A Death In Beverly Hills (11 page)

"I'm sure there was nothing like that going on. She would have discussed any business problems with me."

"Maybe she inadvertently learned something embarrassing about a friend or acquaintance -- that the husband of one of her friends cheated on his bar exam or faked his college degree or was in the closet." Fontaine shook his head. "What if one of her friends was cheating on his wife and Marian found out? With pre-nups all the rage these days, a cheating spouse would have a lot to lose --

"Mr. Janson, I'm going to have to ask you to leave now," Fontaine said sadly. "I don't have any information that will help you and this is just . . . . just too painful."

"I understand." Steve slipped off the stool. This was a man who could not be pushed and trying would only make things worse. "If you think of anything, anything at all, please call me. As painful as that might be, Sarah may still be alive and we'll never find her, never, if we don't discover who really murdered your daughter. I'm begging you, Mr. Fontaine, not for Tom Travis, but for Sarah's sake, please call me if you think of anything at all that might give me a lead to someone with a motive for Marian's murder. Will you promise me you'll do that?"

Fontaine stared at Steve, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. For an instant he seemed ready to speak, then the moment passed and the gates closed again. Steve extended a slip of paper and a pen. "If you would give me Riley's address. I'd like to talk to him too."

Gerard paused, then block printed three or four lines. Steve exchanged the paper for one of his cards.

"I want you to know that I'll keep my promise," Steve said pocketing the note.

"My opinion's not proof of anything--"

"But you don't want Greg Markham putting you on the stand and asking you if you think Tom Travis is innocent."

"Maybe he's not. Maybe my gift has left me. Maybe I'm too close to this to see things the way they really are. But--"

"You still don't think Tom did it."

"He doesn't have it in his heart to kill a man," Fontaine said, glaring into Steve's eyes with sudden intensity, "not like you. You could kill a man, Mr. Janson. I can see that written in your soul, clear as day."

"All right, class, our dough has rested," the chef called from the front of the room. "It's now time to make our galette."

Fontaine gave Steve an unreadable stare and walked away.

Chapter Eighteen

Steve punched Riley Fontaine's address into the navigation system and headed north on the 5, replaying his meeting with Fontaine as he went. Gerard Fontaine had surprised him. More decent and fair-minded than Steve would have been if it had been his daughter who had been murdered. Then again, maybe Gerard Fontaine had other reasons, secret reasons, for believing that Tom Travis hadn't done it. But if he did, why had he done nothing to identify the real killer? Why would he let the monster who killed his daughter get away with it?

Fontaine said he thought Travis was innocent because he had a psychic gift oooohhh. Ninety five percent of that stuff was the ability to read facial clues. The FBI routinely trained its agents how to translate the blink of an eye, the tilt of a head into indications of deception or truthfulness. And as far as Fontaine's peering into Steve's own murderous soul, the stories about him were common knowledge. Three mouse clicks on the Internet and it was right there for anyone to see. The bottom line was that when confronted with the guy who had probably killed his daughter, the only thing most fathers wanted to do was slit the guy's throat.

No, Steve didn't expect fathers to let the men responsible for their daughter's deaths get away with it. So why was Gerard Fontaine being so forgiving? Steve pulled off the freeway at Riley Fontaine's exit.

He found Riley Fontaine in a deserted store on Olympic, as trapped and hopeless as an insect stuck in amber. The sign out front said 'BLACK GOLD - Vintage Music' but was contrarily painted in faded ivory letters against a deep blue field. Steve paused on the sidewalk but the display windows were so smeared with smog and snot and human grease that a determined gaze revealed only hints of isles bisecting rows of blurred merchandise.

When he pushed through the front door Janson was rewarded with a screech as if a nervous parrot had been tasked to stand guard. Three long aisles ran the length of the shop terminating at the back in a wide counter half obscured in the afternoon gloom. At the counter's center was a scarred cash register attended by a young man as different from his sister as nature might allow two siblings to be. Where Marian Fontaine Travis was blond, Riley was dark. Where she was clean featured and athletically slim, he was puffy with rough skin and muddy eyes. Dressed in a long sleeved black shirt and black jeans, Riley's only hint of color was a silver teardrop bolted into his lower lip.

Janson ambled down the right hand aisle, stopping here and there to flip through the tubs of vinyl LP's, now almost as much artifacts of a bygone era as 78's and Edison gramophone cylinders. One section labeled 'Folk Music - L' sported a smiling Glen Yarborough under the title:
The Limelighters At The Hungry I
. The price tag said $38.50. Steve shook his head and moved on. Behind him the rich afternoon light penetrated the smeared glass as if through a Vaseline-coated lens and filled the little shop with the saturated colors of an antique diorama. Riley Fontaine bent over a sheaf of printed forms, his pencil making little jots and scratches. Steve glanced at the front door forty feet away then back to Riley Fontaine who ignored him with the passionate indifference of a Parisian cab driver.

"Excuse me," Steve began. Fontaine briefly held up his left hand and continued scribbling. Thirty seconds passed. Steve looked around. The store was empty, as energized as an immanent bankruptcy. "Hello?" Fontaine's head did not move, the only sound was the scratch, scratch, scratch of lead on paper. Thirty seconds more slipped by and after a quick glance at his watch, Steve reached over and pulled the pencil from Riley's hand.

"Hey! You don't have to--"

"Apparently I do. Are you Riley Fontaine?" The kid gave Steve a go-to-Hell glare and reached for the pencil. Steve snapped it cleanly with a flick of his thumb. "You do a great business here," Steve said, looking at the empty store. "You must sell . . . . two, three records a day? Hell, at that pace I guess you barely have time to ring up the orders."

"I don't know who you think you are but--"

"That's part of your problem, Riley. You didn't take the time to find out who I was and what I wanted before you went into your asshole routine." Fontaine pouted like kid who's just been told he's not allowed anymore to poke the family dog with a stick. "Let's start over." Steve gave Riley a quick smile and extended his hand.

"Hi, Mr. Fontaine. My name's Steve Janson. I just met with your father and he gave me your address. I'm filling in some holes in your interview with Detectives Katz and Furley." Steve dropped a copy of Riley's police interview on the counter. "Now, do you want to give me a few minutes of your time to nail the bastard who murdered your sister or do I need to haul your ass down to some little room with plastic chairs and a court reporter for three or four hours? Your choice." Steve dropped the broken pencil on the counter and gave Riley his best tough-guy look. The kid broke eye contact and tossed the pieces into the trash. The pout still painted his face but now it was joined by a hint of uncertainty creeping in behind his eyes.

"When's the last time you spoke with your sister?" Steve asked, not waiting for Fontaine's agreement.

"I told the other cops--"

"I've read your statement," Steve snapped, ignoring the 'other cops' reference. If the kid, and that was the only way Steve could think of him no matter what his chronological age might be, wanted to assume that Steve was a police detective, that was his problem. "This will go a lot faster if you just answer my questions instead of arguing about everything. So, the last time you talked with your sister was. . . ?"

"Uhhh, sometime before Christmas," Riley finally mumbled.

"Sometime before Christmas isn't good enough. When, exactly?"

The kid gave Steve a surly expression, then lowered his head and muttered, "Two days before Christmas."

"What did you talk about?"

Fontaine took a breath as if about to complain that he had already told that to the other detectives, then he caught Steve's gaze and changed his mind. "Holiday stuff, what I was getting dad, if I was going to be home for Christmas dinner, what I was doing for New Years."

"What were you doing on New Years?"

"Hanging loose."

"'Hanging loose' doesn't cut in my report. Account for your day from eight a.m. December 31
st
through ten that night."

"You're telling me I'm a suspect?"

"I'm asking you to account for your time so nobody else can claim you're a suspect." Steve poised his pen above his spiral pad.

Fontaine gave him a sour look then began. "Okay, I got up around nine-thirty. The store was closed for the holidays. I had breakfast. listened to some music, watched TV, stuff like that until about noon. I got lunch at Fatburger and then went down to Funland. I drove the carts, go-carts, and hit the arcade. I did some shopping, had dinner with a friend--"

"Who?"

"Larry Spartezian. You want his number?" Steve held out the pad and pen.

"Go on."

"Well, okay, we had dinner at Jacko's on the pier, went to a movie,
Dive Bomber
, then hit a couple of clubs. So, does that get me off the suspect list?" Riley sneered.

"Sounds good to me. I'll give your pal Larry a call. Tell me about your sister."

"What about her?"

Steve sighed. Dealing with this kid was like herding a cat. "She's, what, five years older than you?"

"Seven."

"Okay, what kind of a person was she?"

"Very nice." The pout was back.

"I'm sure she was very nice, but I need to understand her better."

"What's that matter now? She's dead."

"Yeah, I know she's dead. That's the point, isn't it. Tom Travis is saying he had no motive to kill her. If we understood better what might have set him off. . . ." Steve tilted his head to the side. "She wasn't an angel, was she? She was human, right. It's possible that she might do something to piss a guy off, right?"

Riley's lips tightened and he gave Steve a sudden nod. "Yeah, she could piss people off," he agreed in a soft tone.

"Okay, tell me about it." Steve picked up his pen.

Riley glanced around the empty store, then leaned forward, his voice just above a whisper. "She had this way of saying she was helping you but really she was screwing you, like when your mother tells you that you can't go to a party but it's for your own good, you know what I mean?"

"Hey, I had a mother. She used to drive me crazy with that stuff. So, Marian was like that? How?"

"My mom died when I was ten and Marian sort of stepped in and took over. It was like my sister disappeared. I mean, she was only seventeen, still in high school and all of a sudden she's telling me I can't do this and I can't do that, do this and do that."

"That must have been a pain."

"I didn't mind the rules so much but it was the way she did it. She always treated me like I was a jerk who couldn't tie his own shoes. I figured that when I got older things would change."

"But they didn't."

"They got worse," Riley snapped. "Everything I did was wrong. And she'd get this look on her face. . . ." Riley's lips curled down.

"What kind of look?"

"Like I had fucked up again, just like she expected me to do. Like, 'Poor Riley, I really hoped you could handle this but I should have known that you'd mess it up. You're just a big loser and you always will be.' It was like she blamed herself for being stupid enough to believe that I could do anything right. One look at her face and I could hear her speaking inside her head, like she was saying to herself, 'Well, next time I'll know better than to trust Riley not to fuck everything up.'"

"That must have been rough. What about your dad? How'd he handle it?"

"Dad? Marian was his little angel. She was perfect. She could do no wrong."

"Well, fathers and their daughters--"

"I didn't mind that, him liking her better than me," Riley complained, "but, it wasn't fair, her turning him against me. 'You know we can't trust Riley, dad. It's not his fault that he's a fuck-up. He just is, poor kid.' I could see it, I could see what she was doing, poisoning his mind against me, but no matter how hard I tried, it didn't make any difference. She convinced him that I was worthless, nothing." Riley slapped his palm on the counter like the shot from a gun.

"One time, for his birthday, I planned this really great party. I saved my allowance for weeks. I made dinner reservations at his favorite restaurant, everything. I worked so hard. Is it my fault the damn car got a flat tire? What was I supposed to do about that?" The kid looked like he was about to cry.

"What happened?"

"What happened? The same thing that always happened. It all turned to shit! . . . I got out the spare and started to fix the tire and then Marian started in on me. 'Riley, you don't know what you're doing. Wait for the Auto Club.' I couldn't wait for the fucking Auto Club! We had reservations for seven o'clock. I had booked that restaurant two months in advance. By the time the damn Auto Club got there, it would have been too late. But she wouldn't shut up. She just wouldn't shut up!" Riley pounded his fist on the counter. "She'd keep at you in that sweet, fake-friendly voice of hers, 'Riley, leave the spare alone. Riley, you'll get your pants dirty. Riley, I don't think the jack goes there. Riley, you're a jerk and you're going to screw up again, like always.' It was all her fault. She got me so upset I couldn't think straight. If she had just left me alone, I would have fixed the flat, no problem. But no, she just couldn't shut the fuck up!" Riley pounded his fist into the wall and turned away.

"The car slipped off the jack?" Steve asked gently.

"Bent the rotor. They had to tow it to the dealer. It cost dad a thousand bucks. A cab took us home. Marian cooked dad his favorite dinner and gave him her present, which he loved. And I'm sitting there, with nothing, looking like a fool. What have I got to give him? Nothing! So, she ends up the hero and I'm the fool, just like always."

"Was your dad pissed?"

Riley gave Steve a heartbroken smile. "No, I was the idiot son who couldn't do anything right no matter how hard he tried, like the dog who just can't help peeing on the floor. 'It was a great birthday, thanks kids,' that's what dad said, but he was looking at Marian. Then he looked at me like, I'll never forget that look, like he was sorry for me. It would have been better if he had just yelled at me for screwing up the car. At least then I could have told him that it was Marian's fault for keeping at me, nagging, nagging, nagging, driving me nuts until I was so shook up I couldn't think straight but it was that look of pity, that . . . . If she had just shut the fuck up and let me do it on my own." Riley's face was twisted into a painful mask.

"Do you think that's how she treated Tom Travis, nagged him until he couldn't take it any more?"

"She could have. She was so beautiful and so nice and everybody liked her and everybody wanted her to like them and when she gave up on you, when she let you know that you just weren't good enough, it was like, you know, a knife in your heart, because you knew that no matter what you did, that she was done with you forever, that she would never, ever change her mind about you, that you had failed her and you could never fix things again. Maybe if she did that to Travis, I mean when your wife tells you you're nothing, that it's over, well, wouldn't that make you mad enough to want to kill her?"