Devil's Waltz

16

She stayed the night and, as usual, was up early.

What wasn’t usual was her sticking around for another hour to drink coffee and read the paper. She sat next to me at the table, one hand on my knee, finishing the arts section as I skimmed the sports scores. Afterward, we went down to the pond and threw pellets to the fish. The heat had come on early for spring, overpowering the ocean currents, and the air smelled like summer vacation.

Saturday, but I felt like working.

She remained at my side. We touched a lot but the signs of her restlessness were beginning: flexing muscles, random glances, minuscule lags in the conversation that only a lover or a paranoiac would have noticed.

I said, “Got a busy one planned?”

“Just a few things to catch up on. How about you?”

“The same. I’m planning to hit the hospital sometime today.”

She nodded, put both arms around my waist, and we walked back up to the house, entwined. After she got her purse we descended to the carport.

A new truck was parked next to the Seville. Royal-blue Chevy pickup with a white racing stripe along the side. New car registration sticker on the windshield.

“Nice,” I said. “When’d you get it?”

“Yesterday. The Toyota developed serious engine problems and the estimates I got ranged from one to two thousand, so I thought I’d treat myself.”

I walked her to the truck.

She said, “Dad would’ve liked it. He was always a Chevy man — didn’t have much use for anything else. When I drove the other one I sometimes felt he was looking over my shoulder, scowling and telling me Iwo Jima stories.”

She got in, put her bag on the passenger seat, and stuck her face out the window for a kiss.

“Yum,” she said. “Let’s do it again soon, cutie. What was your name again? Felix? Ajax?”

“Mr. Clean.”

“How true,” she said, laughing as she sped away.

I paged Stephanie, and the operator came back on the line saying Dr. Eves would call back. I hung up, pulled out my Thomas Guide, and pinpointed Dawn Herbert’s address on Lindblade Street. I’d just located it when the phone rang.

“Steph?”

“No, Mile. Am I interrupting something?”

“Just waiting for a callback from the hospital.”

“And of course you don’t have call-waiting.”

“Of course.”

Milo gave a long, equine snort that the phone amplified into something thunderous. “Have you had your gas lamps converted to Dr. Edison’s miracle wires yet?”

“If God had wanted man to be electric, he would have given him batteries.”

He snort-laughed. “I’m at the Center. Phone me as soon as you’re finished with Steph.”

He hung up. I waited another ten minutes before Stephanie’s call came in.

“Morning, Alex,” she said. “What’s up?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“Nothing much. I saw her about an hour ago,” she said. “She’s feeling better — awake, alert, and screaming at the sight of me.”

“What’s the latest on the hypoglycemia?”

“The metabolic people say there are no metabolic problems, her pancreas has been examined from every possible angle — clean as a whistle — and my Swedish friend and everyone else is back on Munchausen. So I guess I’m back to square one, too.”

“How long are you planning to keep her in?”

“Two or three days, then back home if nothing else comes up. I know it’s dangerous letting her out, but what can I do, turn the hospital into her foster home? Unless you’ve got some suggestions.”

“None yet.”

“You know,” she said, “I really let myself go with that sugar thing. Thinking it was real.”

“Don’t bludgeon yourself. It’s a crazy case. How did Cindy and Chip react to the continuing uncertainty?”

“I only saw Cindy. The usual quiet resignation.”

Remembering Al Macauley’s comment, I said, “Any smiles?”

“Smiles? No. Oh, you mean those spacey ones she sometimes gives? No. Not this morning. Alex, I’m worried sick over this. By discharging Cassie, what am I sentencing her to?”

Having no balm, I offered a Band-Aid. “At least discharging her will give me the chance to make a home visit.”

“While you’re there, why don’t you sneak around and look for hot clues?”

“Such as?”

“Needles in bureau drawers, insulin spansules in the fridge. I’m kidding — no, actually I’m only half-kidding. I’m this close to confronting Cindy, let the chips fall. The next time that little girl gets sick, I just may do it, and if they get mad and go elsewhere, at least I’ll know I did everything I could — Oops, that’s me on page — Neonatology, one of my preemies. Gotta go, Alex. Call me if you learn anything, okay?”

I phoned Milo back. “Working weekends?”

“Did a trade with Charlie. Saturdays on in exchange for some flexibility in my moonlighting. How’s old Steph?”

“Off organic disease, back on Munchausen. No one can find an organic reason for the hypoglycemia.”

“Too bad,” he said. “Meantime, I’ve got the low-down on Reggie Bottomley, the nurse’s bad seed. Guy’s been dead for a couple of years. For some reason his name never got off the files. Suicide.”

“How?”

“He went into the bathroom, got naked, sat on the toilet, smoked crack, jacked off, then turned his head into bad fruit with a shotgun. Very messy. The Tujunga detective — a gal, actually, named Dunn — said Vicki was home when it happened, watching TV in the next room.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. The two of them had just had some kind of spat over Reggie’s dissolute life-style and Reggie stomped off, got his works out of his dresser drawer and the gun, locked himself in the can, and kaboom. Mom heard the shot, couldn’t get the door open, tried to use a hatchet and still couldn’t do it. The paramedics found her sitting on the floor, crying and screaming for him to please come out, talk it over. They broke the door down and when they saw what he looked like, tried to hold her back. But she got a look at some of it. So that could explain her sour disposition.”

“Oh, man,” I said. “What a thing to go through. Anything on the family history that led up to the suicide?”

“Dunn said there was no history of child abuse — she saw it as basically a nice mom with a rotten kid. And she busted Reggie lots of times, knew him well.”

“What about dad?”

“Died when Reggie was little. Heavy drinker, like you said. Reggie was in trouble right out of the chute, smoking dope and moving on up the pharmaceutical ladder. Dunn describes him as a little skinny jerk, learning disabilities, not too bright, couldn’t hold a job. Incompetent criminal, too — got caught all the time, but he was so pitiful-looking, judges usually went easy on him. He didn’t get violent until near the end — the assault rap. And even that was relatively dinky — bar fight, he used a pool cue on some other scrote’s head. Dunn said he was getting feistier because of the crack, it was just a matter of time before he ended up prematurely muerto. According to her, mom was the long-suffering type, tried her best. End of story. It tell you anything about mom as a suspect?”

“Not really. Thanks anyway.”

“What’s your next step?”

“Lacking anything else, I guess a visit with Dawn Herbert. I spoke to Ashmore’s wife yesterday, and she said he hired grad students from the university. So maybe Herbert has enough technical knowledge to know what Ashmore was looking for in Chad’s chart.”

“Ashmore’s wife? What’d you do, pay a grief call?”

“Yes. Nice lady. Ashmore was quite an interesting fellow.” I told him about the couple’s time in the Sudan, Ashmore’s gambling systems and investments.

“Blackjack, huh? Must have been good.”

“She said he was a math genius — computer wizard. Brown belt in several martial arts, too. Not exactly easy prey for a mugger.”

“No? I know you used to do all that good stuff, and I never wanted to disillusion you, but I’ve seen plenty of martial artists with tags on their toes. It’s one thing in a dojo, bowing and jumping around and screaming like there’s a hatpin in your colon. Whole different story out on the streets. Incidentally, I checked with Hollywood Division on Ashmore’s murder and they’re giving a low solve probability. Hope the widow isn’t pinning her hopes on law enforcement.”

“The widow is still too dazed to hope.”

“Yeah...”

“What?”

“Well,” he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about your case — the psychology of this whole Munchausen thing — and it seems to me we’ve missed a potential suspect.”

“Who?”

“Your buddy Steph.”

“Stephanie? Why?”

“Female, medical background, likes to test authority, wants to be in the center of things.”

“I never thought of her as attention-seeking.”

“Didn’t you tell me she was some big radical in the old days, Chairman of the interns’ union?”

“Sure, but she seemed sincere. Idealistic.”

“Maybe. But look at it this way: Treating Cassie puts her smack at the center of things, and the sicker the kid is, the more Stephanie gets the spotlight. Playing rescuer, big hero, rushing over to the Emergency Room and taking charge. The fact that Cassie’s a big shot’s kid makes it even tastier, from that standpoint. And these sudden shifts she’s making — Munchausen one day, pancreatic disease the next, then back to Munchausen. Doesn’t that have a hysterical feeling to it? Your goddam waltz?”

I digested all that.

“Maybe there’s a reason the kid goes nuts when she sees her, Alex.”

“But the same logic that applies to Vicki applies to her,” I said. “Until this last seizure, all of Cassie’s problems began at home. How could Stephanie have been involved?”

“Has she ever been out to the home?”

“Just early on — once or twice, setting up the sleep monitor.”

“Okay, what about this? The first problems the kid had were real — the croup, or whatever. Steph treated them and found out being doctor to the chairman of the board’s grandchild was a kick. Power trip — you yourself said she plans on being head of the department.”

“If that was her goal, curing Cassie would have made her look a lot better.”

“The parents haven’t dropped her yet, have they?”

“No. They think she’s great.”

“There you go. She gets them to depend on her, and tinkers with Cassie — best of both worlds. And you yourself told me Cassie gets sick soon after appointments. What if that’s because Stephanie’s doing something to her — dosing her up during a checkup and sending her home like a medical time bomb?”

“What could she have done with Cindy right there in the exam room?”

“How do you know she was there?”

“Because she never leaves Cassie’s side. And some of those medical visits were with other doctors — specialists, not Stephanie.”

“Do you know for a fact that Stephanie didn’t also see the kid the same day the specialists did?”

“No. I guess I could look at the outpatient chart and find out.”

“If she even charted it. It could have been something subtle — checking the kid’s throat and the tongue depressor’s coated with something. Whatever, it’s something to consider, right?”

“Doctor sends baby home with more than a lollipop? That’s pretty obscene.”

“Any worse than a mother poisoning her own child? The other thing you might want to think of, in terms of her motivation, is revenge: She hates Grandpa because of what he’s doing to the hospital, so she gets to him through Cassie.”

“Sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

“Evil mind, Alex. They used to pay me for it. Actually, what got me going was talking to Rick. He’d heard of Munchausen — the adult type. Said he’d seen nurses and doctors with those tendencies. Mistakes in dosage that aren’t accidental, heroes rushing in and saving the day — like pyromaniac firemen.”

“Chip talked about that,” I said. “Medical errors, dosage miscalculations. Maybe he senses something about Stephanie without realizing it... So why’s she calling me in? To play with me? We never worked that closely together. I can’t mean that much to her, psychologically.”

“Calling you in proves she’s doing a thorough job. And you’ve got a rep as a smart guy — real challenge for her if she’s a Munchie. Plus, all the other shrinks are gone.”

“True, but I don’t know... Stephanie?”

“There’s no reason to get an ulcer over it — it’s all theory. I can peel ’em off, right and left.”

“It makes my stomach turn, but I’ll start looking at her more closely. Guess I’d better watch what I say to her, stop thinking in terms of teamwork.”

“Ain’t it always that way? One guy, walking the road alone.”

“Yeah... Meantime, as long as we’re peeling off theories, how about this one? We’re not making headway because we’re concentrating on one bad guy. What if there’s some kind of collusion going on?”

“Who?”

“Cindy and Chip are the obvious choice. The typical Munchausen husband is described as passive and weak-willed. Which doesn’t fit Chip at all. He’s a savvy guy, smart, opinionated. So if his wife’s abusing Cassie, why isn’t he aware of it? But it could also be Cindy and Vicki—”

“What? Some romantic thing?”

“Or just some twisted mother-daughter thing. Cindy rediscovering her dead aunt in Vicki — another tough R.N. And Vicki, with her own child rearing a failure, ripe for a surrogate daughter. It’s possible their pathology’s meshed in some bizarre way. Hell, maybe Cindy and Stephanie have a thing going. And maybe it is romantic. I don’t know anything about Stephanie’s private life. Back in the old days she hardly seemed to have one.”

“Long as you’re piling it on, what about dad and Stephanie?”

“Sure,” I said. “Dad and doc, dad and nurse — Vicki sure kisses up plenty to Chip. Nurse and doc, et cetera. Ad nauseum. E pluribus unum. Maybe it’s all of them, Milo. Munchausen team — the Orient Express gone pediatric. Maybe half the damn world’s psychopathic.”

“Too conservative an estimate,” he said.

“Probably.”

“You need a vacation, Doc.”

“Impossible,” I said. “So much psychopathology, so little time. Thanks for reminding me.”

He laughed. “Glad to brighten your day. You want me to run Steph through the files?”

“Sure. And as long as you’re punching keys, why not Ashmore? Dead men can’t sue.”

“Done. Anyone else? Take advantage of my good mood and the LAPD’s hardware.”

“How about me?”

“Already did that,” he said. “Years ago, when I thought we might become friends.”

I took a ride to Culver City, hoping Dawn Herbert stayed home on Saturday morning. The drive took me past the site of the cheesy apartment structure on Overland where I’d spent my student/intern days. The body shop next door was still standing, but my building had been torn down and replaced with a used-car lot.

At Washington Boulevard, I headed west to Sepulveda, then continued south until a block past Culver. I turned left at a tropical fish store with a coral-reef mural painted on the windows and drove down the block, searching for the address Milo had pulled out of the DMV files.

Lindblade was packed with small, boxy, one-story bungalows with composition roofs and lawns just big enough for hopscotch. Liberal use of texture-coat; the color of the month was butter. Big Chinese elms shaded the street. Most of the houses were neatly maintained, though the landscaping — old birds of paradise, arborvitaes, spindly tree roses — seemed haphazard.

Dawn Herbert’s residence was a pale-blue box one lot from the corner. An old brown VW bus was parked in the driveway. Travel decals crowded the lower edge of the rear window. The brown paint was dull as cocoa powder.

A man and a woman were gardening out in front, accompanied by a large golden retriever and a small black mutt with spaniel pretensions.

The people were in their late thirties or early forties. Both had pasty, desk-job complexions lobstered with patches of fresh sunburn on upper arm and shoulder, light-brown hair that hung past their shoulders, and rimless glasses. They wore tank tops, shorts, and rubber sandals.

The man stood at a hydrangea bush, clippers in hand. Shorn flowers clumped around his feet like pink fleece. He was thin and sinewy, with mutton-chop sideburns that trailed down his jaw, and his shorts were held up by leather suspenders. A beaded band circled his head.

The woman wore no bra and as she knelt, bending to weed, her breasts hung nearly to the lawn, brown nipples visible. She looked to be the man’s height — five nine or ten — but probably outweighed him by thirty pounds, most of it in the chest and thighs. A possible match for the physical dimensions on Dawn Herbert’s driver’s license but at least a decade too old for the ’63 birthdate.

As I pulled up I realized that the two of them looked vaguely familiar. But I couldn’t figure out why.

I parked and turned off the engine. Neither of them looked up. The little dog started to bark, the man said, “Down, Homer,” and continued clipping.

That was a cue for the bark to go nuclear. As the mutt scrunched his eyes and tested the limits of his vocal cords, the retriever looked on, bemused. The woman stopped weeding and searched for the source of irritation.

She found it and stared. I got out of the car. The mutt stood his ground but went into the face-down submissive posture.

I said, “Hey, boy,” bent and petted him. The man lowered his clippers. All four of them were staring at me now.

“Morning,” I said.

The woman stood. Too tall for Dawn Herbert, too. Her thick, flushed face would have looked right at a barn raising.

“What can I do for you?” she said. Her voice was melodious and I was certain I’d heard it before. But where?

“I’m looking for Dawn Herbert.”

The look that passed between them made me feel like a cop.

“That so?” said the man. “She doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Do you know where she does live?”

Another exchange of glances. More fear than wariness.

“Nothing ominous,” I said. “I’m a doctor, over at Western Pediatric Hospital — in Hollywood. Dawn used to work there and she may have some information on a patient that’s important. This is the only address I have for her.”

The woman walked over to the man. It seemed like a self-defense move but I wasn’t clear who was protecting who.

The man used his free hand to brush petals off his shorts. His bony jaw was set hard. The sunburn had gotten his nose, too, and the tip was raw.

“You come all the way here just to get information?” he said.

“It’s complicated,” I said, fudging for enough time to build a credible story. “An important case — a small child at risk. Dawn checked his medical chart out of the hospital and never returned it. Normally I’d have gone to Dawn’s boss. A doctor named Ashmore. But he’s dead. Mugged a couple of days ago in the hospital parking lot — you may have heard about it.”

New look on their faces. Fear and bafflement. The news had obviously caught them off guard and they didn’t know how to respond. Finally they chose suspicion, locking hands and glaring at me.

The retriever didn’t like the tension. He looked back at his masters and started to whine.

“Jethro,” said the woman, and the dog quieted. The black mutt perked up his ears and growled.

She said, “Mellow out, Homer,” in a singsong voice, almost crooning it.

“Homer and Jethro,” I said. “Do they play their own instruments or use backup?”

Not a trace of a smile. Then I finally remembered where I’d seen them. Robin’s shop, last year. Repair customers. A guitar and a mandolin, the former in pretty bad shape. Two folkies with a lot of integrity, some talent, not much money. Robin had done five hundred bucks’ worth of work for some self-produced record albums, a plate of home-baked muffins, and seventy-five in cash. I’d watched the transaction, unnoticed, from up in the bedroom loft. Later, Robin and I had listened to a couple of the albums. Public domain songs, mostly — ballads and reels, done traditionally and pretty well.

“You’re Bobby and Ben, aren’t you?”

Being recognized cracked their suspicion and brought back the confusion.

“Robin Castagna’s a friend of mine,” I said.

“That so?” said the man.

“She patched up your gear last winter. Gibson A-four with a headstock crack? D-eighteen with loose braces, bowed neck, bad frets, and a popped bridge? Whoever baked those muffins was good.”

“Who are you?” said the woman.

“Exactly who I said I was. Call Robin — she’s at her shop, right now. Ask her about Alex Delaware. Or if you don’t want to bother, could you please tell me where I can find Dawn Herbert? I’m not out to hassle her, just want to get the chart back.”

They didn’t answer. The man placed a thumb behind one of his suspender straps.

“Go call,” the woman told him.

He went into the house. She stayed behind, watching me, breathing deeply, bosoms flopping. The dogs watched me too. No one spoke. My eyes caught motion from the west end of the block and I turned and saw a camper back out of a driveway and lumber toward Sepulveda. Someone on the opposite side of the street was flying an American flag. Just beyond that, an old man sat slumped in a lawn chair. Hard to be sure but I thought he was watching me too.

Belle of the ball in Culver City.

The suspendered man came back a few minutes later, smiling as if he’d run into the Messiah. Carrying a pale-blue plate. Cookies and muffins.

He nodded. That and his smile relaxed the woman. The dogs began wagging their tails.

I waited for someone to ask me to dance.

“Get this, Bob,” he said to the woman. “This boy’s her main squeeze.”

“Small world,” said the woman, finally smiling. I remembered her singing voice from the album, high and clear, with a subtle vibrato. Her speaking voice was nice too. She could have made money delivering phone sex.

“That’s a terrific woman you’ve got there,” she said, still checking me out. “Do you appreciate her?”

“Every day.”

She nodded, stuck out her hand, and said, “Bobby Murtaugh. This is Ben. You’ve already been introduced to these characters.”

Greetings all around. I petted the dogs and Ben passed the plate. The three of us took muffins and ate. It felt like a tribal ritual. But even as they chewed, they looked worried.

Bobby finished her muffin first, ate a cookie, then another, chewing nonstop. Crumbs settled atop her breasts. She brushed them off and said, “Let’s go inside.”

The dogs followed us in and kept going, into the kitchen. A moment later I heard them slurping. The front room was flat-ceilinged and darkened by drawn shades. It smelled of Crisco and sugar and wet canine. Tan walls, pine floor in need of finishing, odd-sized homemade bookshelves, several instrument cases where a coffee table would have been. A music stand in the corner was stacked with sheet music. The furniture was heavy Depression-era stuff — thrift-shop treasures. On the walls were a Vienna Regulator that had stopped at two o’clock, a framed and glassed Martin guitar poster, and several handbills commemorating the Topanga Fiddle and Banjo Contest.

Ben said, “Have a seat.”

Before I could comply, he said, “Sorry to tell you this, friend, but Dawn’s dead. Someone killed her. That’s why we got freaked out when you mentioned her name, and the other murder. I’m sorry.”

He looked down at the muffin plate and shook his head.

“We still haven’t gotten it out of our heads,” said Bobby. “You can still sit down. If you want to.”

She sank into a tired green sofa. Ben sat next to her, balancing the plate on one bony knee.

I lowered myself to a needlepoint chair and said, “When did it happen?”

“A couple of months ago,” said Bobby. “March. It was on a weekend — middle of the month, the tenth, I think. No, the ninth.” Looking at Ben.

“Something like that,” he said.

“I’m pretty sure it was the ninth, babe. It was the weekend of Sonoma, remember? We played on the ninth and came back to L.A. on the tenth — ’member how late it was because of the problems with the van in San Simeon? Least that’s when he said it happened — the cop. The ninth. It was the ninth.”

He said, “Yeah, you’re right.”

She looked at me: “We were out of town — playing a festival up north. Had car trouble, got stuck for a while, and didn’t get back till late on the tenth — early morning of the eleventh, actually. There was a cop’s business card in the mailbox with a number to call. Homicide detective. We didn’t know what to do and didn’t call him, but he called us. Told us what happened and asked us lots of questions. We didn’t have anything to tell him. The next day he and a couple of other guys came by and went through the house. They had a warrant and everything, but they were okay.”

A glance at Ben. He said, “Not too bad.”

“They just wanted to go through her stuff, see if they could find anything that might relate. ’Course they didn’t — that was no surprise. It didn’t happen here and they told us from the beginning they didn’t suspect anyone she knew.”

“Why’s that?”

“He — this detective — said it was...” She closed her eyes and reached for a cookie. Managed to find it and ate half.

“According to the cop, it was a sick psycho thing,” said Ben. “He said she was really...”

Shaking his head.

“A mess,” said Bobby.

“They didn’t find anything here,” said Ben. The two of them looked shaken.

“What a thing to come home to,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” said Bobby. “It really scared us — to have it be someone we knew.” She reached for another cookie, even though half of the first one was still in her hand.

“Was she your roommate?”

“Tenant,” said Bobby. “We own the house.” Saying it with wonderment. “We have a spare bedroom, used to use it as a practice room, do some home recording. Then I lost my job over at the day-care center, so we decided to rent it out for the money. Put a card up on the bulletin board at the university ’cause we figured a student might want just a room. Dawn was the first to call.”

“How long ago was this?”

“July.”

She ate both cookies. Ben patted her thigh and squeezed it gently. The soft flesh cottage-cheesed. She sighed.

“What you said before,” he said, “about this medical chart. Was her taking it uncool?”

“She was supposed to return it.”

They looked at each other.

“Did she have a ‘taking’ problem?” I said.

“Well,” he said, uncomfortably.

“Not at first,” said Bobby. “At first she was a great tenant — cleaned up after herself, minded her own business. Actually, we didn’t see her much because we had our day jobs, and then sometimes we’d go out to sing at night. When we didn’t, we went to sleep early. She was out all the time — real night owl. It was a pretty good arrangement.”

“Only problem,” said Ben, “was her coming in at all hours, because Homer’s a good watchdog and when she came in he used to bark and wake us up. But we couldn’t very well tell her when to come in and out, could we? Mostly, she was okay.”

“When did she start taking things?”

“That was later,” he said.

“A couple of months after she arrived,” said Bobby. “At first we didn’t put it together. It was just small stuff — pens, guitar picks. We don’t own anything valuable, except the instruments, and stuff gets lost, right? Look at all those one-of-a-kind socks, right? Then it got more obvious. Some cassette tapes, a six-pack of beer — which she could have had if she’d asked. We’re pretty free with our food, even though the deal was she was supposed to buy her own. Then some jewelry — a couple pairs of my earrings. And one of Ben’s bandannas, plus an antique pair of suspenders he got up in Seattle. Real nice, heavy leather braces, the kind they don’t make anymore. The last thing she took was the one that bothered me the most. An old English brooch I got handed down from my grandmother — silver and garnet. The stone was chipped but it had sentimental value. I left it out on the dresser and the next day it was gone.”

“Did you ask her about it?” I said.

“I didn’t come out and accuse her, but I did ask her if she’d seen it. Or the earrings. She said no, real casual. But we knew it had to be her. Who else could it have been? She’s the only other person ever stepped in here, and things never disappeared until she came.”

“It must have been an emotional problem,” said Ben. “Kleptomania, or something like that. She couldn’t have gotten any serious money for any of it. Not that she needed dough. She had plenty of clothes and a brand-new car.”

“What kind of car?”

“One of those little convertibles — a Mazda, I think. She got it after Christmas, didn’t have it when she first started living with us or we might have asked for a little more rent, actually. All we charged her was a hundred a month. We thought she was a starving student.”

Bobby said, “She definitely had a head problem. I found all the junk she stole out in the garage, buried under the floorboards, in a box, along with a picture of her — like she was trying to stake claim to it, put away a little squirrel’s nest or something. To tell the truth, she was greedy, too — I know that’s not charitable but it’s the truth. It wasn’t until later that I put two and two together.”

“Greedy in what way?”

“Grabbing the best for herself. Like if there’d be a half-gallon of fudge ripple in the freezer, you’d come back and find all the fudge dug out and just the vanilla left. Or with a bowl of cherries, all the dark ones would be picked out.”

“Did she pay her rent on time?”

“More or less. Sometimes she was a week or two late. We never said anything, and she always paid, eventually.”

Ben said, “But it was turning into a tense scene.”

“We were getting to the point where we would have asked her to leave,” said Bobby. “Talked about how to do it for a couple of weeks. Then we got the gig in Sonoma and got all tied up, practicing. Then we came home and...”

“Where was she murdered?”

“Somewhere downtown. A club.”

“A nightclub?”

Both of them nodded. Bobby said, “From what I gather it was one of those New Wave places. What was the name of it, Ben? Something Indian, right?”

“Mayan,” he said. “The Moody Mayan. Or something like that.” Thin smile. “The cop asked us if we’d been there. Right.”

“Was Dawn a New Waver?”

“Not at first,” said Bobby. “I mean, when we met her she was pretty straight-looking. Almost too straight — kind of prim, actually. We thought she might think we were too loose. Then gradually she punked up. One thing she was, was smart, I’ll tell you that. Always reading textbooks. Studying for a Ph.D. Biomathematics or something like that. But at night she used to change — she’d dress up to go out. That’s what Ben meant by her having the clothes — punk stuff, lots of black. She used to smear on that temporary hair dye that washes right out. And all this Addams Family makeup — sometimes she’d mousse up her hair and spike it. Like a costume. The next morning she’d be straight again, going to work. You wouldn’t have recognized her.”

“Did she actually get killed at this club?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We really weren’t listening to the details, just wanted the cops to get her stuff out of here, get the whole thing out of our systems.”

“Do you remember the detective’s name?”

“Gomez,” they said in unison.

“Ray Gomez,” said Bobby. “He was a Los Lobos fan and he liked doo-wop. Not a bad guy.”

Ben nodded. Their knees were pressed up against each other, white from pressure.

“What a thing to happen,” she said. “Is this child going to suffer because Dawn stole the chart?”

“We can work around it,” I said. “It just would have been nice to have.”

“Shame,” said Ben. “Sorry we can’t help you. The police took all her stuff and I didn’t see any medical chart in there. Not that I was looking that close.”

“What about the things she stole?”

“No,” said Bobby, “no charts there, either. Not too thorough of the cops not to find it, huh? But let me just check, to make sure — maybe inside the flaps or something.”

She went into the kitchen and came back shortly with a shoebox and a strip of paper. “Empty — this here’s the picture she laid on top. Like she was staking her claim.”

I took the photo. One of those black-and-white, four-for-a-quarter self-portraits you get out of a bus terminal machine. Four versions of a face that had once been pretty, now padded with suet and marred by distrust. Straight dark hair, big dark eyes. Bruised eyes. I started to hand it back. Bobby said, “You keep it. I don’t want it.”

I took another look at the photo before pocketing it. Four identical poses, grim and watchful.

“Sad,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Bobby, “she never smiled much.”

“Maybe,” said Ben, “she left it at her office at the U — the chart, I mean.”

“Do you know what department she was in?”

“No, but she had an extension there that she gave us. Two-two-three-eight, right?”

“Think so,” said Bobby.

I took paper and pen out of my briefcase and copied that down. “She was a doctoral student?”

“That’s what she told us when she applied. Biomathematics, or something.”

“Did she ever mention her professor’s name?”

“She gave a name for a reference,” said Bobby, “but to tell the truth we never called it.”

Sheepish smile.

“Things were tight,” said Ben. “We wanted to get a tenant quickly, and she looked okay.”

“The only boss she ever talked about was the guy at the hospital — the one who got killed. But she never mentioned him by name.”

Ben nodded. “She didn’t like him much.”

“Why’s that?”

“I dunno. She never went into details — just said he was an asshole, really picky, and she was gonna quit. Then she did, back in February.”

“Did she get another job?”

“Not that she told us about,” said Bobby.

“Any idea how she paid her bills?”

“Nope, but she always had money to spend.”

Ben gave a sick smile.

Bobby said, “What?”

“Her and her boss. She hated him but now they’re both in the same boat. L.A. got ’em.”

Bobby shuddered and ate a muffin.