“Assistant manager at some apartment building. It depressed him, he’d hoped for hotel work but his résumé didn’t cut it. Was his death somehow connected to that?”
Milo said, “We’re curious about the building.”
“In what way?”
“There may be things going on there.”
“It’s a dope den? Westwood Village?” said Kramer. “I guess that’s not so far-fetched. Students, the weirdos who hang around students.”
“Did Peter talk about that?”
“Not to me, Lieutenant, but I used to attend at the health center, I know what I saw.”
I said, “How much contact did you have with Peter when he worked there?”
Kramer ran a hand along the top of neat, white hair. No strands out of place but that didn’t stop him from patting. “I wish I could say we grew closer but we didn’t. I’m assuming Peter didn’t need money because he stopped contacting me. The only reason I found out about his death was he’d listed me in his phone contacts and the coroner’s investigator found me.”
Milo said, “Do you have that phone, Doctor?”
“No. I told them to dispose of all of Peter’s effects. It was hard enough cleaning out Lenore’s closet. I didn’t need to go through that again.”
I said, “Did you ever meet the girlfriend from Panama?”
“Once. I took them to dinner at Spago and she seemed very pleasant. Far better behaved than Peter, who drank too much wine and got loopy and started talking about his mother. I didn’t appreciate hearing Lenore described in a drunk’s slurry voice. The girl could tell, she managed to calm Peter down. Nice young lady. Good looking, too. Peter always had a way with the girls.”
I pulled out the photo of Suzanne DaCosta.
Paul Kramer said, “Yes, that’s her. Are you telling me she was involved in Peter’s death?”
Milo said, “Part of what we’re dealing with is her murder.”
Kramer’s eyes popped. “Murder? She was also a junkie? She’s the one who gave Peter heroin?”
“There’s absolutely no evidence of that, Dr. Kramer. Ms. DaCosta is our primary case and she led us to Peter.”
The fingers of Kramer’s right hand flew to his cheek and drummed the skin lightly. Large fingers for a small man. Expressive, a surgeon’s source of grace and authority. “DaCosta? That’s not the name I was given.”
“Suzanne Kimberlee DaCosta. Sometimes she called herself Kimbee.”
“Not to me, she didn’t,” said Paul Kramer, returning the photo. “I have a good memory for names—most of my age peers don’t—and I remember distinctly that Peter introduced her as Susan Koster. And she said, ‘Call me Susie.’?”
CHAPTER
34
We left Kramer’s house and rode a block before Milo pulled to the curb and began working his mobile computer.
Detective work is like building a suspension bridge: No matter how precise the engineering or elegant the architecture, nothing matters until the last gap is closed.
Armed with Susan Koster’s true identity, Milo began piling up facts like a spoiled kid hoarding Christmas gifts.
Within seconds he’d called up Susan Katherine Koster’s DMV records: first license at eighteen, two renewals followed by a two-year gap consistent with working in Panama. After that, nothing until she materialized as Suzanne Kimberlee DaCosta.
No paper trail in Nevada. If her story about working in Vegas was true, she hadn’t put down roots in the Silver State.
That was consistent with the type of short-term gig that brought some attractive young women in and out of Vegas. Working in the brothels of Nye and other counties with legalized prostitution would’ve resulted in some sort of registration. But illegality raises the price of goods and services and if she’d gone for the big bucks in Sin City and had never been arrested, no record.
One consistency on every Susan Koster license, an address on Mentor Place in North Hollywood.
The online map kicked out the image of a boxy green bungalow east of Laurel Canyon and two miles north of Ventura Boulevard.
A hop from the Studio City garage she’d sublet from Serena and Claire.
As Milo continued to type away, I logged onto a pay site I’d used before. PayPalling a few bucks hooked me into thousands of high school yearbooks. Knowing the age and address of my subject sped up the process and within seconds I had a North Hollywood High senior photo, taken twelve years ago.
The same pretty face, a bit fuller and less defined, obscured by bangs that hung to her eyebrows and curtained by long dark hair ironed straight. Her eyes were wary, heavily shadowed, her mouth sour and downturned.
Photo shoot on a bad day or high school hadn’t been her thing.
Maybe the second because she’d listed no achievements, academic or athletic, nor any extracurricular interests.
A dancer who’d failed to make the pep squad? Or an outsider who hadn’t regarded applying as worthwhile?
That set my mind racing but I kept my thoughts to myself and showed the thumbnail to Milo. He gave the V-sign and returned to his keyboard, pulling up the reverse directory and identifying the occupant of the house on Mentor Place.
Dorothy Maria Koster.
County tax files listed her as the owner and sole occupant and the house as nine hundred thirty-eight square feet sharing a four-thousand-foot lot with two equally petite residences. DMV made her forty-eight years old and served up a thin face topped by a curly blond bob. Blue eyes, five-four, one hundred eighteen pounds, corrective lenses required.
One registered vehicle: a ten-year-old blue Buick LaCrosse.
Impeccable driving record, not a trace of any sort of questionable activity.
Milo said, “Law-abiding citizen. Time to meet Mom and ruin today and every day that follows.”
He called the landline listed on the directory, held on for six rings, got a robotic male away-message and left his name, rank, and cell number. Then he sat back, closed his eyes, rubbed the lids, and rested his head against the seat. “I’ll try her again in an hour. What do you suggest, in the meantime?”
I said, “Not a bad time to theorize.”
“About?”
“Susan’s death.”
“Don’t make me beg. What?”
“She was with Peter Kramer for a while but he clearly wasn’t The Brain.”
“Maybe I should be looking into his genius brothers.” He opened his eyes and pivoted toward me. “Sad, kid like that in the wrong family.”
“Poor fit,” I said. “I see it all the time.”
“It causes problems all the time?”
“It can be worked with.”
He nodded. “My brother Brendan. The rest of us are built like beer kegs with legs. Football, weight lifting, wrestling. Then we get this when we turn thirty.” Patting the bulge of his gut. “Believe it or not, I’m not the tonnage champ in the family. My brother Mel beats me by at least thirty pounds, my brother Will’s six-five, gotta be three fifty minimum. Brendan, on the other hand, is not only the smartest, he takes after my mother’s side, a bunch of leprechauns. Five-seven, one thirty on a good day. The rest of us could bench-press him and not breathe hard. He became a graphic artist, moved to Pittsburgh, owns his own ad company.”
Abrupt laughter, bassoon-pitched, gushed from between his lips. Someone else might’ve thought he was smiling. I knew he was remembering.
“Little Brendan was the one everyone suspected was gay. He ended up married to a beauty queen and has five terrific kids.”
I said, “Keeps life interesting.”
“What does?”
“When order is disrupted.”
“Hah. I sure disrupted my family. When I finally snuck out of the closet, Dad came close to stroking out…so ol’ Peter wasn’t up to Suzy’s intellectual aspirations and she tossed him over for someone who was?”
“That’s the bet I’d take. He got replaced and eliminated.”
“By Susie and The Brain, or just The Brain?”
“Nothing suggests she was violent.”
“If she had no beef with Kramer, why would The Brain bother? Didn’t sound like he was serious competition.”
“Not for the time being,” I said.
“The Brain worried she might change her mind and took out death insurance? That’s pretty savage.”