Private: #1 Suspect (5 page)

CHAPTER
18

MITCH TANDY AND Len Ziegler entered my office and looked around as if they’d just bought the place at a blind auction and were seeing it for the first time.

I showed them to the seating area, and Tandy and I sat down. Ziegler wanted to look around—at the view, the bookshelves, the photos on the wall.

Tandy said to me, “Why did you mess with the crime scene, Jack? It’s just a little too neat, you know what I mean?

“Girl dies in the middle of the bed with her shoes on. Doesn’t leave any fingerprints, not even in the bathroom. In my experience, the girl always uses the bathroom.”

The cops hadn’t come to bring me news. They were here so that they could read me, scare me, catch me in lies or deviations from what I’d told them last night.

“She was dead when I got home,” I said. “What you saw is what I saw.”

“Jack, I’m a fair guy.”

Aside to self: No, he wasn’t. He was a poisonous human being. His unexamined lack of self-respect and his envy of others made him that way. Dangerous.

He said, “Tell me what really happened so you can get ahead of this thing.”

“Mitch. I told you everything I know.”

“Okay.”

He leaned over the coffee table, straightened a stack of books, and said, “Now I want to give you my theory of how this girl got killed. Colleen Molloy was in love with her boss. That’s not in dispute. Not unusual. Happens all the time. But this particular girl, Colleen, she tried to kill herself after you and she broke up. That’s a fact. Attempted suicide tells me she was emotional. Unstable.”

“Slashed her wrists about six months ago,” Ziegler said from across the room. He had a pocketknife, about six inches long, pearl handle. He tossed it in the air and caught it. Did this throughout as he went on. “Colleen survived. Quit her job and moved back to Ireland, returned to LA two weeks ago to see friends.”

“That’s right,” said Tandy. “Now we’re up to date. So last Wednesday, Colleen has lunch with you at Smitty’s, but whatever went down wasn’t entirely satisfying to Colleen. She knows your schedule, when you’ll be coming home, et cetera, and last night she takes a cab and shows up at your house uninvited.”

His tone was even. No rough stuff. No threats. But Tandy was laying out his theory, that it was me, and he was setting it in concrete.

I said, “You’ve got a good imagination, Mitch. But Colleen had a boyfriend in Dublin. She wasn’t stalking me.”

“Not saying she was stalking. She wanted to talk. She knew when you’d be home. She uses her access code and waits for you. You walk in. She says, ‘Surprise, I still love you, Jack. I’ll always love you.’”

“Tandy, you’re making me sick, you know that? Nothing like that happened. Colleen and I were friends. Just friends.”

“You were tired when she showed up. That’s what you told us. That long flight, all those layovers. You’re not in the mood for the needy ex-girlfriend, but maybe you try to be a gentleman.”

Ziegler was on his feet, knife in his back pocket now, moving around toward my desk. I got up, went over to my desk, shut down my computer, and said over my shoulder to Tandy, “Nothing you’ve said is true.”

“It’s just talk,” Tandy said pleasantly. “Just talk. When I’ve finished telling you my theory, you can tell me yours.”

CHAPTER
19

TANDY ENJOYED SPINNING his “Jack Morgan did it” storyline. He sat there on my couch, smelling like curry, moving his hands around as he got to the crux of his “theory.”

“So now the girl is crying, I don’t know, or maybe she’s giddy. Was that it? Was she all lit up? Manic?

“At any rate, Colleen is worked up. And here’s where it gets painful,” Tandy said. “You say you’re not interested in her anymore. ‘Thanks but no thanks. Let’s be friends.’ And she doesn’t want to be rejected by you again. So she’s going to kill herself. That’ll show you.”

What Tandy was saying hurt. Yes, Colleen still had feelings for me. I’d still had feelings for her too.

I said, “Very theatrical, Tandy, but as I keep telling you, I didn’t do it.”

“So, as I’m telling
you,
Colleen knows where you keep your gun. She goes for it. You struggle with her. The two of you fall on the bed—and the gun goes off. Hair trigger.
Bam.
Bam. Bam
. She takes it in the chest.”

“That never happened.”

“Colleen has been shot. It was an accident. I know you well enough to say that, Jack. But you can’t change the events. And now this poor mixed-up girl is dead in your place. Sure, you could dump the body, but you gotta ask yourself. Maybe Colleen told a friend she was coming to see you; you can’t know. Or maybe you’re scared. You panic. You lose it—”

“Ziegler, stay away from my desk.”

“What’s wrong, Jack? Is there something here I’m not supposed to see?”

Ziegler meandered over to where I was sitting with Tandy. I imagined putting my fist into his jack-o’-lantern grin.

“If I’ve got this wrong, make me a believer and I’ll work with you,” said Tandy.

So polite. Covering his ass because the chief of police and I were friends.

I said, “My turn to talk?”

“You’re on,” Tandy said.

“Okay. You’ve got to look at me for the crime. I get that. But you’re wasting time. I’ve been set up. Someone doesn’t like me. He kidnapped Colleen, got her to give up her key fob, and used her print to open the door. He brought her into my house and shot her in my bed.

“The shooter left before I got home. He figured that the cops wouldn’t look very hard at anyone but me. That was his plan.”

Tandy smiled. “But here’s where your story goes off road, Jack. There’s a gap in your timeline. You left the airport at five-thirty-something. Hit some traffic. You arrived home at six-thirty. So you say.

“At eight you call the chief. Time passes as Fescoe calls the precinct and the call goes down the line. By the time Ziegler and I arrive, almost two hours have gone by since you walked in your door.

“You had plenty of time to shoot the girl, get rid of your gun, throw it and your security system hard drive into the ocean. Then you shower, shampoo—hell, you could have had your guys come in and do a professional cleanup, like it never even happened.”

I said, “Mitch. The card reader shows Colleen’s key was swiped at six. At six, we were just getting clear of the airport.”

“So what? She waited for you. Or you screwed with the security program after the fact. Look, I’m a fair guy, Jack. You tell me. Who do you think killed Colleen?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”

“Well, think about it. I could use your thoughts on this. Why don’t you put together a list of your enemies. I’ll check them out. Personally. Okay? Call me, Jack. Anytime.”

“Thanks, Mitch. I will.”

I shook hands with the cops, then Cody walked them out to the elevator. Bastards. It was absolutely clear. I was going to have to find Colleen’s killer.

It was up to me to save my own life.

CHAPTER
20

I SWALLOWED SOME aspirin, then stole a few minutes at my desk, attacking the backlogged avalanche of e-mails and phone calls. When I looked up, Sci was sitting in front of me. I hadn’t heard him come in. Had he materialized out of the air? If anyone could do that, it was Dr. Sci.

“What the hell?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

Sci was wearing a red shirt, tails out over his jeans, bowling shoes up on the edge of my desk. He had the face of a cherub and the brain of Einstein—if Einstein had lived in the digital age. Since he hadn’t, Dr. Sci was arguably smarter.

“Thinking about what?”

“I’ve got news, Jack. I can’t find anything good in it.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I spoke to someone.”

Along with Sci’s advanced degrees, he’d worked in the LA crime lab for a couple of years, doing rotations in ballistics, fibers, DNA. He had deep contacts at LA’s hundred-million-dollar lab, and his tech friends were close to the cops. One of those friends was hoping that Sci would bring him over to Private.

We had agreed long ago that Sci would give me off-the-record intel and I wouldn’t ask any awkward questions.

“There was a witness,” said Sci.

“Someone saw Colleen?”

“Someone saw
you,
Jack. On the beach. A neighbor, Bobbie Newton. You know her?”

“Slightly. She lives a couple houses down the beach.”

“She said she was jogging last night and she saw you on the beach, talking on your phone. She waved at you and you waved back.”

“When was this?

“Approximately six something. She doesn’t know for sure. She wasn’t wearing a watch.”

“She saw
me?
”

“So she says.”

“For Christ’s sake, Sci. I wasn’t on the beach.”

I didn’t want to have the thoughts that were turning in my mind, but the tumblers were clicking into place. A riddle. Who was me yet not me?

My womb-mate. My enemy.

“Tommy,”
I said. “What else?”

“The fingerprints in your room were all yours.”

“We’re identical,” I said.

“Yes, but your fingerprints aren’t identical. They’re shaped by the currents in utero. Tommy’s prints will be a little different than yours.

“Jack, you really think Tommy killed Colleen?”

“He knows her. He knows me. He could get close to her and he could force her to give up her key, press her finger to the biometric lock. He has motive. He fucking hates me.”

CHAPTER
21

I TOOK THE stairs down to Justine’s office, which was directly under mine. Three associates were arrayed around her semicircular desk: Kate Hanley, Lauri Green, and our sixty-year-old virtual chameleon of a sleuth, Bud Rankin.

Justine was assigning them to collect background on all five of the hotel murder victims.

She looked up, her long dark hair hanging to her shoulders, framing her lovely face.

She thanked the troops and they filed out.

I sat down and told Justine about Noccia’s offer that I couldn’t refuse.

“We’re not taking the job, are we?”

“I don’t want to.”

“I vote, no, no way, and not in a million years.”

“Duly noted.”

“Now, bring me up to date on Colleen.”

About me and Justine. A few years back, we bought the beach house where I live as a future wedding present to us both. We made a lot of love and had a lot of good times in that house. Truth is, we fit together in every way—but one.

I don’t like to spill my guts. And Justine is a shrink. I’m guarded, or what she calls “too well-defended,” and she gets pissed off. Then she closes up. And she stays mad.

We were lovers. We broke up, then tried it again with the same result. After we split up the second time, more than a year ago, I started seeing Colleen—and Justine dated a guy not half good enough for her.

A few months ago, we were both unattached again, and we’d started dating in a noncommitted way. I still couldn’t open up. She still couldn’t tolerate that. So for good and for bad, not much had changed.

Sitting here looking at her, I couldn’t understand why I had to talk when Justine could pretty much read my mind.

She was peeling back the layers even now.

“There’s a witness,” I said. “A neighbor says she saw me on the beach around the time Colleen was killed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It wasn’t me.”

I leaned back in the chair without breaking eye contact with Justine.

“God. It was Tommy,” she said.

We were both thinking about my evil twin. Would he dare set me up to be tagged for Colleen’s murder? Did he really hate me that much?

Justine asked, “What do you think happened?”

“I think she was walked in, maybe at gunpoint. She had the electronic gate key, and whoever killed her pressed her finger to the pad at the door.”

“Colleen still had access?”

“She’s not the only one. You’ve got access too.”

“I’m sure it’s a pretty big crowd of insiders,” Justine said, swiveling her chair away from me.

“I’m not hiding anything from you,” I said—but that wasn’t entirely true.

She swiveled back. “You’re not telling me everything, Jack.”

She was right. But the part I was leaving out had nothing to do with Colleen’s murder.

“Colleen and I had lunch. There was a lot on my mind. I had to catch a plane. She was in a good mood. She seemed okay to me, but we didn’t talk about anything important.

“Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to set me up.”

“Okay.”

“I’m staying at the Sun for a few days. Until the cops give me back the house. Let’s have dinner there.”

“Not tonight,” she said. “I have plans.”

That was a lie.

She said, “What are you going to do about Tommy?”

“What would you do?”

“I’d go back in time and loop the umbilical cord around his neck. Make a slipknot and pull it tight.”

“I wish I’d thought of that.”

We both laughed loud and long.

It felt really good to laugh.

CHAPTER
22

CRUZ AND DEL RIO were in Del Rio’s office, working their case, comparing the phone calls Maurice Bingham had made from his cell phone with the list of escort services in the Beverly Hills yellow pages.

“I had a girlfriend once who was an escort,” Del Rio told Cruz.

Cruz said, “This I’ve got to hear.” He moved his chair to Del Rio’s side of the desk so he could see the computer screen.

“I signed up for the ‘special-gift daddy’ section,” Del Rio said. “ ‘Special-gift girls’ want a hookup with one guy until they earn enough from him to buy this so-called gift.

“Her name was Chelsea,” Del Rio went on. “Very pretty, very smart. On her way to becoming somebody in the fashion business when a friend of hers told her she could make a bundle being an escort. That she could make enough to get her business off the ground.”

“When was this? Before or after you got out of the joint?” Cruz asked.

Cruz was a good-looking guy of twenty-seven. Dark hair pulled back in a short ponytail. Clean shaven, dressed in black. Former middleweight boxer. Former cop and investigator for the DA. Currently a senior investigator on the fast track at Private.

“After. I was so starved for a woman by that time, I can’t tell you. A kiss could send me to the moon,” Del Rio said.

“Here’s our match,” said Cruz, pointing to the number on the screen. “Bingham called an escort service called Phi Beta Girls.”

Del Rio tapped the name of the escort service into his browser, and a website filled the screen.

Cruz read the sales pitch at the top out loud: “‘Beautiful girls of every ethnicity. Not just beautiful but very intelligent,’ blah, blah. ‘Each one loves her work as an escort,’ har-har. ‘Matched by our placement experts.’ Oh, sure. Matched to your credit card, more like it.”

Del Rio said, “Chelsea wanted implants, so, you know, took about three dates for her to pay for those, and then she wanted another ‘special gift.’ She wanted a
car
. I didn’t have a spare fifty grand, so Chelsea dumped me for a gift daddy who owned a luxury-car dealership. Now she drives around town in a Bentley.”

Cruz laughed. “Not bad for a few hours’ work.”

“You woulda thought my looks and my fine skills in the rack would’ve meant something to her,” Del Rio said. “I was a definite keeper.”

“You’re not still hooked on this girl?” Cruz asked.

“Yeah. She was the love of my life,” Del Rio said. “I’m kidding, you jackass. Chelsea was a ho.” He laughed and turned his attention back to the screen. “Okay, Phi Beta lists about a hundred escorts. Look at these girls. Jessie. Six hundred an hour. Two-hour minimum. Three grand for an overnight. ‘Diana, Playboy Bunny, a known celebrity…’ ”

“Here’s Phi Beta’s address,” said Cruz. “Let’s take a ride.”