Killer Commute (14 page)

“Ohmygod, Mom, he's so gross, I can't understand how you can represent him.”

“I don't represent him. The agency does. I just lined them up.” Charlie grabbed a basket and began shoveling Taco Bell wrappers, boxes, napkins, and plastic forks into it. “Tell me the cat didn't eat any beans.”

“Hey, you can hear again. Larry, I think Mom's faking this deaf bit so she can investigate Jeremy's murder, don't you?”

Larry's answer was to wad up a paper taco wrapper and lob it at her. She tossed it to Doug who threw it at Lori and it made the rounds twice before Tuxedo intercepted and dissected it. These three kids had been together on and off since Libby hit Long Beach. When one of the girls teamed with a boyfriend, the other two carried on until she came back to the fold.

Where Libby was tall, blond, and slinky, Lori was short, brunette, and bouncy. They'd both cut gorgeous, glistening long hair—Libby's straight, Lori's curly—last year and broke their mothers' hearts, as daughters have been doing for decades. Charlie had to admit now, they both looked pretty good.

“Sorry to hear about Mr. Fiedler,” Lori said with an inappropriate but habitual giggle.

Charlie was mentally tabulating how long before one or all of them would be demanding dinner—the Taco Bell debris having originated from after-school snacking. Here was Charlie Greene, a possibly permanently handicapped, barely employable single mother and prime murder suspect living in a bombing zone, automatically calculating the relative merits of takeout, delivery, a quick run to Von's, or feigning deafness again. She could eat the rest of her lunch and let the rest of them deal with it.

Anybody with her problems should not have to be thinking about this. She looked at her assistant/secretary. He could organize the office, but Stew did the cooking at their house.

Rudy Ferris was one of the sleaziest talk-show hosts going—which says a lot. He talked, dressed, and acted like a carnival barker. Charlie'd happened to meet him on a recent trip to Manhattan, although he lived and worked in L.A. She was there to talk deals for several of her writers, and to suck up to the latest hot book editors, East Coast producers, and a few influential story editors in film.

Charlie had never quite convinced herself these trips paid off—she feared flying—but she didn't have to pay her way, and contacts are influence, after all. Still, most of her real successes had come from out of the blue, as unexpected as Jeremy Fiedler's murder—the sheer-dumb-luck quotient she'd learned to value over talent.

She and Rudy happened to be sitting side by side at a publisher's luncheon, she unhappy because she thought it was to have been just her, her client, his editor—Joe Putnam, and a representative of Pitman's marketing department. And Rudy Ferris happened to be fuming at his entertainment agent at TNT. One thing led to another. He recognized her as having a connection with Mitch Hilsten, superstar. She gave him her card. He called her at the office the next week and she set up a meeting with Richard Morse. Sheer dumb luck beat out hard work any day.

“So what do you think everyone's going to—”

“Chinese, takeout/delivery,” Libby said. “With crab-cheese wontons, and cold peanut rice noodles for appetizers and—”

“May I have dinner with you tonight if I promise to do the dishes?” Doug asked.

“Let's eat at your house and sleep at mine tonight so you don't get blown up,” Lori offered. “You too, Doug, if you want to sleep with my little brother.”

“And we can actually eat on the dining room table.” Libby sat up to stare at that piece of furniture as if she'd never seen it before. “We've got a cleaning lady.”

Charlie and Larry left them arguing over the menu and choice of delivery service to stand in front of Jeremy Fiedler's bombed-out house. It smelled of a fire that had been soaked down with water.

“There's no crime-scene tape, Larry.”

“If they've found their murderer, they've found their bomber.” He let her lean on his arm.

“Does Stew know you're spending the night here? I don't want anything happening to you.”

“Stew's a big boy and so am I, Charlie. Neither one of us want anything more to happen to you.”

“Do you think kung pao shrimp will blow out my eardrums for good?”

“Well, at least we'll know. Keegan Monroe's new script is filled with food. That's so unusual for him. He and most men write of breakfast, lunch, and dinner to mark time. Woman write of eggs or bagels, soup and salads or sandwiches, fettuccine or meatloaf or salmon, and always of desserts.”

“Most women writers who can sell are selling novels. Most screenplays are guy stuff written by guys. But I'm not surprised that Keegan's getting into food, Larry. I expect the fare in prison makes him homesick for food.”

Jeremy Fiedler's house had blackened patches on the stucco around the windows and a seagull on the peak of the roof.

Not-very-securely nailed boards blocked the doorway, almost like an invitation to danger. So they looked in the window next to it, into what had been the kitchen. A mangled light fixture hung on wires and cords almost to the floor.

“How could the police just walk in and copy my computer files, go through my mail and records, Larry? Don't you have to have a court order or something?”

“Apparently not. But I think you should look into getting a lawyer.”

“Then they'll think I'm guilty for sure.”

Larry walked around to peer in the window Doug and Libby had crawled out of the other night. “In my inexpert opinion I would say, Watson, that someone was attempting to destroy evidence here.”

“Looks like they succeeded, Holmes.” Charlie came to stand beside him.

The entertainment center/bookshelves piece had apparently protected the side door, and the torrey pine looked in better shape than the house. All Charlie could see inside here was dark, stinking, depressing. Tidy Jeremy would not have approved. Something inside creaked and snapped and a billow of ashy dust puffed out at them as if Jeremy had answered.

They both stepped back in time to see Mrs. Beesom crossing the courtyard carrying something in a newspaper. She saw them and winked, set the newspaper on Jeremy's picnic table, and walked over to them with a finger to her lips. A breeze ruffled the edges of the newspaper and Jeremy's seagull floated down from the roof to eat the fish scraps from Mrs. Beesom's dinner.

“Seems like there ought to be a memorial service for Jeremy.” The old lady's lips trembled. “Maybe this is as close as we'll get to one.”

“I hadn't even thought of that,” Charlie said. “There should be some kind of service for him. But you're right, that bird is the only being we know outside the compound who knew Jeremy.” Charlie wondered who would come if they held a memorial for him here. Or maybe at the seaside, how about on the bay? Would the woman in the long coat come? Would Charlie know her without the coat?

Charlie was really missing Jeremy. Larry was wonderful and beautiful, but if it weren't for the fact Jeremy was the victim in this travesty upon her fortress, he would have been the one she and everyone else who lived here would be counting on now. Weird. Major weird.

Betty looked into Jeremy's living room window and shook her head. “Don't seem possible, but the fire inspectors think the house can be gutted and rebuilt inside. If it can be, I'm going to have it built back the way it was, exactly. That will be kind of a memorial, too, for the poor man.”

“Will you sell it, do you think?” Larry asked.

“No, I'll rent it to some nice young man we all can trust like we trusted Jeremy.” Betty looked away quickly. She was always nice to Larry but never comfortable around him. Charlie wondered if that made Larry feel like being handicapped made her feel.

They put newspapers over the gleaming table in the dining room and shared mooshu pork and kung pao shrimp, sesame chicken, moo gu gai pan, beef and broccoli in garlic sauce, Tai peanut noodles, and wanton cheese crabmeat wontons, along with bucket boxes of steamed rice with soy sauce and endless cans of Coke—an oriental pig-out Charlie knew she would regret in the middle of the night when raging thirst and the need to pass all that Coke would strike at the same time. God only knew what her ulcer would be thinking when she staggered down the stairs to the bathroom. Whoever said you get what you pay for had it all turned around.

There would have been enough left over for another meal if Doug Esterhazie had not been with them. Larry confiscated a half-bucket box of rice he could microwave with cinnamon, sugar, and milk for breakfast to help alleviate his sodium hangover, and the rest was history.

When he and Charlie were left alone with the cat, they discussed a memorial service for Jeremy. “It would make Mrs. Beesom feel better—people her age are really into death and stuff and maybe somebody who could be a fellow suspect might show up. What do you think? I mean, I kind of feel lonely in the suspect role here—could use the company.”

“You're the only one who actually saw the woman in the long coat running away from here before the blast inside Fiedler's house.”

“And the only one who saw Jeremy's Ferrari come down the alley. Officer Mason saw it from behind later, going down the street, but the license plate was covered with mud and she didn't see the woman driving it. She has no proof I wasn't lying about it's being Jeremy's.”

“I sure hate to tell you this, boss”—and he leaned across the crummied newspaper protecting the gleaming dining room table with one of his heart-stopping winsome looks—“but I can't see what more you could lose at this point. Unless the bouquet bomber's not done yet.”

CHAPTER 20

CHARLIE
STOOD ON
the crumbling cliff along the beach she'd never seen before. She wore a series of long scarves that blew in the sea breeze, something a sixties-type would have worn as an adult when Charlie was a kid. Major weird.

Larry Mann stood in Lawrence of Arabia garb at the edge of a cliff with arms raised, invoking the gods to give peace to the poor murdered Jeremy Fiedler, who stood beside Charlie's secretary, nodding his approval, and a seagull circled low overhead, looking for fish scraps. The breeze that blew Charlie's scarves blew Larry's robes and the long coat on the woman standing under a torrey pine that itself stood alone on this cliff. Betty Beesom, huddled on a rock nearby, her thin but careful hairdo gone ragged in the salty sea wind, smiled, nodded, and winked at Jeremy. And that was it—sea breeze, woman in the long coat, Charlie, Betty, torrey pine, Larry—all in motion with the wind. Except Jeremy, in his usual tan pants and striped shirt and seriously thinning hair, was undisturbed by nature. But that made sense, since he was dead.

Charlie's problem, besides keeping the scarves in some semblance of propriety in case Detective J. S. Amuller appeared, was her overriding thirst. She was halfway down the stairs in her condo on her way to the potty when the transition from sea cliff in sunlight to stairs at night seemed perfectly normal. Maybe because of the thirst.

Enough light from the streetlight penetrated between the bars on the window to reveal Larry Mann's makeshift bed was empty. She passed a few gallons of Coke in the bathroom and headed for the bottled water in the kitchen. No Larry here, either.

She found herself listening and holding her breath—good, she could hear the refrigerator and remembered now she'd heard the toilet flush. She hated these sudden and unreasonable panicky feelings when she remembered to worry about the loss of what had become such an unexpectedly vital part of her senses.

The floor tile felt cool and oddly lacking in grit under her bare feet. Why had she waited so long to hire a cleaning lady? They weren't that poor even before her recent successes professionally and her winnings in Vegas. It was just the memory of those struggling years trying to put food on the table while paying exorbitant rent for a bedsitter in Manhattan when she'd worked at a literary agency there. If her mother had not paid for Libby's day care and private school, Charlie wouldn't have made it. She'd felt so liberated having a home and a living wage out here, hated so having to depend on Edwina Greene, who had never forgiven her her teen pregnancy. Libby had to go to public school here, but they were a free family at last. Now that Charlie could afford private school, the kid didn't want to leave her friends at Wilson.

Charlie slipped into a windbreaker that hung on a hook inside the broom closet to one side of the kitchen door. It was scruffy but came down almost to her knees, covered the fact she slept in nothing but a T-shirt.

The patio tile was really chilly on her feet but she wouldn't be out here long, would just stand on the top step of her sunken patio and look around for her gorgeous secretary.

Maggie Stutzman's car was in its berth across from Charlie's Toyota. Her car, a loaded Subaru, sat lonely there without the Trailblazer. Charlie wondered what “they” had done with it. What “they” had done with the copies of her files. Charlie didn't think the Beverly Hill's PD could invade the office that way without some kind of court-ordered search warrant. But it was rumored the Feds did such things and worse in a secret investigation. Larry was right—she needed a lawyer.

Jeremy was something bigger than a neighborly murder. If he could disappear his identity … he could be a national threat. And if Charlie killed him she might be involved in this identity conspiracy, too.

Charlie was glad her best friend was home—even though there might be a bouquet bomber about. Even though their fortress was no longer protected. Mel the merry-married was a real threat, too.

A shadow moved away from the torrey pine at Jeremy's house, slid around the patio flower boxes, and disappeared behind Maggie's Subaru. It walked upright—so it was either man, ape, or big foot. It wasn't thick enough for a bear.