Open Season (Alex Delaware #40)

Chapter 20

Chapter

20

Not an uncommon name in SoCal but it didn’t take long to find the likely match.

Victoria “Vicki” Saucedo’s presence on social media was one sparse page. The two images posted were eight months old and revealed a smiling, gorgeous twenty-something with sculpted cheekbones, wide black eyes, and thick, straight hair of the same color.

She’d worked as a “fashion consultant” at Chanel on Rodeo Drive and had been photographed in a little black dress and a body-hugging red gown.

Same boutique where Marissa French’s friends had attended a party.

I chewed on that for a while, inspected the rest of the page.

Split-second review; no friends, no favorites, no interests.

At the bottom a single italicized line surrounded by rose vines.

Get well, Vicki, everyone’s rooting for you!

—

An image search pulled up a whole lot of other Victoria Saucedos plus the same pair of photos and one other in which Vicki Saucedo wore a white bikini and posed on sand next to a beach chair. The back of the chair read Regency Cabo.

Pairing the hotel with her name pulled up nothing. A closer look at the resort produced room rates in the four-hundred-dollar range, a no-kids or time-share policy, and consistently good ratings.

Pairing her name with Paul O’Brien’s was a dead end. Same for merges with Gerald Boykins and Jamarcus Parmenter.

I tried matching her with marissa french to no avail, had the same luck with each of Marissa’s friends.

Broadening to boyfriend, friend, friends, companion was fruitless. Then I tried high school and found an eight-year-old yearbook page from Torrance High featuring Victoria “Vicks” Saucedo’s senior headshot.

Less-than-ambitious photography couldn’t hide the fact that at eighteen she’d been a radiant, beautiful girl. Like Marissa—and Whitney Killeen. Women who’d sidestepped the indignities of adolescence.

At Torrance, she’d been a cheerleader and a member of the Art and Design Club, the Spanish Club, and something called The Fashionistas. That turned out to be a group of students with sewing skills who copied couture.

Three girls and a boy. I copied their names and went on to search saucedo family torrance.

Two items in the Daily Breeze.

The first was a nine-year-old photo of a middle-aged couple, a girl around twelve, and a boy a few years younger, sitting floor-level at the Forum in Inglewood.

Proud parents Harold and Maria Saucedo, along with sister Susan and brother Michael, watch as eldest daughter Vicki competes in the West Coast Cheer Competition.

Everyone smiling.

The second hit was a two-year-old alphabetized shout-out to local seniors who’d been accepted at selective colleges.

Michael J. Saucedo, Oberlin, full scholarship.

harold saucedo torrance produced the staff list of a local evangelical church. Harold M., the administrator. Nothing on Maria. Maybe a housewife or a stay-at-home mom or whatever they were calling it this week.

Three Susan Saucedos lived in the South Bay city. The one whose age and image matched the Daily Breeze photo was a second-grade teacher at a charter school in El Segundo.

Michael J. Saucedo’s name appeared in an Oberlin Review article. Participant in a student group venturing out at night to feed the local homeless.

Church administrator, grade school teacher, altruistic college student.

No one who seemed likely to hire a hit man.

But maybe someone else in Vicki Saucedo’s life had taken action? A friend or a lover who’d suspected Paul O’Brien’s involvement in her death?

That depended on O’Brien definitely being the lowlife who’d overdosed and abased Vicki. A more-than-reasonable assumption, given the similarities between her death and Marissa’s.

I phoned the Tidy Tavern, ready to ask for Martin Kehoe.

Not necessary; he answered.

“Mr. Kehoe, this is Alex Delaware.”

“Who?”

“Lieutenant Sturgis and I spoke with you the other day.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I have a question for you. Did Paul ever work on Rodeo Drive?”

“Yeah. At Chanel.”

“When?”

“Maybe…last year? Half a year? Something like that.”

“What did he do at Chanel?”

“The usual,” he said. “Security at parties for actors and other rich people. He wanted me to do it with him, said it was easy, we’d mostly hang out. I said I was already busy and also I like to stay home at night.”

“How’d he react to that?”

“Called me a fucking wuss,” said Kehoe. “I didn’t care. I told Caitlin and she’s like why didn’t you go and bring me home some Chanel swag? Then she said she was proud of me.”

“For…”

“Avoiding him .”

—

I returned to the list I’d compiled of Vicki Saucedo’s fellow Fashionistas.

Brianna Dominguez, Brianna Petersen, Sherilyn Dorsey, Matthew Salazar.

The yearbook gave up pictures of three pleasant-looking girls and a small, skinny, pimpled boy who looked closer to thirteen than eighteen.

Time for another dip in the Sea of Cyber.

—

Unlike Vicki but like most everyone else, her sewing friends had extensive social networks. But none of them cross-referenced her. Or one another.

Going their separate ways after graduation.

Brianna Dominguez was a helicopter pilot stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Brianna Petersen repped cancer drugs in Connecticut and New Jersey for a Big Pharma corporation.

No indication where Sherilyn Dorsey called home but she was married to a Redondo Beach firefighter named Bradley Komack and was now Sherilyn Dorsey-Komack. So somewhere in SoCal, maybe the beach town itself, making her a good lead.

Most of her photos featured the couple and their three cute kids. No outside job listed. Sewing was still a hobby, along with surfing and scrapbooking. She’d gone ash blond, put on a bit of weight, grown prettier.

I put all that on hold and looked for Matthew Salazar, now creative director for a high-end bourbon distiller. Production in Bardstown, Kentucky, business office in Lexington where Salazar resided. He’d just married his longtime partner, Ben, a physician. The two of them were currently honeymooning in Aruba.

Back to Sherilyn Dorsey-Komack. I bookmarked her social pages, then switched gears and looked for Chanel celebrity parties.

Six events, but three had taken place recently, so I examined the coverage of the earlier three. Lots of A-list faces and those of the people who worshipped or lived off them. It took a while but I finally spotted an image that included Vicki Saucedo.

Revival celebration of Chanel No. 5 nine months ago. Her lips were cardinal red, her eyes shadowed in smoky tones, the outer lashes upswept like wings. Luxuriant black hair was drawn back as tight as her smile as she stood holding a tray of cocktails.

I kept paging, located another photo of her in an identical pose seven months ago. Fashion consultants drafted for cocktail waitress duty.

A few feet away, dressed in a black suit, shirt, and tie, thick arms folded across a puffed-up chest, was Paul O’Brien.

Narrowed eyes lasered on Vicki Saucedo’s back.

At some point, she’d responded to him. And ended up vegetative.

I printed and sat for a long time taking in the image. He, repulsively focused. She, blissfully unaware of what was to come.

In the eyes of the law, every victim deserves full effort. But that’s an abstraction, not reality and, besides, I’m not the law. So if a predator’s crumpled body on a balcony was the only issue, I’d have left it alone.

But a little green boat…

The chance that something in Vicki Saucedo’s past would link to a cool, efficient sniper for hire was remote. But at this point, what else was there?

My only possible lead was the high school pal who’d stayed local. But I couldn’t see any way to contact Sherilyn Dorsey-Komack and keep my word to Lee Falkenburg.

I took out my guitar and wrestled with Bach, always a humbling experience. He’d never composed for the guitar and attempts to translate him have led to a lot of improbable stretches. I’d thought it a unique situation until a concert pianist friend told me, “J.S. put the notes in place. He didn’t give a shit how you got there.”

That level of distraction drew me away for a while. But when my fingers began aching and I stopped playing, everything rebounded. I called Lee at home and told her about the Chanel party.

She said, “Used to go to their sales until Rodeo got clogged with gawkers. Never got invited to any of their fancy parties…so she definitely worked with your dead guy.”

“And he had his eye on her. Want me to send you a photo?”

“Definitely not. Why are you even telling me this?”

“None of Vicki’s family looks likely to hire a shooter so I was wondering about an avenging boyfriend. Her Facebook page doesn’t list any but there’s not much to it, period.”

I began describing the rose-wreath.

Lee cut me off. “Too much information. The poor little kid in the boat got lodged in my head until I got home and had two Martinis.”

I told her about contacting Sherilyn Dorsey-Komack. “Would that create a problem for your source?”

She said, “Probably. Anything that opens the box would.”

“Okay, forget it.”

“Shit,” she said. “Now I’m feeling like I’m part of some sleazy hush-job—welcome to Murdergate. What the hell, Alex, do your best to be discreet, you know the parameters.” Her breath was a whoosh. “Two years old .”