Flipping Out (6 page)

Terry
put his hand to his forehead. 'I must be an idiot.'

'It
was like watching a train wreck,' I said. 'I saw where you were going, but I
couldn't stop you.'

'She'll
be OK,' he said. 'In the meantime, if Diana is right about the motive, that
would narrow down the list of suspects. There's not too many people who would
benefit if the house sold for more.'

'Nora's
loaded,' I said. 'I can't imagine she'd kill anyone for money. So that leaves
Julia and Marisol.'

'Don't
forget about that redhead who's puking her guts out in the bathroom,' Terry
said. 'Never did trust her.'

Traffic
on the 101 is cake if you leave for work at five thirty in the morning. We had
to wait till a civilised hour before we could make house calls, so we spent the
first chunk of our day going over Reggie Drabyak's recent cases. At 9:00 a.m.
we headed for Nora Bannister's house.

Nora
is a cop groupie. She used to drop by the station under the pretence of
visiting her son-in-law, Charlie Knoll, then spend the next few hours chatting it
up with any homicide detective she could corner. Terry and I were her favourite
targets.

Eventually,
she stopped pretending and would call in advance to schedule a lunch or a drink
after work, then bombard us with whatever murderous thoughts she had in her
head.

If
we figured out who the killer was, she'd go back and rethink the plot. Her
biggest joy was getting one past us.

'I've
stumped the experts,' she would say. 'This book is going to be a bestseller.'

And,
of course, it always was. Nora was short, smart, tough, funny, and immensely
popular in fifty countries. She was also a bit of a loon. A lot of people check
their horoscopes, but Nora based every one of her life decisions on how the
planets aligned with the stars. She refused to let her publisher launch a book
if Mercury was in retrograde. As for her partners in the house-flipping
business, any one of the wives at our station would have been thrilled to get
in on the action, but Nora only invited the astrologically blessed. The sad
exception was her daughter Julia, the biggest disappointment of Nora's life.
Who knows if Julia would ever have been anything besides a failed poet living
in her mother's shadow, but when Mom keeps telling you that you were three
weeks premature, so, despite all her calculations, it's your fault that you
popped out under a bad sign, your whole life is basically fucked. It doesn't
matter if it was mystical or self-fulfilling, either way it was a prophecy
Nostradamus would be proud to call his own.

I'd
never been to her home till now. It was three stories high, pure white, and
screamed art deco.

'It's
like somebody broke off a piece of the Chrysler Building and dipped it in
powdered sugar,' Terry said.

'Does
that mean you hate it?' I said.

'Are
you kidding? I'd kill to own that house. Oh, wait, that's what she does.'

Nora's
assistant, Martin Sorensen, greeted us at the front door. We'd met him several
times before at her book signings. Five years ago he had been a low-paid
assistant editor at Nora's publisher. She was so impressed, she hired him to
become her high-paid flunky.

Clean-cut,
good-looking, well organised, and totally buttoned up, Martin is the perfect
assistant. Even more perfect than one might imagine. At last year's book
launch, after several trips to the punch bowl, Charlie let us know he was
pretty sure that old Martin was banging his mother-in-law.

Of
course, old Martin wasn't exactly old. He was thirty-seven. And while Nora's
website doesn't give her age, the consensus from the media sites put her at
sixty- four.

'Julia
thinks it's adorable that her mother is screwing a guy young enough to be her
son,' Charlie had said. 'I think it's creepy. I asked around. He's got a
reputation for chasing cougars, and Nora is one hell of a rich cougar.'

'Terrible
tragedy about Jo,' Martin said as he walked us through the house to the pool.
Nothing more. Just the basic pap you mumble as you shake hands with the
bereaved at a funeral service and move on.

Nora
and her daughter, Julia, were having coffee on the patio. Nora sprang up when
we she saw us. 'I'm so glad you're working this case,' she said, giving each of
us quick double-cheek Hollywood air kisses. 'You got anything yet?'

'We're
still putting it together,' I said. 'Good morning, Julia.'

Unlike
her mother, who was small and blonde, Julia was big and bland. 'Hi,' she said.

'This
is sur-freaking-real,' Nora said. 'Do you have any idea who might have killed
her?'

'That's
what we came to ask you,' I said.

'The
three of us have been racking our brains about it all morning,' Nora said.
'Nobody we know could possibly have done this. Maybe it has something to do
with her past. Something none of us know about.'

'Everybody
loved her,' Martin added helpfully.

'You
all got along? No infighting? No problems?'

A
chorus of three yeses.

'Would
Marisol Dominguez agree with that?' I asked.

Nora
laughed. She sat back in her chair and downed what was left in her coffee cup.
Without a word, Martin picked up the empty cup and refilled it from a large
chrome carafe. 'Well, there was no love lost between Marisol and Jo,' Nora
said. 'They were total opposites. Sometimes Jo would bring the workers a box of
pastries left over from one of her parties, and Marisol's attitude would be
we're not paying them to sit around and eat fucking donuts.
Jo was a people person. Marisol
is a Marisol person. She's not there to make the workers happy. She's there to
make them work. That's why she's so effective as a project manager.' Nora
glanced over at her daughter, the failed project manager. Julia pursed her lips
but said nothing.

'So
Marisol is in charge of the crew,' I said. 'What about the rest of the
partners?'

'Well,
I write the books, so I have the biggest stake,'

Nora
said, picking up her fresh cup of coffee. 'I used to own sixty percent. Julia
and Marisol are twenty-percent investors, and Marisol gets a salary for
overseeing all the subcontractors. On this latest house, I dropped back to
fifty percent, so we could make room for Jo and Marilyn. They each have five
percent. I didn't need their money as investors. It was more because it's a
successful business, and I wanted to bring in a few friends, who have the
talent and the karma that I thought could make it even more successful. Marilyn
has an innate sense of feng shui, and she's a water sign, so she's perfect in
the garden, and Jo was the quintessential Virgo, so of course I put her in
charge of publicity and coming up with creative ways to showcase the house.'

'The
book launch was scheduled for tonight,' Martin said. 'Jo planned a brilliant
party. We used to have the predictable champagne open house. This year, Jo has
transformed it into a veritable movie set. She totally brought the murder to
life.'

Nora
slammed her open palm down on the table. Silver, china, and Julia all jumped. 'Martin,
did you hear what you just said?' She turned to us. 'Jo planned a stellar
event. We've postponed it till after her funeral.'

'Who
would benefit financially with Jo gone?' I said.

'Nobody,'
Nora said. 'She's done so much of the work already. When we sell the house, her
share will go to her estate. I guess that means Reggie.'

We
fished for ten more minutes, but the more questions we asked, the more clear it
became that no one in the group benefited from Jo Drabyak's death.

Finally,
we wrapped it up. 'One last question,' I said. 'Where were you all on Sunday
night at about eleven?'

'I
was in bed with a cop,' Julia said. 'Charlie got home from the poker game just
around eleven.'

'I
was blogging,' Nora said. 'In fact, I bet you can track the fact that I posted
a blog on my site around eleven thirty. It's not much of an alibi, but quite
frankly, I can't imagine I actually need one.'

'And
I was home,' Martin said.

'Alone?'
I asked.

'Absolutely,'
he said, looking directly at Nora.

He
didn't seem to care if Terry and I believed him. He was more worried about the
cougar.

Martin
and Julia waited on the patio, while Nora walked us to the front door. 'I
realise you didn't want to say anything in front of the others, but if you've
got anything, feel free to share it with me. I can help.'

'Nora,
you've been a big help already,' I said. 'Thanks.'

'No,
Mike. I mean
help.
In case you forgot, I solve homicides for a living.'

I
had been in a pissy mood before I got to Nora's. I only had five hours sleep, I
was tired of living out of a suitcase, and the prospect of my contractor ever
calling to say my house is ready looked dim. And now this woman who invented
every homicide she ever solved was telling me she could do my job. My patience
was worn thin, and I tore into her. 'Nora, you make this shit up,' I said. 'You
come up with ways to kill imaginary people, and then three hundred pages later
you have some other imaginary person figure out who the killer was. In case
you
forgot, this is what Terry and I do for a living. Jo Drabyak is not one of your
characters. This is the real deal.'

'For
God's sake, Lomax, I know the difference between reality and fiction. You know
what Tom Clancy said?'

'No,
and quite honestly, if it's not going to help me turn this case around, I don't
give a shit.'

'The difference
between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
Killing Jo Drabyak makes no
sense. I can't make heads or tails of it. I was up at four this morning. By the
time you showed up I was on my third pot of coffee. I have a theory. Are you
willing to listen to it?'

Terry
hadn't said a word for ten minutes. He stepped in. 'Yes, we'd like to hear
whatever you came up with.'

She
smiled. 'Thanks. Is it your turn to be Good Cop?'

'Yeah,
but I suck at it,' Terry said, 'so cough up your theory fast because I can get
twice as cranky as Mike.'

I
doubted if Nora had anything of value to offer up. The only thing on her agenda
was to get involved, but she was Charlie's mother-in-law and Marilyn's partner.
It was probably a good call on Terry's part to let her blather on.

'I'm
sure you're looking into the Reggie connection,' she said. 'Cop's wife gets
killed, maybe somebody's got a hard-on for the cop.'

'We
got it covered,' Terry said.

'So
I focused on Jo. Why kill her? Sure, there may be an old grudge that you dig
up, but I doubt it. So I thought, what if this is not really about Jo? What if
it's about someone else?'

Terry
was patient. 'Like who?'

'Like
me,' she said. 'What if someone is trying to destroy my career?'

'Correct
me if I'm wrong,' Terry said, 'but wouldn't it be easier to destroy your career
by just shooting you in the head?'

'Not
if the killer is a sicko who wants to toy with me. First he kills Jo, then
Marisol, or Julia, or even Marilyn. Little by little he would sabotage my
books, my real estate venture, everything I do. 'Why shoot me, if he can watch
me suffer?'

I've
met a lot of self-centred people in Hollywood, but Nora was the first to
suggest that someone else's murder was motivated by a desire to ruin her day.

'And
who do you think might want to do that?' Terry said.

'I
don't know. I haven't figured that part out yet. But even though I have
millions of fans, there are always those few that don't wish me well. Maybe
they're authors who are jealous, or people who were offended by something I
wrote. I'm sure there are a lot more people who would rather kill me than kill
Jo.'

At
this point I was one of them.

'It's
an interesting theory,' Terry said. 'Maybe you can come up with a list of
people who you think might have killed Jo to get at you. Meantime, Mike and I
have to go. We'll be in touch.'

He
opened the door, and we walked down the steps into the mid-morning humidity
that claws at Los Angeles every September.

'I'll
fax a list to your office,' she called after us. 'Is there anything else I can
do?'

I
looked back over my shoulder. 'Yeah. Switch to decaf.'

'I
was a real asshole,' I said once we were back in the car. 'Do I owe her an
apology?'

'Hell,
no,' Terry said. 'But you owe me one. You know I hate playing Good Cop.'

'Most
of the time I can deal with her,' I said. 'But sometimes... How come she never
gets to you?'