A Death In Beverly Hills (17 page)

"Don't be sorry!" Steve snapped, then continued in a softer tone, "I appreciate your help."

"It wasn't much help. I don't have any clues to where she is or who kidnapped her."

"At least I know it wasn't Tom Travis."

"But that doesn't help you, in court, I mean. My . . .
vision
isn't evidence."

"No, but it helps me."

"You believe me, then?" Rebecca asked with a note of hope in her voice.

"Yes," Steve said, not sure why. Maybe he just wanted to believer her. He looked around the room. A bumble bee droned just outside the screen door. "Well. . . ." He stood and clasped her hand in both of his. "Thanks."

"Don't forget your sandwich." She shoved the plastic wrapped package into his hands.

"Thanks. I'll eat it when I get back to my place."

She walked him to the front door. Outside a mild breeze rustled the greening sycamore and Steve smelled orange blossoms on the wind.

"If I think of anything else. . . ."

"And maybe I can call you, sometime, just to talk. Maybe something will, you know, come to you."

Smiling, shyly, Steve thought, she closed the door.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Carey Ebbe studied the Escort's front left brake assembly with sour disdain. Son of a bitch calipers were half locked up with rust and mud and sand. What did the guy do, drive it through a couple of feet of salt water for ten or twenty miles? Where the hell was his rubber mallet? He'd break the fucker loose or break it off, one or the other.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a big guy come in and start talking to Romero. The guy was about six three and in pretty good shape, dressed in slacks, an open collar blue shirt and dark gray sport coat. Tool salesman? Insurance agent? Carey didn't recognize him as a customer. Turning back to the Escort he lifted the mallet and whammed it against the frozen caliper. It made a
thunk
noise and bounced off. Fucker! Carey slammed it down again and thought he felt the slightest bit of give. Then his back tingled and he took a quick glance over his shoulder. Romero was still talking to the big guy and then pointing at him.

Carey did a quick mental check of any unpleasant business that might be trailing him. A couple of speeding tickets and a reckless driving charge he had dodged, but this guy wasn't a cop, and besides cops in plain clothes didn't come after you for traffic tickets. He'd clocked some guy outside of the Brass Penguin, what, a month ago? Naw, they'd both walked away dripping a little blood. 'Mutual altercation' the cops called it. Could Jenny have tracked him down? Was this about child support for her brat? No, she didn't know where he was and if she did the first thing she'd have done was garnish his wages, real quick like, before he could skip out and get a job under another name.

Two handed he pounded the caliper. This time he definitely could feel it give. Behind him he sensed the big guy's approach. Run or play it out? Shit, maybe it was nothing. He got ready to smack the thing again.

"Excuse me, Mr. Ebbe?"

Mr. Ebbe? At least the guy was starting out polite. That was probably a good sign.

"Yeah, who are you?"

"Steve Janson. I'm investigating the Marian Travis murder. Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"You got a badge?"

"No, I'm working for the lawyers. Would you prefer to talk with a cop? I can ask Detective Katz to invite you down to Robbery-Homicide if you like. Of course, you'd miss half a day's work."

Carey lifted the mallet and turned back to the Escort. "What do you want to know?"
Thump
.

"Where were you the day she disappeared?"

Thump
. "When was that?"

"New Year's Eve day year before last."

"I don't remember."
Thump
.

Suddenly the mallet was yanked from his hand and Carey stumbled back against the fender.

"Hey, you could've--"

"I could have broken your fucking neck." Janson held the mallet even with his waist. "I still can." Carey gave him a mean glare which Janson ignored. "I've treated you politely but I guess you're one of those guys that doesn't work with, so we can go another way if you want."

Carey stared at the mallet for a second then seemed to subtly slump. "My boss don't like me missing work. I'm on the clock here."

"Then answer my questions and I'll leave."

"I've got work--"

"Your boss can't fire me, only you. So, how long do you want to play this game because I've got all day."
Slap
, the rubber hammer head slapped against Steve's palm. Carey stared at it then at Steve and figured he meant it.

"When was that again?"

"New Year's Eve day, year before last."

"How am I supposed to remember that?"

"It doesn't matter how who you are, rich or poor, everybody remembers what they did on Christmas and New Years so stop stalling."

"New Year's day, year before last," Carey mumbled as if the concept was just too complicated to grasp all at once. "Yeah, okay, now I remember. I was in Mexico."

"Where in Mexico?" Janson demanded. Carey could see interest flaring in his eyes.

"Where to you think? TJ."

"Tia Juana? What were you doing there?"

"Drinking and chasing whores like everybody else."

"At ten in the morning?"

"I wasn't even awake at ten in the morning," Carey said, snorting a laugh.

"Take me through your day."

Carey took another quick look at the rubber mallet and then at the office where Romero was giving him the evil eye, and shrugged.

"Okay, I woke up about, I don't know, ten thirty, eleven. I hit the Fat Burger for lunch then Phil Pentacoli and me, that's Phil over there," Carey pointed at the thin, hatchet- faced man two bays down, "hooked up. We kinda drove around then decided to go to TJ. We got there about seven, got some dinner then partied til midnight. Then we banged a couple of hookers to celebrate the new year, drank some more and went to sleep in Phil's van. He's got a couple of air mattresses in there." Carey barked a laugh. "Phil woke me up about four in the morning, puking his guts out then he grabbed my shirt to wipe his face. We got back here around noon, New Year's day."

"And Phil will confirm this?"

"Go ask him," Carey sneered.

"He's your buddy. He'll say anything you want him to."

"Hah! We ain't buddies no more."

"Why's that?"

"Why's that? Because I punched his fucking lights out for getting his shit all over my shirt. Almost broke his fucking nose, damn pansy." Carey reached out and grabbed the mallet. "If you're done breaking my balls, I've got work to do. Go over there and bother Phil, Hot Shot."

Ebbe turned his back on Steve and began to wiggle the caliper on the Escort. Steve studied his back for a moment then headed for Phil Pentacoli. It only took two minutes to confirm Ebbe's alibi. Pentacoli was no friend. "Son of a bitch half broke my nose!" he complained bitterly.

Steve mentally crossed Kaitlen's old boyfriend off his list of suspects. Another dead end. As he left the shop he heard a loud
thump-clang
.

"Got you, you son of a bitch," Ebbe shouted behind him.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Steve made one more stop before heading home, Riley Fontaine's record store. For about half a minute a solitary customer roamed the aisles then, shaking his head at Fontaine's astronomic prices, shuffled out the door. Steve immediately headed for the counter. For about thirty seconds Fontaine feigned memory failure before a vision of Sarah tied up in a closet someplace overwhelmed Steve. An instant later Fontaine found his head being ground into the back wall.

"All right, all right!" Riley croaked.

Steve shoved a pen and a notebook into his hands. "Start writing the names of your sister's girlfriends."

In a scribbled, half printing, half sloppy longhand, Fontaine scratched out a list of five names and cities of residence with a few cryptic descriptions, 'girl friend from woman's shelter charity'; 'old college roommate'; 'grew up together as kids' and the like.

With an angry flourish he shoved the pad into Steve's hands. "You're a degenerate, you know that?" Riley rubbed the edge of his neck where Steve had half-strangled him.

"If you had kept your promise you'd have no reason to complain."

"You lied to me. I checked you out. You're no cop. You're were asking me to help the guy who killed my sister."

"No, I asked you to help the guy who's
accused
of killing your sister, which is a whole different thing."
Why am I wasting my time?
Steve asked himself and turned away.

"How long do you think you can keep doing this?"

"Until the trial's over," Steve said, not looking back.

"I mean beating up anyone who gets in your way."

Steve paused and shot Fontaine a quizzical glance.

"It's karma man. What goes around comes around."

"You should go on Doctor Phil." Steve took a step toward the counter and Riley flinched.

"Your skull, man, it's like a bag of worms, all slithering around and pounding on the inside of your head. I can see them man, every time I look into your eyes." Steve took another step forward. "That's why I didn't give you the list, if you want do know the truth, because I knew you were all fucked up inside, just struggling every day to keep the top of your head from blowing off."

"If I'm as violent as you think, saying something like that could get you into serious trouble."

Riley retreated a step until his back was pressed against the wall. "There's no love in your heart man, just a crazy vacuum inside there. I don't want anything to do with you."

His face clouding with barely repressed rage, Steve leaned over the counter. "You got your list man," Riley whined, "so get the hell out of my place before I call the cops."

For a heartbeat all Steve could think about was pounding the smirk off Fontaine's face and then erasing the kid's accusations with a half a dozen shots of Scotland's finest. As Steve gauged the distance to Riley's head, the height of the counter, the reach of his fist, his brain seemed to fill with a hissing black squall that drowned out all rational thought, and all he could think about was the last time he had heard that black moaning inside his skull. It was the day he had killed Alan Lee Fry.

Suddenly, Steve's vision cleared and he noticed Riley Fontaine the way a hiker spots a spider sitting on his arm. All of a sudden Fontaine was just there, his t-shirt clamped in Steve's fist. Riley had leaned as far as he could away from the madman on the other side of the counter. Steve blinked and noticed his left fist pulled back, ready to strike. For a long second he stared into Fontaine's terrified eyes then released him and headed for the door.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

A pale, flat-faced deputy escorted Travis into the lawyer's conference room. Tom seemed almost a stick figure in his floppy orange jumpsuit as if the prison were slowly leaching the flesh from his bones.

"Can you remove those please?" Steve asked, pointing to the manacles that tethered Travis's wrists to his waist.

"Sorry," the guard said in a bored tone. He didn't sound sorry at all.

"I'd like some privacy, please."

"Rules are that we keep the prisoner under observation at all times."

"You can observe him through the window."

For a couple of seconds Steve and the deputy stared at each other then the guard sourly positioned himself on the far side of the door. The room was cement all around and contained only a small steel table and two steel chairs bolted to the concrete floor, an environment as inviting as a keg of nails.

"They giving you a hard time?" Steve asked nodding at the guard's doughy face peering through the Plexiglas.

"He's just doing his job."

That guard hates your guts
, Steve wanted to scream, but didn't.

"Tom, some things have come up--"

"It was her drug dealing brother, wasn't it? It's just the sort of thing a coked-out loser would do. Shit, if he had just waited, Kaitlen and I--"

"Tom, hold on. One step at a time."

"Yeah, sorry." Travis gave Steve a tight smile and bit his lip.

It's finally starting to sink in
, Steve thought.
He's finally starting to get it that he's heading over the cliff and the cavalry isn't going to show up to save him
.

"Tom, you can't hold anything back, nothing. I need to know who might have wanted to hurt you or Marian."

Travis shrugged. "You tell me. After all the time you've spent on this haven't you found anything?" he complained.

You really do know how to piss off people, don't you Tom
, Steve thought, biting his tongue.

"I talked to Ms. Berdue and she gave me her ex-boyfriend's name. He's got a solid alibi. I talked to her brother and he was in jail at the time. I've just gotten the names of Marian's friends and I'm going to see if she said anything to any of them about somebody stalking her. . . ."

"Don't waste your time," Travis broke in.

"Not necessarily. It could have been someone she knew from one of her charities, some man who became obsessed with her, a. . . ."

"Steve, I appreciate your thoroughness, really, but you're barking up the wrong tree there. Marian didn't have any enemies. My money's on Kaitlen's scumbag brother. Sure, maybe he was in jail but he had plenty of friends who were capable of something like this. Maybe he was trying to sound like a big man, tells his buddies his sister is dating Tom Travis and they start to see dollar signs. Maybe it started out as burglary and Marian walked in on them--"

"If it was a burglary, why didn't they take something, paintings, silver, electronics, the Escalade? That doesn't fit."

"Fine, maybe it started out as a kidnapping. They figured I'd be good for a couple of million in ransom." Tom tried to point his finger but the chain to his waist held him back.

"If it had been a kidnapping they would have tried to get some money out of it, for Sarah if not for Marian."

Travis shook his head. "Not if they had killed Marian accidentally and panicked. Something happens, she hits her head, suddenly they--"

"Steve, she was strangled with an electric cord. That wasn't an accident."

"Okay, there are two of them. One guy goes to check out the house and the other one goes nuts on her. The first guy comes back, finds the second guy standing over her body, they panic . . . That's what happened in
Blue Steel Justice
. I played this homicide detective and--"

"For Christ's sake, stop it!"

"Hey, I was just--"

"This wasn't a burglary gone bad. It wasn't a kidnapping gone bad. It wasn't one of your movies come to life. Not one fucking person in the world believes that. If Greg tries to tell the jury that the burglar did it, they'll laugh him out of court. Jesus!"

"Okay, okay--"

"Tom, please God, listen to me. They're going to hang your ass. That jury hates you. The public hates you. The judge hates you. They can't wait to put a needle in your arm. Fuck! I'm trying to save your life here and you're giving me God damn movie plots!" Travis went ash white and Steve forced himself to stop shouting then counted to five.

"Does that include you, Steve? Do you hate me too?" There was no anger in Travis's question, just a quiet inquiry, like some pathetic husband asking his fleeing spouse, "Don't you love me any more?"

The poor son of a bitch was pitiful, pale skinny arms poking out of oversized orange pajamas, thinning hair, gray at the roots, chained up hand and foot.

"Steve, I don't hate you. I don't think you did it. I believe you're innocent. But--"

"You mean that? You really believe me?" If Travis had only been a good enough actor to fake that tremor in his voice, the sad quiver at the corner of his lips, he'd have won an Academy Award by now.

"I'm absolutely certain, Tom, that you didn't have anything to do with Marian's death, but what I think doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"But not to the jury." Steve began to pace around the room. "You've got to level with me."

"I have! I've told you everything I know about this."

"Then tell me, who wanted to hurt you enough to kill your wife and pin it on you!"

Travis just shook his head and slumped in his chair as if anyone ever seriously disliking him was a concept he found impossible to comprehend.

Shit
!

"Okay, let's try something else. I understand that you talked to some guys on the crew about going out with you on your dune buggy. Who were they?"

Travis just shook his head.

"Steve?"

"It was thirty seconds almost a year and a half ago. I don't even remember mentioning it to anybody, leastwise what their names are. I went alone so what does it matter anyway?"

Steve took another breath and tried again. "Somebody told me you had a stuntman friend. Maybe he knows something that might help."

"Nope. No way," Tom insisted.

"Still, I should give him a call. . . ." Steve's voice drifted to a stop in the face of the insistent shaking of Travis's head.

"Just let me have his name anyway. You never know when--"

"That's a dead end. I cut my ties to my old crowd when I married Marian. You don't have enough time left to waste any of it raking up ancient history." Travis paused then looked up, embarrassed. "Look, you know about my anger management problems. Well, most of them had something to do with booze. You get in with a group of guys and you get into a pattern, not a good one, and stuff happens, a lot of stuff I don't want dragged back into the papers. You start talking to people about the old days, that will give them ideas. The next thing they'll do is call the tabloids and try to sell them some dirt. All that's going to do is make me look worse.

"I made the decision when Marion and I tied the knot that I was going to clean up my act and to do that I had to cut some people loose. And I did, so. . . ." Travis held up his hands to the limit of the chain. "I mean, we don't have a lot of time left here. You've got to stick with the leads that have a shot at going someplace, not wasting your time digging up stuff that happened years ago, right?"

Steve wanted to argue but Travis's flinty expression stopped him. For whatever reason Tom wasn't going to talk about his failed friendship with some stuntman and when it came right down to it, what did it matter? If he hadn't seen the guy since his wedding it didn't sound like his ex-friend would have anything worthwhile to add to the case. Travis was a vain man. Maybe the ex-friend knew something from some movie set years ago that made Tom look like a pansy and Travis was holding back because his ego was too fragile for him to handle Steve hearing the story.

"Okay, Tom, I'll move on. I talked to Bobby Berdue." Travis's face twisted into a frown. "He said that you asked him for a connection to somebody who could get you prescription drugs and that he hooked you up."

"Yeah, right!" Travis snorted. "Like I need some gangbanger to get me a bag of Lipitor."

"So, he's lying?"

"You really think I need to get legal drugs from Bobby Berdue?"

"You see the problem I've got, Tom, is that you didn't answer my question. Listen, guy, this is your life here. I'm not writing your biography. I'm trying to keep you off Death Row. For Christ's sake, stop bullshitting me!"

Travis's frown deepened and he looked away. Ten seconds passed. Finally, he looked up. "This can't get out."

"Shit, Tom, nothing you tell me will make you look half as bad as being found guilty of murdering your pregnant wife."

"Yeah, okay."

"Okay, what?"

"Okay, I bought some speed."

"And?'

"And nothing. You get past forty and your energy level drops but you gotta keep going -- meetings, reading scripts, staying up all night to learn your lines, and I still do a lot of my own stunts, always have. People expect it of me. I just needed something to keep me going. You start to look old and tired in this town and they'll eat you alive. So, okay, I bought some speed and I used it for a while but it started to make me crazy and I stopped, cold turkey. End of story. It's got nothing to do with anything."

"You bought it from Bobby Berdue?"

Travis gave his head a little shake. "I didn't want it getting back to Kaitlen. I made her a promise to stay clean and sober. I told the kid I needed some prescription drugs so that if it got back to Kaitlen it wouldn't sound so bad. I told him that I wanted them on the outside so some clerk couldn't sell my medical records to the tabloids. Once the kid hooked me up, I bought some speed."

"From whom?"

"From whom? Big Frank in the third alley on the left. Jesus, how the hell would I know? The kid gave me a number. I called it and left a message. I got a call back, 'Meet me in the park' or something. I show up, give the guy a couple of Ben Franklins and he slips me a paper bag, bing bang, he's gone, I'm gone. We didn't exchange resumes."

"You paid him the full amount? You didn't hold back--"

"Hold back? Shit, you think I'm retarded or something? Those guys would cut your throat for looking at them the wrong way. I paid him. He gave me the stuff. He left. I left. We never saw each other again. Like I said, end of story."

Steve paced around the table then looked down at Travis's worried face, his sincere eyes, and he didn't believe a word of it. Travis was hiding something. Tom looked back, politely waiting for Steve's next question. Whatever it was, Travis had decided that it had nothing to do with Marian's murder and that he wasn't going to admit a thing.

"Tom, you're not giving me much to work with here."

"I can't tell you what I don't know."

"So, I guess that's it then."

Travis gave another of his abbreviated shrugs.

"I'll let you know what I find out." Steve waved to the deputy who patted Travis down before leading him to the door.

"Steve, you're gonna find something, right? You're gonna get me out of here?" Travis pleaded over his shoulder as the guard led him away.

"Sure, Tom, I'll find something," Steve called back, not believing a word of it.

When he entered the plaza outside and felt the sunlight on his face, it was as if a set of shackles had been removed returning him to the company of free men. And then he saw the Beast.