“You said Mrs Scaler has a sister? A beautiful woman?” Harry said to me. “Does she stay at the house? Live in the area?”

“I’ve never seen anything but a picture from a portrait joint. A place called Blackburn Studios.”

“Portrait studio?” Harry mused. “You’ve got to figure a place like that keeps address info on clients, right?”

Chapter 43

The photography studio was in one of the hoitytoity neighborhoods on the west side, which seemed odd. I recalled the photo of Patricia Scaler’s sister as being emotionless, as if taken by the camera and not a human behind it. Maybe cold and mechanical portraits were the new rage among the wealthy.

Harry had a call from the DA on the court case and had to sit in the car and detail his upcoming testimony. I think he preferred staying in the cruiser anyway, keeping close to the pic of Noelle.

I walked in the door, found myself in a plush anteroom with art on the walls, potted ferns, furniture upholstered in creamy leather. A woman in a nurse-type uniform sat behind a window, reading Vogue. It hit me that I was in an upscale dentist office, or something similar.

“Good morning,” the young woman said, showing perfect teeth as white as snow. “May I help you?”

“Is there another Blackburn Studios?” I said. “I’m looking for a photography studio.”

She puzzled about it, pretty little chin perched atop her pink finger. “There’s a Blackburn Motors. Sometimes people dial us instead of them.”

A man in his mid forties stepped from a back hall into the office. He was attractive to the point of pretty, walking in choppy steps as if on a model runway. He wore a starched white lab coat and was holding a stack of files in a pink hand with manicured fingernails. He looked like a guy who had to be dragged out of the mirror section of department stores.

“Trisha, I need you to please put these back in…” He looked up, saw me. “Hello…can I help you?”

“I’m beginning to wonder.”

“I’m Dr Lawrence Blackburn. Step back here, please.”

Puzzled, I followed him into a small office with several mirrors and a large desk. There were posters of noses and chins on the wall, hundreds of noses and chins. He stepped close and studied my face like Michelangelo inspecting a chunk of marble.

“Great angles, masculine thrust. But everyone can use a little help. You’re mid thirties, right?”

“True.”

“Your nose has been broken.”

“Twice,” I affirmed. “Once in the line of duty and once in defense of a lady.”

“I can make it straight as an arrow; think of Pierce Brosnan’s nose. And I can take five years off those eyes. You spend too much time in the sun. It’s taken a toll. How about giving me profile?”

I did my best uprising profile, modeled after Tutweiler. “You know Patricia Scaler’s sister, don’t you, Doc?” I asked as I posed. “I don’t recall her name.”

He did puzzled. “I didn’t know Patricia had a sister. She’s never mentioned one.”

“You took a picture of the woman, Doctor. Strikingly attractive. Her portrait said Blackburn Studios in the lower-right-hand corner.”

“That wasn’t a portrait like a picture portrait. It’s a picture of the future, a computer-generated image of what our procedures will create. Patricia’s having a total reconstruction…a good way to start with a plain-Jane face like the poor girl’s been wearing all these years.”

“Wait a minute…I was looking at Patricia Scaler?”

“After rhinoplasty, blepheroplasty, cheek uplifts, chin implants, collagen. Along with our facial work, she’s having cosmetic dentistry by Dr Mellmen over in Daphne, implants, caps. The best in the region. Plus breast implants. She’ll look twelve years younger and drop-dead gorgeous. The damage to her face is the best thing to ever happen to her, from an aesthetic standpoint, of course. We can start from scratch.” Blackburn seemed to realize he’d gone on without mentioning a critical moment in the past couple weeks, did an obligatory frown.

“Terrible thing about her husband, of course.”

“Maybe a new face will cheer her up,” I suggested.

“Better than new shoes,” the doc said, chipper again.

“We heard it right,” I said after explaining to Harry I’d been in a cosmetic surgery clinic. “That was Patti Scaler on the video. Get this: the woman’s having herself re-done, cosmetic surgery from tits to topknot. Maybe that’s what she’s always wanted.”

“She sounded angry in the video. And tough.”

I folded my arms and thought through three traffic lights, lost in my head. “Tough probably isn’t the word,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Try this one for a hoot, bro: Lady Scaler’s in on the action. When the boyos come to hijack Scaler, spirit him off to camp, she tells one of them to work her over. Knock out those rabbit teeth and bust a few things bad. It gives her an excuse to get everything rebuilt from the beginning. Symbolizes a new start.”

“Jesus, Carson, that’s freaky.” Harry thought about it. “But it also lets her claim…”

“That daddy Scaler was a wife-beater, adding to his negative legacy. And sweet Patti gets to have a sexy new face installed after forty-eight years.”

Harry scowled. “That’s insane, you know. Something a psychopath would do.”

“Time to turn the camera on Patricia Scaler,” I nodded, feeling foolish. “Like I should have done a week ago.”

Chapter 44

There were two cars in the drive, the blue Toyota that belonged to Mrs Herdez, the Scalers’ housekeeper, and a red pickup with a Mexican flag on the bumper.

I knocked. Seconds later Mrs Herdez’s face appeared at the door. It took her a second to recognize Harry and me. She didn’t look happy to see us.

“I’d like to speak with you, ma’am,” I said. “About your employers.”

“No speak Ingles.” The door started to close.

Harry’s hand caught the door and eased it open.

“You spoke it well enough to work for the Scalers. Or did the Scalers comprende Espanol?”

A trapped look from Mrs Herdez. We used her moment of confusion to slip into the room and close the door, as if invited into the home. Despite the second vehicle, I didn’t see anyone else. The place was bright and clean and orderly, a couch and chairs covered with woven blankets, a tube-style television in the corner. One white wall was covered with photos going back years; family, I expected, far more black-and-white photos than color. Some were faded and yellowed, dark-skinned people leaning on rattletrap cars or sitting beneath mesquite trees or gathered in a room, the walls obviously adobe.

“You’re not in any trouble, ma’am,” Harry said. “We just need to ask you some questions about the Scalers. Mrs Scaler, in particular.”

Mrs Herdez’s face seemed overtaken with sudden joy. Her hands clapped.

“Mrs Scaler is a lovely woman. An angel. Kind and generous. She shares her things with me, gives me clothes, food. One time there was a party and she gave me twenty pounds of camarones to take home to my family.”

“How did she and her husband get along?”

“They were like children in love. Kisses, the snuggles.”

“We heard they didn’t still sleep in the same room,” Harry said. “Or talk a lot.”

“I don’t know who would speak such things. They were happy like two doves.”

From the other room I heard, “That’s a load of sandeces, Maria Herdez. It’s bullshit.”

I looked toward the door to the kitchen. A slender woman with angry eyes strode into the room. She was in her forties, probably very pretty when her face wasn’t tight with anger. Her hair was in a braid and outsized loop earrings dangled from her lobes. She put her fists on her hips and glared at Mrs Herdez.