The Midnight Show Murders (2) (15 page)

Chapter
TWENTY-EIGHT

The hour ended not with a bang or even a whimper. More like a thud.

Specifically, it ended with Gibby’s decision to replace the final joke he’d told at rehearsal with one about a guy whose golfing partner drops dead from a heart attack on the twelfth hole. You probably remember it. Back at the clubhouse, somebody asks him what happened after that. “Not much,” he replies. “From there on in, it was pretty much the same. Hit the ball, drag Charlie. Hit the ball, drag Charlie.” In itself, a good joke. Old but good. It would probably have prompted a wave of laughter at almost any time other than immediately following a discussion involving the death of the show’s previous host.

Oblivious to his lapse in sensitivity, Gibby was thrown off cue by the lack of audience response. Still, he gamely waved the show’s few lingering participants back onstage for a group goodbye. Then he performed what he hoped would become his under-the-credits signature, a standing backflip, ending with a semi-grotesque little-boy grin and a wiggling-fingers wave.

As soon as the camera’s red light went off, he rushed to the wings. I had him pegged as the kind of despotic twit who’d start blaming everyone in sight for the shambles he himself had made of his first show. Instead, he brushed past us and went directly to his dressing room without a word.

Marcus Oliphant turned to me with a surprised look on his pan-caked face. “Did you see that?”

I nodded.

What we had both seen was Gibby Lewis, not only looking like an unhappy baby but crying like one.

Twenty minutes later, he knocked once on my dressing room door, opened it, and came in. I was on the phone, talking with Detective Brueghel. I’d called to tell him about hearing a whirring sound just before the explosion, and he’d insisted we get together immediately. Since I had no more information, I was about to ask him why a face-to-face would be necessary. But Gibby picked that moment to barge in.

His eyes were red, his cherubic face blotchy. He was still wearing his on-camera suit, but he’d removed the tie and his shirt collar was unbuttoned. He flopped onto the only other chair in the small room and glared at me, nodding his head, tapping his foot, and showing just about every known sign of impatience.

I asked the detective where he wanted to meet, told him I’d get there as soon as I could, and clicked off the phone.

Gibby immediately lapsed into “Give it to me straight. Am I fucked?”

I stared at him, not quite sure what he was asking or how I was supposed to answer. I decided to wait him out.

“I know the show was a monu-fucking-mental disaster,” he said. “I mean, after tonight, forget
Cop Rock
. Forget the Iraq War even. Are they gonna can my ass, Billy?”

“What have you heard?” I asked.

“Max says it’s not his call, that the decision will come from the East Coast. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not New York’s rep out here? They’ve already got someone they rely on, a vice president with a nice, big office in the main building. Carmen Sandoval. You may have noticed how just the sound of her name causes Max to deflate.”

“Aw, shit. Carmen is not a fan,” he said gloomily. “Max had to do handsprings to get her to give me a shot. I really fucked the duck tonight. I just didn’t … I couldn’t get a fix on the studio audience. I couldn’t get into the zone.

“No! You know what it was? I lost faith. That’s it. I lost faith in the material and was trying to edit on the fly. That takes real cool and real smarts, and, let’s face it, I’m not a guy gets too intellectual, you know?”

Why couldn’t he have lived up to my expectations and been a blame-everybody-else weasel? Then I could have just given him the usual three-word suggestion of what he could do to himself and walked away. Instead, he was wallowing in self-pity and self-recrimination, which, while not exactly my favorite traits in an adult, tapped into one of my less protected pockets of sympathy.

“Gibby, at our lunch you mentioned Conan O’Brien. Like you, a comedy writer moving up to show host.”

“So?”

“Remember what his first shows were like?”

He brightened a little. “Yeah. You’re right. They were awful. Even as bad as ours, maybe.”

“And he kept improving.”

“Yeah. He improved so much, he wound up getting booted off
The Tonight Show.
”

“But now he’s thirty million dollars richer and he’s got a show on TBS,” I said. “People love CoCo.”

“You’re right, Billy,” he said. He lowered his head in a gesture of faux humility. “Do you think you could mention the bit about me being the new Conan to your contact at the network?”

I sighed. “I’ll add it to my morning report,” I said, hoping it would satisfy him and get him to leave.

“You’re a mensch, Billy,” he said. “And your segment with the alter cocker? The only part of the show that didn’t suck.”

“Thanks, Gibby.”

He stood and started for the door. Then he stopped and turned, looking as despondent as he had when he’d entered. “Shit, I was fucked from the git-go. If Carmen was expecting the show to be any good, she’d have had April go full-out on the publicity.”

“What makes you think April didn’t?”

“Did you see anybody shooting backstage promo footage for the website?”

“No.”

“She had a guy doing it for Des’s debut. I saw him. I realize Des had the big contract and I’m just trying to prove myself. But how much would it cost to have a publicity guy with a camera?”

“Ask April about it,” I suggested. “Maybe somebody was there and you didn’t notice.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” he said. “Ah, well, fuck it. It’s only a career.”

When he left, the atmosphere in the room brightened considerably. I felt so relieved to be rid of him that I did not give his story about the backstage photographer a moment’s thought.

My foolhardy lack of awareness didn’t end there.

I completely overlooked the black BMW sedan that had to have been waiting for me as I exited the lot.

Chapter
TWENTY-NINE

It wasn’t until I’d started on my way up Calvin Coolidge Drive that I noticed the car, and only then because ignoring it was impossible. It was the only other vehicle on the winding drive, and its headlights flashed in my rearview mirror at every twist and turn.

Even then I didn’t suspect it was following me.

Brueghel’s house was near the top of the drive. A work in progress. Just half of the front of the small cottage had been recently painted. The gate was new, but the wood was bare and, even in a city with minimal rainfall, cried out for some kind of stain or varnish.

As I entered through the gate, the BMW drove past, traveling neither fast nor slow.
Nice car
, I thought. But I never quite understood why people liked those dark tinted windows.

I turned and followed a short brick walkway to the front door of the house, passing a paint can that rested on a patch of scrub grass that constituted the front lawn. The lid of the can was missing, and the paint had solidified around a brush that Brueghel or somebody had left in it. I wondered how long ago he’d been called away from working on the house and how long it would take him to get back to it.

In response to the buzzer, a light went on over the front door and, after a second or two—the time it would take to press an eye to a peephole—the detective was framed in the doorway, wearing a blue warm-up outfit. He gave the surroundings a quick scan, then invited me into a tiny entrance area that smelled of turpentine, though I saw no evidence of it.

There were baseball caps, a hat, and several jackets, of cloth and leather, hanging from pegs on a wooden block bolted to the wall next to a closet door. A handsome bleached-pine floor seemed to run throughout the house.

“Have any trouble finding the place?” he asked, leading me down a short hall to a living room that a neatness freak would call messy but that struck me as comfortable.

“Nope. My rental’s GPS led me right here.”

“Good. How about a beer after that drive?”

“Sure,” I said, wondering, not for the first time, what I was doing there.

He disappeared for about as long as it took me to move a stack of paperback mysteries from a chair and sit down. He returned with a frosty bottle of Cerveza Pacifico in each hand.

“Maybe you’d prefer a glass?”

I told him I didn’t, and accepted the offered bottle. He clinked his against mine, and we both drank. The icy beer was just a few degrees shy of a brain freeze and had a nice sharp edge.

“I’m out of limes,” he said.

“You drag me all the way up here and you don’t even have limes?” I said.

It took him a second or two to realize I was kidding.

“What can I say, Blessing? I’m not used to playing host.”

“I’m surprised you suggested we meet here at your house,” I said. “Don’t you guys usually draw the line between your work and your home?”

“Ordinarily I’d have suggested a bar,” he said. “But knowing how you hoard information, I don’t see you blabbing my address to just anybody on the street. And the fact of the matter is it was too late for me to get a sitter for the kid.”

Only then did I notice the little transformer toy resting on the floor near the dark TV set. “A boy?” I asked.

He nodded. “Just turned four. A real handful. In his bed, hopefully asleep.”

“I didn’t take you for a married man,” I said.

“I’m not. Little Pete’s mother and I never … well, she’s out of the picture now.”

He raised the beer bottle to his lips. I waited for him to either explain why she was out of the picture or to move on to another topic. When he remained silent, staring at the floor, I, used to filling in awkward silences while on camera, said, “A homicide detective raising a young boy. Can’t be easy.”

“No. I wouldn’t call it easy. But it has its moments.” He smiled. “And Pete’s making a better man of me. At least this guy who’s a pretty good observer of human nature thinks so.”

“A fellow detective?”

“No. He writes books. Ever heard of a crime novel called
The Manicurist
?”

“Of course,” I said. It had been a bestseller. The story of a tough L.A. homicide detective on the trail of a serial killer who murdered hookers and then painted their fingernails pale green. “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me …?”

His grin turned sheepish. “Yeah. He kinda based his fictional story on my investigation and capture of a whackjob the media named The Hairdresser. I don’t know if there was much about that case on the East Coast, but out here it was a big deal. Anyway, he’s writing a sequel. And since I’ve got Pete now, in the new book his detective is becoming a single father, too. He says it’ll make the character more unique and more human.”

“So your son living here is a recent development?”

“A few months,” he said. “But I didn’t ask you up here to talk about me.”

He took a slow sip of beer.

“If it’s about the whirring sound I heard before the explosion,” I said, “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

“That was helpful info, and I’ll pass it along to the techs who are trying to identify the device and its triggering mechanism. But that’s not why I asked you here, either. Something’s come up I didn’t want to get into on the phone.”

“Yeah?”

He stared at me for a beat, as if he were contemplating several approaches to the something that had come up. He settled on: “Charbonnet wants a sit-down with you.”

I think I showed great restraint by not doing a classic spit take. Instead, I asked, “Why?”

“His attorney, Malcolm Darrow, who’s pretty damn sharp, by the way, said he didn’t know why. He was just passing along his client’s request.”

I placed the beer bottle on the floor and stood up. “Tell Mr. Darrow I’m sorry, but I’ve had more than enough meetings with his client.”

“Sit down, Blessing. Finish your beer and hear me out. Please.”

Reluctantly, I sat down. I said, “It’s not hard to figure out why you’d want me to meet with Roger. You’re hoping he’ll blow up and do something stupid, like cave in my head with a chair.”

“Maybe not that, exactly,” he said. “There’s no chance of him harming you. In fact, I can’t see a downside to your meeting with him. But it could result in him spilling something that will help our case.”

“Don’t you have enough evidence now to put him away?” I asked.

“You never have enough,” he said. “The ghost of the O.J. trial will be haunting us for a long time.”

“This won’t be anything like the O.J. trial,” I said.

“Oh, really? Let me bring you up-to-date. The lovely Miss Zeena Zataran has now definitely remembered, without a doubt, that she’d made a date with Charbonnet that night for eight o’clock and failed to notify him about her conflicting vodka party commitment. So he’ll say he was expecting her. Ergo, the ‘I was at home’ alibi is looking better.

“And she’s positive he called her from his home at nine-thirty. She even recalls a chime going off from the clock in his living room.”

“What about all the junk you recovered from his place?”

“That’s the O.J. touch,” Brueghel said. “There’s a rumor going around that one of the investigating offers may have had a hidden agenda that drove him to plant that ‘evidence.’ ”

I leaned back in the chair. “The officer being you,” I said. “And the hidden agenda being your previous failure to nail Roger with the death of Tiffany Arden.”

“You got it. Before little Pete became a part of my life, this kind of crap would have driven me nuts. Now I just look for other ways of getting the job done. Will you talk to him, Blessing?”

“Let me sleep on it,” I said.

If the BMW followed me out to Malibu, I didn’t notice it.

Chapter
THIRTY

I woke shortly before ten a.m. the next morning. The villa had seemed sinister and intimidating the previous night, but now, under a blue, cloudless sky with a balmy breeze wafting from the ocean, all was right with the world.

Except for the messages that had been collecting in my voice mailbox.

The first call I’d ignored when I turned off my phone last evening was from the defense attorney Brueghel had mentioned, Malcolm Darrow. His voice was confident, no-nonsense. A deep-timbre voice worthy of another, more famous Darrow, named Clarence. I wondered if the name had influenced his choice of profession or if the profession had influenced his choice of name. In either case, he’d left his number at five-fifty-seven p.m.

Two hours later, at roughly eleven p.m. Manhattan time, Cassandra had provided a report on the status quo of the Bistro that, minus the snark, seemed satisfactory, especially since she’d not requested a return call.

Stew’s daughter, Dani, had left a voice mail at ten-oh-five p.m., requesting a callback.

Malcolm Darrow had left his second message a couple of hours before I awoke.

Shortly thereafter, Amelia St. Laurent had left word that she would be showing the estate today. She said she’d canceled yesterday’s tours “out of respect for Mr. O’Day’s untimely passing.” To alter the late comedian Fred Allen’s line: You can fit all the integrity in Hollywood into a gnat’s navel and still have room for a kumquat and a real estate agent’s heart.

At precisely nine, Whisper had called to remind me that rehearsal for tonight’s show would be at two p.m. She’d added, with a hint of wonder, that the overnight ratings had been good enough, especially in the key eighteen-to-forty-five-year-old demographic, for Gibby to remain on as host for this week and possibly even the next. She suggested I ignore some of the hypercritical comments on the Internet.

No problem there.

I had no intention of phoning the lawyer and, though mildly curious about why Dani had called, felt I could let that slide for a while. The fact is, suddenly I was feeling glum, and I knew why. Though I hadn’t really expected Vida to call, the fact that she hadn’t dimmed the day a little.

Well, as we all know, there’s nothing like a big breakfast to lift one’s spirits.

Thanks to a trip to the nearby supermarket, that dream was to be fulfilled. I brewed an extra-strong pot of French roast coffee, toasted four pieces of sourdough bread, which I buttered while still hot, and fried a rasher of bacon, resting the resulting strips on a paper towel to dry and crisp. I then performed a bit of stovetop magic with four eggs (but using only two of the yolks: See, I can be healthy), several hunks of jack cheese, and minced mushroom. Veggies, healthier, still.

I loaded a tray with the finished omelet, the sides, and a jar of homemade raspberry preserves, and carried it out to a table on the deck. There I sat, facing the Pacific, allowing myself to be mesmerized by the gentle surf while enjoying the fruits of my stovetop labor.

I was having a third cup of coffee, amusing myself with the fantasy of the liquid somehow dissolving the breakfast cholesterol and calories, when my eyes were drawn to a familiar tall feminine figure in a familiar white bikini, running full-out along the waterline in my direction.

When she saw me, Dani Kirkendahl made a right-angle turn and, slowing to a jog, crossed the sand toward the deck. She’d been running long enough for her skin to be glistening, but she wasn’t even breathing hard. “Billy,” she said, as I rose to greet her, “I didn’t think you were … I called you last night.”

“Can I get you some coffee?” I asked, as she took a chair. “Or water?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“I apologize for not getting back to you. I slept in this morning, and—”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I understand. I know you must be … I mean, after that horrible night. I hate to bother you, but it’s important.”

“Is it about your dad?” I asked.

“Dad? No. He’s … fine. It’s about Roger.”

I suppose my face must’ve reflected my thoughts.

“Oh. I don’t blame you,” she said. “I mean, he certainly has … anger issues. And he’s told me you guys have a long history.”

“Did he mention any details about that history?”

She hesitated, then broke eye contact, looking off down the beach. “Some.” She turned back to me. “I’ll say to you what I said to him. Whatever happened is between the two of you. Leave me out of it.”

“So you guys are still an item?”

“An item? You mean like boyfriend-girlfriend? Eeewwww. Billy, the man’s ancient. He’s Dad’s age. Well, maybe a few years younger, but still …”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just assumed … Well, what
is
your relationship?”

“We’re friends. Platonic friends. There are such things, you know.”

“Really? And what are your thoughts on unicorns? Or Bigfoot? Or, God help me, vampires?”

“You’re being cynical.”

“It’s not cynicism,” I said. “I’m sure
you
think your relationship is platonic. But what about Roger?”

“He feels the same. Women know when a man is coming on to them.” She smiled and added, “When you and I first met and you helped me to my towel, you were sending out a vibe. But it went away when Daddy appeared. Right?”

An interesting question.

I’ve never put much faith in platonic relationships, probably because I am convinced that, barring conditions such as premature sainthood, narcolepsy, or debilitation, anyone is capable of being seduced by anyone they perceive as sexually alluring. When I first laid eyes on Dani, I was wide open to that possibility. Did that change when I learned she was Stew’s twenty-two-year-old daughter? Looking at her now, sitting across from me in her white bikini, I doubted it. I have to admit, though not with pride, I was even considering the possibility that she was fishing to find out if I
was
interested.

She was, therefore, mistaking the myth of platonic relationship for the reality of a little thing called self-control. If she hadn’t discovered the difference by now, I was not about to bring it to her attention, by word or deed. Instead, I made a lateral shift in the conversation.

“I don’t suppose you came over here to discuss platonic relationships,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Roger wants you to meet with him.”

“Old news,” I said.

“Oh. His lawyer talked to you?”

“No, but not for lack of trying. Did Roger happen to mention why he wants a sit-down with me, of all people?”

“They haven’t let me talk to him. It was the lawyer who asked me to ask you. He said Roger needs your help.”

“Then we must be talking about some other Roger. The actor Roger Moore, maybe. Or Roger Rabbit. Some Roger I’d actually want to help.”

“Don’t be that way, Billy. He’s my friend. And he’s not a murderer.”

“Not a murderer. Got it.”

“Please talk to him,” she said.

“Why? How could I help him, even if I were so inclined?”

She shrugged. “All I know is he believes you can.”

“How long have you known him?”

“He says we met a long time ago, when I was just a kid, having brunch with my parents in one of his restaurants. I don’t remember that. The first time I can recall was at Santa Anita maybe two years ago. I was with Wilt, my ex, and Mom and her boyfriend of the moment. Roger stopped at our box to say hello to Mom. He was very charming. He gave us a tip on a race that actually paid off. I didn’t see him again until just after my divorce.”

“That was this year?”

“About six months ago. I was really down, and Mom took me out on a shopping binge. We had lunch at Bagatelle, Roger’s place off Rodeo Drive. He joined us for dessert, and when Mom got one of her right-now-or-never calls from a prospect, he offered to drive me back here. Since then, we’ve spent a little time together.”

“But you’ve really only known him for six months,” I said.

“We talk, Billy,” she said. “I know more about him than I know about Dad. You asked how much he’s told me about his history with you. I know about the murder at Chez Anisette and that you think he killed that woman. He said he didn’t, and I believe him.”

“That’s the thing about sociopaths. They may be crazier than hell, but they can still be believable.”

“Roger’s not crazy,” she said.

“Okay, let’s assume for the moment that he didn’t kill Tiffany Arden. Or set off an explosion that took the life of Des O’Day. How sane can he be if he’ll break into somebody’s house to cook a rat in their oven?”

She blinked. “R-roger did that? Well, he … probably meant it as a joke. You guys were still in your twenties …”

“This happened just days ago, right after he attacked me at your dad’s party.”

“Here?” she asked, looking at the villa.

I nodded.

“Well … just because you found a … This property had been vacant for a while, and the whole area is a haven for rats. Even the Colony. We have to set traps all the time. One may have crawled into the house and—”

“And hopped into a pan, surrounded itself with carrots and potatoes, turned on the oven, and cooked itself? With a cherry tomato in its mouth?”

“What makes you think Roger did it?”

“Who else? And he happened to be here at Malibu Sands at the time. Visiting you. He could have done it before or after the visit.”

She looked disheartened. “It still sounds like a joke,” she said. “And it doesn’t mean he killed anybody. In fact, it might mean just the opposite.” The thought excited her. “He knew how easy it was to break into your house. If he’d wanted to kill you, he could have put his dumb bomb right here under your bed. Why would he have gone to all the effort of sneaking into a studio full of people?”

“That would be a valid question,” I said, “if Roger were rational.”

“You’re the one being irrational.”

I really wasn’t up to reminding her about the damning evidence that the police had found at Roger’s. I stood up and began placing my breakfast dishes onto the tray. “The day is slipping away,” I said. “And there are things I have to do.”

“I guess meeting with Roger won’t be one of them.”

“I didn’t say that,” I told her. I might have, if it hadn’t been for that damn white bikini she was wearing.