Dim Sum Dead (12 page)

“
W
as it murder?”

Chuck Honnett sat across from me at a small table at Louise’s on Los Feliz Boulevard. It was Friday at two in the afternoon, late for lunch.

I hadn’t heard from him since he’d left my house early the previous morning, going off to investigate the death of Quita McBride. It was probably a good thing, too, because I’d needed some time to sort it all out and finally settle down.

“Was it murder?” I repeated.

“There weren’t any marks on the body, other than what you’d expect after she tumbled down a steep flight of stairs. She broke her neck, looks like. We’ll get more details after the weekend.”

“Oh.”

“The boyfriend, Buster Dubin, gave us nothing. He said Quita McBride left the party, and that’s the last he saw of her. The last to leave, he said, were you and Wes and a Mrs. Chen. He said Quita didn’t come back before he went to bed at two. He was alone, so there’s no corroboration. Dubin said he didn’t know where she was going, which I think is bull, but I couldn’t shake anything more out of him. So, basically he saw nothing, and he heard nothing.”

“And so he said nothing.” I finished the old Chinese proverb.

Honnett looked at me.

“Evil, I’m talking about.”

“Yeah, aren’t we both. We’ll work on the neighbors and talk to friends, see if we can catch Dubin lying. Maybe I should write this down, Madeline. You left the house when?”

“Around twelve-forty-five,” I said. “I don’t know if Quita was still there. She’d left the game room about fifteen minutes earlier. And I told you before, she had been acting weird. She told me she was going to spend the night in a hotel.”

“Did she tell you which one?” Honnett asked.

“No.”

“I’ll look into it. If she checked in somewhere and then came back to Dubin’s house, we can trace her through credit cards.”

I shook my head. “I lent her some cash. She would have used cash.”

Honnett looked up. “It’s a long shot anyway,” he said. “She probably never left the house.”

“So you don’t know anything,” I said.

“I’ve talked with several of the party guests already. I’ll talk to the rest of them today and tomorrow, if I can. They haven’t told us much. The neighbors have been a little more helpful. Time of death seems to be near 3:00
A.M.
A neighbor heard some noise at five minutes past. Woke him up. Sounded like trash cans falling. Her body was found among four large plastic trash bins down at the end of the driveway by the street. That fits with the time we get from the coroner.”

“How did she die, Honnett? Exactly,” I asked.

“I’d have to guess until the autopsy report comes back.”

“Guess, then.”

He looked at me. “She fell down the steps and hit her head. A lethal head injury. Blunt trauma. They’ll likely find an intracranial bleed, which is bleeding in and around the brain with or without a fracture of the skull. This sort of death happens every day, Maddie. Especially when someone is ‘under the influence.’ Death can be instantaneous or it may take minutes, or hours, or even days.”

“Will the coroner be able to tell you if Quita was pushed?” I asked.

“A shove would not leave any marks that the coroner could identify.”

“I see,” I said, not happy. We didn’t know a thing that would make Quita’s death any clearer, and we probably wouldn’t. “Who found her? Buster?”

“Another neighbor. A jogger who was up at five. He ran by there early, but didn’t see anything. Then he changed clothes and was going out to work at seven-thirty. His driveway was near the knocked-over trash cans and he got out of his car to straighten them out. That’s when he found her. He called it in.”

I thought it over and went back to the thing that was nagging at me. “What was Quita doing on the stairs at three in the morning?” I shook my head trying to put the pieces together.

“You didn’t see her leave,” Honnett repeated.

“No.” I thought back. I remembered standing in the street, talking to Lee Chen in her little silver Acura, saying good-bye. I remembered getting in my big black Grand Wagoneer, on the way to my fateful meeting with Arlo. I remembered starting my car, my headlights coming on, illuminating the yellow Cadillac parked in front of me at the curb. “Honnett, I remember now. Quita’s car was still parked at the curb when I left.”

“You’re sure?”

“My old cooking teacher Lee Chen and I were the last to leave.”

“Can you write down Mrs. Chen’s name and address for me?”

Honnett was taking my statement. Wasn’t that romantic? He and I had skirted around anything more personal, and it felt strange to look at him and remember the last time we were together.

“Did Quita have her purse with her when she was found?”

Honnett checked back a few pages in his notebook. “Yes. The body had become tangled in the shoulder strap. It had her identification.” Honnett looked up at me. “You wondering about that cash you lent her?”

“Was it still in her purse?”

Honnett read his notes quickly. “There was seven dollars and change in her wallet.”

“I wonder what happened to the eight twenties I gave her earlier.”

The waiter came to our table and delivered a pizza, putting it on one of those wire stands that held it up off the table. Honnett served himself three slices, but I wasn’t hungry. I sipped a Diet Coke, wondering what to make of us now.

Honnett was polite, professional, maybe even friendly. But nothing more. I could almost believe our evening together had never happened.

“This must be hard for you, Honnett. Interviewing a woman you’ve been…you know, I don’t know what to call it.”

He met my eyes. “I guess you’re angry with me.”

So he was a good detective, after all. “Maybe.”

Honnett let out a breath slowly. “Because I didn’t call you?”

I let it just hang there.

“Or because I have this job to do? Because I’m a cop? I remember you telling me once that you don’t care for cops, right?”

“How about,” I said, “because you didn’t take me seriously? Quita was scared. I knew she was in trouble, no matter how crazy she was acting. And what did you do about it?”

“Look. I know you feel bad.”

We sat there looking at one another.

“Look, Maddie, no one is happy that a young woman fell down a flight of stairs and died, but things like that are known to happen. Hell, she’d been drinking all night. She was wearing those crazy shoes. The steps were steep. It was late.”

“She was scared,” I said.

“I know. I’m working on it. Neighbors saw lights on upstairs all night, so Dubin was probably awake. Some friends have told us Dubin and Quita were about to break up. That still doesn’t mean the guy pushed her with intent to kill her.
If we don’t find a witness or some major forensic evidence, what can we do?”

“I don’t believe this is about Buster at all,” I said. “He could never do something like hurting Quita. There’s something else going on.”

“Tell me what you think.”

“Someone stole that mah-jongg set. That’s got to be the key. Someone wanted that old book that was inside. I think Quita was lying. I’ll bet it wasn’t any novel. But whatever that book was, it’s the key to this thing. When she found out it had disappeared she came unglued.”

Honnett looked at me, and just to appease me he wrote down a few notes.

“You still don’t believe me.”

“First off, this is not about me and you. Okay? This is about logic. Explain what you think it was that was so important about that missing book that it could have gotten Quita killed.”

“I don’t know. Maybe she knew something, and it was dangerous. Or maybe this whole mess has something to do with Dickey McBride.” I grasped at a stray straw. “Quita mentioned Catherine Hill was friends with Dickey McBride.”

“I knew that,” Honnett said, trying to lighten the tone of our meeting. “See, I pay attention to old Hollywood gossip. Are you surprised?”

“In fact, I am,” I said.

“I like to go to the movies. Do you?”

“Of course,” I answered.

“Want to catch a movie with me sometime?”

I had to smile. “Possibly. I don’t know. I’m confused right now.”

“Well, it’s just a movie, Madeline. Think it over.”

“So, are you going to question Catherine Hill?”

“It would make you happy if I did, right?”

“It makes sense to me.”

Honnett sighed.

“Well, why not?” I asked, getting more frustrated.

“We have nothing to go on here. Hill has about fifty years
of experience dealing with people who come at her with questions. She won’t tell me anything, that’s why.”

“You don’t strike me as a guy who lacks confidence in his job skills, Honnett.”

“There are limits to this job.”

“I’ve always said so. But if she knows about Dickey McBride’s red book…”

“Chances are Catherine Hill knows nothing at all about the book or about Mrs. McBride and her unfortunate death. Chances are, even knowing nothing, she’ll shine me on. Because people like her are into privacy. But let’s just suppose for a minute that she does know something that has a bearing on our investigation. And let’s suppose it’s information she considers incriminating, whatever that might be. What are the chances she’s going to tell me that information?”

Following the rules, burdened by the laws, he couldn’t get any real information that way.

“I see.”

He stood up, and said, “I’ll call you when I hear anything.”

“You can call me before that, too, you know.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I think I’ll stay and finish my Diet Coke,” I said. And figure out just how I could go about meeting the multi-Oscar-winning leading lady, Catherine Hill.

T
he Wetherbee house was a work in progress. Wesley and I sat out on the large grassy lawn in back of the house in the shade of a California live oak. Two workmen walked in and out of the open French doors bringing out a chandelier and other lighting fixtures, bringing in pails and drop cloths. With the demolition nearly finished, they were getting a start on replastering.

The garden table was made of heavy white-painted iron, and its round glass top was covered with blueprints and computer printouts showing the layout of the house. Wes was connected to the Internet by wireless modem, and his laptop computer sat close by, atop the pile of renderings. All this was part of the fun of planning his remodeling project. He’d been working and reworking the plans for the master bathroom as we talked, playing with a pencil, tapping the eraser end against his straight teeth.

Birds sang brightly as the late-afternoon sun moved through the branches above, casting slowly shifting shadows over the paperwork and us and onto the old patio tiles beneath our feet. A leaf, curled and golden, fell onto the blueprint Wesley was studying, and he smoothed it away.

“So you won’t do anything dangerous, right?” he asked me.

“No, of course not. I’m not stupid. And anyway, if it turns out that Quita’s fall was an accident, there
is
no danger, right?”

“Right.” Wes looked at me with concern. “But you don’t think it was an accident.”

“You know, I wish I did.”

Wes leaned over and patted the top of my head.

“I’d feel better,” I said, “if I could be sure.”

“Of course you would.” He was never enthusiastic about my little investigations, but I had faced a few problems in the past and gotten through them all right.

“This is going to be useful.” I touched the edge of Dickey McBride’s antique rosewood mah-jongg case. It was back with us since the Santa Monica police had found too many smudged fingerprints on it and none they could identify. They hadn’t seemed surprised. In all, their manner had not encouraged our expectation, either, that they might continue pursuing this crime with anything mimicking vigilance.

“So how are you going to get in touch with Catherine Hill?” Wes asked. “I’m assuming she’s not in the phone book.”

I had this plan. It seemed to me that I would have more success talking to Catherine Hill, privately, than the police ever would if they tried to question her officially. And that was assuming the cops were interested in Catherine Hill. Which they weren’t.

But first, I had to figure out how to reach her. I knew she had a big house in Bel Air, but short of going out to Westwood and buying a Map to the Stars’ Homes from one of those boys on a street corner, I was stumped as how to talk to her.

“Remember Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?” Wes asked, starting to erase another line on his plan.

“The game? Of course.”

Several years ago, a bunch of college boys with too much time on their hands and a bottle of Southern Comfort came up with the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The game is a rather inspired, if loony joke based on the John Guare play and movie
Six Degrees of Separation
, which suggests that we are all connected by six or fewer stages of acquaintance.

In other words, if I were in line at my neighborhood Mayfair market and I ran into my hairstylist friend, Germaine,
and I invited her to see an Orson Welles film retrospective, we’d hardly be through checkout before she mentioned that she does Loni Anderson’s hair, and that Loni was in
Munchie Strikes Back
in 1994 with Dom DeLuise, and did I know that Dom was in
The History of the World: Part I
with Orson Welles in 1981, so did I think she should call and invite Loni to come with?

In that case, I believe it was only four degrees of separation between me and the illustrious Orson Welles, but you get the general idea. Those wacky and inventive college boys must have noticed how nicely Kevin Bacon could substitute for “Separation” in the meter of the phrase. It seems it was all they needed to hypothesize that Kevin might also be the center of the universe, at least when it comes to connecting actors. What makes their Kevin Bacon joke actually work as a game is the fact that Bacon has been in a significant number of ensemble films, from
Diner
to
Apollo 13.
And if you use Bacon as an end point, you can link him in six degrees or less to almost any other performer.

And the whole thing caught on like gangbusters. For those who don’t have the entire filmography of the Western World memorized, the Internet comes to the rescue. It now has several websites that help you make the proper links. For instance, by consulting the Oracle of Bacon website, which is run by the University of Virginia of all exalted places, you’d learn that Julia Louis-Dreyfus of TV’s
Seinfeld
takes all six steps to make a chain. She was in
Christmas Vacation
with Randy Quaid, who was in
Major League II
with Tom Berenger, who was in
Shattered
with Greta Scacchi, who was in
Presumed Innocent
with Harrison Ford, who was in
Raiders of the Lost Ark
with Karen Allen, who was in
Animal House
with Kevin Bacon.

A very amusing game, you might be saying to yourself. But what in heaven’s name does all this have to do with us? Well. As it turns out…
we
know Kevin Bacon. And if we were lucky, we could just use the Oracle of Bacon to quickly discover how closely we could get a link between Kevin Bacon and Catherine Hill. Then all I’d have to do is trace backwards.

“Should I try it?” Wes asked, tapping his keyboard.

“Of course. Everybody cut footloose,” I said.

Wesley was already on it. He’d entered Catherine’s name into the screen, and a few seconds later he smiled.

“It’s a good one. Catherine Hill was in
Rhapsody
in 1954 with Vittorio Gassman and Vittorio Gassman was in
Sleepers
in 1996 with Kevin Bacon.”

“So,” I said, pulling out my cell phone, “all I have to do is ask Kevin to call Gassman and explain I need to talk to Catherine Hill.”

“Right,” Wes said. “However, if Vittorio Gassman is still alive and if he lives anywhere we can reach him, we have to wonder if the phone number he may have for Catherine Hill is still current after almost fifty years.”

“True.” I began to rethink. I would hate to bother a celebrity client just to run into an eventual dead end anyway. “Besides, I need some up-to-the-minute scoopage on Ms. Hill. This won’t do.”

“Wow,” Wes said, looking back at his computer screen.

“What?”

“Did you know Kevin Bacon is only two links away from Bob Barker?” He looked up from his screen. “Sorry, Mad. I got carried away.”

I knew he was dying to tell me. “Go on.”

“Bob Barker was in
Happy Gilmore
in 1996 with Andrew Johnston who…”

A male voice with a Spanish accent interrupted us. “Mr. Wesley?”

It was one of the men who were working on the house. Wesley put down the laptop and went over to talk to him. After a few seconds, Wes turned to me. “We’ve got visitors. I’ll go see who it is.”

Who had come to call? Maybe Honnett, I thought, and felt my pulse pick up with a jolt. Maybe he’d tracked me down and was coming with some big, important news. It was unlikely, but still…

Maybe Arlo, I thought, jolting in another direction. Ah, what about that? It had been a couple of days since I’d walked out on him at the restaurant. It was strange he hadn’t
called. But maybe he’d decided to stop by and see me in person. That was stressful.

By the time Wesley came back outside, I’d had a little too much time left on my own. In those few minutes, I’d managed to run through several disturbing possibilities about who might be coming to call. I was, by that time, staring at the open French doors with more intensity than I normally would have. And, still, I had not expected to see the group he ushered forth—the regulars from the Sweet and Sour Club.

Buster Dubin, dressed in baggy gray shorts and an oversize Hawaiian shirt, looked an awful lot like his regular fun-loving self, just perhaps a shade more subdued. Trey and Verushka were with him. They lumbered over the shaggy grass, calling out “hellos” and eventually settling, at Wesley’s urging in the chairs around the patio table.

I’d brought over a pitcher of lemonade and supplies from my house and started pouring glasses of fresh-squeezed lemonade all around. I can’t help it. Really.

“You know about what happened to Quita, right?” Buster asked after thanking me for the drink.

“It’s horrible,” Verushka said. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? She’s dead.”

“I will miss her,” Trey said solemnly. The wind gently ruffled his pale blond hair.

“We all will,” Buster said. “She was a lousy mah-jongg player, but she was a sweet girl.”

“Say,” I said, “do any of you remember how she did that night? Did she win or lose a lot?”

No one spoke for a minute. “She stayed pretty even,” Trey said. “Didn’t she?” He turned to Verushka.

“I think she was down, but then she had a megalucky hand at the end,” she confirmed.

“Really,” Buster said, “for Quita that was a winning night.”

Verushka sent Buster a questioning look, but didn’t say anything.

“Do you guys have any reason to think Quita’s death might not have been an accident?” I asked.

Wesley looked at me. Dead buffalo times made him edgy as a cat. In fact, he looked like he would rather be cleaning out cesspools.

“Why?” Verushka asked quickly. “Is that what the police think?”

I shrugged. “She just seemed so disturbed,” I said. “Didn’t any of you notice?”

“She seemed pretty wasted to me,” Verushka said, looking over at Buster. “Quita was Buster’s girlfriend, and we loved her, of course—but she was hard to really get to know.”

“How did you meet her?” I asked Buster.

“Trey brought her over to the Sweet and Sour Club,” Buster answered.

“Right,” Trey said, sipping his lemonade. “She played MJ.”

Buster looked over at me. “I wonder if I could talk to you? I called your office, and Holly said you were with Wes. We took a chance we’d find you here.”

“We’re like his escort service,” Verushka said, clowning. “We’re all attached at the hip, and my hip is, like, my biggest part.” She laughed loudly.

“Can I have a moment with you, Madeline?” Buster asked.

We took the flagstone path through the rose garden and entered the French doors into the large empty living room. From another room we could hear the sound of a radio tuned to a Spanish language station. The plasterers had finished in this room and it smelled like damp cement. We settled ourselves on the long wooden step that leads up from the sunken living room into the entry hall.

“What can I do for you, Buster?” I’d selected a spot on the dusty hardwood about eighteen inches away from him, farther than I would normally have chosen to be seated from a friend. He was the same man with whom I’d goofed around two nights before. And yet it was different now. The shocking death of Quita McBride at Buster’s house had rubbed off on him, raising uncomfortable questions. I was glad the crew was noisily at work in the room next door.

“I need a favor,” Buster said.

I looked at him carefully.

“Your fortune-teller was right,” he said, smiling. “Mrs. Chen is hot. I got that gig I wanted. The music video.”

“
Warp
?” I remembered the rock group Quita had mentioned at the party.

“Right. Yes. The shoot is in Europe.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Yeah. Copenhagen and then France. It could be a blast. Trey never talks about his chicks, but I want him to come with and bring his girl. And I may take a babe along. Have you ever been to Denmark, Madeline?”

It wasn’t taking Buster long to jump back into his fun, fun life. I chuckled at the bad taste of it all. Sometimes gallows humor is all that’s left.

A workman stepped lightly past us on the step, carrying a bucket of white goo. We waited until he passed.

“Look, Mad, I heard that you are friends with a homicide detective.”

Remember that cynical side of me that I had been trying to give a proper burial? Imagine it rising from the psyche graveyard. “Who told you that?”

“Well, word gets out. Whitley Heights is like St. Mary Knee.”

“St. Mary Mead,” I corrected. Holly, I thought to myself. She told everything to everyone.

“I have to leave the country, Mad. For this gig. It’s only two weeks, and I’m coming back to edit here in Burbank. So I need this cop with a hair up his butt to agree to let me leave.”

“If you are under suspicion, Buster, nothing I say would help. If anything, it could hurt.”

“Let’s play truth or dare, Maddie.” Buster gave me a sly grin.

“I know that game,” I said, amused. “All it can do is lead to trouble, right? Why would anyone play that?”

“I’m not trying to flee from justice. I’m directing a big shoot in Europe. Well, let’s say I dare you to talk to your cop friend for me.”

“Okay,” I said, “and if I accept your dare, what do I get?”

“You get the truth. Ask me any question you want to.”

I looked at Buster Dubin, his jet-black hair and his permanent five-o’clock shadow and his dancing eyes.

He said, “You know you want to ask me something.”

My heart began pounding in an odd way. I became aware of the sound. I had to know. “Okay. I’ll talk to Honnett.”

“Excellent.” Buster smiled up at me and edged a little closer on the step. “So now it’s your turn. What do you want to know? And remember, I am a fairly eligible bachelor, I always win at MJ, and I have made a fortune on the stock market.”

So Buster expected me to ask him advice? I was afraid he was in for a shock. I wanted the truth about something a lot more important to me than his sex life, or how many tech shares he was holding.

“Truth,” I said, looking him in the eyes. “What really happened after I left your house?”

“After you left?” He stared at me.

“This is your game,” I said.

“Quita and I had a fight.”

Oh, man.

Buster told me more. “Quita was a good kid, really. But, you know, she could be demanding as hell, and lately she was getting all weird. You know, she had never seemed happy. It was like she always had some other thing on her mind. And over the past week, Quita had been getting more and more spooky. I told her she didn’t have to leave right away. She could take as long as she needed to move her things.”