13 Stolen Girls (15 page)

“Remove your gown, Layla.”

A throaty whisper, ugly and carnal.
What? What had he said?

“Strip it off.”

“I don't think so.”

“I gave it to you, I can take it back.”

Remington thought of the little pistol in her clutch bag.

“How about I take it off you? How would that be?”

“No, thanks.”

Monaghan remained blocking the exit. “Rip it from your back, tear it from your skin, strip you naked, then bend you over and introduce your backside to the whip.”

“This is bullshit.” Layla attempted to move around Monaghan.

He wouldn't allow her to pass.

“Mr. Monaghan, you are about a split second away from committing a felony.”

He didn't move. Remington snapped open the clasp on her purse. She slipped her hand inside, feeling the cool steel of the little automatic.

“You can go.” The man took a microstep forward, until he was by her side. “But I'll tell you what, Detective Investigator Layla Remington, who is always on the prowl for missing and exploited youths. If I grabbed you between your legs right now”—he thrust his right hand into the folds of her gown—“I'd find you wet, wouldn't I?”

“Fuck you!”

“Exactly.”

Knocking his hand away, she pushed past him.

“You can't deny it,” he called after her, lazily following behind. “It's hardwired into your genes, girl. I can always tell. I can pick women like you out from a crowd.”

She swung around to face him. “I could place you under arrest right now.”

Monaghan stood beside the bronze statue of the grinning satyr. “Mine's bigger,” he said, caressing Priapus's arrogant erection.

The producer's laughter echoed after Remington as she stalked out through the colonnaded baths.

Judd Lowe was nowhere to be seen.

The mild dark of the autumn evening had begun to settle as Stills drove Remington home. She sat silent, stewing. The man beside her had the good sense not to ask if something was wrong. She had pulled him out of the party, wishing their host might choke himself on “a giant bowl of fuck.”

The valet couldn't pull up their car quickly enough for Remington. Stills made a vain stab at humor. “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” The joke didn't go over well.

So they drove without speaking. Remington was furious, mostly with herself. Behaving like some silly starstruck girl. She should have known better.
Come down to the Roman baths and I'll show you my etchings
. Screw Gus Monaghan. Screw Judd Lowe. Screw every proud penis owner on the face of the planet.

There were people in the world, men and women both, for whom domination and submission represented a needful flavoring in their lives. But how about when such sub-dom theatricals crossed the line into murder?

Was that what had happened in the case of Merilee Henegar? A confused girl got swept up in the literature of pain. Well, a lot of confused girls and quite a few confused women had done the same. But someone had whispered into Merilee's ear, using the language of the Rose and Thorn books. And a young girl wound up dead.

The whisperer just might have been Gus Monaghan.

“What would it take to bust him?” Breaking the silence as Stills turned up Topanga Canyon toward her bungalow.

“Who?”

Remington just stared at him.

“Monaghan? What for?”

“For being an egotistical prick.”

“Start in on that, L.A. would turn into a ghost town.”

“Dolphins,” Remington muttered. “A pair of damned dolphins in the backyard.”

“Lulubelle and Angus,” Stills said. “They were rescues—the Navy destroyed their hearing with sonar. They would both perish if left in the wild.”

“Seriously, what would it take to bring that bastard down?”

“You know the story of Robert Durst?”

“Everyone knows the story of Robert Durst.”

Stills told her anyway. A New York real-estate heir, richer than God, arrested in Texas for murdering his next door neighbor. Readily confessed to using a paring knife, a bow saw and an axe to chop up the victim's body. He also admitted that he discarded the remains in Galveston Bay, where they washed up and alerted police. Even with all that, Durst was acquitted of a charge of murder, claiming self-defense.

Stills shook his head in disbelief. “You know that statue of Justice wearing the blindfold? Throw a couple million dollars at her and she slips it down off her eyes. Ten million, she drops the toga, too.”

Forget that,
Remington thought. She was furious at the way she had been played. She made a promise to herself. Before this was over, she was going to see Priapus, aka Gus Monaghan, in an orange prison jumpsuit. See how he liked
his
makeover.

When they pulled up outside Remington's bungalow, Stills killed the engine and they sat.

Remington didn't move. “Well, thank you.”

“You're still upset.” He looked over at her, as if he still couldn't believe the crawling thing had transformed into a butterfly. He leaned in.

Remington realized too late that the guy was reading the moment all wrong. He pulled her toward him and put his lips to hers.

She had fantasized off and on about this kiss, almost from the first moment she and Stills had met. It was impossible that she would not melt. But Gus Monaghan's ugliness in the scarlet chamber had killed all possibility of romance for the evening.

“Huh.” Remington checked her own temperature. Nothing. “Hmm.”

“Layla?” Rick Stills wore his confidence like a suit of armor. He was stunned not to have elicited a response.

“Piece of advice,” Remington said. “You ought to work on your timing.” She yanked open the sedan's door and spilled out of the car.

Dixie found herself a little disappointed by her aunt and uncle's home. She was expecting something a lot nicer. Ann and Larry Close were well off. That was the way Sheila and Jerry always talked about them. Dreams of an unexpected inheritance had come into Dixie's thoughts every once in a while ever since she was a teenager.

This house was a pitiful split-level ranch in a pitiful development in a pitiful neighborhood, stuck between the town airport and the freeway in Camarillo, way out in Ventura County. Aunt Annie made apologies for the place, fussing about it as she brought her niece there for a family dinner.

“It's one of Larry's properties,” she explained. “The two of us manage it together.”

Dixie soon enough realized what that meant. A woman badly in need of dental work with a dirty-faced toddler on her hip waylaid Annie Close on their way into the house. The two of them had a quick conversation, the woman complaining about a neighbor's dog doing its business in her yard. Annie put her off and managed to get Dixie inside.

Her aunt and uncle were caretakers of Ventura Sun Estates, a collection of twenty-four tract homes. It was one step up from a trailer park. Toys, trash and random vehicles were scattered across the yards, which were mostly grassless and unlandscaped. To top it all off, it sounded as though the Closes didn't own their place but rented, getting a break by acting as caretakers.

“Of course, we still have the ranch in Malibu.”

Well, if you have a place in Malibu, what are you doing in a dump like this?

“Larry has work today in the area, so he thought it would be better if we met here.”

“I was never quite sure what kind of work Uncle Larry does.”

“Oh, you know, management, consulting…A lot of it is in real estate. The last time he counted, he told me, he had six companies registered with the California secretary of state, plus two more based in Nevada. Isn't that a wow! He's the head of eight companies.”

That was more like it, Dixie thought. That was the Uncle Monkey she knew. “A big operator,” his brother Jerry Close always called him. In recent years, the description had taken on the tone of a sneer.

The interior of the house was neat enough, but painfully small. Not a palace by any means.

Dixie and Annie set about making dinner, fried chicken. “Your favorite,” the older woman said. It had been Dixie's favorite, back when she was little. Now she was trying to stay away from fried foods. But she didn't mention the change in her tastes, and the two of them had a good time in the kitchen. They spoke about Dixie's plans for the future and about her determination to track down her birth parents.

“You said Uncle Monkey might be able to help me with that.”

“Oh, I don't know. Larry's really up to his ears all the time with work.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“I never got the chance, you know? But you can sure speak to him when he gets home tonight.” Annie was trying to teach Dixie the fundamentals of the recipe. “I always use a mix of canola and peanut oil—it makes it lighter. Plus I soak the chicken in milk beforehand, see? The sugars in the milk are the best.”

After they were done, Annie set the fried chicken aside to cool. Another Ventura Sun resident came to the front door, wanting Dixie's aunt to check out a stove whose oven wasn't working.

“Come along,” Aunt Annie told Dixie. “I'll show you around the development.”

“I'm a little tired. Is it okay if I sit on the couch with my Coke and rest?”

“All right.” Annie Close glanced around the living room next to the kitchen. “Just be careful not to disturb any of Larry's things, okay? He's very particular. He should be home soon.”

The house was quiet. Somebody somewhere nearby had on Dr. Phil, the volume turned up high. Ventura Sun Estates was close to the Ventura Freeway, so Dixie could hear the steady pass of cars. The ice in her glass clinked and the soda kept up a faint fizz.

Dixie was a snoop, a character defect she had tried and failed to correct. When she babysat in Scottsdale, she was terrible, riffling through the desks, drawers and closets of her host families. She never took anything—well, not very often—she just liked the sensation of prying into other people's lives. Even recently, at the apartment in Reseda, the private possessions of her roommates were fair game. She knew that Lindsey, for one, had thousands of dollars in her bank account but was still slow to pony up the rent money.

She nosed around the living room for a while. She could see out the front windows whether her aunt was returning, so she made free with whatever drawers and boxes she could find.

There were two bedrooms. One was at the back of the house. The other was evidently used as an office and was in front, so Dixie chose that. This was Uncle Monkey territory. He had a collection of Mexican wrestling masks dumped in a pile. Documents and stacks of papers were piled everywhere. All his companies. “Imperial Mark Real Estate.” “Banning Properties.” “Malibu Lake Partners.”

Dixie pulled an unopened letter from the California Department of Corrections from underneath one pile. There was a file folder with torn-out newspaper clippings and some printouts of newsfeeds from the Internet. All concerned Tarin Mistry, the missing actress whose body had just been discovered.

One thing especially interested Dixie, a document box labeled “Adoption.” But when she opened it she found that it was empty.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

Dixie gave a surprised little yelp and spilled her Coke. Her uncle stood in the doorway, glaring at her.

“Uncle Larry, it's Dixie, Dixie Close, Jerry's daughter.”

“I know who you are. I asked what you were doing poking around in my papers.”

“I was just looking for…”

“Looking for what?”

Dixie crossed the room and threw her arms around the man. “Uncle Monkey!” she exclaimed. He submitted to her hug.

“Come on, girl—out of here!” His tone was scolding rather than angry. “That's my business stuff you were pawing through. Did you spill soda on anything?”

He ushered her out and closed the door behind them. “Where's your aunt?”

“She's—” But Annette Close came in the front door just at that moment.

They had a lovely dinner. Margarine-slathered corn on the cob, a blue cheese–jalapeño coleslaw and the fried chicken, which was delicious. Dixie made her aunt and uncle laugh by mimicking an old advertisement for “Shake 'N Bake” chicken, saying “An' Ah Helped!” in an affected Southern accent, just like the child on TV. Larry Close drank one peach wine cooler after another.

The uncle whom she hadn't seen in a decade looked older than Dixie remembered, of course, and wore a worried expression that made him appear older still. He was, what? Forty? Forty-five? She tried to remember if he was the older or younger brother in the Close family.

He didn't want to talk about Jerry, he said. In fact, it seemed he didn't want to talk about much at all, not speaking much beyond gruffly ordering her aunt to perform this or that service for him. Get the salt. Bring me another wine cooler. Where are you keeping the rest of the chicken? No “please,” no “thank you.” Aunt Annie bustled around like a servant.

It was funny, Dixie thought, but you needed to spend only a very little time with people before you could see pretty far into their lives. It didn't take her long to understand that her aunt was afraid of her uncle. It made her think less of her, and less of him, too. She didn't believe she'd be spending much time with her relatives in the future.

“Aunt Ansty said you were with my dad when he brought me home to Scottsdale.”

“She did, huh!”

He didn't look as though he was going to volunteer anything more than that, but Dixie wasn't going to let him off that easily.

“Do you remember that day?”

“Course I remember.”

“Well, I don't, so maybe you could tell me about it.”

Her aunt stifled a chuckle. “I remember, too,” she said. “It was raining, Larry, right? You always remember the rainy days in L.A. I went out to buy Huggies for you.”

“Annette!” Larry snapped. Just that one word, coupled with a glare and a half-raised hand. Ann Close immediately closed her mouth and looked away, cowed.

“No, no, please, tell me!” Dixie felt excited. Here was her first chance at some real information. “Uncle Monkey? Please?”

“What's to tell? You were a little bawling red-faced snip. Don't know why my brother and I decided that two men would be the right ones to do the picking up and bringing you home, instead of your mom or your aunt here.”

“I thought—you mean you went with Jerry to pick me up? I didn't know that. I thought he did that alone. Where was it? The hospital?”

“No, no. Adoption agency.”

“What? Really? G. A. Services in Inglewood?”

Larry Close narrowed his eyes. “How'd you know that?”

“Uncle Monkey, my birth certificate was some kind of fake! I told Aunt Annie. I'm trying to track down my birth parents and I can't do it!”

“Oh, for Pete's sake. That was a long time ago. It's all in the past.”

“Larry—” Dixie's aunt began, but was silenced by a quick glare from her husband.

“My advice to you, missy, is to move forward,” he told Dixie. “There's no good to come from looking back. Why do you want to dig into this anyway? Aren't Sheila and Jerry good enough parents for you? You need others?”

“It's not that—”

“Let's have no more talk about it. It's just a bunch of foolishness. G. A. Services—why, that place burned down and took all its records with it.”

“What? Really?”

“I make it my business to know everything about everything that concerns me. I'm telling you, this is no good, no good at all. You have your whole life ahead of you, Dix! Concentrate on that. How will you support yourself? Are you always going to be looking to your parents and your relatives for handouts?”

“Larry, now, please,” Annie protested, but he bulled right past her.

“Think about what you're going to do to make a living, instead of this useless trucking with what happened and is all over and long done with.”

“Don't you remember anything about where you got me?” Tears stung Dixie's eyes.

Her uncle softened. “Honey, that was almost twenty years ago. There were, I don't know, nurses around. People with forms to sign.”

“Forms to sign! Exactly! I need those forms!”

Annie broke in gently. “Didn't you say you kept some of those documents, Larry?”

He mocked her. “No, I didn't say I kept some of those documents, Larry.”

“So you don't have anything?” Dixie's voice wobbled.

“I was busy helping my brother keep it together. He was so excited that I thought his head was going to explode.”

Dixie gave a begrudging laugh through her tears. Annie laughed, too.

That was it. That was all. Dixie's aunt drove her to the Caltrans stop after dinner. Dixie was moody and stared out the window, answering Annie's gentle promptings with monosyllables.

On the bus ride back to Reseda, she turned the evening over in her mind again and again. Something was wrong. She had researched the history of G. A. Services herself. There had been no fire. She could trace the succession of businesses that had existed in the same building. An adoptee support group she contacted had some information. So Larry Close had been mistaken. Either that or he was intentionally misremembering the past. Why?

The empty document box marked “Adoption”—that was a little odd, too.
Didn't you say you kept some of those documents?
her aunt had asked. Maybe he had once upon a time, but perhaps more recently had experienced second thoughts.

Or maybe Dixie was just stressed and frustrated over the lack of progress in her quest. Maybe, maybe, maybe. She should go back to school, she thought. Pick up her education at Scottsdale Community College or somewhere, buckle down, get some good grades then move on to a real university. What was she doing in Lost Angeles? What did it matter, really, who she shared genes with?

Give it some more time, Dixie told herself. Meanwhile, try to figure out whatever in the world was going on with Uncle Monkey.

The Corean master slumped down in the front seat of his wife's Acura. He had decided to take this car rather than his other options, because it seemed anonymous. The black sedan looked as though it could have been any year's model from within the past decade. He parked along the little dirt lane in Topanga Canyon and tried to contain his boiling rage.

He was always angry lately. It used to be that any attempt at Ultimate Consummation would soothe him. Even if it wasn't realized in the precise way he had hoped, the whole process was intricate enough and sufficiently exciting to beat back the emotions that constantly threatened to overwhelm him. Recently, the effect hadn't been the same. His last try had been miserable. The master had difficulty mastering himself.

Now this mission. He had attempted the task once before, and wound up almost getting hit by a commuter train, smashed in a wrecked SUV and burned to a crisp in a fireball. You'd think one disaster would have been enough. He was still aching from it. Yet another do-over? Of all the idiotic plays, killing a law enforcement officer had to be the worst. Man, the police looked out for their own with a ferocity that rivaled the Aryan Brotherhood. Or bees. Screw with one, screw with them all.

He hated everything about Topanga. This Remington broad had to be the only cop who lived in the canyon. The area treasured its hippy-dippy past. Starry-eyed Topangans talked in “those were the days” tones about the shack where Woody Guthrie squatted, or the basement where Neil Young recorded
After the Gold Rush
. The old days had their dark side: Topanga was the site of the Manson family's first successful murder.