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“What’s up?”
“I caught you,” he said. “Good. What’s the name of the lawyer who tried bringing Gannett in as an expert?”
“Forrest Slope.”
“Unbelievable.”
“He’s relevant?”
“Not in terms of breathing,” he said. “Murdered a couple of years ago, open case. Do you remember when the thing in chambers took place?”
“Let me check…March.”
“He got killed in November. Not here, down in Palm Desert. I found out because I was checking out your bad daddy, Hoffgarden, due to his relationship with Cordi and history of DV. Also, with his being a weight trainer, I figured a strong guy.”
“Strong and big,” I said. “Around six-three and two thirty, all muscle. Why’s that a factor?”
“It’s not for Cordi, but it could be for knocking out Naked thentoting him outside figuring to ditch him somewhere. The van shows up, change of plans. Naked gets tossed straight at it, mission accomplished.”
“Naked’s off your radar as the killer.”
“Far from it, he’s right on the screen,” he said. “But learning anything about him means waiting for the lab and I don’t like doing nothing. The scene stinks of up close and personal. I’ve been through Gannett’s place and there’s no sign she had any current love interest, so maybe she and Hoffgarden were still involved on some level. An old flame burning out of control could do a lot of damage.”
I said, “No love life fits what I’ve just seen on her social pages. All business.”
“Really…so maybe she had adeepsecret life.”
“Or none at all and she really was all about commerce. In terms of someone removing Naked, why bother when her body was left in the house?”
“I was thinking a staging. Make it look like Naked killed her and ran out of the house crazed. Which is exactly what I assumed until the gray cells kicked in and I realized I needed to avoid tunnel vision. And the little I know about Hoffgarden gives me an itchy feeling.”
“What’s his connection to Slope?”
“Trainer–client. When I googled Hoffgarden his name popped up in aDesert Sunpiece on Slope’s murder. Apparently he moved to Palm Springs and opened a gym there, and Slope was one of his loyal customers. Hoffgarden was quoted along with a few other of Slope’s acquaintances. You didn’t think much of Slope, right.”
“Not a big fan.”
“Other folks were. Great guy, shirt off his back, the usual stuff you get with dead people no matter what they were really like. I phoned the detective who worked the case. It’s technically open but cold. She figures it for a home invasion robbery that got ugly. Palm Desert’s quietcrime-wise but Palm Springs has gang problems and there’s also spillover nastiness from Coachella.”
I said, “Slope also moved to the desert?”
“Either that or he had a weekend place there. The basics are he didn’t show up for golf with friends, ditto for a dinner later that day, so they went to check. Slope’s car was there but he didn’t answer the bell or his phone so they went out back, saw the sliding glass door to the back was unlocked, and called the cops. The house had been tossed and Slope was in bed, strangled with a ligature, probably a belt. There was an alarm system but it was switched off. Local D didn’t find that notable, like I said the area’s safe and people get relaxed.”
“Did the scene fit an invasion?”
“On the face of it,” he said.
“You have your doubts?”
“Local D didn’t seem like someone into working too hard, so without looking at the murder book I won’t commit. The safe wasn’t touched and there was cash in a bedroom drawer; the only thing missing was a bunch of expensive watches. None showed up at any pawnshop in the area. But if it was gangsters, they have other trading posts. Or some lowlifes are walking around sporting Rolexes and Patek Philippes.”
I said, “Hoffgarden must’ve been happy with Slope’s work on the divorce if he kept up a relationship with him.”
“Yeah, but Hoffgarden’s domestic history says relationships with him tend to go south. What keeps poking at me is both Slope and Gannett were killed in their homes in high-end neighborhoods and Hoffgarden knew both of them. I ran him through the databases, and prior to the domestics with his girlfriends he has an assault conviction and one for battery. Bar fights back when he was in college. There is a six-year period between college and his first DV but you know how it goes.”
“People get away with stuff.”
“The mulch in which crime germinates remains rich, amigo. In a perfect world, I could subpoena Hoffgarden’s cellphone and see which towers it pinged at the time poor Cordi was getting stabbed but I’m several galaxies away from justification for a subpoena. Meanwhile, Naked still is a person of interest—calling him that sounds flip, wish I had a name.”
