“You think he did it?”
“I think it sounds like he’s running from something. Maybe nasty impulses. Maybe he’s close to her in a way that scares him, so he split to the desert to be alone with his goddamn thoughts.”
“Oh, man,” I said. “Just what Lucy needs.”
I thought about my brief meeting with Peter, trying to remember as much as I could about him. Pale face, sleepy voice. Cold hands. Bulky sweater on a hot day. Eager to get back to the car. Looking down at his lap. . . .
“What if he’s running from something else?” I said.
I described the brother.
Milo looked at me. His big black eyebrows were up.
“Junkie?”
“It fits, doesn’t it? His unemployment, Lucy’s defensive attitude—evasive, actually. I remember her saying he was always trying to protect her “even though he’—and then she broke off the sentence. When I pressed she said, Even though he isn’t the toughest guy in the world. But it wasn’t what she started to say. I know it’s conjecture, but he really wanted to get back inside that car. When I glanced back, he was sitting low in the seat. As if he was doing something. Lucy looked back too, and that session she dropped her chronic smile. He could have been fixing right there. She could have known.”
“Junkie,” he repeated. “Could be. Hungry hypes don’t wait for a corner suite and fresh linens.”
“It would explain his cutting out on Lucy in her time of need. Talking to everyone else but her because she’d know he was traveling to make a buy, and he didn’t want to have to explain. Doesn’t lots of stuff come into New Mexico from the border?”
He nodded. “But no shortage of stuff right here in L.A.”
“Maybe he couldn’t buy here. Because he’d run up some serious debts—that could be why he left town. Avoiding creditors. The kind who don’t send overdue notices.” My stomach tightened. “For all we know, the creditors know about Lucy and are trying to use her as leverage. Maybe those phone hang-ups were real. Maybe someone really did break in and mess with her underwear.”
“No one broke in,” he said. “She said there was no evidence of that.”
“Okay, so they tossed Puck’s place and found the key to Lucy’s apartment.”
“That’s awfully subtle for people like that,” he said. “They’d enjoy breaking in.”
“Maybe it’s at a subtle stage. Intimidating him so he makes a big score for them and settles up. Maybe he’s a longtime seller. How else would he pay for his habit without a job? Lucy’s got a family trust fund that pays her a thousand dollars a month, so he might too. But with any kind of habit, a thousand a month wouldn’t go very far.”
“Trust fund from Lowell’s side of the family or the mother’s?”
“Lowell’s.”
“Daddy abandons the kids, but supports them?”
“It’s a generation-skipping thing set up by his mother for taxes. He may have no control over it.”
“Leverage,” he said. “Yeah, be nice to blame it all on the dope demons and restore her credibility. But I still don’t see any connection to her head in the oven.”
“What if someone drugged her and put her there? She’s a creature of routine, has a drink of juice, every night, watches PBS. That would explain the drapes being open—they wanted her to be found. Wanted to send a message to Puck. Wouldn’t that be something? We’re all assuming she’s lying or denying, and she’s telling the truth?”
He rubbed his face. “It would absolutely be something, Alex. It would be Fantasyland, ’cause there’s no knot on her head and the hospital found nothing on her dope panel.”
“What if they gave her something the panel doesn’t test for, like chloroform?”
“Hey,” he said, “you wanna theorize, I say it’s more likely Pucky himself tried to gas her—pissed ’cause she wouldn’t give him dope money. Or maybe he’s just after her chunk of the trust fund and split town to give himself an alibi. And he’s calling Ken to find out if she’s dead. You like that one, I can make up six more like it for a quarter. Couple more quarters, I’ll fill your day with fantasy.”