To the Bone (11 page)

Walking back to the van, Monks put his hands in his pockets. “My bad karma, catching up. I should have gone to her movie.”

Larrabee nodded distractedly. “I'm thinking about where to go with this. There's nothing to take to the cops, yet. Just suspicion, and that's worthless. Especially—” Larrabee paused, and cleared his throat.

“Especially coming from a doctor who's feeling the heat?” Monks said sourly.

“Sorry. But yes. You got anything planned for this afternoon?”

Monks shook his head. “Sit around and chew my own liver.”

“How about visiting Eden's parents? Sacramento, what's that, an hour-and-a-half drive, maybe two?”

“I'm not so sure they'd want to talk to me,” Monks said.

“I can't see that you've got anything to lose.”

Monks exhaled, then nodded. People had told him that before.

They reached the courtyard's iron gate. They paused, looking the place over once more. It was still, empty, almost desolate. Monks supposed that movie stars, especially ex–movie stars, led often-quiet lives, just like anybody else. But this place had the same feel as what he had seen in her eyes.

“Coffee looks used up,” Monks said.

Larrabee closed the gate quietly. “That's a good way to put it,” he said. “Used up.”

T
hey bought deli sandwiches and took them back to Larrabee's, eating while he tracked down the address of Eden Hale's parents. Monks opted for Italian meatballs in a thick red sauce, messy but just the ticket. He finished every bite, swabbing the plate with the last bits of bread. He had not realized he was so hungry. The Hales lived in Citrus Heights, an area of Sacramento. Larrabee called and spoke briefly to Mrs. Hale, asking if she was willing to meet. Monks gathered from what he overheard that she was reluctant—apprehensive at why a private investigator wanted to talk to her. Larrabee assured her, with professional skill, that he would explain. He did not say anything about Monks coming along.

They exchanged the van for Larrabee's Taurus, a car he liked because it was so inconspicuous. The drive to Sacramento was a straight shot on Interstate 80, across the Bay Bridge, through Berkeley and the suburban sprawl east, out into the open of Fairfield and Vacaville. Even though it was early in the summer, the fields and foothills were already brown and parched.

Traffic was bumper to bumper, most of it traveling at eighty miles an hour or trying to, and squeezing even tighter together over the long narrow causeway into West Sacramento. Monks had a musty memory of a lesson learned in physical chemistry classes—that molecules forced closer together by heat and pressure would move faster and faster, until they finally boiled over or exploded.

Neither of them was familiar with the freeways in Sacramento proper. The spiderwebs of interchanges turned into an all-out free-for-all that had them battling their way through the maniacally confident locals. Signs would appear with the suddenness of flashcards, sending them careening across several lanes of traffic, desperate to make an exit or else they'd end up trapped in the speeding streams to Stockton, Tahoe, or Reno.

Finally, with relief, they found their way to Citrus Heights and joined the relatively normal street traffic. It was just before two
P.M.

Tom and Noni Hale lived in an upscale area—a tract, like most of the city's suburbs, but older, built in the late fifties or early sixties, and more gracious. The house was ranch style, long and low with a stucco exterior and a red tile roof. It was weathered to a soft brindle color that helped give it a Spanish feel. But most of the comfortable quality came from the yard, large and private, closed in by oleander hedges and a vine-wreathed fence. Monks glimpsed orange and lemon trees in the back. He had a brief mental image of a laughing little girl, the picture of innocence, playing underneath them.

They got out of the car and walked to the door. It was significantly hotter here than in San Francisco—over a hundred, Monks was sure. The air had a different feel to it, an infinitely fine grit that seemed to abrade his skin and teeth. To the east, the snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada looked like clouds through the hazy air. The Sierra foothills looked bone-dry, too.

A woman answered the bell. She was fiftyish, attractive, with carefully applied makeup and coiffed hair tinted auburn. A loose tunic covered a suggestion of spread around her waist, but tight pedal pushers showed off calves that were still slim and firm. Her face was tense with stress.

“Mrs. Hale? My name's Larrabee. I called earlier.”

Her mouth made a little grimace. “Yes,” she said, and stepped back to let them in. Larrabee did not move.

“This is my associate, Dr. Monks,” he said.

She blinked, and then her eyes widened.

“You're—not—the one who—”

“I attended your daughter in the Emergency Room,” Monks said.

“I can't believe you had the nerve to come here.” Mouth trembling, she wheeled around and called, “
Tom.
This is that doctor!”

A man came striding into the room from another part of the house. Tom Hale had the look of a jock gone to seed, with thinning hair and a once powerful body turned shapeless. He was wearing a golf shirt and pleated white shorts. His face was red from sun, anger, and possibly booze.

“I did everything in my power to save your daughter's life, Mrs. Hale, and I've been saving lives for more than twenty-five years,” Monks said. “I wouldn't dream of coming here if I couldn't say that.”

Tom Hale ignored him and glared at Larrabee. “Is that what this is really about? You told us you had questions, but you brought him here to try to soften us up? Well, forget it.”

“I came here because I'm willing to explain in detail what happened in the Emergency Room,” Monks said. “I'll also tell you that the case will undergo a review by a team of medical specialists in the next few days. If they find that I was negligent, I'll quit practice.”

Larrabee glanced at him, astonished. Monks had not known he was going to say that until he did. But he meant it.

Noni Hale's face had gone from outraged to doubtful.

“I did come because I have questions, Mr. Hale,” Larrabee said. “Not to try to soften you up.”

Slowly, Noni moved aside from blocking the doorway. “You have to understand, this is very hard for us,” she said. Monks and Larrabee followed her into the house.

The living room was immaculate, with a leather couch and chairs and a dozen
Sunset
magazines fanned out in perfect order on the glass-topped coffee table. The photos of two young men were on prominent display. One was wearing the dress uniform of a marine lance corporal; the other was in a tux, with his arm around his beaming bride. They were all clean-cut and good-looking. There were no photos of Eden.

“When you took home Eden's things,” Larrabee said, “did you take a phone answering machine?”

“I don't think so. No.” Noni turned to her still glowering husband for confirmation. He shook his head sullenly. “I don't remember seeing one,” she said.

“Do you know if she had one?”

“I'm—not sure. I suppose so.”

Monks remembered that the parents had not known about Eden's breast surgery. It did not sound like there had been much communication between them.

“Did she have a source of income, besides her work?” Larrabee said. “From you? Or an inheritance, anything like that?”

“No. We used to help her out now and then. But not for years.” Noni looked puzzled now.

“She must have been doing pretty well, judging from her apartment.”

“She'd been on TV.
Days of Our Lives, General Hospital
, some others. But we don't really know much about that part of her life. The whole acting thing—it wasn't what we wanted. We tried our best to get her into something more respectable. She was very smart, but she didn't care about school.”

Larrabee cleared his throat. “Are you aware that she was involved in, ah, adult films?”

Tom Hale, pacing at the room's far edge, made a choked angry sound.

Noni folded her arms. “Eden made some mistakes.”

“I wasn't passing judgment,” Larrabee said.

“That was years ago,” she said, still sharp-edged. Then she sagged. “Some of our friends found out about those films, I don't know how. People at church. It was awful. They wouldn't say anything, but—the way they'd look at us.”

Tom Hale's face was getting increasingly ugly. “What's the point of this?” he demanded.

“I'm trying to put together a picture of your daughter's life,” Larrabee said.

“Why? What difference does it make now?”

“We're considering the possibility that Eden's death was caused by a toxic substance,” Monks said. “Our hospital pathologist—a man I respect a great deal—suggested that.”

“Toxic substance? What do you mean?”

“A chemical, probably.”

“Something that poisoned her, is what you're saying,” Tom Hale said.

“It would have had that effect, yes.”

“What does that have to do with the phone machine?”

Larrabee gave Monks a look that plainly said:
It's up to you.
Monks hesitated, trying to weigh the Hales' grief against his own need to push this.

“We're also considering that it might not have been accidental,” Monks said.

Noni Hale looked like she had been hit in the face. Tom stepped past her with his jaw thrust forward. His eyes were furious, the skin around them screwed up tight.

“What?
Why the goddamned hell aren't the police in on this?”

“We haven't approached them yet,” Monks said. “We're trying to establish whether we have cause to.”

“So you
don't
have any cause to?”

“What we have at this point is speculation, based on medical knowledge.”

Hale pointed a shaking forefinger at Monks. “You know what I think? I think this is a hoax. You let our daughter die, and now you're trying to weasel out of what you've got coming. Get out.”

“Tom,
wait,
” Noni said. “I want to know about this.”

“We're not saying another word without our lawyer.” The finger stabbed at Monks again. “You'd better have one, too.”

“I'd advise you to keep everything you took from her apartment,” Larrabee said. “Store it carefully, especially medicines, chemicals, anything like that. Oh, and bedding. Towels. Clothes she'd worn recently. It may need to be examined.”

Tom Hale stomped out of the room. At the door, Larrabee offered Noni a business card.

“This is not a hoax, Mrs. Hale,” he said quietly. She hesitated but took it.

Monks trudged through the heat to the Taurus. All in all, it had gone about as he had expected—no better, no worse. He wondered how much of Tom Hale's anger had to do with losing his daughter, and how much was because the family's dirty laundry was getting an airing.

 

They were about to pull away from the curb when they saw a young man come hurrying out of the Hales' backyard, at the far end of the house. He was waving at them. He trotted to the car, glancing back over his shoulder as if he feared that someone would stop him.

“I heard you talking to my parents,” he said. His speech was hesitant, with some of the syllables forced. Monks got the impression that he had learned not to stutter. His eyes were earnest and filled with appeal. “Eden
did
have an answering machine.”

So—this was one of Eden's brothers. But Monks was pretty sure he was not one of the faces in the living room photographs. He was twenty-two or-three, tall and gangly, with a long, pale face and a vertical crown of hair four inches high, dyed gold. One ear sported a stud that looked like a real diamond.

“When did you talk to her last?” Larrabee asked.

“Just a few days ago.” He glanced nervously at the house again.

“What do you say we take a drive?” Monks said. “Come on, hop in.”

He got into the backseat and sat with his hands clasped between his knees. Larrabee eased the car out into the street.

“I'm Carroll, and this is Stover,” Monks said.

“Josh. Hi.”

Eden and Joshua, Monks thought, recalling Noni Hale's concern about her church. The names did suggest a biblical theme. Although in Eden's case, it had taken a twist that clearly had not been foreseen.

“Any place in particular you'd like to go, Josh?” Larrabee asked. “Get a burger, maybe?”

“No, thanks.” His lips started to tremble and his eyes dampened. “I can't believe she's dead.”

“It's tough, really tough. Were you close?”

“We were like sisters,” Josh said, watching their faces anxiously. What he saw, or didn't see, seemed to reassure him. “Well, it's not any secret. I played with her dolls and wore her clothes when I was little. My parents tried like heck to change me, but—”

But they finally started pretending you and Eden didn't exist, Monks thought.

“It sounded like your folks weren't getting along with her,” he said.

“They stopped speaking to her after they found out about those movies. Now—they're totally freaked.”

“That's sure understandable,” Larrabee said. “When you talked to her, what kind of a mood was she in?”

“Good. She seemed happy.”

“Not worried about anybody or anything?”

“She was getting ready to have the surgery, and she was a little scared about that. But excited, too.” Josh gazed down at his clasped hands. “Do you really think somebody might have k-k-killed her?”

“It's a possibility. Can you think of anybody who might have wanted to?”

“Noooo,” he said hesitantly.

“How about her boyfriend?” Monks said. “Fiancé, whatever he is. Ray.”

“Well—he's a lowlife.”

“I gathered that.”

“You know him?” Josh asked, surprised.

“We met. He's a lowlife, but—” Monks prompted.

“He really got off on her being an actress. She used to joke that she never had to worry about him beating her up, because it might hurt her looks.”

“Did she ever take advantage of that?” Larrabee asked. “Fool around with other guys, make him jealous?”

“She had sex with people sometimes, to help her career. But Ray didn't care about that. He'd even help set it up. Like those porn movies.”

“Ray set up the movies, huh?” Larrabee said.

“When they were living in LA. It was a favor to somebody who was going to give her a part. It was supposed to be kept secret. She used a different name.”

“Did she get the part?”

Josh shook his head sadly.

Larrabee cruised on through the curving side streets, where there was not much traffic to require his attention. Sacramento was essentially flat, but they were high enough here to get glimpses of its expanse, mile after mile of tree-lined streets cut by the blue bands of its confluent rivers and the speeding glittering glass and metal streams of the freeways.

“There's one big problem with all this, Josh,” Larrabee said. “Your sister was all of a sudden spending a lot of money. She told Ray she inherited it from an aunt. Is that true?”