Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

a nine year old kid. After the divorce, the ex got custody and moved to Palmdale. But when the kid was five years old, they were still married, and their kid went to kindergarten at Stoner Avenue Elementary. Guess who his favorite teacher was?"
    My mouth dropped open. Pete said, "You are shitting me."
    "Nope." Jon looked grim. "So, we talked to Wallace's ex-wife about that a little. Turns out Wallace was a great dad, went to parent-teacher conferences all the time. The kid had a couple of instances of acting out in school that year, and the parents both went to the school and met with Ms. Graham when that happened. So both Wallace and his ex got to know Ms. Graham pretty well, at least in terms of Ms. Graham being their kid's teacher."
    Pete said, "That fucking liar ." I said, "You'd asked Jennifer whether she'd known Wallace before, right?"
    "Of course. And she said no. So Belardo and I brought her in for another conversation yesterday. Kevin watched from the observation room."
    " What did she say?"
    "She caved immediately, said yes, she'd met Wallace at the school, and more importantly, knew what he did for a living. That he was a junk man and had knowledge of the value of old things."
    Pete said, "I cannot believe this." Kevin said, "I can." I said, "Holy shit . So she'd talked to him about her hoard?"
    "Yep. She'd called him and told him she was going to sign up for the show, and that she'd like him to look at her books and papers as the cleaning took place because the old lady had told her there was valuable stuff in the boxes."
    Pete was speechless. Abby was laughing. "The way you guys have talked about her, the way Valerie talked about her at Thanksgiving, I am not surprised. This sounds really typical of her."
    Pete said, "Yeah, it does. But she's not stupid, or at least I didn't think she was. Lying to the police in a homicide investigation is a whole ' nother layer of crazy."
    I said, "But she'd asked me to do the same thing."
    Jon said, "Yeah. She was covering all the bases, basically, hoping that if there was anything of value in the boxes, at least one of you would find it."
    Pete said, "So when Wally was working slowly that first day, we thought it looked like he was sorting through stuff. And he was."
    "Yep. Although Ms. Graham was clear about the fact that she'd told Wallace that the valuable stuff was in boxes. So he had no reason to be sorting through anything that first day."
    I said, "Just hoping he'd find something else, probably."
    Jon said, "Yeah. So when he didn't, he decided to come back early the next day and have a look himself, before anyone else got into the boxes."
    Pete said, "But he brought someone else with him. He'd told someone else."
    "Yep. Now we have to figure out who that person was, and if there’s a connection to Brashier. We have another meeting set up with the ex-wife tomorrow, to see if she has any idea of who Wallace would ask to be an accomplice in something like this."
    I said, "I bet Belardo was pissed."
    Jon laughed. "Oh, hell yeah. He put the fear of God in Ms. Graham when we brought her in to the station. Very clearly informed her that if she didn't come clean, she was going to jail. He was rough on her. She was pretty shaken when she left."
    Abby said, "Had she told anyone else?"
    "She swore not. I tend to believe her this time, but if nothing pans out with the Wallace angle, we'll have to talk to her about it again."
    Pete shook his head. "That is just … fucking unbelievable ."
    We all agreed.
    On Sunday, it rained. Pete and I stayed in. He cooked for the coming week; I cleaned and did laundry. Around noon, Jon called; he and Belardo had been out to Palmdale to talk to Wally’s ex-wife again. She couldn’t think of anyone that Wally might have used as a partner in whatever scheme he had cooked up, and she’d never heard Brashier’s name. But, as she had pointed out to Belardo and Eckhoff, it had been two years since she’d had any knowledge of who Wally might associate with.
    The most interesting thing she’d said was that Wally was falling behind on his child support payments.

    On Tuesday, I had my first appointment with the counselor that I’d chosen from our provider list. I didn’t want to tell Pete about this just yet, so I made the appointment for my lunch hour. Right before noon, I walked down to the professional building next to UCLA’s hospital at the south end of campus, to the office of Dr. Tania Bibbins.
    Dr. Bibbins was a tall, elegant