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“What’s that, tough love?”
“Keeping things simple. Caspian not having a car made me realize I didn’t see one at Cordi’s.”
“Nothing registered,” he said. “No doubt Uber et cetera for her, too. What do you think about Caspian’s lifestyle. Kinda Trappist, no?”
I said, “Like she said, it’s a vicious town.”
“She does have a point. And I think she was right, it does tell us something about Cordi. Poor guy’s scratching by, she gets him todiscount his fee? She’s a complex girl, our victim, should’ve come equipped with a decoder.”
I said, “Idolized by her brother and Caspian but not too popular with anyone else we’ve talked to.”
“Including her own mother. You see any similarities between Aaron and Caspian?”
“Males with whom sex wouldn’t be an issue for her. Fits with her abandoning relationships and concentrating on becoming famous.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. So Ms. Kramm coulda just nailed the motive. You’ve heard of those involuntary celibates, hate themselves, hate women, sometimes they snap. What if one of those watched her online, got enamored, convinced himself romance was on the horizon. He managed to make personal contact, she either ignored him or rejected him. Either way, he couldn’t handle it and boom.”
I said, “You wouldn’t need celibacy, just unfulfilled fantasy. Classic celebrity stalker situation.”
“Even though she wasn’t much of a celebrity yet.”
“You don’t have to be famous anymore, just out there.”
“Yeah…I’d love to check out the correspondence her videos pulled but she set it up so it got cleaned out every month. And nothing we’ve seen recently was suspicious.”
A block later, he said, “What if the scenario featured the short-tempered Mr. Hoffgarden? Who she actually did sleep with once upon a time. She breaks it off, he goes nuts.There’syour stalker deal. You’ve spent time with him, what do you think?”
“Can’t eliminate him.”
“That’s it? Nothing he did tipped you off?”
“The brief time I spent with him focused on his parenting skills.”
“Which were nil.”
We drove a bit.
I said, “Caspian sleeping in the nude clarifies one thing. He wasn’t stripped by the bad guy. He was a neat person, so his clothes were probably folded near the sofa and the bad guy took them and the I.D. to delay identification. Or, if Caspian was mistaken for a lover, carrying him naked into the street and making sure he was found that way would be an additional way to demean him.”
“Red-hot lover sleeping on the couch?”
“Sleeping naked could still have connoted sex,” I said. “Finding Caspian was likely a surprise, the killer might not have been thinking logically. Another reason could’ve been to take trophies. That would explain why you haven’t found the clothing discarded.”
“Loco-man slavering over his stash.”
His cell began chirping something Baroque. Mercifully, he answered by the third note.
Alicia Bogomil said, “Learned a few things about Mr. Delage, Loo. Sad story.”
“Let’s hear it, kid. I took my antidepressants this morning.”
She laughed. Gave the details.
When she finished, Milo said, “Maybe I need a higher dosage.”
CHAPTER
24
