The Trials of Nikki Hill (37 page)

Bayliss apparently had not been expecting the question. His head jerked back and he momentarily dropped his arrogance. “The murder? I know nothing about that.”

“Then we’ve wasted enough of your time and ours. Thank you.”

She sat back down.

Bayliss, still a bit shaken, looked at the judge, who told him he could step down. As he walked past them, Nikki leaned toward Wise and whispered, “What just rocked Bayliss’s world? Did we miss something?”

Wise was watching the table to their left. Nikki turned and saw a very annoyed Anna Marie Dayne speaking quickly into the ear of an apparently agitated assistant. “Whatever it was we overlooked,” Wise said, “I think the defense is just as clueless.”

S
EVENTY-TWO

W
hen Virgil arrived for dinner that night, Nikki was using one of her fancy machines to puree baked garlic cloves.

She moved quickly from behind the stove, but not quickly enough to head off the giant in the tight midnight-blue suit who had drawn his gun and was now unlocking the front door. Bird leaped from his cushion and stood poised, waiting for Nikki’s command.

She was too busy watching the giant open the door and point his gun at Virgil.

“Sonny,” she cried out. “He’s okay. This is the man I told you about. “

Virgil, standing there holding a bottle of wine, looked from Sonny to Sonny’s gun. Then he turned to Nikki and asked, “A story go with this, Red?”

“This is Sonny. My bodyguard.”

“Nice gig,” the detective said. He faced the big man and put out his free hand. “Virgil Sykes, Sonny,” he said.

“Forgive me if I don’t shake your hand, Virgil,” Sonny said, holstering his weapon, “but I like to keep mine empty and ready when I’m on duty.”

Virgil shrugged, withdrew his hand, and turned to Nikki. “Okay, what now?”

“You folks ’scuse me,” Sonny said, striding past the detective to make his exit.

“Sonny will be spending the evening in his car,” Nikki said.

“Dinner, too?”

“Dinner, too,” she said. “Feels he can survey the scene better out there.”

“Bless his gun-totin’ soul,” Virgil said. He was suddenly very serious. “Got pretty rough last night, huh?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Hell of a time for me to be at a friend’s place watching the Lakers,” he said. “How’d they get in?”

“Popped the front door,” she said. “My girlfriend came by to feed Bird and didn’t know about putting on the double lock.”

“Aw, baby,” he said. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

Bird pushed his big head between them and eventually pried them apart.

“I thought we had an understanding,” Virgil told the dog. He took something from his pocket and slipped it to the animal, who gobbled it down.

“What’d you give him?” Nikki asked.

“Dog treat,” Virgil said. “New kinda dry burger meat. Part of my plan to win him over. What should I do with this human treat?” He held out the bottle of wine.

“Hey, no Ripple for us,” Nikki said, noting the vintage and trying not to think about the strands of burger she’d found in Bird’s beard the night before. “Pop the cork, mister.”

They walked to the kitchen. He handed her something else from his pocket, a CD featuring the singer Erykah Badu. She fed it into her player while he rounded the counter looking for a corkscrew. “Umm-um.” He inhaled loudly. “Smells like my sweet mama’s kitchen. Don’t know where you find the time to shop and cook, in court all day long.”

She flashed on the race to the supermarket, the hunt for something, anything, that might make a dinner she could whip up quickly, the checkout lane that refused to move, Sonny at her heels the whole time. Then the rush to feed Bird, clean up the place, shower, dress. Cook. “Just got to take things in stride,” she said as the singer-songwriter’s odd mixture of soul and hip-hop filled the house.

“Wise musta had his work cut out for him today,” he said, handing her a glass of white wine. “Dude on the radio said he just about had to jump down some guy’s gullet to pull the answers out.”

“Well, he got ’em out,” Nikki said, taking the wine.

“To us, Red,” he said, clinking glasses.

The wine was cool and crisp. She took a second sip and applied herself to the task of pan-searing their steaks, then covering them with a garlic cream sauce. “How’d the Lakers do, by the way?” she asked.

“Got their butts whipped by the Jazz.” He looked at the steaks. “Just two, honey? What about old Sonny? Looks like he could eat these and a few more.”

“Sonny fixed himself a salad. He’s a vegetarian.”

“He’s something, that’s for sure.”

They dined sitting on wooden folding chairs facing one another over a card table covered by a red-and-white-checked cloth she’d bought at the supermarket. Virgil’s comment, when he saw the table and chairs in the middle of her otherwise empty large dining room, was, “You got some monk doing your interior design, Red?”

Once the lights were lowered, the candles glowing, the food served, Bird taking it easy lying in the doorway and Gladys Knight communing with the Pips in the background, he amended his original statement. “This is sorta nice ’n’ cozy.”

She watched him devour his steak, nearly certain she was being foolish to suspect he could have had anything to do with the break-in. The food particles in the dog’s beard had looked like regular hamburger, not anything dry. Virgil was too clever to waltz in and feed the dog the same thing that had knocked him out the night before. Anyway, she knew he wasn’t either of the two housebreakers.

Why was she even thinking this nonsense? Because only a short time after she told him about Mason Durant, somebody had scrawled that name on her bathroom mirror.
You’re behaving like a crazy woman. He was at a friend’s house, like he said. Watching the Lakers. It’s easy enough to check to see if the game really was televised.

Stop, damn it,
she commanded herself. Still, the suspicion was there.

“You’re not eating,” Virgil said. “I know some chefs can’t eat their own cooking, but in this case, that’d be a crime. This is great.”

“I’m just worn out,” she said.

When they’d cleared the table, he asked, “Nightcap at my place?”

She shook her head. “Like I told you, I’m onstage tomorrow morning.” She was glad that when she’d invited him to dinner, she’d warned that the evening would end early. She’d have to be up at the crack of dawn to prepare for court. Now she had an even stronger reason: she wanted to be alone to deal with her suspicions, to examine them and hopefully discard them before they did serious damage to

the bond growing between them.

“Nightcap here, then?”

“Raincheck,” she said.

“Sonny staying the night?”

“Jealous?” As confused as she was, she found the idea amusing.

“At least curious.”

“There’s another guy, Mark, who takes over at four.”

“I could save the county the overtime. Keep the bad guys away for nothing.”

“Who’d keep you away?” she asked.

She thought his smile faltered. But it was back almost immediately. “That’s where the Bird dog comes in,” he said as she walked him to the front door.

“You’ve corrupted him with your treats.”

“Don’t sell him short,” Virgil said. “Takes more than a treat to turn that boy. See you tomorrow?”

She hesitated. “I’m having dinner with Loreen. I told you about her.”

“Your best friend. Okay, if your plans change or you want to get together after your dinner, give me a call.”

He leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers.

For the first time, she held back a little.

He sensed something was wrong. Gave her a wistful smile and said good night.

She stayed in the doorway, watching him stroll down the walk and give Sonny a two-fingered salute before getting into his car.

Am I being a fool?
she wondered.
Or have I already been one?

S
EVENTY-THREE

G
oodman watched Gwen’s car disappear into the underground parking lot at a four-story building in Beverly Hills. He braked at the curb. Even without a night-light, he could make out the tasteful but shiny gold lettering on the building’s glass front door. The Adler Agency.

Although any number of men worked for the talent agency, using his standard guide of worst-case scenario, Goodman knew exactly whom she’d come to see. Hobart Fucking Adler.

Just fifteen minutes before, he and Gwen and her partner, Manolo, had been drinking beer at the Short Stop, a cop hangout on Cesar Chavez Avenue. Her beeper had gone off and she’d left to use the pay phone. She was back almost immediately. “Sorry, guys, gotta run.”

“I thought we were all gonna head out to Lucy’s,” Manolo had complained.

“Can’t make it tonight,” she’d said, looking at Goodman.

He’d watched her walk out of the bar. Then he’d followed her out, vaguely conscious of the big Samoan yelling his name.

Now he sat in his car in front of the office building, surprised that on a warm Southern California night there could still be a chill in the air. He knew his next move. Was he thinking like a cop or a rejected lover? It didn’t much matter in the long run. The hard fact was that Gwen was a policewoman involved with someone who had a lot riding on the Maddie Gray murder case. The case
he
was investigating.

He had to find out if she’d stepped over the line.

Gwen arrived at her apartment a little after one-thirty A.M. to discover Goodman slouched on her sofa, feet on her coffee table, bottle in hand.

“I used a pick to let myself in,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“
Mi casa
and all that shit,” she said testily. She kicked off her shoes and dropped her purse with a clunk on the floor. “See you found the tequila, huh?”

“Found this, too.” He took a folded rectangle of paper from his pocket. It had been in a shoe box in her bedroom closet.

She sagged. She recognized it, of course. You don’t not recognize a check made out to you in the sum of twenty thousand dollars.

“What’s this Magna Productions, paying you all this loot?” he asked.

“A film company,” she almost whispered, sitting beside him on the sofa. Picking up the tequila bottle. Purposely ignoring the check.

“New one on me. Magna. Says down here in the corner ‘consultant’s fee.’ Back when I did my consulting, twenty large’d buy quite a bit of my time. Of course, that was a while ago. What’s it buy now?”

She put the bottle to her lips and took a large gulp.

“Movie or TV?” he asked.

“Stop it,” she hissed.

“Probably a feature film, that kind of dough.”

“Stop it,” she said again, louder.

“You must have a good agent.”

“Stop it!” she screamed at him. She began to cry, pounding the tequila bottle on the couch beside her.

Goodman pried the bottle from her clenched hand, placed it on the table, and watched her cry. If it had been a movie, he’d have had a handkerchief to offer her. He wondered if anybody other than guys in movies ever carried one anymore.

He looked around the room for a Kleenex. The best he could find was a paper napkin. She threw it back at him, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her cotton shirt. “You don’t want any part of this, Eddie,” she said. “These people don’t play nice.”

“Adler? Hell, I’m already on your boyfriend’s shit list. Carlos and I fronted him and Doyle off at lunch the other day. Made him blink. He ain’t so tough.”

She was not amused. “Christ’s sake, you don’t play little cop games with somebody like Hobie. You try to catch him when he’s asleep and drive a wooden stake through his heart.”

“That’s nice talk about your main squeeze.”

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I’m his mistress, okay?” she said harshly. “He gets horny, he calls me. I get him off, he sends me away.”

“Sounds like a sweet deal for you,” he said.

“Get out of here, Eddie.”

He felt the blood building up in his veins, felt the slightly dizzy sensation caused by the pressure. He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. “Let’s talk a little about the twenty grand,” he said.

She shook her head.

“It’s me or Corben.”

“You wouldn’t bring this to Corben?”

“Without batting an eye.” He wondered if that was true. He thought it might be.

She grabbed the tequila. Dutch courage, or was she simply playing for time?

“I used to be pretty good at figuring things out,” he said. “Let’s see what I can deduce.” Actually, he’d spent over an hour analyzing the facts.

He mock-studied the check. “This date’s familiar. It’s the day after Maddie’s body turned up, the start of our investigation of the murder. I don’t imagine that’s a coincidence. So, let’s see, what could you have done for your boyfriend to earn this loot? I guess we can rule out sex, since you were giving that away.”

“Eddie...”

“What then? A running report on our progress? Not worth two gees, much less twenty. Something world-class. Something that Dyana Cooper really needed. Wanna know my guess?”

She watched him, saying nothing.

“The glass with her fingerprints that was missing from the room where we found the blood.”

“You honestly believe I’d steal what I thought was crucial evidence from a crime scene?” she asked.

“At this point, Gwen, what I believe or don’t believe is pretty immaterial. The facts speak for themselves. You took something from the crime scene, something big-time.”

“You have to understand. Hobie is...well, Hobie. Charming. Smooth. I wasn’t...we weren’t in love, or anything like that. It was kicks. He was great to be with. Exciting. Fun. He loved hearing stories about the job. He wanted me to start keeping a journal. Said he could sell it in a minute. But you know how I am, Eddie. I can’t even get my reports done without a gun to my head.”

Let her talk,
he thought.
Keep listening and try to pretend she’s just another suspect.

“Anyhow, he asked me to do him a favor. Like a fool, I did. Everything changed. He gave me a check. A payoff. The fucker!”