Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) (25 page)

“Then I’m probably going to get arrested for something. It’s a risk.”
 

Her fingers flew over the screen of my phone. Undoubtedly she used complete sentences and proper capitalization, which I was given to understand was not normal texting style.

As we walked back into the house and returned to Gary’s library, the phone buzzed. Stevie had picked the noise, which sounded like someone doing scales on a harp. Given that she was the one who had to read the texts, it seemed only fair to let her pick the noise it would make.

Stevie took much longer to read it than I knew she needed.

“What is it?” I said.

“I’m trying to figure out if this is a code or not.”

“What did he say?”

“He suggests you call him.”

Was that an indicator that I was about to get arrested for something? Might as well push my luck and find out exactly what Greg Hitchcock had had to say about me. Probably Gruen wouldn’t give me too much of a head start if things had gone poorly.

“Ask him what’s the best place to get a whiskey sour in the area.”

“Is this part a code?”

“Are you hard of hearing? I have extremely good diction.”
 

She typed furiously on the phone’s screen. “Seems like a game of Chinese Whispers.”

“Join the rest of humanity here in the twenty-first century. The game is called Telephone. Or Operator. Have you ever even played Telephone?”

“Only with you.”

I remembered that afternoon. “Doesn’t work quite the same when only two are playing.” We couldn’t convince the nanny to play with us. “You, of all people, calling it Chinese Whispers. For one thing, you actually speak Chinese. It doesn’t sound like nonsense to you, it sounds like words and communication.”

The phone beeped. “Which area?” she said.

“What does he think is nice?”

She stared at me. “Are you mad? It’s not difficult. We’re in the Palisades—”

I waved my hand at the phone. “Stevie. Ask him.”
 

She typed. And waited for the buzz.

“There’s a good sports bar on Cahuenga,” Stevie said.

Something about Stevie of all people uttering those words made me want to cackle with laughter. Also the feeling of relief that Gruen’s response most likely signaled I wasn’t getting arrested anytime soon. Cahuenga. Hollywood. I wondered if he was simply in the neighborhood or if he lived near there.
 

“What time is it now?” I glanced at the museum-quality grandfather clock Gary had installed in the library. “Tell him to send me the address and ask if they have a Happy Hour.”
 

My sister’s thumbs flew over the screen of my phone. “Seems extremely odd to—” She held the phone up in one hand. “The two of you are arranging a date. I am facilitating a...a date. With someone you should not be dating. When you have bigger problems on your hands.”

“Can’t a new resident of L.A. ask someone who’s lived here a while for recommendations on places to enjoy a convivial atmosphere?”

She crossed her arms, tucking my phone close to her. “This is the most bonkers thing you’ve done...” She drifted off, clearly running through everything we’d done in the last few days, months, years, and realized meeting Gruen for a drink had some strong competition.
 

“I completely agree,” I said. “Going for drinks anywhere near Hollywood on a Friday afternoon? Probably sunstroke.”
 

She shook her head. “And I helped you to do something this mindbogglingly stupid in the middle of a murder investigation.”

“Yes. But you’re so much better on the keyboard than I am. I have a disorder. You may have heard of it.”

She muttered to herself as she brought the phone out and hit one key. “Mr. Ross will have a fit when he finds out about this.”

“Mr. Ross. You’re so cute. When Nathaniel finds out about what? That I had an enjoyable cocktail
by myself
at the end of the day?”

“He will stop being your lawyer. And then where will we be?”

The phone beeped.
 

“I suppose you want me to read you the address,” she said.

“At least I’m familiar enough with the layout of the streets that you don’t have to tell me how to get there,” I said.

A SPORTS BAR is designed for the people there to watch sports, preferably on screens as big as possible, and not to watch the people around them. There were three basketball games going on when I arrived. Gruen wasn’t there, so I found a table in the back, near the smallest (and therefore least popular) screen. The game was visible but not directly dominant from my little perch, which was perfect. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to me, which was even more perfect. One of the nice things about television is that it magnetically draws the attention of everyone close enough to it. They only see what’s on the magical glowing telly and forget to pay attention to everyone else.
 

Particularly the people sitting in the darker areas, because staring at a glowing screen reduces the eye’s ability to focus on anything darker.
 

Early on I trained myself not to be drawn in by glowing screens. This has paid off handsomely for me on multiple occasions, when I’ve been the only one seeing what’s going on while everyone else is staring like zombies.

This goes double for these damned phones everyone enjoys, especially as they’re all text based.

I propped my feet with their five-inch heels on the chair across from me. After Stevie told me where the bar was, I put on my crocheted lace dress, which clung to my curves without chafing my skin or any of my bandages, and a pair of black patent shoes. Wouldn’t want to have to dress like this all the time, but there were definitely occasions. My body wasn’t back into perfect shape, but you can either wait for the perfect moment or enjoy the imperfect now.

The waitress, a tall, gangly woman with long brown hair and protruding wrist bones stopped by the only other table near me that was occupied. She served beers to the two guys and replaced large, bowl-shaped margaritas for the two women, who I assumed were their dates. Once the empty goblets were balanced on her tray, she swung by my table. I ordered myself a whiskey sour. And I waited.

I pretended to watch the game on the screen and instead watched the table to my left. Everyone in their mid-twenties or trying very hard to look that way. The women were better dressed than the guys: the curvy Chinese woman was in a tight white bandage dress and spiky white heels, and the stick-thin blonde wore a casual low-cut top and a short skirt and an almost identical pair of shoes. The blond guy, who was there with the Chinese woman, wore a t-shirt and jeans, and the black-haired guy, who might have been Italian or Indian or I don’t know what, was in a button-down shirt and trousers. No tie. No one in Los Angeles ever wore ties, except hipsters and lawyers like Nathaniel Ross and police detectives, which probably made them easier to spot. It was Friday afternoon; these four had cut work early and started Happy Hour.
 

They talked about work and how exhausted they were after a day of secretly running Los Angeles while their bosses played video poker all day. I laughed.

“This seat taken?”

The deep male voice startled me—I must have been concentrating on eavesdropping hard. Detective Gruen had his hand on the back of the chair where my feet were perched. He looked amused, probably having noticed that I’d been completely unaware of his arrival. He’d lost the sports coat and tie he’d been wearing at Hitchcock’s construction site, and the top button on his dress shirt was undone, too. He was a little sweaty and a little tired and still completely gorgeous. I’d make do with the sweaty and tired.

I swung my legs down. “Please do.”

He watched them move. “Nice shoes. You weren’t wearing those earlier.”

“They’re both elegant and handy in a fight. I can break off the heel and use it as a shiv.”

“They’re probably not very convenient at construction sites, though.”
 

And thus endeth the foreplay. Gruen wanted to get down to talking business before we talked anything else. Well, we had a lot to talk about.

The waitress came over with my drink and managed to set it down in front of me while keeping her back turned to me so she could face him. I understood that reaction to Gruen, but I was still going to dock her tip for that maneuver.
 

“What can I get you?” she asked.
 

He ordered a beer. “You really drink whiskey sours,” he said.

I shrugged. Whiskey sours were something Drusilla drank. Every time the name changed, so did the drink. Priscilla in Montréal drank red wine, which I didn’t understand at all because I don’t particularly care for the stuff. Whiskey was definitely a step up.

“What brings you to Hollywood?” I asked.

“Had to drop off some paperwork.”

“The curse of our time.”

He nodded at that. “What’s your excuse?”

“You.”

Just because he was done with the foreplay didn’t mean I was. Didn’t hurt that it was the truth.
 

“Thanks,” he said. “I think.”

“I wouldn’t have come across town to talk to Detective Vilar.”

There are lots of parts of a man’s body I find attractive. But like most women, I start with the eyes. His were hazel, a muddy sort of greenish-brown, and very focused. Men are encouraged to look directly at a person, whereas women aren’t. I look directly into people’s eyes, too. Particularly when I want to signal my interest.

Gruen was really good about keeping eye contact. I admired that about him; so many men had trouble talking to a woman. And I don’t mean because they’re too busy checking the woman’s figure out or wondering how to ask her out or something as mundane as that. It’s simply because some men don’t think a woman is worth talking to. I didn’t know Detective Gruen very well, but the few times we had talked made me wish there weren’t such strict prohibitions against us communicating.
 

I had to stop meeting him over dead bodies.
 

“Sorry, should I not have said that?”

“We have a few things to talk about.”

“Funny running into you this afternoon.”

He leaned toward me. His skin smelled of sweat and salt. Since his shirt wasn’t sweaty, he’d changed before coming here. “Tell me you’re not poking around Courtney Cleary’s death.”

“Before I answer that, let me ask: is this conversation actually happening?”

He shook his head slowly. “Just two people talking.”

“I’ve not gone anywhere near Courtney’s death. That is for rather delightful men like yourself to look into. My problem is with Roger Sabo.”

“Stay away from him.”

“If he left me alone, I would stay home and needlepoint.” I picked up my drink. “I don’t needlepoint, exactly, but you get my meaning.”

“You don’t want to get mixed up with—”

“An undercover cop?” I said.

The look Gruen gave me was somewhere between admiration and suspicion.
 

“You’re right, I don’t. However, I have done. That isn’t the least of it. Do you know about his relationship to Greg Hitchcock? You might be interested. Or does the LAPD take a cut of its members’ meth-dealing empires? Could help funding shortfalls, I suppose.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

I leaned toward him. If I moved a couple of inches closer, I’d be kissing him. He didn’t back up. “You have to keep my name out of the papers about Courtney’s murder.”

“I can’t promise that.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Yes, you can.”

He shrugged. “Okay. I won’t unless you have a really good reason.”

Fine. I’d go first. “He’s not just playing a meth dealer on TV, Detective. He has the same operation going here with Hitchcock that he had going in Simi Valley with Chris McClanahan. You know that name?”

Gruen nodded.

I leaned back and Gruen’s attention wandered to how I looked settling back in a comfortable position. I held my hand out, thumb and fingers an inch apart. “If this was the deal with McClanahan?” I held my arms out as far as I could without hitting other patrons. “This is the size of the deal with Hitchcock.” I dropped my hands into my lap. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but this is much bigger than just you handling it. Sabo is terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news. Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he killed Courtney.” I held up my hand. “No idea whether he did or not. But he’s definitely a bad actor.”

“Was he there that night?”

After a second’s pause, I nodded. “I saw him through the window. After Courtney was murdered. He disappeared before the police arrived?”

“You saw who did it.”

“And they were fully masked.”

“You need to testify he was there.”

“And you know that’s not happening. Ever.”

Gruen leaned back in his chair, annoyed at my unwillingness to cooperate. He sucked in a huge breath before blowing it out—his version of counting backward, perhaps. His gaze flicked back to me. “What were you doing with Hitchcock today?”

“Oh, this story you are going to like.” I told him about the women who went to the financial counseling office. Poor, desperate, and without means. “There were a lot of women there, Detective. Courtney took me to meet him because she thought I might be in need of his special brand of help. She knew what he was doing. He had a fantastic motive to kill her. Or have someone else do it. He wasn’t the one holding the gun.”

“You still haven’t said what you were doing there today.”
 

“I wanted to motivate him to tell his friend Roger to leave me alone. Then there was a crisis at the construction site. Which I had nothing to do with. The end. Are we done talking about this now?”

“What else do you want to talk about?” he asked.

I smiled. “I can think of a few things, Detective. And you’re a guy, so I know you’ve already thought about them.” That made him grin. The first time he saw me he was on the way to start investigating my husband Colin’s death. Not even that will stop a man’s imagination.