Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) (30 page)

Roberto stared at me for a few seconds, his mouth set in a severe line. So many possible responses he could give to my impassioned speech—at the very least, I’d just slagged off the love of his life, who also happened to be my mother.

And then he smiled.
 

Well, okay, maybe it was more of a grin, but that response hadn’t been on the list of possibilities.

“I’m not angry at you,” he said, and I felt an icy grip around my solar plexus.
 

Roberto angry at me I could handle. Roberto being proud of some of my more extreme behavior was scary.
 

The better part of valor yelled at me to shut up until he was done talking.

“Actually, that’s not entirely true. Making what happened yesterday go away is expensive and time-consuming and a waste of Nathaniel Ross’s talents. But he can do it and I can afford it. The LAPD gets the credit for rooting out one of its own and your friend gets publicity and a really great story. She’s been told not to include you, by the way.”

Roberto stopped talking and I started counting the seconds. The highest I’ve ever gotten before someone else speaks first is eighty-two.
 

I reached forty-five before I blurted out, “And?”

“And now I know how far you will go to protect a friend, or to find an answer that’s bothering you, or just to get what you want.”

“You set Roger Sabo up to do that?” I yelled.
 

His wince was immediate. “No, good Lord, no. I had no idea. But nudging you in the direction of the answer you needed was more than enough to bring all of these things out into the light. To bring out your best. Or your worst. You not only figured out who Roger Sabo was, you took care of him. Brilliant. By the way, Chris McClanahan called Anson Villiers yesterday to complain about your negotiating technique. And to reconfirm that Erica Rose will be at the party tonight.”
 

“The party hasn’t happened yet.”

He shook his head. “I’m not worried. Speaking of Villiers, you will start visiting him. Once a week, every week, starting this week. Call him for the appointment time—”

“Roberto, I can’t—”

“Not ten minutes ago you assured me you’re nothing but
can
. So you can, and you will. You will begin training for your future responsibilities. There are things you need to learn to expand your skill set.”

Roberto wanted to teach me the business. All of the business. And he wanted me to learn as fast as possible.

Either he really cared about me as a person, or Roberto needed me.
 

“What’s going on in New York, Roberto?”

“Simply being fantastic at negotiating over boardroom tables is not going to be enough to succeed in the future. The family’s companies are getting bigger and more attractive to outsiders every day. Your brother is very good at picking out the snakes in the office down the hall.”

“And my job will be to take care of the other ones.”
 

“If the two of you can keep from killing one another after you return, yes.”
 

“I bet Chance doesn’t have as much experience at actually killing people as I do.”

“No, but he has more experience with money and power.”
 

Roberto was worried about my brother. Not for my brother.

My stepfather had to set up the pieces on the chessboard before the whole chess set got taken away from him. He needed me on his side and he needed me in New York, as soon as possible.

Dammit. Not only did I have to go back to New York, now I really wanted to. For no other reason than to find out what the hell was going on.

“So where do we start?”
 

Roberto swallowed, which meant he was relieved. He hadn’t known for certain how I was going to take his admission that lines were being drawn. Awesome. “You work with Villiers. Periodically I will give you things to learn. To study.”

“Or to do for you.”

He nodded. “Think of it as doing them for yourself. Learn a few things you need to know. And get very good at them. See you on Monday.”

The screen went black. I had been dismissed.
 

Roberto had better enjoy the power differential between us now, because when I returned to New York, things were going to be different.

I left Nathaniel’s office and waved to him outside the meeting room. He capped his pen and got up.

We might both be Roberto Montesinos’s lackeys, but I ranked higher than he did, and I didn’t need to listen to his lecture. “All done. You can go back to what you were doing. I know the way out.” And I smiled.
 

Because he might hate what he had to do for me...but he had to do it for me.

THE MEMORIAL SERVICE for Courtney Cherise Cleary was scheduled for 2:00 p.m. at the Tarzana First Christian Church. Stevie and I decided we would arrive early and wait inside, see who was attending. If the police were there, then Sabo hadn’t confessed and they were still looking for the murderer. I wanted to find out who it was. The likeliest suspect would undoubtedly be attending the service.
 

Micah had given Greg Hitchcock a hell of a motive for killing Courtney. Expose him for being a hypocrite and having a baby out of wedlock, and who knew what secrets might come tumbling out afterward.
 

My only problem with that was that Hitchcock had clearly not been the man on the motorcycle. So had he gotten one of his workers to do it for him? What would be worth doing that?

The parking lot was still full, so we parked a few blocks down Tampa Avenue and walked. Stevie was in her new dress with the large flowers on it. The hem was nearer her knees than it had been in the store, which meant Stevie had broken out her sewing machine sometime last night. It was now one of the shortest skirts she’d ever worn. She looked quite nice. I wondered why this bothered me so much. The only thing I owned that qualified as proper church attire was my lightweight dark blue wool dress. It was too hot, but the heat would still have been unbearable if I’d been in a bikini. Welcome to the San Fernando Valley, where the sun was shining full force with no clouds for miles and no wind blowing through to lessen the discomfort.
 

Quite a few people in their Sunday best were walking toward us, away from the morning church services, and they were very friendly to everyone they walked past. Lots of smiles, lots of parents holding hands with their children, all of whom seemed to be in much better spirits than I ever had been after suffering through Sunday services.

Parents holding their children.

“Everyone’s leaving,” Stevie said. “Will anyone come to the service?”

“If there are television cameras there, they will.”

Coming down the street toward the church was a white van with a satellite dish on top.
 

“Courtney would be so furious to miss this,” I said.

“Let’s get into the church,” Stevie said.
 

Micah stood near the van, which was parked near the door to the church. Two cameramen and two sound guys stood in a semicircle around him, while he explained the game plan, using expressive gestures. Micah wore a lightweight, relatively wrinkle-free black blazer and a nice shirt, which made me think he was attending the service as well. He wore the young, hip Hollywood version of dressing up. He did a double-take at me and his hand began to move up, as though he were going to wave. Then he shook his head and went back to what he was doing.

Immediately inside the church was the foyer, a plain square box. A large picture of Courtney with a black wreath around it stood on an easel. On the wall was a picture of the pastor, a nice-looking chap in his thirties with curly hair and a round face. Stevie whispered his name to me: Bernard Janek. A table had a guest book on it with a pen ready. Next to the guest book was a stack of release forms, authorizing Micah’s production company to use the signer’s likeness in a broadcast show.

I didn’t sign either one.
 

The doors into the reception room were open, and Jonathan and Alison were in there, setting up the refreshments table. Hailey was in a bouncy saucer, hopping up and down. Jonathan looked up and saw us.

“Anything we can do to help?” I asked.
 

Jonathan looked at his wife, who shrugged. “Well, okay, then,” he said. He grabbed a box of booklets from the corner. “If you could pass out the flyers in the pews, that’d be great.”

Stevie didn’t make a move to take the box, of course. I’m the pack horse in our relationship.
 

I took the box. It was heavier than I expected. My muscles told me exactly how much they did not appreciate my carrying anything right now. “How many people are you expecting?”

“Maybe a hundred,” he said. “There should be a hundred and thirty in there.”
 

I took a moment to wonder how many people would show up at my funeral and blanked out after counting to one. Possibly two, but Roberto would just be making sure I was really dead.

“Did Courtney have a lot of friends?” I asked.

“When she lived in L.A., she was active in the church,” he said.

Stevie and I walked toward the assembly room. “Active in the church?” I said. “Doesn’t seem like her at all.” I dumped the box by the door.

“People are complex, Dru. They’re never just one thing.” My sister picked up a handful of the booklets. “Everyone has many facets.”
 

That was my sister, always looking on the better side of things and using big words to do it. But then I’ve given the advice not to mistake people’s religious beliefs for their behaviors, and perhaps the opposite was true as well.

The main area of the church was behind two large plain doors with square handles. The pews were set up with an aisle down the center. I put the box down on one of the front pews and Stevie picked up one of the pamphlets.

Courtney’s picture was on the cover. Stevie quickly summarized what was written inside: a little bit about Courtney’s life, who would be speaking at the service, where donations could be made to a charity that meant a lot to her.

I took the left hand pews and Stevie the right, and we distributed the pamphlets fairly easily among the first twelve rows. I put a pile of the remaining booklets on the pew at the back.
 

The door opened and Pastor Janek walked in. The noise of a variety of conversations followed him in, leading me to suspect attendees had started to arrive. He introduced himself and we shook hands. He told us they were going to open the doors soon, and was there anything else we needed to finish up with? I said no, we were almost done here, and he smiled as he escorted us back out to the foyer.

Which was filling up with guests, as the noise had indicated. Greg Hitchcock was there. The woman next to him was about his age, shorter, plumper, with her short black hair in waves around her face. Probably she was Mrs. Hitchcock. Every time she looked at him she seemed annoyed, and I wanted to assure her she didn’t know the half of it.

Micah Schlegel was chatting away with a beautiful girl—undoubtedly one of the
Girls
—and when he saw me, he nodded. I didn’t go any nearer.

Alison walked over to her husband, Hailey in her arms. The little girl reached for Jonathan, who gleefully took his white-blonde daughter from Alison’s arms. He rubbed noses with her and she laughed.
 

The person in the foyer who surprised me both the most and the least was Randi Narvaez.
 

Stevie saw her well before I did. My sister stared at the crowd of people milling in the lobby of the church, her lips pressed together. It took me a few moments to recognize Randi in a relatively conservative black dress, with her long black hair swept up in a French knot. She greeted Pastor Janek with a handshake and she gave a slight smile when he offered her sympathy.
 

“She came back,” I said. “She came back early from her little holiday for this.”
 

Stevie scrunched up her forehead and the lips got pressed even harder.

Randi had left the weekend away she’d pressed so hard to go on. There was the lure of the TV show reunion, of course; Courtney’s funeral was going to make a fabulous framing story. But she’d been so eager to go away.
 

I put my hand on my sister’s shoulder. “Stay here.”
 

Randi joined a trio of other young women, all of whom I guessed were other girls from the show. They all had the same physical type—young, with toned bodies, and too much makeup given how pretty each of them was — differing only in the details. One was shorter than the others, with straight blonde hair, one had long, wavy red hair, the third had purple streaks in her chin-length black hair. The short blonde stepped into the middle of their circle, widened her eyes, and started telling them what I could only hope was interesting gossip. She stopped talking when she saw me approaching.
 

Randi smirked at me, turning her head to talk to me, rather than her whole body. “Surprised to see you here.”
 

“Why’s that?”

She shrugged. “Oh, you know.”

The other girls, after a few seconds of their conversation having been interrupted, each took out her phone and stared at it.

“I’m likewise surprised to see you.”

“My boyfriend understands how much Courtney meant to me.” She looked around the circle. “Did I tell you guys I’m dating Sir Gareth Macfadyen?”

The way the woman with the purple streaks in her hair rolled her eyes told me that Randi was making sure to drop that tidbit early and often.

“You hated Courtney,” I said.

“Courtney meant a lot to me.” Randi took out her phone, the modern way of indicating a conversation was over. “I wish Sir Gareth had gotten a chance to meet her. Oh, by the way. After the service Sir Gareth wants to talk to you. So be sure to stop by the house.”

Of course I would stop by the house. I lived there. But Randi was so certain I was going to be out of the picture.