“Was the place an outright bordello?”
“More of an anything-goes place. I knew it well from when I used to ride Westside patrol. Drugs, assaults, all-around obnoxious behavior. The detectives on the case assumed Barnard was a john who got in trouble.”
“He was shot,” I said. “Wouldn’t a hooker have been more likely to stab him?”
“There are no rules, Alex. Some of the girls pack fire, or a pimp could have killed him; lots of them carry.”
“Did anyone hear the shot?”
“Nope. Clerk discovered his body, cleaning up. By the time he called it in, place was empty.”
“Deaf clerk?”
“It’s a busy street, he had the TV blasting, who knows? There was no reason to think it was anything more than Barnard picking the wrong time and place for a blowjob.”
“And now?”
“Maybe still. I called you because the fact that he was murdered knocks the Karen Best case up another notch on the Intrigue Scale. As does Mo’s feeling that he came into dough.”
“Best told me Karen was Barnard’s last case,” I said. “And Barnard was killed a year after Karen disappeared. You think he could have been blackmailing someone about Karen and they finally got tired of paying?”
“Or he got too greedy. On the other hand, he could have been blackmailing someone about another case totally unrelated to Karen. Or maybe he got the T-bird by saving pennies behind his wife’s back. Or at the track. She said all he left her was three thousand bucks—how much would a T-bird have cost back then?”
“Probably six, seven thousand.”
“Not major-league blackmail. We’re still a long way from evidence. Barnard could have been shot simply because some whore did get mad at him.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“I’ll see if I can turn up anything more on him. Then I guess the logical thing is to try to find those Sand Dollar people and see if they remember anything about Karen.”
He looked through the trees at the restaurant. No cars in the lot and only a few lights were on.
“I went in there tonight looking for Doris Reingold, but she’s off for a couple of days. . . . The thing that bothers me about Barnard’s investigation is if Karen was hired by the Sheas to work the Sanctum party, why wouldn’t anyone at the Dollar have mentioned it?”
“You think someone told Barnard and he left it out intentionally?”
“Who knows? Like you said, maybe he was just an incompetent boob and didn’t ask the right questions. Or he got answers and didn’t think they were important.”
“Malibu Sheriffs interviewed the same people,” I said. “If Karen was working the party, why wasn’t it in their reports?”
“Maybe she never was at the party. Or could be the sheriffs found out she was and didn’t think it was important either.”
“The last place she was seen wasn’t important?”
“Her serving hors d’oeuvres to five hundred people isn’t much of a lead, Alex. She could have been picked up by some party animal and run into trouble later. What reason would anyone have to suspect she was somewhere on the grounds, six feet under?”
We reached the bluff and I walked him to the Porsche. He opened the driver’s door and fished for car keys.
“I told Lucy about Karen,” I said.
“Oh?”
“I’m still not sure it was right, but I followed my instincts. It was either continue to hold back information from her, and take the chance it would destroy our rapport, or be straight.”
“How’d she react?”
“Initial shock. Then she warmed to the idea that the dream might actually mean something. Learning the truth’s become her mission.”
“Great.”
“I’m doing my best to keep the lid on. So far, she’s being reasonable. She asked for hypnosis to enhance her memory, and I agreed to try some basic relaxation. I thought she’d be really susceptible, and at first she seemed to be. Then she fell asleep. Which means she’s resisting strongly. She slept very deeply and her dream pattern’s fragmented. I actually watched her go in and out of several phases. I’m not surprised she’s a sleepwalker and has chronic nightmares. She’d like to believe she sleepwalked her way into the kitchen and put her head in the oven, and I guess it’s possible. Sleep’s her great escape. She blocks things out by dozing off.”