City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(15)

“I was thinking a staging. Make it look like Naked killed her and ran out of the house crazed. Which is exactly what I assumed until the gray cells kicked in and I realized I needed to avoid tunnel vision. And the little I know about Hoffgarden gives me an itchy feeling.”

“What’s his connection to Slope?”

“Trainer–client. When I googled Hoffgarden his name popped up in a Desert Sun piece on Slope’s murder. Apparently he moved to Palm Springs and opened a gym there, and Slope was one of his loyal customers. Hoffgarden was quoted along with a few other of Slope’s acquaintances. You didn’t think much of Slope, right.”

“Not a big fan.”

“Other folks were. Great guy, shirt off his back, the usual stuff you get with dead people no matter what they were really like. I phoned the detective who worked the case. It’s technically open but cold. She figures it for a home invasion robbery that got ugly. Palm Desert’s quiet crime-wise but Palm Springs has gang problems and there’s also spillover nastiness from Coachella.”

I said, “Slope also moved to the desert?”

“Either that or he had a weekend place there. The basics are he didn’t show up for golf with friends, ditto for a dinner later that day, so they went to check. Slope’s car was there but he didn’t answer the bell or his phone so they went out back, saw the sliding glass door to the back was unlocked, and called the cops. The house had been tossed and Slope was in bed, strangled with a ligature, probably a belt. There was an alarm system but it was switched off. Local D didn’t find that notable, like I said the area’s safe and people get relaxed.”

“Did the scene fit an invasion?”

“On the face of it,” he said.

“You have your doubts?”

“Local D didn’t seem like someone into working too hard, so without looking at the murder book I won’t commit. The safe wasn’t touched and there was cash in a bedroom drawer; the only thing missing was a bunch of expensive watches. None showed up at any pawnshop in the area. But if it was gangsters, they have other trading posts. Or some lowlifes are walking around sporting Rolexes and Patek Philippes.”

I said, “Hoffgarden must’ve been happy with Slope’s work on the divorce if he kept up a relationship with him.”

“Yeah, but Hoffgarden’s domestic history says relationships with him tend to go south. What keeps poking at me is both Slope and Gannett were killed in their homes in high-end neighborhoods and Hoffgarden knew both of them. I ran him through the databases, and prior to the domestics with his girlfriends he has an assault conviction and one for battery. Bar fights back when he was in college. There is a six-year period between college and his first DV but you know how it goes.”

“People get away with stuff.”

“The mulch in which crime germinates remains rich, amigo. In a perfect world, I could subpoena Hoffgarden’s cellphone and see which towers it pinged at the time poor Cordi was getting stabbed but I’m several galaxies away from justification for a subpoena. Meanwhile, Naked still is a person of interest—calling him that sounds flip, wish I had a name.”

“No match to his prints?”

“Prints haven’t been run yet, he’s still being processed.” He laughed. “Another humanistic term from the world of law enforcement. So what else did you learn about Ms. Cordi on the Web?”

“She was a skillful self-promoter and seems to have avoided any other fraudulent claims.”

“If what the neighbor saw means she was seeing clients at home, I haven’t found any evidence of it. No patient files in the house and no office listing.”

I said, “No files in the house doesn’t mean anything. Licensed practitioners have to maintain records but there are no rules governing what she did.”

“The wages of sin. Didn’t think of that. However she was making money, there was plenty of it, Alex. Six hundred thou in an investment account at Morgan Stanley plus eighty in a checking account.”

“That could be from ad royalties. She’s got twenty-five videos running online and they’re all sponsored.”

“By who?”

I told him.

He said, “New-agey hip stuff plus old-school insurance.”

“Old school could mean deeper pockets,” I said. “Going corporate could’ve been her long-term goal.”

He said, “Any weird comments on the videos?”

“The only posts are the endorsements she’s got on her website. Verbatim.”

“Controlling the info flow. Ms. Enterprising. How long do the videos run?”

“One to three minutes.”

“You think ads on something that brief could bring in serious bucks?”

“People log on to see cats with Hitler mustaches.”

“Good point. So I’ve got the possibility of a sketchy private practice full of clients I can’t identify and/or a bunch of profitable cyber-jabber. There’s a disconnected feel to this woman, Alex. Including no family relationships I can find. There was one listing on her phone for Maternal Entity, which doesn’t sound too warm and cuddly. Comes back to an inoperative number.”

“What are the rest of her contacts?”

“Business,” he said. “Not shrink stuff, the basics. Landlord, plumber, electrician, Pavilions, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, bunch of food delivery services, dry cleaner. One thing stood out: not a single restaurant. And there was plenty of food in the pantry and the fridge, so looks like she was a stay-at-home type. But you’d think just from a P.R. perspective she’d want to circulate, like back when she was hanging with showbiz types.”