Sympathy for the Devil (6 page)

I
felt that my luck was changing. I found a great parking spot right in front of Chez Nous and did a masterful job of parallel parking my old wagon, backing in only once and then straightening up and throwing it into park.

I drive a 1991 Jeep Grand Wagoneer, a big black four-wheel-drive buggy, with a ton of room in back to hold oversize platters and insulated chests and cases of booze. It is huge and fearless. Without even blinking, I could probably drive it straight up the side of Mount Wilson.

The Wagoneer's got a lot of chrome and those kitsch woody panels. I think it's funny, an irreverent antichic choice in a town that worships gods named Lexus and Saab. At least that's what I tell everyone who wonders how I could drive a car that gets about six miles to the gallon.

As the hostess looked up at me from her podium, I spotted Lizzie, already seated at a far table. Chez Nous is a trendy neighborhood bakery that was close enough to the studios of Burbank to do a good morning business in croissants and decaf cappuccinos. On the weekends, it was filled with the junior studio executives who lived close by.

The main room is casual, with small tables clustered along a wall of multipaned windows. The effect would seem a little more French countryside if the windows did not look out onto busy Riverside Boulevard and the 31 Flavors across the street.

As I approached Lizzie's table, I was startled to see she
was not alone. Sitting with his back to me was Lieutenant Honnett, a man with whom I did not get off to a flamingly good start the night before.

“Sorry I'm late, Lizzie.”

“I had company. You remember Lieutenant Honnett?”

“Sure,” I said, not quite sure at all what he was doing here at our girls' lunch out.

“Sit down, Miss Bean,” Honnett suggested. He had a homely handsome face, strong-featured, and thick dark hair starting to show gray, which he wore kind of long. His tanned, weathered skin was testimony to a lifetime's blatant disregard for sunscreen.

I sat down. Lizzie smiled. No one spoke.

Finally, I said, “So…”

I don't do well with silence. I mean to work on that. Unlike the Navahos that Tony Hillerman writes about, who can spend happy hours sitting in silence, I can make it maybe twenty seconds, tops.

“So what's up?” I tried again.

Honnett set down his cup of coffee and smiled.

“I told Liz here that I'd be visiting you this afternoon and she invited me to join you gals for lunch. Hope you don't mind.” He spoke with a solid self-assurance. “I have a few questions I wanted to put to you, Miss Bean.”

“Shoot,” I said. Perhaps that wasn't the best choice of words when speaking to a member of the LAPD.

I wished I'd taken the time to put on mascara. When I'm in a hurry, I have a tendency to just sort of let the whole makeup thing go. And I was still embarrassed remembering last night. I had been defensive and flustered and dressed like a fairy.

I looked up at him, waiting. Honnett had honest, penetrating blue eyes. But he didn't look at me straight on. Maybe he was afraid he'd scare any skittish lambs by giving them a direct gaze. Hey, Chuck, I can take it.

“Let me tell you what we know,” Honnett started, still not looking at me directly.

He was squinting at a small spiral notebook. “We know
that at around midnight last night Bruno Darren Huntley, Sr., died, witnessed by a couple of hundred friends. The M.E.'s office thinks he was poisoned with strychnine. We have to wait for the toxicology results. Meanwhile, the contents of his stomach revealed that he dined sometime near 10:00 p.m. on shrimp, crab, mushrooms, cheese, and rice. Alcohol was also found in his blood. Sound familiar?”

“Well, actually Lieutenant, I don't often hear my ingredients list read back to me from an autopsy report.”

Chuckling, Honnett looked up at me and flashed me his big blues. The restaurant was uncomfortably warm. I must tell the waitress.

“You happen to observe Mr. Huntley eating last night?” he asked.

“I helped get him his dinner.”

Lizzie stopped buttering her croissant and looked up.

Honnett flipped his little notebook back a page. “This was a buffet dinner where folks helped themselves. That right?”

“Yes. But by the time Bruno and Lily got to the buffet everything had gone cold. I wanted them to have something better than that, so I went to the kitchen and got them something fresh.”

“You got it yourself? From what? The pots on the stove? That sort of thing?” Honnett looked at me with those zingers. I think I was developing a crush on a cop.

“No. Wesley was in charge of the kitchen last night—Wesley Westcott—so he put the food on their plates, if that's what you're asking. But I was standing right there, watching him. It came from the same pans as all the other food for the party.”

Were we really talking about the wonderful dinner that Wes and I had worked so hard to prepare as if it was now suspect? It was just impossible to believe. After all, no one but Bruno was sick.

“And did you or Mr. Westcott bring the plates of food out to Bruno Huntley?” Honnett asked.

“I did.”

Silence, again, as Honnett wrote in his notebook.

Our waitress brought me a menu, but I was feeling flushed. I asked for iced tea.

Honnett said, “Just a few more questions. Did you know of any reason for Westcott to want to harm Bruno Huntley?”

“Wesley?” I think my voice squeaked. I looked over to Lizzie for some sort of explanation. “What's Wes got to do with this?”

“I understand that he works with you in your cooking job…” Honnett started.

“He's my partner and my friend.” I thought the lieutenant's tone had edged right past self-assurance and on into arrogance.

“Yes, of course, he's your friend. But witnesses told us Westcott was trying to get Bruno alone all night. Westcott was described as very angry. Perhaps you noticed this yourself?”

I felt a pinch of tension at the base of my neck.

“We also learned that Bruno Huntley had fouled up a business deal that left your friend Wesley in financial trouble. So isn't it true he had a pretty good reason to want to kill Huntley?”

Maybe Wes did have his own grievances with Bruno. Who didn't? But could the police honestly believe that Wes was involved in Bruno's death? I was speechless with anger. I hate being speechless. It doesn't happen often.

“Mr. Honnett,” I said, purposely ignoring his title, “you're a moron. There were six hundred people at last night's party who had better reasons to kill Bruno Huntley than Wes did. All of them!” I noticed that the couple at the next table had looked up.

“You may be right about that, Miss Bean.” Honnett was calm as he signaled to the waitress for a refill.

I could be as calm as he could. We sat together in silence, everybody sipping something. I thought about the time when Bruno was proposing to Lily, six years ago or more. Back then, Bruno was looking to buy Lily something “sig
nificant” as a wedding gift and he cast his eye on a parcel of property located just above his own. It was virgin canyon, but there were rumors that a land developer was interested in turning it into eighty gated mini-estates.

As it happened, Wes knew the guy who inherited the land and was looking to unload it. He arranged a private sale to Bruno for five million, and Bruno promised Wes a finder's fee of one percent. Let's just say that it was one of the many times Bruno matched to a millisecond the moment he forgot his part of the deal with the moment he got what he was after.

Wesley tried to get Bruno to pay him the fifty thousand dollars he was due. Months went by. Then years. But at the point when Wes finally got an attorney and had papers served, Bruno suddenly calls our office about his huge Halloween dinner with a budget of a $250,000!

We knew all the top caterers were making bids. Ours if we wanted it. A chance to become stars overnight. The message was clear. Take Bruno Huntley's friendship and patronage and forget about that nasty little real estate business.

It was one of those decisions where you couldn't figure out what to do the harder you tried. I said let's pass. Wes said, no, let's do the party. He could always proceed with his lawsuit after the party, if he didn't get his money.

But Wes would never kill Bruno. Never.

And then I realized that Lizzie must have told Honnett about that land dispute. Lizzie knew the story. Lizzie. A real pal.

Honnett seemed to be keeping an eye on me as I thought things over. He shot me a cool glance with his razor blues. I'd had it with the silence. It was probably some cheap cop trick to get a chatty “gal” like me talking. I also gave up on calm.

“Are you arresting Wesley?” I asked in alarm, staring straight into his goddamn blue eyes.

“Arresting? Why, heavens, it's too early…” Honnett started.

“No, Maddy. Nothing happens that fast.” Lizzie looked upset.

What was she saying? It might not happen “that fast” but it could still happen?

Shit! I had to find Wesley.

I
was standing in the street next to my car, pulling the keys out of my shoulder bag. I felt a hand on my arm. My heart was still pumping adrenaline, and I swung around fast enough to throw Lizzie off balance.

“What?” I asked fiercely. Everything was said. I looked at Lizzie a moment to make the point and turned back to my car.

“I have to talk to you. Please, Madeline.”

I opened my door and climbed up to the driver's seat.

Lizzie stood outside my car, talking about giving her a chance to explain. Please, she said, it wasn't what I thought.

What I thought was: I was becoming way too involved in the murder of a man I really didn't know, or even like, that well. I had that “uh-oh” feeling of standing in quicksand. And I didn't think Lizzie's climb to be top cop was compatible with my health.

Lizzie gave up. She ducked around behind the Grand Wagoneer and then, before I knew what was happening, she opened the passenger-side door and jumped in.

“I'm not getting out til you hear what's going on. You don't have to say a thing. I know you must be steaming. You figure I told a few tales out of school. Jeez, Madeline, what could I do? I didn't tell Honnett anything that he couldn't have found out with a few phone calls on his own. And he knows we're friends. How would it look if I hadn't
told him that stuff about Wesley and Bruno's property? Like I was covering up for you guys. And then he'd wonder why. It would make Wesley appear more guilty, see?”

“What do you want from me, Lizzie? I gotta go.”

“Not yet. There's a lot more. You should know that no one is figuring you to be involved. Anyway, the theory is that Wesley got into a snit over the money deal that went south. Unfortunately, he had motive and he had opportunity.”

“Liz, come on!” I was furious.

“Hey, I don't think Wesley is the kind of guy who would kill. But the way things look, Bruno picked a damn inconvenient time to die and Wes has got some explaining to do. That's what happens in this big bad world when a creep you hate goes and gets himself murdered right under your nose, eating your own goddamned food!”

“You're turning out to be a big help.”

“Maddy, I want to help. Okay?”

“Well, tell me about things that don't point to Wes,” I suggested. We'd see where the line in our friendship was really drawn. I knew I was pushing her to betray some cop secrets.

“You gotta promise to keep this stuff confidential. See, we've got witnesses who say Bru, Jr. was asking Daddy for money at the party. A hundred thou. Know what Big Daddy told him?”

“Bruno turned him down?”

“Bingo.”

“Okay. So now you're starting to make sense. Bru Huntley has always had money problems.”

“Yeah, I guess since the Menendez murders, it's the fashionable way to inherit.” She grinned at me, daring me not to smile, too, at her tasteless joke.

“So why hassle Wes? There's got to be more against Wesley than you're letting on.”

The line that appeared between Lizzie's brows told me I was right. I was getting that sinking feeling again.

“Wes had been complaining to everyone that Bruno
cheated him out of a fortune. How does that look?”

“It was only fifty thousand.”

“Pocket change, right? Sugar, do you know what most of us cops make a year? And, then Wesley knows about poisons…”

“That's ridiculous!” I said. “Where'd you hear that?”

“Wesley majored in pharmacology up at Berkeley. When he was doing grad work he taught a course on poisons. You knew that.”

I'd known about the chemistry degree. But after Bruno's death last night, Wes didn't say a word about his knowledge of poisons. Why had he kept that quiet?

“Here's another part of the puzzle. Witnesses heard Bruno say something to Lily as he was falling. Something about ‘Mal.'”

“Mal?” I looked at her sharply.

Lizzie nodded.

“Bruno could have an enemy named Mal.”

“Or he could have been talking about Wesley's dog, Mal.”

“Why would he be talking about a dog, Liz?” Then I remembered Wes and that silly tattoo. Was Bruno trying to identify his murderer by drawing attention to the name inked on Wesley's arm?

“What did Bruno say? Exactly.” I tried to hide my distress.

“Mal or Moll something-or-other. They said it sounded like ‘Mal Fee-so.' But no one heard him that clearly.”

“It just doesn't make sense.”

“He was dying, honey. What makes sense? Anyway, I didn't tell Honnett about Wesley's dog.”

“Thanks.”

“He'll find out about it, sugar. Wes better have a lucky star. This thing is thick.”

“Yeah.” I was deep in thought. A small Toyota wanted my parking space and was hanging back, waiting me out.

“I better go,” Lizzie said, and she opened the door. “Just remember, I'm really not out to hurt you, Madeline.
I promise.” And she hopped out of the Grand Wagoneer.

I worked at pushing away the overwhelming fear that wanted to grab me and hold me down and smother me. I punched the buttons that opened all the windows and the sunroof. Warm air poured in.

Sure, this looked bad. But it was just some nasty problem and I fix problems for a living. I'd get to work. I'd talk to Wesley. This whole mess would be over in fifteen minutes.

I yanked the car away from the curb. In my rearview mirror I could see the patient Toyota pulling into the spot.