Heartbreak Hotel

Chapter 47

The ruby was photo’d, logged, placed in an evidence envelope, and handed over to the crime scene techs. After a call to Noreen Sharp from Milo, delineating precisely.

She said, “Over to us, huh?”

“Safest route.”

“Only route, Milo. I’m driving over there now, find the right place for it.”

It didn’t take long for Deandra Demarest’s body to be bagged, gurneyed, and wheeled to the blue-striped van.

The C.I.’s left.

One of the techs said, “Now what?”

Milo said, “The dirty work. Sorry.”

“We do plenty of hazmat.”

“I asked for two extra masks.”

“Got them, too.”

“God bless you.”

“We hear that all the time,” said the tech.

“You do?”

“Not.”

He and his partner laughed.

Whatever helped.

The airtight greenhouse had prevented the entrance of flies and the compression of the soil heap had partially preserved the body. But you can’t stop nature, and bacteria and tiny mites migrating from the plants did their thing, albeit at a far slower pace than blowfly maggots.

Decomp had spread downward, concentrating on the exposed head, leaving the legs below the knees and the feet pristine. The arms and hands were somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, with all ten fingers still able to serve up decent prints.

ID was verified, along with the route the male victim had taken to eternity.

Two bullets had entered the occiput of Henry Bakstrom’s brain. Later that day, a ballistics match was obtained at the crime lab: The same weapon had killed Gerard Waters. Never to be located.

Milo came by the house and filled me in. “Dirty end for a dirty guy.”

I said, “How long was Bakstrom in there?”

“Best guess, a week or so.”

“He was also expendable from the beginning.”

He nodded. “DeeDee and Phil’s mulch pile. Not that Duke’s admitting anything. Lawyered up after I asked him a few questions. I did learn his relationship to her. Distant cousins, third or fourth, he wasn’t really sure. He barely knew her when she showed up and told him a story.”

I said, “Before or after seducing him?”

“Who knows? Not that going mute is gonna help him, stick a body in your greenhouse and let it molder, even an L.A. jury will get it. The other news is no news on Ricki Sylvester. Not at home or in her office, so she’s either another stashed corpse or flown the coop.”

I said, “That about sums it up.”

But we were wrong.

Shortly after ten P.M. a call came into the West L.A. station. Milo was off-service but the desk sergeant was smart enough to remember and phone him.

He reached me at home and we arrived at the Aventura simultaneously. Chain-link fencing blocked the drive but a car-wide gate hung with a condemnation sign had swung open.

The hotel had its own odor: an arid, musty aura of desertion. Like a sauna gone bad.

One vehicle in the lot, a Saturn bearing the signage of a private security firm. Two black-and-whites parked near the mouth of the loggia leading to The Green. The windows of The Can were black, the landscaping spots as inoperative as those in Phil Duke’s backyard. But the lobby was brightly lit and exposed by glass walls.

A uniformed rent-a-cop sat behind the counter, middle-aged, paunchy, playing with his phone.

Milo said, “Wait here,” went in, and talked to the guard.

Brief chat. “He’s the one found it, routine patrol.”

I said, “He seems unscathed.”

“Twenty years on the job in Pittsburgh, says he’s seen it all. He’s looking at nudes on his phone, couldn’t care less.”

Both cop cars were unoccupied. Their roof bars strobed the pathway red and blue.

After the first turn, we came upon four uniforms.

One said, “All the way at the end.”

“Thanks for preserving the scene.”

“Sure, sir. Nothing out here except bugs.”

Milo and I gloved up.

The cop said, “Let me know when you’re ready, sir.”

It hadn’t taken long for Uno to acquire the look of abandonment, screens removed from the porch, front door ajar and off kilter, window shutters splintering.

The steps to the porch deck mewled in protest. The deck was littered with leaves and dust and scraps of paper. Milo looked at each one of them, said, “Trash,” and turned to the right.

Looking at the big rattan peacock chair where Thalia had sat the first time I met her.

No Sydney Greenstreet bulk taxing the cane, no wispy centenarian dwarfed by the curvaceous throne.

Something in between.

A chubby woman with unfashionable curly yellow hair wearing a too-tight floral dress that had ridden up as she’d slid downward, revealing dimpled knees and feet turned away from each other, clumsy and duck-like.

Ricki Sylvester’s head lolled. Her skin was green-gray. A dry drool trail striped her chin.

On the floor to her right was an empty bottle of Svedka vodka. Next to that, a small amber pill bottle. Childproof cap.

Rules say you wait until the C.I.’s clear the body. Milo cupped Ricki Sylvester’s chin and lifted her face gently.

Nearly shut eyes, a sliver of gray glass barely visible.

Slack mouth, tongue drooping to the right.

He lowered her, still gentle. Crouched and shined his flashlight on the pill bottle’s label.

Sixty tabs of Percocet, legally prescribed by an M.D. in Santa Monica.

“All that and a bottle of booze,” he said. “Not exactly a cry for help.”

I said, “There’s an envelope wedged at her side,” and showed him.

“Protocol says wait for the C.I.’s. I already bent the rules.”

“You bet.”

“Hell,” he said, and fished out the envelope. “Anyone asks, we found it on the floor.”

Just to make sure, he rubbed it on the floor, picked up grime.

Business-sized envelope, with Ricki Sylvester’s name, degree, and office address at the top.

Closed but not glued. He lifted the flap.

Same information on the single piece of paper folded inside.

Below the letterhead, graceful handwriting in burnt-orange ink.

“Custom color, looks like a fountain pen,” he said. “Haven’t seen that in a while.”

We read together.