Serpentine

Like its neighbors, the house we were looking for was generous but no mansion: two-story cream-colored Spanish from the twenties with a flat lawn leading to a low-walled courtyard.

The grass had been tended but not coddled; dandelions sprouted like stubble on a carelessly shaved face. Hugging the wall, two forty-foot coconut palms shared space with a pair of equally towering Italian cypresses. Close to an unlocked iron-scroll gate, doddering birds-of-paradise coexisted with spatulate clumps of blue agapanthus.

Old-school landscaping. It would be easy to assume a resident with a traditionalist view, maybe one preoccupied with the past. But my training’s led me to run from easy answers. For all I knew, Ellie Barker rented the place.

The courtyard was gravel-floored and empty. The front door had a Gothic peak and was equipped with a rectangular peep-window and a tarnished brass loop for a knocker.

He stood back. “Go for it.”

“What do I say, psychologist on duty?”

“Hmph, no sense of adventure.” Stepping past me, he lifted the loop and let it fall hard.

From inside the house, a woman’s voice trilled, “One second!”

“Cheerful,” he said. “Why the hell not when the universe is your toy.”

Rapid footsteps followed by a flash of pale eyes in the window, then the door swung wide.

A smiling strawberry blonde held out a hand. “Lieutenant? I’m Ellie.”

Milo pretended to not see her fingers. Ellie Barker’s smile shrank to something tentative and anxious as she dropped her hand.

Pleasant-looking woman, medium height, medium build, the hair wavy, worn to her shoulders and parted in the middle. Her clothing revealed nothing about socioeconomic status: short-sleeved white jersey top, straight-leg blue jeans, white canvas slip-ons. No jewelry other than an Apple Watch around her left wrist.

Eyes, now doubtful, were gray-green, the skin surrounding them lightly tanned and sporadically freckled. Thirty-nine and showing the advent of laugh lines and forehead furrows.

She looked at me.

Milo said, “This is Dr. Delaware, our consulting psychologist.”

I shook her hand and her smile managed to stretch but lose wattage. “Someone thinks I need help? I do but I wasn’t thinking psychotherapy.”

“Dr. Delaware helps us with unusual cases.”

“I see,” she said without conviction. “Sorry, please come in.”

She led us through a domed Mexican-tiled entry hall and into a step-down living room with a high, wood-beam ceiling. Across the hall, a smaller dining room was brightened by lead-mullioned windows. Cutting through both spaces, a Mexican-tiled staircase climbed to the second floor.

The furniture in the living room was beige and brown and sparse. Bare white walls, unused fireplace lacking tools or a screen. The rental hypothesis gained traction.

“Please, guys.” Indicating a three-seat sofa facing a bare oak coffee table. “Can I get you something to drink — Coke, tea, water? I can make some coffee?”

“Water’s fine,” said Milo, sitting near the left arm of the sofa. I took the opposite end.

“Flat or fizzy?”

“Flat.”

Ellie Barker looked at him, hoping for thaw. He studied the ceiling.

She said, “Sure, water coming up,” and hurried off past the dining room into a kitchen doorway.

I said, “Looks like the butler’s on vacation.”

“So she’s doing the regular-gal thing for our benefit.”

Ellie Barker returned with two bottles of Dasani that she handed to us before settling in a facing love seat. “Thanks so much for doing this, guys. I hope it’s not a giant hassle.”

Milo checked himself midway through an eye roll.

Not soon enough. Ellie Barker flinched.

Thrown off for the second time, she coped the same way and turned to me. “A psychologist... part of me does think it’s crazy, trying to find out after all this time. I can’t exactly pump myself up with hope. But if I don’t ever try...” She looked at the floor.

I said, “Is this the first time you’ve tried?”

“No, it’s the third time but to my mind the first two don’t count.”

“Nothing came of them?”

“Less than nothing,” she said. “Private investigators. I think they were taking advantage of me.”

“Because...”

“It was too quick. Like going through the motions. They were corporate security types, maybe that was my mistake, I don’t know.” Daring a look at Milo.

He uncapped his water bottle, took a long swig. “Was one of them Sapient Investigations?”

Green-gray eyes widened. “They were the first. How did you — do they have a reputation for taking advantage?”

“They’re among the biggest and they concentrate on California. Mostly Northern California where you’re originally from. Their emphasis is on computer fraud, industrial espionage, tax cases.”

“You researched me.”

“Just the basics.”

“I see.” One slender freckled hand tugged at the fingers of the other. “I got the referral through my executive board — my former board, I had a company that I sold.” Small smile. “You probably know that, too.”