“It looks like a second grader wrote it, doesn’t it? That’s him.”
“Alex, I’m sorry—”
“What are you sorry about?”
“I’ve been concentrating so hard on the murders . . . and on us. . . . I should have found him by now.”
“Don’t apologize to me, Jakes,” I said. “So far you’ve saved my life once. You get a pass—”
“No,” he said, “I don’t want a pass. I’m going to find this bastard and make him pay for what he’s done to you.”
“I don’t want you to shoot him,” I said.
“I won’t shoot him,” he said, starting the car. “I’ll lock his ass up.”
“Good.”
We had driven past the guardhouse and pulled out onto the street when I said, “I want to shoot him myself.”
Chapter 54
When we got to my house, Jakes came inside with me after waving to his man across the street. Sarah and my mom were there. I gave my little girl a long hug, one she wiggled out of after a while.
“I have to go play in my room, Mommy,” she said, and hustled away.
“Detective,” my mom said. “Can I offer you something? Coffee? Something stronger?”
“Coffee would be nice, Mrs. Peterson.”
Mom started for the kitchen and then stopped and turned back. “I’m making dinner,” she said to Jakes. “Would you like to join us? There’s plenty.”
He looked at me, but I left it entirely up to him.
“Unless you have a previous engagement?” My mother raised her eyebrows. “Someone waiting for you at home?”
“No,” he said, “nobody waiting for me. Dinner sounds great.”
“Good.”
While Mom went back into the kitchen, Jakes looked at me and said, “I’m going to go across the street and tell Kavanaugh to take a break.”
“Okay. I’m going to take a shower and put something else on.”
Dinner went off without a hitch. The conversation was lively, especially between Jakes and my mother. Everything was fine until Sarah made a perfectly innocent faux pas.
“Mommy, where’s Paulie?” she asked.
All the adults at the table looked at one another, and then two of them looked at me. “This one’s yours,” their faces said.
“I’m not really sure, honey,” I said, hedging.
She asked the next question the way most children do, without looking up at anyone in particular. Her eyes were intent on her French fries as she asked, “When is he coming back? I miss him.”
I was tongue-tied. Thankfully Jakes stepped in just in time.
“I bet you do, Sarah. Your mom said he’s a good friend of yours.”
“Yeah, he’s really nice. He reads to me a lot. He has lots of funny voices and stuff.”
I couldn’t help myself; I started to tear up.
“Well, I might not read quite as well as Paulie, but maybe sometime, I could try to read a book to you. You know, if you want.” Jakes was speaking softly to her, looking her in the eyes.
“Yeah, that would be okay. Maybe even later, after dinner! I got a new book when I was at the r’union!”
Sure enough, after dinner Jakes read to Sarah, funny voices and all. He did remarkably well for someone who didn’t have kids of his own.
“Time for bed,” my mother said finally. “Say good night to Jakes, Sarah.”
“Night, Jakes,” Sarah said, waving.
“Good night, Sarah.”
As she and my mom started from the living room, Sarah turned her head and said to me, “I like Jakes, Mommy, but he has a funny name.”
Jakes just looked at me. “Yes, I do. Don’t I, Sarah? Good night. it was fun reading to you,” Jakes said.
I said quickly, “I’ll be in to tuck you in, sweetie.”
“Night, Mommy.”
“Thank you. You handled that very well,” I said to Jakes when we were alone.
“It wasn’t hard. I like her. She’s a cutie. And she’s smart. Just like her mom.” He smiled and I smiled back at him.
We were sitting on the sofa together, one at each end, with a cushion between us.
“What’s happening with the new case?” I asked.
“Alex, do you want to talk about Randy—”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “I’ve already given that son of a bitch too much of my time. He sent me a note, and I panicked for a moment. My producer is trying to find out how he got onto the lot, and you’re going to find him, so no, I don’t want to talk about him anymore. Not now.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, Alex. It’s your call.”
“Tell me what you worked on today.”
“I figured something out.”
“What?”
“We don’t have to solve all the murders,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I think it’s a mistake to think that way when they’re multiple, or even the work of a serial killer. If we solve one, we solve them all.”
“I get it,” I said. “Since you think the same person did them all, you only have to solve one to find the . . . murderer.”
“Right.”
“But . . . which one do you work on?”
“The one that wasn’t planned,” he said. “The one that looks as if it was a spur-of-the-moment thing and not premeditated.”
I stared at him, and then it came to me. “Henri’s murder.”
“Right.”
“What about your partner?” I asked. “And your boss? What do they think of this theory?”
“Len is going to keep working on the murders of the actors,” Jakes said. “I’m going to work on the murder of the hairdresser.”
“And what do I do?”
“Well,” he said, “for one thing we have to keep you out of Captain Carpenter’s sight.”
“And then?”
“You’re going to help me question the people who knew Henri.”
“His neighbors?” I asked.
“Yes, them, too,” he said, “but I was thinking about his coworkers. Do you know how long he was working on your show?”
“No,” I said, “but he was there when I got there.”
“So you need to take me to the studio with you.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” I said. “We’ll have to wait until Monday.”
“Okay, then,” he said, “we’ll go to his home tomorrow, ask around.”
“Wasn’t that done already?” I asked. “I mean, you people do a . . . canvass?”
“Yes, some of our patrol guys and some other detective did it,” he said. “But I want to do it myself. I need to know all about Henri Marceau.”
“But—” I stopped short.
“Come on, Alex,” Jakes said. “If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
“What if Henri was just killed by a jealous boyfriend, or something like that?”
“That’s too much of a coincidence for me,” he said. “Two people connected with your show, killed so close together? And don’t forget, Henri said he had something to tell you.”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe he had something to show you, too,” Jakes said, “and maybe it’s still in his apartment.”
“So we’ll go and check it out tomorrow?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll pick you up early—that is, unless you had other plans? Something with Sarah?”
“No definite plans,” I said. “I just usually spend the day with her. But I’ll make it up to her later.”
“I’d better go, then,” he said. “You have to tuck her in.”
I walked him to the door, where he held me and kissed me good night—only it was more than a good-night kiss.
“I’ll see you in the morning, about nine,” he said. “Good night.”
“Night, Jakes.”
Chapter 55
Jakes picked me up at nine o’clock the next morning. As I got in the car he said, “Good morning,” and handed me a container of coffee.
“I thought we’d go over to Henri’s place first and then stop for breakfast after we’ve looked around a bit.”
“You’re the boss,” I said. “What I mean is, you’re the detective.”
He laughed. “I know what you meant, Alex.”
We drove mostly in silence. I don’t think either of us was fully awake yet.
He parked in front of Henri’s building. We left our coffee in the car and walked up the front steps. The door was locked. I looked to him for guidance.
“Just push all the bells,” he said. “Somebody will buzz us in.”
“It’s that easy?”
“Watch.”
Between us we pressed all the buzzers, and immediately somebody buzzed the door open.
When we got to Henri’s door, though, it was a different story. It was locked, and there was yellow evidence tape still across the doorway.
“Now what?” I asked.
“You forget,” he said. “I’m the detective in charge.”
He took a ring of keys from his pocket, found the right one and put it in the lock. One turn and the door was open.
“Follow me,” he said. He ducked under the tape that crisscrossed the doorway, and I was careful to do exactly the same thing.
Inside I said, “Hey, detective in change, why are we slipping under the tape?”
“I like to be able to tell if anybody was here,” he said. “Anybody inexperienced with the tape would have disturbed it. When we leave, I still want to leave it intact, just in case.”
“So you’re sure no one’s been in here since you and your men left?”
“Reasonably sure, yeah. Place looks like the same mess.”
“Okay,” I said, “so tell me what we’re looking for.”
“Same as before,” he said, reminding me of our last case together, when we’d broken into someone’s home—only I’d gotten hit on the head that time. “You’ll know when you see it.”
“Okay. I’ll start in the kitchen.”
“Wait,” he said, digging into his jacket pocket. “The lab already went through this place for prints, but wear these anyway.” He held out a pair of latex gloves.
“Okay,” I said. Pulling them on, I moved into the kitchen.
“I’ll start in his bedroom,” Jakes said.
I went through the cabinets and drawers and didn’t find anything out of place in the kitchen. The counters were covered with the usual—salt and pepper shakers—and canisters were full of the usual—sugar, flour, tea bags.
There were no extravagances in Henri’s kitchen. No fancy coffeemakers, no carving machines, blenders, et cetera. The refrigerator was more empty than full—some bad milk, three bottles of Corona, two half-filled bottles of wine (one red, one Chablis), two bottles of Snapple, a couple of plastic containers with leftovers and some Chinese food containers. The lettuce crisper had a half a head of lettuce going brown. What the fridge really needed was a box of baking soda in the back.
In the freezer were a few frozen dinners, an ice cube maker, one of those cold compresses, two pints of ice cream—Rocky Road and Cherry Garcia—both half empty. Nothing hidden in the back. I closed it. It had a water-and-ice dispenser right in the door. You can switch the setting from water to ice and back. At the moment it was set on ice.
I turned around, leaned against the refrigerator and surveyed the room. Had I missed anything? I’d be embarrassed if Jakes walked in and saw something I hadn’t.
There was a Georgia O’Keeffe calendar hanging on the wall. Some dates were circled, but there didn’t seem to be a pattern. There were too many to be the days of any of the murders. I checked the previous month. More circles, sometimes three and four days in a row, then nothing, and then it would start again. It reminded me of the way some people tracked a diet—circles for the days they stayed on the diet, and no circles when they cheated.
I looked around for an address book. Some people kept them in the bedroom, others in the kitchen. I found recipe books and diet paperbacks. No address book or appointment book.
When I was finally ready to give up on the kitchen, I walked into the living room and found Jakes sitting on the sofa. On the coffee table in front of him was a combination leather address and appointment book. He was leafing through it, but there was a defeated slump to his shoulders.
“You found his address book,” I said. “That’s good. No, wait. Didn’t you say last time we were here that you found an address book?”
“Yeah, we did,” he said. “This is another one. I found it in the closet. This one’s more involved. It’s like a daily planner, with names, addresses, calendar. . . .” He looked up at me. “I was just thinking. . . .”
“Boy, no good news ever came after those words,” I said. “About what?”
“My theory about solving one murder,” he said. “I may have chosen the wrong one.”
“Why?”
“If the same person who killed Masters and the other actors also killed Henri, it was only to shut him up. It was an afterthought. We’re not going to find anything here to tell us who it was. If the murder was personal, that’s where we’d be likely to find something helpful in an address book or stuffed under a mattress.”
“You looked under the mattress?”
He nodded. “And the bed.”
“Bathroom?”
“Yeah, everywhere. You know what? The way this place was tossed, it’s clear that whoever did it didn’t know what they were looking for.”
“I see what you mean. They looked in drawers, canisters, under seat cushions.”
“They were just trying to get lucky—but let’s talk about this book.”
I sat down in an armchair. “Henri had something he wanted to tell me or maybe show me. Maybe it was this book. Maybe that’s why it was hidden in the closet. Maybe it’s what the killer was looking for, too.”
I tried to think back. “I’m not sure,” I said, “but my point is, he wanted me to come here. There had to be a reason for that.”
“Okay,” he said, “I’m finished with the bedroom. I’m going to check in here. Why don’t you sit tight, go through this book and tell me if you recognize a name?”
“Okay.”
I started at the As and began flipping pages. The book was setup for addresses, phone numbers—home and cell—Web sites, e-mail addresses, the works.
“You recognize any names yet?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “A couple of producers from my show and other shows, but he worked there, so that’s not unusual.”
“Anybody else? Actors?” He put his hand down an empty vase.