Kris Lamplear

Kris Lamplear is Tanya Stratton’s older sister and an important source of information about Tanya’s health, relationships, and movements. Protective after their parents’ deaths, Kris worries when Tanya does not tell her where she is going; her account also directs Milo Sturgis toward the secluded family land where Tanya may have gone.

Family and Concern for Tanya

Kris describes herself as protective, explaining that she and Tanya are all that remain of their immediate family after their parents died. She wants Tanya to let her know where she is going, not because she doubts her sister’s ability to manage, but because she worries and has no other close family to share that concern.

That protectiveness is heightened by Tanya’s recent illness. Tanya had Hodgkin’s disease, which doctors considered curable and for which they gave her a good chance of recovery. Radiation and chemotherapy were grueling and changed her, although Kris believes she is now fine and will be all right. Even with that reassurance, Kris remains alert to her sister’s whereabouts and asks Milo Sturgis not to tell Tanya that they met; she expects Tanya to be annoyed that she has been checking up on her.

Views of Paul Ulrich

Kris is candidly skeptical of Paul Ulrich, whom she considers pompous. She suspects Tanya may be beginning to see him that way too, noting that Tanya has become less likely to defend him when Kris criticizes him. Their relationship is not presented as wholly one-sided: Paul gives Tanya jewelry and clothes, and he cooks and cleans, gestures Kris acknowledges even as she questions what he does for a living.

Kris understands that Paul works for himself in real estate, but says he does not seem to work much while always having money. She also describes how he reacts when Tanya refuses to go out because her work has piled up: he becomes pouty and usually stays home. At other times he leaves on his own for a day or so. Kris does not know where he goes, a gap that matters to Milo because Paul and Tanya are witnesses in a homicide investigation. Kris identifies Valley Comprehensive Hospital in Reseda as the place where Tanya and Paul met, during Tanya’s treatment there under her HMO.

The Malibu Cabin and the Investigation

Kris’s most concrete lead is a remote parcel she and Tanya own together in the Malibu mountains. Their parents bought the five- or six-acre property years earlier; their father intended to build a house but never did. Kris rarely visits and would have sold it, describing a small, rundown cabin with no phone, an unpleasant bathroom, a tiny septic tank, electricity lines that often fail, and a road that regularly washes out. She expects her children would be bored there.

Tanya, by contrast, likes quiet and went to the cabin while recuperating from chemotherapy, perhaps also to prove her toughness. Kris knows the place is the one location Tanya likes to visit and suggests it as somewhere Paul might go when he leaves alone. Because Kris believes she is the only person who knows about the property, she realizes that sharing it may reveal that she has been monitoring Tanya. Milo Sturgis copies down the directions and promises to let her know if Tanya is there, turning Kris’s intimate, uneasy knowledge of her sister into a practical investigative lead.