Celebrity in Death (21 page)

“I can’t believe I was juiced when they cast her to play me. Please-body,” Peabody muttered. “She didn’t have any respect for me at all. I wish I’d known what a crappy human being she was before she got dead. I’d have shown her a Pleasebody.”

“How long do you figure you’re going to stew over this?”

“Awhile. I’ve never worked on a vic I wished I’d punched in the face before somebody killed her. I’ve been working on my hand-to-hand.”

“Is that so?”

“That is very so. I think I’m improving. Plus I lost two pounds. Well, one-point-seven pounds.”

“One-point-seven.” Eve slanted a look over. “Seriously? You weigh in decimals?”

“Easy for you, Skinny Bitch.”

“Hey, that’s Lieutenant Skinny Bitch to you, Detective Pleasebody.”

That got a lip twitch that spread to a reluctant smile. “But the point is, I’ve been working on that hand-to-hand, on not telegraphing my moves and all that. I could’ve taken her down, one-on-one.”

“Damn right. You’d have mopped the floor with her if she hadn’t gone and got herself killed first. Selfish fucker. The least she could’ve done is lived long enough for you to bloody her.”

“I don’t care how that sounds.” After folding her arms, Peabody jerked up her chin. “It’s true.”

“Maybe when we collar the killer, there’ll be an opportunity for you to engage in a bit of hand-to-hand. If you punch the killer, it should have some level of satisfaction.”

“It would. I think it would. Yeah, I feel better. Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Eve decided the fates had rewarded her for placating Peabody when she snagged a street-level slot half a block away. “Maybe you can lose that point-three pound walking to Asner’s office and back.”

SINCE ASNER’S OFFICE WAS SITUATED OVER A
pierogi place in a pockmarked brick building that squatted between a dingy tattoo parlor and a particularly seedy-looking bar, they added a flight of stairs to the walk.

“Pierogies. Even smelling pierogies can offset weight loss. It’s a medical phenomenon.”

“Hold your breath,” Eve advised as they started the climb.

As the building squatted between bar and parlor, Asner’s office squatted between a law office Eve figured specialized in repping sleaze-balls and a bail bondsman who no doubt shared clients.

Eve opened the door into a claustrophobic reception area with barely enough room to hold the desk manned by a bored, busty blonde who sat painting her nails murderous red.

Clichés became clichés, Eve deduced, because they were rooted in fact.

“Good afternoon.” The blonde spoke in squeaky Brooklynese as she straightened at the desk. “How can we assist you today?”

Eve took out her badge. “We need to speak to Mr. Asner.”

“I’m sorry. Mr. Asner is not in the office presently.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m sorry. I’m unable to give you that information.”

“Did you see this?” Eve tapped her badge.

“Uh-huh.” Cooperatively the blonde nodded, widened her eyes. “If you tell me the nature of your business I can tell Mr. Asner on his return.”

“When is he expected back?”

“I’m sorry. I’m unable to give you that information.”

“Listen, sister. We’re the police, get that? And we’re here on police business. We need your boss’s whereabouts.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t keep reading that same line.”

“But it’s
true.”
The blonde waved her red-tipped fingers in the air. “I can’t tell you, ’cause I don’t know. He said how he had some outside business, and I should hold the fort.”

“Can you contact him?”

“I
tried,
’cause Bobbie came by and said why don’t we go out for a drink, but I can’t go out for a drink if I’m holding the fort. So I tried to tag him to ask when I could stop holding it, but I went right to v-mail.”

“Is this usual?”

“Well … it depends. Sometimes A’s outside business involves, um, wagering. When it does he maybe doesn’t answer his ’link for a while.”

“Do you know where he wagers?”

“Different places. They move around.”

“I bet. Do you have a name?”

“Uh-huh.”

Eve waited a beat. Then two. “What would your name be?”

“It’s Barberella Maxine Dubrowsky. But everybody calls me Barbie.”

“Really? Okay, Barbie, let’s try this. Do you have a client who resembles my partner here?”

Barbie caught her bottom lip between her teeth—a method, Eve assumed, of concentration. “Um, no, I don’t think.”

“One named K.T. Harris?”

Now the lashes fluttered, a reflex of anxiety. “Am I supposed to tell you?”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Okay. No, at least I don’t remember that name. There’s an actress who has that name. She used to go with Matthew Zank. He’s totally cute. I saw her in this vid about corporations and crime or something. I didn’t get it. But she looked good, plus it had Declan O’Malley in it, and he’s—”

“Totally cute,” Eve finished.

“Uh-huh.”

“How about a client named Delia Peabody?”

“Oh sure. She came in to see A about a week ago. Something like that. She was in with A for a long time, like maybe an hour, and he was really excited when she left. But …” She glanced over her shoulder, dropped her baby-doll voice to a whisper. “I thought she was kind of a beyotch—you know?”

“Is that so?”

“She, like, ordered me around. Like—” Barbie snapped her fingers, then frowned down at her nails. “Shoot. I smudged them. I’m really polite with clients, but I wanted to tell her, Listen, you, just ’cause you’re rich doesn’t mean you can snap your fingers at me and look at me like I’m dirt.”

“Why did you think she was rich?”

“She had on these mag-o-mag shoes. I’ve seen them in
Styling,
and they cost
huge.
And she wore this swank dress. Some redhead comes in here in a swank dress and mag-o-mag shoes, I know she’s rich. But that doesn’t mean she can boss me around and tell me to go out and get her a decent cup of coffee—cream no sugar—for which she didn’t even pay me. It’s not like I get an expense account working here, and that coffee cost me ten. A made it good a couple days ago, but she shouldn’t have done like that. Right?”

“Right. Do you know why she hired A?”

“I wrote up the file. It’s okay to tell you? We’re confidential.”

“I’m the police,” Eve reminded her.

“Yeah, I guess. Well, I wrote up a domestic surveillance file, and the contract for it. We do lots of those ’cause people really cheat, and that’s just not right. A said to leave the amount blank.”

“Is that usual?”

“No way, but I just work here. He said to leave it blank, then he didn’t give me a copy for my files. He said not to worry about it, but I do the billing and the books. I’m good with numbers. Numbers and people.” She smiled, poked out her impressive breasts. “They’re my strengths.”

“Did she come back?”

“No, she only came in the one time. Fine with me. I don’t like people talking down to me. But A’s been in a really good mood since. Except, I guess this morning. He came in and barely said hello, and he locked himself back in his office. He was okay when he left, though. He gave me a wink. Not that we’re like that, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t get like that with the boss. You’ve got to keep that out of the office, right? Or you don’t get respected.”

“That’s smart, Barbie.”

“Anyway, I haven’t seen Ms. I’m-Too-Good-to-Pee-Body since the one time. Is she in trouble? I wouldn’t care, except because of A.”

“You could say she had some trouble. When A comes back, or you’re able to contact him, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell him I need to talk to him.” Eve dug out a card.

“I sure will. I don’t think I’m going to hold the fort much longer, though. We don’t have any appointments in the book anyway. So I’ll leave him a message if I go before he gets back.”

“Thanks. You’ve been very helpful.”

She beamed. “That’s good. I like to help.”

After they left the office, Peabody shoved her hands in her pockets. “These nicknames are pissing me off.”

“But you’re not I’m-Too-Good-to-Pee-Body. Harris is.”

“It’s
my
damn name. And now I have to pee. It’s like my bladder has to prove something.”

“Pee at the bank. Consider it a deposit.”

T
hey found another recording in the safe box, more cash, and two dated, handwritten receipts from A. A. Asner for fifty thousand each.

They bagged and labeled, and transported everything back to Central.

“Get the cash logged in and secured,” Eve told Peabody. “I’m going to take the recorders up to Feeney for a quick anal. Write it up. When I’ve finished with the recordings, I’ll swing by the studio, check out the vic’s trailer before I head home.”

“You don’t want me with?”

“Figuring her, she’s too paranoid to have much of anything in her trailer. But we’ve got to look, so I’ll take care of it. Get it written up,
copy Whitney. And you can send the file to Mira, get me some time with her tomorrow.”

“Okay. Dallas? I’ve been thinking. There’s no murder weapon. We have motive all over the place, and the same for opportunity. Because this is a tight-knit group, when you think about it. They’ve been spending hours together every day for months—and they’re all in the same business—the same world.”

“No argument.”

“Well, I don’t know if any one of them would tell us if they actually saw someone slip out of the theater. I don’t know if any one of them would tell us if they actually knew which one of them killed Harris.”

“Probably not. Or not yet.”

“I don’t see how we’re going to pin this one, or prove it unless the killer decides to come in and confess.”

“Maybe we’ll arrange just that. For now we take the steps, work the case. And don’t put that you think we’re screwed in the report.”

But she had a point, Eve thought as she headed up to EDD. They had a victim no one liked, one who’d threatened or manipulated or pissed off everyone who’d been on scene at the murder.

Three cops, she thought in annoyance, a shrink, and a former criminal now expert consultant, civilian, right there at the time and the place, and they couldn’t appreciably narrow the list of suspects.

It was as embarrassing as it was infuriating.

She walked into the color and sound of EDD. And movement, she thought when she spotted McNab doing a kind of prancing pace around the room. He weaved or sidestepped when one of his fellow e-geeks strutted or boogied in his path.

Like a strange, disjointed dance, Eve thought, where even the chair-sitters bopped, swiveled, or tapped to some constant internal beat.

She stepped in front of McNab, poked him to get his attention.

“Hey.” He flicked off his earpiece. “Got those financials for you.”

“Two withdrawals of fifty large, each within the last ten days.”

“Well, hell. You spoil the fun.”

“We tracked her PI. Anything else interesting?”

“As a matter of fact. Come, have a seat in the parlor.”

He led the way to his cube, recently decorated, Eve noted, with a poster of a monkey in a tutu riding an airboard with a PPC in one hand, a sandwich in the other while its earpiece flashed green. A smaller monkey rode in a pack on her back.

It was titled
MULTITASKING MAMA.

“So, I figured I hit the gold with the 50K withdrawals, but I ran through the rest anyway. She’s got auto-payments on her place in New LA, standard autos for standard home expenses, the usual blah stuff. Fees to her agent, her manager. She doesn’t spend a lot considering what she pulls in. Mostly it goes to face and body treatments, wardrobe.”

He swiped through what Eve supposed he considered the usual blah stuff.

“Then I find this nice chunk charged up to I Spy, so I dig down, and it’s the shop here, in Times Square. Follow that up. She bought two spy cams a couple weeks ago. Microminis, with audio, motion, and sound activation, remotes, timers—the works. I got the clerk who sold them to her, and he remembered her. Except he described her as a redhead—a ‘pushy, hard-ass redhead,’ to use his words.”

“Fits. She was a redhead when she hired the PI, and when she rented a safe box at a downtown bank. That must’ve been her go-to disguise. Two cams. Interesting. And interesting timing. That’s good work, McNab.”

“All kudos accepted. One more deal. She also put a hefty deposit down on a high-end, high-class villa—for a two-week stay starting
December twenty-third. Olympus Resorts, and she booked a private shuttle—two passengers. She had to give the names. Hers, and Matthew Zank.”

“And again interesting. Send the data to my home unit. I’ll take a look when I get there. Is Feeney in his office?”

“Last I saw him.”

She headed over. The captain of the ship of noise and eye-blasting colors sat hunched at his desk in rumpled shirtsleeves. Silver threaded through his minor explosion of ginger hair. His face sagged like an old, comfortable hammock and looked as lived-in as the rumpled shirt.