The Midnight Show Murders (2) (21 page)

She got behind the wheel and, with little effort, made a U-turn and drove away.

“What a loathsome creature that man is,” Gloria said.

“You’re preaching to the choir,” I said.

She asked me the same question the old man had: Was I going to help Roger? I gave her the same answer, then asked, “Why would Roger send Victor here, knowing how you feel about him?”

“I’ve never given Roger reason to think I feel any way about Victor, pro or con. They’re partners and friends, though I can’t imagine how Roger puts up with him. They’re so different in every way.”

I thought they were as alike as cuff links, psychologically and philosophically, but I kept that to myself, preferring to part on, if not exactly a friendly note, at least a polite one.

Before driving off, I phoned Detective Brueghel and was directed to his voice mail. I left a request for a callback, pocketed the phone, and put the car in drive. As I departed, I glanced back and saw Gloria still at the window, looking off into the distance, as if trying to convince herself that Victor was truly gone.

Chapter
THIRTY-NINE

Having lunch in Hollywood isn’t exactly a problem, unless you’re an easily recognizable figure currently involved in a front-page murder investigation. That rather limits your choice of restaurants. I had no desire to dine in any of the flash places where the paparazzi roam, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to finish a meal in peace in even the less-celebrated venues.

I decided traditional was my best bet and headed to Hollywood Boulevard and Musso & Frank. Neither the grill nor the menu had changed much in twenty-two years. Just the personnel and the prices.

I settled into a dark red leather booth, my back to the rear door, the main entryway, and managed to polish off a pounded steak with country gravy, lyonnaise potatoes, creamed spinach, and two glasses of iced tea, with just one tourist couple stopping at the table to gawk. And that was only until I looked up and winked at them.

Sated, and having nowhere else to go, I arrived at the Worldwide lot twenty minutes early for the afternoon meeting. I sat in the Lexus with the top up and the AC on high, wondering if I should go in or just fly back to Manhattan and pretend the trip had been a dream, like that infamous season of
Dallas
.

Detectives Brueghel and Campbell made the decision for me.

Their black Crown Vic entered the lot, drove right past me, and slid into a no-parking space about ten vehicles away.

I closed down my AC and engine and met them on their way to the main building.

“What’s up?”

“Damn it, Blessing,” Brueghel said. “Why don’t you ever answer your goddamned phone?”

Thanks to Cassandra’s heads-up, I’d turned the thing off rather than risk inadvertently bugging myself. “Sorry,” I said.

“I been trying to reach you for the last hour,” he said. “No good deed …”

“You have to excuse him, Mr. Blessing,” Detective Campbell said. “Man hates to be wrong.”

“Not wrong,” he snapped. “But even if I am, my wrong doesn’t make you right.”

Detective Campbell giggled at that. She was much more attractive in giddy mode.

“What’s going on?” I asked, as we entered the building.

“My partner had to kick Charbonnet loose,” Detective Campbell said.

“Why?”

“ ’Cause the prick …” His sentence drifted into an undecipherable mumble.

“The prick what?” I asked.

“He didn’t do it,” Brueghel groused, and, ignoring the approaching elevator, pushed through the door leading to the stairs.

Campbell and I followed.

“What happened?” I asked her.

“Couple things. First, we finally got the report on the explosive used. It was a little more sophisticated than a Clorox bomb. Not much, but enough to make the stuff we found at the Brentwood house useless as evidence.”

We were double-timing it up the stairs, Brueghel nearly a level ahead and widening the gap. “There’s more,” Campbell said, not even breathing hard, “but we should wait for Pete to give that out, him being the lead.”

She was grinning.

“You’re getting a big kick out of his discomfort,” I said.

“Pete’s the best partner I’ve ever had, and he’s an excellent detective. Except when he’s got Charbonnet in his sights. I’ve been telling him all along he’s been misreading this one.”

Carmen was not alone in her office. Whisper was seated on a chair to her right. Max and Trey were standing nearby, shaking hands with Brueghel. After an introduction to Detective Campbell, Carmen gave Brueghel the floor.

A scarlet flush was spreading upward from his neck, and his jaws were clenched so tight that little knots protruded from the sides of his face. “There have been …”

He paused, his right hand going to the back of his neck. I was concerned that he might be experiencing a seizure of some kind. But he just made a head roll accompanied by neck pops and launched into his announcement. “As I mentioned on the phone, Ms. Sandoval, Chief Weidemeyer, ah,
suggested
this heads-up because your network is directly involved in our investigation. We’re doing it in the spirit of mutual cooperation. The chief will be making an official statement to the media in just about two hours. I want to make it clear that this is off the record.”

“Our evening news anchor, Jim McBride, is flying in from D.C. to attend the chief’s briefing,” Carmen replied. “That will be the source of our coverage.”

“I assume that pertains also to Ble—Mr. Blessing’s appearance on
The Midnight Show
?”

Carmen hesitated, then nodded.

“Fine.” The detective and his partner exchanged glances, and he continued. “We have become aware of certain facts regarding last week’s fatal explosion that have made us reopen the investigation.

“Initially, because the explosive had been ignited on a section of the stage where Mr. Blessing had been scheduled to stand, we had assumed that he, and not Mr. O’Day, had been the intended victim. Our primary investigation … proceeded from that assumption, the result being the arrest of Mr. Roger B. Charbonnet, a suspect who not only had a history of … animosity toward Mr. Blessing but was in possession of materials used in the creation of a bomb.”

Campbell had an unreadable smile on her face.

“This morning, however, we have learned considerably more about the explosive and the device used to trigger it, information that indicated our original assumption had been in error. It appears more likely that Mr. O’Day was the assassin’s target. Consequently, we have released Mr. Charbonnet and refocused our investigation.”

“What’d the techs tell you about the bomb that changed your mind?” Max asked.

Brueghel’s face registered only a hint of annoyance at being interrupted. He was doing his best to maintain his good-cop mode. He got a small spiral notepad from his inside coat pocket, flipped a single page, and read, “It was a ‘cast-loaded composition B burster’ about the size of a couple of cigarette packs.” Closing the notepad and putting it away, he continued, “The materials we found in Mr. Charbonnet’s shed could have created a bomb but are not consistent with this particular one.”

“There’s something I’ve never understood, detective,” Carmen said. “The theater’s stage was built on solid cement. For the bomb to claim Mr. O’Day, it must have been in plain view. But no one remembers seeing anything unusual, not even something as small as a couple of cigarette packs.”

“Right. Well, a tiny piece of plastic, found in the rubble, helps to explain that, ma’am. It was identified as a portion of a wheel, one inch in circumference, from a kid’s toy called a Zapmobile. It’s like a little automobile with a wireless control. We think it had been rigged to hold the explosive. When Mr. O’Day took his final position on the stage that night, the killer sent the Zapmobile in his direction and then used another wireless device to detonate. The whole operation could have been done in less than thirty seconds.”

I remembered the whirring sound I’d heard. And there was something else that seemed relevant. A comment someone had made? Maybe on that night? I couldn’t get a fix on it.

“That’s the main reason we released Mr. Charbonnet,” Brueghel was explaining. “The killer had to be present and could see, without doubt, that Mr. O’Day would be his victim. To our knowledge, Mr. Charbonnet had no motive for killing Mr. O’Day. The focus of our investigation now is to find out who did.”

“We will assist you in any way we can,” Carmen said.

Max turned to Trey. “You’re the expert on Des,” he said. “Maybe you should sit down with the detectives, give ’em whatever you’ve got.”

“Actually, I provided Detective Campbell with my files on Des and all the other members of the cast and crew days ago.”

“Oh?” Max turned to look questioningly at the detective.

“Mr. Halstead has been very cooperative,” Campbell said.

“I’m surprised to hear you were looking into Des’s background before today,” Max said. “How long have you had the information about the bomb?”

“As Detective Brueghel said, we just found out about the bomb today. While our primary focus has been on persons of interest with motive to do harm to Mr. Blessing, it was Mr. O’Day who died in the explosion, and we could hardly ignore the possibility he might have been the intended victim. I’ve been working on that possibility.”

“Come up with anything?” Carmen asked.

“Tons about his career as a performer, beginning with his first paying job on the radio in Dublin. That was in 1997. Before that, not much. Born in Dungannon on January seventh, 1972. Father and mother were both merchants. Now deceased. No siblings. Attended Saint Mary’s University in Belfast but dropped out after a year for some unknown reason. That’s about it.”

“You should talk to Jimmy Fitzpatrick,” I said. “They grew up together.”

“That’s where I got what little information I have,” Campbell said. “I’ve spoken with him a couple of times. He’s pretty vague. Or maybe he’s been stonewalling me. I tried reaching him today, but his phone’s off. What time does he come in?”

“He’s not coming in,” Max said. “He walked out on the show yesterday. After manhandling our star.”

That caught Brueghel’s interest. “He was violent?”

Max turned to Trey. “I’d say so, right?”

“Yeah,” Trey said. “Definitely violent.”

“I want to know more about this.”

Before either Max or Trey could put Fitz even further under the bus, I said, “Fitzpatrick told Max he intended to take Des’s remains home to Ireland for burial,” I said. “Gibby made some pretty insensitive jokes about the body parts and then called Catholics mackerel-snappers, and Fitz slapped him around a little.”

Brueghel nodded and seemed a little less intrigued. He turned to his partner. “They released the body?”

She nodded. “Mr. Fitzpatrick asked me to let him know, and so I did. Yesterday. But as of an hour ago, the remains were still unclaimed.”

“And Fitzpatrick’s not picking up his phone,” Brueghel said. “Anybody here have any contact with him after the … slapping incident?”

“He dropped by my place last night,” I said.

Once again, I was the center of interest.

“And …?” Brueghel asked.

“He’d been drinking and seemed a little … stressed.”

“Jeeze, Blessing, don’t make me drag it out of you. Details, please.”

I was beginning to feel like those mastodons who’d paused to take a sip of water and wound up trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits. Ever since I’d arrived in L.A. I’d been stuck and slowly sinking. Opening up with everything that Fitz had told me would only put me in deeper.

But I realized now he hadn’t been raving. He probably did have a good idea why Des had been killed. Even more disquieting, if he was right about that, who’s to say he wasn’t right about somebody connected with the show being involved in the murder? Or that the somebody had sent a milk-eyed man to stalk him? These were things Brueghel should know.

“Is that it, Blessing? You’re clamming up?”

“No,” I said, and told him the salient parts of my late-night visit.

Chapter
FORTY

“You didn’t consider any of that significant enough for a call?” Brueghel asked.

“He was drunk as a skunk, singing songs and speaking in riddles. So no, my feeling was he was talking through his beard. And just a reminder, Roger was still in jail, and you were convinced
he
was the killer, so you would have agreed with me.”

Brueghel’s frown deepened. Any more and his brows would completely overlap his eyes. He turned to the others. “Don’t suppose any of you know of a man with a milky eye? I guess that might be a cataract.”

They didn’t.

“That’s utter nonsense about someone on the show being involved in Des’s murder,” Max said. “Nobody had even met him before he was signed. And that was only a few months ago. Right, Trey?”

“As far as I know, Des spent surprisingly little time in Southern California.”

“Could there be a reason for that?” Brueghel asked. “Maybe somebody out here he didn’t want to see?”

Trey shrugged.

“Once he arrived, was there any kind of incident or problem?” Brueghel asked.

I looked at Max, and he looked away. He and Trey had been eyewitnesses to the beating of the transvestite. But they evidently were not going to mention it. Maybe that was the correct choice. The only certain result would be the transvestite winding up at the top of the detective’s list of suspects. And he’d already been through enough.

“Blessing,” Brueghel said, startling me out of my reverie. “About the mess in the house out in Malibu, did it look like it had been caused by a struggle?”

“That or a drunk floundering around by himself.”

“But the realtor put a cleaning crew on it. Probably not much to see, Mizzy, but still we ought to drive out there, look around. And we need to get a handle on this Fitzpatrick. Find out where he is. Here. In Ireland, or wherever.”

Max glanced at his watch. “If that’s it, we’d better move on to our staff meeting,” he said. “Thanks for the update, detectives.”

“We should probably stop by that meeting on our way out,” Brueghel said. “Check in with the rest of your people. Maybe they’ve bumped into the guy with the milky eye.”

“As you wish,” Max replied.

“I appreciate your cooperation.”

The daily meet had been relocated to the executive conference room, down the hall from Carmen’s office. The multiwindowed space was bright and airy, and the chairs cushioned, all of which seemed to lighten the atmosphere. Until the detectives began asking questions about Des and Fitz and the milky-eyed man.

Though Brueghel did most of the initial talking, the staffers seemed more responsive to Campbell. It appeared that while he’d been involved in his pursuit of Roger Charbonnet, she’d had meetings with many of them, investigating what was then the less likely scenario of Des being the intended victim.

Brueghel was quick to read the room and smoothly deferred to his partner. The two detectives spent nearly half an hour with us, mainly answering questions. If they got any information in return, I missed it.

What I did notice was Gibby’s thoughtful silence, which struck me as being slightly out of character.

When they departed, Max gave us a pep talk about putting our concerns regarding “this regrettable situation” on hold. In the grand tradition of our industry, the show must go on. “Our responsibility is to entertain. Let Billy deal with the harsh reality in his segment.

“By the way, Billy, Jim McBride will be your guest tonight. You guys can kick around the
official
LAPD announcement.

“Okay, kids, I’ll see you on Stage Seven in fifteen minutes.”

Chief Weidemeyer held his press conference at precisely four that afternoon, timed to make the early newscasts on the West Coast and the late news in the East.

I watched the East Coast feed of the complete seventeen-minute conference with Carmen in her office. I discovered she had a habit of snorting derisively. When the chief told the members of the media about the unique bomb-delivery device and purposely left the toy’s brand name unmentioned, she let out a snort. When he spoke of the 180-degree shift in the homicide investigation, he made it seem more like a breakthrough than the correction of an initial deductive misfire. Another snort.

He began his wind-down with a substantive comment: “The popular musician known by the name Fitzpatrick, a close friend of the victim’s, is currently being sought. If anyone has any knowledge of Mr. Fitzpatrick or his current whereabouts, please contact the LAPD. I should emphasize something: Mr. Fitzpatrick is not a suspect.” Snort. “We do believe, however, that he may possess information that would assist our investigation.

“Other than that, I can assure you that the investigation is on course. We are making excellent progress, and we expect to make an arrest shortly. Thank you.”

I snorted with Carmen on that one.

Chief Weidemeyer clearly hoped to exit on that note, but the noisy crowd wasn’t finished with him. The newsies wanted more sound bite material on just about everything, and their questions, once begun, were relentless, repetitive, and overlapping. They boiled down to: Was Fitzpatrick missing? What was it he knew? Did they suspect he might be dead? Did they know why Des O’Day had been murdered? Whom did they suspect, if not Fitzpatrick?

The chief’s face remained unreadable throughout. He seemed to be staring just over the heads of the crowd, as if counting the windows in the building across the street. Finally, he’d had enough. He bent slightly to get closer to the mike, cleared his throat, and repeated, “Thank you.”

That didn’t stop the flow of questions, but he no longer seemed to care. He gathered his notes, paused to whisper something to the public information officer, and made his getaway. The perky public-relations lady, who seemed to enjoy confrontation, assumed the role of blocking guard for the chief and responded to questions with the usual canned nonanswers designed to close down a conference.

That’s when I noticed Jim McBride plant himself directly in the chief’s path, ready with a question. He opened his mouth just as the chief’s female flying wedge moved in on him, a perfect smile plastered on her perfectly made-up face.

Jim suddenly buckled, and the chief and his entourage squeezed past his bent body.

“The bit about Fitz means that the detectives reported our meeting to the chief,” I said.

“That should make it fair game for the show tonight,” she said. She stood, an indication that she was no longer fascinated by my presence. “I assume you and Jim will get together as soon as he arrives from the conference.”

“Right,” I said, backing toward the door. “It looked to me like the chief’s PIO nearly knocked Jim on his ass.”

“Kneed him in the balls, if I’m any judge,” Carmen said.

The rehearsal for the last
Midnight Show
of the week was in full swing when I slipped onto a seat in the nearly unpopulated audience section of Studio 7. A black-and-yellow-haired member of the Asian group No Fangs was goofing on Gibby mercilessly, pretending to teach him hip-hop while getting him into positions that defied gravity and inevitably resulted in his hitting the deck with a thud.

Gibby was supposed to be holding his own verbally with the No Fangser, but he seemed a little distracted. One of the comedy writers was standing by, feeding him lines that he kept fumbling. Somehow that made it more amusing.

Suddenly, I got a whiff of camellias and felt a warm body pressed against the back of my head. Graceful hands covered my eyes.

“Guess who?”

“Hmmm. Give me a hint. Ebony or ivory?”

“Definitely ebony.”

“Jennifer Hudson?”

“No,” she said.

“Beyoncé?”

“No,” she said again.

“Then you must be
my
dream girl,” I said, taking her hands in mine, pressing my head back, and looking up at Vida smiling down at me.

She circled the seat, trailing her fingernails across the back of my neck. I rose as she brushed past me to take the adjoining seat.

“How was Yorba Linda?” I asked.

“You first. On the drive in, every news station was blowing up with stories and speculation about you and Des, and new evidence in the investigation.”

“You probably know more than I do.”

“Oh, sure. You’re not going to hold out on me, Billy?” she asked.

“Ah, if only that question were sex-related.”

“With me, baby, news is sex.”

“I hope that’s a joke.”

She smiled to show me that it was. “Okay,” she said. “If you won’t tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine. Satan has officially left Yorba Linda. The woman who started the whole mess broke down this morning under some very tough questioning by the teachers’ attorney. She admitted she
may
have been mistaken about what her son said in his sleep re: the school celebrating a devil mass.”

“How old is the kid?”

“Four.”

“And she still monitors his sleep?”

“My guess is she’d chew his food for him if he’d let her. The real story, and the one I’ll be reporting, is that a teacher at the school had incurred mommy dearest’s wrath by laying hands on her precious son. The teacher, a twenty-five-year-old pregnant lady, had pulled the monster boy off of a little girl after he’d knocked her to the ground and was kicking her.”

“Sounds like Mom was looking for Beelzebub in all the wrong places.”

“You got it. Her brat acts up, and her reaction is to spread a lie that sends five innocent, dedicated teachers, one of them with child, to prison for over a month.”

“But the bad genie is back in the bottle?” I asked.

“Pretty much. The DA is afraid of looking like the idiot he is and hasn’t quite given up the fight. But his case is dissolving as we speak, and it appears the teachers will be exonerated.”

“That kind of toxic cloud doesn’t blow away all that easily,” I said. “There’ll be quite a few empty desks in those classrooms for a while.”

“I know. But at least the teachers will be spending tonight in the comfort of their own homes. And I’ll be spending tonight in mine. Alone, unless I can find somebody who’s free for dinner.”

“Short notice,” I said.

“Boeuf bourguignon,” she said. “I use a recipe in a cookbook by my favorite TV food expert.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You? I was talking about the Muppets’ Swedish Chef.”

“Oh. But you’ll be serving real F-O-O-D, right?”

“As real as a clogged artery.”

“The earliest I can get there is ten-thirty,” I said.

She stood. I stood. “It’ll take me that long to do justice by the Swedish Chef,” she said. She leaned against me suddenly and kissed me, her tongue darting between my lips. As I raised my arms to pull her closer, she slipped away.

“Don’t be too late,” she said, “or I may have to start without you.”

I watched her as she strolled gracefully toward the exit.

When she was gone, I turned and found Gibby staring at me from the stage. He gave me a wink and a thumbs-up, then began a series of pelvic thrusts, humping the air.

Ever the class act.

I turned to go in search of Jim McBride, who should have made it back from the press conference an hour ago.

“Hold up, Billy,” Gibby shouted.

I watched him grab a towel from the back of a chair and walk toward me, blotting his perspiring face.

“I … need some advice,” he said, lowering his voice.

“What’s the gag?”

“No. No gag. I’m seriously freaked.”

He looked it, and he wasn’t that good an actor. “How can I help?”

“Today, when the cops mentioned—”

He was interrupted by McBride, lanky and as immaculately dressed as always, calling out, “Billy B. Great to see you in the flesh, as it were.” He approached us slowly and carefully, wincing with each step.

I introduced him to Gibby, who thanked him for guesting on tonight’s show. Then, inching away, Gibby added, “I, ah, better get back. Billy, can you spare a couple minutes later, after the show?”

“Sure,” I said.

“He seems a little nervous about something,” McBride said, as we watched the comic heading for the set. “They dumping him?”

“Not that I’ve heard,” I said, turning to McBride. “You look a little nervous yourself,” I said.

“That’s pain, brother. At a press conference today, the chief of police’s PR lady kneed me in the ’nads.”

“I saw it happen on the tube. You got in her sight line. She was a beauty, by the way. Roger Ailes should hire her for FOX News. They have a thing for hot women.”

“Hot and mean,” Jim said with a wide grin. “Just like we like ’em. Except for their politics, of course. So what’s our plan here, Billy? I understand we’ve got twelve minutes to fill. Do we do this
60 Minutes
style, write down a series of talking points, each stopwatch-timed, each feeding off the other until we arrive at a final conclusion that has a kick harder than an LAPD PR flack? Or do we go to plan B and find us a couple of comfortable chairs in whatever passes for a greenroom here in lotusland and chat about the good times and then, when we get the red light, wing the whole damn thing as smoothly and effortlessly as the old pros we are?”

“I vote for plan B,” I said.