Chapter 17
Chapter
17
Shari Flores’s Tahoe backed out, reversed, drove off. Milo stashed the box file in the Impala’s trunk and we returned to the water’s edge, shielding our eyes from glare.
Milo said, “Weirdly peaceful…thoughts?”
I said, “Like you said, smooth and professional. It firms up the hit man scenario, and nothing gets people angrier than child custody battles.”
“Accountant in a boat. Can’t see Whitney linking to Parmenter or O’Brien so the work we’ve been doing trying to connect them could be a waste. Then again, wouldn’t it be interesting if Whitney had done his corporate audits, too? Maybe learned something she shouldn’t and it has nothing to do with the ex.”
“Easy enough to find out,” I said. “Most likely she worked for a firm and CPAs don’t have confidentiality.”
“There you go with that positive-attitude thing again. Yeah, will do. Anything else?”
“After twenty-six months, Whitney’s mother will be frustrated and eager to talk.”
He retrieved the box, spent a while thumbing through, said, “Here we go, she lives in West Hills, right on the way back. I’ll take that as an omen.”
He called the listed number, spoke briefly, listened for a long time, hung up and patted his ear as if cooling it.
“Beyond frustrated. She’s waiting.”
As we got back in the car, he said, “Here I was, ready for some grub at the Ventura Harbor, there’s this great place, fresh catch. Alas, duty calls.”
Words of regret but spark in his eyes. It takes a lot to steer him away from lunch.
—
Thirty-five miles to the Valley Circle exit on the 101 was a forty-one-minute drive. Once we got past the businesses facing the freeway, we were in leafy suburbia.
Milo continued to Roscoe, hooked left for half a mile, then turned right on a gently sloped street lined with ponderosa pines and marked by a No Outlet sign. Wide, low-slung houses were arranged around a ladle-shaped cul-de-sac. Basketball hoops were a regular feature and several of them were being put to good use. A few toddlers rode plastic tricycles under the gaze of watchful parental eyes. One man washed a vintage gold Corvette with exquisite care.
Milo said, “No lake. Seems like a good thing today.”
Before beginning the drive, he’d done some background on Whitney Killeen’s mother, Donna Batchelor. Fifty-four years old, living at the Brunswick Court address for twenty-one years, zero criminality.
Her house was two lots short of the dead end, one-story, teal-sided, with a beige door. The front was a cement parking area divided into diamonds with clover filling the seams. Flowers and shrubs fluffed up every border save the one leading to a double garage. No evident architectural style but a nice-looking, well-tended home.
Milo parked at the curb and we got out. The moment the Impala’s doors closed, the beige door opened and a woman marched toward us. She wore a sleeveless black top and jeans that ended mid-calf. Thin and tan, with ash-colored hair cut short, a pixie face, and wiry arms.
She continued her approach until we met midway, said, “Donna,” in a husky voice, shook my hand first, then Milo’s, folded her arms across her chest, and examined us.
Milo said, “Lieutenant Sturgis, this is Alex Delaware.”
“Glad someone’s interested, it’s about time. Not that I get what LAPD has to do with Whitney but I’m sure you’ll tell me. C’mon in, I made iced tea but if you want coffee, I can fix some.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned her back on us and hurried toward her house.
Milo mouthed, “Frustrated.”
I thought, That could be helpful.
—
Donna Batchelor’s house had white walls and high, angled ceilings. Hand-scored mesquite floors gleamed. Beige couches were spotless; red, orange, and rust accent cushions had been dimpled perfectly. Glass sliders looked out to a meticulous garden centered by an oval pool and let in soft, northern light. The color of the water was a close match to the teal siding. More glossy leaves and pastel petals abounded.
She race-walked us to the living room where a pitcher of iced tea, two highball glasses, and a plate of Oreos sat on an olive-wood tray atop a tufted white leather ottoman. Settling at the short end of a rectangular coffee table, she motioned to a rock-hard sofa.
“Sit. Help yourselves,” she said. Generosity via command.
Milo said, “Thanks for meeting with us on short notice.”
“Why wouldn’t I? This is the first I’ve heard in a long time about anyone giving a hoot. In the beginning I was hopeful, the Sheriff’s detectives actually seemed to know what they were doing. Then they just lost interest. I used to call them every week, Monday at nine, on the dot. For the first month or two, they answered. After that, it was crickets. I went over their heads and complained to some captain. He put on the nice-guy act but said anything that could be done had been. So I went over his head and tried to talk to the main sheriff who never called me back. Instead I got an email from his office bouncing it back to the captain. Obviously, all that could be done wasn’t because you’re here.”
“We’re here, ma’am, because there’s some indication Whitney’s murder could be related to work we’re doing in L.A.”
“Work,” said Batchelor. “What are you trying to say?”
“A case.”
“Hopefully that’ll be to my benefit. Who else got killed?”
“Two people.” He showed her Jamarcus Parmenter’s and Paul O’Brien’s headshots.
She said, “Them? Can’t see Whitney having anything to do with people like that. Even when she lived in L.A.”
“When was that?” said Milo.
“All of her life until she rented that whatever-you-want-to-call-it in Boonesville.”
Milo produced his pad.
Her posture relaxed. Someone who appreciated the transfer of facts to paper.
He said, “Where in L.A. did Whitney live?”
“Brentwood, an apartment. To make things easier for him.”
“Jay Sterling.”
Hearing the name thrust her mandible forward, bulldog-like.
“Bastard. Yes, him. He had a big house in Brentwood and she was trying to help out with his seeing Jarrod more easily so she graciously moved from Encino. And let me tell you, it was a come-down, the place in Encino was bigger and nicer and the rent was lower. But that was Whitney. Going along to get along. A lot of good it did her.”
“Whitney was a CPA.”
“Like me,” she said. “We both passed the exam the first time. It’s a toughie, believe me, I was proud of her. We were best friends, I had her at eighteen. And no, not as a single mother, Killeen and I were married. I was just starting college but he was already a CPA. He went and died of an aneurysm and I had to pull it together. Years later, I married Batchelor. A CPA and a tax lawyer. Then he upped and died of prostate cancer.”
She bared even white teeth. “I was thinking of myself as a jinx. Then I got actuarial and accepted that twice I’d married older guys. Twenty years in Killeen’s case, thirty-five in Batchelor’s, so what could I expect?”
She glanced at Parmenter and O’Brien and shook her head. “Definitely not her type—you don’t want tea?”
“No, thanks.”
“Your loss. Okay. My beautiful Whitney. And she was, I’m not just saying it.”
She sprang up, walked to an adjoining dining room, and removed several framed photographs from the wall. A bit of effort; something—probably museum putty—had been holding them in place.
She returned. “Here, you’ll see what I mean.”
She thrust an image at us. Full-faced, brunette teenage girl in a cheerleading uniform, lofting two pom-poms.
Next the same face, leaner, under a tasseled black graduation cap and robe of the same color.
Finally, Whitney Killeen, her hair cut and colored exactly like her mother’s, holding a dark-haired, grave-faced boy around two.
Donna Batchelor pointed to the graduation portrait. “That sash she’s wearing, they call the color drab but that’s not an insult, it’s tradition. Signifies business and accounting. This gold braid, here, is because she earned honors.”
She re-hung the photos and sat back down. “Honors, dean’s list, the works. Getting a great job right out of the gate was a cinch. Deloitte. Know who that is?”
Milo said, “One of the big firms.”
“Mega-huge. She made terrific money, took the exam, passed the first time, and got a serious raise. She stayed at Deloitte until she was thirty, then she moved to a smaller firm so she could have more creativity and broaden her opportunities.”
Milo said, “Is that where she was when she met Sterling?”
“Unfortunately. Not the job. Meeting him.”
“Name of the company, please.”
“Lewin, Wolf and Taback. They specialize in the rag trade, have offices in Century City and New York. She met him in New York even though he lived here. Was assigned to do internal audits at STL—his company. Which can get tricky, you uncover something and they do a blame-the-messenger thing. But she didn’t with STL, everything was kosher, the parent company’s Shigihara Limited from Japan, old-school, very big on integrity. He was one of their American reps. Whitney’s assignment meant spending a lot of time with him and that’s how it happened.”
“The pregnancy.”
“The relationship. The pregnancy was…let me tell you, that was a shocker, I don’t know how it happened, Whitney had always had sound judgment. I couldn’t believe it. It was the first time anything came between Whitney and me. I told her to terminate, it could only bring her problems. She got furious and we didn’t talk. But we’d started again. After things went bad with him and she needed someone to support her. Emotionally, not financially, Whitney always did great financially.”
I said, “Why did things go bad between her and Sterling?”
“Because he was a flat-out bastard. Total commitma-phobe.” She reached for an Oreo, broke it in two, and nibbled at one half. “Sure you don’t want one?”
Milo smiled and took a cookie.
Donna Batchelor said, “There you go, nutrition, you can always go to the gym…what went bad? The whole kit and caboodle. Bastard’s living luxe and doesn’t want to pay serious child support? Then he started making noises about moving to New York to be with his other kids ’cause they were in college there? Claimed his experience as a parent made him more suitable for full custody. I told Whitney to hire a shark lawyer who out-bastards him but it never got to that point.”
Her fingers crushed what remained of the Oreo. Dark dust fell on a white marble tabletop.
“ Damn .” She sprang up, moistened some paper towels, and returned. Picked up every crumb, then buffed the marble.
I said, “Were Whitney and Sterling communicating through lawyers?”
“No, not yet, they were screaming at each other. That’s what Whitney said. Finally she had enough of his crap, took leave from her job and rented that place.”
“To get away from Sterling.”
“To get away from civilization,” she said. “Have you been up there? It’s Boonesville, half the time you can’t even get internet.”
“You visited her there.”
“Once, that was enough. She wanted me to go out with her on a dinky little boat. Said it was calming for the soul. Maybe hers, not mine. The only water I want are Perrier and my pool.”
She glanced at a gold Lady Rolex. “So what’re you going to do about him?”
Milo said, “We’ll be looking at him seriously. What else can you tell us about him?”
“That’s it,” she said. “Never met the bastard, don’t want to unless it’s in court and he’s just been found guilty.”
“You’re certain he’s behind Whitney’s murder.”
“Who else? Everyone loved her. No one had anything against her except him.”
“He’s living in New York now.”
“Last time I heard he was but that was when Whitney was still…right after she went rural. For all I know now, he’s in Singapore or somewhere.”
“With Jarrod.”
“Yup.” No emotion, grandmotherly or otherwise, at the mention of the child’s name. “So what are you going to do other than look at the bastard?”
“That’s where we’re starting, ma’am.”
“Fine,” she said, jangling her watch. “It’s time for my swim.”