Diagnosis Murder 6 - The Dead Letter (2 page)

Yankton was in the process of destroying the dining room table when he noticed Vivian standing in the doorway, her mouth hanging open, either in shock or from the unnatural weight of the collagen in her lower lip.

"I never liked what you did with this place," Yankton said. "I only wanted to make you happy."

He used to think she was a stunning beauty. But tonight she looked grotesque to him, a mockery of a woman, with her catfish lips, bowling-ball breasts, and permanently arched eyebrows.

"Not that you give a damn," he said, giving the table a final whack with the sledgehammer that brought it crashing to the floor.

Yankton nodded pleased with himself. His skin was damp with sweat, his clothes sticky and itchy. His tailored suit was dusted with plaster and sawdust. There were blisters on his hands from wielding the sledgehammer, which was far heavier than his usual weapon of choice, a fine fountain pen.

"What the hell has gotten into you, Bert?" she said, trying to sound angry instead of afraid. "Do you have any idea what this is going to cost?"

"Matter of fact, I do." he said calmly.

He motioned with the sledgehammer towards the coffee table, the only piece of furniture left standing in the wreckage. In the center of the table was the stack of pictures the detective had taken and, beside it, a thick document.

Vivian's breath caught in her throat as she saw the picture on the top of the stack. It was the most graphic one of the set, which is why Yankton put it on top. He didn't want any arguments. He didn't want any denials. Her grip tightened on the handles of her Neiman Marcus shopping bags as if they were life preservers. She couldn't look away from the picture. She couldn't look at him.

"You can keep the pictures for your portfolio. They're sexier than the crap the French guy shot and a lot cheaper. The document beside them is our prenup," Yankton said. "I've highlighted the key points with a yellow marker so you can't miss them. I'm going to La Quinta for the weekend. Be gone when I get back on Monday."

Still hefting the sledgehammer, he headed for the door. She flinched as he walked past, as if expecting him to take a swing at her. But he didn't. He took a few swings at her Mercedes in the driveway, though, leaving it bleeding antifreeze and wailing for help as he got into his BMW and drove off.

When she was certain he was gone, she slowly set down her shopping bags, reached into her Louis Vuitton purse, and took out her cell phone. Her hands trembled. The phone rang twice, and then he answered.

"Jimmy," she said, but then she couldn't say anything more. All she could do was sob.

* * *

On Monday morning, Bert Yankton showed up promptly at seven A.M. at his Wilshire Boulevard offices looking fit and rested. He smiled at the receptionist, picked up his mail, and sauntered into his bright corner office.

He emerged a few moments later to get a cup of coffee and a donut from the snack mom, then went back to his desk to check the stock market, catch up on his e-mail, read the newspaper, and go over his calendar for the day. This was all part of his morning routine.

Ordinarily Yankton would spend the next two hours preparing for his first meeting of the day, which would be with either a client or member of his staff.

But this morning he had a meeting that wasn't on the books.

The man who strode uninvited into Yankton's office looked like he would be much more comfortable wearing a tank top, shorts, and sandals than an off-the-rack suit and scuffed Florsheims. He had the even tan and sun-bleached hair of a surfer, but there was nothing laid-back about his attitude. The man radiated authority and probably would have even without the badge and the gun clipped to his belt.

"Bert Yankton?" the man asked.

"Yes." Yankton rose from his chair. "How can I help you, Officer?"

"It's detective I'm Steve Sloan. LAPD Homicide."

"Who died?" Yankton asked.

"People who die aren't my problem, Bert. Just the ones who are murdered."

"All right," Yankton said. "Who has been killed and what does that have to do with me?"

"Where have you been since you left the office Friday night?"

"I went home for a few hours, and then I drove down to La Quinta," Yankton said. "I have a place there."

"Is there anybody who can confirm your whereabouts?"

"I was by myself. But I stopped for gas in Montclair on my way down, got some groceries at Jensen's market on Saturday night, and filled up the tank again on the way back this morning, at a Chevron in Redlands. I used my credit card for all those transactions, if that matters."

"It will."

"Are you going to tell me what this is about?"

"Where's your partner?"

Yankton's face tightened, and he glanced at his watch. "Jimmy doesn't come in until ten."

"When did you last see Jimmy Cale

"Not since Friday," Yankton said. "We met with a client for lunch at Le Guerre in Studio City. Jimmy had other meetings in the Valley and I had an appointment back here at the office."

"Who did you meet with?"

"I'm not answering any more questions until you tell me what's going on."

"You met with a private investigator who calls himself Nick Stryker," Steve said.

"What should he be calling himself?"

"Zanley Rosencrantz. That's his real name, but it doesn't sound half as cool as 'Nick Stryker,' does it? Think about it for a second, Bert. Would you have hired a guy with a name like that to follow your wife?"

Tiny beads of perspiration were beginning to make Yankton's brow shine. "If you already knew who I met with and why, what was the point of asking me?"

"To catch you in a lie, of course," Steve said. "It's a big part of what I do."

"Has Stryker been murdered?"

Steve shook his head. "No such luck."

Yankton shifted his weight in frustration, clearly trying to keep his voice steady and his demeanor professionally aloof. "Then who has?"

"That's a tricky question," Steve said. "We aren't entirely sure yet."

"We?"

"Me, your wife, and the La Quinta police," Steve said. "I'll tell you more about it on the way down to the parking garage."

"What's in the garage?"

"Your car," Steve said. "Which reminds me, you better bring your keys."

The two men didn't speak to one another again until they were alone in the elevator Yankton hit the button for the parking garage and turned to Steve.

"You mentioned my wife and the La Quinta police," Yankton said.

"I don't know what your weekend has been like, but let me tell you about mine," Steve said. "After you trashed your house with a sledgehammer, your wife, Vivian, called her lover, your partner, Jimmy Cale, who set her up in an apartment in Marina del Rey. He was supposed to join her there Saturday night. When he didn't show, she got worried and went over to his place. His car was parked in the driveway, but his front door was wide open. She went inside and found everything smashed, blood on the floor, and no sign of Cale. That's where I come in."

Yankton cleared his throat. "Is Jimmy dead?"

"You tell me," Steve said. "But if you're going to confess, wait until I read you your rights."

"I didn't kill Jimmy," Yankton said.

"Did you trash his house?"

"No," Yankton said.

"It must have been another angry husband with a sledgehammer" Steve said. "Right, Bert?"

Yankton didn't answer. He reached into his jacket for his cell phone to call his lawyer, but thought better of it after remembered two things: There was no reception in the Parking garage, and his lawyer didn't know the first thing about criminal law.

The elevator reached the garage and stopped with a disconcerting jolt. The doors slid open like the curtains on a stage at the opening of a play. Yankton gasped involuntarily at the drama that was already unfolding.

His parking space was cordoned off with yellow police tape. The trunk and all four doors of his BMW were wide open. Several uniformed officers were standing guard as a team of half-a-dozen crime lab technicians in blue jumpsuits went over his cat

"I guess I won't need your keys after all," Steve said as they stepped out of the elevator.

"You better have a search warrant," Yankton said. He'd watched enough TV cop shows to know that much.

Steve reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to Yankton. "Here it is. Hold on to it for your scrapbook. It will go nicely with the one they issued down in La Quinta, where the police are searching your place as we speak."

"What are you looking for?" Yankton's voice was barely more than a whisper.

"Evidence of murder," Steve said.

"This is crazy. Jimmy could be anywhere. He could be in Vegas right now, have you thought of that? He goes up there for quick trips all the time. Flies up, gambles all night, and straggles in here at ten o'clock looking like hell." Yankton glanced at his watch. "He could be here any minute."

One of the crime lab techs motioned Steve over to the trunk. Her name was Leslie Stivers, and the tech squad jumpsuit didn't do her any favors. But Steve was one of the few in the department who didn't need to use his imagination to know what she looked like without it.

Steve went over to her, gesturing to Yankton to follow.

"What have you got?" Steve asked her.

She aimed a special light into the trunk. Several spots glowed bluish-white

"What's that?" Yankton asked.

"It's blood, Bert," Steve said. "We sprayed the trunk with luminol, which detects hemoglobin and makes it glow when hit with the right light."

"I spilled some spaghetti sauce in there once," Yankton said. "Maybe that's what it is."

"It's not," Steve said.

"Someone attempted to clean it off, but whoever did it missed a few spots in the back," Leslie said. "He also missed this."

She reached into a dark corner with a pair of tweezers and picked up something, holding it up for them to see.

"Is that a thumb." Steve asked.

Leslie shook her head. "Tip of a big toe. Hacked off the left foot, I think."

Steve glanced over at Yankton, whose face was ashen.

"Mondays are hell, aren't they, Bert?" Steve said.

CHAPTER ONE

On another Monday, nearly five years after the most miserable morning in Bert Yankton's life, Monette Hobbes stood in line at the Tarzana post office, waiting to send all the stuff she'd sold on eBay.

Monette's hobby was shopping and, thanks to eBay, she'd found a way to subsidize it. She visited the outlet malls in Camarillo, Ontario, and Cabazon when they were having sales. She would use her AAA Club card to get free discount coupon books at the mall offices, and then she'd hit the stores, scooping up tons of brand-name items at rock-bottom prices.

She always kept a few things from her shopping sprees for herself and her twenty-year-old daughter, LeSabre, who could wear anything with that body of hers. Monette listed most of the clothes and shoes she bought for auction on eBay as soon as she got home. Whatever she couldn't sell, she simply returned to the stores on her next visit for a full refund or store credit. That was rarely necessary, since she usually sold most of what she listed, and the profits from her little entrepreneurial enterprise financed her own discretionary shopping fund above and beyond the household allowance her second husband, Lowell, gave her each month.

She was very pleased with her ingenuity and the success of her business. Monette wasn't going to make the cover of
Forbes
magazine anytime soon, but it made her feel good about herself anyway. Besides, it was fun, something to do now that her daughter wasn't living at home anymore and, for the first time in nearly two decades, Monette was a homemaker with no home to make.

The only downside was the twice-weekly chore of going to the Tarzana post office to send her goods and pick up mail from the box she rented for her eBay business. But she even found a way to turn the chore into something that made her feel special.

Monette always spent her time in line looking at the display case full of Edgar Rice Burroughs' memorabilia that ran through the center of the lobby. Burroughs wrote the
Tarzan
novels, and he used all that money he made to buy a huge ranch, which he subdivided in the twenties into a housing tract named after his most famous character.

She never tired of studying the sales brochures for the original Tarzana subdivision, the yellowed
Tarzan
novels, comic books, lobby cards, and toys, the faded photos of Burroughs, various actors playing Tarzan, and the Tarzana area when it was still farmland.

Looking at everything in the display case made it seem like living in Tarzana was something romantic and steeped in Hollywood glamour, which by extension, meant that so was she. It meant that her fifties-era Tarzana tract home wasn't simply a disposable example of mass-produced housing—it was something of cultural significance, built on hallowed ground. It meant her post office was more than a post office—it was a museum, a place that tourists might travel hundreds of miles to visit but that she could go to anytime she wanted. It meant that Monette Alicia Hobbes was privileged.

Lately, Monette had needed those self-esteem boosters wherever she could find them. She was feeling unappreciated at home. Abandoned. Forgotten. And fat. Her husband, Lowell, was never around, and now her daughter, LeSabre, wasn't either. Perhaps that was why she checked her positive feedback score on eBay every day and why, a year ago, she'd hired a private detective to follow Lowell and see what he was up to.

She had been afraid that Lowell was having an affair. It cost her fifteen hundred dollars of her hard-earned eBay profits to find out that her fears were unfounded, that her second husband wasn't going to abandon her for some waitress the way her first husband, Desmond, did (the one who impregnated her in the backseat of his father's Buick LeSabre, the nicest car she'd ever been in).

It was a silly fear, really. Lowell ran a Pep Boys auto supply store. His hands were always greasy and covered with calluses. Every day he wore the same drab uniform, a baseball cap and a stained gray shirt with his name written on a dirty white patch. He was thin, with a flat chest and a lazy belly.