"There ain't no boyfriend, honey," she said scornfully. "Unless you count the ones come around wanting smoke and pussy."
"Then why did you call Ray?"
She stepped away from him, her forearms rising to cross her breasts, hands clasping her slender upper arms. Then she glanced back to him, with her gaze cool again.
"Because I'm a bitch," she said. But it had the feel of bluster this time.
She walked away, toward the crowd around the swimming pool. Monks almost felt sorry for her. Under her hardness and arrogance, there was a girl who had been given too much too fast. It had gone to her head, and she had made bad choices. Like Eden, she was a casualty of a world that glittered on the surface but was lined with broken glass.
But his pity stayed at almost. There were too many real victims who had never had anything but bad choices to make.
So – there hadn't been any boyfriend or fight. Something else had impelled her to sleep with Ray Dreyer that night, and guilt about it was softening her. Monks decided that he and Larrabee would be calling on Coffee again.
"I didn't realize you two knew each other," a sultry voice said.
Monks turned to see another young woman walking toward him. Like Coffee, she was dressed very differently than the older guests, in a thigh-high leather skirt and black tube top under an open white blouse. A wide belt with a big brass buckle encircled her narrow waist. Her dark hair was done up in a tousled ponytail.
He realized, with astonishment, that this was Gwen. He had only seen her before in her professional mode, beautiful, but sedately dressed and clearly almost forty. Now, in this light, she could have been in her twenties.
When she reached him, she leaned forward, offering her cheek to be kissed. Monks obliged, catching the scent of that same perfume she had worn at the clinic, deep and heady, musky rather than sweet.
"You look ravishing," Monks said.
"Tell me how you met Coffee," she said teasingly. "I need to know if I should be jealous."
"No worry there. My partner and I found out that Eden's boyfriend spent the night with her, while Eden was dying."
Gwen stepped back in shock. "My God, that's awful. That's why he wasn't with Eden?"
Monks nodded. "We asked her to confirm it. She did, but she wasn't happy about it."
"No, I don't suppose she would be. Coffee's not doing very well anyway."
"Drugs?"
"Big-time. And money. She's about to lose her house."
Monks remembered the air of neglect around the place. "I heard she had a very promising future."
"There's a million luscious young girls with promising futures out there, darling. Some of them get lucky, for a while. But only a few are good enough and smart enough to stay on top."
It seemed clear that Gwen included herself in that select group.
"Let's have a drink," she said. "I've got a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice. I've been saving it for a special occasion."
"I'd better stick with club soda for now," he said.
"Come on, just one glass. You'll be more fun if you relax."
"You mean, I'll have more fun?"
"No, be more fun, for me," she said. "I'm very selfish."
Monks smiled. "All right. Just one."
"It's inside. I'll get it."
She left him, walking to a side door of the house, her long slim legs flexing gracefully with a model's fillylike stalk.
Monks heard another loud splash from the swimming pool.
"It's great," a young woman's voice called invitingly. "Like a bath."
He moved quietly closer. The pool was like a grotto, springing out of a rocky cliff, lit by underwater lamps. It had a distinctly Mediterranean feel. Quite a few of the guests were standing around it, drinking and talking.
By now Monks had started to notice that there were two fairly distinct groups – the older and more affluent, and a younger set, dressed casually and even flamboyantly, like Gwen and Coffee Trenette. Tight jeans and tops that accentuated breasts or pectorals seemed to be the prevailing uniform. They were mostly quite attractive – they looked like they were, or could be, actors and models.
One of them, a man, was looking back at him pointedly – glaring, in fact. He had on wraparound sunglasses, and it took Monks a moment to realize that it was Ray Dreyer, Eden's ex-boyfriend.
Dreyer was wearing a black silk jacket over a T-shirt. Monks walked over to him.
'Thoughtful of you to dress in mourning," Monks said quietly.
'Tuck you," Dreyer mouthed. Monks braced himself, thinking that Dreyer might want to pick up their fight where it had left off. But he turned away and went the other direction, farther into the shadows.
Another old friend who was glad to see him, Monks thought.
Then he noticed a slight flare of light, from the other direction. The main front door of the house was opening and closing. A man was coming out.
D'Anton.
Monks walked quickly back that way and intercepted D'Anton as he reached the bottom of the porch steps.
"Good evening, Doctor," Monks said.
D'Anton glanced around impatiently. The glance turned to an icy stare as he recognized Monks.
Monks was very aware that he might be looking into the eyes of a man who was capable of mutilating a living human being.
"How dare you come to my house," D'Anton said.
"Gwen Bricknell invited me."
"And you actually accepted?" D'Anton said, with withering disbelief.
"I was watching you inside there. It must be quite a feeling, being surrounded by your own creations."
Unexpectedly, D' Anton smiled. It was filled with pity for Monks.
"Do you know what they would tell you?" D'Anton said. "What they have told me! That they belong to me. Any fool can give them money, but I can give them what really matters – youth and beauty."
"So you figure you have the right to do anything you want with them?"
D'Anton's smile vanished. "I don't know what you're getting at, but I have had enough of you," he said. "If you come around me again, you'll be hearing from my attorney."
"The same errand boy you sent to scare Roberta Massey?"
D'Anton recoiled, a tiny backward jerk and widening of his eyes. But he recovered instantly. Monks had to hand it to him.
"That name means nothing to me," D'Anton said.
"Oh, right, you're not good with names, are you."
"I remember yours, now." D'Anton held Monks's gaze with his own, steely and unwavering, for a few seconds longer. Then he turned away and continued his brisk walk, fading into the night.
D'Anton had recognized Roberta's name, there was no doubt about that. Monks considered that he might have played that card too early. But it would increase the strain on D' Anton, and strain could lead to mistakes.
Monks moved back toward the pool, but stayed a little apart from the crowd. In another couple of minutes, Gwen came back out, carrying two flutes of pale effervescent champagne.
This time, as she passed the crowd at the pool, she was accosted by a thickset, balding man in his sixties, who leered at her like a satyr.
"Jesus, sweetheart, you look like jailbait tonight," he said in a loud, raspy voice.
Gwen paused, glancing at him in amusement.
"I know you're an expert there, Ivan."
"That thing still as tight as it used to be?" he growled.
"You certainly didn't stretch it any."
A ripple of laughter sounded from nearby guests, watching the two of them like a circle drawn up around teenaged boys getting ready to fight. Monks was touched by an equally adolescent outrage, a schoolboy urge to step in and defend his girl's honor. But she seemed to be enjoying it thoroughly – keeping the loutish attacker at bay, like an exquisite fencer, with quick, sure barbs.
Maybe the preoccupation with youthfulness that he sensed here was catching, Monks thought, although there had been none of it in the brilliant adamantine intensity that emanated from D'Anton.