“I’ll drive you,” I said.
“What a guy,” he said airily as he strode out of the room. As we left the apartment he said, “I’m really sorry the way this turned out.”
Nine o’clock the next morning, I phoned Dr. Simon de Maartens at home, and he picked up, sounding distracted. When I introduced myself his voice chilled.
“I already returned your call.”
“Thanks for that, but there are still a few questions—”
“Questions?” he said. “I told you I don’t remember the girl.”
“So you have no memory of her talking to you about doing some research.”
“Research? Of course not. She was an undergrad, only grad students are permitted into my lab. Now—”
“The perception course Lauren took from you,” I said. “Did the class subdivide into smaller discussion groups?”
“Yes, yes—that’s typical.”
“Would it be possible to get a list of the students in Lauren’s section?”
“No,” he said. “It would not be possible— You claim to be faculty and you are asking for something like that? That is appalling— What is your involvement in all this?”
“I knew Lauren. Her mother’s going through hell, and she asked me to be involved.”
“Well . . . I’m sorry about that, but it’s a confidentiality issue.”
“Being enrolled in a study section is confidential?” I said. “Not the last time I checked the APA ethics code.”
“Everything about academic freedom is confidential, Dr. Delaware.”
“Fine,” I said. “Thanks for your time. The police will probably be getting in touch with you.”
“Then I will tell them exactly the same thing.”
Click.
Something bugs you, let me know.
I called Milo. No answers at home, in the car, or at his desk. I told his voice mail: “De Maartens was not helpful. He bears attention.”
A live woman answered at Motivational Associates of Newport Beach, informing me in a bored-to-death singsong that the office was closed.
“Is this the answering service?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When does the office open?”
“They’re in and out.”
“Is there another office?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“L.A.”
“Do you have the number?”
“One moment, I have to take another call.”
She put me on hold long enough for me to wonder if the line had gone dead. Finally, she came back on with a 310 phone number. I called it and got her partner in ennui.
“The office is closed.”
“When will it be open?”
“I don’t know, sir—this is the service.”
“What’s the office’s address, please?”
“One moment, I have to take another call.”
I hung up and looked it up in the phone book.
The twelve thousand block of Wilshire Boulevard put Motivational Associates’ L.A. branch in Brentwood, just east of Santa Monica. A couple of miles from the U and even closer to the Sepulveda alley where Lauren’s body had been found.
But no sense dropping by and confronting a bolted door. I booted up the computer and plugged in “Motivational Associates.”
Three hits, the first a four-year-old article from the Chicago Tribune about a South Side shelter for battered women and the services it offered. Residential care, medical consultation, individual counseling, group therapy “provided by Motivational Associates, a private consulting group that offers pro bono services, particularly in the area of human relations.” The gist of the article was human-interest coverage of several abused women who’d gained emotional strength, and the firm’s participation earned no further mention.
The second reference was a shortened version of the Trib piece, picked up by the wire services and distributed nationally. Number three was an Eastern Psychological Association abstract of a paper presented two years ago at a regional convention in Cambridge. “Buffington, Sandra, Lindquist, Monique, and Dugger, B. J. The Multidimensional Assessment of Intimacy: Factor Analysis of the Personal Space Grid Index (PSGI) and Self-Report Measures of Locus of Control, Trait Anxiety, Personal Attractiveness, Self-Concept and Extroversion.”
So much for racy research.
The authors’ affiliations were University of Chicago for Buffington and Lindquist and Motivational Associates, Inc. for B. J. Dugger.
Dr. D.
I pulled out my American Psychological Association directory and looked up Dugger, betting on a woman. Barbara Jean, Barbara Jo—
Benjamin John. Not the day for me to play the ponies.
Dugger’s birth date made him thirty-seven. He’d earned a B.A. in psychology from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, at the age of twenty-one and a Ph.D. in social psychology from the U of Chicago ten years later. Postdoctoral fellowship at UC, San Diego, then a two-year lapse until his first—and only—job: Director, Motivational Associates of Newport Beach, California. Areas of specialty: quantitative measurement of social distance and applied motivational research. The address he’d listed was on Balboa Boulevard, in Newport, and the number was the 714 I’d just called.