Gone

“Maybe that’s it,” I said.

He leaned against the wall, scuffed the baseboard. “Even if someone did call Vasquez to prime the pump against Peaty, the right suspect’s in jail. Let’s say Ertha Stadlbraun got things stoked up because Peaty had always creeped her out. My interview tipped her over and she stirred up the tenants. One of them was an incompletely reformed banger with a bad temper and boom boom boom.”

“If you’re comfortable not checking it out, so am I.”

He turned his back on me, imbedded both hands in his hair and turned it into a fright wig. Smoothing it down was a partial success. He stomped back into his office.

When I entered, he had the phone receiver in hand but wasn’t punching numbers. “Know what kept me up last night? Damned snow globe. Brad thought Meserve put it there but the one in the van says Peaty did. Would Peaty taunt Brad?”

“Maybe Peaty didn’t leave it.”

“What?”

“Meserve thinks he’s an actor,” I said. “Actors do voice-overs.”

“The Infernal Whisperer? I can’t get distracted by that kind of crap, Alex. Still have to check out all those buildings Peaty cleaned, stuff could be hidden anywhere. Can’t ignore Billy either, because he hung with Peaty and I was masochistic enough to find out.”

He passed the receiver from hand to hand. “What I’d love to do is get to Billy in his apartment, away from Brad, and gauge his reaction to Peaty’s death.” He huffed. “Let’s take care of this whispering bullshit.”

He called the phone company, talked to someone named Larry. “What I need is for you to tell me it’s crap so I can avoid the whole subpoena thing. Thanks, yeah…you, too. I’ll hold.”

Moments later, his faced flushed and he was scribbling furiously in his pad. “Okay, Lorenzo, thanko mucho…no, I mean it…we’ll forget this conversation took place and I’ll get you the damned paper a-sap.”

The receiver slammed down.

He ripped a page out of the pad and shoved it at me.

The first evening call to the Vasquez apartment had come in at five fifty-two p.m. and lasted thirty-two minutes. The caller’s mid-city number was registered to Guadalupe Maldonado. The call from Jackie Vasquez’s mom at “like six.”

Milo closed his eyes and pretended to doze as I read on.

Five more calls between seven and ten p.m., all from a 310 area code that Milo had notated as “stolen cell.” The first lasted eight seconds, the second, four. Then a trio of two-second entries that had to be hang-ups.

Armando Vasquez losing patience and slamming down the phone.

I said, “Stolen from who?”

“Don’t know yet, but it happened the same day the call came in. Keep going.”

Under the five calls was the doodle of an amoebic blob filled with crosses. Then something Milo had underlined so hard he’d torn paper.

Final call. 10:23 p.m. Forty-two seconds long.

Despite Vasquez’s anger, something had managed to hold his interest.

Different caller, 805 area code.

Milo reached over and took the page, shredded it meticulously, and dropped it in his trash basket. “You have never seen that. You will see it once the goddamn subpoena that is now goddamn necessary produces legit evidence.”

“ Ventura County,” I said. “Maybe Camarillo?”

“Not maybe, for sure. My man Lawrence says a pay phone in Camarillo.”

“Near the outlets?”

“He wasn’t able to be that precise, but we’ll find out. Now I’ve got a possible link to the Gaidelases. Which should make you happy. All along, you never saw Peaty for them. So what’re we talking about, an 805-based killer who prowls the coast and I’ve gotta start from scratch?”

“Only if the Gaidelases are victims,” I said.

“As opposed to?”

“The sheriffs thought the facts pointed to a willful disappearance and maybe they were right. Armando told his wife the whispering made it impossible to identify the sex of the caller. If it’s amateur theater we’re talking about, Cathy Gaidelas could be a candidate.”

His jaws bunched. He scooted forward on his chair, inches from my face. I thanked God we were friends.

“All of a sudden the Gaidelases have gone from victims to psycho murderers?”

“It solves several problems,” I said. “No bodies recovered and the rental car was left in Camarillo because the Gaidelases ditched it, just as the company assumed. Who better to cancel credit cards than the legitimate owners? And to know which utilities to call back in Ohio?”

“Nice couple hiding out in Ventura County and venturing into L.A. to commit nasty? For starts, why would they home-base out there?”

“Proximity to the ocean and you don’t have to be a millionaire. There are still places in Oxnard with low-rent housing.”

He yanked his forelock up and stretched his brow tight. “Where the hell did all this come from, Alex?”

“My twisted mind,” I said. “But think about it: The only reason we’ve considered the Gaidelases a nice couple is because Cathy’s sister described them that way. But Susan Palmer also talked about an antisocial side- drug use, years of mooching off the family. Cathy married a man people suspect is gay. There’s some complexity there.”

“What I’m hearing is minor league complexity. What’s their motive for turning homicidal?”

“How about extreme frustration coming to a head? We’re talking two middle-aged people who’ve never achieved much on their own. They make the big move to L.A., delusional like thousands of other wannabes. Their age and looks make it even chancier but they take a methodical approach: acting lessons. Maybe they were rejected by other coaches and Nora was their last chance. What if she turned them away in less-than-diplomatic terms? Charlie Manson didn’t take well to hearing he wasn’t going to be a rock star.”

“This is about revenge on Nora?” he said.

“Revenge on her and the symbols of youth and beauty she surrounded herself with.”

“Tori Giacomo got killed before the Gaidelases disappeared.”

“That wouldn’t have stopped the Gaidelases from having contact with her. If not at the PlayHouse, at work. Maybe she served them a lobster dinner and that’s how they learned about the PlayHouse.”

“They do Tori, then wait nearly two years to do Michaela? That’s a dish gone way cold, Alex.”

“That’s assuming no other students at the PlayHouse have gone missing.”

He sighed.

I said, “The hoax could’ve served as some kind of catalyst. Nora’s name in the paper. Michaela’s and Dylan’s, too. Not to mention Latigo Canyon. I could be totally off base, but I don’t think the 805 link can be overlooked. And neither can Armando Vasquez’s story.”

He stood, stretched, sat back down, buried his face in his hands for a while and looked up, bleary-eyed. “Creative, Alex. Fanciful, inventive, impressively outside the goddamn box. The problem it doesn’t solve is Peaty. A definite bad guy with access to all of the victims and a rape kit in his van. If the Gaidelases were chasing stardom, why would they have anything to do with a loser like him, let alone set him up to be shot? And how the hell would they know to prime the pump by phoning Vasquez?”

I thought about that. “It’s possible the Gaidelases met Peaty at the PlayHouse and some bonding took place- outsiders commiserating.”

“That’s a helluva lot going on during a failed audition. Assuming the Gaidelases were ever at the PlayHouse.”

“Maybe Nora kept them waiting for a long time then dismissed them unceremoniously. If they did bond with Peaty, they could’ve had opportunity to visit his apartment and pick up on tension in the building. Or Peaty talked about his dislike for Vasquez.”