the reason will always elude me.

  Despite my training, I’m not one for introspection. Working with other people’s problems is a great time-filler.

  Milo and Rick haven’t tied the knot, either. Recently, they’ve had to deal with not-so-subtle pressure from those who believe the legalization of gay marriage confers obligation.

  “Fuck that noise,” Milo had pronounced a few months ago. The two of us at a tavern near the station, celebrating a vicious murderer’s life sentence and booze-meandering to all sorts of topics.

  I said, “Do what you want.”

  “Don’t I always?” He tossed back his third shot, got to work on the accompanying beer. “Let me tell you about the crap I had to deal with last night. Boring-as-shit dinner party with some of the money people who help fund the E.R.—the things I do for love. We’re talking one of those they tell you where to sit with goddamn place cards. Rick’s like an acre away and I’m stuck with this heiress from Bel Air—’scuse me, she’s a social justice activist. Weighs around ninety pounds, apparently she substitutes opinions for eating. And one of them is that Rick and I are somehow failing in our social obligation.”

  I said, “And there you were thinking progress was about choice.”

  He called for a fourth Boilermaker. “Being told what to do is childhood. If my body’s going to seed, least I can get are the benefits of adulthood, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Not that I’m saying we’d never do it,” he went on. “Maybe one day, for inheritance purposes. But hell, I’ll be the first to go anyway, you know how long they live in his family, and it’s not like he needs my goddamn pension. Which he can probably get hold of anyway, the department being so progressive and all that. According to the memos. Which I don’t read.”

  Slamming his hand down on the bar. “Fuck that noise.”

  I said, “Amen.”

  He patted my shoulder. “I like that we’re religious tonight.”

  * * *

  —

  Drinks finished, Robin said, “Okay, I’m sufficiently brandied to be civil. How was your day?”

  “Not much to tell.”

  “Indulge me, baby. I like the sound of your voice.”

  I filled her in.

  She said, “Anything’s possible? Yeah, I can see that as terrifying for a detective. But your point about a student does make sense.”

  “Big Guy thought it was a cliché.”

  She laughed. “Fresh-faced Cindy working her way to summa cum laude by taking off her clothes? Yeah, I’ve seen that movie. It does happen, though. Remember those girls up at Berkeley—the little escort service they had going?”

  “Sensual Seminar.”

  She elbowed my arm. “You remember at that level of detail, huh?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Ha. Now tell me the names of every seminarian.”

  “Fifi, Gigi, Mimi—”

  She laughed and stood. “Want another drink?”

  “Why not.”

  She paused to study the sky. Mauve and gray and wispy pink where daylight had resisted expulsion. “Me, too, we’ve both earned our leisure. Not that we have to self-justify. But we always do, don’t we? That’s the way you and I are constructed.”

  “Want me to mix?”

  “No, my turn.” She stood and smiled down at Blanche, lying tummy-down, eyes shut, breathing slowly, chunky bod so flaccid she might as well be an invertebrate.

 
“You, on the other hand, little missy, are blessedly entitled.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  Milo phoned at ten a.m. Tuesday.

  “Dug a little more on the families, dull shovel, hard clay. No hint of bad behavior for any of them. The only surprise is Amanda. Her age you’d expect some sort of social network presence. Zilch. Same for a driver’s license, state I.D., or local address. She lives in L.A. but doesn’t drive?”

  I said, “It’s happening more often. Driving used to be a symbol of freedom. Some kids today see it as a hassle.”

  “Ooh, traffic,” he said. “Scawy-wawy invasion of safe space.”

  I laughed. “She goes to the U., probably lives in or near Westwood, maybe close enough to walk to campus. Longer journeys, she can bike or Uber.”

  “Jesus,” he said. “A generation of fetuses.”

  “Hey,” I said, “if they sit at home sucking their thumbs the crime rate could eventually drop.”

  “There goes my career. But not yours—don’t gloat.”

  “In terms of her address, she could live in a dorm.”

  “Good luck prying that out of the U. I googled, looking for anything. Her name came up once: Two years ago she won an essay contest in high school sponsored by the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce. Patriotism and capitalism as bosom buddies. Different narrative, back then.”

  “Straight-arrow goes to college and turns all relativistic and postmodern.”

  “Oh, those big words, Doctor. Anyway, what I’m left with is a mouthy kid who reworked herself. Can’t see how it relates to Kimby Red Dress.”

  “Unless Kimby was a student, like I suggested, and they knew each other.”

  “Backpack and books, yeah, I thought of that. That’s another reason I checked Amanda’s web presence. Best of all worlds, there’d be Instagram shots of both of them. Unfortunately.”

  Long breathy exhalation. “It is weird, though, Amanda being so covert. Who feeds the online beast? Egomaniacs, bigots, and millennials. Or is there another trend I missed?”