Mystery

“No progress on that poor girl?”

“More like anti-progress.”

“Tell me.”

“Trust me, you don’t wanna know.”

“Trust me, Milo. I do.”

Blanche let out a soft, breathy bark.

“Outvoted,” he said and proceeded to summarize.

Robin said, “Mystery. A girl who sells herself to the highest bidder is anything but mysterious. How old was she?”

“Her profile says twenty-four.”

“Pathetic.”

She got up, hugged me. “You guys eat yet? I made spaghetti with porcinis, there’s plenty left.”

I said, “The gourmet here prefers cold chicken.”

Milo said, “The gourmet will eat spaghetti with porcinis and like it.”

“You can have both,” said Robin.

“You are a wise, wise woman.”

The two of them headed for the kitchen but I veered to my office and cybersearched tara sly.

That pulled up MySpace pages for three separate women, one of them tarra. None was the girl who called herself Mystery.

I tried variants: torra, terri, sligh, sleigh, with no success.

Plugging in markham mcreynold suss was more productive: nine hits, most from business and trade journals covering the sale, twenty-five months ago, of Markham Industries to a private equity group based in Abu Dhabi.

A garment manufacturer with headquarters in Los Angeles and factories in Macao and Taiwan, Markham specialized in bottom-grade women’s undergarments and panty hose designed to look expensive. The company had been established in 1946 by Alger and Marjorie Suss, postwar transplants to L.A. from Ohio, where the couple had built up a small chain of dry-goods stores in Dayton, Columbus, and Akron before Marjorie’s chronic bronchitis spurred a move westward.

Her designs had formed the basis for the new concern based upon a conviction that only a woman could understand what made a “female foundation garment” comfortable. Eventually, that practical sensibility gave way to “cutting-edge concepts combined with low-cost materials” under the direction of Alger and Marjorie’s son Markham.

“This is a business based on sensory gratification not durability,” he was quoted in Barron’s. “There’s no reason a bra or a pair of panties should be expected to last forever. Women want style, they want class, they want that intangible but inexorable feeling of tactile sensuality that enhances feelings of femininity. To that end, polyester works as well as silk.”

A black-and-white photo of Suss’s parents said they could’ve posed for American Gothic if Grant Wood had been looking for more dour. Markham’s resemblance to his father was obvious. Both men were bald with distinctive faces: long, lean, lantern-jawed, thin-lipped. But where Alger’s prim visage radiated self-denial, Markham’s triumphant smile trumpeted bon vivant.

Alger looked as if he lived indoors. Tara Sly’s Sugar Daddy was flamboyantly tan.

Markham Suss’s high-dome pate, sun-splotched and naked save for white wisps curling above heavy-lobed ears, connoted nothing but advanced age. The same went for snow-puff eyebrows and a bulbous nose. But all that surrendered to crinkly bright eyes and an impish, boyish upturn of lip. The end result was a handsome man of a certain age projecting youthful exuberance.

Perhaps exuberance had something to do with the sum he’d gotten for his company: eighty-four million dollars, all cash.

When asked by L.A. Trade Quarterly whether he planned another venture in the rag trade, Markham Suss’s reply was unqualified: “Not a chance and I’d give you the same answer even if I wasn’t encumbered by a noncompetition clause. I’m going to embrace my good fortune and make creative use of my newfound freedom.”

Those same sentiments had found their way to his SukRose profile.

For all his bravado, just another man fighting mortality and shouting Look at me?

I turned to the nonbusiness references.

Two cited Markham and Leona Suss as donors at charity functions. The beneficiaries were a retirement home for screen actors and an inner-city arts program.

The third was a Beverly Hills Courier social-pages item citing a benefit for breast cancer at the Crystal Visions Art Glass Gallery in Encino.

That one featured a full-color illustration.

Markham and Leona Suss, flanked by two sons and daughters-in-law, had posed in front of an array of vitreous abstraction.

Tara Sly’s Sugar Daddy wore a navy blazer, aqua T-shirt, and indigo jeans. Trim man but the shirt stretched over a paunch that he seemed to flaunt.

Leona Suss was tall, bony, black-haired, around her husband’s age. Her pink leather jumpsuit was body- conscious. Enormous horn-rimmed glasses distracted from the rest of her face.

The tendency for son to favor father continued with Dr. Franklin Suss, bald, lean-but-potbellied, dressed identically to Markham but for a maroon T-shirt. Clutching his arm was Dr. Isabel Suss, a short, compact brunette in an olive-drab pantsuit.

The genetic train ground to a halt at Philip Suss, who appeared around the same age as his brother. Several inches taller than Markham and Frank, he sported a full head of dark wavy hair, a thicker, broader build, and a flat belly. A rust-colored caftan-type garment hung nearly to his knees.

His shapely blond wife was attired in an orange sari embroidered with gold thread and was identified as the owner of the glass gallery.

Connie Longellos-Suss.

I searched using her name as a keyword, found nothing. Tried crystal visions and learned on an art glass site that the gallery had closed six months ago.

I ran searches on both sons, learned about Isabel in the process. She and Franklin practiced together as dermatologists in Beverly Hills.

If Philip Suss was gainfully employed, the Internet hadn’t found out.

Printing what I needed, I made my way to the kitchen.

Milo was forking spaghetti onto three plates. Blanche nibbled daintily on a Milk-Bone. Robin poured red wine.

She said, “Perfect timing, dinner’s on, baby.”

I said, “And I brought dessert.”

obin was the first to speak. “People find each other on the site by surfing randomly through profiles. But Muhrmann managed to hook Tara up with his cougar girlfriend’s father-in-law?”

I said, “It’s possible Daddies can narrow their searches using keywords. Cohiba comes to mind.”

“What’s a Cohiba?”

“High-priced Cuban cigar. Suss mentions enjoying them and Tara says she’s a nonsmoker but she doesn’t mind if her date lights one up. Given what we know, that does seem like conspicuous branding.”

Milo crumpled a still-clean napkin. “Muhrmann and Connie used Tara as a lure for Suss. Wealthy family, it has to be something financial.”