Mind Scrambler (27 page)

“Excellent.”

“When can we stop whispering?” Parker asks.

Ceepak checks his watch. “Approximately ten minutes. When the Rocks take their final bows at twenty-one-fifteen.”

That means it's currently 2105. Katie's time of death. She's been gone a whole day.

“We need to arrest Mrs. Rock!” I say.

“What's the charge?” asks Parker.

“Murder!”

“The nanny?”

“It's a possibility,” says Ceepak.

“Why? What's her motive?” Parker asks.

“Fear of discovery,” I offer, sort of making it up as I go.

“Come again?” says Parker.

“We know either Mrs. Rock or Sherry Amour paid for Jake Pratt's motel room across the street,” I explain. “We've seen one of them holding hands with Pratt on the elevator. Tonight, me and Ceepak figured out that Mrs. Rock wasn't onstage during the Lucky Numbers bit last night and that's when Katie was killed. So she did it!”

“For real?” Parker asks. I don't think he's buying my closing argument.

“Definitely! See, last night, the so-called Mrs. Rock didn't say a word to the volunteer onstage. Tonight, she wouldn't shut up. That's because last night the part of Mrs. Rock was played by Sherry Amour!”

“So Jessica Rock could come back here and kill Ms. Landry?” says Parker. “Why?”

I look at Ceepak. He nods. Encourages me to keep taking wild stabs at the truth.

“Well, I figure, Katie found out about Mrs. Rock's affair with Jake Pratt. A teenager. They were both afraid that if Katie told anybody, they'd have to stop seeing each other because what they were doing over at the Motel No-Tell kind of went against the whole family-friendly image of the Rocks' show. So, Mrs. Rock told Jake to torture Katie until she told him where she had hidden
whatever it was they were looking for. I'm figuring it was a sex video. Like that one Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee made, you know?”

Now Parker gives me the slow up-and-down head nod typically reserved for homeless people who swear the Chipmunks are planning a sneak acorn attack.

It doesn't slow me down.

“When Katie wouldn't talk, Pratt left the room at a prearranged time—probably right before Lucky Numbers started. But first, he ran into the bathroom, finally turned off the hot water pouring into the tub for Richie's bath, and scribbled that love note on the steamed-up mirror.
J
luvs U.”

“How come the tub didn't overflow?” Parker asks.

“Hunh?” I wasn't expecting a plumbing sidebar.

“How come, if the hot water's been running since Ms. Landry came backstage with the kids, it never flooded over the sides of the tub?”

“It never does,” I say. “Unless, you know, the water's totally gushing. There's an overflow drain deal built into the latch fixture. That's how high the waterline was.”

“Hunh.”

“When Lucky Numbers started, while her husband was super-busy, Mrs. Rock came back here, tried once more to convince Katie to give up the tape or whatever they thought she had. When she wouldn't, Mrs. Rock strangled Katie with Jake Pratt's bolo tie.”

“I see,” says Parker. Now he turns to Ceepak seeking confirmation for my harebrained hypothesis.

“It's a definite possibility,” he says. “As Danny suggests, we should detain Mrs. Rock for further questioning.”

“Wait a second,” says Parker. “What about the, you know—the pubic hair the CSI guys found?”

“I suspect,” says Ceepak, “that the material was harvested by
the killer earlier and planted to incriminate Mr. Pratt. It's why there was a clump of it, not a strand or two.”

Cool. Ceepak's on board with my whole theory. Maybe. At least the part about the pubic hair being planted, which, come to think of it, I didn't even mention.

But, now that Ceepak mentions it, it makes sense Mrs. Rock would try to frame Jake Pratt. The lady is most likely into spider sex. According to this show I saw once on the National Geographic Channel when the Mets game got rained out, female spiders have twisted ideas about dinner dates.

If a male hangs around too long after the sex is done, the female kills and eats him.

Or, they hire a PI to do the killing part the next day.

 

 

 

 

 

I think
my theory makes sense.

Mrs. Rock killed Katie because Katie had uncovered some sort of evidence that exposed her seedy affair with a barely legal boy.

I'll wager that Mrs. Rock, as the senior partner in the scandal, was the one who called most of the shots. Told Jake Pratt to buy the lingerie and force Katie to wear it. Told him to send the kids out for ice cream. She probably even lent him the fifty bucks.

She probably also suggested that Pratt use his bolo tie to choke Katie to the brink of suffocation, to scare her into telling him where she had hidden her evidence.

But, Katie didn't.

Okay. I have to wonder about that. Why not?

Why didn't she just give them what they wanted?

Maybe being forced to strip naked and pull on all that leather
garter gear was just too humiliating, stopped her from thinking straight.

See, the Katie Landry I knew back in elementary school was a sweet and innocent Catholic kid. She grew up to become a sweet and innocent kindergarten teacher. Hell, she could've been a nun if, you know, girls still did that sort of thing. So if Mrs. Rock and Jake Pratt wanted to sexually humiliate Katie as part of their torture technique, man, they sure made a smart costume choice. I'm certain Katie Landry wished she could die before she actually did.

And then, clever spider woman that she is, Mrs. Rock used the same kinky sex setup to frame her disposable boy toy. She dropped a pile of his pubic hairs on Katie's carpet. I figure she harvested them earlier when Pratt was distracted. When Jessica Rock had him squirming on the mattress in ecstasy, he clearly wasn't paying very close attention to what her fondling fingers were actually doing
down there.

And when her disposable boy toy was framed and ready for hanging, she paid sleaze-bucket Kenny Krabitz to nail him with a pistol she'd lifted out of the prop room.

“You really think she did it?” I ask Ceepak.

“I suspect she was somehow involved in the murder and/or its cover-up.”

Okay. Not a ringing endorsement. But I'll take it.

We're still stationed in the hallway backstage. I can hear the canned music they use for the big finish seeping out through the stage door, which somebody on the other side just propped open in anticipation of the final curtain call.

Parker has gone off to help cover the other stage exits.

“But what about the diary?” I say this out loud.

“Come again?” says Ceepak.

“The spiral notebook the ACPD found in Pratt's room at the
Royal Lodge when they found the Pink Pussycat bags. Why'd he write her that love note?”

“I don't believe it was a love note to Katie.”

“No?”

“Do you recall the actual wording?”

“Not precisely.”

Ceepak reaches into a knee pocket on his cargo pants, pulls out his own little spiral-bound book.

“I took the liberty of cribbing it when Chief Maroney was reading the pertinent passage: ‘Katie. I am moving into the Royal Lodge as suggested. Being closer is better. I love you. I can't wait to be so close we melt into each other.' ” Ceepak closes up his notebook, tucks it back into his pants. “The punctuation after
Katie
is crucial.”

Oh-kay. If Ceepak says so. Me? I let the computer check my spelling and grammar.

“It is a period, Danny. If Pratt had meant it as a missive to Ms. Landry, he would have used a colon. Perhaps a dash. Maybe even a comma. But by coming to a full stop, he is merely adding another item to his to-do list.”

Got it.
Katie.
It's something to be dealt with. Like:
Laundry.
Read that way, this is a note to whoever told him to take care of Katie, agreeing with their suggestions on how the job should be done. Move into the Royal Lodge. Be closer to the scene of the crime. Have a place to hide immediately afterward.

And now I think we know who he really wanted to melt into. It sure wasn't Katie. She was way too young for this creep. That lover's spat I witnessed in the lobby? It wasn't one. It was Jake Pratt already hounding Katie to turn over whatever evidence she had uncovered. The guy was nineteen. Nineteen-year-olds are what they call impetuous. So even though he had been given his marching orders, Pratt probably wanted to wrap up the Katie
problem without going through all the trouble of playing dress-up back in AA-4.

Now I hear thundering applause pouring out of the stage door.

“The show is over.” I see Ceepak brush his hip, checking for his Glock, which, like mine, isn't there. Usually, when we apprehend a primary murder suspect, we're armed. Not tonight.

“Great show, guys!” gushes the nanny-dancer, the first one to bound out the stage door. “Awesome!” She and the three other chorus girls bounce up the hall dressed in their sexy cowgirl outfits—complete with white gun belts holstering pink pistols.

Next come the three remaining male dancers: Mr. Magnum (who, by the way, is kind of tiny), Blaine, and Jim Bob. The guys look like total doofuses compared to the girls: spangled Stetsons, bolo ties, cowhide vests, and chaps flapping against their legs.

Finally, here comes Richard Rock followed by David Zuckerman. Zuckerman is hugging his aluminum-clad clipboard. His face is flushed and his scalp is even pinker than the chorus girls' six-shooters.

Meanwhile, Rock is shaking his head and sighing heavily.

“How could you betray me like that, David?” he says as they march up the hall.

Zuckerman blinks. “She asked me.”

“Son—never miss a good chance to shut up.”

“Gentlemen?” Ceepak interrupts. “Where is Mrs. Rock?”

Rock dabs at his face with a towel. “What are you two boys doin' back here? This area is off-limits.”

“We are here as part of the continuing investigation into the murder of Katie Landry. Again, Mr. Rock—where is your wife?”

“You boys should'a notified us first if you were gonna come nosin' around while we was onstage.”

“We obtained clearance from hotel security.”

Rock turns to Zuckerman. “David?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Get on the horn and call that Cyrus Parker fella. See if he really did give these two permission to snoop around back here.” He puffs out his chest, goes nose to chin with Ceepak. “You boys see anything interesting while you were spyin' on me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, really? What?”

“We now fully understand how the Lucky Numbers illusion is done.”

“Say what?”

“We know it is merely a matter of you manipulating prerecorded digital video images inside a control room while narrating the footage in a manner designed to convince the audience that what they are seeing on-screen is actually happening.”

Steam blasts out of Rock's ears. Well, it would if this were a cartoon. “David?”

“Sir?”

“Call the goddamn fucking lawyers. Sue this sumabitch. Sue the Atlantic City police department for being dumber than fucking dirt and deputizin' these two little shits in the first place. Slap an injunction on them.”

“I believe,” says Ceepak, “that what you should request is a restraining order.”

“What?”

Ceepak is scanning the hallway behind Rock. “Where is Mrs. Rock?”

“Gone.”

“Say again?”

“She's gone! Pulled up stakes and left me.”

“I find that hard to believe,” says Ceepak. “Mrs. Rock was just onstage.”

“Hell, I know that, boy. I was out there with her. But she refused
to come off this a'way with me. Apparently, somebody's been snooping around where they shouldn't ought to. Told Jessie what Lady Jasmine's been saying is one hundred percent true. Told her I've been frequenting a massage parlor up the boardwalk, ain't that right, David?”

“Mrs. Rock asked me to look into the matter, yes. After Mr. Ceepak reported that Lady Jasmine was continuing to make her allegations.”

Rock shakes his head, walks on by. “If I was you, I would've taken a closer look at to who it was signin' my paychecks, Davey. I don't like this . . .”

“You always instructed me to do whatever Mrs. Rock asked me to do.”

“David, I don't particularly like it when people put words in my mouth unless I say it!”

With that, Rock storms up the hall toward the
T.

We turn to follow and I see that the chorus boys have been hovering around the corner, sponging up some hot gossip for tonight's dish session up in the karaoke bar.

“Where did Mrs. Rock go?” Ceepak now asks Rock's back.

Rock tosses up his hands and, without turning around or slowing his stride, says, “Who knows? Too bad she can't run across the street, cry all over her boyfriend's pillow.”

Finally, dramatically, he stops and turns.

“That's right. I knew what the hell was goin' on over at that motel.”