Naked Addiction (13 page)

Chapter 18

Goode

G
oode punched the pillow, but it barely bounced back. It just sat there, flat and lumpy. He felt mildly pissed, first at the motel and then at himself. Why would he check into a cheesy motel and then expect the pillow to bounce back? Not only that, but the room smelled of stale smoke. He’d specifically asked for a no-smoking room.

Feeling a spring poke into his butt, he moved over a bit and slid slowly into the valley that was the middle of the mattress. If he continued to dwell on the lack of amenities, he’d never get to sleep. The neon red numbers on the clock read 11:45 P.M.

Just as he was dozing off, a car alarm ripped through the damp night air. Goode leapt up and pulled back the orange and green plaid curtains. They felt thin, a little slimy and were coated with rubber nubbins. The streetlights cast a glow over a beat-up red truck, a yellow Honda Civic the size of a six-pack, and a dark blue Camaro, all of which had seen better days.

The noise seemed to be coming from the Camaro, which was parked under a pepper tree in the back corner of the lot. Every fifteen seconds, the sounds switched from a high-pitched siren, to a low staccato beep, an even louder siren, and then back to the beep. Goode wanted it to stop. Now. Or somebody was going to get hurt.

If he wanted to impress the brass, Stone said, he shouldn’t go crazy splurging on an expensive hotel, so Goode had gone low-end. But he would be no good at the funeral if he got no sleep. He would do things differently the next time—spend his nightly travel allowance and then pay the difference so he could get a decent room. In the meantime, he had to kill that alarm.

He called the front desk and sputtered into the phone: “Can’t you do something?”

The night clerk said something in a Middle Eastern accent, then hung up. A few minutes later, he came to the door in his slippers, offered a light bulb to Goode and mumbled something unintelligible. Goode slammed the door, sighed, and shook his head. Then he felt bad that he’d yelled at the poor guy, who was still standing there when Goode opened the door to apologize. The detective pointed down to the Camaro and put his hands over his ears. The man shrugged indifferently, said something incoherent, and shuffled back downstairs to the front office.

Goode figured it would be at least an hour of hell before the car battery went dead, and by then, he’d be ready to shed his own skin. Searching the room for a distraction, he tried picking up the TV remote, but it was glued to the bedside table. It was David Letterman time, and he couldn’t get the damn thing to work. The battery was probably dead. How ironic was that?

Goode was really exhausted. It felt good to lie down, even on a crummy bed. He’d spent the afternoon cruising around the Beverly Hills neighborhood where Tania had gone to high school. He’d interviewing a number of witnesses, many of whom were still living with their parents. The homes were like fortresses—expansive estates with high walls, coniferous trees and tall iron gates. One of them had a beautiful Japanese garden, with decorative rocks and a black marble fountain, circled by bonsai trees.

He didn’t learn anything that he hadn’t already gleaned from the diary. His picture of her was becoming more three-dimensional, although it was still pretty focused on her sexuality. Her friends said she was a well-liked, beautiful girl, but on the edge of the popular crowd because she was in smarter classes than the rest of them. Nonetheless, she was still voted Homecoming Queen, probably because she exuded sexuality, but also because she was very friendly. In the end, he didn’t find any of her friends to be likely escort candidates, but vice wasn’t his area of expertise.

After having talked to Tania’s mother, he was curious to put a face with the voice. He wondered if she knew how complicated her daughter had been and whether Tania had taken after her. But because Tony and Helen Marcus had already talked to Stone that morning at headquarters, he decided to let them grieve in peace and leave his prurient curiosity unsatiated for the moment.

The saliva samples from Seth and Keith would be analyzed by the time the memorial service started the next morning, so he would withhold judgment until then, but keep his eyes open for clues that could be helpful later.

Goode still had no cause of death and no motive. But the more he read of the diary and the emails, the better chance he had of connecting the multitude of dots he was collecting. As he lay there, he felt a little scattered, overwhelmed, in fact. Maybe it was the caffeine, or maybe not enough sleep. He looked forward to the moment he could say,
Aha
! Perhaps he felt he needed to go over the reading materials more carefully so he could start seeing those connections.

He was embarrassed to admit, even to himself, that he’d been in a more or less constant state of arousal since he started reading Tania’s writings. He hadn’t been able to stop imagining how she’d moved, the scent of her hair, and the taste of her lips.

But it’s only natural to picture what she was like, right? Plus, I have to really
know
her to find her killer. . .Don’t I?

Pulling out the binder of emails from his overnight bag, he opened it to a page two-thirds of the way through, from the previous summer. It was addressed to [email protected]. He seemed to remember
Girls
being the name on one of the magazines in the stack under her bed.

I could describe it as a craving. A sexual craving is not all that different from a physical hunger, because starving myself sexually can produce a hunger all its own—a longing and an emptiness that I feel compelled to quiet and fulfill. It usually hits me on a Friday morning and distracts me from work until I plan a night on the town that promises some interaction. I’ve tried fantasizing instead, but it’s only good in a pinch. I’ve come so close to the real thing in my head as I’m lying in bed, touching myself, that I can actually feel my body tense and my breathing speed up. I imagine tangled limbs, soft strokes alternating with firm squeezes. Being engulfed by a man’s muscled arms or held inside the bend of his leg. Him kissing me up the back of the neck and rubbing my ass. Bending me over the arm of the sofa and pulling my skirt up. The problem is, no matter how much I fantasize, or even how much a man actually touches me, I always want more. You know what I mean?

Totally,
Felicity wrote back.
You have a way with words. Send me more of your writing and maybe we can publish you again in the next issue. 

Goode was impressed that this girl had already been published by the age of twenty-four.

What an interesting mind this young woman had. I wish I’d known her, even if only for one night.

He skipped ahead, and found another note to Felicity, but this one sounded full of more angst than fantasy.

You know how some days you wake up in someone else’s bed and you wonder, “What am I doing here? Do I really need to be held that badly? Do I really want someone I don’t know all that well to touch my most private parts, even when I know those hands were touching someone else the night before?” I had one of those interludes last night, and now, I feel so detached and alone. My body feels like it doesn’t even belong to me. I guess I’m in transition mode, getting ready to move from LA to San Diego, and then who knows where. Maybe that’s why I’m just jumping from one guy to the next. A med student to a doctor, a law student, a screenwriter, an actor. . . What’s next? I’ve always wanted to date an architect, so he could help me design my life. Like Jason, the art director I worked with this summer, told me, “Just keep thinking white space. You don’t always need to fill it with something.” That’s easy for him to say.

How could this woman be only twenty-four? Goode allowed himself one last email before he put the binder away. Maybe he’d have more pleasant dreams than usual.

Sometimes I don’t even know who I am. Like last weekend, I wore knee-high boots, tight black jeans and a low-cut black sweater. Kind of trashy, really, but it worked. I caught the eye of that cute bass player at the Spritz Club. He took me back to his place and showed me his pierced nipple. It was such a turn-on I almost melted. Last Thursday, I wore a flowered dress with a high-necked collar and a string of pearls, and I felt virginal. Ha. That’s pretty funny. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to let a man get too close to me ‘cause I don’t want anybody trying to figure me out, asking me questions like that therapist did last year. He was so gross, so old and so wrinkled, not to mention lecherous. I’m still pissed my Mom made me go see him. Like she couldn’t find someone other than Dad’s golf partner to send me to. Well, I guess my friends are pretty bizarre too. Rachel told me yesterday that she only sleeps with black guys. And Joanne likes men in uniform. She’s been out with security guards, police officers, firefighters, even with that guy who runs the elevator at the Hyatt. I don’t get that at all. I’m just looking for a guy who can hold my interest.

Goode fell asleep imagining what she looked like in those knee-high boots.

Chapter 19

Goode

Tuesday

T
he alarm on Goode’s watch roused him out of a dream in which he was being chased by a man with a pierced nipple. His T-shirt was clammy.

“Showtime,” he whispered as he pulled back the covers. He’d slept as well as could be expected, given the alarm mishap, the bad pillow, and the Valley of the Mattress.

The cold bathroom tiles felt good on his feet after sleeping in Santa Ana heat. He took a deep breath and felt a stinging in his nose. That evil dust was still in the air. He’d definitely had enough of the stifling hot, dry winds and he’d forgotten to bring his allergy medication. He hopped into the shower, expecting a nice soothing wake-up, but the water kept going from hot to cold, hot to cold.

Goode was shaving when he heard his cell phone ringing on the sink. It was Stone, calling from home, and he sounded pissed. Said he was just getting ready to go play catch with his son in Balboa Park when the lieutenant called. Another beauty school student was dead in PB, a redhead named Sharona Glass.

“So now we definitely know there’s some connection to the beauty school,” Stone said.

“Shit,” Goode said.

“What, did you know her?”

“No. Maureen told me a couple of weeks ago that she’d met a few women from a new beauty school in La Jolla.  I didn’t think anything of it until I found Tania Marcus. I called and went by Maureen’s house in PB before I hit the road yesterday, but no one was home. I should have gone in. . . .”

“Simmer down now,” the sergeant interrupted. “You go to the memorial service and I’ll send a unit over to Maureen’s and see if she’s all right. I haven’t seen her around for months. What’s the address?”

“It’s on Turquoise Street near Cass. The address fell off the house but it’s white with yellow shutters. Her roommates are two surf-bum pool cleaners. Call me when you get a chance and let me know if you hear anything, okay?”

“Will do. You just concentrate on the funeral and see if you can figure out what that connection is. I’ll have Byron process the new murder scene. When you’re done up there, head down to PB as soon as you can, and he’ll bring you up to speed. It’s one of those apartment complexes right near the beach on Chalcedony. By the way, Slausson and Fletcher said they trailed Seth, Keith and Jake for a while, and the three of them didn’t meet for a giant drug pow-wow or do anything else suspicious. Seth and Keith mostly went separately to real estate appointments. Jake got up early—really early—to drive up to UCSD and went into the biochemistry building. So it sounds like he told us the truth about being in the master’s program up there. Looks like a dead end to me.”

“What about those cross-checks between Tania, Samantha Williams, Seth and Keith? Anything there?”

“Sorry, no. Dead end. No connections at all, at least with the names we’ve got for them.”

“What about the taxi driver? Did Slausson catch up with him?”

“Yeah, the guy swears he dropped off Alison and never met anyone named Tania Marcus. He grumbled about the short fare but said she gave him a nice tip so it all worked out.”

Goode jotted down notes as Stone rattled off the information, then hung up. He was late for the funeral but decided to try Maureen’s number one last time. After listening to the rambling voice mail greeting again, he left a message in that fatherly tone she hated. He couldn’t help it when he was this worried.

“Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, stop it immediately and call me on my cell. There’ve been two murders at that beauty school you were telling me about. I hope you were smart enough not to waste your time with that, but I can’t seem to find you anywhere and I’m worried about—”

Damn thing cut him off with a beep. Where was she? Goode had wanted to move to PB from his cottage in La Jolla to be closer to her, but she’d said no. She liked having him close, but not that close. Goode told her he needed to save money so he could buy a house, but she didn’t believe him. He didn’t tell her he was still paying off credit card bills the ex- had racked up.

Sometimes it was tough, but he usually tried to cut Maureen some slack, considering how the two of them grew up. She’d always wished that their father had stuck around, and so had Goode. He didn’t mind looking out for his little sister, but he could have used a male role model himself. Maureen had grown up quite a bit in the last few years, but he still worried about her. For one thing, he didn’t trust her roommates, Chris and Mitch. Goode had known them since junior high school, and frankly, he’d rather she live with strangers than let those guys eyeball her getting out of the shower. She said she could take care of herself, especially after all those Tai Kwon Do classes. When Goode tried to encourage her to move in with female roommates, she told him to “Get a wife.”

Goode smacked his hand on the steering wheel. He’d forgotten to ask Stone one very important question, so he called him back. “Hey, one more thing. Any word yet on that white powder from Tania’s coffee table?”

“Funny you should mention that,” Stone said. “I got the paperwork right after we hung up, but the lieutenant walked in and wanted a full report first. You know how that goes. There was pretty high quality cocaine on one corner and some of the purest methamphetamine the lab has ever seen on the other. Looks like the little lady was connected to some people who could supply her with a smorgasbord of high-end stimulants.”

“That is very interesting,” Goode said.

“Gotta run,” Stone said. “That’s the chief on the other line. Call me after the service.”

The test results were helpful, but Goode still had no clear motive and still no direction to follow other than the drugs. The problem was, people don’t act rationally when they’re high on stimulants, so that always made it difficult to find reason in their behavior. He figured Seth brought the drugs to Tania’s, but it was also possible that Tania had her own stash, or even that Keith was her supplier and that’s how he knew where she lived.

Goode quickly packed his bag and drove away from the pathetic excuse for a hotel. He’d planned to leave earlier, grab some breakfast and show up at the funeral half an hour early so he could watch people arrive. But with all the phone calls, it was too late to stop for anything other than a donut.

His stomach started gurgling around nine thirty as he entered Beverly Hills, where he couldn’t afford to buy any food anyway. What he really wanted was a meatball sandwich with hot peppers and mozzarella cheese, doused with oil and vinegar. After parking near the church, he leaned over and opened the glove box, just in case he’d left something to eat in there.

“C’mon,” he said, rifling through maps, wadded-up papers and empty gum wrappers. He found a flashlight, a dead battery, some breath mints and a half-eaten package of tropical fruit LifeSavers.

“Excellent,” he said, popping one of the mints into his mouth. It was soggy, but he was so hungry it almost tasted good. He kept the LifeSavers for the service.

Shifting the seat back, he propped his feet up on the dashboard, and watched the people walking toward the church. A tall guy in a black shirt and pants walked past the car, but Goode couldn’t see his face. The guy had a very determined gait, even though he had a slight limp. Goode made a mental note to ask Alison if she knew which of Tania’s friends had a limp. The fact that he was wearing black at a funeral certainly wasn’t going to help identify him.

A few minutes later, the street was full of Mercedes, competing with the BMWs and Jaguars for parking spaces. Goode wondered how all these people were going to fit into the church. There were more men than women, walking solo, or in twos and threes. A black Ferrari almost mowed down Seth and Keith as they crossed the street. Turned out the driver was Gary Bentwood, who parked illegally down the block.

Goode headed over to the church to find Alison and picked her out of the crowd pretty easily. She was standing alone on the front steps, pulling on her dark purple velvet dress. She smiled as he got closer. But before she could say anything, he put his finger to his lips and shook his head. He didn’t want her calling out his name or talking about the investigation; he wanted to remain incognito.

She took his arm, and the sweet scent of gardenias greeted them as they entered the church together. 

“Gardenias were Tania’s favorite flower,” Alison whispered, pointing to the glass bowls of them, floating in water, that were placed around the spacious room.

“Follow me and we’ll stand in the back,” he whispered as they joined the throng of mourners filing in. The way people were dressed, black and fashionable, and chatting each other up, they could have been at a Hollywood party or art gallery opening. He headed for an open spot along the rear wall.

“I recognize some of these guys from photo albums Tania showed me,” Alison whispered. “She sure had a lot of old boyfriends. She said she stayed friends with a bunch of them.”

“Any of them stick in your mind?”

“She was seeing some married guy at the ad agency where she used to work, but that ended at the beginning of the summer. I didn’t meet her until orientation, which was about a week before school started, so I’m sure there were others.”

“Did she date anyone once she moved to San Diego?”

“She may have, but Seth is the only one I saw her with. Her next-door neighbor, Paul, tried to date her, but he wasn’t her type. We’d see him trying to hide in the parking lot, taking pictures of her. Kind of creepy, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Goode said. “Did anything happen between them?”

“He asked Tania out a few times, but she always said no. Then he started getting weird. You know. Knocking on her door late at night without being invited, and asking if he could come in. The usual stuff guys in love do.”

“So how did Tania handle that?”

“She tried to be nice, but firm. She didn’t want any conflict with a next-door neighbor. I guess he didn’t really get the message.”

“When was this?”

“She told me it started as soon as she moved in.”

“Anything else unusual about him?”

“Ummm. . .Yeah. He walks with a limp. A bad motorcycle accident or something.”

Goode perked up, but before he could say anything a couple of bruisers pushed past them, jostling Alison.

“Hey. That’s weird. That’s him right there,” she said, pointing to a guy at the front of the line of people waiting to pay their respects at the casket. “I can’t believe he would drive all the way up here. Well, yeah, I guess I can.”

He hadn’t noticed Paul limping the day he’d interviewed him. But then again, the weirdo had barely stepped outside the apartment to talk to him, curling around the front door like a cat.

Goode watched Paul look up at the huge white cross on the church wall. Then, as if the sight of it pained him, he dropped his eyes to the casket, which he touched for a moment, then pulled his hand away quickly, as if it had burned him. He tried again, tentatively, then rubbed his fingertips along its edges. Finally, he kneeled and laid his head on the wood.