“When, not if,” she said.
“We’re always hopeful.”
“Sorry,” said Felice Corvin. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me — you’ve got a tough job, I don’t envy you. Good luck.”
Headlights washed across her face. A car pulling into the driveway of the Spanish house next door. Paul Weyland stepped out of his silver Taurus. Carrying a briefcase, moonlight doming his bald head. He didn’t seem to notice us, braced himself on the roof of the car. Rocked on his feet.
Off kilter? A narrowly avoided DUI? He pushed away, stood in place for a moment, and slumped, a small man getting smaller.
Felice said, “Hi, Paul.”
Weyland stopped, waved, saw us. “Oh, hi. Anything new?”
“Follow-up,” said Milo.
“Oh,” said Weyland. Weak voice. His shoulders heaved.
Felice said, “Are you okay?”
“No worries. No police worries, anyway.” His voice caught.
She walked over to him. “Are you ill or something?”
“No, fine,” said Weyland. He righted his glasses. “Oh, what the heck, can’t hide it forever. You’ve noticed Donna hasn’t been around.”
“Visiting her mom.”
“True,” said Weyland. “But she’s not coming back — we’re breaking up, Felice.”
“Paul, I’m so sorry.”
“It happens.” He shrugged. Poked a finger under a lens and wiped something from his left eye. To us: “Sorry, don’t want to interrupt.”
Felice walked over to him, arms spread.
As Milo and I left, the two of them were still embracing.
Halfway up the block, Milo looked over his shoulder. No one around. “Touching scene. Makes you wonder.”
“About suburban intrigue?”
“About the future on Evada Lane.” He rubbed his face. “She’s tired of Chet, who’s less Chet than ol’ Paul?”
“Could happen,” I said.
“Meanwhile, Chet’s off doing who-knows-what on the road, Chelsea could be hanging with the creepy neighbor, and the boy’s got the emotional range of a newt. Does anyone lead an uneventful life?”
I said, “Hope not.”
“Why?”
“Neither of us is ready for retirement.”
We drove back to the station where he phone-photo’d Braun’s face and sent it to Chet Corvin’s cell, then scanned his message slips.
Wastebasket, wastebasket, wastebasket. Then: “Crypt says Braun was A-negative, which isn’t rare but also not that common. They got a decent match between blood from his body and a speck they found on the boxer shorts I got from EmJay, best guess, a popped zit. Some subtests — HLA — also match... basic DNA’ll be back in a few days. Once it’s confirmed I’ll tell her what she already knows.”
He pocketed his phone. “Mary Ellen, too, maybe one of them will remember something else about the Happy Warrior.”
I said, “There was a first wife. Barbara in Stockton.”
“Who died of cancer.”
“So Braun said.”
He looked at me. “Good point, I’ll check on her tomorrow, enough for today, Rick’s off call, we’re aiming for some quality time.”
“Have fun.”
“Since you didn’t probe for specifics, ‘quality’ means dinner at a new Argentinian place on Fairfax. I’ll relax my standards and eat grass-fed steak. He’ll do tilapia, sauce on the side, and shoot me the cholesterol glare.”
Chapter 16
Before I drove off, I checked my own messages. Lots of junk and a call forwarded by my service from “Mr. Joseph.” That meant nothing until I looked up the 239 area code. Florida.
Lanny Joseph, the record producer who’d referred Iggy Smirch to Bitt.
I tried the number, no answer or voicemail. First thing the following morning I made my second attempt and got the woman with the Cuban accent.
“Hol’ on.”
Several minutes, then: “Doctor, buena morninga. Talking about that asshole Bitt got me thinking, thinking got me remembering, remembering popped a name into my head. I talked to her yesterday, she said she’d talk to you.”
“She being...”
“Let’s leave it at someone you’ll want to talk to,” said Lanny Joseph. “If you still want to learn about that asshole Bitt.”
“We do.”
“We?”
“As I told you, I work with the poli—”
“I got that, Doctor, but let me give you some wisdom: Go easy on that. She’s not jazzed about talking to you, singular, I did you a big favor and convinced her. But no way will she get officially involved with the cops.”
“Got it. Thanks for taking the time.”
“Iggy said your girlfriend’s beyond hot and you been with her forever. I like faithful people and also Bitt was a total asshole. Here’s the name, she’s right by you, in L.A.”
Maillot Bernard.
I was pretty sure a maillot was some kind of bathing suit — one of those factoids you have no memory of actually learning.
The Internet confirmed that and added dancer’s tights to the mix.
Artistic woman? I looked her up on the Web, found nothing, made the call.
A tentative voice trilled, “Yes?”
“Ms. Bernard, Dr. Alex Delaware.”
“Yes?”
“Lanny Joseph gave me your number.”
“Yes. I told him he could.”
“This is about Trevor Bitt.”
“Yes.”
“Could we talk about him?”
“I guess,” said Maillot Bernard. “Somewhere basically... out in the open.”
“Whatever works best for you, Ms. Bernard.”
“Best,” she said, as if learning a new word. “There’s a place on Melrose, Cuppa. Serves breakfast all day. I’m going to be there by ten.”
“See you then.”
“Wait a few minutes, come at ten after,” she said. “So I have time to figure out what I want to eat.”
“Ten ten it is.”
“Yes.” A beat. “Lanny said you’re a police psychologist, like on TV.”
“I don’t actually work for the police, more of a freelance.”
“How interesting,” said Maillot Bernard, with scant conviction. “I used to freelance as a dancer. Then I taught dance to children. Freelancing always has you wondering. When’s the next check coming in. Now I do nothing.”
“Ah.”
“Make it ten fifteen,” she said. “I’ll be wearing orange.”
Cuppa sat beneath two stories of undistinguished, brick office building. Lampshade store on one side, Chinese laundry on the other. The restaurant’s front was all glass.
Inside, a boomerang-shaped, gold-flecked Formica counter faced chartreuse vinyl booths. Bullfighting posters and a wall menu served as art. The young woman behind the counter, white-uniformed with Lucille Ball hair and crimson lipstick, had nothing to do. The pass-through to the kitchen offered a view of a white-capped man smoking an e-cig.
What had once been a coffee shop transformed to a place that sold eight-dollar mocha drinks, six-dollar Postum, and omelets/scrambles/frittatas offered with options like ramps, glassfish, Belgian wheat beer, and sweetbreads.
Cheap oatmeal, though. Three bucks and represented with pride as “not steel-cut.”
A corner booth was occupied by a rabbinically bearded, brooding hipster genuflecting before a tiny cellular screen. Two other stations were taken up by white-haired throwbacks to the Kerouac era, reading newspapers and spooning oatmeal.
A woman in an orange dress sat in the farthest booth, watching me and ignoring a glass of red juice, a mug of something, and a bowl of what looked like lawn shavings sprinkled with fried onions.
Painfully thin would’ve been Maillot Bernard after a month of gorging.
She could’ve been anywhere between thirty-five and sixty; when emaciation sets in, distinctions blur. Her hair was long, white-blond, frizzy, her face a spray-tanned stiletto.