From Barcelona, with Love (13 page)

That door satisfied all Mac's remembered images of the great “private eyes” from the past: Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Perry Mason and Ellery Queen. And after all, a simple office was all that was needed because a detective's work took him out and about in the world of thieves and thugs, sleazy streets and smart restaurants and worldly women, just the way it had in those old movies.

In fact the office was a bit of a joke. A nice woman came in once a month to file papers, and dust a bit, but his real office was at the studio and functioned perfectly, with a real staff; as well as his assistant, Roddy, bleached-blond, and gay, gorgeous, and sometimes outrageous, and totally devoted to Mac. Roddy had been with him five years, since the beginning of TV's
Malibu Mysteries,
and knew everything there was to know about him.

Nowadays though, information came easy, with Google and
Huffington Post
and
The Daily Beast.
It was, Sunny told Mac, scarcely worth his effort to go hunting for it anymore when they offered it right there in the privacy of your own home.

Nothing about Bibi Fortunata was private, though. Her life was up there for anyone to see, including a couple of topless photos snapped by some too-enterprising paparazzo who'd climbed a tree next door and aimed his zoom lens directly into her bedroom window. Bibi had won that court battle; such invasion of privacy could not be tolerated and the tabloid concerned had paid a hefty price in compensation and damages, but the photos were still out there. Nothing could ever be gotten rid of in this electronic age.

Mac thought about that as he sat in front of his computer. His own life, anyone's life, had become an open book. Privacy had become a privilege instead of a right. So why, then, had Bibi not known that her so-called best friend was a call girl, albeit the “expensive high-class” sort.

“You know the ones,” Mac said to Sunny, who was hanging over his shoulder reading all about it. “The escorts. You see them in the big hotels all the time.”

“You mean the good-looking women always dressed better than I am, in a fancy cocktail outfit at three in the afternoon. And always, I'll bet, with a pair of clean panties in their Vuitton bags.”

Mac laughed. He knew some of those women; they weren't
all
bad, they simply wanted to make money and were prepared to put up with anything to get it. Well,
almost
anything. The top girls drew up their rules and the men abided by them, or else paid extra. Which meant really big money. A good dominatrix did not come cheap in this town.

“Everybody has to make a living,” he said, dodging Sunny's whack.

“
I
make a living,” she reminded him, as he turned to kiss her.

“That you do, my love, and I know you'll be able to keep me in my old age, in the style to which I've become accustomed.”

“Then you'd better behave yourself and forget Bibi and her best friend and take me to Mauritius. I have the hotel all picked out. Ten whole days of peace and love and good food on an island in the Indian Ocean, that's about as far away as we can get from all this ‘trouble.'”

Mac looked at her. “I believe Paloma's in trouble,” he said, suddenly serious.

“I know,” Sunny sighed. “I saw it in her eyes too.”

“Poor kid.”

“Poor little girl. In those old boots of her mom's. And the charm bracelet. It's all she's got left.” Sunny heaved another sigh. How could she compete with a nine-year-old with a broken heart?

Mac said, “All the reports tell the same story. Bibi's best friend and neighbor—her lover's ‘mistress'—was known as Carly Malone. Her hooker name was Brandi.”

“Why are they always called Brandi?” Sunny complained. “They have to use so much imagination on their job, you'd think they could come up with something better than a stripper name.”

“Guys like stripper names, in that context, I guess.” Mac was still scanning the screen. “And she was still a working girl, even when she was going out with Bibi's lover.”

“
Going out with!
Now there's a euphemism if I ever heard one.”

“The report is that the lover, who went by the name Waldorf Carlyle, real name Jimmy Skeener from Knoxville, Tennessee, never took Carly/Brandi out alone, not to dinner, not to parties, nowhere, unless Bibi went along, and then Carly/Brandi simply played the role of the best friend.”

“Playing footsie with Bibi's lover under the table in the restaurant,” Sunny guessed.

“Or worse,” Mac agreed. “She was that kind of woman. Anything goes, and she knew how to do it.”

“Excite a man, you mean?”

“The lure of the forbidden appears too regularly in my line of work. Wives are spurned for it. Murders are committed for it.” He shrugged. “And that's what so interesting about this case. Both the lover and his new mistress…”

“His ‘bit on the side,'” Sunny corrected him, thinking of the betrayed Bibi.

“
Both
the lover and his bit on the side were murdered.”

“The police couldn't prove
he
was. That Bentley could have just gone out of control.”

Mac gave her a skeptical glance. “Have you ever known a Bentley to go out of control?”

“Well…”

“Rarely, I'd say. I'd also say it was a wild coincidence if, in fact, that is what happened.”

“Then you don't believe it?”

“I do not.”

“And what about the bitch best friend?”

“The autopsy found cocaine and ‘prescription drugs' in her stomach and her bloodstream. Oxycontin, Percodan … like that.”

Sunny had heard too many similar descriptions of the tragic deaths of young celebrities. “What about in the wine though?”

“Only in her lipstick on the rim of the glass. Not in the actual glass itself.”

“So no one slipped a pill into her wine?”

“They were unable to prove that.”

“And unable to prove that the car going over Mulholland was not an accident.”

“Cars have gone over Mulholland before.”

“And what about that little satin pillow? Found next to her dead face, it says here.”

“That's the tabloids' sensationalist reporting. They would say that. Again that's something that was not proven. She was not suffocated.”

Mac clicked off the computer and turned to face her. “And that's why now I have to do what Raymond Chandler would have called some ‘leg work.'”

Sunny stretched out a long leg for him to inspect.

Mac said, “A beautiful leg, a very, very lovely leg, but not the sort I'm thinking about.” He ran his hand along her smooth thigh though and their eyes linked.

“I know.” She sighed again. “You're thinking about the Beverly Hills PD.”

“I am.”

“You're going there now?”

Mac knew it was late but there were no regular office hours in his job. “Right now, baby,” he said. “But first I'm calling Lev Orenstein.”

Sunny groaned. If Lev was involved she knew her holiday was a lost cause. Mauritius was out. Lev Orenstein was only the best bodyguard known to man. He was fortyish, bald as a coot, and always wore aviators and a Tommy Bahama flowered shirt with jeans and sneakers. He was six-one and in good enough shape to take on all comers. He was also a triple black belt in karate and had worked with the Israeli Special Forces. He organized corporate and round-the-clock surveillance with his team of personally trained men; he was one of the greatest shots ever and he knew the watering holes of the rich and famous like his own bald handsome face in the mirror. He also knew a lot of their secrets. Lev was a man known for his loyalty and for always being on the side of honor.

Paloma Ravel was going to find she had a new friend. Sunny was sure of that.

 

Chapter 18

Mac occasionally had
Sunny act as his impromptu assistant. She had been known not to throw a faint when a body fell out of a refrigerator in a villa in Tuscany, or scream when a withered hand emerged from the desert sand, though she could scream pretty good when she saw a spider or a snake. But that didn't happen often, and anyhow she knew it made Mac feel macho rescuing his “damsel in distress.”

Still, Mac wasn't sure he wanted her to be involved. A child might be in danger, a murderer was still on the loose, and a well-known woman had simply disappeared like smoke from his barbie, the one on which he was supposed to be cooking steelhead fresh-caught from the Rogue River in Oregon. For a moment he regretted the fishing trip, but then he remembered Paloma's anxious eyes.

Of course Bibi's story was an excellent scenario for his
Malibu Mysteries
show. The perfect format. The only difference was that this time he knew the people involved.

“Bibi's got to be somewhere,” he said to Sunny.

“Right.” She could see his mind was made up. “No Mauritius then.” It wasn't a question and he knew it needed no answer.

“No Rogue River,” he said.

“It's Bibi instead.”

“It's
Malibu Mysteries
…”

“With yours truly, Mac Reilly, coming at you, Thursday nights in person and in living color.”

Sunny knew how popular Mac's show was, and how good Mac was at what he did. Looking for a killer was not unusual; this was Mac's game, this was what he did, seeking out murderers and con artists, abusers and pedophiles. The only trouble was the show had brought him the kind of fame she knew Mac wasn't sure he wanted.

Sunny also knew how much the public loved him: they wrote in and told him so. They loved his rugged slightly unkempt look; that dark hair that even though he was in his early forties, was, thank God, still thick on his head, and through which he had a habit of running his hands when talking. They wrote in to say they loved the way his dark blue eyes crinkled when he smiled, though Mac insisted that it was caused by too many days on the beach and too many nights spent propping up bars in his misspent youth. They also said they loved the way his eyes narrowed when he looked directly into the camera, as though he was talking to each viewer. They wrote in and said how sexy they thought his stubble was, though usually it was because he'd been too busy even to think about shaving and anyway he hated TV makeup.

They e-mailed and twittered how much they loved his casual outdoors look, acquired from his beachside lifestyle, and his lean six-foot body, always clad on TV in jeans and a T-shirt, usually old and well-worn, because Mac wasn't into clothes, and anyhow he always wore the soft, easy, black leather jacket Sunny had bought him in an effort to smarten him up. The jacket had become part of his identity both on-screen and off. Like him it was a bit worn-in, a bit beat-up. Looking at him now, though, Sunny thought that was just her Mac.

He was already on the phone.

Lev answered on the first ring.

“How're y'doin', friend?” Mac asked, hearing Lev's throaty chuckle in response.

“You want something,” Lev said. “It's the only reason you ever call.”

“Where are you?” Mac knew Lev could be anywhere in the world. He protected movie stars and celebrities, heads of corporations, rich men, richer women, and even royalty, in their homes and on their travels. He saw trouble before it arrived and knew exactly how to stave it off. Mac always said Lev could stop a vampire in his tracks. Forget the stake in the heart, all he'd have to do was hold up a hand and the devil's representative would shrivel to a heap of ashes. He hoped Lev could do that now.

“I'm in New York,” Lev said. “Actually, right now I'm at Teterboro, New Jersey, about to board a chartered Gulfstream 5 heading for Shannon, Ireland.”

“I'll bet I know who with,” Mac said.

“I'll bet you do.”

Movie star Carole Brightwater was with a man who was not her husband, and with Lev's help, was traveling incognito. Or almost incognito, because before she'd hired Lev to take care of things, she had been photographed departing LAX with a well-known golf pro, en route to New Jersey. “A golf holiday,” she had told the press hastily, though when Carole Brightwater had ever played a game of golf was a mystery.

“Each to his own,” Mac said.

“Ain't that the truth,” Lev agreed, yawning.

“I hope you're not too tired to take on a bit of trouble,” Mac said.

“Shoot,” Lev said.

“You remember Bibi?”

Lev whistled. “Sure do.”

“I have to find her.”

“Why you? And why now?”

“Her kid needs her mom,” Mac said.

“Jesus,” Lev said. “You know this kid?”

Though Mac couldn't see him he knew he was running his hand over his bald head, a habit he had when thinking.

“I saved her from drowning in the Pacific just last week.”

“Jesus!” Lev said again, stunned. “The kid wasn't … I mean she didn't try to…”

“It was an accident. I saw it happen, that's how I managed to fish her out. Meanwhile, you recall the case?”

“A suspected double murder, and Bibi was the suspect who got off the hook.”

“Well, now all we have to do is find out who did it, and find Bibi.”

“That means you don't think
she
did it?”

“I surely hope, for her kid's sake, that she did not.”

“How old is she?”

“Around nine, I guess.”

Lev said, “What's your next move, besides corralling me, I mean.”

“Checking with the Beverly Hills PD, then a little visit to Palm Springs to meet the ex who's claiming custody of Bibi's little girl in an attempt to get his hands on the family fortune. The
de Ravel
family. You may have heard of them.”

Lev whistled again. “Old money and new money as well. It's not a bad wine, y'know.”

“It's not bad money either, and one-third of it rightly belongs to Bibi, if she's alive, and if not, then to little Paloma Ravel.”