The Wedding Guest (Alex Delaware #34) - Jonathan Kellerman Page 0,83
out at night, come home at all hours. Sometimes there’d be money missing from Lenore’s purse or my wallet. Friends advised us to use tough love but we didn’t want a confrontation.”
He dabbed at his eyes and cheeks. “I might’ve tried getting tough but Lenore had the softest heart in the Western Hemisphere. Plus when Peter felt social, he’d go shopping with her, they’d lunch, have a grand time. I found the situation distressing so I upped my work hours. It put a strain on my relationship with Lenore but we resolved that.”
Paul Kramer laughed. “By that I mean Peter and Lenore did their thing and I got used to it. Finally, he left, just shy of his twenty-third birthday. By leaving I mean I paid for an apartment in Hollywood and set up a trust fund that gave him enough money to live on for five years with me controlling the payouts. Lenore was dead-set against it. She’d never admit it but I think part of her enjoyed having Peter as a perpetual child. The apartment was my idea. I subverted her and essentially bribed Peter to get the hell out of here. Lenore figured it out. There were some cold nights.”
He shook his head. “She said she forgave me but I’m not sure she ever completely did. I tried to get Peter another construction job but he said he’d do his own thing and ended up working as a busboy in various restaurants. We’d see him spottily, though Lenore and he talked on the phone. Then she developed a brain tumor and our life became a nightmare for the eighteen months she hung on. Bart and Josh flew in as frequently as their situations permitted but Peter was the star. He was at his mother’s side continually, totally devoted. That was when I learned to admire him. I saw the goodness in him that I’d been blinded to because I’m a conventional man.”
I said, “After your wife’s death—”
“I fell apart and paid no attention to any of the boys, least of all Peter. I dated, got married again—we won’t discuss that, it lasted five months. Peter was close to his mother, he had to be devastated. But I wasn’t there for him and when he told me he was moving back to Florida, I wished him luck.”
He leaned forward. “I saw it as one less complication in my life.”
“Before he left, were drugs—”
“A factor in his life? Definitely. The ones I know about are marijuana, Ecstasy, quaaludes, cocaine, and alcohol. I know because Peter was open about his drug use. Basically, he’d brag and dare us to do something about it. He knew his mother was a soft touch so he—but that’s water under the bridge. And despite all that, Dr. Delaware, I never picked up anything to do with heroin. Peter had been terrified of needles since childhood. Even when getting a tattoo became the thing, he said he’d never get one. Not into pain was the phrase he used.”
Milo said, “Nowadays people snort and smoke heroin.”
“So I was told,” said Kramer, “by the coroner who did his autopsy.”
He looked down, hands knitted and twitching. “Second worst day of my life, the first was when Lenore was diagnosed. I suppose I went into denial about the heroin aspect, asked the coroner if he’d found any needle marks. He said he hadn’t but that didn’t prove anything—what you just said, people inhale. I demanded to know if Peter’s autopsy revealed any signs of long-term opiate use. I’d done some research, knew the signs: pulmonary hyperplasia, micro-hemorrhages of the brain, inflammatory heart tissue, liver disease. He admitted Peter’s body showed none of that. But his interpretation was Peter, being a novice, had snorted far too much. Still, accidental never sat right with me. And now you’re here.”
I said, “Peter was thirty-four when he died. What do you know about his life between the time he returned to Florida and then?”
“The second time, he was gone for seven years. I’d get emails two, three times a year, mostly when he needed me to wire cash. Which I did, he didn’t request much. But we were essentially out of touch.”
“Emails from where?”
“Obviously Florida—the Gulf Coast, the fishing thing. Then Texas, he’d gone back to restaurant work in Austin and later the same in San Antonio. Then it was fishing again, back to Florida, he claimed he’d been promoted to first mate or something along those lines. Whatever it was,