Dr. Death by Jonathan Kellerman

Close enough to the ocean to feel the breeze and smell the brine. Were ugly September mornings better up here?

I caught glimmers of moon-blanched water between the bulk of big houses. As I continued, the properties got wider, offered broader glimpses of Pacific. Now I was high enough to see all of the moon, gravid and low. The sky was a cloudless indigo comforter.

Very few cars were parked on the street, and the unmarked, fifty yards up, was as inconspicuous as a roach on a fridge. I sped by, vaguely aware of two heads in front, not bothering to notice if Korn or Demetri made me. Assuming they had. Now I was a notation in the murder book.

I cruised, looked for the address Safer had given me, wondered which neighboring structure housed the Mani-tows’ dreams and nightmares.

Richard’s monument to success turned out to be a two-story Monterey colonial, pale and ambitious above a hillock of ryegrass spacious enough to host several clusters of trees. Coconut palms, Canary Island pines, lemon eucalyptus, pittosporum, all prettified by clean white lighting that created herbal sculpture. Meticulous flower beds kissed the front of the house. Lights from within turned curtained windows amber. The lack of wall and gate implied openness, welcome. So much for architectural cues.

Stacy’s Mustang sat in the driveway, in front of a silver Cadillac Fleetwood of a size no longer manufactured. No sign of Richard’s black BMW. Perhaps the auto warrant had gone through and the vehicle was being raked and combed and vacuumed and luminoled in some forensic garage.

I pulled in behind the Caddy. Its plates read SHYSTER.

A Bouquet Canyon rock pathway snaked to a heavy door banded with hand-forged iron. Before I got to the entrance, the door opened and a rabbi gazed out at me. A

tall, rangy, black-suited, yarmulked, gray-bearded rabbi in his sixties. The beard was clipped square and blocked the knot of his silver-gray tie. The suit was double-breasted and tailored. He stood with his hands behind his back and rocked. His presence threw me. The Dosses were Greek-Sicilian, not Jewish.

The rabbi said, “Doctor? Joe Safer.”

One hand appeared. We shook, and Safer motioned me into a chandeliered entry hall guarded by a pair of blue-and-white vases as high as my shoulder. An iron-railed staircase swept upward to the second story. Safer and I walked under it and continued to another vestibule bottomed by a crimson Persian runner that fed into a wide, bright hallway. To the left was a dining room papered in blue and set up with plum-colored rosewood furniture that looked old. Across the foyer was a high-ceilinged living room. Ivory ceiling, cream silk sofas, cherrywood floors. If the neutral tones had been designed to show off what was on the walls, they worked.

Case after case of brass-framed, mirror-backed, glassed-in etageres, custom-fit to the crown molding. Glass shelves so clear they were rendered nearly invisible. What rested upon them appeared suspended in midair, just as Milo had described.

Hundreds of bowls, chargers, ewers, jars, shapes I couldn’t identify, each piece spotlit and gleaming. One side wall of more blue and white, the other filled with simple-looking gray-green pieces, the widest expanse populated by a porcelain bestiary: horses and camels and dogs and fantastic, bat-eared creatures that resembled the spawn of a dragon with a monkey, all dappled in beautifully dripping mixtures of blue, green and chartreuse. Human figurines rode some of the horses. On a seven-foot coffee table sat what looked like a miniature temple glazed with the same multicolored splotch.

“Something, eh?” said Safer. “Richard informs me that those animals are all Tang dynasty. Over a thousand years old. They pull them up out of graves in China, beautifully preserved. Quite remarkable, wouldn’t you say?”

“Quite brave keeping them here,” I said, “given the seismic risks.”

Safer stroked his beard and pushed his yarmulke back on his head. His hair was an iron gray crew cut specked with red. I still couldn’t get rid of the rabbinical image. Remembered his comment about the death of his gay son. His diagnosis sped my learning curve. His eyes were gray-green, borderline warm. Like many tall men, he stooped.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *