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Her face was flushed and, up close, her usually perfect hair was mussed.
All I could do was sputter words. “What? Why?”
She grinned at my discomfort.
“What’s wrong?”
Where to begin? She was Peralta’s ex-wife. She had moved away to San Francisco in as final a breakup as I could imagine. I had known both of them for most of my adult life. And here she was, having obviously been in his room. But it was none of those things. I felt the embarrassment of nearly coming across my parents having sex.
“It’s all right, David.” She laughed that full-out laugh that always put me at ease. She studied me. “You’ve lost weight.”
Her eyes held concern rather than a compliment. I knew the suit was now almost hanging on me.
I said, “So you’re why he went to Balboa Park. I thought something was odd.”
“Maybe he can grow a little after all,” she said. “I was down here for a conference, so…”
So, indeed.
She hugged me again, made me promise we would get together for drinks or coffee before we left, and disappeared into the elevator.
After a minute to collect myself, I knocked on his door. He greeted me in a bathrobe.
“Why are you blushing?” he demanded.
“I got too much sun at the beach.”
“Why is your shirt and tie a mess?”
“A baby peed on me, okay? You change and I’ll come back.”
“I’m fine,” he said and walked inside, leaving the door open. I reluctantly followed him.
He plopped down on the unmade bed. I sat on a sofa and filled him in on Tim Lewis, the baby, and Grace Hunter’s small business. He closed his eyes and grunted after every few sentences, taking it in as he always did. He offered no more reaction when I showed him the flash drive. We would have to find someone to break the code.
The room was too warm for my suit.
I wrapped it up. “Tim Lewis has parents in Riverside. I told him to take the baby and go there today.”
“Did you get their address?”
“Yes.” I said it a bit too testily.
“What’s wrong?” His Mister Innocent voice. Then, “Look next to you, on the desk. It’s the entire case file on the girl’s suicide.”
I swiveled to see several thick folders bound with a large red rubber band.
“Man, you have the pull,” I said. “How is Kimbrough doing?”
“He’s happy.” He slurped on a Diet Coke. “I’d like to say it was my pull, but remember that suicide in Coronado? The girlfriend of the millionaire from north Scottsdale who allegedly hanged herself?”
I remembered. It had happened at the Spreckles Mansion in the rich, idyllic town that sat on a spit across from San Diego. The rich guy had purchased the iconic house. As I recalled, he made his money from acne products and cosmetics. The girlfriend, young enough to be his daughter of course, had been alone when his young son had tripped and fallen over a balustrade in the mansion. The child had died.
The next day the girlfriend had been found hanging from a second-story balcony, naked, a cloth in her mouth, and her hands bound with rope. As with Grace, the authorities had pronounced it a suicide.
Peralta shook his head. “I can see your mind making connections, Mapstone. They’re not there. It has nothing to do with our case. Bill Gross is a good friend of mine.” That would be the San Diego County Sheriff. “His department was called in because Coronado PD doesn’t have the expertise for a complex death investigation. The media put Bill through hell on this one. News choppers overhead got pictures of the body and pretty soon it was on the Internet. Everybody became an amateur sleuth. They even got Dr. Phil involved.”
He shook his head. “But the woman in Coronado really did kill herself based on the evidence. Hell, the sheriff’s department even put up a special page with the information on their Web site. Kimbrough said his chief didn’t want Grace Hunter to turn into another media circus. So we lucked out and have copies of everything.”
