The Murderer's Daughter (40 page)

“Why not? You don't care if I don't do the dog and pony, right?”

“Pardon?”

“For most clients I have to visit twice a year with charts and crap and show what a good job I'm doing. Malcolm and Sophie knew it was a waste of everyone's time. But Gardener insisted.”

“No need, Mike.”

“Also,” said Leiber, “I'm telling you this at the outset: Some years you'll do better, some worse, anyone who tells you different is an asshole con man.”

“Makes sense, Mike.”

“You can call if you have questions but your questions are unlikely to be uninformed. Better to read the monthly statements, everything's spelled out. If you want more, I'll recommend reading a book on basic investing, Benjamin Graham's the best.”

“I'll bear that in mind, Mike.”

“Good. Oh, yeah, I'll send you some checks so you can withdraw whatever you want.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

“Whatever.”

Over the next
year, Grace sold the house on June Street, consigning the more valuable antiques and objets d'art with a dealer in Pasadena and storing Malcolm and Sophie's papers in a warehouse that specialized in document safety. One day, she might read them.

Using the proceeds from the house, she avoided capital gains tax with a 1031 exchange: snagging the house on La Costa Beach for a good price because it was tiny and unsuitable for more than one person and the Coastal Commission was balking at issuing building permits. Additional cash was spent on a cottage in West Hollywood that she converted to her new office.

The day after closing on both properties, she drove to a dealership in Beverly Hills, traded in the BMW, and bought the Aston Martin, black and barely used. The previous owner had discovered he was too large to fit comfortably in the cockpit. The Toyota station wagon, also barely used, was parked in a corner of the lot. It turned out to be owned by the salesman. She shocked him by making an offer, ended up bundling it into the deal as a practical fallback.

She'd known she wanted a sports car, had even considered a vintage T-Bird but decided that would be literal and stupid and trite.

The first month she owned the Aston, she put on two thousand miles. The combination of excessive speed and recklessness felt strangely redemptive.

Maybe one day she'd stop imagining the night they'd been taken from her.

She'd learned nothing about the accident. By choice. Had refrained from talking to Gardener or the highway patrol, requesting records, any sort of clarification.

She didn't even know if the drunken waste of space who'd destroyed so much was male or female.

Despite everything she told her patients about open communication, she craved the balm of ignorance. She supposed that could change.

Meanwhile, she'd drive.

T
he morning after catching her first glimpse of Venom Boy as an adult, Grace set out for the Claremont district.

By seven a.m., she was sitting under a giant umbrella-shaped tree and studying the scant traffic traveling to and from Avalina Street. The tree, a species she couldn't identify, was the largest of an old-growth copse that rimmed a patch of lawn claiming to be Monkey Island Park.

No simians in sight, no water, no island. Nothing at all but a third of an acre of grass surrounded by stout trunks and overarching branches heavy with chlorophyll.

Arriving here would be a giant letdown for a kid with visions of chimps in his head. Maybe that's why the place was empty.

Making it perfect for Grace.

No contact lenses today; her eyes were concealed by sunglasses. She'd hazarded the blond wig, but combed it straight and free of creative waves and flips and gathered a foot of ponytail through the slip-hole of her unmarked black baseball cap. Warm morning so no jacket, just jeans and a tan cotton crewneck, athletic socks and lightweight sneakers. Everything else she needed was in her oversized bag.

She'd picked up a
Daily Californian
near her hotel, opened it, and pretended to care about campus life. A few people walked near the park but no one entered.

At eight forty-five a.m., Walter Sporn emerged from Avalina in a black Prius and headed north.

At nine thirty-two, Dion Larue did the same. Larue drove too fast for Grace to catch many details but in the daylight, his hair and beard flashed golden, with an almost metallic glint.

As if he'd gilded himself, a self-styled graven image.

Grace remembered a technique she'd learned about when consigning Malcolm and Sophie's decorative objects: ormolu, a process where gold paint or leaf was applied to a baser metal like iron or bronze.

Basically, trying to make something more than what it was.

She closed her eyes and processed what she'd just seen. As Walter Sporn zipped by, he'd been frowning. Dion Larue's handsome face had the same upward tilt of nose and jaw that she'd observed last night as he left his wife out in the dark.

Overweening arrogance and why not? No one had told him no for a very long time.

Grace readied herself for another look at the big brick house.

But give it more time, just to be sure. No reason to rush.

Twenty-two minutes later, two female pedestrians rounded the corner of Avalina and headed straight for her.

Both blond, the taller one pushing a baby stroller. As they got closer, the baby's round, white disk of face came into view. Also fair-haired.

Grace's wig made it an Aryan morning at Monkey Island Park.

The newcomers didn't
alter their trajectory but did stop well short of Grace, settling near the center of the lawn. The taller woman faced the stroller and began unstrapping the baby, as Grace watched, yards away, shielded by her sunglasses and her newspaper. She'd already registered a guess as to the stroller pusher's identity and a turn of face confirmed it.

Subservient Azha, her hair a bit limp, center-parted, and held in place by a leather band that was pure hippie redux. She had on a black cotton shift cut slightly higher than the dress Grace had seen last night, this one just meeting her knees. On her feet were flat sandals. No jewelry, no watch.

In the daylight, her face was handsome, just short of pretty. But those cheekbones.

Grace visualized Dion Larue out to reshape his world, wielding one of those gauges favored by sculptors and carving away at his wife. Azha sitting immobile and mute throughout the process, wracked by exquisite agony, as the psychopath who dominated her scooped and contoured and bloodied her down to the bone.

Nice metaphor and all that but Grace stopped indulging herself, no time for fanciful bullshit.

For all she knew, the woman was one of those jellyfish who enjoyed having doors shut in their faces.

She raised her paper an inch higher, watched Azha remove a blanket from the back of the stroller and spread it on the grass. When satisfied with its smoothness, she removed the baby from the stroller, held it up to the sun and beamed.

Tiny little thing, well shy of a year, chubby legs kicking in glee. Dressed in a white onesie, thank God for no black. Lowering the baby and pressing it to her bosom, Azha folded herself carefully and settled on the blanket, crossing her legs in some sort of yoga pose.

Hugging the baby for a moment, she plopped it down next to her. The tyke bobbled and swayed and fought to remain upright, finally succumbed to gravity and began falling backward only to be saved by the flat of Azha's hand on its back.

That level of balance suggested five, maybe six months old.

Smiling, Azha kept her hand in place, allowing the child to pretend it was sitting of its own accord. That lesson in false confidence worked: The baby laughed. Azha laughed back, said something and kissed the baby's nose.

All this was happening too far out of earshot to make out content but the melodious quality of Azha's voice floated across Monkey Island Park.

The baby reached for her and she allowed it to grip her finger, began rocking it gently in a new game of balance.

All the while, the shorter woman had stood by in silence.

As if realizing it, Azha turned and looked up at her and pointed to the grass.

Moving woodenly, the shorter woman sat.

She was about the same age as Azha, thicker-built and plain-faced. Her hair was tied in dual pigtails far too childish for her and her black dress appeared to be of the same light cotton as Azha's but cut fuller, almost haphazardly, as if the tailor's attention span had wandered by the time he'd gotten around to her.

At this distance, her features came across small and flat in a doughy face, her eyes squinty. She was positioned on the other side of the baby but paid no attention to it. Instead, she stared off into the distance. Vacantly, it seemed to Grace. Mike Leiber's soulmate?

Second by second, her body sagged lower until she was hunched, limbs settling flaccidly. Grace continued spying as the woman's mouth dropped open and remained that way. Azha played with the baby but her companion seemed cut off from the fun. Indeed, from all of her surroundings. Grace began to wonder if she was subnormal intellectually.

Or perhaps, like so many others attracted to cults, she was damaged goods—brain damage due to dope, some other psychoneurological insult.

Whatever the reason, she continued sitting like a lump and it went on that way for a while, neither Azha Larue nor the baby paying her any mind. Then Azha turned and took hold of the other woman's chin delicately and guided her face so that they faced each other.

Manipulating her, the way you would a toy. The shorter woman complied as if made of soft plastic, maintaining eye contact but not responding after Azha said something to her. But when Azha handed her the baby, she accepted it and Azha lay down flat on her back and placed her left arm over her eyes.

Naptime for Mommy.

Whatever the other woman's deficits, Azha trusted her with her child. And she did know how to hold it properly, nestling it close to her, supporting the supple neck.

The baby was at ease with her, as well. Relaxed, smiling, laughing again when the short woman chucked it under its chin.

A gesture not unlike Azha's toward her.

Azha was dozing now, chest rising and falling rhythmically as her companion did a fine job of babysitting. The infant never wavered from good cheer; lucky kid, blessed with a good temperament.

How long would that last?

Suddenly, the shorter woman placed the baby belly-up on the grass. Again, no fuss from Model Tot, as it gazed upward. Now the woman had altered her own position and was hovering above the baby. Looking directly down at it.

Azha Larue's chest rose and fell at a slower pace. Her companion watched her for a few seconds then returned her attention to the baby.

Waving her hands at the infant—some sort of pantomime show, or just weird movement by a weird woman—no, there was purpose to this, the baby knew it, was rapt as fingers flew.

Rapid movements taking shape. Communicating.

The baby continued to pay attention as the hands above it shaped air, pointed, circled.

Comprehending. As pre-verbal babies often did when trained in American Sign Language.

C
ould it be?

Of course it could.

Lilith had been eight or nine when Grace first saw her, putting her at nearly thirty now—the age of the shorter woman.

Nothing at odds with the smaller woman's appearance either: a fair-haired deaf-mute girl grown to a fair-haired deaf-mute woman.

Not mentally dull, just cut off from Azha Larue because Azha didn't know—or didn't care to know—sign language. Manipulating Lily's face and speaking directly at her.

Read my lips.

Azha had also ignored Lily completely until the moment she needed her—
Watch the baby so I can catch some Z's.
Not the approach you took with a friend, this was more master–servant.

Like any cult, Dion Larue's family embraced a strict line of command: Guru at the top, followed by the guru-ess, then the worker bees.

Lily with her deafness and her passivity was the perfect serf. What must be crippling passivity in light of Larue's murder of her parents.

Had Larue found another woman of approximately the same age and size to substitute as a sacrifice? A hitchhiker or a street girl he'd picked up during the drive from California to Oklahoma? Burning the house down because how better to obliterate physical evidence?

Maybe one day, she'd look into it…

First guesses are often right on, maybe because they spring from a deep, intelligent place in the unconscious, and Grace realized hers had been freakishly acute.

Venom Boy, wanting to relive the glory days of his father's insanity, moving steadily toward that goal for a decade. Slaughtering the McCoys as they slept silently in their little Oklahoma house but taking Sister Lilith with him first.

Confident she'd offer no resistance. And if she did, he had ways of handling it, witness Brother Typhon.

Amy Chan perceived the meeting in the restaurant as a chance encounter but perhaps it had been anything but. Big Brother watching his brother for a while. Learning he was in town and stalking him from behind the wheel of his Prius.

Watching as Amy and Andrew entered the vegan joint—maybe a place he frequented himself, if he continued to eschew animal products. Announcing to Azha, still and silent in the passenger seat, that he was treating her to dinner out.

No argument from her. About anything. Ever.

The “spontaneous” encounter had spelled the beginning of the end for Andrew.

Your basic spider-fly scenario.

Because Andrew hadn't reacted well, none of that Lily-passivity.

On the contrary, he was repulsed.

Idiot Typhon had turned moral.

Thinking about it, Grace was surprised to feel herself shuddering. Flipping a page of the
Californian,
she scanned a paragraph of self-righteous student journalism. Something about micro-triggers of pre-post-traumatic “discomfort” due to a long list of isms…

Cries from the lawn snapped her out of that.

There he was.

Gilded and straight-backed, handsome face uglied by rage.

Grace watched, unable to act, as Dion Larue raised his foot and kicked the sandaled sole of a now-awake and wide-eyed Azha. Azha sat up looking panicked and Larue turned his wrath on Lily, now holding the baby. Stabbing an accusing finger at her. Snarling something.

He began fluttering his own hands as he berated her—a mocking parody of sign language.

The baby, easygoing until now, wrinkled its face and turned scarlet and wailed. Larue ripped it out of Lily's hands hard enough to whip its tiny head forward, then back. Too much of that and school would be a challenge when the kid grew up.

The baby cried louder. Larue looked at it as if it were an insect.

Contemplating something terrible? Would Grace be forced to act? What a disaster.

She got ready to spring from behind her arboreal shield. Thankfully, Larue thrust the baby into the shaking hands of its mother. Began attacking her verbally, waving a fist as if it were a cudgel.

Too distant to make out words but imagined lines of dialogue sailed through Grace's brain like subtitles.

You fell asleep? Gave it to her?

Your job, not hers.

She was signing at it, you idiot. Since when do we allow that?

Azha hung her head. Larue clapped his hands on his hips, raised himself taller, and glared down at both women.

The baby cried louder.

Larue advanced on it with a fist and Azha placed a hand over its mouth.

Larue stood there, yet another Crown Prince of an entitled generation.

Azha Larue managed to roll her child close to her breasts while extending both hands toward him, her head bowed lower.

Forgive me, for I have sinned.

Larue watched his wife demean herself then barked something harsh and turned back to Lily and kicked her hard on a bare shin. Azha winced in empathy. Lily didn't respond.

Larue's face began darkening. He rocked on his heels, fingers drumming his hips.

His kicking foot raised higher.

How much could Grace allow? But again, she was saved from action as Lily began aping Azha's penitent gestures.

Going through the motions, Grace thought, but not feeling it.

Larue agreed; he kicked her harder.

Lily bent nearly double, face in the grass, and that seemed to be the proper response because Larue turned his back on all of them and pranced across Monkey Island Park, creepily effete.

Heading in the opposite direction from where Grace sat and now she spotted the faint gleam of sunlight on black automotive paint, peeking through foliage in random triangles and rectangles.

His Prius parked at the periphery. She hadn't seen him drive up.

She needed to be more careful.