“You’re doing fine, ma’am.”
She laughed. “Sure I am. My baby’s dead and the one upstairs will be beeping me soon. I’m doing fantastic, just fantastic.”
“I’ll do everything I ca—”
“Find whoever did this, Detective. Take this seriously and find him— not the way the cops took it like a joke when Lauren went missing—”
“Ofcour—”
“Find him! So I can look him right in the eye. Then, I’ll slice his balls off.”
10
MILO QUESTIONED HER a bit longer, honing in on Lauren’s finances, any jobs she might’ve worked between seventeen and twenty-five, any business acquaintances.
“Modeling,” said Jane. “That’s the only work I know about.”
“Fashion modeling.”
Nod.
“How’d she get into that, ma’am?”
“I guess she just. . . applied and got work. She’s—was a beautiful girl.”
“Did she ever mention an agent? Someone who got her work?”
Jane shook her head. She looked miserable. I’ve seen the same thing happen to other surviving parents. The pain of ignorance, realizing they’d raised strangers. “She paid her own way, Detective, and that’s more than you can say for a lot of kids.”
She unlaced her hands, glanced toward the elevator. “I don’t like it when he gets too quiet. As is, I barely sleep—always worried about something happening to him.” Sickly smile. “This is a bad dream, right? I’ll wake up and find out you were never here.”
She sprang up, ran to the elevator. We saw ourselves out, trudged back to the Seville. From somewhere in the hills, an owl hooted. Plenty of owls in L.A. They eat rats.
Milo looked back at the house. “So she knows nothing. Think it’s true?”
“Hard to say. When you asked her about Lauren’s travel, her eyes got jumpy. Also, when she began talking about Lauren’s modeling. So maybe she knows—or suspects—about how Lauren really paid the rent.”
“Something else,” he said. “She was quick to tell us about her prenup with Mel. But even if she did marry him for the loot, I can’t see what that has to do with Lauren. Still, I think I’ll follow the money trail—Lauren’s finances. This one smells [ike money.”
“Sex and money,” I said.
“Is there a difference?”
I got behind the wheel and turned the key. The dash clock said 1:14 A.M. “Too late for Lyle in Reseda?”
He stretched the seat belt over his paunch. “Nah, never too late for fun.”
I drove back to Van Nuys Boulevard, turned right and picked up the 101 west at Riverside. The freeway had nearly emptied, and the exits before the Reseda Boulevard off-ramp zipped by like snapshots.
As I got off Milo said, “Daddy and Mommy live pretty close. Wonder if they had any contact.”
“Mommy says no.”
“So near and yet so far—nice metaphor for alienation, huh? Not that I’m in any mood for that kind of crap.”
Lyle Teague’s street was a scruffy, treeless stretch, south of Roscoe, smelling of infertile dirt and auto paint. Apartments that looked as if they’d been put up over the weekend mingled uneasily with charmless single-family boxes. Old pickups and cars that had rolled off the assembly line without much self-esteem crowded curbs and front lawns. Crushed beer cans and discarded fast-food containers clumped atop storm gutters. My slow cruise brought forth a chorus of canine outrage. Dogs that sounded eager to bite.
The Teague residence squatted on a third-acre table of what looked to be swept dirt. Eight-foot chain link gave the property a prison-yard feeling. Something in common with his ex-wife: They both liked being boxed off.
But this house was dark, no outdoor lighting. Milo used his penlight to sweep the property. The narrow beam made it a lengthy exercise, alighting on windows and doors, lingering long enough to arouse suspicion,but neither that nor the continuing hound concerto brought anyone out to check.
The flashlight continued to roam, found a GUARD DOG ON DUTY sign, but no animal materialized to back up the warning. A chain heavy enough to moor a yacht tied the gate to the fence. A fist-sized padlock completed the welcome. The house was a basic box with a face as flat as Spike’s but none of my pooch’s personality. Pale stucco on top, dark wood siding below. A few feet away sat a prefab carport. A long-bed truck with grossly oversized tires and chromium pipes rested in front of the opening. Too tall to fit inside.