Serpentine

Chapter 19

At eight p.m., Milo called my private line and asked if I was still “healing miniature psyches.”

“Free now but tied up until noon tomorrow. Progress?”

“Nah, I’ve just got something I want you to hear.”

“I’m listening.”

“Hear as in verbal exchange, then we discuss. Not over the phone.”

I was tired, had planned to finish my paperwork then unwind with Chivas and my guitar gently weeping. But he sounded needy and Robin had returned to her shop and would be working late tweezing minuscule inlay onto the mandolin’s sound-hole rosette.

Her guess: back by nine. Eleven was more likely.

I said, “I’ll leave the door open.”

I was at my keyboard when he tapped on the doorframe. The playhouse was still in the center of the room.

“That for me?”

“If you can handle deep psychic exploration.”

“Sounds like my nightly sleep pattern.”

He plopped onto the battered leather couch, leaned forward, and began examining the house. “Kinda Beaver Cleaverville. Do I get to pick a favorite room? And don’t say the kitchen.”

“What, then?”

“Bypass the process and head straight for the outcome. The dining room.”

He removed a steak the size of a toenail. “For plastic, this stuff looks pretty good, but the portions? Tsk... is this broccoli or cauliflower... or a lawn cutting from Dad’s mower?”

I saved the file I was working on, double-checked, and logged off just as he was plucking a Mom-doll out of the house. “Apron and bouffant hair?”

I said, “I bought it when I started in practice.”

“Maybe you should update. Mama with skinny jeans and a coupla tattoos?” He rotated the doll. “Is her name Susan or Mary Jane? Is she still true to her sorority?”

“Sorry,” I said, “patient confidentiality. How’s Twohy?”

“Still in the hospital, nothing new to say. In terms of the crime scene, Petra doesn’t know for sure where the shooter hid but she’s got a good guess. Indentation in some brush twenty feet from where Twohy fell. Unfortunately, no footprints. Or casing, maybe it was a revolver.”

He held up the doll. “Back to Formica and TV dinners for you, Suzy.”

I said, “Did you have time to watch the mansion?”

“Briefly, still can’t figure a good way to do it, road’s too open, traffic’s too thin. I used the Porsche to blend in, did some drive-bys seven to ten a.m. and four to seven p.m., figuring those were the likely times Sabino or some other employee would be coming or going. No one came or went except for FedEx delivering what looked like boxes of books. Top of that, Martz called me yesterday emphasizing I was to report to her and no one else. Meaning I can’t request backup from Moe or Sean or Alicia. Now the topic for discussion.”

He triggered his phone. Two beeps were followed by a deep male voice.

“This is Dr. Des Barres.”

“Doctor, Lieutenant Sturgis.”

“You, again? I got your messages and ignored them because I’m busy and have nothing to say to you.”

“If you could just—”

“You misled my service, saying it was an urgent call.”

“It kind of is, Doctor.”

“It kind of isn’t,” said Anthony Des Barres. “False premises. Not right, Lieutenant. Goodbye.”

“Sorry, sir, no harm intended but if you could give me just a second? Your brother and sister did.”

“A second to do what?” said Anthony Des Barres. “What in the world do you think I can tell you?”

“Did they fill you in?”

“I haven’t talked to my brother. My sister said something about a woman who lived with our father umpteen years ago.”

“And was murdered during that time.”

“That’s supposed to concern me because...”

“It may not concern you at all, Doctor. The case has been reopened and I’m trying to gather background information.”

“By operating scattershot? If I went about my job that way I’d never get any work done.”

“You’re a surgeon?”

“Vascular surgeon,” said Anthony Des Barres. “I take apart blood vessels and put them back together again. I don’t ask my patients about their childhoods or their ears or their rectums. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got reality to attend to.”

“The woman in question was named Dorothy Swoboda.”

“That means nothing to me.”

“I sent your brother a photo and he thought he recognized her. Could I do the same with you?”

“You’re serious,” said Des Barres.

“It won’t take long, sir.”

“Then can we put this to bed? I don’t like talking about them.”

“Who?”

“My father’s houris. It wasn’t a great time for us, seeing him change after my mother died.”

“Running a harem.”

“I said ‘houris,’ didn’t I? I believe it’s the root of ‘whore.’ ”

“Not a classy bunch.”

“Hah. Cheap types traipsing in and out of the house. A flesh parade. I was in college but my sister was a little kid. What kind of environment do you think that was for her? If I could’ve taken her with me I would’ve, but a dorm isn’t exactly the right place for a ten-year-old.”

“The home environment affected your sister?”

“I’m not a psychiatrist.” A beat. “I’m not saying Valerie needs one, she’s doing fine. Goodbye.”

“That photo?”

“Email it.”

“Where, please?”

Des Barres rattled off a Gmail address. “Do not send it to my office. If you do, I’ll lodge a complaint. I cannot have my staff distracted.”

Click.

I said, “Angry man.”

Milo shook his head. “You’d think people would learn what hostility sets off in detectives. Now listen to this.”

He pushed a button. New connection.

“Sturgis.”

“This is Dr. Des Barres. I remember her because she didn’t even try.”

“Try what?” said Milo.

“To ingratiate herself.”

“The other women did.”

“Not effectively, but they tried.”

“In what way?”

“Fake smiles and unctuous voices for my sister, honey, this, sweetheart, that. For my brother and me — and for my father, of course — it was batting the lashes and shaking their you-know-whats. Tacky, the bunch of them.”

Milo said, “Dorothy Swoboda didn’t do any of that.”

“That’s the only reason I remember her. It was as if she felt confident in her situation.”

“What situation was that?”

“I don’t know — maybe thinking she was the Queen Bee houri.”

I scrawled entitled on a Post-it and showed it to Milo.

He spoke the word.

Dr. Anthony Des Barres said, “Exactly. Entitled and arrogant.”

Milo said, “That kind of attitude could cause resentment. Did she have any enemies?”

“How would I know, Lieutenant? I was barely around and when I was, my thoughts weren’t on whatever drama my father had put himself in. I concentrated on spending the minimum amount of time there and then getting back to my studies.”

“So no one you know of—”

“What do you want me to say? That I saw her and one of the other houris engage in a claws-out catfight? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, these were gold diggers not debutantes. Father probably would’ve liked that — being fought over. But I never witnessed anything remotely like that.”

Milo said, “So Ms. Swoboda’s goal was being your father’s favorite.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Lieutenant. I don’t know that, I’m inferring.” Tony Des Barres let out a derisive laugh. “If they had brains they’d have realized he had no intention of developing a relationship with any of them.”

“He told you that.”

“Do you people get paid to be thick? No, he didn’t tell me that. His actions made it obvious. If you want domesticity you don’t assemble a bunch of sluts.”

“Got it,” said Milo. “So the other women jockeyed for position by sucking up to you and your sibs but Dorothy Swoboda didn’t.”

“She couldn’t have cared less.” Snide noise that might’ve been a chuckle. “There you go, you’ve solved it. Another houri bumped her off. Now if—”

“Your brother said she could get seductive with him.”

“Bill thinks he’s God’s gift to women, he’s been married four times. And in answer to your inevitable question, no she didn’t do that with me. I’m the last person to think I’m God’s gift to women. Would you like to know why?”

“Please.”

“I’m gay,” said Anthony Des Barres. “Does that shock you?”

“No, sir.”

“I’ll bet. You people aren’t known for your tolerance.”

Click.

Milo put the phone down, flexing his fingers as if letting go of a hot frying pan. “Sssss. What do you think?”

I said, “He just floated the other women as potential suspects, but if Dorothy did have a chance of being Des Barres’s chosen one, she’d have been a bigger threat to the heirs.”

“Follow the money.”

“Val was a kid, Bill still a teenage preppie, but Tony was a legal adult most likely to appreciate the consequences.”

“Dr. Genius just gave himself a motive.”

I said, “And if he was still closeted, Dorothy could’ve posed a double threat — capturing Dad’s heart and informing on Son Number One.” I smiled. “Of course, you intolerant law enforcement types wouldn’t understand that.”

He cracked up. “What was I gonna say? Feel your pain, sourpuss? Take a look at some internet photos I pulled up, medical galas and such.”

I scrolled through four images, each featuring small clutches of partygoers. Two of the affairs were black-tie, the others, business attire.

Dr. Anthony Des Barres was a tall, broad, heavy-jawed man with a steel-colored crew cut and a pugnacious jaw. A hyphen of thin lips completed the disapproving-elder look. Beyond serious; grim. Hollywood would’ve cast him as a drill sergeant.

The exception to his crankiness was one shot where he stood next to a slender, younger Asian man identified as Richard Hu, M.D. The two of them pressed close together, Hu beaming boyishly as Tony Des Barres managed a pained semi-smile.

Milo said, “Like he was weaned on vinegar. Look at his size, gotta be in my league.”

I said, “Young adult thirty-six years ago and easily able to overpower a woman.”

“Plus he’d have access to Daddy’s car. And remember: Dottie was killed in July.”

“Summer vacation,” I said. “He could’ve been home from college.”

“He gets back to the manse, doesn’t like what he sees, has words with the Queen Gold Digger and it goes far, far south. I ran a search on him, hoping for anything anger-related, but no dice. No priors, period, not a single complaint to the medical board or any online griping. Which nowadays qualifies you for sainthood. Just the opposite, his patients love him. Apparently when it comes to varicose veins, he’s a miracle worker. With an excellent bedside manner.”

I said, “Maybe he knows how to compartmentalize.”

“Dr. Nice at work, something else when you get his goat?”

Or, I thought, bringing up his childhood had simply been a trigger for bad memories, nothing more. But no sense getting any more analytic; at this point it led nowhere.

I nodded and left it at that.

Milo pocketed his phone. “What do you think about the brothers living near each other but not talking much? Tony’s dig about Bill thinking he’s God’s gift to women.”

I said, “Could you use Bill to learn more about Tony? At this point, I wouldn’t risk it. The same goes for giving Valerie another try. They could still be a cohesive trio, in which case everything will blow up in your face.”

He gave a resigned shrug. “I was hoping you’d contradict what I already figured. Any other ideas?”

“You could search for someone outside the family who remembers the harem days. Maybe a friend of Des Barres’s wives.”

He drummed his knees with his fingers. “Helen died of natural causes but with the pattern of accidents, concentrate on Arlette the Horsewoman, maybe one of her gal-pals had suspicions.”

He left the office, came back chomping on an apple, sat on the battered leather couch. “I was also thinking it’s time to have a sit-down with Ellie.”

“Reassuring her?”

“More like seeing if there’s more she remembers. I had it set up for ten tomorrow but you’re busy till noon. If I move it, can you make it?”

Out came the phone.

Before “Sure” had left my mouth, he punched a preset. “Ellie? Need to move it to two thirty.”