“But you forgave him?”
“We sort of found each other when I started college. Suddenly I was an adult. We could have a conversation. I wanted to become an attorney. He took an interest in me.”
“You became friends,” Parker said. “Which is why you call him Lenny instead of Dad.”
She looked away again, not wanting him to see her have an emotional reaction to her memories of her father. But it was there—a thin sheen of tears in the dark eyes, a tightening along the jawline. That was some kind of steely control, Parker thought.
He supposed maybe that was what a little girl learned to do while her father was busy handicapping the sixth race at Santa Anita. And what a little girl did when she was caught between warring parents, what she did when her father left, what she did when he reappeared in her life. She maintained control. She suppressed reactions. She could survive any challenge if she didn’t let anything penetrate her armor.
“Did you know your father’s friends?” Parker asked quietly. “His enemies? Whether or not he was into something dangerous?”
She seemed to laugh a little to herself. Some private joke she had no interest in sharing with him.
“Lenny was always looking for an angle. Maybe he finally found one. I don’t know. If he was involved in something . . . I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. We talked about my classes. We talked about him wanting me to work with him after I pass the bar. We went to the racetrack.”
Her voice strained on the last sentence. Her relationship with her father had gone full circle, only this time around they were pals and he gave her the attention she had craved as a child. Craved so badly she had gone into her father’s profession to please him—consciously or not.
Parker said nothing for a moment, letting his gaze move without focus over the stuff on the desk. Abby Lowell continued her slow pace. She wanted out, he supposed. Not even innocent people wanted to be around cops. He had no way of knowing how innocent she was or wasn’t.
“You’re in charge of making the funeral arrangements?” he asked. “Does he have any other family?”
“He has a brother in upstate New York. He has a daughter from his first marriage, Ann. I haven’t seen her in years. I think she moved to Boston. And three ex-wives. None of them would cross the street to spit on his corpse.”
“You’re the only forgiving one in the bunch.”
She didn’t comment, didn’t acknowledge that he had spoken. She picked up a black Coach leather tote from the floor, and put it on the desk. It matched her boots.
“Do you mind if I smoke, Detective?” she asked, already digging a cigarette out of a pack of Newports.
He let her get it to her mouth, lighter poised, before he said, “Yes, I do.”
She cut him a look from under her brows and lit up anyway. As she blew a stream of smoke at the nicotine- stained ceiling, she said, “I only asked for form’s sake.”
She leaned against the side of the desk. Her profile belonged in an Erte drawing, the long, graceful, subtly curving lines of the early Art Deco movement. Her skin was like porcelain. Her hair spilled down behind her like a dark waterfall. There appeared to be nothing of Lenny in her looks. Parker wondered if the other daughter had been so lucky. He wondered if this one was trying to distract him.
“Did you speak to anyone last night after you left here, Ms. Lowell?”
“No. I went home.”
“You didn’t call your mother? Tell her her ex checked out?”
“My mother died five years ago. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry,” Parker said automatically. “You didn’t call a friend? A boyfriend?”
She sighed, impatient, stubbed out the cigarette, started to move again. “What are you trying to get at, Detective? If you have a question, ask it. We don’t have to play twenty questions about my personal life. I have arrangements to make, and I have a class at eleven. Can we get on with it?”
Parker cocked a brow. “A class? No day off to mourn, to try to grasp the idea that your father was murdered less than twenty-four hours ago?”
“My father is dead. I can’t change that.” Her pace picked up a step. “He was murdered. I can’t grasp that idea. I don’t know how anyone possibly could. What good would it do me to stay home in my pajamas, contemplating the meaninglessness of life?” she asked. “I may seem cold to you, Detective Parker, but I’m dealing with this the only way that makes any sense to me—moving forward, doing what has to be done because no one else is going to do it for me.”
“Cope now, fall apart later,” Parker said, rising from the bloodstained chair. He positioned himself where she had been, leaning against the end of the desk. “I’ve been a cop nearly twenty years, Ms. Lowell. I know survivors deal with grief in their own way.
“I had a case once,” he said. “A woman murdered in a carjacking. Her coat caught in the door when the perp shoved her out. She was dragged nearly a block. It was horrible. Her husband was a reasonably successful artist, a painter. His way of coping, of exorcising grief and guilt, and all the rest of it, was to lock himself in his studio and paint. He painted for thirty-six hours straight, no sleep, no food. For thirty-six hours he raged in that studio, hurling paint, brushes, cans, anything he could put his hands on. The whole time he was screaming and shouting and sobbing. His assistant called me because she was afraid he’d had a psychotic break, and worried he might try to kill himself.
“Finally everything went silent. The guy came out of the studio, spoke to no one, took a shower, and went to bed. The assistant and I went into the studio to see what he’d been doing all that time. He’d done a dozen or so big canvases. Incredible work, brilliant, miles beyond anything he’d done before. Pollock would have wept to see it. Every emotion tearing this man apart was up there, raw, angry, crushing grief.
“When the guy woke up, he went back into the studio and destroyed every one of them. He said they were private, not meant for anyone else to see. He buried his wife, and went on with his life.”
Abby Lowell was staring at him, trying to figure out how she was supposed to react, what she was supposed to think, what kind of trick this might be.
Parker spread his hands. “Everyone handles it the only way they can.”
“Then why were you judging me?”
“I wasn’t. I need to know the why of everything, Ms. Lowell. That’s my job. For instance, I need to know why it said in the
Something flashed in her eyes, across her face, there and gone. Not anger. Surprise, maybe. Then the poker face. “I don’t know. It isn’t true. You know it isn’t true,” she said defensively. “I was at the restaurant when I got the call. And I don’t know any reporters. I wouldn’t talk to them if I did.”
“And you didn’t speak to anyone after you left this office last night?”
Exasperation. “I told you. No.” She checked her watch, shifted her weight, put her hand on her purse.
“How about before? Did you call anyone from the restaurant or from your car on your way over here? A friend, a relative?”
“No. And I’m sure you can get my cell phone records if you don’t believe me.” She put the strap of her bag over her shoulder and looked toward the door to the front of the office. “I have to go,” she said bluntly. “I have a meeting with a funeral director at eleven.”
“I thought you had a class.”
The dark eyes snapped with annoyance. “The class is at one. I misspoke. I have a lot on my agenda, Detective. You know how to contact me if you need anything more.”
“I can find you.”
She started past him to leave. Parker reached out and gently caught her by the arm. “Wouldn’t you like to know when your father’s body is going to be released from the morgue? I’m sure the funeral director will need that information.”
Abby Lowell looked him in the eye. “His body won’t be released until after the autopsy. I’m told that could be several days, or as much as a week. I want everything arranged so I can get this over with as soon as possible.”
Parker let her go. She had the composure of a knife-thrower’s assistant, he had to give her that. He wondered if there was anything more behind it than a lonely little girl protecting herself.
His gaze drifted across the desk as he tossed these thoughts and observations around in his head. She’d left
