Mystery

amantha “Suki” Agajanian’s red Audi TT Roadster zipped into the lot behind her building at ten thirty-five a.m.

Milo knew the car was hers and that her real name was Samantha because he’d spent the early-morning hours researching her and her sister.

Preceding that with a look at the Suss family, using the Web and property tax rolls.

No additional financial details had surfaced following the sale of the company. As a privately held corporation, Markham Industries had done a good job maintaining its privacy.

One surprise: Philip and Franklin’s shared birth date made them twins.

“ ’Bout the least identical I’ve ever seen,” said Milo.

Despite the dissolution of Connie’s gallery and her possible fling with Steven Muhrmann, she and Philip remained married and living together on Portico Place, not far from the Encino Reservoir. The P.O.B. she’d cited in her reference for Muhrmann was a mail-drop a few miles away, long since rented by someone else and the proprietors didn’t remember anything about her.

Drs. Franklin and Isabel Suss were in their tenth year of paying taxes on a North Camden Drive house in the flats of Beverly Hills. Before that, they’d lived in a smaller place on Roxbury, south of Wilshire.

Leona Suss was the sole occupant of a two-acre estate on Hartford Way, just north of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and of a condo in Palm Desert. Both properties had been purchased by a family trust twenty-seven years ago.

None of the Susses had ever been married to more than one spouse.

“Too much goddamn stability, it’s un-American,” said Milo.

The Agajanian sisters, on the other hand, had each been divorced in their twenties, twice in Rosalynn’s case. The founders of SukRose.net had been truthful about owning a Lake Arrowhead cabin but their city digs was a shared Hollywood Hills rental, just south of the bird streets.

Rosalynn drove the same model Audi as her sib, in silver. Columbia, Penn, and the U. verified both women’s educational claims. One parking ticket each, paid punctually, comprised their contact with law enforcement.

The slot I’d found at the far end of the parking lot allowed us to watch Suki as she headed for the building’s back door, pressing an iPhone to her ear. She smiled as she listened, smiled as she talked. Switched to texting and kept up the mirth. A tailored tweed jacket bisected firm, generous buttocks, and skinny jeans made the most of her legs. Five-inch red stilettos caused her to teeter every few steps but the occasional loss of balance did nothing to shake her good cheer.

As if she’d put in a bid to purchase the universe, fully expected it to be accepted.

We waited until she’d disappeared into the building, spotted her entering the elevator. She looked up from her phone just as the doors began closing. Saw us and raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow as we stepped in.

Milo gave a small salute.

She returned to her mini-screen.

The lift stopped at the second floor. Two of the other riders exited, leaving behind an older woman in a baggy plaid coat and bad makeup who looked ready to discipline someone. She’d been standing close to Suki, moved quickly to put maximum space between them. Sniffed, as if the younger woman was emitting anything but Chanel No. 10.

Ding. Floor three.

Suki hesitated.

Milo said, “Ladies first.”

The old woman said, “Someone get a move on.”

Out in the hallway, the texting continued.

“Morning, Suki.”

“Morning.”

“We need to talk.”

“I don’t think so. Brian gave you what you need.”

“Brian gave us basics. Since then, life got complicated.”

“For who?”

“That depends.”

She looked up from the screen. “I don’t appreciate being pressured.”

“That sounds like something Brian told you to say.”

“No. It’s how you’re making me feel. I don’t deserve it.”

“Let’s go talk in your office.”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“I can get one but I sure hope it doesn’t come to that, Suki. For your sake, because once the process starts, it takes on a life of its own. As in your business gets closed down for as long as it takes our techies to replicate your hard drives and scour your records.”

“No way you can do that.”

Milo clicked his tongue. “That’s what they all say, Suki.”

“This isn’t Syria or Iran,” she said. “You need grounds for a search.”

“We have grounds,” he said. “No matter what you’ve seen on TV, murder cuts through the smog.”

“No way,” she said, but her voice faltered.

“The sad thing, Suki, is we probably don’t even need your hard drives and going through them is going to be a major pain. All we’re after are the answers to a couple of simple questions, so how say we all do ourselves a collective favor?”

“You just said everything was complicated.”

“But you can make it simple again.”

The door to a neighboring office opened. Two men in fitted suits and open-neck shirts came out laughing.

“Morning,” said one.

Suki’s return greeting was barely audible and both men studied her as if she’d rebuffed them at a club.

“Whoa,” said one. “Time to move on.”

As they boarded the elevator, the other said, “Was that the police? Weird.”

Suki mouthed, Damn.

Milo said, “Let’s talk in your office.”

“Fine. But no promises.”

SukRose.net’s dark, empty suite gave way to fluorescence as Suki punched wall switches on the way to her office. Vacuum tracks and an orangey-chemical smell said the space had been cleaned overnight. But the aroma of last night’s Mexican takeout fought to be noticed and the crew had left packets of hot sauce next to one of her computer screens.

She frowned, brushed them into a trash basket, and looked past us.

The computers hummed. Hardware and software collaborating to align rich men with young female flesh.

I supposed it wasn’t that different from what had constituted marriage for centuries, before the ideal of romantic love went from fictional device to social norm. And who knew? Maybe the concept of soul mate would one day reduce to bytes and bits.

Right now, a beautiful girl with a missing face made it feel wrong.

As we’d waited in the lot, Milo had asked me to begin the questioning. You know how I feel about that math science crap.

I said, “Suki, how random is your process?”

“You’ll have to be more specific about what you mean by ‘process.’ ”

“Matching Daddies with Sweeties.”

“The process is we provide data and people find their own way.”

“All by themselves.”

Her eyes shifted to the left. “That’s what I just said.”

Milo walked to her window and parted the drapes. The blade of light that shot through was harsh and white.

She kept her eyes on him until he returned to his seat. “What were you looking at? Are there more of you out there?”

He said, “Great view. You’ve got yourself a really sweet setup here.”

He has a way of making pleasantry sound ominous. Suki Agajanian swallowed. “Whatever.”

I never enjoy lying glibly but I’m better at it than I’d like to think. “Suki, we had some math types examine your site. The consensus is that for you to succeed in a competitive field, the likelihood of random sorting as your dominant mode is about the same as sticking a monkey in a room with crayons and paper and expecting it to produce a Shakespearean sonnet over a long weekend.”

She swayed from side to side. If she were a boat, she’d be taking on water. “Is that so?”

I nodded.

“Then your so-called math types don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“You’re saying you never narrow searches in order to maximize compatibility.”

Her eyes repeated the same journey portside. “There are steps we can take if people request. So what?”

“What kind of steps?”

“Constructive focus.”

“Zeroing in on common interests.”

Nod.

“Favorite foods and such?”

“Deeper than that,” she said. “Values, experiences, intellectual pursuits.”

I tried to imagine a deep conversation between Markham Suss and Tara Sly.

“In order to zero, you use word-search software.”

She held out two palms. “Uh-uh, no way I’m going to get into technical aspects. Wouldn’t do it even if we were already copyrighted—and we’re looking into that. Because anything can be modified and ripped off.”

“We’re the last people you need to worry about stealing your stuff,” I said.

Her arms crossed over her chest. “Nope, no can do. Now, if there’s nothing else you—”

“So we agree that random surfing for true love might be fun in theory but narrowing the focus works significantly better.”

“Significance is a statistical concept,” she said. “You mean importance.”

“Okay, focus is important.”

“I guess that depends.”

“Do you word-search routinely or is it an option?”

She didn’t answer.

I said, “My guess is it’s a paid option, the geezers get a do-it-yourself base-rate or pony up additional dough for assisted loving.”

Suki Agajanian’s crisscrossed arms tightened, folding her shoulders inward, as if someone had laced her into an oppressive corset. “Relationships aren’t a joke.”

I said, “They’re anything but. Do you charge per word, or is it a package deal?”

“I don’t see why you’d care about that.”

“Are Sweeties and Daddies both eligible for assistance?”

“Everyone finds their own way, that’s the beauty of—”

“Daddies pay to enroll on the site but Sweeties don’t.”

“Brian already told you that.”

“So if there is an extra for-fee service only Daddies get to use it, correct?”

Long silence. Petulant nod.

I said, “Sweeties fend for themselves.”

She said, “Trust me, they do fine for themselves.” Sweat beaded her pretty Levantine nose. She dropped her arms, laced her fingers. A knuckle cracked. The pop made her jump.

When your own body scares you, you’re easy prey.

I said, “Obviously, you see where we’re headed.”

“Obviously I don’t.”

“Cohibas.”

She wheeled back in her desk chair. Hit an obstruction and came to a jarring halt, braced herself on the desk-edge. “We did absolutely nothing wrong.”

“No one’s saying you did, Suki.”

“Then can you please leave so I can go about my business? I’ve got a ton of emails to deal with.”

“As soon as we have the exact dates Tara Sly and Markham Suss registered with you.”

“Uh-uh, no way, I can’t do that,” she said. “Not before I consult with Brian.”

Her iPhone lay on the desk. Sparkling pink case, like a toy you might give to a three-year-old girl. I held it out to her.

She didn’t budge.

“Call him, Suki, so we can all go about out business.”

“That’s everything you want?” she said. “Just dates and then you’ll leave me alone?”

“You bet.”

She laughed. “Then you really wasted your time cause the dates are right out in the open, at the top of each profile.”

Exactly.

Milo pulled out Stylemaven and Mystery’s ventures in creative writing. “According to this, Mr. Suss registered twenty-three months and four days ago.”

“If that’s what it says.”

“And Tara aka Mystery came on real soon after, three days to be exact.”

“Okay.”

I said, “How much do you charge for keyword prompts?”

“You asked me that already.”

“Don’t recall any answer, Suki. And frankly, we don’t get why you’d want to be evasive if paying extra for prompts is a policy that all new Daddies learn about when they enroll. Unless it isn’t and you fool with the fee based on some hidden criterion. Like how much you think they’re good for.”

“No! Everyone pays forty dollars for three words and each additional word is twenty each.”

“Per month?”

“Per two months but they can change the prompts if they’re not getting results and there’s no extra fee.”

“What percentage of your members opt to pay for any prompts?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it the majority?”

“We’ve never counted.”

“Quants like you and Rose?” I said. “That’s hard to believe.”

She sagged. “It’s about half.”

Quickie math made that serious income.

She said, “Now can I get to my emails—”

“Half the Daddies pay for advanced searches while the Sweeties rely on their wits.” I smiled. “So to speak.”

“You’d be surprised,” she said. “Some of them are smart and educated.”

“Tara Sly must’ve been really smart to snag her Daddy that fast,” I said. “Though you’d never know it from her spelling and grammar.”

“Whatever.”

“Either that, or she had ESP.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t know?”

Another eye jog.

I said, “Take a guess how many words she and Stylemaven matched on.”

Silence.

“Five, Suki. Adventure, freedom, embrace, spiritual. And, most strikingly, Cohiba. Our math types say the probability of that happening by coincidence is infinitesimal. What we’re thinking is Mystery wasn’t surfing for some theoretical Daddy. Right from the beginning she set out to get Stylemaven. That would be no big deal if Sweeties had access to Daddy profiles before they registered. All she’d have to do is read about his interests and match them. But that would wreak havoc with your site and turn it into one big linguistic competition. So you keep Daddy profiles off limits to anyone without a username and a password. Unless you mess with that rule for a fee.”

“We do not.”

I said, “Adventure, freedom, embrace, and spiritual are words that probably come up a lot on SukRose. Especially spiritual, everyone claims to be spiritual. But even so, a four-way match would be quite an accomplishment. Toss in a low-frequency word like Cohibas and Tara having ESP sounds real good. Unless you sell data to Sweeties under the table and of course you don’t do that.”

“We don’t, I swear.”

“Then it’s really puzzling, Suki. We randomly sampled a whole bunch of your profiles. Guess how many times Cohiba or Cohibas showed up on anyone’s other than Stylemaven’s and Mystery’s?”

Silence.

“Any guess but zero would be wrong, Suki.”

“Okay, so what?” she said. “Someone with a username and a password showed his profile to her.”

“Another Sweetie sharing the wealth?” I said.

“Yes.”

“All those girls competing for a few choice rich guys and they’d hand over freebie data just to be nice?”

She shrugged.

Milo said, “We have an alternative explanation.”

“What?”

He showed her an enlargement of Steven Muhrmann’s DMV photo. “He look like a sharing type to you?”

Suki Agajanian’s mouth dropped open. “Him?”

“Well, look at that,” said Milo. “A spontaneous reaction.”

She gaped.

He said, “Obviously you’ve had the pleasure.”

“Stefan whatwashislastname—Moore,” she said. “What does he have to do with any of this?”

“His real name’s Steven Muhrmann.”

“I knew him as Stefan Moore.”

“How do you know him, Suki?”

“He worked for us, okay? Only for a short time, no big whoop.”

“When?”

She clicked keys. Gasped. Sat back and stared at the ceiling. “Oh, shit.”

Milo said, “The date, please, Suki.”

“Right around the same time.”

“As …?”

“As him registering. Stylemaven—Suss.”

“The date,” he repeated.

She read it off woodenly.

Milo said, “That’s two days after Stylemaven came on and one day before Mystery registered.”

“Shit.”

“How long did he work for you, Suki?”

“Less than two weeks—hold on.” Click click. “Guess I don’t have a record but it wasn’t long, maybe a week, a week and a half.”

“Looks like he used his first day on the job to access your database.”

“No way,” she said. “He didn’t even have computer skills.”

I said, “And you know that because …”

“He told us, up front.”

“What an honest guy.”

“Shit.”

“I’ll bet he made a big deal about being a computer dummy, Suki. I’ll bet you and Rose were impressed by all that upfront honesty.”

She closed her eyes. Massaged her brow. “I’ve got a crazy headache.”

I said, “His ignorance of computers made you feel comfortable. No way he could mess with your data.”

She sat up straight. “That bastard—but no way, he’d never be able to get into the profiles, we’re security-paranoid, you want to know how paranoid we are? We double-encrypt everything, use layers of firewall, it’s like the Pentagon—Brian says the Pentagon should be as secure. We do everything to maintain the integrity of the data because without our data, we’re toast.”

“What exactly were Stefan’s duties?”

“He was a gofer, ran errands, took deliveries.”

“Did he answer the phone?”

“Sometimes.”

“When?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was he limited to when you and Rose were here or did he work the phones when you went out to lunch?”

Silence.

Her whisper was fierce. “Oh, fuck.”

I said, “You never bothered to turn the computers off because Stefan was a computer dummy.”

The sound that she made next was hard to characterize. Part laughter, part cackle, part bronchial congestion. “Shit, shit, shit, how could we be so … no, no way, I can’t believe …”

I said, “Did you fire him?”

“No, he quit.”

“Did he give a reason?”

“He just stopped showing up.”

“So he didn’t officially quit, he just flaked. Because his real job was over.”

Her head dropped as if yoked by sudden, crushing weight. “I am so sorry. But you’re not saying that caused … what happened to her. You’re not saying that, right?”

Milo said, “One way or the other Tara Sly got aimed at Markham Suss. If Stefan ripped you off, that’s one thing. But if you broke your own rules and took a bribe to guide the process, that’s a whole different kettle of scrod.”

“No, no, we’d never do that, there’s nothing personal going on here, everything’s done online.”

“Romantic.”

I said, “You had no idea she matched him that precisely?”

“Why would we? We don’t look at that kind of thing.”

He said, “How about after we came in with Tara’s picture? You didn’t get curious.”

Her jaw swung from side to side. “Sure we did but all we learned was she only matched one Daddy and that was good, we figured at the worst we’d give you that and you’d leave us alone.”

“The fact that they registered within days of each other and hooked up nearly immediately didn’t impress you?”

“I swear,” she said. “That didn’t even register with us, we were just trying to cover our—to stay out of a mess. We’re sorry, okay? And we never connected it to him—that bastard. Why would we? He came across like a dummy. Even now, you can’t prove he had anything to do with it—that our data was even corrupted.”

“A five-word match, Suki? Cohibas.”

“What I said, another girl shared.”

Milo and I didn’t speak.

“Okay,” she said. “It could also have been a glitch.”

He said, “What kind of glitch?”

“Programming errors, it happens, we fix them. But really, it could’ve been another girl. Maybe they traded.”

“Like baseball cards,” said Milo. “Hey, here’s an idea for a spin-off: Daddy and Sweetie cards, collect them all, kids.”

“Whatever.”

“ ‘Gee, Tara, I was surfing with my username and password and just happened to come across this rich old dude who has a thing for Cuban cigars and I thought, hey, that’s perfect for you, you love rich old dudes who stink of tobacco and talk about karma, here you go, honey. And once you get your very own username and password you can return the favor—and, oh yeah, homegirl, here’s four other words you can stick in your profile to form a mathematically improbable coincidence because I ran a careful word-search in order to maximize your success.’ ” He slapped his cheek. “ ‘Oops. You lost your face.’ ”

Suki Agajanian’s eyes filled with tears. “I said I was sorry.”

“Then how about you channel all that remorse into action, Suki. As in no more delays and legal bullshit and you tell us the address Stefan gave when he applied for his ten-day job.”

“Of course, no problem.” Click. “Here it is.” She printed a single sheet.

The same defunct mail-drop Connie Longellos had given to Muhrmann’s landlord.

Milo said, “Where’s the rest of his job application?”

“That’s it, I promise. I know it looks skimpy but we were working day and night to accomplish the important things, didn’t have time to get all official with him—and like I said, he was barely here.”

“How’d you find him in the first place?”

“He found us,” she said. Leftward eye slide. Her lips vibrated. She’d never pass muster as a psychopath.

“How’d he find you?”

“Slipped his name and number under the door with a note saying he was looking for office work. He said he’d interviewed downstairs, someone told him we needed a gofer.”

“Who downstairs?”

“I don’t know.”

“You never verified.”

“We were busy. We thought we needed help. Once we got set up and he was already gone, we learned the computers could do everything a person could do except better. That’s the beauty of eBiz, you keep overhead to a minimum.”

“Bunch of smart kids, you and Rose and Brian,” he said. “Anyone else in the family involved?”

“Michael—our baby brother—did some Web design for us, he’s artistic, but that’s it.”

“Tell us everything you remember about Stefan Moore.”

“He was okay,” she said. “Polite, didn’t say much.”

I said, “He kept out of your way and you were busy so that was perfect.”

“Yes. You’re not saying he’s the one who … oh, God!”

Milo said, “What we’re saying is we’ve got a dead girl on our hands and ol’ Stefan was seen in her proximity the night she died. That makes him what we call a person of interest.”

Her head dropped again. “This is a shit-filled nightmare.”

“For Tara Sly it was a nightmare, for you it’s an inconvenience, Suki.”

She looked up, dark eyes blazing. “You don’t get what I’m saying. Any of this gets out and we’re complete and utter toast and it couldn’t come at a worse time.”

“Business is tough?”

“Just the opposite, business rocks. We’ve been fielding some serious buyout offers that could be huge, so please, please, please, don’t go public with any of this. Please.”

Milo said, “We’ll do our best, Suki. If you’ve told us everything you know.”

“I have! I swear to God!”

“Let’s go back to something Brian claimed: You don’t collect personal data on Sweeties once the initial criminal check comes back clean.”

Moment’s hesitation. “Basically … okay, we keep addresses and phone numbers, no reason not to. I’ll give you Mystery’s. Will that work for you?”

“Excellent, Suki. You’ll also give us her real name.”

“I would but I don’t know it.”

“Come on—”

“It’s true, I’m being totally honest with you now, I want to be honest, there’s no reason to hold back.”

“You do a criminal check but don’t probe for real names.”

“We go by what they tell us,” she said. “We’re not the FBI, we shouldn’t be expected to have … what do you call them—dossiers.”

He stared at her.

“I swear.”

“All right, Suki. Let’s have her address and phone number.”

“Okay, okay, okay.” Click click click. “Oh, God.”

“What?”

“Blank space,” she said. “It’s been deleted.”

“By who?”

“No way to tell.”

“When?”

“Can’t tell you that, either.”

“Looks like your database is far from incorruptible. Better fix all that before the buyout offers are finalized.”

She shot us a crooked smile. “I’m going to be sick.” Announcing calmly as if introducing her next piece at a piano recital.

By the time she reached the door she was retching.

The bathroom she ran to was close enough for us to hear.

Truth in advertising.