Self-Defense by JONATHAN KELLERMAN

“What kind of cases did he work on?”

She looked at Milo. “Same questions—no, I don’t mind. I don’t really know what kind of cases. Felix didn’t talk about his work. Truth is, I don’t think there were too many cases, toward the end. I know he did some work for lawyers, but for the life of me I can’t remember the names of any of them. I wasn’t part of his work, had my own job to do. I’m no feminist but I always worked. We never had kids, both of us just went and did our own job.”

I nodded.

She said, “I don’t mean to paint him as some kind of bum. Basically, he was a nice guy, didn’t raise his voice, even when we fought. But he could be a little . . . easy around the edges, know what I mean?”

“Cutting corners.”

“ ’Zactly. The first time I met him he tried to pay me five dollars to release an accident record to him without filling out the proper forms and paying the county fee. I turned him down and he was real good-natured about it. Laughed it off—he had a great laugh. I was only nineteen, should have known better anyway, but I didn’t. He came back the next day and asked me out. My parents hated his guts. Six months later we were married. Despite all the problems, he was a pretty good husband.”

“So he never discussed Karen Best?”

“Never,” she said. “Truth is, we didn’t discuss much, period. We kept different hours. I’d be up at six, walking the dogs—we used to have miniature poodles—in the office at eight, back by five. Felix liked to sleep late. He claimed a lot of his work had to be done at night, and maybe it was true. He was gone a lot when I was home and vice versa.” She grinned. “Maybe that’s how we stayed together thirty-one years.”

The grin dropped from her face.

“Still, his being killed was the worst thing ever happened to me after my parents passing away.” To Milo: “When you first called, I didn’t want to talk about it. But you were a gentleman, and then you told me maybe Felix didn’t die because of whoring around. That would be nice to know.”

CHAPTER

23

She showed us two pictures of herself and Felix, saying, “These are the only ones I have. When you go mobile, you keep things to the minimum.”

The first was a wedding portrait, the young couple posed in front of a painted backdrop of the Trevi Fountain. She’d been a pretty dark-haired girl, but even at nineteen her eyes had been wary. Felix wasn’t much taller than his bride, a spare man with slicked hair and Clark Gable ears. He’d worn a pencil mustache, like Gable, but had none of the actor’s strength in his face.

The second snapshot had been taken two years before Barnard’s murder. The mustache was gone and the PI was stooped, his face lined, the toupee embarrassingly obvious. He wore a gray sharkskin suit with skinny lapels and a white turtleneck and held a cigarette in a holder. Mo’s hair was bleached blond and she’d put on some weight, but despite that she did look young enough to be his daughter. The picture had been taken in a back yard, their faces shaded by a big orange tree.

“Our place in Santa Monica,” she said. “I rent it out now. The income along with my pension’s what keeps me going.”

Milo asked to borrow the more recent photo, and she said, “Sure.” We thanked her and left. As we stepped out of the trailer, she said, “Good luck to you. Let me know if you find out anything.”

“Nice lady,” I said, as we walked down to our cars.

“She fed me dinner,” said Milo. “Beans and franks and potato chips. I was ready for camp songs. Before she really opened up, we watched Jeopardy. She knows a lot about presidents’ wives.”

“How long were you there?”

“Since six.”

Four and a half hours. “Dedication.”

“Yeah, beatify me.”

“How’d you learn about Barnard’s murder?”

“Social Security said he was deceased, so I checked county Death Records and it came up homicide, which needless to say surprised me. According to the autopsy report, he got shot in the back of the head in that motel, just like she said. What she doesn’t know is that his pants were down around his ankles, but there was no evidence of sexual activity and he hadn’t ejaculated recently.”

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