Sheila Quick said, “Gavin used to be neat. Before the accident. I tried, I gave up.” She shrugged. Shame colored her face. She closed the door. “Some battles aren’t worth fighting. Do you have kids?”
We shook our heads.
“Maybe you’re the lucky ones.”
*
She insisted we leave before the doctor arrived, and when Milo tried to argue, she pressed a hand to her temple and grimaced, as if he was causing her great pain.
“Let me be with my thoughts. Please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He got the address for Stan and Paula Bartell. Same street, Camden Drive, but the eight hundred block, one mile north, on the other side of the business district.
“The Flats,” Sheila Quick reiterated. “They’ve got some place.”
*
When you see stock footage of Beverly Hills in the movies, it’s almost always the Flats. Directors favor the sun-splotched, palm-lined drives like Foothill and Beverly, but any of the broad streets wedged between Santa Monica and Sunset will do when the connotation is primal California affluence. In the Flats, teardowns began at 2 million bucks and pumped-up piles of stucco can fetch more than triple that amount.
Tourists from the East usually have the same impression of the area: so clean, so green, such miserly lots. Houses that would grace multiple acreage in Greenwich or Scarsdale or Shaker Heights are shoehorned onto half-acre rectangles. That doesn’t stop the residents from erecting thirteen-thousand-square-foot imitations of Newport mansions that elbow their neighbors.
The Bartell house was one of those, a hulking, flat-faced wedding cake set behind a pitiful front yard that was mostly circular driveway. White fencing topped with gold finials shielded the property. A security sign promising ARMED RESPONSE hung near the electric gate. Through the fence, double doors with frosted-glass panes were backlit teal green. Above them, a giant porthole showcased a white-hot chandelier. No vehicles in front; a four-car garage provided ample shelter for automotive pets.
Milo inhaled, and said, “Once more with feeling,” and we got out. Cars zipped by on Sunset, but North Camden Drive was still. Beverly Hills has a thing for trees, and the ones lining Camden were magnolias that would’ve loved South Carolina. Here they were stunted by drought and smog, but a few were flowering, and I could smell their fragrance.
Milo punched a button on the squawk box. A man barked, “Yes?”
“Mr. Bartell?”
“Who is this?”
“Police.”
“About what?”
“Could we come in please, sir?”
“What’s this about?”
Milo frowned. “Your daughter, sir.”
“My—hold on.”
Seconds later, lights flooded the front of the house. Now I saw that the glass doors were flanked by orange trees in pots. One was failing. The doors swung open, and a tall man walked across the driveway. He stopped fifteen feet from us, shaded his eyes with his hands, took three steps more, into the floodlights, like a performer.
“What’s this all about?” said a deep, hoarse voice.
Stan Bartell stepped up close. Late fifties, Palm Springs tan. A big man with powerful shoulders, a hawk nose, thin lips, a bulky chin. Waxy white hair was drawn back in a ponytail. He wore black-framed eyeglasses, a thin gold chain around his neck, and an iridescent burgundy velvet robe that brushed the ground.
Milo produced his badge, but Bartell didn’t come any closer.
“What about my daughter?”
“Sir, it would really be better if we came in.”
Bartell removed his glasses and studied us. His eyes were close-set, dark, analytic. “You’re Beverly Hills police?”
“L.A.”
“Then what are you doing here—I’m going to check you out, so if this is a scam, you’ve been warned.” He returned to the house, closed the doors behind him.
We waited on the sidewalk. Headlights appeared at the south end of the block, followed by bass thumps as a Lincoln Navigator drove by slowly. Behind the wheel was a kid who looked no older than fifteen, baseball hat worn backwards, hip-hop music bellowing from the interior. The SUV continued to Sunset, cruising the Strip.
Five minutes passed with no word or sign from Stan Bartell.
I said, “How much detail will Beverly Hills PD give him?”
“Who knows?”
We waited another couple of minutes. Milo ran his hand along the white fence slats. Eyed the security sign. I knew what he was thinking: all the safety measures in the world.