One of Those Malibu Nights (29 page)

She was so busy thinking of Allie, she almost missed the turn onto the autoroute. She swerved into it, saw the car in front of her and braked hard. Too late. She plowed into the back of it, saw it lift up into the air and come crashing down on its roof. The Peugeot shuddered to a halt, the air bag burst in her face and she fell back, unconscious.

Lev was having lunch at a café in the Marais district of Paris with his old friend from their Israeli Army days. Zac Sorensen was now a French citizen and had for years been a top detective. Like Lev, he was lean and mean and tough, and much too dedicated to his job ever to marry. He rarely even took a vacation.

“Too many crimes,” he told Lev over a fast ham and cheese baguette and a beer, keeping an eye on the traffic whizzing past just in case he might spot something of interest.

“Still the same, I see,” Lev said with a grin.

Zac glanced at him. “You too. So why are you in Paris anyway? I can tell it’s not a vacation.”

Lev told him the story and saw Zac’s eyes light up.

“You really think Allie Ray is here in France?”

“She might even be here in Paris for all I know,” Lev said. And then he went on to tell him the details of the anonymous letters, the stalker, the break-in and slashing of Allie’s gowns.

“We’re looking for a potential killer,” he said, “and I have reason to believe it’s a woman named Jessie Whitworth. Seems she’s over here now, on vacation with a friend of hers, by the name of Elizabeth Windsor.”

Zac glanced at him, one skeptical eyebrow cocked, but he made no comment. “If she’s over here the odds are she’s rented a car.”

“Correct.”

“It’s a tough job to check the driver’s license of every tourist who comes to France,” he reminded Lev.

“True.” Lev bit into his sandwich, waiting for Zac to come up with an answer.

“Of course, there’s always immigration,” Zac said thoughtfully. “You said she was in Cannes?”

“We believe so.”

“Then that’s probably where she rented the car. I know someone there, an old friend …”

Lev grinned at him. Now he was getting somewhere.

“Perhaps I could make a call,” Zac said, and this time Lev laughed.

“You old bastard,” he said, punching him on the shoulder. “I knew I could rely on you.”

Lev didn’t have to wait long for his answer. He got the call from Zac two hours later. A woman named Elizabeth Windsor had been involved in a crash just outside of Cannes. She had hit a car. It had rolled over and the driver was killed instantly. “She’s practically untouched, except the face where the air bag hit her. Red and bruised. You know how it is. Her license was false.”

“What does she look like?” Lev asked.

“About forty, wearing a blond wig and expensive designer clothes, though she was staying in a cheap hotel near the railroad station.”

“You might want to check out the name Jessie Whitworth,” Lev said. “And by the way, what happened in the crash?”

“She was hospitalized for one night. Currently she’s in police custody in Nice on vehicular manslaughter charges.”

“Keep her there,” Lev said. “I think you’ll find she’s wanted for more than that.”

The local Tuscan carabinieri seemed even less thrilled than the Palm Springs PD to have a couple of housebreakers find a body in the refrigerator at an important movie director’s villa. They were even less happy with the story Mac told them, but when the paramedics arrived and saw Sunny’s throat, they were more inclined to believe them. A search of the area was instigated and Sunny was carted off to the local Cruz Rosa hospital for further inspection.

Following in the rental car, Mac groaned out loud. His Sunny might have been killed. First Ruby Pearl was dead. Had she been blackmailing Perrin? Now poor Marisa. She’d said she had incriminating documents. Had she been trying to blackmail Perrin too? Who next? he wondered.

The name flashed into his head. Allie Ray. Who else
would have better access to Perrin’s private files than his wife?

The next day, when Sunny was released from the hospital and Mac had completed his questioning by the police, they drove back to their hotel in Rome. After a bowl of soup and half a bottle of wine, with her bruised throat wrapped in a silk scarf (Hermès of course), Sunny was sprawled in front of the TV, watching the news to see if there was any mention of the body in the villa, when to her surprise Allie’s face appeared on the screen. She quickly called Mac over.

The Italian newscaster was saying it was a “scoop.” A French TV correspondent had discovered Allie Ray, the “lost” movie star, working as a waitress at the Bistro du Manoir near the small town of Bergerac. The Italian station had preempted the French channel and was the first to broadcast the news.

“Jesus,” Sunny yelled, then wished she hadn’t because it hurt her throat.

But Mac was already dialing the airport in search of a private plane for hire.

Half an hour later, Sunny was ready, dressed in jeans and Mac’s green cashmere sweater with cute little Manolo boots into which she’d managed to stuff her swollen ankle. Actually, it felt quite good, she thought, testing it by walking back and forth across the room. The boots supported the ankle, and the scarf hid the bruises on her neck.

“I’m a wreck,” she complained. And Mac said yes she
was and it was all his fault and he was sorry, and why didn’t she just stay here at the hotel and take it easy.

“Room service, TV, anything you want,” he added.

“Are you kidding?” Sunny looked scornful.

“Think you’re up to it, babe? After last night?”

“Too right I am,” she said. She was darned if she was gonna let Mac Reilly go to the rescue of the beautiful movie star all on his own.

They were ready to leave when Mac’s cell rang. With a what-the-hell-can-it-be-this-time look on his face, he answered it. His brows rose.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Here in Rome. Reilly, we need to talk.”

“You bet we do. And—it had better be soon. Like right now.”

“The Café del Popolo, on the piazza. I’ll be there in fifteen.”

Mac clicked off the phone. “You’ll have to go on ahead,” he said to Sunny. “Make sure she’s safe. I’m meeting Ron Perrin in fifteen minutes.”

Mac put Sunny in a taxi to the airport then walked to the café in the Piazza del Popolo.

He almost didn’t recognized Perrin. He’d shaved his head and was wearing large very dark sunglasses. In a striped T-shirt and a gold earring he looked like a cartoon of an old-time burglar. All he needed was a sack labeled
SWAG
slung over his shoulder.

Mac took a seat and ordered an espresso. Perrin was already drinking grappa.

“So, how are you?” Mac sat back, taking him in.

“Not good.” Perrin lifted his dark glasses and his sorrowful brown eyes met Mac’s. “How could I be? First my wife disappears. Then my girlfriend.” His heartfelt sigh shook his strong frame.

“Marisa is dead,” Mac said.

For a long silent minute Perrin stared at him. Then he lifted his hand and summoned the waiter. “Another grappa,” he snarled.
“Rapido.”

When it came he tossed it down. “How do you know that?”

“I was the one who found her. In Renato Manzini’s Tuscan villa. She had been strangled.”

Perrin stared into his empty glass. “I want you to know I didn’t do it,” he said quietly.

He had put back his dark glasses and it was impossible for Mac to read his eyes. Perrin downed the second grappa. “Marisa was like a reincarnation of Rita Hayworth,” he said quietly. “All tumbling red curls, flashing green eyes, and that sexy mouth.” He signaled for another grappa. “Her real name was Debbie Settle. She’s from Minnesota though how that cold state could have bred such a fiery young woman beats me. I’m telling you so you can contact her family out there in Minnesota. God, I feel so sorry for them.”

“So what are you doing here in Rome anyhow?”

“What d’ya think I’m doing? Takin’ a fuckin’ vacation? I’m avoiding the FBI of course. And trying to find out what’s happened to my money. A lot of which seems to have gone missing.”

“You know we found Ruby Pearl buried under the saguaro cactus at your Palm Springs place.”

“Jesus Christ,” Perrin, said, white to the lips.

Mac hoped that was a prayer, he was gonna need it.

“You’re on the hook for two murders now,” he told him. “It’s only a matter of time, Perrin, so you’d better tell me the truth.”

Perrin eyed him. “You on my side?”

“Tell me your version of the story, and then I’ll give you my answer.”

Despite the grappa, Perrin was sober.

“So I met a couple of women on the Internet,” he says. “Look, I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink to excess—except under special circumstances.” He signaled for another grappa. “And so what if I shifted a little money around here and there? So does everybody else in my position, don’t they?”

“The FBI claims you committed fraud.”

“I’d like to see them prove that,” Perrin said angrily.

“Maybe they can,” Mac cut through Perrin’s bluster. He could see he was a frightened man. He had taken off the sunglasses now and those worried puppy eyes told him so.

“The man following you was not the FBI. It was Ruby Pearl’s ex-boyfriend. He told me you gave her the diamond watch. The jewelers confirmed you bought it. He believes you killed her.”

Perrin shook his head. “That’s not true. I didn’t really even know the woman. Demarco got me to employ her as my secretary. Ruby stole some documents from my private files in Malibu, with the coded account numbers for offshore banks. I discovered it by chance when I went to look for one
and it wasn’t there. When I looked again the next day, it had been replaced. I figured she was working for the FBI and told her goodbye, get out of my life. She’d only been with me a couple of weeks. It was about then I met Marisa.” Tears moistened his eyes as he looked at Mac. “I don’t have to love her to mourn her, now do I? I’m human, y’know.”

“The ‘engagement’ ring was missing,” Mac said.

“You mean somebody
killed
Marisa for the ring I gave her?” Perrin put his head in his hands. “Then maybe in a way I did kill her,” he muttered, half to himself.

Mac watched him. He was sure now Perrin had not killed Marisa. Nor Ruby Pearl.

“Why didn’t you come to Rome right away, to be with Marisa?”

“I thought if the FBI was after me, they’d be able to trace us. I needed to be ‘a lone wolf’ at that point, get my affairs sorted out. I made sure, via Demarco, she was okay financially. I didn’t want to involve her with the FBI.”

“What if it wasn’t the FBI?”

“Who the hell else would want to steal my offshore account numbers? And who else would kill Ruby Pearl?”

“How about the man who employed her?” Mac said.

Perrin jerked back in his chair as though he’d been shot.
“Demarco?”
he said.
“Demarco?
Sumavabitch, you’re telling me he’s been stealing my money, then laundering it himself?”

Perrin thought for a minute, then he said, “Here’s the truth. The missing papers did not have the important account
numbers. Only Allie has access to them. I hid them in code on her laptop. She was the only one I trusted. I told Demarco that.”

Realization came to them at the same time. They stared at each other across the table. “Then we’d better find Allie,” Mac said. “Before Demarco does.”

Demarco was in a standard room at a cheap chain motel outside of Florence when he heard about Allie, in a broadcast earlier than the one caught by Sunny and Mac.

The TV news blared in rapid Italian, interspersed with variety revues consisting of almost-naked showgirls and comics he didn’t understand. He was polishing off a fifth of vodka and wondering what to do next.

He had not thought he would have to kill two women to achieve his goal. It had almost been three, but he hadn’t realized that the woman in the kitchen at the Villa Appia was Reilly’s assistant, and that Reilly was with her.

For years Demarco had been committing fraud and laundering the money stolen from the business into his own offshore accounts, leaving a trail that could incriminate only
Perrin. But what he’d really wanted was access to Perrin’s private offshore accounts. He’d known Perrin kept them in his files in his bedroom safe at the Malibu house where he could never access them. So he’d wooed Ruby Pearl with expensive gifts, culminating in the diamond watch that he’d charged to Perrin. The bills were always sent to the office and Demarco took care of them. Too bad that this time things had gone wrong and the bill for the watch had been sent to Allie by mistake. That had taken a little fancy explaining but he had managed.

Of course he’d used Marisa in the same way. One thing those two women had in common though, they both wanted money. And once they’d got it they wanted more. Marisa had been more than willing to work for him.

Marisa was often alone in the Malibu house and he’d ordered her to access the safe and find the current offshore account numbers. She’d told him later that somebody had come into the house and interrupted her, and that when she finally looked, there were no such papers.

And then, just when he thought he had her neatly tucked out of the way, playing at being a movie actress in Rome, she had pulled the same blackmail trick as Ruby Pearl. The priest disguise had come in handy when he’d followed her in that street in Trastevere, then stunned her and got her into his car. He’d had to kill her of course, she couldn’t be left around to tell her story to the world.

Stuffing Marisa into that refrigerator when he’d seen
the car’s lights approaching the villa had been tougher than actually strangling her. He had strong hands: that was no problem. He had meant to bury her under the chestnut tree on the hill in back of Manzini’s villa, but Sunny Alvarez had put paid to that. If she and Reilly had not shown up it would have worked out fine. But he still hadn’t won. The papers retrieved from Marisa were the same ones he already had.