Guilt (17 page)

We shook hands. His skin barely touched mine. Surgeon’s caution. I’d anticipated that and was careful not to squeeze. Milo’s touch was even lighter, a bare graze of fingertips. Courtesy of all those years living with Rick, whose name for the policy was “Don’t scratch the Stradivarius.”

Donald Chang sat next to his wife, placed a hand on her knee.

“Terrible about Adriana,” he said. “She was a really nice person. Not the most social person, but I don’t mean that in a weird way. I just never saw her desirous of any prolonged interaction with anyone but May.”

Lilly said, “Except for that time in Sherman Oaks.”

“What time?”

“When we were with my folks and she went out?”

“Oh,” said Donald. “That is true. But it never happened again, did it?”

She shook her head.

I said, “She enjoyed her time with May but wasn’t much for adult conversation.”

“I wouldn’t imply immaturity from that,” said Donald. “She was a serious person. But yes, she definitely preferred to be with May and the moment May was asleep, she’d retire to her room.”

Lilly said, “Not to evade housework, during the day she managed to clean and straighten up beautifully. Even though that’s not what she was originally hired for, the plan was to get a maid twice a week.”

Donald said, “Adriana insisted it wasn’t necessary, the place isn’t big, she could handle everything. We offered to pay her whatever we were going to pay the maid but she refused. We didn’t want to take advantage of her and insisted she get something extra. Finally, she agreed to an additional hundred dollars a week. Which was a huge bargain for us. So when she considered her day over and went into her room, that was fine.”

Lilly said, “Right from the get-go, she was great with May, but we were careful anyway, installed hidden baby cams. Watching the recordings reassured us. She couldn’t have been more patient or loving or attentive.”

Milo said, “Do you have the recordings?”

“Sorry, everything was uploaded to my computer at work and once I was confident Adriana was okay, I deleted the file and got rid of the system.”

Donald said, “We removed the cameras when Adriana was out walking May. We didn’t want her discovering them, thinking we hadn’t trusted her. Though, of course, we hadn’t. Trust needs to be earned.”

I said, “And Adriana earned it.”

“In spades,” said Lilly. “She was a gem.”

Same term Susan Van Dyne had used.

Donald said, “For someone like that to be murdered is astonishing. Do you have any idea who did it?”

“Not yet, Doctor,” said Milo. “What else can you tell me about her?”

Donald turned to his wife. She shook her head.

I said, “Where did she sleep?”

“In the spare bedroom.”

“Could we see it?”

“There’s nothing of hers left in there, it’s all the current nanny’s stuff and she’s sleeping in there.”

“How’s the new nanny working out?”

“She’s nice,” said Lilly.

I said, “But no Adriana.”

“Corinne’s pleasant, May seems to be attaching to her. But Adriana had something special. A real kid person.”

Donald said, “Corinne’s also not much for cleaning, now we do bring a maid in once a week.”

I said, “Did Adriana talk about herself?”

“Not really,” said Lilly. “She wasn’t rude but she had a way of … I guess
deflecting
would be the right word.”

“How so?”

“With ambiguous answers, then changing the subject. ‘Oops, there’s a stain on the counter,’ and she’d get busy cleaning. I wondered if her personal history was painful, maybe a past relationship that had hurt her.”

Donald stared at her. “Really?”

“Yes, darling.”

He said, “I always thought she was just shy. What specific evidence of being hurt did you pick up?”

She smiled. “No evidence at all, it was just a feeling.”

I said, “Did you pick up signs of her worrying about anything?”

Lilly thought. “Like depression?”

“Depression, anxiety, or just plain worry.”

“No, I couldn’t say that, she wasn’t moody at all. Just the opposite, she was even-tempered, never raised her voice. I just felt she wanted her privacy and I respected that.”

“Unemotional,” said Milo.

“No, I wouldn’t say that, either. Her default mood was
 … even
is the best word I can come up with. Going through her day, pleasant, never complaining. Once in a while—infrequently—I’d catch her with a remote look on her face. Like she was remembering something troubling. But, honestly, it was nothing dramatic.”

I said, “She lost a fiancé to a farm accident.”

“Oh, my. Well, that could be it, then.”

Donald put his arm around Lilly’s shoulder. “Honey, you’re an emotional detective. I’m impressed.”

A beep sounded on the monitor. Both Changs turned to the machine.

Silence.

“Back to sleep,” said Donald, crossing his fingers.

Lilly said, “That’s really all I can tell you about Adriana. Would you like to collect her belongings?”

Donald said, “So to speak.”

Milo said, “Not much in the way of worldly possessions?”

“Let’s put it this way, guys. Everything fit into two boxes and one of them’s small. That’s not much of a life, is it?”

D
onald Chang took us down in the elevator to a parking garage filled with vehicles save for a section cordoned by a mesh gate. Behind the mesh was a wall lined with storage lockers.

Chang unlocked the gate and one of the lockers and stood back. “The two in front are Adriana’s, everything else is our stuff.”

Milo drew out a cardboard wardrobe and a carton of the same material, around two feet square. Both boxes had been sealed cleanly with packing tape and neatly labeled
Adriana Betts’s Belongings
.

Chang said, “Can’t tell you what’s in there, Lilly packed. Do you want to go upstairs to look at them?”

“Thanks, but we’ll take them back to L.A.”

“Forensic procedure and all that? Makes sense. Good luck, guys.”

Milo gave him a card. “In case you or your wife remember something.”

Chang tugged a mustache end. “I don’t want to demean the dead but my opinion is Adriana was a bit odder than you just heard from Lilly.”

“How so, Dr. Chang?”

“My wife sees the good in everyone, puts a gloss on everything. The way I perceived Adriana she was a total loner, no life at all other than caring for May and cleaning like a demon.”

I said, “Except for that one time the red car picked her up.”

“Yes, that would be the exception, but outliers don’t necessarily say much, do they?”

Milo said, “When she got back from the date she looked okay.”

“Nothing stood out but bear in mind that neither of us was psychoanalyzing Adriana, our priority was that May stay calm during the drive home.”

Another mustache tug. “I certainly don’t want to put Adriana down just because she stuck to herself, lots of the people I worked with in computer sciences at Yale were like that. And I’m not complaining about her work, as Lilly said Adriana was a dream employee, great with May. But once in a while, I wondered about her.”

“Wondered about what?”

“Her being too good to be true. Because I’ve observed people like that—the ones who come across totally dedicated to the job, single-minded, no outside life. Sometimes they’re fine but other times they end up cracking. I’ve seen it on high-pressure wards, your saintly types can turn out to be horrid.”

I’d learned the same lesson working my first job as a psychologist: the plastic bubble unit on the Western Peds cancer ward where I finally figured out the most important question to ask prospective hires:
What do you do for fun?

Milo said, “So you were waiting for the shoe to fall, huh?”

“No, I’m not saying that, Lieutenant. Not even close, I liked Adriana, was pleased with the order she brought to our lives. I’m just a curious person.” He smiled. “Maybe overly analytic. I didn’t want to say any of this in front of Lilly. She was totally enamored of Adriana, hearing about the murder was pretty traumatic for her. I know she looked fine to you but two hours ago she was sobbing her heart out. It’s an especially soft heart, my wife likes to believe in happy endings.”

I said, “You’re a bit more discriminating.”

“Maybe I’m just a distrustful bastard by nature, but when Adriana flaked on us—what we thought was flaking—Lilly was surprised but I wasn’t.”

Milo said, “You figured something stressed her out.”

“I figured she was like everyone else: Something better comes up, you bail.” Chang smiled again, wider but no warmer. “That’s a California thing, right?”

We placed the boxes in the back of the unmarked and headed back to L.A.

Milo swerved into the carpool lane and kept up a steady eighty-five per, jutting his head forward, as if personally cutting through wind resistance.

At Del Mar, he said, “Adriana goes on her one and only date with someone in a red car. So maybe the SUV little Heather saw isn’t relevant. Hell, what’s to say any of it’s relevant?”

I said, “Something drew Adriana to that park.”

“Something drew her to L.A., amigo. I’d say a better gig but bailing on the Changs for extra dough doesn’t sound in character.”

“A friend in need might have lured her. Someone with a baby.”

“It was Mama in a red car, not a date?”

“Mama in a red car who called Adriana for help because something scared her. If those fears were justified, Adriana could have lost her life because she got too close to the situation.”

“Bad Daddy.”

“Major-league monster Daddy who murdered the mother of his child and the child, held on to the baby’s skeleton as a psychopathic trophy. That ended when he read about the bones in Holly Ruche’s backyard and decided to ditch his collection nearby. Mom had already been taken care of and Adriana, suspicious after her friend disappeared, followed him. Unfortunately, he spotted her.”

He drove for a while. “Charming scenario. Too bad I’ve got nada to back any of it up.”

“You’ve got Adriana’s personal effects.”

“There was anything juicy in those boxes, the Changs—being trained observers—would’ve noticed and said something.”

“That’s assuming they snooped.”

“Everyone snoops, Alex.”

“Not busy people.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll burn some incense to the Evidence Gods, pray a hot lead shows up in the boxes. I was a less pro
-fessional
detective, I’d pull into the next truck stop and do an impromptu forensic.”

“Everything goes straight to the lab?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “Finders keepers, but I’m doing it by the book.”

We got off the freeway at Santa Monica Boulevard at 1:36 a.m. For all its rep as a party town, most of L.A. closes down early and the streets were dark, hazy, and empty. That can stimulate the creepers and the crawlers but Milo’s police radio was calm and back at the station the big detective room was nearly deserted, every interview room empty.

He used the same room where Helene Johanson had cried, dragged in an additional table and created a work space. Spraying the surfaces with disinfectant, he gloved up, used a box cutter to slit the wardrobe open, emptied the contents.

Clothing. More clothing. A peer at the bottom evoked a disgusted head shake. He examined the garments anyway.

A couple more bland dresses similar to the one Adriana Betts had died in, two pairs of no-nonsense jeans, seven nondescript blouses, cotton undergarments, T-shirts, a pair of sneakers, black flats, cheap plastic sunglasses.

“No naughty secret-life duds, amigo.” He sniffed the garments. “No secret-life perfume, either. Adriana, you wild and crazy kid.” Shutting his eyes for several moments as if meditating, he opened them, repacked the clothes, sealed the box and filled out a lab tag.

The smaller box yielded a hairbrush, a toothbrush, antacid, acetaminophen, a blue bandanna, and more garments: two pairs of walking shorts and a wad of white T-shirts. Milo was about to put everything back when he stopped and hefted the shirts.

“Too heavy.” Running his hands over each tee, he extracted a shirt from the middle of the stack and unfolded. Inside was a brown leatherette album around six inches square, fastened by a brass key clasp.

“Looky here, Dear Diary.” He pressed his palms together prayerfully. “Our Father Who Art in Heaven, grant me something evidentiary and I’ll attend Mass next Sunday for the first time in You know how long.”

The clasp sprang free with a finger-tap. A pulse in his neck throbbed as he opened the book.

No diary notations, no prose of any sort. Three cardboard pages held photographs moored by clear plastic bands.

The first page was of a teenage Adriana Betts with a boy her age. Bubbly cursive read:

Dwayne and Me. Happy Times
.

Dwayne Hightower had been a huge kid, easily six six, three hundred, with a side-of-beef upper body and thick, short, hairless limbs. His face was a pink pie under coppery curls, his smile wide and open as the prairie. He and Adriana had posed in front of hay bales, barns, a brick-faced building, and a green John Deere tractor with wheels as tall as Adriana. In each shot, Hightower’s heavy arm rested lightly on Adriana’s shoulder. Her head reached his elbow. She clung to his biceps.

Their smiles were a match in terms of innocence and wattage.

The following page began with more of the same but ended with shots from Dwayne Hightower’s funeral. Adriana in a black dress, her hair tied back severely. Wearing the cheap sunglasses from the wardrobe.

The final page was all group shots: Adriana and several other young adults in front of a red-brick church. The edifice that had backdropped her and Dwayne. Had they planned to wed there?

Not a single tattoo, body pierce, or edgy hairdo in sight. These pictures could’ve dated from the fifties. Heartland America, unaffected by fad or fashion.

In some of the shots, a portly white-haired man in his sixties wearing a suit and tie stood to the left of the group.

In most of the pictures, Adriana, though not particularly tall, had positioned herself at the back. Not so in the last three, where she posed front-center, next to the same person.