Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman

hallway carpeted in gray poly smelled of mold and orange-scented air freshener. Twenty-three mail slots just inside the door. Liver-colored doors lined the murky space. Lots of interviews, if it ever came to that.
    A door at the rear of the hall opened and a man stuck his head out, scratched the crook of one arm. Sixty or so, gray hair flying like dandelion fuzz, haloed by sickly light. Scrawny but potbellied, wearing a blue satin Dodger jacket over striped pajama bottoms.
    He scratched again. Worked his jaws and lowered his head. “Yeah?”
    I said, “Just leaving.”
    He stood there, watching until I made good on that promise.
     
     
    South on Highland took me through two miles of film labs, tape-dupe services, costume warehouses, prop shops. All those people who’d never be thanked on Oscar night.
    Between Melrose and Beverly a few dowager apartment buildings clung to twenties elegance. The rest didn’t even try. A turn onto Beverly took me around the southern edge of the Wilshire Country Club and into Hancock Park.
     
     
    Hudson Avenue is one of the district’s grandest streets, and the second address on Tanya’s list matched a massive, multigabled, slate-roofed, brick Tudor piled atop a sloping lawn that had been skinned as close as a putting green. Five-foot bronze urns flanking the front door hosted lemon trees studded with fruit. Double doors under a limestone arch were carved exuberantly. A black filigree gate offered a view of a long cobbled driveway. A white Mercedes convertible sat behind a green Bentley Flying Spur hand-fashioned in the fifties.
    This was where Patty and Tanya had just moved when they first came to see me. Renting space in a house. The owners of this house didn’t appear to need the extra income. Patty had been certain the move hadn’t been stressful for Tanya. Face-slapping contrast with the sad building on Cherokee made me a believer, and I wondered now about the specifics of the transition.
    I sat there and enjoyed the view. No one came out of the mansion or any of its stately neighbors. But for a couple of lusty squirrels in a sycamore tree, no movement at all. In L.A. luxury means pretending no one else inhabits the planet.
    I put in a call to Patty’s oncologist, Tziporah Ganz, left a message with her service.
    One of the squirrels scampered over to the left-hand lemon tree, got hold of a juicy one, and tugged. Before it could complete the theft, one of the double doors opened and a short, dark-haired maid in a pink uniform charged out wielding a broom. The animal faced off, then thought better of it. The maid turned to reenter the mansion and noticed me.
    Stared.
    Another hostile reception.
    I drove away.
    Address three was a quick drive: Fourth Street off La Jolla. Tanya had returned to my office just after leaving there for Culver City.
    The house turned out to be a Spanish Revival duplex on a pleasant leafy street of matching structures. The only distinguishing feature of the building where the Bigelows had lived was a concrete pad in lieu of a lawn. The only vehicle in sight was a deep red Austin Mini with vanity plates that read
PLOTGRL
.
    Solidly middle-class, respectable, but a whole different planet after Hudson Avenue. Maybe Patty had wanted more room than rented mansion space afforded.
    My final stop was a solid forty-minute drive in thick traffic to a grubby stretch of Culver Boulevard just west of Sepulveda and the 405 overpass.
    The lot bore six identical gray-framed, tar-roofed boxes that ringed the crumbled remains of a plaster fountain. Two brown-skinned preschoolers played in the dirt, unattended.
    Classic L.A. bungalow court. Classic refuge of transients, has-beens, almost-weres.
    These bungalows weren’t much bigger than sheds. The property had been neglected to the point of peeling paint and curling roof shingles and sagging foundations. Traffic roared by. Pothole–axle encounters lent a syncopated conga beat to the engine concerto.
    Maybe it had been