City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(56)

Grunting, he wheeled back to his monitor, typed and squinted, got up and left the office, flinging the door wide. Ten minutes later he returned with coffee. One cup. Facing his computer again, he resumed working.

I said, “Guess I’ll be going.”

“Yup.”

He stayed fixed on the screen as I left. I covered half the distance to the stairwell before hearing, “Alex!”

He was loping toward me. Someone else might’ve seen a bull elephant charging and dashed for cover. I waited.

He caught up and clapped my shoulder and said, “Sorry for being pissy, it’s sleep deprivation along with what Bobby Zimmerman says: too much of nothing.”

I said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“I always worry, couldn’t do the damn job otherwise. Anyway, I think I found her, the former Mrs. Hoffgarden. Courtney, thirty-six, lives in North Hollywood, works as a dental hygienist in Encino.”

He waited for confirmation.

I said, “Ace detective.”





CHAPTER


    25


The following morning at ten, he phoned and said, “Just met with Courtney Hoffgarden, now back to Courtney Giraldo. Confirmed as a very nice woman, says she was a fool to stick with Tyler as long as she did. She’s engaged to a dental student, some resident who circulated through the office.”

“Congrats.”

“And the kid’s doing fine.”

“Great.”

“And just to show you I’m the one should be beatified, I’m not gonna hold back on what else I learned from her.”

“Thank you, Cardinal,” I said. “If you could see me you’d know I’m kneeling.”

“Faith is not to be scoffed at, young Alex. Anyway, she confirmed that Tyler’s a scary guy. Never got physical with her but came close, there was always what she called a dread. Like waiting for a tightly coiled spring to snap. Unfortunately, she’s had no contact with him for a year, no idea where he might be. I asked her about the relationship between him and Forrest Slope and she said they’d become buddies, acted like frat boys during the custody thing. She called Slope a sleaze, had no idea he’d been killed and I didn’t tell her. Bottom line: There’s no obvious link between Hoffgarden and Slope’s murder but you never know.”

I said, “Friendships can go bad. Did she know about Cordi?”

“Just that Tyler had dated her after they separated and that he tried to use her as an expert but it fizzled. Telling her about the murder took all the color from her face but she had nothing to add. Though she did say that despite her feelings toward Tyler, she couldn’t believe he’d ever do something like that.”

“Why not?”

“She just didn’t see it,” he said. “Oh yeah, one other thing. She told me about the custody thing working out because she had this great psychologist who continued to work with her kid afterward, helped both of them adjust.”

“Nice to hear.”

“What’s with you?” he said. “The emotional oven got set to Low?”

“I like to keep the worlds separate.”

“What we do and your normal shrink stuff—oxymoron though that may be?”

I laughed.

He said, “Emotion, finally—hold on, Alicia just walked in, has a look on her face.”

Muffled conversation for a few moments, then he came back on.

“What’s that thing you explained to young Aaron? Making assumptions before enough info comes in?”

“Sampling error.”

“Just happened. Mona Kramm didn’t know it but Caspian’s got another sib. Younger sister who lives in Albuquerque. She uses her married name, Ionnides, which is why she didn’t come up initially. But God bless Alicia, she kept rooting and found a joint obituary for both parents in The Columbus Dispatch.”

I said, “The parents died a couple of years apart.”

“Maybe the kids did a twofer to save dough. The sister—Katie—is a cook at a chicken joint, so no trust fund.”

Or Bankster family dynamics had been interesting.

I said, “How’d she react to Caspian’s death?”

“She got pretty overwhelmed, couldn’t talk anymore, said she’d call back later. To my surprise, she did but just to tell me she had to work, her break was at noon. You wanna listen in or is the normal stuff intruding on your schedule?”

“Nothing normal until tomorrow,” I said.

“Wish I could say that.”



* * *



—

I was at his office by a quarter to twelve.

He said, “Your crack about if I could see you, you’d be kneeling got me thinking. Why not a face-to-face? I emailed Katie and asked if we could do it on FaceTime and she said sure. Any cyber-shrink tips?”

I said, “Nope. Good thinking, you’ll have access to nonverbal cues.”

“The remote thing, think it could ever take off for you guys?”

“Tele-therapy?” I said. “It’s already done when face-to-face isn’t possible.”

“And…”

“It wouldn’t work for a lot of my work. Getting down and playing with kids and being there to reassure them. Talking to adults remotely is better than nothing. But personal contact’s a big thing for humans and other species.”