The Trials of Nikki Hill (35 page)

“And Doyle?” Corben asked.

“No wants, no warrants.”

Corben hummed a bar of some music Goodman was unable to identify, then turned to Morales. “What’s your take on Doyle?”

“Man don’t blink.”

Corben scowled as if he didn’t consider that to be proof positive. “I’ll put somebody on Doyle’s case. Meanwhile, I been thinking of assigning another team to help you out with Lydon.”

“Could you hold up on that, chief?” Goodman asked. “At least until Carlos and I take a run at Doyle?”

“What kind of a run?”

“Shake his cage a little. See what falls out.”

“Nothing extreme, understand?”

They started to go.

“How’s your wisdom tooth, Morales?” Corben asked.

“Think I’m gonna have to yank the fucker,” the detective replied.

In Morales’s car, Goodman noticed a little Day of the Dead figurine stuck to the dash. The skeleton was wearing a dark suit and had a packet of money sticking out of his coat pocket.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Lawyer.”

“From the Palmers’ shop?” Goodman asked.

“I dropped by there yesterday.”

“Without me?” Goodman sounded hurt. “You conducting your own investigation in Lydon’s death?”

“Not ’zackly.”

“What’s that mean?”

“If I tole you, I know what you’d say. That I’m wastin’ my time. So we gonna go talk with your man Doyle or not?”

“I suppose so,” Goodman said, wondering why, suddenly, he was out of everybody’s loop.

Nearly two hours later, Jimmy Doyle bounced down the steps from the house in the hills, got in his rental Lexus, and drove off. Morales and Goodman followed.

He led them to a sun-baked minimall just off La Brea. Cars filled the parking area before four storefronts—Tip-Top Costumes (For All Occasions), Slip’n’Spin Rollerballs, Vic’s Video Repairs, and Wu Seafoo, the “d” in the name lost to the ages, apparently.

Doyle turned over his keys to a lot attendant in a Hawaiian shirt. Parked in a bus zone, the two detectives watched the stocky man saunter past a Rolls into Wu Seafoo.

“Look at the low riders on that lot,” Morales said. The automobiles were mainly Benzes, BMWs, and Lexuses, with the odd Jaguar and Suburban making up the mix. “What the hell goes on at Wu’s?”

“Guys eating seafoo,” Goodman said. During the period when he’d provided technical advice to a television series, he’d been taken there a couple of times by the genial young owner of the production company, who was addicted to risks and who eventually embarked on a fatal sky dive headfirst into the Mojave.

Wu’s had not been the detective’s idea of a real restaurant. Real restaurants had tablecloths and waiters in tuxes and menus and a cocktail area. Wu’s was an establishment frequented by men—primarily Asians and jaded Americans— who delighted in paying top dollar to sit at a Formica counter and dine on exotic and sometimes potentially lethal denizens of the sea.

When Goodman and Morales entered the air-conditioned, brightly-lit room, the counter customer nearest the door, a plump Asian gentleman, was dropping something with dangling tentacles into his mouth. Morales seemed fascinated by the spectacle.

Doyle was at the rear of the room, sitting at one of only three tables in the place. There was a tall, dignified man with him. They were chatting good-naturedly with their aged waiter. Goodman wondered if the old man might be Wu himself.

As they brushed past, the jabbering maître’d, the two young guys in chef’s hats behind the long counter, a waiter beside the first table, and the one who was possibly Wu near the Doyle party all zeroed in on them. Goodman had seen their kind of eyes before—deceptively emotionless, maybe a bit curious, but, ultimately, expecting the worst from the barbarians. That might be exactly what they were going to get.

Doyle recognized them immediately. He slid his chair back a few inches. To give him room to swing? No. He stood up and reached out a hand. “Detective Goodman, isn’t it? And . . .” He seemed to be searching his memory. “Morales.”

When it became obvious that neither of them was going to accept his offered hand, he withdrew it. Goodman looked at the distinguished man. “You an associate of Mr. Doyle?” he asked.

“Hobie,” Doyle said, “these are the detectives working the Madeleine Gray murder. Gentlemen, Hobart Adler.”

The tall man nodded agreeably. Goodman knew the name. The guy was a hotshot talent agent. What would he and Doyle be discussing? The detective smiled and threw out a fishing line. “Dyana Cooper’s agent, right?”

“Hobie is everybody’s agent,” Doyle said.

“I believe I saw you in the news a few nights ago, Detective Goodman,” Adler said. “You were leaving the courtroom. Everything went well, I hope.”

The smarmy-smooth bastard.
“Everything went like roses,” Goodman replied. “The defense attorney tried to run some fake evidence past us, but she got nailed. I hear the judge is going to sanction her. Imagine trying a dumb stunt like that?”

“We were about to have lunch, detective,” Doyle said. “I know you’ll excuse us.”

“Actually, Jamey,” Goodman said, “it’s you we’re here to see.”

Doyle’s face broke into a dangerous smile. “Jamey? Nobody’s called me that in a long time.”

“Your mom, wasn’t it?” Goodman asked.

“Yeah. My mom.” Doyle was staring at him now.

The ancient waiter stepped into the scene. “You gentlemen wish to be seated?”

“No,” Morales said, flashing his badge. “And I ain’t so sure we’re gen’l’men.”

“Jimmy,” Adler said, “if you’ve some business with these fellows, why don’t we have our lunch some other time?”

“Hey, don’t run off,” Morales said, blocking Adler’s exit. “You gotta eat. You oughta try one of them sticker fish that kill you dead if they cook it wrong.”

“Sounds delightful, but I think I’ll be leaving,” Adler said, barely ruffled, if at all.

“We’re just going to ask Jamey a few questions about some stuff we found at the home of a friend of his, Peter Sandoval.”

Adler blinked.
The bastard blinked!
Goodman was ashamed at the delight he felt over so slight an achievement. “Sorry you can’t stay,” he said.

The agent seemed torn.

Morales sent him on his way with “So long, Jobart, see you aroun’.”

As Adler made his exit, a remarkably graceful one considering the circumstances, Doyle sat down at his table and said, “You boys don’t want to rile him for no reason.”

“Hobie?” Goodman said, taking Adler’s chair. “Hell, he’s an old prom queen.”

Doyle watched Morales drag a chair over from another table. Then he turned his head toward Goodman. “You look a little long in the tooth to be behaving like such an asshole.”

“That’s the beauty of age,” Goodman said. “You reach a point where you can get away with anything. And if not, what difference does it make?”

“If you say so,” Doyle said. “You guys want some fish? On me.”

“Naw,” Morales said. “These people put MSG on everything.”

“Well, here we are,” Doyle said. “You got a question about Sandoval?”

“We were wondering if you knew his whereabouts,” Goodman asked.

“Peter’s a blithe spirit,” Doyle said. “What do you want with him?”

“Robbery, murder, interfering with an investigation,” Goodman said. “Maybe even racketeering. Pick a topic. We haven’t gone through all his stuff yet. The guy was like a pack rat. His place is full of hidey-holes jammed with material. I’m particularly interested in his files on Leonard Quarles. You knew Quarles, didn’t you?”

“In passing,” Doyle said. “You sure about Peter? It doesn’t sound like him at all.”

“What’s Sandoval been doing for you?” Goodman asked.

“Nothing. Like you said, he’s a friend.”

“Oh?” Goodman put on his surprised look. “Then he wasn’t working on Dyana Cooper’s behalf when he black-bagged Arthur Lydon’s place?”

“Boys, I think you must be talking about some other Peter Sandoval. The one I know used to be a policeman, just like you.”

“Maybe a little different,” Goodman said, rising. “Love to sit around all day and chat with you, Jamey. But we’ve got other puffer fish to fry.”

Morales got to his feet, too.

“You did some research on me, huh?” Doyle asked Goodman. “Found out my sainted mom called me ‘Jamey’?”

Goodman had located a Boston cop whose family had grown up on the same block as Doyle’s. He looked the smirking man in the eye and said, “Just something I spotted in one of Sandoval’s files. You have a nice lunch now.”

S
EVENTY

I
t was about four
P.M.
when Nikki finished up with her witness, Milan Jabhad, the night manager at Quik-E-Gas on Sunset and La Brea. Jabhad had seen a tan Jaguar XKE pull up to his pumps at approximately 9:05 P.M. on the night of the Gray murder. Since the car was on the other side of the pumps, he’d been unable to identify the person who got out to fill the tank, but, as he informed the courtroom, he’d watched the car drive away. He added that he thought there may have been two people in it.

The nervous little man had failed to mention that during the several hours of interrogation at the D.A.’s offices the previous evening. Stung by the unexpected revelation, which cast doubt on the prosecution’s theory that Dyana Cooper had acted alone, Nikki tried to get back on track. Knowing the man’s indecision, she asked, “But you can’t be sure you saw two people?”

“Objection. Leading her own witness.”

“Sustained.”

“How many people are you absolutely certain you saw, Mr. Jabhad?”

“I only saw part of one,” he replied, eyes as wide and full of alarm as a runaway horse. “When she pumped the gas.”

The night before, the little man had told her that he could not identify Dyana Cooper, could not, in fact, say if the person had been a male or a female. Nikki felt it a personal triumph that he was now referring to the pumper as “she.”

“So if you had to answer yes or no to the question about seeing two people...?”

“I would have to say no. I saw just the one.”

Nikki then led him to explain how his credit card setup worked, with the card being applied to a slot just beside the pump. The coded information on the card, plus the date and time and amount, were then transmitted to a machine in the bulletproof glass booth where he sat through the night.

Nikki entered into evidence the slip stating that a credit card assigned to Dyana Cooper Willins had been used to purchase $28.47 worth of gas at Quick-E-Gas on the night of the murder.

When she returned to the table, Wise passed her a note. “Lousy preparation.”

“How’d you like my foot up your ass?” she whispered to him, smiling all the while.

The first question Anna Marie Dayne asked in her cross-examination was, “Mr. Jabhad, you know what Ms. Cooper looks like, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Can you state without question that she was the person in that Jaguar?”

“No.”

“So it could have been two people, neither of whom was Ms. Cooper?”

“Objection. Mr. Jabhad has stated that he saw only one person.”

“Mr. Jabhad,” Dayne said, consulting her notes, “you said you had the impression there might have been two people. What was it that gave you that impression?”

The little man didn’t answer at once. His body tensed and he seemed to be staring down at his shiny but pressed dark blue trousers. Then he brightened. “A shadow. I saw the shadow of someone next to the passenger window, as the car drove away.”

“And neither of these two people resembled Dyana Cooper?”

“I didn’t get a good look. But her credit card—”

“Did you see her use the card?”

“No.”

“And her signature is not on the sales slip?”

“Our system does not require—”

“Yes or no.”

“No. She didn’t sign the slip.”

“So two other people could have been in that car, using a card stolen from Dyana Cooper?”

“Objection. Calls for speculation.”

“Sustained.”

“I’m finished with this witness,” Dayne said.

“Redirect, your honor,” Nikki said.

This was what it was always about. The thousand and one little impressions the jurors got of how the trial was progressing. Time to leave them with something to chew on. “Mr. Jabhad, just to clarify, how many people were in the car?”

“Two. I am sure of that now.”

“Couldn’t the two have been Dyana Cooper and, in the seat beside her, the wrapped body of her victim, Madeleine

Gray?”

“Objection, your honor.”

“Question withdrawn,” Nikki said, filled with the satisfaction of seeing most of the jurors scribbling away on their tablets.

Then she was back in her office, scribbling on her own, prepping for the next day. At eight P.M., she and Wise dined for a leisurely fifteen minutes—two Whoppers, fries, diet Coke for him, Sprite and a shot of tequila for her—during which time they also managed to work out a full week’s game plan.

At a little after ten that night, Nikki put her automatic garage opener to work and eased the Mazda into a niche created by boxes filled with books and old clothes still unopened from the move. Wearily, she clicked the garage door closed and dragged herself from the car.

She yawned while unlocking the door to the house.

She was surprised that Bird wasn’t there to meet her. But it was late.

She walked down the hall toward the front of the house, depositing her briefcase on the kitchen counter. The moon was shining through the glass doors, providing enough illumination that she didn’t even bother to turn on the lights.

She poked her head into the living room. Bird’s plaid mattress was empty.

Something else caught her eye: an outline of light around the front door, caused by the street lamp outside.

The front door was open!

Could Loreen have been that careless when she dropped by to feed Bird?

Nikki ran to the door, the adrenaline rush chasing away any thought of sleep.

The street in front of the house was empty. The dog wouldn’t have run away.

She stepped back into the house. “Bird?” she called.

From somewhere at the rear of the house came a reassuring growl.