The Silent Widow

‘Happened to Lisa, or to me?’

‘Either.’

‘Well …’ Nikki swallowed. Her whole throat suddenly felt dry. ‘Lisa left Willie Baden. I guess you could call that surprising.’

Goodman nodded. ‘How about you?’

Nikki opened her eyes and gazed directly into Goodman’s.

‘The most surprising thing that happened to me,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘was losing my husband.’

Raising her hand to his lips, Goodman kissed it.

‘Tell me what happened,’ he urged Nikki softly. ‘Tell me everything.’

At the very back of the bar, alone in a corner booth, a man looked on unnoticed while Dr Nikki Roberts and Detective Lou Goodman leaned into one another like limpets.

She’s got him where she wants him, the man thought, watching Nikki’s lips part as Goodman’s hand toyed with her hair, his blue eyes fixed on her green ones. Whatever sob story she was telling him, it was working. She was reeling him in like a credulous fish. Fool.

The man nursed his beer discreetly as Goodman paid the check, then he and Dr Roberts walked out onto Santa Monica Boulevard, hand in hand like a pair of teenagers. It was frustrating, being an observer, unable to act. He liked to think of himself as a man of action. But the past few weeks had taught him that patience was also a virtue. He wouldn’t have to stay passive for long.

Soon the time for watching would be past.

Very soon …

CHAPTER TWENTY

Detective Mick Johnson watched as Carter Berkeley fiddled with his shirt, picking anxiously at the platinum Tiffany cufflinks with a perfectly manicured fingernail. It struck Johnson that everything about Nikki Roberts’ rich banker patient was ‘mani

cured’, from the neatly trimmed lawns of his Holmby Hills estate, to the gleaming collection of vintage Jaguar sports cars in his garage, to the immaculately furnished interior of his home office, where the two men now sat. Even the words Carter chose to explain what had happened seemed carefully chosen.

Last night while he was out at dinner, according to Carter, a rat – a dead, poisoned, rat – had been left at the foot of his bed as a mafia-style ‘warning’.

‘There was no note or anything like that,’ he told Johnson, twirling the cufflink between finger and thumb. ‘But obviously it was intended to intimidate. And it hit the mark, Detective. I don’t mind telling you, I was terrified. I am terrified. Especially after the other two murders. It was rather a stroke of luck that you were already in my schedule today, or I’d have been calling you out here.’

Johnson nodded, looking again around the room with all its polished wood and neatly arranged books, shelf after shelf of self-help and business manuals. Everything around this man was controlled and ordered, the result of careful thought and planning. Everything was perfect, on the outside. Inside Carter Berkeley’s head, however, it was a different matter.

Johnson had read Nikki’s notes earlier: ‘Neurotic. Delusional. Convinced he is being pursued by Mexican criminals but presents no evidence to support this belief. Long history of anxiety. Childhood trauma?? (Spent time in Mexico as teen/young adult. Did something happen?) Regressive/immature in intimate relationships. Excessively controlling.’

It pained Johnson to agree with Dr Roberts on anything, but her assessment of Carter Berkeley chimed with his own. Although he would probably have added ‘attention-seeking’ to the list. Perhaps Dr Roberts couldn’t see that because she suffered from it herself? Carter’s rat story was obviously an invention, a deliberate attempt to place himself at the center of the drama surrounding the two murders.

He needs to feel important, Johnson thought. Either that or he’s trying to distract me from something else. Some evidence he doesn’t want us to find.

‘I assume you have security here, sir?’ Johnson asked, although he already knew the answer. He’d passed the bored, poorly trained guards on his way in, and observed the CCTV cameras throughout the property.

‘Naturally,’ said Carter. ‘It’s a valuable property.’

‘Including cameras?’

‘Yes. But not in the master bedroom.’

The cufflink twirling took on a more frenzied pace.

‘Not in the master bedroom,’ Johnson repeated. ‘Why’s that?’

The banker gave a smirk worthy of a thirteen-year-old. Puerile, as Dr Roberts would say. ‘I’m sure you can take an educated guess, Detective. My security guards receive a live feed from those cameras. Let’s just say I value my privacy. Besides, I don’t need cameras in the master suite. All the entrances to the house are filmed, as is the upstairs hallway. Anyone coming in or out would be visible.’

‘Right,’ said Johnson. ‘And I imagine you reviewed the footage from those cameras yourself. After you found the rat.’