Bones by Jonathan Kellerman Page A

tall, yellow plastic garbage can. Empty. Additional pillows strewn randomly supplied extra seating. Plumped and firm, as if they’d never borne weight.
    Storage came by way of a three-drawer plywood dresser and a six-foot steel closet painted olive drab. To the left of the closet was a lav barely wide enough for one person to stand in. Nylon curtain instead of a door, fiberglass shower, Home Depot sink and commode. A flimsy medicine cabinet sat on the floor.
    Everything spotless and dry. The cabinet was empty.
    The exception to all the bare-bones aesthetic was a wall devoted to a pair of electric keyboards, an amp, a mixing board, a twenty-inch flat-screen monitor on a black stand, two black folding chairs, and several waist-high stacks of sheet music.
    Reed examined the music. “Classical… more classical… some indie rock…
more
classical.”
    Milo said, “No stereo, no CDs.”
    Reed said, “There’s probably an iPod somewhere.”
    “Then where’s the computer that makes all the other gizmos operative?”
    Reed frowned. “Someone cleaned up.”
     
     
    The two of them went through the dresser and the metal closet. Jeans, T-shirts, jackets, underwear in small sizes. Tennis shoes, boots, black high-heeled sandals, red pumps, white pumps. One end of the hanging rack in the closet bore half a dozen dresses in optimistic colors.
    No discs, laptops, anything related to computers.
    Reed kneeled in front of the dresser, slid open the bottom drawer. “Whoa.”
    Inside was a leather bustier, two sets of fishnets, three pairs of orange-trimmed black crotchless panties, a trio of cheap black wigs, three enormous purple dildos.
    Each of the hairpieces was shoulder-length with short bangs. A blue vinyl sewing box held bottles of white face makeup, black eyeliner, tubes of lipstick the color of an old bruise. When Reed pulled it out, a small, black leather riding crop rolled forward.
    Milo said, “Dominatrix in her spare time? Maybe her real pad’s someplace else and she used this dump for partying.”
    Reed seemed transfixed by the garments. “Maybe she also gave her music lessons here, Lieutenant.”
    “Doubtful, no real piano, no instruction books.” Milo shut the drawer, took in the room. “If this
was
her main crib, she led a pretty bare life, even accounting for a cleanup. Five minutes inside and I’m ready to gulp some Prozac.”
    He returned to the metal closet, ran his hand over the top shelf. “Well, looky here.”
    Down came a cardboard Macy’s box stuffed with papers.
    On top was Selena Bass’s tax return from last year. Income of forty-eight thousand from “freelance musical consulting,” ten grand worth of “equipment and supplies” deductions.
    Beneath that, he found thirteen monthly checks clipped together in a precise stack. Four thousand dollars each, written on the Global Investment Co. account of The Simon M. Vander Family Trust, address on Fifth Street in Seattle.
    Same memo for every payment in block printing:
Lessons for Kelvin.
    Reed said, “The kid on the Web.”
    Milo said, “Nearly fifty K a year to teach Junior how to tickle the ivories.”
    “One student paying all the bills, maybe he’s got serious talent, some kind of prodigy.”
    “Or someone thinks he does. How about going out to the car and running Simon Vander’s name? The kid, too.”
    “You bet.”
    Milo resumed examining the papers in the Macy’s box. A California I.D. depicted a thin-faced, big-eyed girl with a pointy cleft chin and dirty-blond hair. Short bangs, just like the wigs. Easy fit for dress-up time?
    I said, “Why would she need that if she had a license?”
    He said, “Maybe she moved here without a license, got this in the interim.”
    Beneath the card were receipts from a Betsey Johnson outlet in Cabazon, near Palm Springs, and a six-month-old credit card bill for five hundred dollars, recently paid off after six months of mounting interest at the typical usurious rate.
    At the bottom sat a single