The Clinic by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online Page A

to make some kind of statement.”
    “Yeah . . . but I do want to know what she did for Cruvic and Barone. We’re talking over a hundred grand in two years. Though after the book, she didn’t need it.”
    He pulled photocopied tax returns out of his briefcase.
    “Her last filing. Gross income of six hundred eighty thousand dollars, the bulk of it from advances and royalties and public speaking. The after-tax came out to almost half a mil and it’s sitting in a money-market account at Merrill Lynch jointly registered to her and Seacrest. No real debts, she had the Mustang before, and Seacrest inherited the house from his parents. Another half a mil. Not a bad investment to cash in on, especially if the marriage is sour.”
    “How long were they married?”
    “Ten years.”
    “How’d they meet?”
    “Seacrest says at the University rec center, swimming.”
    “Was he married before?”
    “Nope, he told Paz and Fellows he’d been one of those “stodgy confirmed bachelors,’ unquote.
    In addition to the five hundred grand, there’s more coming to him. Her literary agent wouldn’t give me numbers but she did say substantial royalties were likely to come in over the next year or so. Book sales were brisk before the murder, the publisher was about to offer her a deal on a sequel. Hope and Seacrest did estate planning a few years ago, established a marital trust to avoid estate taxes, so Seacrest gets to keep all of it.His income last year was sixty-four gees, all from his University salary. His Volvo’s eight years old and he’s managed to put away some cash in his faculty pension plan. Plus there’s the house. He’s written some books, too, but they don’t pay royalties. Guess romantic elements of the medieval age can’t compete with penis-as-lethal-weapon.”
    “Ten-to-one income ratio,” I said.
    “Another kind of jealousy angle. What if she was going to leave him just as she struck it big?
    For another guy—your love-sex-betrayal thing, plus all that money sitting there. A temptation, right? And who’d be in a better position to know her habits? To poison the dog? Hope did have one thing right: More women are killed by so-called loved ones than by all the scumbags Page 30

    combined.”
    “Seacrest went all these years without big bucks,” I said. “Has he turned into a high liver recently?”
    “No, on the contrary,nothing’s changed about his life: He goes to work each day and comes home. Weekends he stays home. Says he reads and watches TV. Doesn’t even rent videos. But if she was cheating on him, no telling what that could do to an old-fashioned confirmed bachelor.
    Someone who studies romance—don’t forget that stab in the heart. The guy’s fifty-five, Alex.
    Maybe he had a midlife crisis. And like I said, I keep thinking he’s hiding something.”
    “Why?”
    “Nothing I can put my finger on, that’s the problem. He answers questions but volunteers no info. He never called Fellows and Paz once, to find out how their investigation was going. When I got assigned I phoned him right away and got the feeling I was taking up his precious time.
    Like he was off somewhere else.”
    “Maybe he’s still in shock.”
    “No, this was more like he had better things to do. If someone you loved got sliced up, how would you react? Tell you what, how about I give you a firsthand look? I’m planning to drop in on him tonight, late. Not that I’m out to exploit a pal—if you’ve got some serious time to invest on the case, I can actually”—he panted—“payyou.”
    He drew a folded form out of his jacket pocket. “Surprise from Uncle Milo.”
    Police ID badge and a consultant contract in triplicate, my name typed on the dotted line. The department was willing to engage me for no more than fifty hours at less than a quarter of my private hourly fee. Small print limited LAPD’s liability: If I tripped on a banana peel or got shot, they’d be sympathetic but stingy.
    “It ain’t filthy