She held a wallet identifying her as a police psychologist for the San Francisco Police Department.

“After being married to him for thirty years, who could be more qualified?” She winked at him.

“Plus, Tim’s mother had all of Sharon’s books,” he said.

“As I was saying…” Sharon reclaimed the floor, and Peralta, uncharacteristically, shut up. “The mother’s name is Vicki, father named Mike. They were both there, a nice couple, and were very generous with their time considering all they’ve been through. They’re devastated by Tim’s death and sick about their grandson. The police have tapped their phones, but they haven’t heard anything, much less a ransom demand. They don’t understand why anyone would have killed Tim or Grace.”

I actually swallowed my food before speaking. “So they knew Grace?”

Sharon nodded. “They met her when she and Tim first started dating. After they got together again, they saw her more than a dozen times, including at their wedding, which was held in Riverside, and when she gave birth. They loved her. That was the word each one used.”

I listened to Sharon and was so glad to see her. She was a couple of inches shorter than Lindsey’s five-seven, but was still in great shape with the black hair and angelic face off a tapestry in a Mexican church. In a way words couldn’t describe, she centered our world. I had known her when she was a young, uncertain mother, then as she put herself through college and graduate school, not always with Peralta’s emotional support. This had been one of the old battlegrounds between Peralta and me. Then she had hit it big and finally she had divorced him. But apparently “finally” had a second act.

She said what we had heard before: Grace was stable, not suicidal, and had no enemies. Tim’s childhood sounded suburban normal, the kind that produced golf pros or lone mass shooters. And Grace had done a very good job of keeping people from knowing how she had made money working through college.

“They didn’t have a clue,” Sharon said. “But the world of high-end call girls can be very different from the sexual exploitation you find with streetwalkers or immigrants from Eastern Europe who thought they were getting a trip to America for a job in a factory and it tur

ns out to be a very different kind of assembly line. What Grace was doing was even more specialized, working on her own. Most work for agencies. But powerful men will pay very well for the services.”

“I bet.” Peralta licked his fingers. Sharon shot him a civilizing glance and he stopped, using his napkins instead.

“These men pay for the sexual skills, no question. The more versatile, the better. They think they have a woman in her sexual prime who really wants to have sex and enjoys it. Many of them are narcissists who want a beautiful young woman on their arms. It’s a prestige thing. If he’s an executive, it’s gotten too risky to hit on subordinates. So a discreet hooker is the thing.”

Lindsey said, “Is it only about the prestige and the sex?”

Sharon shook her head. “Many of the johns also want an emotional connection that they feel they aren’t getting from their wives. If Grace was all these things, plus polished, cheerful, intelligent, sophisticated, and romantic, then she could get top dollar. In San Francisco, I met call girls who were getting more than five thousand an hour.”

“An hour?” Peralta raised an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“Considering she was their daughter-in-law,” I said, “it’s better that they didn’t know her past.”

I certainly didn’t know Lindsey’s recent past.

Sharon said. “They liked being a family to her. It sounds as if Grace’s mother was totally self-absorbed and her father was even worse. Tim’s parents went to her graduation last year. Neither of Grace’s parents did. Her father was at a golf tournament with his buddy, some washed up pro football player.”

I stopped in mid-bite and pushed the hot dog away.

“Larry Zisman?” I asked.

“That the name,” she said. “He was a star for the Sun Devils back in the seventies. I remember.”

Occam’s Razor, indeed.

Peralta attacked his second chili dog with more aggression than usual. A Scottsdale McMansion of possibilities had opened up. One room contained the obvious, that Zisman was a client. Another held the possibility that Zisman had hit on his buddy’s daughter and gotten it for free. The rest of the floor plan was too twisted to think about over lunch.

I said, “Maybe Zisman wasn’t her client.”

“He wasn’t,” Lindsey said.

Everybody turned to her.

“It took me about two minutes to break into that flash drive,” she said. “It contained an Excel spread sheet with sixty two clients: names, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, dates, and amounts. No Larry Zisman.”

Nobody took a bite.

I said, “The johns gave her that information?”

Tags: Jon Talton David Mapstone Mystery Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net