Flesh And Blood

remotely friendly, the ready rap, the body, the clothes. The clothes were always the tip-off. A girl who shouldn’t have been able to afford five grand worth of couture but wore it well.”

LeMoyne smiled and closed the script. “Not that it helped. If you knew the difference between real class and bullshit. Every one of those girls had a certain… commonness. Trailer-park trying to morph into Grace Kelly.”

He crossed his legs. “Beleeeve me, Detective, that takes more than aerobics and a crash course on what fork to use. Still, you can fool most of the people…” To Salander: “She was a hooker, Andy.”

Salander gazed up at Milo.

Milo said, “She did have that in her past, Andy.”

“Oh…” Another labored sigh. “I’m tres naive, aren’t I? I guess it was right there in front of me, but I just didn’t want to know – Not that it would’ve mattered. I don’t judge, why should I judge? And I swear the whole time we lived together she never did anything illegal or brought anyone home – I guess when she took those long weekends she was… She told me… I can’t be blamed for believing her. Okay, fine, I’m naive and stupid.” Staring at LeMoyne.

LeMoyne shook his head and reopened the script.

Milo said, “What did she tell you about the long weekends, Andy?”

Salander squirmed. “I didn’t say anything when you first came around because I wasn’t sure – And it looks like now maybe it didn’t have anything to do with it. Now that you’re telling me she was… The thing is, I didn’t want to make things complicated-”

LeMoyne’s laughter cut him off. “You’re babbling, Andrew. They have no clue what the hell you’re talking about.”

Milo edged closer to Salander.

“What, Andy?”

“Her family,” said Salander. “Her real family. She said she was going out to Malibu to reconnect with them. Since she’d learned who her real father was. Tony Duke. I guess she was… fantasizing, right? It’s the world’s greatest fantasy, right? Live your life one way and then find out all of a sudden that you’re on a whole different level.”

Milo sat down on the bed.

So did I.

Milo’s notepad was out. His tie was loose. “When and how did she learn about this, Andrew?”

“When was last year,” said Salander. “Maybe a year ago – just before we started rooming together. How is her mother told her. The two of them had started relating again. They hadn’t talked for a long time, and then Jane started making overtures and they began trying to patch things up. Slowly – having lunch once in a while. It was at one of those lunches that Jane told her. They’d finished off a bottle of wine, gotten all girlie-chatty, and Jane just spilled it out. She said she’d met Duke while working as a flight attendant on a jet Duke had chartered – taking some models and a bunch of other people to the big island of Hawaii for a big photo spread and partying. Jane ended up serving Duke personally, and he invited her to spend the layover at some mansion he was renting. And… it happened. Jane and Lo’s dad – the one she thought was her dad, the asshole – were going together but hadn’t decided to get married. When Jane found out she was pregnant, she convinced him to marry her.”

“Talk about your false pretenses,” said Justin LeMoyne. “It really does have story elements.”

“The funny thing,” said Salander, “finding out about Duke caused things to make sense for Lauren. Like why she couldn’t stand her father – the one who raised her. She said she’d never related to her father, she’d always felt like a stranger to him – like there’d been this wall between them. Now she understood it.”

“Jane never told him about Lauren’s true paternity,” I said.

“Lauren said no way, his temper was too bad for that. The marriage broke up anyway, but Jane told Lauren the whole time she was pregnant, she was paranoid he would find out, do something violent. Luckily, Lauren resembled Jane.”

“Paranoid, but she kept the baby,” I said.

“She told Lauren she’d always wanted a baby.”

Tish Teague’s outburst came back to me. Recounting Lauren’s cruel parting comment: “You don’t deserve a damn thing from me – you’re not even my family and neither is he and neither are your rugrats.”

No blood connection between Lauren and Lyle’s little girls, yet Lauren had sought them out, brought them Christmas presents, only to withdraw. Ambivalent. How lonely she must’ve been…

“So Jane told Lauren about a year ago,” said Milo. “When did Lauren tell you?”

“Soon after I moved in – maybe a couple of months later. At first, after we started rooming together, she was real up – happy all the time. Probably ’cause she’d just found out. But then her mood changed – she slid way down. Being a natural listener, I kept trying to help her open up… When she did, it was after I’d cooked this big Italian dinner and we’d finished a whole bottle of Chianti – cheap wine’s the great conversation starter, right?”

Milo shifted his bulk. “What was her mood when she told you?”

“At first she was kind of giddy about it – like isn’t that cool, my real dad’s a zillionaire. But then she got real quiet. I thought maybe because she felt she’d missed out on stuff – all those years she could’ve been a princess. I said something to that effect, but she said, no, that wasn’t it at all. She wouldn’t trade her life with anyone’s, but the whole thing had just thrown her off balance. And – this was the main thing – after Jane told her, she got all freaked out and started pressuring Lo to forget about it, not to try to get in touch with Duke. Lauren thought that was cruel and manipulative, and she was right, don’t you think? You can’t just go and dump something on someone then try to hold them back. Lo was furious at Jane.”

I said, “That’s when she complained about Jane wanting to control her.”

“Yes, exactly. She said Jane was a coward and a liar and totally full of shit to think she – Lauren – would just sit there and let someone else make up the rules. She was also mad that Jane had tried to bribe her to keep quiet – said it was sleazy.”

“Bribe her how?”

“After Jane got divorced, she was real poor for a while. So she wrote to Tony Duke and he started sending her money. For her and for Lauren. Even though Lauren wasn’t in the picture – she and Jane had lost contact for years. Jane claimed she spent only her part, put Lauren’s share aside. When she and Lo connected, she started giving Lo a regular allowance, but she never told Lo where it really came from.”

Milo and I exchanged glances. Both of us remembering the deposits in Lauren’s portfolio. A hundred thousand payment four years ago, then fifty a year since.

“Big money?” said Milo.

“Lauren didn’t specify, but it must’ve been, right?” said Salander. “All those zeros. And the way she dressed. But the point was, Jane wasn’t up front about it. Lied to Lauren about where Lauren’s allowance was coming from.”

“What did she tell her?”

“That her second husband was giving it to her – to Jane – and that Jane was sharing with Lauren, out of the goodness of her heart.”

“Lauren believed that?”

“He’s a rich TV producer, Mr. Abbot. Real generous with Jane. Jane was living like a rich woman now. But then, when Jane was trying to pressure Lauren not to blow the lid off the Duke thing, she told Lauren where the money had really come from, tried to make herself a saint – like ‘I put myself on a limb for you, all those years you never talked to me, I still put your money aside.’ And then she offered to give Lauren even more money if she’d stay away from Tony Duke.”

“Why was she worried about that?”

“She told Lauren it would create a big mess, there was nothing to gain from it. Lauren suspected what she was really worried about was ticking off Tony Duke and jeopardizing her own allowance. Protecting her butt. In Lo’s mind, Jane was just trying to buy her off, and she was tired of being bought.”

Salander turned silent. “I guess I know, now, what she meant.”

“Ding,” said LeMoyne, miming a bell ring.

Milo said, “So Jane wrote a letter to Duke, and he just started sending her money.”