Breakdown

Chapter 35

Refusing my offer of a ride, the old lawyer shuffled back home.

As I reached the Seville, a homeless couple wheeled his-and-her supermarket carts toward the dry fountain. Two humans camouflaged as shags of filthy cloth, bruised feet barely covered by tattered sneakers. The man’s lips moved. The women’s mouth hung open.

Outpatient mental health in the twenty-first century. The twentieth had been a combination of incarceration and occasional nurturance.

I pictured Zelda, her show canceled, her agent ill, trying to make her way in a city that prized looks and availability.

Crazy and sexy. You can do what you want with one of those.

Learning about her mother’s maltreatment at the hands of her sibs would’ve changed her quest. No more search for her roots, time for payback. As her own mind disintegrated, she’d have struggled to hold on, terrified by suggestions of damaged lineage.

She hadn’t become an ace detective. She’d learned everything from her beyond-the-call-of-duty therapist.

Well-meaning, caring Lou had no idea where his compassion would lead.

I phoned Milo. “I found out how Zelda learned about her family.”

“I found out there’s no chance for a goddamn warrant.”

“John wasn’t impressed.”

“Hell,” he said, “as I was laying it out, I wasn’t impressed. Bottom line: Without a solid reason to enter the premises, I couldn’t even stroll in if the gates were open.”

“What defines solid grounds?”

“A moldering corpse would work nicely, but ‘obvious evidence of wrongdoing’ is the operative criterion. Like I needed John to tell me that. I got too caught up, amigo. Too bad we didn’t spot Enid growing cannabis that night.”

“You could hire a bird to drop seeds.”

“Crows R Us, there you go. So how’d Zelda become a detective?”

“Lou Sherman detected for her. He was trying to figure out if her story about her mother was real or not.”

“Who told you this?”

“Earl Cohen.”

“Him? He’s still alive?”

“A medical miracle.”

“Why’d you go to him?”

“He was around back in the day.” I gave him Cohen’s description of the DePauws. What the old man had heard about Zina.

“Coupla would-be actresses,” he said. “On top of all the other family crap, sisterly competition.”

“Neither of them made it but Zina failed a little less obviously.”

“So Enid got back at her by stealing her boyfriend. That’s pretty primal.”

“Cohen called it spiteful, I like your description better.”

“Getting the boyfriend and snagging her inheritance, too, if we’re right about the shutoff clause. Sexy crazy, huh?”

“In those days, mental illness would’ve been an easy trigger. And that crack Cohen’s buddies made was telling: She was seen as easy prey. Add booze to the mix, and taking everything from her, including her baby, would be easy. Sherman also told Cohen that Zelda’s adoptive situation hadn’t been ideal.”

“Coup de grâce by Sister Enid,” he said. “Stripping Zina down to nothing. Zina hangs on, doing what it takes to get by, then one day, poof. But you know what John’s gonna tell me: A woman with that level of problems, there are all kinds of ways she could end up missing.”

“Sure,” I said. “But her daughter was most likely murdered. Along with—”

“Three innocents, I know. John was impressed by that. The blood potential. Assured me if it ever got to court, he had first dibs on prosecuting because a trial like that could be a career builder.”

“But he’s not holding his breath.”

“Way he put it was ‘My wife bugged me to take her to Maui, we’re leaving in two days and I’m not trading in my tickets.’ ”

Clear evidence of wrongdoing.

Rescue fantasies clogged my head.

I could call White Glove Cleaning, buy myself a tag-along with the cute girls.

I could find out when the gardeners arrived on St. Denis and wangle my way in with them.

Or just take the simple route: hitching myself over a wall and engaging in some freelance exploration.

All of which would screw up the case if I found anything incriminating. Officially, I was a private citizen, but even a bottom-feeder defense attorney would have no trouble convincing a judge I was an agent of the police.

Expired name tag notwithstanding.

Enid DePauw and J. Yarmuth Loach had the money to hire an ace.

Banish all thoughts.

That got me thinking about the prime suspects. Even with two of them doing the dirty work, a seventy-year-old woman and sixty-seven-year-old boy-toy transporting bodies and burying them seemed unlikely.

If Alicia and Imelda had fallen prey, they’d likely been driven somewhere and dumped in a remote location where burial wasn’t necessary.

The desert.

Had Enid’s story about Palm Springs been a nasty private joke?

If so, no sense pursuing it. East of the city stretched hundreds of miles of sand and sun-cracked gullies, an alternative universe where raptors, canids, and fire ants had evolved fierce and focused, striving to survive.

Flesh would be devoured greedily, bones picked clean in days and scattered.

When thinking about that proved too depressing, I returned to a more hopeful scenario: Why not somewhere on Enid’s estate? No need to dig deep because it was private property, protected by the lack of clear evidence of wrongdoing.

I recalled the layout. Hedged and terraced formal gardens backed by forest-like growth at the back. Zelda had been found in the manicured section, no attempt to conceal.

You can do what you want with them.

If two other bodies were concealed anywhere on the property, it would have to be at the back.

Same problem: serious tote for a pair of senior citizens, even a duo who could’ve stepped out of a cruise-ship ad.

I supposed a wheelbarrow would help. But the interment itself would entail strenuous effort.

I got on Google Earth.

Wouldn’t you know.

Learn something new every day.