“If you mean it… one thing that does come out of it are those bodyguards and limos. Be harder for a whack to abduct Caitlin right outside the bar… though she left after her shift, so maybe that means nothing… still, her car was never found, so it's likely she drove somewhere and got snagged, could be anywhere from Santa Monica to Venice.”
“Or beyond,” said Liana, “if she got jacked. Meaning, focusing on Riptide could be a waste.”
“Rau mention any celebs by name?”
Liana shook her head. “Only names were the ones I showed you from the Times.”
“A name not on that list just came up, Lee. Lem Dement.”
“That asshole,” Liana hissed. “Be nice if he did have something to do with it.”
Her intensity surprised Aaron. “You don't approve of his religious views?”
“I don't approve of him. Because I once caught an up-close look at him and his psyche.”
“Where and when?”
“Shortly after that biblical splatter flick of his opened. San Marino, someone's gigantic house near Caltech, not the usual Industry types. Church folk, captains of industry, grace before the canapés, crucifixes on every table. Back then, I didn't know you, used to pass trays for a caterer to pay bills. It was summer, the party was outdoors, everyone was dressed for the heat, except Mrs. Dement-Gemma. She's wearing a long-sleeved black sweater over a Chanel frock and way too much makeup. What caught my eye was the look in her eyes-something I recognized right away because my older sister hooked up with a guy who beat the crap out of her. It was years before that bastard had the courtesy to die, I could never convince Sybil to leave him.”
“Gemma looked like an abused woman,” said Aaron.
“Not just looked, Aaron. Was,” said Liana. Fury had deepened the blue of her eyes. “Hollow, haunted, there's no mistaking it when you see it. Because of my experience with Sybil, I'm primed. So while I served shrimp on toast, I kept sneaking glances at the two of them. Didn't take long for me to catch it: squeezing her arm just a little too tight as he propelled her around the room. Treating her like a prop, never talking to her. Once, when he thought no one was looking, he flicked the back of her neck with his fingernail, had to sting.”
“How'd she react?”
“She didn't, that's the point. Numb and compliant, a good little robot. No one except me seemed to notice, because everyone was focused on Dement, all the money he was raking in, the fat pig. That stupid hat, he had fishhooks in his hat. With a tux, no less. No one said a word.”
“A few hundred million'll do that,” said Aaron. “Were there any other-”
“But wait, folks, there's more!” Liana held up a finger. “A while later, I go to the ladies’ room-this mansion has a giant powder room-makeup area for guests-and Gemma's there and she's got her sweater off but when she sees me, she snaps it back on. But not quickly enough to hide the bruises all up and down her arm. I'm talking livid, Aaron, like she'd been put through a compressor. I pretend not to stare while she pretends to be apathetic, fixes her hair, lays on even more pancake. But I'm getting a close-up look and it's obvious why she's plastering the stuff on. She's got more bruises on her neck and shoulders. Plus a definite swelling behind her ear. This is a woman who gets used regularly as a punching bag.”
She clenched a fist. “Hypocritical asshole. Please tell me he's involved.”
Aaron said, “It might shake out that way, but all I've got right now is a real estate link.”
“To who?”
He told her about Rory Stoltz's early-morning adventure on the Strip, the gated estate on Swallowsong.
Liana said, “Sneaking a couple of celebs out the back way? No idea who?”
“Too dark, too quick, too far away,” said Aaron. “One guy was skinny, the other more of a football type. Neither of them was Dement. Younger, thinner.”
“Aaron, Dement beats his wife, who knows what he does to other women? Please please tell me you're going to follow up on him.”
“Of course.”
“How old were the two guys Stoltz drove home?”
“I can't be sure, Lee. Could be twenties, thirties.”
“Dement has a whole bunch of kids-six, seven. He's in his fifties, so he could easily have spawn in that range.”
“Junior living in a house Daddy owns? Maybe, but that still says nothing about Caitlin. The link I'm following is Rory.”
Liana grew silent.
Aaron said, “I'll follow up on Dement, Lee.”
“I know I'm being emotional. You can't imagine the hell my sister went through. And my parents. And the rest of us. We're a close-knit family, Gordon made all of us bleed.”
Aaron had never seen her like this. Family made things complicated. “I'll bloodhound Dement.”
“Maybe the police have something-domestic violence calls covered up.”
Aaron stood, walked from behind his desk, paced.
Liana said, “What's wrong?”
“Working with the police on this one. It's complicated.”
CHAPTER 15
Madeleine Fox Reed Guistone was a woman of serene temperament.
The shifting hues of her Tuscan-inspired house on half an acre of Beverly Hills POB hillside suggested otherwise.
Which just went to prove the classic detective caution, thought Moe: Assume means make an ass out of u and me.
As he pushed his unmarked up the juniper-shrouded lane that led to Mom's manse, his memory dredged up mocha to salmon to sage green to coral to the eye-searing sienna-orange mottle he'd seen eight weeks ago. But he might've missed a few stages.
He reached the top expecting something even more outrageous.
Nope, still “flame-rust villa de Borghese,” the pigment-infused plaster slapped on so thickly the house appeared lumpy. Random patches of phony exposed brick completed the picture: typical pathetic, totally L.A. grab for a reality that had never existed in the first place. First time he'd seen it, he'd muttered, “Disneyland,” but told Mom it was gorgeous. This evening, parking in the circular motor court next to his mother's red Mercedes convertible, the theme park crept back into his consciousness.
And that brought back memories.
Moe, plagued with ear infections and motion sickness as a young boy, had always despised the Anaheim ode to corny.
Heaving his cookies after a single spin on the teacups.
Meanwhile, Aaron's leaping into a Matterhorn car. Conquering the “Alps” over and over again. Maddy and Moe waiting until he finally got his fill. Moe clutching his stomach just thinking about the Matterhorn.
Contempt on Aaron's ten-year-old face as he points out a crumb of vomit on Moe's T-shirt…
A guy who called his office space Work Land; some people never got real.
Moe walked past the Florentine fountain, murky and leaf-strewn as usual, dribbling happily under a gently setting sun. That, Mom hadn't painted, maybe in deference to Dr. Stan Guistone's memory.
Stan had lived in the house on North Corsair for four decades before marrying Mom and until he'd died, she'd changed nothing, including the photos of his deceased first wife set up like icons on an altar table in the cavernous entry hall.
During her years with Stan, Mom had Windexed Miriam Guistone's portraits religiously, pooh-poohed his offer to redecorate, held on to every stick of Miriam's clumsy Victorian Revival furniture.
She'd put up with the original gray-beige exterior that even Stan thought was dreary.
Dr. Stan was a good man. He deserved that level of consideration.
One week after he was laid into emerald-green Forest Lawn turf, the painters showed up at the house, as did the trucks from Goodwill. Bye-bye Agatha Christie, hello Georgia O'Keeffe: delivery vans bearing rooms full of the blocky, serape-draped “Southwest Revival motif” Mom had come to love during her yearly “centering” trips to Santa Fe.