Dr. D.
As in Dalby? No, Gene claimed to barely remember her, and I had no reason to doubt him. And his research was on politics, not intimacy.
Another of her teachers’ names began with a D—de Maartens. The psychology of perception. Lots of D’s.
Who was I kidding—I knew whose initial she’d jotted.
You were a great influence on her, Doctor.
The last time I’d seen her, she’d paid for the privilege of unloading her anger—not unlike the pattern she’d adopted with her father.
Years later she’d thought of me, made the notation.
Intimacy. . .
Wanting something from me? Never building up the courage to ask?
I thought of that last, angry meeting, Lauren flashing the wad of bills, unleashing the acid of recrimination. I’d always felt she’d been after more than that.
But what had been her goal when she’d picked up the phone and dialed my service?
What had I not given her?
12
MILO CAME BACK shaking his head. “Nothing—maybe she kept her pills in her purse.”
I said, “Here’s something,” showed him the inscription, told him about the ad that had run before Shawna Yeager’s disappearance.
“Ads probably run all the time.”
“Not really,” I said. “From what I saw, they tend to come and go.”
“Did you find any ads before Lauren went missing?”
“No, but she could’ve seen it elsewhere.” It sounded feeble, and both of us knew it. He was enough of a friend not to dismiss me, but his silence was eloquent.
“I know,” I said. “Two girls, a year apart, no striking links. But maybe there were other girls in between.”
“Blondes disappearing on the Westside? I’d know if there were. At this point I’m not eliminating anything, but I’ve got a full plate right now: get hold of Lauren’s phone records, find out if she had a computer, look for possible witnesses to a pickup. Maybe find some known associates too. There’s got to be someone other than Salander and her mom who knew her. If all that dead-ends, I’ll take a closer look at Shawna.” He returned the textbook to me. “‘Dr. D.’ You’re sure that’s you?”
“Theoretically it could be one of her professors—Gene Dalby or another one named de Maartens. Neither of them remembers her. Big lecture classes.”
“Well,” he said, “I can’t exactly interrogate them because of this—hell if it means anything at all. The main thing’s still the money. Her job and the way she was killed—cold, professional, the body left out there, maybe as a warning—smacks to me of her getting in someone’s way. That’s why I’m not jumping on the Yeager girl’s case—Leo Riley felt that one was sexual. If Lauren deposited fifty a year, who knows how much she was taking in. And that makes me wonder if some of her income came from supplemental sources. Like blackmail. Who better than a call girl to hoard nasty secrets and try to profit from them.”
“That would also be reason to make off with her computer.”
“Precisimoso. Big bucks at stake. College profs don’t exactly fit the bill.”
“Some college profs are independently wealthy. Actually, Gene Dalby is.”
“You keep mentioning him. Something about him bug you?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Old classmate, tried to be helpful.”
“Okay, then—onward.”
“So we just let the intimacy project lie? This might be a current number.”
He took the book back, produced his cell phone, muttered, “Probably gonna get ear cancer,” and punched in the number. Nothing in his eyes told me he’d connected, but as he listened he groped in his pocket for his pad, wrote something down, hung up.
“‘Motivational Associates of Newport Beach,'” he said. “Friendly female voice: ‘Our hours are ten A.M. to blah blah blah.’ Sounds like one of those marketing outfits.”
“Intimacy and marketing,” I said.
“Why not? Intimacy sells product. Lauren sure would’ve known that. So this was a moonlight for her. She liked money, took another part-time gig. Make sense?”
“Perfect sense.”
“Look,” he said, “feel free to follow up on it. Call the other professor too—de whatever-his-name-is. Something bugs you, let me know. Right now what bugs me is no computer. I need a ride back to the station to pick up my car, see if any messages came in, then I’m packing it in. You up for chauffeur duty, or should I lean on one of the boys in blue?”