Renowned physician.
So much for my big-time intuition. Milo had been gracious, but was the rest of it—including suspicions of Ben Dugger—just as off base?
Still, Dugger was an odd man who’d paid good money to Lauren and Cheryl and who knew how many other beautiful blondes to sit in a cold little room and entice men.
Hiring female flesh, compiling data that hadn’t been published or put to any apparent use.
Hidden cameras, grids in the floor . . . voyeurism masquerading as science. Dugger had eschewed the flash and spark of Tony Duke’s lifestyle for … what?
I thought of how easily Dugger had relinquished Cheryl to Tony Duke the moment the old man had made his interests known. The personal trip to LAX to pick up Maccaferri—a job easily accomplished by a factotum. Maybe Dugger was a strong adherent to the Fifth Commandment. But perhaps, now that his father was seriously ill, there was a more practical reason to be attentive.
Back to the money: millions of dollars’ worth of motivation.
Tony Duke’s death was more than theoretical now. One day—perhaps sooner rather than later—Duke Enterprises would be divvied up. Ben Duj$0er’s lifestyle was far from lavish, but his market research seemed to generate very little income, and someone had to pay for the ocean-view high-rise, offices in Newport and Brentwood.
And now he was closing down Newport and shifting operations to Brentwood.
Same reason: sticking close to Dad during the final days.
Dependent upon Dad’s good graces. But with his sister at the helm of Duke Enterprises, was he in danger of being cut off? Knowing how Ben and Anita got along would help answer that, and the only indication I had was the fact that there’d been no mention of Ben’s attendance at Anita’s wedding.
Then there was the matter of the two other sibs: Sage and Baxter. And Kent Irving, of the pink shirt and Hollywood wink.
All in all, high risk for conflict. For the type of endgame litigation that meant big winners and catastrophic losers. Big-time rage.
Cheryl aka Sylvana was no genius, but she had to be aware of the financial ramifications. That could explain her anxiety about being branded a bad mom. Yet that hadn’t stopped her from dozing off on the beach. Or giving me her private number.
Poor judgment . . . pliable.
Unlike Lauren, toughened by years on the street. Big tips.
I thought back to Jane Abbot’s first call to me. Panicked about Lau-ren’s disappearance, even though Lauren had been on her own for years, had traveled in the past.
Because the two of them had finally started to reconnect and Lauren had confided in her. Maybe even bragged about her lucrative dodge.
Perhaps Jane had tried to talk Lauren out of the blackmail scheme—the control issue Lauren had complained about to Andrew Salander.
Lauren refusing. Signing her death warrant, and that of her onetime partner/friend Michelle. And her mother.
Milo was chasing down Salander’s whereabouts, and maybe that would lead to something. But I couldn’t help thinking that any solution lay crouching behind the walls of the Duke estate. High walls, electric gates closed-circuit TV, cable car that shimmied up and down the cliff side. All of it emitting a clear message:
Keep out, Stupid.
And, for the life of me, I saw no way in.
32
L.A.’s FIRST commandment: When in doubt, drive.
Years ago—ages ago—when I arrived in the city as a college freshman, the first thing that hit me was: The streets are asphalt rivers. In high school I’d played guitar in a wedding band and filed paper at an architect’s office in order to scrape up enough cash for a puke-colored, emphysemic Chevy Nova that my father, a Ford man, despised. (Quoth Harry Delaware: “It’s crap, but at least you earned it—nothing you don’t earn is worth half a crap.”) That Bondoed, duct-taped chariot whisked me from Missouri to California and, when it reached my dorm, promptly sputtered and died. For most of the first year I was left to the mercies of L.A.’s afterthought bus system—house imprisonment. The following summer a series of late-night jobs had earned me a moribund Plymouth Valiant, chronic insomnia, and the habit of stumbling out of bed before dawn, cruising dark, empty boulevards, and wondering about my future.