Flesh and Blood by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online Page B

was just a cover for selling her body in another way.
    Weekends by herself. One in Malibu, other times unspecified. Keeping it vague to cover her trail as she met up with clients?
    The night owl and the morning lark. If she wanted privacy, Salander was a perfect roommate. Still, the guy was perceptive. If Lauren had been working at her old profession, wouldn't he have caught on?
    Maybe he had and chose not to tell me. My gut told me he'd been forthcoming, but you never knew. . . .
    I thought of what he'd told me about Lauren's income. Investments. From her working days. Enough to coast for a few years.
    I do great with tips.
    Good clothes but otherwise living frugally. Before Salander had moved in, she'd had virtually no furniture. That and the old car said she knew how to make do.
    Budgeting but spending on luscious thingsin her closet.
    Dressing for the job?
    I wondered about the lunch with her mother, Lauren returning dazed and upset, complaining about Jane trying to control her. But that had been two or three months ago—no reason it would lead her to vanish now.
    Vanish. Despite my reassurances to Salander, I was thinking worst-case scenario.
    Seven days, no luggage, no car, no explanation.
    Maybe Lauren would waltz in any minute. Straight-A student returned from a research trip—some professor asking her to attend an out-of-town meeting or convention, deliver a paper. . . . She'd flown somewhere—that could explain no car. But it didn't solve the problem of wardrobe, and why hadn't she let anyone know?
    Unless Salander wasn't as familiar with her wardrobe as he claimed and she had packed something. Tossed casual clothes into a bag.
    Research ... A project at my alma mater, a psych major, so probably a psych job. At the very department from which I'd obtained my union card.
    I headed west on Wilshire, caught snail traffic at Crescent Heights—an orange-vested Caltrans crew, stupidest agency in the state, taking petty-fascist satisfaction in blocking off two lanes. I sat, idling along with the Seville, rolled a foot or two, sat some more, finally got past La Cienega. Unmindful of the noise and the dirt. New focus: yearning to feel useful.
    6
    I REACHED THE city-sized campus of the U just after four-thirty. More people were leaving than arriving, and the first two parking lots I tried were being retrofitted for something. University officials gripe about budget constraints, but the jackhammers are always working overtime. It's a boom time for L.A., might endure till the next time the earth shrugs.
    It was nearly five P.M. when I hurried up the stairs to the psych building, hoping someone would be around. The cement-and-stucco waffle had been repainted: from off-white to a golden beige with chartreuse overtones. Uncommonly bright for a place devoted to the joys of artificial intelligence and compelling brain-lesioned rats to race through ever more Machiavellian mazes. Maybe boom times hadn't loosened up grant money and the new hue was an attempt to connote warmth and availability. If so, eight stories of Skinner-box architecture said forget it.
    By the time I entered the main office, half the lights were out and only one secretary remained, locking up. But the right secretary—a plump, ginger-haired young woman named Mary Lou Whiteacre, whose five-year-old son I'd treated last year.
    Brandon Whiteacre was a nice little boy, soft and artistic, with his mother's coloring and scared-bunny eyes. A freeway pileup had shattered his grandmother's hip and sent him to the hospital for observation. Brandon had escaped with nothing broken other than his confidence, andsoon he began wetting his bed and waking up screaming. Mary Lou got my name from the alumni referral list, but the department wasn't picking up the tab. She was reeling from the crash and still chafing under the financial hardships imposed by a three-year-old divorce. Her HMO offered the usual cruelty. I treated Brandon for free.
    My footsteps made her look up, and