Flesh And Blood

Pointing to the pad. “But I don’t know for sure,” she added.

“You didn’t ask her?” said Milo.

“I tried – I can be nosy, I admit it. But like I said, Shawna was private. She just kind of blew me off, picked up her suitcase, and left.”

“So older men know how to treat a woman,” said Milo. “You think she meant financially?”

“That’s the way I took it. ’Cause Shawna liked things. Talked about becoming a psychiatrist or a plastic surgeon, getting herself a big house in one of the Three B’s – Brentwood, Bel Air, Beverly Hills – like she’d read about that in some magazine. I mean, she actually took the bus into Beverly Hills once, walked up and down Rodeo Drive – unsophisticated. Kind of adorable, really.”

“Into stuff,” said Milo.

“Clothes, cars – she said one day she’d drive a Ferrari.”

“From being a plastic surgeon or marrying one?”

“Maybe both,” said Mindy.

“She ever talk about any professors she really liked?”

“What, you think it was a professor?”

“They’re the older men on campus.”

“No, she never said.”

“Okay, thanks for your time,” said Milo, flipping through his pad, then slipping it into his pocket. Mindy smiled, and her posture had just loosened when he said, “Oh, one other thing – and this’ll stay as private as possible too. There was mention of some photos Shawna might’ve posed for, for Duke magazine-”

“Oh, please,” snapped Mindy. “That stupid idiot – the weirdo from the Cub.”

“Weird, how?”

“Obsessive. Like a stalker. He wouldn’t leave me alone. Kept dropping in at the dorm, doing his big reporter thing. The last straw was when he barged right past me, started poking around our stuff. The whole Duke thing came up because Steve had left some magazines around – Sports Illustrated, GQ. And, yes, some Playboys and Dukes too – you know guys. And the idiot has the nerve to start poking around in the stack and these loose pages fall out of the Duke and Green – the idiot – grabs them and says, ‘Whoa, is this Shawna?’ I grab them back and tell him to keep his filthy mitts off and his mind out of the gutter. And he gives me this knowing smile – this smirk – and he says, ‘What’s the matter, Mindy? Why shouldn’t Shawna pose? God gave her the bod and the hair – ’ disgusting talk. That’s when I threatened to scream and he left, but he kept hassling me, and I had to get Steve to warn him off. Maybe you should be looking at him.”

“Did he know Shawna before she disappeared?” I said.

“No – I don’t think so. I was just talking in the sense that he was weird. Anyway, that’s where that Duke stupidity came from.”

“So Shawna never posed.”

“Of course not. Why would she do that?”

“Same reason any girl does. Money, fame – or maybe she’d met an older guy who was also a photographer.”

“No,” said Mindy, “no way. Shawna wanted to be a doctor, not a centerfold. That’s not the kind of money and fame she wanted. None of us want that. It’s demeaning.”

“Shawna entered beauty contests,” said Milo.

“And hated it – Miss Olive Oil, whatever. She told me she only did it for the prize money and because she figured it would look good on her U application. She wasn’t that kind of girl.”

“What kind is that?”

“A bimbo. She was smart.” Another quick study of the ceiling. White knuckles around the gold pen. One hand let go and began tracing the outline of her narrow hip. Her face had turned salmon pink. Her eyes jumped around like pachinko balls.

“Demeaning,” she said.

Milo smiled at her. Let it ride.

CHAPTER 21

AS MINDY RETURNED to her office the corridor filled with people.

Milo said, “That Chinese food made me thirsty.”

We rode a crowded elevator down to the med school cafeteria. Amid the clatter of trays and the odors of mass fodder, we bought Cokes and settled at a rear table. Behind us was a cloudy glass wall looking out to an atrium.

“So,” he said. “Mindy.”

“Not a terrific liar,” I said. “Her complexion wouldn’t cooperate, and she was squeezing that pen hard enough to break it. Especially when she talked about the photos. Adam Green said they were loose black-and-whites, not magazine pages. Mindy tried to make him out as some nut, but he seemed pretty credible to me. And Mindy’s explanation makes no sense. Why would her boyfriend keep skin mags in her room? Green wondered if both Shawna and Mindy had followed up on a solicitation to pose. That would explain Mindy’s nervousness.”

He nodded. “Especially now that she’s an old married woman.”

“You didn’t press her on it.”

“I felt I’d gone as far with her as I could. For the time being. Even if Shawna did pose for nudies, there’s no proof it was really a Duke gig, and not some con man with a business card. Fact is, I can’t see Duke using some psycho photographer – too much at stake. And I can’t exactly march into Tony’s corporate headquarters and demand access to the photo archives.”

His beeper went off. He read the number, cell-phoned, couldn’t get a connection, and stepped outside the cafeteria. When he returned he said, “Guess who that was? Lyle Teague. Mommy doesn’t call me, but Daddy does.”

“What did he want?”

“Have I gotten anywhere, was there anything he could do? Forcing himself to be polite – you could just about see his hands clench through the phone lines. Then he slips in a question about Lauren’s estate. Who’s in charge, what’s going to happen to her stuff, do I know who’s handling her finances?”

“Oh, man.”

He shook his head. “The vulture circles. When I told him I had no idea about any of that, he started to get testy. Poor Lauren, growing up with that. Sometimes I think your job’s worse than mine.”

He bought another Coke, emptied the can.

I said, “The one thing Mindy did confirm was Shawna’s attraction to older men. That and a Duke angle – real or not – does provide a possible link between her and Lauren.”

“Dugger,” he said.

“Older man, rich, smart. A psychologist, no less. He fits Shawna’s list. And talk about business cards – he’s got paternity to back it up. For all we know he uses the magazine as a lure. Same for the intimacy study.”

“Double life, huh? Mr. Clean by day, God knows what after hours?”

“Even by day he’s strange,” I said. “He has no current clients but keeps that lab going. Putting people in a strange little room and measuring how close they get to each other. Sounds more like voyeurism than science to me. And he was running ads prior to both Shawna’s and Lauren’s disappearances.”

“His staff said Shawna had never been to Newport.”

“So he destroyed records. Or met Shawna another way. Taking glam pictures, or he used some other premise. Mindy said Shawna got all dressed up for that weekend thing back home. She didn’t buy the story, assumed the obvious: a date. Shawna was eighteen years old, hungry for the finer things, talked openly about digging older guys.