LITMIR.BIZ

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he hadn’t gone to bed until nearly 2 A.M. and now his kid was calling at dawn.

      “Okay. Sorry.” She didn’t sound it. “But come on, Dad, what’s this all about? I asked Olivia about it, but she was kinda secretive. You know how she gets, all ‘this is between you and your father,’ which is just such BS.” Kristi must’ve been standing outside, maybe outside the apartment she rented in Baton Rouge while attending All Saints College. Bentz could hear the sounds of traffic and the soft call of a mockingbird in the background.

      “I just need to work things out.”

      “So this is like…what? A separation?”

      “What? No.” He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw and walked to the window to crack open the blinds. Immediately bright sunlight streamed through the dusty glass. “I just have some things to do.”

      “What things?” Kristi demanded.

      “Just catching up on some old cases. I’m meeting with one of the guys I worked with tonight.”

      “Why? I thought you hated L.A. The way I remember it you couldn’t get out of the place fast enough.”

      “I was going stir crazy.”

      “So suddenly, after all these years, you hop on a plane and head west? Save me, Dad,” she said with a theatrical sigh. “Just tell me this doesn’t have anything to do with Mom, okay?”

      “It doesn’t.”

      “And you’re a bad liar. A real bad liar.”

      He remained silent, wondering what had tipped her off. Of course…he’d told Kristi he’d seen Jennifer in his hospital room after he’d woken from his coma. Though they’d never discussed it since, Kristi was bright enough to put two and two together. She was also on the verge of being paranoid now that she possessed her own little bit of ESP. Ever since an accident that nearly took her life, Kristi claimed she knew when a person was about to die, that the victim would “bleed from color to black-and-white.” That had to be scary for her, and Bentz didn’t want to add to her worries.

      “Aren’t you supposed to be planning a wedding or something?” he asked.

      “Don’t deflect, Dad. It doesn’t work with me.”

      “So why did you call? Obviously not just to tell me to have a nice trip.”

      “Very funny.”

      “Thought so,” he said as he moved to the bathroom where a single-cup coffeepot was wedged onto a slice of countertop. Tearing open the packet of coffee, he listened as Kristi kept firing questions at him: Why was he in L.A.? When was he coming back? Were there problems with Olivia? How worried should she be? He plopped the packet of “fine roast” into a basket, added a cup of water to the pot, and pressed the on button.

      “I’m fine. Olivia’s fine. Nothing to worry about,” Bentz insisted as the coffeepot gurgled and hissed. He needed to take a leak, but decided not to freak his daughter out any further and waited until she hung up.

      It took another five minutes, but she finally told him “to keep in touch,” before taking another call. He relieved himself, hopped in the shower, and dressed. With his cup of coffee in hand, he decided to hunt up breakfast. He figured a coffee shop on Colorado Avenue might be a good place to start.

      After breakfast he would continue trying to locate the women on his list. First up: Shana McIntyre…well, after some digging last night he discovered that her name had changed a couple of times. She’d been Wynn before she married her first husband and became Mrs. George Philpot. After that divorce she’d become Mrs. Hamilton Flavel, and now, she’d taken the name of her current husband, Leland McIntyre. Bentz recognized her type—a serial wife.

      Last night he’d found a number for her and had tried it, only to get her lofty voice on the answering machine. “You’ve reached Leland and Shana. Leave a message. We’ll get back to you…sometime.”

      Nice, he’d thought and didn’t bother leaving his name or number. His cell would show up as “restricted call” and he wanted to catch her off guard. Didn’t want to give her time to make up answers or avoid him.

      By the time he walked outside, the sun was already rising in the sky, glare bouncing off the pavement. His car was warm, its interior collecting heat more quickly than a solar panel in the middle of the Sahara. He rolled out of the parking lot and headed toward Santa Monica and Colorado Avenue, which he’d tentatively identified in one photo of Jennifer.

      He’d already done some Internet research. An online map had shown three coffee shops in a twelve-block stretch.

      Within twenty minutes he spotted it—a café on a corner that matched the photo. The Local Buzz, it was called. Two newspaper boxes stood by the front door, and tall café tables were positioned near the windows.

      This was too easy, he thought. Whoever had taken the picture had lured him here without too much finesse.

      He parked on a side street and made his way inside, where the smell of ground roast was overpowering. Jazz competed with the hiss of the steamer and the gentle din of conversation. The booths were full and several patrons had their laptops open, taking advantage of the free wi-fi connection. Bentz ordered a black coffee and waited while a surge of customers ordered lattes and mochas, everything from macchiatos and soy caramel lattes to plain coffee. Once the crowd dissipated, he approached the baristas again, this time showing them his pictures of Jennifer.

      Neither coffee server claimed to have ever seen her. They were certain. The tall girl in frumpy suede boots and shorts barely glanced at the photos as she wiped off the hot milk nozzle and shook her head. But her partner, a shorter, rounder woman of around fifty, studied the shots thoughtfully. Above her rimless glasses her eyebrows drew together. “She could have come in when we were busy or when someone else was working, but she’s not a regular. At least not a morning regular. I would know her.” She went on to explain that there were six or seven servers on staff, so someone else might have helped the woman in the picture.

      He glanced at the table where “Jennifer” had sat in the photo, went to the window and stared out at the street. To the left, a dozen or so blocks from here, the streets ended at the Pacific Ocean. He and Jennifer had spent some lazy afternoons there, walking the Santa Monica Pier and the path that cut alongside the beach. Long ago he’d considered Santa Monica their special place, a spot where, near the jutting pier, he and Jennifer had first made love in the sand.

      He sipped his coffee and tried to imagine what Jennifer—no, make that the woman posing as Jennifer—had been doing here, and why he’d been led to this spot. What was the damned point? He stared out the window for a few minutes more, then left with his too-hot coffee and a feeling that he was being worked.

      Shana, breaking the surface after swimming underwater the length of her pool, drew in a deep breath, then shook the wet hair from her eyes. Forty laps. She was congratulating herself on keeping in shape when she heard the doorbell peal.

      She wasn’t the only one. At the first bong of the dulcet tones Dirk, her husband’s damned German shepherd/rottweiler mix, began barking his fool head off. He’d been lying at the edge of the pool, but was instantly on his feet, the hairs at the back of his neck bristling upward.

      Great.

      Just what she needed—a surprise visit by some stranger. She hoisted herself onto the tile strip near the waterfall, then climbed to her feet. She was naked, not even the small pieces of her string bikini covering her body. The housekeeper had the day off, the gardener had already left, so she’d taken her alone time to sunbathe for a perfect tan, one completely devoid of lines or shading. She’d just swum her laps after lying on her back on her favorite chaise. Had she not been interrupted, she would have lain facedown, toasting her backside.

      “Later,” she promised herself as she scooped up her white poolside robe, jammed her arms down the sleeves, and cinched the belt around her slim waist.

      The doorbell rang once more,

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