You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2) (15 page)

“Why does she want to talk to me?” I grabbed my purse. “Let’s go mad and guess this has something to do with Colin. Come on.”

Stevie didn’t move. Her shoes remained by their spot at the coat closet and not on her feet.

Yesterday I left Stevie alone for hours, with disastrous results. What would happen if she were alone even longer? “You should come with. It’ll be fun. You can meet a TV star.”

She shook her head. “I will if you need me to, but…I don’t want to.”

She didn’t want to?

She should be anxious to spend a little time with me. Where was the girl who could stick like Velcro? Suddenly she could take me or leave me?

I stared at her. “There’s something on the telly, isn’t there?”

She gave me the lip press of annoyance. “Yes, there is,” she said, not looking at me. “But you don’t understand.”

“Oh for Chri—Zeus’s sake, they rerun those detective series twenty times a day.”

“Chelsea versus Arsenal.”

Well, if that wasn’t Stevie in a nutshell. My husband’s been murdered, I’m going to have a chat with the person he mentioned before he died as having threatened him, and Stevie has to let her obsession with football get in the way of helping me out. Football. She’d never watched a match while she lived in England, either at a stadium or on the telly. (Stevie at a stadium with tens of thousands of rabid football fans? Please. She wouldn’t have made it past the first gate.) She’d never kicked a ball, let alone played. Her fanatic devotion to Arsenal—
Arsenal
, for Christ’s sake, as if that weren’t proof of her complete and total detachment from the real world—was wholly a manifestation of her desire to go home. A home that never existed, of course, but Stevie was never one to let reality get in the way of a good fantasy. Whereas in the here and now, I got to deal with the reality.

I glared at her. “You want to stay here and watch a football match?”

She rocked back and forth, ball-heel, ball-heel, several times, not looking at me, before she nodded. She tilted her head toward the floor and said, “The telly has all the pay sports channels.”

My first thought was, might as well enjoy them, because they probably won’t have all those neat channels at the group home. But I clenched my jaw and stopped thinking about Roberto and New York and my inheritance.

“Fine,” I said, not caring much whether or not she heard my teeth grinding. “Let’s go over the map and you can show me where I’m headed.”

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

PENELOPE WAS IN the Juice Heaven hut when I arrived at Venice Beach. She wore a fuchsia cropped top with matching short-shorts, the kind that require a Brazilian bikini wax. Compared to some of the other girls in the juice store, though, Penelope was wearing a burka. Who needed clothes when the weather keeps you warm? She signed a few autographs and, from where I sat, I could hear her squeal of appreciation every time someone recognized her.

I sat on a stone bench across the pedestrian walkway, camouflaged by the constant foot traffic. Venice Boardwalk was crawling with people. And why not? It seemed to be California personified. The March day was warm and sunny and the beach stretched out for miles, with the Pacific glistening beyond—the water was freezing cold, which explained why no one was swimming in it. Walkers, rollerbladers, and bicyclists covered the boardwalk, passing the shops on one side and the line of street sellers on the other. At my bench, I had a street artist to my left, ready to do a caricature of any tourist in oil crayons. On my right was a giant display dedicated to the legalization of marijuana, manned by a chap with blonde dreadlocks and an untrimmed beard. I was downwind from him and he smelled like samples were available. Also, like he hadn’t bathed in a while.

Penelope stepped out of the juice place, holding a gigantic foam cup but not drinking from it. She looked up and down the block, perhaps wondering where I was.

I stood up and waved. “Penelope!”

She waved at me and flashed her too-white smile. “Hi!” She dashed across the pedestrian path, dodging a few rollerbladers, and came over to me. “Hey! You’re here!” She looked at my dress. “Wow. Vera Wang?”

“How are you today, Penelope?”

We started walking down the beachfront.

She swung her honey-brown ponytail over her shoulder. “I’m so glad I’m off the set today. Doing a series is a grind, you know? It looks easy, but it’s so much work. Hey, you want some juice?” She offered me her cup.

I shook my head. “I have a dinner engagement tonight.” The same one I always did, with my sister.

She shrugged, and then took a sip. “This is like all I’m going to eat today. Seriously. I have got to drop five pounds before this photo shoot next Monday, and I retain water like anything.” She snapped her fingers.

I knew I was supposed to ask, “Lose five pounds from where?” I don’t like to play other people’s games. So instead I said, “Where would you like to chat?”

She raised one index finger off the cup and pointed to a building a few blocks up the beach. “I live right here. Bought it like two months ago. It’s so fabulous having my own place. But there’s not much furniture. It’s not decorated yet, okay? I’ve been away at a location shoot for forever and just got back two days ago.”

As we walked, Penelope babbled on about interior designers.

“I think I want a Tuscan kind of feel to it,” she said.

I stifled my first reaction and went for a neutral response. “Many people do seem to like that, it’s true.”

“Oh! I just love the way English people talk! I wish I’d been born there and had an accent. Instead I’m from Merced. You ever been to Merced?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t. It’s completely the ass of the universe.”

“I’ll wager you’ve never been to any of the Baltic states,” I said.

“I’ve been to Baltimore, does that count?” Then she laughed.

As we walked, we discussed fashion, as though we’d talked about it before. She told me about the gossip on her co-stars, none of whom I knew. She said hello to everyone who said hello to her. It was surreal, walking along the pathway, chattering away with the woman who had threatened Colin in some way, shortly before he got himself murdered. I found it tough to believe she could have killed him, if for no other reason than she was five or six inches shorter than Colin and she weighed about three hundred tons less. She was bony. Penelope had a body built to reassure male viewers, not threaten them.

Her building was a large, shallow sandstone arc that faced the Pacific Ocean. “Every condo in there has an ocean view.”

“Every condo goes from one side of the building to the other?”

She nodded.

“So the ones on the end must have wrap-around views.”

Another nod. “And I have one of the end ones!” she burbled.

In the lobby, Penelope tried to wave me past the guard’s desk with a smile and giggle, but he insisted I had to sign in anyhow. I signed the book with my beautiful copperplate signature, all carefully placed angles and perfectly-sized loops. Whenever I get a new name, Stevie has me work on the signature until I can do it without hesitating, and every name has a different writing style. I can’t read any of them, of course, but they’re very pretty.

I can even do it with either hand. That particular skill hasn’t come in handy yet, but I’m sure it will one day.

We went up in the elevator, which required a card key to operate, to the nineteenth floor. The top was the twentieth, so Penelope hadn’t scaled all the heights of fame yet. The décor down the hallway to her condo had nice touches: The hallway carpeting was black with gold paisleys, and the walls were painted with various sizes of stripes in pale pink and yellow.

It wasn’t fabulous. But it looked nicer than anywhere I’d lived in the past few years. Up until Gary’s estate, of course.

“Ta da!” Penelope said as she opened the door—into an empty apartment. When she had said it was empty, I hadn’t expected actual emptiness. The entire contents of the place were one red Barcalounger in the middle of the living room, one half-full ashtray on the white Berber carpeting beside the lounger, and a wine glass on its side nearby. The only decoration was in the hallway, where a poster for
The Night Glen
was tacked onto the wall. There was nothing else I could see in the place.

Even more overwhelming was the smell. Penelope smoked like a fiend, because every pore of that place was filled with cigarette smoke, a scent that appalls me as much as it beckons me to return to its loving embrace. I prayed the overpowering smell of the cigarettes in the condo wasn’t going to stink up my clothes.

The living room did have an impressive view. To be specific, the balcony off the living room did. Venice Beach was right below, on the other side of the street, and beyond that stretched the Pacific.

We were at the end of the continent. I couldn’t run any farther west. Nowhere left to go.

Penelope bopped into the kitchen and I followed. “I need a drink,” she said, throwing her foam juice cup into the sink, which was already filled with plenty of dishes and other juice cups. “Want some wine?” She pulled the bottle out of the refrigerator. “I’m not much up on wine, but this is a really great brand.” She held out the label toward me. I didn’t need to. I recognized the label. Queen’s Lace Pinot Grigio.

Colin’s favorite wine.

Interesting.

My stomach threatened to go on strike and look for another body to live in if I had anything to drink before I’d had my first decent-sized meal. And I didn’t quite trust what might be in that bottle. Nathaniel hadn’t mentioned a thing about toxicology reports, so I didn’t know if Colin had been drugged or not. This tiny woman would have had to have had some kind of help in overpowering him—such as using chloroform or elephant tranquilizer—if she wanted to kill him.

Vin Behar had been sitting outside Colin’s apartment.

“Oh, are you AA or anything?” She didn’t wait for my answer. She put the bottle on the kitchen counter and picked a wine glass out of the sink. A quick wash and wipe and she was good to go. “I’m thinking about doing AA.” She filled her glass. “It’s a great place to meet people in this town. AA is like the best place to network.” She giggled over the top of her goblet, embarrassed. “A lot of people do. If my show doesn’t work out…something to think about, right?” She took a gulp of wine, swished it around in her mouth like mouthwash before swallowing, and then topped off the glass with another slug. As she stuffed the cork back in the bottle, her eyes started to fill with tears. “This was Colin’s favorite wine.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “Did you spend a lot of time with him and Anne?”

She put the bottle back into the refrigerator and looked back at me with a half-grin. “No. We spent time alone. Hope you didn’t mind.”

I rolled my eyes. Hope she didn’t think she was special. She wasn’t special; she was obvious and heavy-handed. What could she have done to make Colin so damn frightened right before his murder?

She led me back into the living room and started to pull open the door to the balcony, where there were two chaise-longues facing the ocean, with an overflowing ashtray between them. A strong cold breeze came in and Penelope shut the door.

“Fog’s coming in.” She giggled and drank about a third of her wine. “Come on.”

She led me down the hall, past the poster, to the bedrooms. We passed the first two, which contained opened, rifled moving boxes or racks of clothes. Then we entered the master suite, which was larger than the living room and had a bigger balcony that looked out over Venice toward Santa Monica. The room had a king-sized bed with the black-and-white checkerboard satin duvet, a flat-screen TV on the wall, and a bedside table with the ashtray, the pack of Marlboro Lights, and a lighter on it. The telephone was on the floor. Clothes had been scattered wherever she’d been standing when she removed them. A highboy stood in the corner, forgotten.

Penelope propped up the pillows on the bed against the ornately carved headboard. “This is kind of weird, but it’s so comfortable.” She reached for the cigarettes and lit up. She blew the smoke into the air and I waved it away. “Oh, sorry! I’ll crack open the door.” She pulled open the balcony door and then hopped back on the bed. And sat there for a moment, as though she’d forgotten why in the hell she’d asked me there to begin with.

“So.” She looked over at me. I raised my eyebrows at her. “Um…how do we start?”

Start having a discussion or having sex? I thought. “Let’s discuss what happened last night, Penny.”

“Penelope. Just Penelope.” She laughed without a genuine drop of humor. “Never Penny.” She smoked her cigarette and stared off into space for a moment. Then she turned her head to look at me, head tilted forward so she was looking up at me through her lashes. It’s a powerfully seductive position. I’ve used it often enough myself.

“This whole thing with Colin—it’s totally weirded me out. I mean, I was talking to him at his place last night.” Her hand slid over mine and she interlaced our fingers. “The whole conversation we had, then he was murdered…”

She squeezed my hand so lightly, I almost mistook it for a nervous twitch.

Almost.

Except Penelope was gazing at me at the same time, in a way that was supposed to make me think “longing” but instead made me think “deliberate.” The squeeze was a maneuver to make it clear she was flirting with me. Getting us in bed together was a move calculated to put me off-balance. She wanted me wondering what was going on, which would leave her in control.

Her first mistake? Thinking she could put me off-balance by sitting on a bed with me. Please.

“You know I’m Colin’s wife, right?”

“Oh, uh huh.” She took another puff. “I feel I’m really close to you, in a funny way, you know?” She put the cigarette in the ashtray and then leaned against the pillow, light golden brown eyes turned toward me.

Fantastic. Had he given her the idea he’d married a lesbian? “You were at his apartment last night? Have you told the police that?”

“I really don’t want them to know,” she said.

Right. Let me put that on my Not To Mention list. “How did you meet Colin, anyhow?”