Evidence of Guilt (22 page)

He shrugged. "It's a complicated situation."

I waited.

After a moment he cleared his throat. "Do you have children?" he asked.

"No, I don't."

'They're their own people, you know. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, they ultimately follow their own mind."

"Is that what Lisa did?"

"I don't know what
she
was following. From everything Reena's told me Lisa was a happy, easygoing child. Then, when she reached her teens, things changed dramatically."

They usually did when hormones kicked in. "How old was Lisa when you and your wife married?"

His eyes again scanned the room, looking for the waitress. As she approached with his drink, his scowl eased. He sipped first, then reached into his pocket to pay the bill.

When the waitress left he took another sip before nodding in my direction. "Lisa was almost fifteen. I'm sure Lisa's age, the fact that Reena and I married rather quickly, the move to San Marino, they were all part of the problem. Reena had been married twice before. Neither marriage lasted long. I'd guess that was a contributing factor as well."

He paused, took another couple sips of his drink.

"Knowing Reena, I'm sure there were men in and out of the picture during the intervening years, but in terms of family it was just the two of them, Reena and Lisa, for most of Lisa's life."

I nodded, encouraging him to continue.

"Then I show up. There she is on the verge of womanhood herself, and suddenly Lisa has to share her mother with a stranger. A male." He sounded embarrassed. "A man's presence in a situation like that... it alters things, recasts them in ways that aren't always entirely obvious."

"You sound like a shrink."

He smiled. "A radiologist, actually. But I have a psych background, and a buddy who's an analyst."

I shifted in my seat. "Are you saying that Lisa was jealous of her mother?"

"There was a certain degree of rivalry, I think."

"Kind of a modern-day slant on Freud?"

Ron smiled again. The martini seemed to have relaxed him. His features were looser, his gestures less sharp. Or maybe it was my own glass of wine that softened the edges.

"Nothing quite so deep," he said. "Nothing you could really put a finger on either. It was always just beneath the surface."

"How did Lisa act when you were around her?"

"At times she was standoffish or sassy. Other times it was almost like she was flirting. Again nothing overt." He rubbed his chin. "I guess maybe coquettish is a better word. More subtle and childlike."

"How did you react?"

"For the most part I ignored it."

"For the
most
part?"

He sighed, sipped his gin. "I wanted Lisa to like me. The wicked stepmother persona is just as uncomfortable for stepfathers, you know. It's not an easy role."

"I imagine not." My dealings with Tom's children had been an eye-opener in that regard.

"Besides, I knew it was unlikely I'd have a child of my own. Lisa was my one shot at family."

"By fifteen, most of us want to forget we're part of
any
family."

Ron acknowledged the remark with a smile. "The funny part is, things seemed fairly smooth at first. Lisa didn't react badly to the news that we were going to be married. We included her in the wedding, took her on all but four days of our honeymoon. I thought we were off to a great start. I don't know . . . Maybe it was just that the novelty wore off, or maybe I tried to be too chummy too fast."

As the waitress circled by our table, Ron caught her eye. "Would you like another?" he asked me.

"Sure."

The waitress cleared our empty glasses and left.

"In retrospect," Ron said, "I can see that things started to change almost immediately. But at the time it took me a while to notice. Of course Lisa was sick a lot during that time too."

"Sick how?"

"Stomachaches. Odd, unexplained pains. I'm sure it was psychosomatic, but it put a strain on all of us."

"How about headaches; were they part of it?"

He thought for a moment. "They might have been, but I don't recall that specifically. The symptoms seemed to change from week to week."

"But they eventually disappeared?"

He nodded. "Although to tell you the truth, I can't remember when that was, exactly."

Our drinks arrived, and Ron took a moment to refor-tify himself.

'They must have cleared up by her junior year, though. That's when she began hanging out with a tough crowd, thumbing her nose at our rules. The classic symptoms of self-destructive behavior."

"Drugs?"

He nodded. "Drugs, sex, letting her appearance go, her grades slide. It seemed like our hands were tied. The more we clamped down, the more she rebelled. She moved out of the house altogether in the middle of her senior year."

I was intrigued. The Lisa I'd known was so unlike the young woman Ron Swanson was describing. "Where did she go when she left home?"

"Not that far. She moved in with some guy who had an apartment in Alhambra. But she finished high school; I give her credit for that. After she graduated she took off

and didn't tell us where she was headed. We've barely seen her in the last six years."

"What about her husband? Do you know anything about him?"

"Not much. We met him for the first time last year when he showed up at our doorstep looking for Lisa. I gathered they'd had a fight or something."

"What was he like?"

"Young, good-looking in that healthy, southern California way. He was a musician, or so he said, though he made his living as a chauffeur for one of those airport limo services."

Ron paused. 'That was when we first learned of Amy."

"It must have been a shock."

He nodded. "It was. For Lisa to have kept something like that from us ... it seems so spiteful."

We sipped our drinks in silence for a moment. Ron seemed lost in some private rumination, and I needed a chance to collect my thoughts. The more I learned about Lisa, the less I understood her. But that wasn't why I'd come to Los Angeles.

"Lisa apparently kept a journal of some sort," I said. "I'm hoping it might tell us something about what led to her death. It's not at her house. Do you think it might be among the things you had shipped here?"

"It doesn't sound familiar, but I can look."

"I'd appreciate it." Then I had another thought. "When was the last time you spoke with Lisa?"

Ron frowned. "I think it was just after Anne died. Anne Drummond, Reena's cousin."

"I thought they were sisters."

"Not technically. Reena lived with Anne's family after

her own parents were Killed, so in some sense they relt like sisters."

"Yet
Anne left the property to Lisa instead of Reena."

Ron gave a hollow laugh. "Reena was a little surprised about that. It wasn't so much the inheritance as the idea of the thing. Not that we couldn't use the money, what with the HMOs taking control of medicine these days. But I think, mostly, Reena was hurt at being overlooked in favor of Lisa. Especially after the way Lisa had treated us."

And Reena had been listed as beneficiary in the original will. It didn't make a lot of sense. "Were Reena and Anne close?"

"I think they were at one time, but. . . well, you know how things go."

I nodded, waiting for him to continue.

"After Reena's second marriage fell apart she kind of went off the deep end. Was actually hospitalized for a period. Lisa, who was only four at the time, went to live with Anne. I gather that made for some tension between Anne and Reena. And they weren't at all alike. Reena's quite emotional." Ron smiled slightly. "As you can probably tell. Anne was strong-willed and opinionated. Very much her own person."

He paused to take another swallow of his drink. "Anne's husband ran off and left her when they'd only been married a year or so. She never brooded over it, though, or let it color her thinking. I got the feeling she thought Reena lacked a certain . . . inner strength. It's not true. But Reena's a romantic at heart, and Anne was a prag-matist."

"Sounds like you knew her fairly well."

"Reena and I stayed with her for a short while after we were married, and Anne would come to L.A. every cou-

pie of years. In fact, we left Lisa with her when we took the four-day honeymoon by ourselves." He laughed without humor. "Lisa and Anne must have really hit it off."

Ron checked his watch. "Anyway, I never meant to bend your ear like this. It's just that I didn't want you to get the wrong impression about Reena." He tried something that looked like it was supposed to be a smile. "I know how you attorneys operate, and I wouldn't want you to do anything that might hurt her further."

I found his concern for Reena touching. I also thought to wonder if it was really the reason behind our meeting.

The alarm rang at seven the next morning. I reached over and turned it off, fully expecting to roll out of bed a minute or so later. When I opened my eyes a second time it was past nine, and the jangling was coming from the telephone. Groggy and blurry-eyed, I rolled over to grab the receiver but succeeded only in knocking it onto the floor out of reach. I scrambled out of bed and picked it up just as the answering machine kicked in.

"You weren't still in bed, were you?" Sam asked when the line had cleared.

I grunted.

"Sorry. I thought for certain you'd be up by now."

I sat on the edge of the bed and pushed the hair out of my eyes. "So did I."

"Late night?"

"In part."

What had done me in wasn't so much crawling into bed at 2
a.m.
It was the endless stretch of time between

then and the hour when my mind finally stopped churning.

"You want to get some coffee and call me back?" Sam asked.

"It's okay; I'm awake. I'll put water on while we're talking. The phone's one of those cordless things." By then I'd made it to the kitchen and was already filling the kettle. Loretta and Barney sat on either side of my feet, patient and hopeful.

"How was the trip to LA.? Did you find Lisa Cornell's diary?"

"No diary, although her stepfather said he'd look through the boxes of stuff they packed from her house." I checked the dogs' bowls; neither was empty. "Forget it, guys. Coffee's not your thing."

"You got a guy there?" Sam asked.

"I was talking to the dogs."

"Oh."

While the water heated, I filled Sam in on my trip. Once again I found myself caught up in Lisa's story, intrigued by facets of her life I'd never suspected. The more I learned about her, the more of a puzzle she became. Of course, I'd only heard her stepfather's version of things. Having been an errant daughter myself, I knew that family matters were always open to interpretation.

"The drug angle might be worth pursuing," Sam said. "A lady with a coke habit could make enemies pretty easily. Even if she was only hooked on pain killers or tran-quilizers, it would give us an opening."

"Lisa's stepfather was talking about her behavior in high school. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a hint of drug involvement recently."

"Maybe that's because nobody's looked." Sam's tone was huffy.

I pulled a mug out of the cupboard. "All right. I'll check into it."

"And see if you can find out anything more about the family. You want my opinion, the dynamics there are rife with possibilities."

"For the soaps maybe." The morning was warm, the air in the kitchen close and stale. I opened the back door and discovered the air outside was fresh but even warmer. The heat hit me like a blast from an open oven. Loretta and Barney wasted no time retreating into the relative cool of the dining room.

"Lisa Cornell's mother must have been plenty irked to discover she'd been cut out of the will," Sam pointed out.