Page 37 of Nightshade

THE ADDRESS ON Daniel Easterbrook’s driver’s license corresponded to a mansion on Orange Grove Boulevard. The gated driveway had a call box on a metal arm that brought it within easy reach of the window of the Bronco. Stilwell pushed the button twice before getting a response.

“Yes?”

It was a woman’s voice.

“L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, ma’am,” Stilwell said. “I need to speak to Daniel Easterbrook.”

“He no longer lives here,” the woman said.

Her tone indicated that she was tired of delivering the same message over and over.

“Can you tell me when he moved?” Stilwell asked.

“A month ago,” she said.

He paused.

“Is this Mrs. Easterbrook?” he asked.

“It is,” she said. “What’s this about?”

“Can you tell me where he’s living now, ma’am? I need to speak to him tonight, if possible.”

“Is something wrong?”

A tone of concern cracked through the previously hard and clipped voice.

“No, ma’am,” Stilwell said. “I just need to talk to him.”

There was no response. He pushed the talk button again.

“Mrs. Easterbrook?” he prompted.

“I’m looking it up,” she said. “I don’t have it memorized.”

Stilwell waited until she recited an address on Oxley in South Pasadena. He thanked her, backed the Bronco away from the gate, and headed south.

The new address belonged to a much smaller house that was not guarded by a gate and had the distinct look of a rental. No ornamental landscaping, no furniture on the porch. Stilwell parked on the street out front. There were lights on inside and this time he was able to approach the door and knock. A man in his late forties with a chiseled jaw and a full head of expensively cut brown hair opened the door. He was in workout clothes, with sweat stains under the arms of a gray T-shirt that said LAKERS across the chest in faded purple.

Stilwell was holding his badge up.

“Sheriff’s department,” he said. “Daniel Easterbrook?”

“Yes,” the man said. “My wife told me you were coming. This is about Leigh, isn’t it?”

There was a look of distress in his eyes. Hearing Leigh-Anne Moss referred to as just Leigh momentarily gave Stilwell pause.

“Yes,” he finally said. “Leigh-Anne Moss. I need to ask you some questions. Can I come in?”

“She’s the one they found in the harbor, isn’t she?” Easterbrook asked.

“I think it would be better if we talked inside.”

“Yes, of course.”

Easterbrook stepped back and let Stilwell enter. He led him to a small living room where none of the furniture matched. It looked as though everything had been taken from a variety of other living rooms reflecting different fads and tastes. Easterbrook pointed him to a black leather couch while he took a chair with puffy arms and a floral pattern. Stilwell began by identifying himself and telling Easterbrook that he was assigned to the Catalina substation. Easterbrook nodded.

“I knew it was her,” Easterbrook said. “When I stopped hearing from her and she didn’t return my calls, I just knew it.”

“You were in a relationship with her,” Stilwell said. He stated it as a fact, not a question.

“I was head over heels,” Easterbrook said. “I just can’t bring myself to believe she’s gone. Who would have done this?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Stilwell said. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Well, now it’s been over two weeks.”

“Was that on Catalina?”

“No, here. She stayed here with me, then she went back over to tell them she was through.”

“Can you be more specific about the date and time you last saw her?”

“Yes, it would have been Saturday morning, the… seventeenth. I drove her down to the Express dock in Long Beach. She took the eight-fifteen ferry.”

Stilwell showed no reaction, but he knew this was likely the day Leigh-Anne had been murdered. The 8:15 ferry would have gotten her to Avalon a little after nine. It matched up with what he knew about her activities that morning before her arrival at the Black Marlin.

“You said she was going to tell them she was through,” he said. “Who was she going to tell?”

“The GM at the club—a man named Crane,” Easterbrook said. “She was going to pick up her last paycheck and quit. I told her to forget about the money, I’d give her the money. But she’d left some of her things at an apartment over there and she wanted to get that stuff too.”

“She wasn’t terminated from the club, as far as you know?”

“Terminated? You mean fired? No. Not that I know of. She was going to move in here with me. I… gave up everything for her. I destroyed my marriage; my kids hate me. I didn’t care. I mean, I cared, but I wanted her. I needed her. Now what am I going to do?”

Stilwell didn’t think Easterbrook was looking for an answer from him.

“Mr. Easterbrook, when did your relationship with Leigh-Anne—Leigh—start?” he asked.

“It would have been… three months ago,” Easterbrook said. “I’d seen her there at the club before that, of course, but one night she was behind the bar and I was there alone and we started talking. You know, very casual, just banter, really, like you do with younger women, and then something… just happened. She showed an interest in me and I felt something I’d never felt before. And I know what you’re thinking: Older man, younger woman. But it was real. For both of us. She was funny, and she was well-read. She was a… wildflower. She put a streak of purple in her hair. She said that was for me. It was our secret—like a signal to me when we were in the club but had to keep our relationship, you know, on the down-low.”

“Nightshade.”

“Exactly. I first thought the color was Catalina sage, like they have up on the hillside behind the Mount Ada. But she said it was called Nightshade. I started calling her that—it was my pet name for her. I felt this passion come to the surface in me, a passion I never knew I had. It made me rethink things—everything about my life.”

He brought a thumb and finger up and pinched the bridge of his nose in what looked like an effort to stop tears. Stilwell wondered if Easterbrook had ever looked up nightshade on the internet and learned that the beautiful flower was also a deadly poison.

“What am I going to do?” Easterbrook asked again. “I know I’ll never be able to fill this empty space. I can’t go back to what I had before. I can’t go forward.”

Stilwell believed his pain was as real as his passion for the woman he called Nightshade. But just because he loved her didn’t clear him as a possible suspect. From past experience, Stilwell knew that women were often killed by men who professed to love them. Easterbrook would need further scrutiny before Stilwell could sign off on his gut instinct that he was not the killer of Leigh-Anne Moss.

He let a few moments go by so Easterbrook could pull himself together. Stilwell had to tick boxes, collating what the known facts of the case were with Easterbrook’s experiences and memories.

“I’m sorry I have to ask you this,” he said. “But when was the last time you and Leigh were intimate?”

“The night before she went back to the island,” Easterbrook said.

“And did you use a condom?”

Easterbrook paused.

“I hate to think about why you need this information,” he finally said. “But the answer is no. She took care of that.”

“You mean birth control?”

“Yes, she was on the pill. Why are you asking me this? Was she raped?”

Outrage was building in his voice.

“I’m just gathering all the facts,” Stilwell said quickly. “We need to ask about everything because we don’t know what could become important to the investigation.”

Stilwell could already see the complication this information brought to the case. If it was Easterbrook’s DNA that was recovered during the autopsy, it handed an easy alternative suspect to a defense lawyer representing anyone else charged. He tried to put that thought aside and continued his questioning.

“On that Saturday, what did you do after dropping Leigh off at the Express dock?” he asked.

“I just turned around and went home,” Easterbrook said. “Wait—no. I stopped by my office first to pick up some files I was going to work on at home.”

“Did anyone else in the office see you?”

“Uh, no, it was a Saturday. The office was closed.”

“What about in the building? Was there security or some kind of check-in process? Cameras?”

“There’s cameras and security but I don’t remember seeing anybody. You’re asking if I have an alibi, aren’t you? You don’t believe me.”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Mr. Easterbrook. If you’ve got an alibi, then I need to check it. Because when we catch whoever did this and go to trial, my investigation will also be on trial. It doesn’t matter whether I believe you or not. I need proof of innocence before you’re in the clear.”

Easterbrook nodded.

“I understand,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“So, was the building locked?” Stilwell asked, pressing on. “Does it have a gated garage?”

“Yes and yes. I have a key card that opens both the garage gate and the doors to the building and my office. I’m sure that can be checked.”

“It can be but it will only show that your card was used. It doesn’t prove it was you. Where are the cameras?”

“Actually, I’m not sure. I’ve just seen the screens at the security desk.”

“But no one was at that desk when you entered?”

“I don’t remember seeing anyone. Maybe they were on a break or making the rounds. It was a Saturday, so I’m sure it was a short-staff day.”

“And when you left with your files, did you see anyone?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What time did you get there and what time did you leave?”

“Probably got there a little before ten and stayed about an hour. I had to print out some documents so the originals would stay in the office.”

While his instincts told him that Easterbrook was telling the truth, Stilwell knew that a further effort would be required to prove his alibi and clear him. He moved on with his questions.

“Let’s get back to the relationship you had with Leigh,” he said. “Did you ever buy her expensive gifts?”

“I did,” Easterbrook said. “I bought her a pair of heels she wanted.”

“Do you remember the brand?”

“Prada.”

“And you stayed with her up at the Mount Ada on occasion?”

“Yes, that’s where we would meet on the island. We’d stay there so she could work. And I would wait for her there. I used to stand on our room’s balcony and look down at the club, hoping to see her when she left.”

More tears came, and this time he did not try to stop or hide them.

“Do you know anyone who would have wanted to harm her?” Stilwell asked. “Did she talk about anybody who threatened her or anything like that? On the island or the mainland? Or at the club, even?”

“No, nothing like that,” Easterbrook said. “That’s what I don’t understand. How could this happen? We were in love. I was in love for what seemed like the first time in my life. We had a plan. We were going to take the boat to Tahiti. And now there’s nothing. I have nothing.”

Stilwell asked a few more questions about the club and the plans Easterbrook had made with Leigh-Anne Moss. He decided he would tell Sampedro and Ahearn that they should conduct a follow-up interview with Easterbrook under formal and recorded conditions, then run down his alibi. They would also need to take a DNA swab from him. But Stilwell believed he had gotten all he could get for the moment. Easterbrook had given him his next move. Either Easterbrook or Charles Crane had lied about Leigh-Anne’s last visit to the Black Marlin Club, and Stilwell was going to find out which one.