Tacky. Too much decoration said, “We’ve got money.”
These people weren’t like that. The simpler the better. But, boy, did they have money.
Tremaine strolled through the Grill. Yes, there were some stares. He looked perfectly presentable, but the old-school surfer ’stache certainly threw off some of the gee-zers in the room. Passing by one table, a man who looked to be somewhere around a hundred just blatantly stared at Tremaine, his mouth hanging open in confusion.
“Howdy,” Tremaine said.
“Who?” the old man grunted back.
Tremaine moved on. He thought to himself, that guy might die later. Then, standing in the middle of the room, sort of looking around for Phillip Cook, Tremaine heard,
“You must be Donald Tremaine.”
Tremaine looked down and to his left to see a man sit-112
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ting at one of the square lunch tables. Tremaine had inad-vertently found Phillip Cook. He was practically on top of him.
“Yes, I’m Donald Tremaine.”
“Phillip Cook,” he said as he stood up, extending a hand for Tremaine to shake.
Tremaine shook Phillip’s hand, then sat down at the table and ordered a Diet Coke from a passing waiter. “Yes, sir,” the waiter said.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet me here,” Phillip Cook said, now seated as well. Tremaine looked for Phillip’s glass eye. It wasn’t hard to find, as Tremaine was face to face with a man whose left eye simply did not move. It just stared straight ahead, like a doll’s. Tremaine thinking, that would be a good device for a P.I. A glass eye to confuse and fluster people you interviewed. Close your good eye and just stare at them with the glass one, freak them out. But then I couldn’t see, he thought . . .
“My pleasure,” Tremaine said. “I’ve always wanted to see the Club.”
Tremaine studied Phillip Cook. He almost couldn’t believe the guy was wearing a blazer with a crest and an ascot. Combined with his black hair with a part on the side that looked like a white line down his head and his glass eye, he fit the mold of a consummate country club gentleman. Or a villain in a James Bond movie.
“It’s interesting that you’re investigating this case more than a year after the murder.”
Man, it was tough to tell this guy’s angle with that glass eye.
“I’m a P.I. I investigate old cases all the time.”
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“Nina hired you, right? That’s what mother said.”
Mother? Another one of those words only these people used. Mother? Shall?
Phillip continued, “So, how can I help?”
Tremaine thought, this guy needs a big white Persian cat in his lap. So he could stroke it maniacally, giggle, and plot the destruction of the free world.
Tremaine said, “Your mother was nice enough to talk to me about Roger.”
Phillip said, “You know, he wasn’t my father; he was my mother’s
second
husband.”
“I know,” Tremaine said, and thought, he’s got that defensive air, just like his mom. What the hell do these people have to be defensive about? They have the world by the balls.
Tremaine continued. “Well, I’m looking into the case and, as you know, the cops never identified an official suspect. There’s the guy who some people suspected . . .”
“Tyler Wilkes.”
“Yeah, Tyler Wilkes. But he’s not why I wanted to talk to you,” Tremaine said. Then, with no obvious implication, “Did you like Roger Gale, Phillip?”
“I liked him because my mother liked him. He made her happy, so I liked him.”
“But, regardless of your mother, did you like him? As a person?”
“You know what? I did. You couldn’t not like him. Everybody at his agency liked him, everyone here at the Club liked him. I resisted his charms at first because I didn’t think anyone could replace my father. But Roger was sensitive to that, and although we were never best friends, I liked him. I did.”
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“Lots of people said Roger Gale’s life caused him to work insane hours and things like that, come home late.”
“I don’t think he was having affairs,” Phillip said, getting right to it. “No one would do that to my mother.”
“You sure?” Tremaine said.
“Yes. And I’m not alone in my contention, either,” Phillip said. “Bill Peterson said the same thing.”
Tremaine looked at Phillip.
Phillip said quickly, “Bill Peterson was one of the detectives who looked into this thing in the first place. He said the same thing. That they looked into the affair angle and there was just nothing there.”
Phillip Cook was getting irritated.
Tremaine said, “Bill Peterson—he’s the cop who moved to Atlanta?”
“Yes, that’s right. How did you know that?”
“I have a friend on the force.”
“So, you’ve talked to the detectives who looked into the case?”
“No, I haven’t. But I know some of them by name. Bill Peterson, Larry DeSouza.”
Phillip Cook’s good eye began to shift a little. It scanned the room while the other eye just stared straight ahead.
Now this guy’s like a lizard, Tremaine thought. A well-dressed lizard who can move just one eye at a time. Thinking, I gotta get me one of those glass eyes. Tremaine pictured a lizard sitting on a rock in the desert wearing a crested blazer and an ascot. Concentrate, Tremaine, con-centrate.
Phillip said, “Do you plan on talking to the detectives who investigated the murder?”
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Tremaine answered immediately, “No. Why would I?
They filed what they found. Talking to them isn’t going to make any new evidence appear.” But, he thought, I might, probably will.
Phillip nodded, appearing to be a little relieved. He took a dainty sip of his sparkling water and said, “What do you do in a case like this where there isn’t much to go on?”
“Start talking to people. Maybe I can find something that the cops couldn’t.”
“I doubt it,” Phillip said, that upper-crust cynicism rearing its ugly head again.
“I don’t,” Tremaine said.
Then Tremaine said, “Are you upset that I’m investigating this case because the wounds have almost healed or because of something else?”
Phillip shifted in his seat, narrowed his eyes at Tremaine, and said, “During the investigation, the police and everybody else started asking people if Roger was having affairs because he kept these crazy hours and he would come home late. In the end, all it did was insult us. It made people, like the people in this very club, think things that weren’t true. And we don’t like that kind of attention. The detectives, they don’t mind asking everyone, implying to everyone, that Roger ran around because they don’t have to live with it. My mother does. Even though it’s not true, they all stirred the pot so much that people started to believe it. It’s insulting and beneath us to have to defend our-selves against a rumor. Now, obviously, I and my mother want the murder solved, but not if it’s going to create a series of entirely ridiculous assumptions about the behavior of my mother’s former husband. Maybe his murder 116
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was an accident. Somebody gave him an accidental blow to the head, then to cover up the mess, they suffocated him.
I don’t know. But I do know that he wasn’t murdered on account of his doing wrong by my mother.”
Tremaine nodded, paused, and said, “Thank you for answering my questions, Phillip. You’ve been very helpful.”
Phillip Cook, appreciating Tremaine’s manners and calming down a bit, said, “Would you like a club sandwich before you go?”
“Yes, actually.”
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C H A P T E R 1 7
Tremaine pulled into the trailer park at dusk. He went inside, grabbed a beer, and then snuck over to the kitchen table, where he kept Lyle’s leash. Then he quickly opened the drawer and pulled out the leash, making all sorts of noise, the leash jangling and jingling. Tremaine thinking, this familiar noise will certainly make Lyle sing with joy!
He didn’t move. Tremaine shook the leash, rattled it around, banged it on the kitchen counter. Lyle didn’t budge.
Tremaine walked over to Lyle, leash in hand, and said,
“Who’s a good boy? Who’s the best little guy around?”
Lyle barely moved, except for the steady rise and fall of his stomach, as asleep as a creature can be.
“Who’s my beautiful little bulldog? Who’s the cutest of the cutest? Who’s the king of the octogenarians?”
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Lyle farted. Tremaine picked him up, rousing him out of his slumber. Lyle looked at him and growled a bit. Nobody likes to be woken up in the middle of a deep sleep. Tremaine took a healthy gulp of his Bud, put it down, then hooked up Lyle’s leash and headed out the trailer door.
Tremaine and Lyle strolled around, enjoying the Malibu evening. Tremaine mulling everything over, maybe even thinking about Nina Aldeen a little here and there.
Marvin Kearns exploded out of his trailer door and said,
“Mr. Tremaine, I may have made an error in judgment.”
Tremaine turned around to see Marvin standing there in a black karate uniform, complete with the black shoes with the thin, red rubber soles.
Tremaine was going to ask about the outfit—must have an audition for a ninja movie—but instead, he said,
“Marvin, what’s up?”
“Hello, Lyle,” Marvin said. “Always, ALWAYS acknowledge the presence of a canine. Especially one with the staying power of one Lyle Tremaine.”
“You hear that, Lyle? He’s paying you a compliment.”
Marvin said, “There was a man here earlier today driving a silver Ford Crown Victoria. Probably a ’99, maybe a 2000. Do you know anyone who fits that description?”
“Not offhand. Did you talk to him?” Tremaine said, interested.
“I did. I was finishing a run, and I saw him driving around the lot. He looked lost. I noticed he was looking at your trailer, so I approached him to see if I could be of assistance. He told me he was your old friend from childhood, and then asked me if your trailer was indeed your trailer. I said it was. Then he said he was going to surprise 119
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you, so don’t say anything. I agreed. This was before I suspected he may have been TOTALLY FULL OF SHIT!
I apologize for providing him with that information. I should have known better, considering your occupation.”
“Marvin, it’s okay. You didn’t tell them anything he hadn’t already found out in the phone book.”
“Let me tell you what else transpired, how I came to determine he was not telling me the truth.”
“We’ll go to my place,” Tremaine said.
They quickly walked Lyle, then went into Tremaine’s trailer, sat down, and popped fresh beers.
Tremaine looked across his table at the human bowling ball dressed as a ninja.
Marvin said, taking a sip, “A truly large libation.”
“Indeed.”
“So, I happened to use your former nickname, Insane, in conversation with the gentleman in the Crown Vic,”
Marvin said. “And he had no idea WHAT THE FUCK
I WAS TALKING ABOUT! And he had already told me he grew up with you. He would know your nickname, regardless of whether or not you like the name.”
“That was smart, Marvin.”
“Is this part of the case you got from the beautiful woman, the one I’m happy to help with should you need assistance?”
“Yeah. This is related. A guy I talked to the other day is now checking
me
out. That’s my guess.”
Tremaine thinking, Tyler Wilkes wants to know what I know or what I want to know.
“Well,” Marvin said, “once I said ‘Insane,’ and he clearly indicated to me he didn’t know what I meant, the conver-120
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sation became very forced. He rolled up his window and drove off. I will say, to his credit, he was driving a superior machine.”
“Can you tell me what he looked liked?”
“Can I tell you what he looked liked!” Marvin said.
“Indeed. Thin, probably five-nine, bad skin, and dark hair.
Young-looking.”
Tremaine nodded and said, “Listen, Marvin, don’t sweat talking to that guy. This could end up helping me.”
Tremaine held up his beer and he and Marvin toasted.
“Largeness,” Marvin said.
Tremaine cooked himself a half-chicken with some aspara-gus and thought about what he had so far. He was going to play with Tyler Wilkes’s head a little, that was for sure, but he had to set it up a little more. Get Tyler a little more unsure of what’s going on, then surprise him. And the guy Tyler no doubt sent to look into him? Probably a young private eye in his silver Crown Vic trying to look and feel official. Tremaine thought, I’ll use him to help get Tyler worried, or more worried. And then maybe Tyler will tell me something about Roger Gale.
But right now, what was on Tremaine’s mind was Phillip Cook and Evelyn Gale. Tremaine understood that the murder was painful for them, something that they wanted behind them. Their emotions were not unique in that regard.
But, Tremaine thought, why were they so insistent that Roger Gale didn’t have an affair? Why do they care that much? And why did Phillip Cook make such a point of 121
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saying that Bill Peterson had determined there wasn’t an affair? That felt forced, like a kid on a playground giving his alibi. Like, I didn’t steal Jimmy’s lunch money, just ask Billy. Billy being the best friend of the accused.
But, more so, it seemed like a slip of the tongue. Tremaine remembered how just after Phillip said it he kind of paused and looked at him. Maybe Phillip said it before he got a chance to think about whether he wanted to make such a presentation out of who could back him up.
Maybe Bill Peterson knew something.
Phillip sure as hell didn’t want Tremaine talking to Peterson; he made that obvious. He came right out and asked him whether he was going to talk to the police. Tremaine could see, even in his goddamn glass eye, some worry.
So, next step, talk to Bill Peterson. Tremaine got online, looked for a plane ticket, a plane ticket to Atlanta. Got one, and a hotel, and a rental car, all with points off his plastic.
No money spent. He’d tell Nina later she didn’t need to know that a hunch was sending him thousands of miles away.