Voices in the Wardrobe (16 page)

“How convenient.”

Besides Detective Solomon and the deputy, Lydia Saucier, most of the officers about Charlie's room and Kenny's were city cops and homicide. She, Kenny, and Deputy Saucier (pronounced, she'd informed them, “saucy-A”) sat on the balcony of his room now while who knew what was going on inside.

“You okay, Charlie?” Kenny reached over to knead her shoulder.

“No, I'm worried sick for Maggie. And now I can't even reach Luella. I don't know what's happening.”

“How about the lawyer—what's her name?”

“Nancy Trujillo. Solomon's got my cell. And I can't describe her—I've yet to lay eyes on her.”

When Detective Solomon stepped out of the room it was with another plainclothes Charlie assumed was city. “Luella Ridgeway's room is in order, all her stuff there except purse and car keys. Her car is not in the lot here. Could she have spirited Ms. Stutzman off the premises?”

“I have no idea. Let me try to call her again.”

“Check your messages first.” Solomon handed her cellular back. “She might have been trying to get a hold of you.”

Another even more frantic message from her gorgeous secretary, Larry Mann. Another even more threatening message from her daughter who was not going to hang around a “bitchy old sick lady another minute if help doesn't arrive right now!” A guilt-trip message from her mother in Boulder, Colorado wanting to know what the hell was going on “out there” and threatening to hop on a plane and get “out there” if someone didn't talk to her “pretty goddamned soon!”

Three different well-known major banking institutions in a row wanted her to use the equity in her home to borrow money from them. Another shark wanted to consolidate her credit card debt to avoid bankruptcy. A dream vacation was hers, practically free, if she just “dialed” this number. Charlie was paying for all this crap, paying the bill for creeps to use her phone to harass her when she needed to contact someone on what could be a life and death matter. Luella still didn't answer and Charlie left a message on
her
cell.

The telemarketing slugs were dream merchants too, as bad as the pharmaceutical pushers. And God wanted us to spread this slime to the rest of world? “God, you sure about that?”

“She talks to herself,” Kenny told the mildly startled officers. “She's also paranoid.”

Charlie, still holding her phone when it tinkled, answered before Gordy Solomon could grab it. It was Nancy Trujillo wanting to know if Charlie knew where Maggie and Luella were.

Nancy Trujillo, a chunky blue-eyed blonde—go figure—stood in front of the Islandia Restaurant holding a purse the size of a briefcase to her chest like a closed book or file folder. Charlie would have walked right on by her if she hadn't been the only person standing right where they'd agreed to meet. And if the lawyer and Detective Solomon had not greeted each other by name and with decided reserve.

The breeze was a tad more insistent on this side of the tall hotel and grew distinctly chilly as a cloud blanket overtook the sun, just a friendly reminder that April is winter in Southern California.

The restaurant was in a separate building from the hotel and other adjacent buildings and at one corner of the property that curled around the marina and bay here. It served dinners and Sunday brunch at this time of year but was to open an hour early today for cocktails because of all the conferences being held this week at the Islandia. The lawyer, Maggie, and Luella were waiting outside for the doors to open, standing at the end of a line when Maggie disappeared.

“Luella and I got to talking about I can't remember what now and before we knew it Maggie wasn't in line with us. Luella rushed off to the lobby building to see if she'd headed to the ladies' room there and if not was going to check the parking lot. I was to search the pool and garden area here, the café in the hotel, and the ladies' room there. We were to meet back at this spot no later than fifteen minutes and check with each other every five. The last I heard, Luella hadn't found her in the lobby ladies' room and was on her way to the parking lot. That was nearly an hour ago.”

“Ms. Ridgeway's car is not in the lot. She's not answering her cell phone. Everything but her purse is still in her room.” Solomon arched the forehead over one eye and nodded knowingly. “What was Margaret Stutzman's mood like while you planned strategy? Cooperative? Grateful for your services? Worried?”

“Pretty much detached, compliant, nervous.”

“Preliminary lab work on your and Margaret's bodily fluids indicate no drugs in her system, but enough in yours, Charlie, to confirm Deputy Saucier's suspicions about the fruit and cheese platters. Might explain your friend's nervousness, since she had a drug problem. Maybe she went off looking for some. Did she have any friends in San Diego?”

“None that I know of, but I don't know all her friends. She's fragile. We need to find her and Luella too.” Charlie grabbed her phone from her purse before the first tinkle got a good start, praying it was Luella and that she'd found Maggie. But it was Larry Mann, her assistant.

“Charlie, I've just been cleaning the garbage out of your e-mail inbox and you are getting some scary stuff coming in here. It's even coded.”

“Then how do you know it's scary? And have you heard from Luella in the last, say hour or two?”

“One of the FBI dudes running around here was looking over my shoulder. He says it's their code. I haven't heard from Luella since she left for San Diego again.”

“Is the e-mail about Maggie or the Sea Spa?”

“No, it's about the explosion at the Celebrity Pit.”

Charlie had managed to get her agency in trouble with THE agency several times and it was a given, after having had computer files screwed up by THEIR invasions, that she had her e-mail automatically downloaded to her laptop at home as well. Doug Esterhazie, son of Esterhazie Concrete who was going to marry his third this Saturday, was so adept at adapting computers that he managed to screen out most of the spam junk in the process.

When she called Libby at Betty Beesom's and got Doug instead, Charlie was glad and she was furious. She needed Doug right now and he shouldn't let Libby use him like this. But if anybody could break a code it was Doug Esterhazie. He already had her password because he and Libby had gotten her out of more than a few Internet jams before this.

“I can't leave Mrs. Beesom. Don't you have your laptop with you? Can't you access your e-mail with your PDA from there?”

There was no way to explain to the Dougs of the earth that Charlie delighted in getting away from the Internet, that she couldn't figure out how to use half the features on her Personal Digital Assistant, that she actually had a life, that as much as she'd appreciated it the last few days, truth be known she even got pretty sick of her cellular on regular occasions. “Look, Doug, just run next door and grab it. It's still at the desk in the dining room. Run it back over to Betty's. You can work on it there. You know my password. Larry thinks it's FBI.” She could hear the disappointment in his sigh. “Look, they could have gotten a lot better at it by now with all the national security beef-up and all the available laid-off techies.” His second sigh added impatience to the disappointment. “It's about the explosion at the Celebrity Pit.”

“You were mixed up with that?” Now there was shock, but some interest.

“No, but they might think so—you know what a suspicious character I am. Call me back when you decode it. And if you see your friend Libby Abigail Greene, tell her I'm going to throttle her.” Charlie came back to the visible world with a start to find Nancy Trujillo, Gordy Solomon, and Deputy Saucier gawking at her. Oh boy. She tried to replay in her head the pieces of conversation they had heard on this end.

Deputy Saucier had just arrived to inform her boss that Luella's car was spotted heading up the coastal highway not far from the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol. And that Keegan Monroe was checking out of the Hyatt Islandia.

Twenty-One

The San Diego Film Institute Screenwriting Conference was in grave disarray, conferees leaving en masse, demanding refunds not forthcoming, Thursday's sessions and banquet called off. Charlie wanted only to pack her stuff and get out before the Institute officials decided not to comp her room after all. She doubted she'd ever see the honorarium. The important thing now was to find Maggie and Luella. Nancy Trujillo had gone to her office, prepared to return the minute a sign of Maggie turned up.

A sheriff's deputy sent to the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol reported back to Solomon that there was no sign of either woman, nor of Luella's car. All their luggage was still here at the Islandia. What to do?

“What was that about the FBI?” Solomon asked Charlie up in Kenny's room. He rifled through Maggie's suitcase while she searched hers for Brodie Caulfield's treatment.

“Oh, Congdon and Morse had some trouble with them over a client who left the country while under suspicion, went to Spain to—”

“Evan Black, the producer? That was a great flick. And your friend Hilsten was in it. Black got out of the country with all that money, went to Spain to blow up Vegas on screen and get even. Man, the back story on that, what was it, um—oh yeah—
Paranoia Will Destroy Ya
, was as good as the film. They run that whole thing on E! every other month. And I hear it's out on DVD now. What are you looking at me like that for?”

“You're the law. And you liked
Paranoia?
”

“Oh yeah, cops love pyrotechnics—we're just suckers for it. You know what's really wild? I know a lot of firemen who do too.” He looked off into the distance to recall a fond memory in his head—which he shook to come back to work. “So, this screenwriters' conference—do these things produce a lot of screenwriters? Why are you still looking at me funny?”

Well, for starters you have one of Maggie's bras dangling by a strap from your index finger. And you don't have any eyebrows and you wear a rug. And for the first time you seem like a real person somehow. But she said aloud, “If you're trying to come on as a lamebrain, I'm not buying in.”

“Look, there's been a murder at this conference. I'm a cop and I'm curious, and got a right to be.” He noticed the bra and shook it off like he'd surprised a cobweb.

“You're talking funny again.”

“Well, I'm trying not to sound like a corny TV mystery.”

“The odds against any of the attendees of this conference making headway in a career as a screenwriter, gaining contact with someone in a position to buy, recommend, judge, produce, make it happen are staggering.”

“But there's four Hollywood agents here, as I understand it. Where else can you go and find that many in one place?”

“Two are crooks. The other two are here under duress—one of them a story editor or analyst, not an agent—neither looking for material but in fact drowning in it. The market is very selective.”

“That why you're looking around so hard for that treatment? Seems like somebody made a contact here.”

“It's just that Brodie's been helpful and useful and not pushy. He's inventive and he can pitch. I'm curious to see if he can conjure. Does San Diego homicide consider Maggie a suspect in Howard's death?”

“City guys seem to feel there's no connection between the murders at the Sea Spa and Dr. Howard's. He work at the university or what?”

“To my knowledge neither the Institute nor Grant Howard are connected to anything but each other. Why do you see a connection between the Spa and the Institute?”

“You, Margaret Stutzman, Luella Ridgeway, your tall muscular writer Kenneth somebody, the fact that all three murders involved prescription drugs and drowning for starters.”

“Those pill bottles were taken away from Maggie last Saturday night at the Sea Spa.”

“Drug dependency does strange things to people and withdrawal can do worse.”

Keegan arrived just as she found Brodie's treatment. “I'm out of here, Charlie. Brodie's going to take me up to Del Mar. I'll be at Les Artistes if you need me. Sorry I got you into this. But you were right about rogue film institutes. Never again.” Keegan had taken the train down and would take it back to L.A. from Solana Beach. He rarely drove more than familiar paths around town since his stay in Folsom. She didn't ask why. Maybe because he'd been convicted of manslaughter in the drowning death of a novelist whose book he'd been commissioned to turn into a screenplay by a major studio. They'd shared a bottle of vodka and a nasty argument at a roadside park near Rizzi Reservoir. She'd driven her car into the water and he'd driven his back home. Keegan swore she was swimming to shore when he left. Her body was found floating free from the car.

Les Artistes was a dinky arty motel owned by friends of his, where he retreated now and then, especially after a blowout stint of writing or just to get out of town.

Charlie was about to open Brodie's envelope when Doug Esterhazie called her back.

“Already?” Solomon said. “Thought the FBI had all these safeguards now.”

“Internet may be fast and effective but we're in real trouble to depend on it. These kids can outwit codes in minutes.”

Betty Beesom was sleeping peacefully and Doug had more messages for FBI agent Green. “I'll get them all translated onto paper for you and then blow them away so no one knows you got them at home too. Charlie, this was a really dumbed-down code.”

It seemed the information on the terrorist explosion was meant for an agent Charles Green. “But he wouldn't have my e-mail address.”

“Well they have your password too now. Some screwup probably searched for his friend Charlie Green and your password came up. Happens. They got more information than money to pay someone to process it. What I'm getting so far is it was religious extremists who tried to take out the Celebrity Pit, supposedly for its symbol of evil influence on society. But these fanatics weren't from any third world country.”