“Robin worked on his guitars. He’s been here a few times. Sweet guy.”
“You know him pretty well?”
“No,” said Alex. “He came by once in a while. Friendly, always smiling. But a bluesman’s smile.”
“Meaning?”
“Sad, resigned. Robin told me he’d had some hard luck. A couple of times I walked in and found him playing. Best show I’ve seen all year. He had an incredible sense of phrasing—not a lot of notes but the right ones.”
Talking like a music guy—nearly word for word, the same thing Petra had heard from the big man’s band mates.
She remembered: Alex played guitar.
“Lots of hard luck,” she said. “What else can you tell me about him?”
“That’s about it. Robin worked on his guitars for free because he was always broke. He’d always make a show of writing out an IOU and handing it to her, but to my knowledge she never collected. Any idea who did it?”
“Nope. That’s why I’m following everything up. Robin around?”
Several seconds passed. Then: “She doesn’t live here anymore, Petra. We separated a few months ago.”
“Oh.”
“Mutual decision, it’s working out,” he said. But he didn’t sound as if he meant it. “I’ll give you her number.”
Petra’s cheeks had grown hot. Not embarrassment. Anger. Another castle crumbles.
“Sure,” she said.
“She’s got a place in Venice. Rennie Avenue, north of Rose. It’s a side-by-side duplex, the studio’s in the southern unit.”
Petra copied the address and thanked him.
“I don’t think she’s in town, Petra. She spent a good part of last year touring with the Kill Famine Tour and has been moving around.” Pause. “She met a guy.”
“I’m sorry,” Petra blurted.
“It happens,” he said. “We’d agreed to . . . try out our independence. Anyway, this guy, he’s a vocal coach, and he travels quite a bit, too. They’re in Vancouver. I know because she called to let me know she’s taking Spike to a vet, there. Toothache.”
Petra remembered the pooch. Cute little French bulldog. A chance to change the subject. “Ouch. Hope he feels better.”
“Me, too . . . anyway, they’re due back tomorrow, I think.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Sure. Good luck on the case. Say hi to Robin for me.”
“Will do,” said Petra, itching to break the connection. “You take care now.”
“You, too.”
He hung up. Petra shut out the call and went over the details of Baby Boy’s demise for the umpteenth time. Then she left the station and got herself some lunch. Greasy hamburger at a Vine Street joint she was certain would disappoint.
4
The first time I made love to Allison Gwynn, I felt like an adulterer.
Totally irrational. Robin and I had been living apart for months. And now she was with Tim Plachette.
But when the touch, the feel, the smell of someone is imbedded in your DNA . . .
If Allison sensed my unease, she never said a word.
I met her shortly before my years with Robin started to unravel. I’d been helping Milo on a twenty-year-old murder. Years before, at the age of seventeen, Allison had been sexually abused by a man who figured in the case. Her college mentor was an old friend of mine, and he asked her if she’d talk to me. She thought about it and agreed.
I liked her right away—admired her courage, her honesty, her gentle manner. Her looks were too notable to miss, but back then I appreciated them as an abstraction.
Ivory skin, soft but assertive cheekbones, a wide, strong mouth, the most gorgeous, waist-length black hair I’d ever seen. Huge eyes, blue as midnight, projected a sharp curiosity. Like me, she was a psychologist. Those eyes, I figured, would serve her well.
She grew up in Beverly Hills, the only daughter of an assistant attorney general, went to Penn, continued there for a Ph.D. In her senior year, she met a Wharton whiz, fell in love, married young, and moved back to California. Within months of receiving her state license, her husband was diagnosed with a rare malignancy, and she was widowed. Eventually, she pulled herself together and built up a Santa Monica practice. Now she combined clinical work with teaching nights at the U, and volunteering at a hospice for the terminally ill.