The Wedding Guest (Alex Delaware #34) - Jonathan Kellerman Page 0,2
detectives for this one. Plus the eight uniforms who’d arrived in a quartet of black-and-whites. Two of the squad cars were topped by clinking cherry bars.
Off to the right, the white vans, crime lab and coroner’s, a pair of ominous twins.
No coroner’s investigator car. Come and gone.
Easy identification or none at all.
* * *
—
Despite all the squad cars, the only uniform in sight rested her hip against the driver’s door of a blinking cruiser. Working her phone, looking serene.
As I walked toward her, she gave me a glance. Usually I get stopped and have to show I.D. She said, “Hey, Dr. Delaware.”
I’d seen her somewhere; the site of someone else’s misfortune.
I said, “Hi, Officer…Stanhope.”
Her phone screen was filled with kittens wearing funny hats. She clicked without self-consciousness. “Cute, huh? Around the back, Doc, it’s pretty crazy.”
The remaining seven uniforms were walking among the parked cars, copying license plates. Milo watched the process from a rear metal door. His arms were crossed atop the swell of his gut. His height, his bulk, and the scowl on his face fit the image of club bouncer. His droopy brown suit, tragic tie the color of pesto sauce, once-white wash-’n’-wear shirt, and tan desert boots didn’t.
He lowered his arms. “Thanks for coming. Got a hundred people inside, a whole bunch of them boozed up. The plan is to settle them down, then Moe and Sean and Alicia Bogomil will try to get info. You get what I meant about context.”
“A wedding?” I said. “I do.”
He stared at me. Cracked up.
I said, “Interesting venue. Looks like a low-rent strip joint.”
“That’s ’cause it once was. Before that it was some kind of church.”
“Saints and Sinners.”
“Huh?”
“The wedding theme.”
“Doubtful that’s the reason, Alex. I’ve met the lovely couple, don’t see them as that abstract. C’mon, let me show you where the big sin happened.”
* * *
—
A building-wide passageway carpeted in tomato-red low-pile took us past an open space. Parquet dance floor centering round tables for ten. Paper plates and a single scrawny sunflower on each table.
To the left were a long buffet table, three portable bars, a photo booth, and a bank of videogames. Empty red plastic cups dotted the floor along with crumbs and stains. Plastic streamers drooped from the ceiling. Four polyethylene columns attempting to look like plaster segmented the walk space from the party space. The remnants of a strip joint evoking Caligula.
The tables in the main room were occupied by sober-faced people dressed for celebration. Most were in their thirties, a few were old enough to be the parents of thirty-year-olds. A rear stage held a deejay setup. Obstructing a clear view of the stage were three chrome stripper poles, one bedecked with plastic sunflowers on unlikely vines. Lacking music and dim lighting, the room had the sad, rancid feel of every after-hours club. A bit of conversational hum drifted toward us, unable to compete with a heavy, gray silence.
Detective Moe Reed, with the powerlifter’s build and youth of an actual bouncer, stood watch on a third of the tables. Detective Sean Binchy, tall, lanky, and baby-faced under ginger spiked hair, was in charge of the next group. Last was Alicia Bogomil, just turned forty, with gimlet eyes and knife-edged features. The ponytailed long hair I’d seen when I met her was replaced by a no-nonsense bun.
Milo and I had encountered Alicia when she worked private security at a hotel where a patient of mine had been murdered. She’d been a real cop in Albuquerque for seven years, moved to California for a romance that didn’t work out, was languishing when she helped us with info.
She’d mentioned joining LAPD to Milo. I had no idea there’d been follow-through. No reason for me to know; for nearly three months, there hadn’t been a murder where Milo felt I’d be useful.
As we passed the partygoers, a few looked up. The slumping posture and resigned eyes of passengers stranded in an airport.
I said, “How long ago did it happen?”
Milo said, “Victim was found at nine fifty, probably an hour before, give or take.” He glanced at the crowd. A couple of people looked over hopefully. As Milo continued to walk, their heads drooped.
“Meet my new alter ego: Officer Buzzkill.”
We continued to the end of the walkway, hooked left as if we were exiting through the front door, then he made another left and began trudging up a flight of grimy stairs.