15th Affair (Women's Murder Club #15)(27)

He said, “Yes? What can I do for you?”

Conklin introduced us, showed his badge, and said we were looking into Alison Muller’s disappearance because she might have been a witness to a homicide.

“I am Khalid Khan,” said the man in the doorway. “Alison is my wife. Come in.”

We followed Khan past a spiral staircase inside the entrance and into a blond and airy great room ripped from the cover of California Living. It had a high ceiling, and the tall windows I’d admired from the street offered a ten-million-dollar view of the bay.

Khan offered us seats on the pale leather sofas, and he took a matching armchair. Soft music surrounded us, a string composition I didn’t recognize. There were no paintings or photographs or anything personal in the room. Again, I felt that forbidding air about the house.

I said, “We’re investigating four killings that took place early in the week in the Four Seasons Hotel.”

I showed Khan my phone with the still shot of Muller from the hotel security footage. Khan scrutinized the image.

He said, “I could see how someone might think that’s Ali, but this woman’s hair covers her face except for her nose. I don’t believe this is my wife.”

“Do you recognize her coat, Mr. Khan? Could it be Alison’s?”

He shrugged, just as two girls came down the stairs and entered the great room. They were beautiful children with thick, glossy hair, one about thirteen, the other about five. Khan said, “Caroline and Mitzi, these are police inspectors from San Francisco. They are looking for Mama.”

The younger child, Mitzi, said sternly, “I hope you are looking very hard.”

I said we were, and after the children ran off toward the kitchen, Conklin continued questioning Khan.

He said, “When was the last time you spoke with your wife?”

“She phoned me on Monday, saying she’d be home that night. She didn’t come home, but this is not unusual for Alison. She has a very busy life.”

Conklin asked, “You’re not afraid something has happened to her?”

Khan answered no to all of Conklin’s questions without apparent emotion or curiosity. No to ransom demands, unusual behavior, strangers in the neighborhood, hang-up phone calls, and whether he knew the name Michael Chan.

Why was Khan so unperturbed when his wife had been missing for almost a week?

So I asked him. “You don’t seem concerned, Mr. Khan. Why is that?”

Said Khan, “This isn’t the first time Ali has taken off for a few days without leaving word. They’re walkabouts. What she calls focus downs. She just checks out to think by herself.”

Really? Without saying a word?

“I trust my wife,” he said.

I asked Khan if anyone might have wanted to hurt her: a coworker, a competitor, a stalker, or a jealous friend.

“Ali is successful, yes. And there are always jealous people, but she is a wonderful woman. She’ll be home when she’s ready. I’ll have her call you the minute she comes home,” he said without a shred of sincerity.

Khan was sure Alison was alive. Or he didn’t give a damn about her.

I said, “We have video of the woman we believe is Alison. If you can identify her, we can at least establish her whereabouts last Monday afternoon.”

“Naturally, I’ll look at the film.”

I asked if I might use the bathroom and he said, “You mean you’d like to snoop around my house? By all means, have at it,” and he turned his back to me.

By all means, I would.





CHAPTER 43


WITH KHAN’S PERMISSION, I gave the second floor a thorough visual inspection, concentrating on the marital bedroom. Like the great room, the bedroom looked like a photo in a lifestyle magazine: expensively furnished and entirely untouched.

The bed was precisely made. There were no clothes on the floor, no clutter on the dressers, no sign of pets, handcuffs, dust bunnies, or bloodstains.

We had one possible witness to the Four Seasons bloodbath: Alison Muller. She was also our only suspect. In the absence of the flesh-and-blood woman, and without a warrant, this was my only chance to frisk her clothes.

I walked past the tower view of the bay to the far wall, slid open the closet doors, and turned on the lights.

Alison’s closet looked like a designer showroom: twenty-five feet long by ten feet deep, with built-in drawers and treed shoes under the eighty linear feet of clothing racks.

Her executive wardrobe filled one section with silk blouses, expensive suits, boots made in Italy, and six-hundred-dollar red-soled high-heeled pumps. Next to her office apparel was a frankly dazzling evening wear collection—casual, formal, all with European designer labels. Above and below the racks were shelves of wraps, bags, and boxes of strappy heels.

I saw no A-line, knee-length black leather coat.

While the presence of that coat might confirm Alison Muller as the blond-haired woman at the Four Seasons, the absence of the coat proved nothing. She might still be wearing it. Or she might have been buried in it.

As I was wrapping up my tour of Ali’s wardrobe, I saw an anomaly: a nearly hidden seam between two sections of built-in drawers.

I pressed on one side of the seam and a door sprang open—revealing a stash of racy, lacy, extremely fine lingerie.

I was examining a boned bustier when Khan came through the closet doorway.