Serpentine

Chapter 3

Ellie Barker opened her mouth to speak, froze, and began fiddling with her fingers.

“Sorry, I’m trying to sort out my thoughts.” A tongue-tip raced between her lips. “I could use some water myself, just a second.”

She was gone longer than it took to fetch the Dasani dangling from her hand. After sitting, she set about working the cap. It resisted, plastic quivering. She put the bottle down, defeated by shaky fingers.

Her right hand rose to her throat.

Touching a necklace of dark-green speckled beads that she hadn’t been wearing when we entered. Fingering orbs like a rosary. Her eyes soared to the ceiling and stayed there.

Milo said, “Take your time.”

She shook her head. “Every time I go through this I’m confronted by how little I know. Not that the other guys really cared. They said anything relevant would be found on the internet, they had access to bases I didn’t. Is that true?”

“The internet’s a tool, no more, no less.”

“One of many in your toolbox, I hope.”

“We do the best we can, ma’a — Ms. Barker.”

“Ellie’s fine.”

He leaned forward. “Ellie, whatever you think you do or don’t know, we have to start somewhere.”

“Sure. Of course. Sorry.” Another lip-lick. Both hands squeezed the bottle. Bubbles floated and descended. “Okay, here goes. My mother’s maiden name was Dorothy Swoboda. When she was with my father — technically he was my stepfather but he’s the only dad I ever knew — I assumed she took his name. Barker. Stanley Barker. I found out later they’d never actually married. I don’t know who my biological father was because my stepdad had no idea and there’s no record of my birth.”

“Nowhere?”

“Not as Eleanor Swoboda, not as Eleanor Barker. That one thing Sapient and Cortez looked into and agreed upon. After my dad filed the certificate he got me a Social Security number and that’s the extent of it. I never knew about any of this. Why would a kid be concerned with paperwork? And I was happy with my birthday, he always got me a cake.”

I said, “When did he tell you he was your stepdad?”

“When I was a teenager.”

“How old?” said Milo.

“Fifteen. I wanted to know more about Mom. Up till then I’d never asked. Maybe I was in denial, but it had never been an issue, Dad and me was what I was used to. Then I started being a teenager — questioning everything — and demanded he tell me what he knew. He got a funny look on his face, like he’d been waiting for this moment but dreaded it.”

She gave the bottle another try. Frowned. I loosened the cap for her.

“Thank you, where was I... okay, I demanded. Dad left the room and returned a few moments later with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He said, ‘Sit down, Ellie,’ and then he told me there was going to be a lot to handle, was I sure. I said something like ‘Fuck, yeah.’ Charming, huh?”

Milo said, “Goes with the teen territory.”

“And not liking it went with the dad territory,” she said. “He was pretty cut-and-dried. When he met Mom she had me, he knew nothing beyond that. I didn’t push the bio-dad issue because he already looked pretty stricken and I didn’t want to hurt him. Besides, he was my real father, I had no interest in some guy who’d abandoned me.”

She took a long swallow of water. “The truth was I went from being obnoxious to feeling bad for him. He looked like he was going to cry. I felt like I was going to cry. Then he said, ‘Let’s go out for ice cream,’ so we went to Baskin-Robbins.”

Small smile. “I remember what I had. Jamoca Almond Fudge in a sugar cone. At first I could barely get it down, like there was a lump here.” Tapping a spot above the green necklace. “In retrospect, should I have pushed for more information? Maybe. But he was my dad. It just didn’t seem right.”

Milo took out his pad and pen. “His full name...”

“Stanley Richard Barker. Doctor Stanley R. Barker, he was an optometrist.”

“How old were you when he and your mom met?”

“Not sure. Dad said a baby.”

“And when she died?”

“Not even three, thirty-three months.”

“Is Dr. Barker still alive?”

“I wish, Lieutenant. He passed a while back.”

“How long ago?”

“When I was in college... nineteen years ago.”

“Where was college?”

“Stanford. I did my undergrad there and was planning to enroll in the MBA program. When Dad passed, I was in my sophomore year and spending the summer doing research for a professor. European economic history, bone-dry. After Dad passed, I dropped out and got myself what I thought would be a mindless job, working for a clothing manufacturer in Oakland. The funny thing is, it led to some interesting things.”

“You started your own company.”

She shrugged. “I was lucky.”

I said, “You had a good relationship with your dad and didn’t want to rock the boat. After he died you didn’t need to worry about that.”

Her head bobbed and she winced. As if I’d embedded a hook.

“He wasn’t a whoop-it-up dad,” she said, “but he was a great dad. Quiet, reserved, and incredibly smart. Earned a B.S. in physics from Cornell, came out to California to work for the government then went to optometry school at Berkeley. He was really into optics — not the political cliché, the real thing. He opened up an office in Danville, this upper-crusty place where we ended up living, then a second down in Oakland just so he could service poor people. He probably could’ve been Pearle Vision or LensCrafters but big business didn’t interest him, he just liked helping people see better and made a good living at it. The money he left me helped me bankroll Beterkraft.”

She finished her water. “When I was home, we’d play Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit, watch goofy old movies.”

Her mouth twitched. Holding something back.

I said, “When you were home from college?”

Another flash of color spread at the edges of her face, this one intense enough to turn her earlobes scarlet. “Before that. I went to boarding school when I was fifteen. Dad had a lot of patience but I turned incredibly difficult — no need to get into the details, let’s just say I was a pain and he tried his best and when he finally suggested I try living away, I said sure. Actually, I didn’t say it very politely. On one hand, I was thrilled to get away from rules. On the other...” Shrug. “But obviously none of that’s the issue.”

I said, “You asked about your mother when you came home from boarding school.”

She stared at me. “No getting around the emotional probing, huh? Yes. Exactly. Things changed when I was at Milbrook — Milbrook Preparatory Academy for Girls, it’s in Palo Alto, a feeder for Stanford. For all my behavioral issues, my grades had always been good. But now I was living with seventy other girls, and girls can get pushy and nosy. Everyone talking about their family, bragging, wanting to know about yours. I knew so little, obviously I didn’t want to talk about it. But a few of them pushed and pushed and then they started making fun of me — my parents were spies or criminals. Or worse, welfare cheats. I tried to ignore it but eventually it got to me and I struck out. Literally. I ended up smacking one particularly obnoxious little bitch in the nose and got into major trouble.”

She passed the empty bottle from hand to hand. “Two months in and poor Dad has to come and beg the dean to keep me. He convinced her but I saw how much it stressed him, so I promised to keep it together. But by then I’d been tagged as a weirdo loner and everyone avoided me. Which on one hand was good, the questions stopped. But then with the pressure off, I realized the questions were valid. Who was she and how had she died? Who was I? So on Christmas, the next time I was home, I brought it up. Dad told me she’d died, had been cremated, and he’d scattered the ashes in a park somewhere they used to go.”

The bottle wobbled and nearly fell out of her hands. She managed to hold on to it, placed it gingerly on the table. “I don’t want to tell you how to do your job but, again, is all this really necessary?”

Milo said, “The more we know, the better chance we have.”

“Sure but I don’t see why — all right, fine, you’re here to help me, I won’t be obstructive.”

“What happened next?”

“Nothing until Dad passed and I broke down, just went numb, the feeling of aloneness.”

Biting her lip, she looked away. When she spoke next, her voice was weak, tinged with the vibrato of suffering.

“Stanford assigned a nurse to look after me. They suggested I see a counselor but I blew that off. Eventually, I told myself life sucked, I just had to be strong, didn’t need a babysitter. I know I was privileged — no money worries because Dad’s executor was taking care of me on that level.”

“Who was that?”

“Dad’s lawyer, Lawrence Kagan. I’d known him as a customer — Larry with the Coke-bottle glasses. I knew Dad liked him but had no idea he trusted him that much.”

I said, “Was the trust justified?”

“Totally. Mr. K was honest and lovely to me.” She breathed in deeply. “It’s when he drove down to Palo Alto to read me the will that I saw the adoption form. Dad had decided to do it after Mom died because I was technically attached to no one. That kind of brought everything back — who was I, where had I come from. Larry had no idea — don’t bother contacting him, he’s also gone.”

She smiled. “That day in his office. He put on one of the Coke-bottles Dad had made for him and shuffled papers like someone out of Dickens. When he showed me the adoption form, it choked me up. That Dad had always cared. Then I noticed Mom’s name. Dorothy Swoboda, not Barker, and he explained about no marriage. Which seemed pretty daring for Dad, but maybe it was her idea? Meanwhile, Larry’s reading the will, I’m Dad’s sole heir and there’s a lot of money. It took a while to settle down emotionally. A year or so. That’s when I first began looking for information about her using her actual name. I had no idea where to start but figured California was logical. I learned that a lot of personal documents are county forms so I worked my way down from Contra Costa to Alameda, et cetera, et cetera. It was tedious but strangely exciting. Finally I found the coroner’s report from L.A. County and then an article in the L.A. Times. Confusing because the paper made it sound like a car accident but the report said homicide. That freaked me out. I put the whole thing aside for a long, long time.”

I said, “Your family was living in Danville but your mother died in L.A.”

“I thought it was weird. Dad certainly never mentioned it. Maybe she was down here on some sort of trip. Or visiting someone?” A beat. “Or they’d separated. I really have no idea. That’s part of what I’d like to know.”

“Did your dad give any indication of marital problems?”

“Never. But he wouldn’t have. He was private. He never talked about her, period.”

That sounded more hostile than private. I said nothing.

Milo said, “Did he leave you any photographs of her?”

She held up an index finger, stood and hurried up the stairs. Returned with a folio-sized brown leather album that she thrust at Milo.

Twenty or so oversized pages, each blank but for the first, where a trio of mementos was lodged under horizontal plastic strips.

At the top, a copy of the Times piece. Bottom of the page, two brief paragraphs.

Below that was a faded color snapshot with crenellated edges and lowermost, dead center, a negative photostat — white lettering on a black background — of a thirty-six-year-old L.A. County Coroner’s death certificate for Dorothy Swoboda, white female, twenties, precise age unknown.

Cause: bullet wound.

Manner: homicide.

Milo tapped the album. “Can I take this?”

Ellie Barker hesitated.

“If it’s a problem, you can make copies and send them to me.”

“No, it’s fine... but if you could return it when you’re through—”

“I’ll make copies and get it back to you.” He looked at the photo. “These are your parents?”

She nodded. “There’s a date stamp on the back. It was taken when I was two, I have no idea where.”

Milo and I studied the shot. Man and woman standing next to each other, a foot of space between them. The setting somewhere outdoors; diamonds of milk-colored sky speckling the gaps in a green-black curtain of trees. Stout trunks, the ground littered with needles.

Some sort of conifer forest. Maybe the place where Stanley Barker had scattered Dorothy’s ashes.

He stood on the right. Midforties, average height, pear-shaped, with sparse dark hair and an owlish face made more so by black-framed eyeglasses. Despite the outdoor setting, he wore a light-blue suit with broad lapels, a white shirt buttoned to the neck, and black, bubble-toed shoes.

Hands pressed to his sides, forcing a half smile. Not a natural poser.

The woman was young enough to be his daughter — early to midtwenties. Long-stemmed and taller than Barker courtesy white spike-heeled sandals and bright-red hair assembled in a sprayed, wavy updo that showed off a pale swan neck.

The face perched on the neck was lean, oval, symmetrical. The right structure for beauty but blocked from beauty by hard eyes and a brittle smile.

Still, a markedly attractive woman, wasp-waisted and full-busted, with curvy contours emphasized by a maroon dress cinched corset-tight by a broad silver belt.

This one liked to pose. She’d placed her hands on her hips, cocked her left haunch slightly higher, and positioned her feet at a forty-five-degree angle from each other.

No jewelry but for a green band worn low around her neck and resting in the hollow above her sternum.

Neither of them dressed for a forest. Neither of them happy.

I said, “Looks like the same necklace you’re wearing.”

Ellie Barker’s fingers climbed to the beads and rested atop them protectively.

“It’s the only thing I have of hers. Dad gave it to me after we got back.”

“Back from?”

“Ice cream. He’d had it in his pocket and when we were back home, he put it on me. He said everything else of hers had been clothing that he’d given to Goodwill. He said he’d bought the necklace for her at an art fair. She didn’t really like it but would wear it when he asked.”

“Malachite?”

“Serpentine. Nothing precious, just a rock with minerals — hydrogen magnesium iron phyllosilicate.” She smiled. “I memorized that.”

Milo took the album, closed it, placed it in his lap.

Ellie Barker said, “I tried to get the details from the coroner but they said something that far back they don’t keep full files, I was lucky they had that. I said I’d like to know who killed her and they said that’s a police matter. So I went back to the article and it said Mulholland Drive off Coldwater Canyon. I google-mapped and found out one side of Mulholland was Beverly Hills, the other the Hollywood Hills. I tried both police departments, did a lot of waiting while I was on hold. The people I finally spoke to said they’d get back to me but never did. So, again, I gave up. I tend to do that... then I went to that fundraiser.”

I said, “What was the cause?”

“Children,” said Ellie Barker. “Kids whose parents had died.”