Page 32 of Tested
Speaking quietly, I share my lack of useful information. We head for Smith, who’s following the loaded gurney out of the house.
Blood and ocean. The body snags my attention and I draw in a deep breath, hoping to pick up something new, something valuable. A Tesla Model S pulls up to the curb next to us and a guy climbs out. He’s older than me, but not by much. “Monica? What’s going on?”
A pair of Pasadena detectives intercept him and Smith waves us toward the street. We walk half a block or so, where we won’t be overhead by the neighbors. Though most of them are fixated on the scene with the young man, who’s getting increasingly hysterical and blocking the gurney from its destination in the ME’s van.
“Divide and conquer?” Connor asks Smith.
He nods, his mustache drooping. “I’ll let the locals do their thing. Their lead guy promised to send me copies of all the statements they take, and I figured you and I could make a second pass tomorrow.”
“Sounds good.”
The sun set an hour or so ago, but as Connor and I amble toward his fancy Ford Taurus, weariness washes over me. I’d been awake till almost dawn with Trajan, then primed myself to leap up as soon as I heard Connor moving around. Kinky sex and murder; it was a lot to take in. Underneath the tired, though, I’m angry.Who murders a selkie?That’s some serious bullshit. “It feels weird to take the rest of the night off.”
“Who said anything about that?” Connor hits the keyfob and the Taurus cheeps back at him. “We might have to wait until the human police work through the interview list, but there’s plenty we can be doing.”
“Such as?”
“The victims have been friends since high school, and it’s unlikely their murders are unrelated.”
“Huh. Yeah.” I stop to do some mental math. Given the victims’ approximate ages, there are forty-some years of friendship to sort through to find a motive for their deaths. Connor puts the car in gear and I start mentally organizing a web search.
We’re heading up Doheny Street when he shoots me a glance. “I’m going to drop you off, and then I have something I need to take care of.”
“Anything I can help you with?”
“Nah.” He sounds casual but there’s tension in his jaw and across his shoulders. I try to come up with an argument that’ll get him into the house with me, but I can’t.
Connor doesn’t even get out of the car. He drops me off in front of Jacques’ big house and promises he’ll return soon. I’d give something expensive to know what his little errand is about.
Don’t worry about it, David. I just need to check on one thing.
And I wouldn’t worry, dumbass, if you hadn’t told me specifically not to. Connor never defends himself against my mental snark, which is probably just as well.
Inside, I find a note from Trajan saying he’d gone to view another possible restaurant space. I’m amused by how consistently we leave notes to each other, like we’re an old married couple…or thruple, I guess. At any rate, I’m not accustomed to rattling around this big ol’ barn by myself. I grab my laptop, an old UCLA sweatshirt, and a bottle of seltzer and settle in at the wrought iron café table near the pool. The air is cooler than it had been during the day, but for someone who’d grown up in Seattle, the mid-sixties temperature is almost warm.
Jonesing for a cigarette it’s not worth the hassle to smoke, I keep my hands busy by starting a spreadsheet. I make a page for Adaline and a page for Monica, and, working down the columns, I start with demographics. Both of them have left breadcrumbs online, and after some initial confusion regarding married and maiden names, I start digging.
I find plenty of information about Monica. She’d been a swimmer as a young girl – hello, selkie, that’s cheating – with a high enough profile to have a Wikipedia page. She was born in 1964 and she graduated from the Westridge School, a private girls school in Pasadena, in 1982. She attended USC with a partial scholarship for swimming, and she competed in the Olympic trials in 1984 but did not make the team.
And she ended up a crumpled heap on the tile floor of her lovely Spanish-style home. I shake my head, not at all sure I have the chops to play this game.
Once I’ve captured as many of Monica’s details as I can, I shift my attention to Adaline. She was born the same year – 1964 – but she graduated from Beverly Hills High. She doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, but I find her name on an alumnae bulletin from ten years or so ago. The bulletin refers to her as Adaline Ito Nosaska, and lists her husband as Brandon Nosaka.
I drill down and find Brandon Nosaka runs a chain of sushi bars, which might explain why Adaline’s body had been found in an empty restaurant. I make a note to ask Connor whether anyone has talked to Brandon. Someone must have, either the police or Smith or Connor himself, and I’m curious about what he’d have to say.
From there I move to social media. Adaline’s Facebook profile is set to private, but fortunately Monica had much blurrier boundaries. I find her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and Adaline figures prominently in her list of friends.
I find pictures of them drinking wine, shopping, working out, and going to the beach. Every shot is well-lit and artfully composed, as if Monica had a stylist for her Instagram feed. There’s even one of those Throwback Thursday posts with high school versions of Monica, Adaline, and two other women.
Which is cool, and all, but doesn’t do much to help me understand why they’d both been murdered.
I’m still at the table poking round the internet when Trajan sticks his head out the door. “I thought I saw a light down here.”
In a white button-down worn open at the neck, he’s looking rumpled and sexy, more businessman than hitman. His hair, though. I shake my head. A raggedly-cut hank falls across his brow, the cross he has to bear in return for eternal life.
“Hey, Tray.” I set the laptop aside and rise. We come together at poolside like one of us is a magnet and the other is steel, and once he has his arms around me, I allow myself to relax. “We found another dead body,” I murmur against his chest.
His arms tighten around me and he brushes his lips against my forehead. “Where?”
