“One particular girl? You know her name?”
“No. She wasn't too friendly either. Had a mean look to her. Almost like a biker chick, but not. Anyway, I never had anything to do with her. She—Miss Bondurant—was usually alone, never said much. She didn't really fit in here. Not too many of the residents are students, and then she dressed kind of strange. Army boots and black clothes and all.”
“Did she ever seem out of it to you?”
“Like on drugs, you mean? No. Was she into drugs?”
“I'm just covering my bases, you know, or else my lieutenant . . .”
She let the suggestion hang, the impression being that Vanlees could empathize, blood brother that he was. She thanked him for his help and gave him her business card with instructions to call if he thought of anything that might be helpful to the case. He backed away from the door, reluctant, craning his neck to see what Moss was doing deeper into the apartment. Liska waved good-bye and closed the door.
“Eew, Christ, let me go take a shower,” she whispered, shuddering as she came into the living room.
“Jeez, you didn't like him, then, Margie?” Moss said with an exaggerated north country accent.
Liska made a face at her and at the odd combination of aromas that hung in the air—sweet air freshener over stale cigarette smoke. “Hey, I got him talking, didn't I?”
“You're shameless.”
“In the line of duty.”
“Makes me glad I'm menopausal.”
Liska sobered, her gaze on the door. “Seriously, those cop wanna-bes creep me out. They always have an authority thing. A need for power and control, and a deep-seated poor self-image. More often than not, they've got a thing against women. Hey!” She brightened again suddenly. “I'll have to bring this theory to the attention of Special Agent Quite Good-looking.”
“Hussy.”
“I prefer opportunist.”
Jillian Bondurant's living room had a view of the river. The furnishings looked new. Overstuffed nubby sofa and chairs the color of oatmeal. Glass-topped rattan coffee table and end tables dirty with the fine soot of fingerprint dust left behind by the Bureau of Investigation team. An entertainment center with a large television and a top-line stereo system. In one corner a desk and matching bookshelves held textbooks, notebooks, everything pertaining to Jillian's studies at the U, all of it ridiculously neat. Along another wall sat the latest in shiny black electronic pianos. The kitchen, easily seen from the living room, was immaculate.
“We'll need to find out if she had maid service.”
“Not the digs of the average flat-broke college student,” Liska said. “But then, I gotta think nothing much about this kid was average. She had a pretty atypical childhood trotting all over Europe.”
“And yet she came back here for college. What's with that? She could have gone anywhere—to the Sorbonne, to Oxford, to Harvard, to Southern Cal. She could have gone somewhere warm and sunny. She could have gone somewhere exotic. Why come here?”
“To be close to Daddy.”
Moss walked the room, her gaze scanning for anything that might give a clue about their victim. “I guess that makes sense. But still . . . My daughter Beth and I have a great relationship, but the second that girl graduated high school, she wanted out of the nest.”
“Where'd she go?”
“University of Wisconsin at Madison. My husband isn't Peter Bondurant. She had to fly somewhere with tuition reciprocity,” Moss said, checking through the magazines. Psychology Today and Rolling Stone.
“If my old man had a billion bucks and would spring for a place like this, I'd want to spend time with him too. Maybe I can get Bondurant to adopt me.”
“Who was here yesterday?”
“They sent a couple of uniforms after the body was found with Bondurant's DL—just to make sure she wasn't here, alive and oblivious. Then Sam came over with Elwood to look around. They canvassed the neighbors. Nobody knew anything. He picked up her address book, credit card receipts, phone bills, and a few other things, but he didn't come up with any big prizes. Gotta think if she had a drug habit, the B of I guys would have found something.”
“Maybe she carried everything with her in her purse.”
“And risk losing her stash to a purse snatcher? I don't think so. Besides, this place is way too clean for a druggie.”
Two bedrooms with two full baths on the second level. In her small house in St. Paul, Liska had the cozy pleasure of sharing one small crummy bathroom with her sons, ages eleven and nine. She made good pay as a detective, but things like hockey league and orthodontists cost bucks, and the child support her ex had been directed by the courts to pay was laughable. She often thought she should have had sense enough to get knocked up by a rich guy instead of by a guy named Rich.
Jillian's bedroom was as eerily tidy as the rest of the house. The queen-size bed had been stripped bare by the B of I team, the sheets taken to the lab to be tested for any sign of blood or seminal fluid. There was no discarded clothing draped over chairs or trailing on the floor, no half-open dresser drawers spilling lingerie, no pile of abandoned shoes—nothing like Liska's own crowded room she never had the time or desire to clean. Who the hell ever saw it but herself and the boys? Who ever saw Jillian Bondurant's room?
No snapshots of a boyfriend tucked into the mirror above the oak dresser. No photos of family members. She pulled open the drawers in the nightstands that flanked the bed. No condoms, no diaphragm. A clean ashtray and a tiny box of matches from D'Cup Coffee House.
Nothing about the room gave away any personal information about its occupant—which suggested to Liska two possibilities: that Jillian Bondurant was the princess of repression, or that someone had come through the house after her disappearance and sanitized the place.
Matches and the smell of cigarettes, but every ashtray in the place was clean.
Vanlees had a key. Who else could they add to that list? Peter Bondurant. Jillian's mean-looking girlfriend? The killer. The killer now had Jillian's keys, her address, her car, her credit cards. Kovac had immediately put a trace on the cards to catch any activity following the girl's disappearance Friday night. So far, nothing. Every cop in the greater metro area had the description and tag numbers on Bondurant's red Saab. Nothing yet.
The master bath was clean. Mauve and jade green with decorative soaps no one was supposed to actually use. The shampoo in the bathtub rack was Paul Mitchell with a sticker from a salon in the Dinkydale shopping center. A possible source of information if Jillian had been the kind to confess all to her hairdresser. There was nothing of interest in the medicine cabinet or beneath the sink.
The second bedroom was smaller, the bed also stripped. Summer clothes hung in the closet, pushed out of the master bedroom by the rapid approach of another brutal Minnesota winter. Odds and ends occupied the dresser drawers—a few pair of underpants: black, silky, size five; a black lace bra from Frederick's of Hollywood: skimpy, wash-worn, 34B; a pair of cheap black leggings with a hole in one knee, size S. The clothes were not folded, and Liska had the feeling they did not belong to Bondurant.
The friend? There wasn't enough stuff to indicate a full-time roommate. The fact that this second bedroom was being used discounted the idea of a lover. She went back into the master suite and checked the dresser drawers again.
“You coming up with anything?” Moss asked, stepping into the bedroom doorway, careful not to lean against the jamb, grimy with fingerprint powder.
“The willies. Either this chick was incredibly anal or a phantom house fairy got here before anyone else. She went missing Friday. That gave the killer a good two days with her keys.”