CHAPTER 12
MILO CAME BACK shaking his head. “Nothing – maybe she kept her pills in her purse.”
I said, “Here’s something,” showed him the inscription, told him about the ad that had run before Shawna Yeager’s disappearance.
“Ads probably run all the time.”
“Not really,” I said. “From what I saw, they tend to come and go.”
“Did you find any ads before Lauren went missing?”
“No, but she could’ve seen it elsewhere.” It sounded feeble, and both of us knew it. He was enough of a friend not to dismiss me, but his silence was eloquent.
“I know,” I said. “Two girls, a year apart, no striking links. But maybe there were other girls in between.”
“Blondes disappearing on the Westside? I’d know if there were. At this point I’m not eliminating anything, but I’ve got a full plate right now: get hold of Lauren’s phone records, find out if she had a computer, look for possible witnesses to a pickup. Maybe find some known associates too. There’s got to be someone other than Salander and her mom who knew her. If all that dead-ends, I’ll take a closer look at Shawna.” He returned the textbook to me. “
“Theoretically it could be one of her professors – Gene Dalby or another one named de Maartens. Neither of them remembers her. Big lecture classes.”
“Well,” he said, “I can’t exactly interrogate them because of this – hell if it means anything at all. The main thing’s still the money. Her job and the way she was killed – cold, professional, the body left out there, maybe as a warning – smacks to me of her getting in someone’s way. That’s why I’m not jumping on the Yeager girl’s case – Leo Riley felt that one was sexual. If Lauren deposited fifty a year, who knows how much she was taking in. And that makes me wonder if some of her income came from supplemental sources. Like blackmail. Who better than a call girl to hoard nasty secrets and try to profit from them.”
“That would also be reason to make off with her computer.”
“Precisimoso. Big bucks at stake. College profs don’t exactly fit the bill.”
“Some college profs are independently wealthy. Actually, Gene Dalby is.”
“You keep mentioning him. Something about him bug you?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Old classmate, tried to be helpful.”
“Okay, then – onward.”
“So we just let the intimacy project lie? This might be a current number.”
He took the book back, produced his cell phone, muttered, “Probably gonna get ear cancer,” and punched in the number. Nothing in his eyes told me he’d connected, but as he listened he groped in his pocket for his pad, wrote something down, hung up.
“‘Motivational Associates of Newport Beach,’” he said. “Friendly female voice: ‘Our hours are ten A.M. to blah blah blah.’ Sounds like one of those marketing outfits.”
“Intimacy and marketing,” I said.
“Why not? Intimacy sells product. Lauren sure would’ve known that. So this was a moonlight for her. She liked money, took another part-time gig. Make sense?”
“Perfect sense.”
“Look,” he said, “feel free to follow up on it. Call the other professor too – de whatever-his-name-is. Something bugs you, let me know. Right now what bugs me is no computer. I need a ride back to the station to pick up my car, see if any messages came in, then I’m packing it in. You up for chauffeur duty, or should I lean on one of the boys in blue?”
“I’ll drive you,” I said.
“What a guy,” he said airily as he strode out of the room.
As we left the apartment he said, “I’m really sorry the way this turned out.”
Nine o’clock the next morning, I phoned Dr. Simon de Maartens at home, and he picked up, sounding distracted. When I introduced myself his voice chilled.
“I already returned your call.”
“Thanks for that, but there are still a few questions-”
“Questions?” he said. “I told you I don’t remember the girl.”
“So you have no memory of her talking to you about doing some research.”
“Research? Of course not. She was an undergrad, only grad students are permitted into my lab. Now-”
“The perception course Lauren took from you,” I said. “Did the class subdivide into smaller discussion groups?”
“Yes, yes – that’s typical.”
“Would it be possible to get a list of the students in Lauren’s section?”
“No,” he said. “It would not be possible – You claim to be faculty and you are asking for something like that? That is appalling – What is your involvement in all this?”
“I knew Lauren. Her mother’s going through hell, and she asked me to be involved.”
“Well… I’m sorry about that, but it’s a confidentiality issue.”
“Being enrolled in a study section is confidential?” I said. “Not the last time I checked the APA ethics code.”
“Everything about academic freedom is confidential, Dr. Delaware.”
“Fine,” I said. “Thanks for your time. The police will probably be getting in touch with you.”
“Then I will tell them exactly the same thing.”
Click.
I called Milo. No answers at home, in the car, or at his desk. I told his voice mail: “De Maartens was not helpful. He bears attention.”
A live woman answered at Motivational Associates of Newport Beach, informing me in a bored-to-death singsong that the office was closed.
“Is this the answering service?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When does the office open?”
“They’re in and out.”
“Is there another office?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“L.A.”
“Do you have the number?”
“One moment, I have to take another call.”
She put me on hold long enough for me to wonder if the line had gone dead. Finally, she came back on with a 310 phone number. I called it and got her partner in ennui.
“The office is closed.”
“When will it be open?”
“I don’t know, sir – this is the service.”
“What’s the office’s address, please?”
“One moment, I have to take another call.”
I hung up and looked it up in the phone book.
The twelve thousand block of Wilshire Boulevard put Motivational Associates’ L.A. branch in Brentwood, just east of Santa Monica. A couple of miles from the U and even closer to the Sepulveda alley where Lauren’s body had been found.
But no sense dropping by and confronting a bolted door. I booted up the computer and plugged in “Motivational
