“Meaning?”
“She had her moods,” said Franck. “Like anyone. Mostly when I saw her, she was in fine spirits.” He picked at a cuticle. “I probably shouldn’t get into this, but I feel duty-bound. Not that I think it’s necessarily relevant. But…”
Pick pick.
“There’s a kid named Martin Mendoza. He’s a senior at Prep and Elise tutored him. But he didn’t come to her in the usual way, Prep assigned him to Elise.”
“And?”
“And there were problems.”
“What kinds of problems?”
“Anger management,” said Franck. “He didn’t want to be there—at Prep, or working with Elise—and he let her know. He came in as a junior, recruited to pitch for the baseball team, he’d been a star in public school. Early in the season, he got injured, couldn’t play anymore, but Prep had already contracted with him for the full two years.”
“Contracted?” said Milo. “Sounds like the major leagues.”
“In a sense it is, Lieutenant. When a prize athlete from the inner city fits a niche at Prep, Prep draws up a written agreement. If it works out, everyone gets their money’s worth. If it doesn’t and the student has significant academic issues to begin with—which is fairly typical—the problem generally fixes itself. In a Darwinian sense.”
“The student drops out because he can’t handle the workload.”
“It’s a high-pressure environment to begin with,” said Franck. “Unless you’re academically oriented, you’re likely to be miserable.”
“Blow your knee, back to Urban Sprawl High.”
“Well put, Lieutenant.”
“Martin Mendoza didn’t oblige?”
“From what Elise told me, transferring to Prep wasn’t his choice, it was his parents’. His father works as a waiter at a country club, that’s where he met an alum who hooked him up. But overcoming historical deficits is tough.”
“What’s a historical deficit, Trey?”
“Public school,” said Franck. “Martin had some monumental catching up, Prep hired Elise to help him.”
“Nice of them, even though he wasn’t pitching anymore.”
“Guess so.”
“You don’t think it was altruism.”
“I think by seventeen a kid should have some control over his life and when you neglect that, you’re playing with fire. Martin got pretty aggressive with Elise. It upset her.”
“Physically aggressive?”
“Verbally, but it bothered her enough to tell me about it.”
“Did she ask you to protect her from Mendoza?”
“Nothing like that, she just wanted to talk about it. Normally, I wouldn’t be thinking about it. But now that she’s… I have to tell you, I’m not comfortable talking out of school.”
“So to speak,” said Milo.
Silence.
“So Elise was scared of Mendoza.”
“More like… I guess she was, Lieutenant. She tried to do her job but he kept missing appointments and messing up her schedule, never followed through on homework assignments, went out of his way to be uncooperative. Elise finally told him he was wasting her time and Prep’s money and not doing himself a favor. He got in her face, started screaming. Elise said she backed away, was ready to call 911. But he just cursed and ran out and she never saw him again.”
“When did this happen?”
“A month or so ago. When’s the funeral?”
“At this point, that’s unclear.” Milo produced his pad, flipped it open, scanned. “Arnie Joseph’s.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a bar on Van Nuys Boulevard. Elise used to drink there occasionally but you know that.”
“I don’t drink.” Franck’s finger worked a cuticle. A seam of blood appeared and he stanched it with a thumb.
Another look at the greasy ceiling.
“You’re saying you’ve never been to Arnie Joseph’s.”
Franck licked his lips. “I haven’t.”
“But you have been near Arnie Joseph’s, that’s how we found you, Trey. You walked Elise over there, then the two of you shared a bye-bye kiss. Hot and heavy was the way it was described to us.”
Trey Franck blurted, “Oh, God.” Plopping back on his bed, he lay on his back, closed his eyes, breathed fast.
“Anything else you want to tell us, Trey?”
Franck mumbled something.
“I didn’t catch that, Trey.”
“We did it.”
“Did what?”
Franck propped up on his elbows, stared past us. “We made love. Not regularly, once in a while. Nothing emotional, for fun.”
“Fun,” said Milo.
“Stress relief.” Franck swiveled and met our eyes. Held the gaze defiantly. “Dealing with idiots, hour after interminable hour. It helped us forget.”
CHAPTER
19
Trey Franck sat up and spread his shoulders.
Admitting his affair with Elise Freeman had enlarged him.
Milo said, “When did you and Elise begin your stress-reduction program?”
“Don’t worry, I was over eighteen.”
“I’m not worried, son, I’m looking for details.”
“I still don’t see why anything I’ve done is relevant.”
Milo squatted and put his big face close to Franck’s. Franck edged back.
“When we investigate a nasty death, Trey, we begin by looking at people close to the deceased, because statistically, most nasty deaths are perpetrated by someone the victim knows. When we ran Elise’s phone records, you popped up as a frequent contact. One thing in your favor is that you didn’t lie about not speaking to her in two weeks. The record backs that up. But that doesn’t mean we’re not interested in learning more about you.”
“Statistics,” said Franck, “are group measurements intended for samples, not individuals. They possess absolutely no validity when applied to individuals.”
“Thanks for the math lesson, son, but right now you’re what we call a person of interest and if you want to stop being a person of interest, you’ll just answer the questions.”
“I just don’t see why my sex life is—”
“Here’s a theoretical situation, Trey: What if you and Elise had a hot-and-heavy romance going and she broke it off? Jealousy and resentment are great motives.”
“It may be theoretical but it’s definitely not empirical,” said Franck. “Elise and I got together occasionally for recreational sex and no one broke anything off. If you’re looking at jealousy, pay attention to a loser who had a serious thing for her named Sal Fidella. Since you’ve got phone records, I’m sure you’ve seen his number.”
“You know Mr. Fidella.”
“No. I know of him. Elise said she’d dated him on and off, he was getting annoying.”
“Annoying in what way?”
“Wanting to keep getting with her but she was over it. She thought he was a loser, always talking to her about get-rich-quick schemes.”
“Such as?”
“She didn’t elaborate and I didn’t ask. It wasn’t anything we dwelled upon.”
“Did Elise ever say Fidella had actually gone through with any of his schemes?”
Franck smirked. “So you already suspect him.”
“Don’t second-guess us, son.”
“She never got specific beyond saying he was all heat, no light.”
“She ever say he was violent?”
“Unfortunately, she never mentioned that.”
“Unfortunately?”
“You’d concentrate on him and I wouldn’t have to talk about my sex life.”
“You’ve seen a photo of Elise and Fidella in her living room?”
“Okay. So?”
“That didn’t make you think?”
“About what?”
“She’s over him but hangs on to his picture?”