Up close it was a solidly built little structure, the red clapboard smooth and freshly painted, a sliding white barn door in perfect plumb and secured with a dead bolt and a beefy brass padlock.
“This secure enough for you?” Pulling out a big chromium key ring, he used one key to spring the lock, another to release the bolt. Then he slid the door to the right, reached in and flipped a light switch, and stood aside.
“After you.”
The interior was larger than Suzanne DaCosta’s garage but not by much, white-walled with a drop ceiling and a black linoleum floor.
No office equipment, just tools for the art of healing animals.
The largest fixture was a steel-topped examining table with a green, triangular base. Growing up in the Midwest, I’d seen a lot of that green: John Deere tractors. Protruding from the base was a steel tilt level and a red foot pedal. At the head of the table stood a surgical lamp; off to the side were two forbidding metal chairs.
The facing walls housed unoccupied wire kennels. The wall perpendicular to the cages was a white metal floor-to-ceiling cabinet with side-by-side doors each sporting a Red Cross decal.
Another pair of locks. Medecos; serious hardware. Will Burdette rotated his key ring and opened them.
Inside were metal shelves holding bottles and boxes neatly stacked and arranged. Rubber gloves, IV setups, disposable surgical tools, syringes of varying size, pills, powders, liquids.
He drew out a box at the top of the pile and another sitting next to it.
“This one’s fentanyl patches and this is the liquid we use for infusions. There are also inhalers available — that’s what screws up a lot of human addicts, too easy to get high. But I’ve found them tough to use on horses and cows.”
Replacing the boxes, he brought out two others. “These are my other narcotics. Hydromorphone and good old morphine. Fentanyl’s a whole bunch stronger and if it gets into your skin you can get sick or even worse. But it works fast, so if you’re careful it can be a wonder drug for an acutely ill animal. Not that I use a lot. If euthanasia’s called for, I over-tranquilize them. It’s safer, easier, more humane. All these agents are for serious pain. Don’t imagine you’ve ever seen a two-ton bull brought to its knees by agony.”
Milo said, “Fortunately not, Doctor.”
“The bigger they are, the more pathetic it is. Gets you right here.” Will Burdette grabbed a handful of shirt above his belt buckle. “Your clients are already out of their misery. I see more than my share of suffering and I do what I can to eliminate or alleviate it. In terms of who has access to this cabinet, you’re looking at him. Now you’re going to ask me is there a spare set of keys and the answer is yes. In the house. So theoretically Sandra could get hold of it and steal dope. You know those dope-fiend wives.”
He slapped his thigh and laughed.
Milo said, “Sorry—”
“Forget it. Like you said, you need to ask.”
Keeping his voice low and smiling. Both lent him an air of menace.
Milo said, “No offense, Doctor.”
“None taken, Lieutenant. You’re doing your job. If everyone did theirs, we’d have a better country. Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
Back outside, he stopped to play some more with the goats and sheep. “They’re as human-friendly as dogs. The goats especially. These are dwarf Nubians. My grandsons love ’em.”
I said, “Nice setup.”
“To me it’s Eden. I came here from Nebraska because a group in Canoga Park offered me a job. But it didn’t work out, so I tried to go it alone and started with a fair share of small-animal work. Then the city folk moved in with their dogs and cats so there was too much competition. Top of that, I like the big critters and don’t mind making house calls. So I concentrated on building that up. I still occasionally get a small patient. Mostly calls from neighbors and shelters. Had a seventy-pound pit bull couple of weeks ago, rose thorn in its paw, terrific animal.”
For all his wanting to get rid of us, another long response to a brief question. People get like that when they’re nervous.
We said our goodbyes and got into the unmarked. Morning was departing, some cloud cover was drifting in, cooling the air.
But as we drove away, the sweat on Will Burdette’s forehead beaded like glycerine.
Once we were off the property, Milo said, “You feel like I do?”
I said, “The Poland thing got to both of them.”
“Both of them gabbing — see that flop sweat on him? The way she cued him in before we had a chance to speak? They’re hiding something.”
“And trying to direct us to the Rapfogels.”
“No love lost. Sounds like the start of a great marriage.”
My cell beeped. Robin. I switched to speaker.
She said, “Hi, sweetie. Sharon’s touring but took the time to call back, how’s that for a gracious virtuosa? She didn’t think giving out the information would be a problem seeing as we’re talking about a murder victim so she texted the head of dance and just got back to me. Your Ms. DaCosta has never attended Juilliard under that name or anything close to it. They did have a ballet teacher, pretty famous, Madame Beatrice Da Costa. The dance head wondered if someone was using her name — like a wannabe composer claiming to be a Mozart.”
“How long ago was Madame at the school?”
“She arrived in 1952, a year after the dance division was established. She was already old and died five years later. So if she’s some kind of a relative, there are multiple generations in between. My bet is Suzanne was just pretending, poor thing.”
“Okay, thanks for taking the time, hon.”
“If not for you, who?”
I told her I loved her and clicked off.
Milo said, “Hmph,” and headed back toward the freeway. Speeding up the way he often does when his head knots up with question marks.
As we neared the on-ramp, he said, “So I’ve got a phantom who reinvented herself aka just plain lied. Which explains why I haven’t been able to trace her before she got the driver’s license. Meaning the goddamn I.D. could be useless along with everything she told her roommates, the Valkyrie, and the bouncers.”
The heel of his hand pounded the steering wheel hard enough to make it hum. His other hand ran over his face, like washing without water.
“One step forward,” he said. “A hundred thousand backward.”
I waited awhile before saying, “Maybe we should concentrate on what we do know — rework it.”
“What, she liked to read?”
“She liked to read academic material. Hunkered down in a corner of the library by herself. In that regard, we’re not talking pretension, she had serious intellectual aspirations. If she wasn’t enrolled at some sort of college, she may have planned to be. And that brings us right back to the brainy lover.”
“Going to school to impress him.”
“Not the kind of thing you make up randomly. My bet is he’s real. Another thing that’s stuck with me: that body shaper. Again, why would a woman with an ideal build bother with that?”
“This is L.A., Alex. Twenty-year-olds get Botox.”
“Maybe so. But it could also be something she did for him.”
“The Brain has a thing for tight undergarments?”
“The Brain has a thing for control. If he played up her flaws, he’d gain more upper hand. Or it’s just a bondage fetish. Which is also about control.”
“Keeping her tight and unavailable.”
“Easier if you’re dealing with someone socially and intellectually beneath you. Her wearing the shaper to the wedding says she expected him to be there.”
“Which brings me back to Garrett, who sure was there. It’s starting to add up, Alex: Guy cuts out right after we talk to him about the Land of Pierogi and his parents get squirrelly about the same topic. Baby probably thinks she’s turned him into a spontaneous, lovey-dovey swain. Talk about ‘that’s amore.’ ”