JONATHAN KELLERMAN. THE CLINIC

“Creative,” I said.

“You’re a good influence.”

“Okay, as long as we’re screenwriting, how about this: a threesome. Cruvic, Hope, and Mandy. Or Seacrest, Hope, and Mandy. Or even an unknown guy. Flying down a call girl to spice up a tired relationship. Then, for whatever reason, the guy decides to call it quits. Permanently. Gets rid of Mandy first because murdering a call girl three hundred miles away won’t attract attention in L.A. But Hope’s a different story. She’s prominent, local, smarter. So he waits, planning, waiting for the right time. Then Hope helps him by getting notorious with her book. Which sets up a perfect cover: some nut acting out because of the controversy she generated.”

He thought about that. “But if Mandy and Hope knew each other, wouldn’t Mandy’s murder have alerted Hope?”

“If they’d parted ways, how would she know Mandy’d been killed? Did Mandy’s murder get any media coverage?”

He shook his head. “Just one small blurb in the Sun the same day. Still, if Hope had been engaged in a three-way with Mandy, wouldn’t she be likely to find out?”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s say she knew Mandy’d been murdered but didn’t connect it to herself. Like you said, prostitutes get killed all the time.”

He drank, looked out the kitchen window. The sun was small and pale, silvering the tops of the pines, turning them as shiny as Mandy Wright’s dress.

“Great screenplays,” he finally said. “It would sure be nice to have some facts.”

“At least,” I said, “I can look into Cruvic’s credentials, see if anything funny shows up.”

“Do that. My next stop’s a chat with Kenny Storm. I want to clear the whole committee angle. I’ll also check with Vegas to see if Mandy had health insurance, maybe her sterilization was documented and we can find out who did it. The boyfriend, Barnaby, might know about that, so we’ll put out the word for him, too. Anything else occur while I was gone?”

“I found Reed Muscadine. Like Kenny, he dropped out of school, but for another reason. He was up for a soap-opera part, thought he had it, but it fell through. He denied raping Tessa Bowlby, repeated the same story he told at the hearing.”

“Credible?”

“No alarm bells went off, but he’s an actor. Take it for what it’s worth.”

“What do you think it’s worth?”

“I don’t know. Tessa looked extremely traumatized. I’d like to know what’s eating at her. Maybe I’ll give her another try.”

“What’s Muscadine like physically?”

“Very big and muscular, good-looking, body-conscious. His place is basically a gym.”

“The kind of guy who could overpower a woman and hold her still in order to stab her in the heart.”

“Easily. He could have subdued her with two fingers. But he seemed pretty calm about being questioned, so either he’s innocent or he’s honed his craft and was prepared for me. His landlady likes him, says he never causes problems. He claims he’s HIV-negative and if he’s lying, he’s not showing the effects yet. Tessa, on the other hand, looks worn-out. But now that we know about Mandy, what connection could there be to the committee?”

“Good question, but I want to finish with it, seen too many screwups that seemed perfectly logical at the time. Only one student left, right?”

“Deborah Brittain. I’ll try to get to her tomorrow.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate this, Alex.”

He put the file back in the briefcase. “Thanks for the theorizing, too. I mean it. I’d rather have theories than nothing.”

I walked him to the door. “Where to now?”

“Home for a shower and then talking to fellow gendarmes. Maybe I can turn up some other pretty ladies triple-stabbed under big trees, and retreat to the comfort of utter powerlessness.”

Cruvic’s lie about not knowing Hope before the fund-raiser stuck in my head and at 7:00 P.M., with Robin working in her shop, I took a drive over to Civic Center.

Hoping for what? A glimpse of his Bentley as he left the office? Some pretty face in the passenger window?

Futile. The pink building’s windowless facade gave no indication if anyone was in.

Not exactly welcoming architecture. The same question: Why set up practice here, away from all the other Beverly Hills medicos?

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