The Midnight Show Murders (2) (6 page)

Chapter
TEN

I’d left my annoying phone in the coach house.

In the brief period of time I spent at the villa, several calls had come in. None required a reply. I sincerely hoped that the next time I was attacked by a madman, it would be in a camera-free location.

When the ringtone sounded yet another time, I answered it with a gruff “What now?”

“H-hello … Is this Chef Blessing?” The voice was female, barely audible, and hesitant.

“I’m Blessing,” I said. “Sorry if I startled you.”

“I … I’m Whisper Jansen.”

Whisper, a name both weird and aurally appropriate. “What can I do for you?”

“I-I’m Carmen Sandoval’s assistant. At Worldwide West.”

“Right. Gretchen Di Voss said I’d be hearing from Carmen.”

“She’s hoping you might be able to meet with her this evening? At five?”

“Sure. Where?”

“Here at WBCW. Do you have the address?”

I told her I had it. “How do I find her office?”

“We’re on the second floor of the Harold Di Voss Building. I’ll come down to reception and guide you up.”

I told her that would be fine.

By three-forty-five my Internet fame seemed to have dwindled to the point where nary a single self-styled comedian chose to bend my ear with an unfunny quip at my expense. I celebrated by taking a stroll to a car rental agency on the Pacific Coast Highway that I’d spied yesterday on the drive in.

What I’d spied, actually, was a bright red Lexus hardtop convertible that seemed to be crying out, “You’re the only person on the West Coast cool enough to be driving me.” But I did not indulge myself by renting it. Actually, someone cooler had beaten me to it. I had to settle for a second-best indulgence, the same car in gray.

It said to me, “Why settle for cheap flash, a confident man of action like you?”

After scraping away a millimeter of my Worldwide Broadcasting credit card’s information strip, the rental agent escorted me to the sparkling-clean car, where he began uttering a litany of its special features. Only a few of them permeated the fog that develops in my head whenever anyone is speaking technology. “The Lexus model number something … blah-blah-blah … goes from zero to sixty in five-point-eight seconds … blah-blah-blah … electronically controlled transmission … retractable hardtop … blah-blah-blah … HDD navigation system with touch-screen capability—”

“Hold it,” I said. “That last thing. It tells me how to get places, right? That’s the one I want you to explain in detail.”

Another twenty minutes and I was zooming south along the Pacific Coast Highway, with at least a rudimentary knowledge of the ways of the navigation system. The top was down, the windows down, the Shirelles were harmonizing on “Baby It’s You” and other hits from a best-of disc, thanks to a golden oldies channel on Sirius Satellite Radio. I was beginning to remember what a dreamland L.A. had been before Victor Anisette fired me and Roger threatened my life.

The warmth of the afternoon sun and the cool ocean breeze combined to produce the perfect temperature. The sky was a soft blue dotted by puffy white clouds. And the Lexus obeyed my every whim as I guided it through the gathering going-home traffic. In New York, I had a driver, and if he wasn’t available, I caught a cab or walked. It had been years since I’d been behind the wheel of a car, and never one that was such a pleasure to drive.

From time to time, the efficient but creepily unemotional female voice of the navigation system told me where and when to turn. Eventually, with the Santa Monica Pier jutting out into the ocean on my far right, the voice interrupted the Shirelles long enough to advise me to “turn left onto the I-ten.”

I glanced at the active map on the dash, where a little bug—representing the Lexus with me in it—floated along like a mouthless Pac-Man. It showed that the Pacific Coast Highway melded into the Santa Monica Freeway, the I-10, and that all I had to do was keep following the road.

Easier said than done.

The traffic was the problem. A thick stream of it flowed in from the south, slowing all the lanes to a crawl. It was some forty-five minutes of agonizingly slow progress later when my helpful disembodied female voice ordered me to take the Normandie exit. I traveled on that street until the Worldwide Broadcasting West lot showed itself and I was given the final audio benediction, “You have arrived.”

Compared to the company’s towering East Coast headquarters—a sixty-five-floor skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan known locally as the Glass Tower—its West Coast center was almost a ground-hugger, at only five floors. But what it lost in height, it made up for with width, its offices and studios forming an
L
surrounded by what seemed like a never-ending lot jammed with parked cars.

In addition to the vehicles that belonged to company employees, there were a couple hundred more driven in by members of various studio audiences. While most of the network’s filmed dramas and comedies were created on sound stages in its studio complex in the San Fernando Valley, the quiz and participation shows, such as
Take Your Pick
and
Are You Smarter Than a Runway Model?
, and some live telecasts, including news specials, were handled in the longer section of the
L
.

At that particular time of evening, parking spaces were as hard to find as unaugmented breasts in this godforsaken land.

I finally found a temporary home for the Lexus at the far end of the lot. When I arrived at the reception area of the Harold DiVoss Building, I was winded and perspiring from the cross-lot run but still, as Whisper Jansen informed me in her sotto voce manner, fifteen minutes late.

She stood beside me at the elevator, petite with shoulder-length blond hair combed back from a pale, heart-shaped face that, while attractive, would have benefited from just a little more makeup and a little less anxiety. She was wearing a zippered beige blouse over loose-fitting jeans that she’d rolled to an inch or so above the ankle. Her tiny feet were encased in beige canvas high-tops with white rubber soles.

She chewed the inside of her mouth as we waited for the elevator to arrive. “Carmen was wondering where you were,” she said, her voice rising to an almost audible pitch, her eyes shifting nervously to me and then back to the closed elevator door.

“There was a line of traffic coming in from the beach,” I said. “And then I spent the last fifteen minutes driving around the lot, hunting for a parking place.”

She seemed to sink within herself. “They were supposed to send you to the reserved parking, right in front.”

The elevator arrived, unloading a group of mainly young office workers who were calling it a day. “I can state unreservedly that that didn’t happen,” I said. “I’m way over by the fence.”

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “Sorry you were inconvenienced. Carmen will say it’s my fault.”

She was silent for a beat. Then, as the elevator stopped at our floor, Whisper Jansen took a deep breath, straightened her backbone, and said, “Well, heck. It’ll be just one more tirade.”

“Tirade,” I said. “An attack on a haberdashery.”

Her giggle sounded more like a gurgle. “Daffy Definitions,” she said. “I remember them from when I was a kid.”

“Monastery,” I said. “A place where monsters are kept.”

Grinning, we exited the elevator, moved quickly past a receptionist, who was straightening her desktop, then down a hall with walls filled by framed portraits of WBC celebrities other than myself and into the corner office of network vice president Carmen Sandoval.

She’d been seated behind an ultra-contemporary desk—a J-shaped sheet of smoked glass resting atop three rosewood blocks. She stood quickly, sending her black leather chair rolling back across the gray tiled floor. She was nearly six feet in her Jimmy Choo python-print espadrilles, shiny black slacks, and scoop-neck, long-sleeve blouse that picked up the same pattern as her shoes. She was almost too thin, but there was nothing weak or fragile about her. Her overlarge black-framed designer glasses were fashionable, highlighting periwinkle-blue eyes while also drawing your attention to a nose that had been cosmetically altered.

Like Whisper, she was pale. I’d heard that was a badge of honor on this sunny coast, where a tan was the mark of the frivolous or the unemployed. But because of her jet-black, close-cropped hair, her skin seemed almost bloodless, a notion enhanced by lipstick so dark it was almost black. Somebody should have told her that the vampire look was hard to carry off once you passed the forty mark.

She glanced at a steel-and-gold Breitling watch that looked as big as a sundial on her thin wrist and curled down the corners of her dark red lips in a gesture of distaste. “Chef Blessing,” she said, “I’m surprised that someone with your on-camera experience would treat time so cavalierly.”

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, “but I had to stop off for a piss. You know how that is.”

Behind me, Whisper was having trouble subduing a gurgle.

Surprisingly, Carmen Sandoval seemed genuinely amused. “Considering the extent of your tardiness, I hope you took time to wash your hands.” She thrust out a thin and chalky claw in a gesture of friendship that I accepted, even though her fingernails looked like they’d been tipped in blood. “Welcome to WBC West, Billy,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind the first-name informality.”

“I prefer it.”

“I was surprised to hear from Gretchen that this is your first visit to the studio.”

“The last time I was on this coast, I wasn’t working for WBC.”

“Well, Vida can serve as your guide,” she said, gesturing to the other side of the office, where a very attractive young sister sat on a plum-colored armchair, smiling at me. Even though Carmen was an undeniably commanding presence, I couldn’t believe I’d failed to notice Vida Evans.

“Hi, Billy,” she said. “Been a while.” She moved into my arms for a very unbusinesslike hug.

“I gather you two have met,” Carmen said.

We had. Several years before in Manhattan. We’d been seated at the same table at a blowout celebrating the sixty-fifth birthday of Worldwide’s CEO, Commander Vernon Di Voss. Vida, then part of the team of reporters covering the White House, had flown in from D.C. with her husband, Congressman Harrison Oakley.

At the time I’d pegged him as a pompous, “I rose above my ghetto background to become a Princeton graduate” jerk who couldn’t hold his liquor. He took offense at my making polite conversation with his wife, whom he was ignoring in favor of a sitcom starlet with a chest size higher than her IQ. As it turned out, good old Harrison was also a greedhead who, shortly thereafter, got caught in the blowback from the Jack Abramoff scandal. For his crimes, including lying to a grand jury, he went off for a year and a day to the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland.

His conviction turned out to be a good thing for Vida, at least professionally (and I hoped personally). She divorced the bastard and, since his criminal behavior had seriously compromised her effectiveness as a capital reporter, she’d leapt at the offer of an early-morning newswriter and -reader spot at the network’s owned-and-operated affiliate in Los Angeles.

In relatively few years, she’d made an astonishing series of career leaps until, finally, thanks to an Emmy nomination for her documentary
Crack in the Wall of Sound: The Phil Spector Story
, she’d settled in as a regular contributor to
Hotline
, the net’s prime-time newsmagazine.

“Actually, we met only once,” I told Carmen. “But the effect was profound.”

I stepped back a few paces to observe Vida. “You were merely beautiful then. Now … wow!”

“Is it any wonder I jumped at the chance to spend a few days with this lovely man?” she asked Carmen.

“Whatever spins your Frisbee,” Carmen said as she shoved papers into a briefcase the size of a garment bag. “It’s past time I hit the road. Thanks to Billy’s tiny bladder, I’ll be spending the next hour or more creeping through going-home traffic all the way to Costa Mesa.”

“You live in Costa Mesa?” I asked.

“Why would anyone live in Costa Mesa?” she replied, clicking the case shut. “I’m going there to see a revival of
Equus
at South Coast Rep. We’re about to put the young male lead under contract and, thanks to the full-frontal scene, I’ll never get a better chance to judge his talent.”

She picked up the case and, apparently deciding it was too heavy for her, handed it to Whisper, who nearly threw her back out accepting it. The four of us took a crowded elevator down to the main floor. “Anything else you need, Billy,” Carmen said, “don’t hesitate to ask … Vida.”

We watched her marching off past other exiting staffers, Whisper at her heels, struggling with the briefcase.

“Well, that was bracing,” I said.

“Carmen is definitely one of a kind,” she said. “I like working with her. This is Passive-Aggressive City. Passive to your face, doubly aggressive behind your back. Carmen gives it to you straight.”

“So you’re my guide, huh? Things that slow at
Hotline
?”

“Hardly,” she said. “And this won’t be all fun and games. Your producer in New York sent a laundry list of ‘wants.’ ”

“Why don’t we discuss them over dinner?” I suggested.

“I’d love to, Billy, but I, ah … have another commitment.” She dug a card out of her handbag. “Call me tomorrow, any time after nine, and we’ll set something up.”

She moved forward, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “See you when I see you.”

Who says romance is dead?

Chapter
ELEVEN

Carmen was right about the going-home traffic. It was even worse than it was on the drive in, the stop-and-go extending all the way to Malibu. It was after seven when my guidance system led me to a supermarket near the Sands, another forty-five minutes before I turned onto Malibu Sands Drive.

Lars and Manny were on duty at the gate. I’d met them earlier, heading out for my walk to the car rental agency. At that hour their khaki uniforms had looked neat and pressed. Now, like the guards themselves, they’d lost some of their starch.

Lars was in his forties, with a long, flat face that resembled the character actor who’d played the Frankenstein-like father in
The Munsters
, Fred Gwynne. Watery blue eyes, mouth turned down at the edges, gray hair, judging by what I could see of it under his peak cap. Manny, whose name was Manuel, I assumed, was in his twenties, Mexican American, slightly overweight but muscled. He was there for the heavy lifting.

Neither man carried a gun, a good thing, probably, because when Manny first caught sight of me that afternoon, I’d had three strikes against me. I was a black man he didn’t know traveling by foot inside his gated community. Fortunately, Lars had recognized me before Manny even had the chance to slide his nightstick from his belt.

But Manny and I seemed to be on good terms now. “Sweet wheels,” he said, waving me through.

Security floodlights were brightening the area in front of Villa Delfina, illuminating two unfamiliar vehicles parked in the driveway, a pea-green Hummer that was about the ugliest SUV I’d ever seen and a dark blue Camry Hybrid. I anchored the Lexus between them, its proper gas-guzzling position.

I put the top up and used the little gizmo to close the gate. I struggled out of the car, plucked the grocery bags from the passenger seat, and took the walkway beside the villa, heading for the guesthouse. I was almost there when I saw Fitz galumphing past the pool in my direction.

“Yo, Billy,” he called out.

I watched, bemused, as he approached. “Glad to see you, cobber,” he said, breathing hard for such a short dash. “Please tell me it was you left the slidin’ door open.”

“I’m pretty sure I closed it, Fitz. In any case, I left before you did.”

“Shite! I was hopin’ you’d come back.”

I shook my head. “What’s up?”

“We, ah … somebody mighta been in the house.”

“A break-in?”

“Well … yeah. I guess you’d call it that.”

“What would you call it?”

“A break-in. I mean, it looks like that. The back door was open when we got here a few minutes ago. Only they didn’t really break any lock or anything.”

“Then how’d they get in?” I asked, the groceries starting to get heavier.

“Ah … maybe the door was unlocked,” he said. “I ain’t used to settin’ alarms.”

The sound of glass breaking inside the villa drew his attention. “Des is goin’ fuckin’ ballistic. I better get back.”

“I’ll catch up with you as soon as I put this stuff away,” I said.

It took me only a few minutes to unlock the guesthouse, shove the perishables in the fridge, and glance around to make sure my valuables, such as they were, had been undisturbed. When I arrived at the villa, I found a visitor in the living room with a cigarette in her mouth, a dust brush in her right hand, and a dustpan in her left. In the pan were the pieces of what looked like a china cat. The woman turned toward me, cocked her head to keep the smoke from drifting up into her eyes, and said around the cigarette, “Welcome to the happiest place on earth. Oh, wait. That’s Disneyland.”

“This is fecking unacceptable, you brainless sot,” Des shouted from somewhere up above.

“The second-happiest place on earth,” the smoking woman said.

She was in her forties, light brown hair professionally styled and highlighted by streaks of blond and gray. A strong jaw, straight nose. Full lips colored a frosted pink. Big prescription glasses in black curved aviator-style frames with
DG
in prominent letters on the temples. Green eyes. Green blouse, more or less covering full breasts. White silk slacks covering long legs. Pink-tipped toes tucked into black sandals with thick platform soles.

She looked vaguely familiar.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Billy—”

“Blessing. Yes. I know. Excuse me a minute.” She moved to a table, got rid of the dust implements, and plucked the cigarette from her lips with her left hand. She extended her right and said, “I’m April Edding. Parker and Bowen Public Relations. We’re handling PR and publicity for
O’Day at Night.
”

We shook hands. I gestured toward the broken cat and said, “It looks like you may have your work cut out for you.”

“Oh,
this,
” she said. “A minor show of pique. Hardly in the same class as tossing one of L.A.’s better-known chefs into a swimming pool.”

“Touché.”

“I was there,” she said. “At Stew’s.”

“Yes. I believe I saw you. I’m sorry we didn’t meet.”

“Well, you seemed a bit occupied with Roger,” she said. “Speaking professionally, if you must do something like that again, please continue to do it in front of paparazzi. It’s publicity gold. Actually, I know the lady who handles Roger’s PR. Regina Simons. I bet we could work out a smashing event in which you and he just happen to meet up again. Fan the media flames a little?”

“Try something like that,” I said, smiling sweetly, “and I just might toss
you
into a swimming pool.”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t cause a ripple, publicity-wise.”

A thud almost rattled the overhead rafters.

“I’d better see what’s going on up there,” I said.

“We ladies love you action heroes,” she said as I headed toward the stairs.

The guys were in a large room with windows that looked out at the beach and ocean. Judging by the various musical instruments resting in cases on the bed and on a chair near a mirrored closet, it was Fitz’s bedroom.

The musician was zipping up an overnight bag.

Des was draped across the only other chair, his right hand wrapped around a bottle of what looked like schnapps resting on his flat stomach.

“What was the noise?” I asked.

“Billy, me lad,” Des said, sounding surprisingly mellow. “Me faithful friend Fitz was just givin’ me a display of his strength by slamming his luggage onto the floor.”

Fitz sheepishly lifted a huge metal footlocker from the hardwood floor and placed it into the closet as effortlessly as if it were a bag of goose down. He saw the gouge it had left in the hardwood and rubbed the rubber sole of his Nike over it. He seemed disappointed that it hadn’t disappeared.

“Don’t worry about it, boyo,” Des said. “Gives the place character. The important thing is nobody has messed with the lock.”

He looked at me. “It appears our concerns were for naught. Nothing seems to be missing.”

“Good to hear,” I said.

“You meet April?”

I nodded.

He straightened and stood with his liqueur. “The three of us are heading out to dinner. April says the place we’re going, Frush, is
the
current hot place to eat. Come on along.”

I recalled that Frush was one of Roger’s restaurants. “Thanks, but I think I’ll just fix something light and catch up on my z’s.”

“You can get all the sleep you need when you’re dead,” Des said.

I could have mentioned that that was precisely why I wasn’t going to Frush. Instead, I asked what he thought of April.

“She seems to know what she’s doing. She was a big help in findin’ the locations where we filmed today.”

“She’s workin’ on a
60 Minutes
segment for Des,” Fitz added as we headed downstairs.

“Wouldn’t that just piss Letterman off?” Des said with a grin.

Searching for a word that described their mood, I settled on “semi-relieved.” Only minutes ago, Fitz had been fully stressed and Des was breaking crockery and yelling. I wondered what was in that footlocker. Something the burglar had not found, if indeed there’d been a burglar.

“Everything safe and secure?” April asked, when we joined her.

“Best as we can tell,” Des said.

“Maybe the wind blew the door open,” Fitz said.

I looked at the sliding door, seriously doubting a breeze off the ocean could move a sixty-pound sliding tempered-glass-and-steel door sideways.

Fitz tensed suddenly and said, “The bloody game room!”

“Well, go check,” Des told him, and Fitz ran off in that direction.

The comedian’s interest turned to the subject of drinks before they left for dinner. April’s request for white wine prompted a mild rant from our host about Southern Californians’ preference for wine over hard booze that sounded suspiciously like a stand-up routine he’d used before.

When he hit his punch line—“so when I’m drinking something, I want it to be the product of clean, healthy barley, not grapes that’ve been stomped on by some Eye-talian broad with dirty feet”—I excused myself and moved away from their chatter to put in a call to Cassandra.

She answered on the third ring. “Snoozing on the job?” I asked.

“How well you know me, Billy,” she said. “Actually, I was not expecting a call this late. I’d assumed you were losing interest in your little food stand. It’s such a minor part of the expanding coast-to-coast Blessing empire.”

“I’ve been a little busy here,” I said, though I didn’t feel an apology was necessary. “How’d my little food stand do tonight?”

She gave me a quick summary of the evening’s business, which was very good news, then went on to complain about a waiter who’d arrived for work with a head cold. “I sent the idiot home immediately. They’ve all been warned. Everybody’s so damned health-conscious these days. One loud sneeze from a food handler and this place is as empty as a bowling alley.”

“There’s got to be a better simile,” I said. “Bowling is a popular sport.”

“Okay,
you
come up with one.”

“As empty as … a country-western concert at the Apollo?”

“Too strained,” she said. “And too stereotypical. If that’s all you’ve got …”

I was in the midst of concocting the perfect empty-room simile, involving the mind of a publicity-hungry reality-show reject, when I caught a whiff of something coming from the kitchen.

I sniffed again.

“My God, Billy, don’t tell me you’re coming down with something,” Cassandra asked.

“No,” I said, distracted now. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I was vaguely aware of the stream of profanities indicating that Cassandra was not ready to ring off, but by then I was snapping my phone shut.

“Anybody smell anything?” I asked the others.

“Yes,” April said. “Something’s cooking.”

“I’m guessing none of you is prepping hors d’oeuvres?” I said.

Not waiting for the answer, I pushed past the kitchen door.

The cooking odor was strong now.
Meat
, I thought,
or possibly fowl
. There was also an acrid smell mixed in. Something burning. All of this was emanating from the electric range, where a digital readout indicated that the broiler temperature was 400 degrees, with twenty-seven minutes left before the cooking was complete.

I grabbed a kitchen mitt and opened the broiler. Sizzling noises and some smoke, along with a full dose of the unpleasant fragrance.

April was standing behind me as I pulled out the sliding tray.

“My God,” she said. “Is that what I think it is?”

There wasn’t much doubt. If you’ve seen one ugly gray rat simmering in its own juices, its fur singed and smoking, you’ve seen ’em all. Someone had decided to broil the rat, surrounded by potatoes and carrots and sprinkled with parsley. They’d even placed a cherry tomato in the critter’s mouth.