It's Not a Pretty Sight (20 page)

“Goody always sounds that way,” Gunner said, trying to finish his chiliburger and talk on the phone at the same time.

“Yeah, well, I’m just tellin’ you what he sounds like to me. So if somethin’ happens later, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Jesus. The man’s just trying to get me to do a job for him, Mickey. That’s all. He offered it to me once, and I turned him down, so now he’s trying to
hound
me into taking it. He’s one of those people who don’t know how to take no for an answer.”

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

Mickey still sounded concerned.

“All right, all right. I’ll go see the sonofabitch right after I talk to Serrano. That okay with you? Will that make you feel better?”

“I’ll feel better when you start payin’ me for this shit. That’s when I’ll feel better. Doin’ this mess for free is gettin’ old, I swear to God.”

“One day, I’ll make it all up to you, Mickey. I promise,” Gunner said.

But Mickey had better sense than to believe him.

twelve

T
RINI
S
ERRANO
’
S STUDIO WAS IN
H
OLLYWOOD
, on Melrose Avenue between Kenmore and Edgemont, not far from the campus of Los Angeles City College. It was a ground-floor storefront in an old, two-story brick building, with a large display window and a half-glazed door to match. There were no markings out front, but a mannequin occupied the display window; a nude female, posed in a crouch, hands up to guard its face, like someone cowering under the blows of an ongoing beating. The prototypical abused woman: naked, helpless, her shame exposed for all the world to see.

Beyond the grimy glass pane of the door, Gunner could see someone working inside; a Caucasian woman, medium height and weight, dressed in a crisp white blouse and dark slacks, arranging photographs on the west wall. He knocked on the door and she turned around, a mop-topped brunette with a kind face and plenty of gray around the ears. Old enough to be somebody’s grandmother, maybe, but still more attractive than some women would ever live to be.

Another vaguely familiar face from Nina’s funeral last Saturday.

Without waiting for her to do the honors, Gunner let himself in through the unlocked door and said, “Hi. I’m looking for Trini Serrano.”

Moving to greet him, right hand extended, the brunette smiled warmly and said, “You must be Aaron Gunner. Welcome.” She shook his hand. “Wendy Singer told me I’d probably be hearing from you. Come in please, make yourself at home.”

She ushered him further inside and watched with some satisfaction as he took a look around, admiring the place. Her photographs were everywhere. Black-and-whites of assorted sizes, mounted in double rows on opposing walls. A graphic litany of women riding the emotional roller coaster that was life with an abusive partner; women of all colors and all ages. Laughing during the deceptive lulls between bad times, crying when the bad times inevitably returned. Bruised and battered, ducking away from punches and clawing at hands clamped around their throats, hiding behind locked bathroom doors and shivering under the covers of unmade beds. And here and there, their mates, the lethal monsters, almost all of them men, to whom they owed their unenviable existence: faces contorted by rage, spittle flying from open mouths, hands clenched tight around anything that could be used as a weapon. Broomsticks, leather belts, hiking boots, and pool cues …

“It’s not a pretty sight, is it?” Serrano asked.

Gunner turned, startled. Without realizing it, he’d been staring in silence now for a full minute.

“What some of us do to the people we claim to love, I mean,” Serrano continued.

“Oh. No. It’s not,” Gunner said, his eyes drifting back to the photographs on one wall as if of their own accord. “It’s not a pretty sight at all.”

“I guess you wonder why I do it. Spend all my time taking pictures like these.”

Gunner faced her again and said, “I imagine you do it because you think it’s important.”

Serrano smiled, making the crow’s-feet at the corners of both eyes widen beautifully. “That’s part of it.”

“And what’s the other part?”

“The other part is that it pays better than wedding pictures.” She smiled again, enjoying herself, but Gunner couldn’t bring himself to do the same. “Come on, Mr. Gunner. It’s just a joke. I take my work very seriously, I assure you.”

“I’m sure,” the investigator said.

“I was just putting some new prints up when you came in. We can talk out here while I finish, or we can go back to my office and talk there, if you prefer. Whatever makes you feel more comfortable.”

“Out here is fine,” Gunner said.

“Wendy tells me you were an old boyfriend of Nina’s,” Serrano said, after he had declined her offer of something to drink. She was peeling yet another photograph off the west wall as she spoke. “Do you mind if I ask what happened? That is, why it is you two never got married?”

“I’m afraid that’s a long story.”

“You couldn’t make a short one out of it? Just this once?”

“I suppose I could. You don’t mind telling me first why you’re interested.”

“I’m interested because I think it might tell me something about you I should know. Like whether you’re a good guy, or a bad guy, for instance. If you’re a good guy, I can talk to you freely, without worrying about what you might do with the information I give you. But if you’re a bad guy …”

“I’m not a bad guy,” Gunner said.

“Good. But tell me what happened between you and Nina anyway.”

“Well, like I said, it’s a long story. But the short of it is, I walked away from her. Thinking I could do better.”

“And did you?”

“I haven’t yet. And I probably never will. One of life’s little lessons learned in retrospect.”

“Ah. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s a waste of energy, being sorry.”

“Yes. I’ve noticed that.” She turned away from her work to smile at him again. “Okay. Your turn.”

Gunner asked her what, exactly, Wendy Singer had told her about him.

“Just that you’re an old friend of Nina’s who’s investigating her murder. Because you aren’t completely certain it was her husband who killed her.”

“And your feelings about that are?”

“What? That you aren’t certain her husband killed her?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have
any
feelings about it. I’m not so sure he did it either.”

It wasn’t what he had expected her to say, and his face must have shown it.

“Does that surprise you?” Serrano asked.

“Just a little,” Gunner said.

“Why? I’m not the first person to say something like that, am I?”

“As a matter of fact, you are. Everyone else I’ve spoken to so far not only believes her husband killed her, but that he was the only one who could have possibly had a motive for doing so. They say Nina was too well loved to have been killed by anyone else.”

“Oh, she was certainly well loved,” Serrano said. “And deservedly so. Nina was a beautiful human being. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t people in this world who might have wished harm to her.”

“Such as?”

“Such as Shirley Causwell. Another resident over at Sisterhood House who was there while Nina was. And a man named Gary Stanhouse. Her ex-boss, works at a law firm Nina used to work for downtown. Is that a straight enough answer for you?”

“The straightest I’ve had all day,” Gunner said.

Serrano put down the photograph she was holding and lowered herself into a nearby chair, no longer willing to divide her attention between Gunner and her work. “Have you spoken to Shirley yet? Is she still there at the house?”

“She’s still there. And I spoke to her while I was there yesterday, yes.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said the only two people she ever saw Nina have words with were Agnes Felker and you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Both she and Angela Glass told me Nina wasn’t speaking to you the last few days of her stay there, and Shirley said she thought she knew why. Seems she heard part of an argument you and Nina had in the laundry room once, over you going through Nina’s things at the house without clearing it with Nina first.” He waited for Serrano to deny it, but she didn’t say a word. “You have any idea what she was talking about?”

“You mean, do I recall the conversation she was referring to? Yes. I remember it. But I also remember that Shirley couldn’t have caught more than the last ten or fifteen words of it, so how she can say she knows what it was about is beyond me.”

“It wasn’t about you going through Nina’s things without her permission?”

“No. Not really.” Serrano hesitated. Either to formulate a lie, or to decide how much of the truth he needed to hear. “What we were really talking about was a bracelet I gave her. Nina had taken the inscription I’d put on it the wrong way, and wouldn’t wear it. So I’d gone through her things to find it, just to make sure it was still there. I was afraid she’d thrown it out. That day down in the laundry room, I was trying to explain to her one more time what the inscription meant. I was apologizing for not having made my meaning more clear.”

“What was the inscription?”

“I’d rather not say. I’m sorry.”

“Was it something along the lines of ‘For Nina, you are much stronger and more beautiful than you know’?”

Again, Serrano hesitated, clearly surprised to hear her own words recited back to her so accurately. “You’ve seen the photograph,” she said.

“Yes. It was at her mother’s. A beautiful piece of work. You captured Nina perfectly, I thought.”

He wasn’t going to tell her he actually had the photograph they were talking about with him now, in the inside pocket of his coat. He didn’t want to take the chance that she would ask for it back.

“Thanks. I always thought so too,” Serrano said.

“But we digress. I was asking if the two inscriptions were similar. The one on the photograph, and the one on this bracelet you say you gave her.”

Serrano remained silent.

“I tell you what. It’s a personal matter, I can see that. That’s why I’m not asking for any specifics, you don’t want to give me any. All I’d like to know is whether the inscription on the bracelet was as suggestive as the one on the photograph. A simple yes or no will do.”

“Define what you mean by ‘suggestive,’ Mr. Gunner.”

“I mean something that could be interpreted by some as having a sexual or romantic undertone to it, Ms. Serrano. As would something you might write to your lover, for example.”

“My ‘lover’? You think Nina was my
lover
?”

“I think that’s one way to read the inscription you wrote on the back of the photograph. Yes. You can’t see that?”

Serrano was shaking her head emphatically, stung by the accusation. “I don’t believe this,” she said.

“You don’t believe what?”

“I don’t believe you’re just as small-minded as she is. That’s what. I knew she’d tell you, of course, but I thought you might be sharp enough to see that there’s nothing to what she says. Nothing whatsoever.”

“Who?”

“If anyone’s to blame for what happened to Nina, it’s her. She was the one who drove Nina to leave that house as abruptly as she did. If she’d just left us alone—”

“You’re going to have to forgive me, Ms. Serrano, but I don’t have the slightest idea who you’re talking about,” Gunner said.

“Please, Mr. Gunner. I think you know very well who I’m talking about.”

“It’s your privilege to think whatever you like. But the fact remains I don’t.”

Serrano didn’t say anything for a long time, looking for either the glimmer of truth or deceit in his eyes. “I’m talking about Wendy,” she said. “Who else?”

“Wendy Singer?”

“Yes. Wendy Singer. What other Wendy do you know?”

“She thought you and Nina were having an affair? Is that what I hear you saying?”

“She didn’t just think it. She was convinced of it. She didn’t tell you that when you talked to her yesterday?”

Gunner shook his head.

“If that’s true, I’m surprised,” Serrano said. “I thought sure that’s where you’d gotten it, this idea that Nina and I were anything more than just friends.”

“No.”

“That’s why I’m no longer welcome there, you see. She thinks I’m some kind of lesbian Lothario. That my photography is all a front for my activities as a predator of tender young girls like Nina.”

“And it’s not.”

“No. It’s not. First of all, because my work is not a front for
anything;
to suggest mat it might be is gravely insulting. And secondly, because a person’s sexuality is nothing to be ashamed of. If I
were
the lesbian seductress Wendy thinks I am, it wouldn’t be a secret to anyone, I assure you. I don’t believe in that kind of duplicity.”

“Then what makes Singer think you and Nina were sexually involved?”

“I couldn’t tell you that. No more than she could tell me. I think the woman’s just a prude, and she’s very over-protective of the women she takes in. Which is understandable, considering how fragile and vulnerable they often are. But you put those two things together—a prude’s sensibilities and a mother hen’s overprotectiveness—and that’s what you get. A homophobe with an overactive imagination.”