Murder by Numbers (11 page)

“Alleged incident, I guess,” Liza said. “My partner got it from an investigator friend who got it from a business columnist. I don't know where, but I do know the name of the chain store.”

She gave it, and Clements nodded with an odd smile.

“I think it's more than merely ‘alleged.' For one thing it explains the odd way Mr. Hake acted when we first questioned him. He was as cool as the proverbial cucumber when we asked him about the death of his boss. But he got a little rattled when we mentioned the store windows being broken.”

Clements shook his head. “Not that he broke down in tears or anything. He's talked to too many cops over the years to give much away. But I picked up something, and so did the other people working the interrogation. He got very emphatic about being away from Maiden's Bay when the windows would have been broken. He says Chissel sent him out of town on the corporate jet—he had to take care of some sort of important business. He'd have been more convincing if he had actually said what that business was, especially since this alibi also happens to cover the murder.”

The sheriff hunched forward with a grunt. “As it is, this is an alibi with a lot of give. Even if he missed the excitement on Main Street, a quick turnaround could have brought him back up here before high tide.”

Clements looked more bearlike than ever. Maybe it was the sunken red eyes showing the sleepless hours he'd spent since the body had been discovered. “You know we're already checking departures and arrivals. We're being especially careful regarding Mr. Hake.”

Leaving the sheriff's office, Liza had that good-news/bad-news feeling. The good news was that Sheriff Clements was at least talking to her as if she were a sane person. He'd thanked her for her information, though obviously he'd check it. After Derrick Robbins's murder, the lead investigator for the Santa Barbara police had treated her like some kind of nut.

The bad news? Well, she had to admit to herself that solving this murder was worse than dealing with diabolical sudoku. Instead of reducing the number of candidates, as accomplished by every successful move in sudoku, her list of candidates for Oliver Chissel's murderer kept expanding.

Even the crime kept expanding. The broken glass found with Chissel's body (which she could never mention unless she wanted to get Curt Walters in trouble) suggested that the murder and the Main Street vandalism were connected.

Liza froze halfway through pushing open the side exit door. Could it be possible that the sabotage, the vandalism, and the murder were also connected?

She got a sudden, vivid flash of Deke Jannsky yelling at her, his red face twisted with fury. Suppose the town's lowlife decided to jack up his extra salary by screwing up the filming of
Counterfeit
. But he screws himself up with bad behavior on the set and gets fired. None of the other citizens of Maiden's Bay back him up. He gets half a load on and goes on a rampage down Main Street. Oliver Chissel sees Deke—maybe he hears him carrying on about the town and the movie. Fearing a public relations nightmare, Chissel tries to stop Jannsky. Instead, Jannsky kills him.

As a line of logic, it held together.

Right
, that annoying voice in the back of Liza's head butted in,
except for the ending.

Maybe the disposal of the body stretched the logical chain a little. Hell, it left the chain twanging apart like an overstressed guitar string. Why in the name of anything would Deke Jannsky bury Chissel up to his neck on the beach? An unpremeditated killing would suggest a panic-stricken reaction. If Jannsky had snapped and killed Chissel, he'd have freaked and dumped the body as quickly as possible—probably in the harbor.

Liza headed back to her car. Like it or not, she needed more information, and the place to get it was the
Oregon Daily
. Finding a spot in the strip mall parking lot, Liza went up the outside stairs and entered the reception area for the newspaper's satellite office.

Janey Brezinski, the paper's official meeter and greeter, barely responded to Liza's hello—she was tied up on an obviously important call. Liza walked past the reception desk and into the newsroom. She was in luck—Murph was definitely in the building.

The oversized reporter had the high color and upturned nose that marked a true son of Ireland. The light from his computer screen put copper highlights in his auburn hair as he hunched over his keyboard, inputting a story. His typing style was idiosyncratic—he only used his two forefingers—but he maintained a swift,
rat-a-tat
cadence as he wrote his story.

Liza stood silently beside the reporter until Murph sighed and slumped back. He aimed a slightly suspicious glance up at her. “You want something, Kelly?”

“I understand you're following up on the sabotage reports from the movie set,” she said.

He nodded, his expression turning more toward boredom. “Pissant stuff. A person might die from a million pinpricks, but it's kinda hard to make an exciting story out of it, you know?”

“I was trying to think who might benefit from delaying the film shoot like that. The answer I came up with was anybody being paid by the day.”

Murph shot her a shrewder look now. “Like the extras, you mean? Especially since most of them were available to work the movie because they couldn't hold down regular jobs anywhere.”

He shrugged massive shoulders. “I thought about that very thing, but it wouldn't wash. Things happened on the set even on days the extras weren't there. And it was fresh sabotage—wires cut after lights had been taken out of a truck and tested.”

“Huh,” Liza said. Well, maybe it was too ambitious to try tying all the crimes together—like the physicists at Coastal University trying to come up with a theory of everything.

“The one thing everybody agrees on,” Murph went on, “is that the sabotage only started when Lloyd Olbrich came on board. Everything went smoothly when Terence Hamblyn was in charge. The movie was even coming in under budget.”

“I guess that's not surprising,” Liza said. “
Counterfeit
was Derrick Robbins's baby, and he handpicked everyone involved with the film. They were supposed to work together well.”

“Well, that stopped when Olbrich came in.” Murph stretched and moved his hands back to the keyboard. “Made me wonder if the trouble wasn't coming from some kind of twisted movie politics—somebody with a grudge against the new director.”

“You could wind up with a long list, from what I hear,” Liza told him.

“Yeah, but I'm trying to do a news piece here, not a gossip story. You know some of the actors don't like the guy.”

“How about the crew members?”

Murph's fingers, poised to type, went back down to rest on the desktop. “Only a couple of them worked with the guy before, and as far as I can make out, they've got no beefs with him. Of course, now all of them are complaining that he's working them like a slave driver.”

If Olbrich got the same message from the Mirage board as I got over the news, he might be right
, Liza thought.
Best to get the movie done before they cut off the money
.

Murph took advantage of Liza's silence to go back into his story, tapping away like a maniac in his oddball typing style. She stood sorting through the movie people who might have a beef with Lloyd Olbrich.

Jenny, of course, had opened her mouth very loudly about Olbrich. And Liza knew that Jenny had worked on a lighting crew for the tech side of her theater training. Lights aren't all that different on a theater stage and on a movie set.

Mayor Massini must have been fairly annoyed to have Olbrich come in and start reshooting scenes. But he didn't have a motive for sabotage and delay. He'd want the film people to finish up and get out of town so he could start the boardwalk construction.

Guy Morton had seemed very up front when Michael hit him on the sabotage issue. Maybe, though, that bang on the table had been a little too much of a performance. That poor young actor getting institutionalized—that was a strong motive against Olbrich…and maybe more. Suppose Morton had decided to ratchet up local feeling against the continued filming and Olbrich's changes by going on a glass-smashing spree down Main Street. If Chissel had seen him and intervened, that might also become a motive for murder.

“Are you annoying my reporters?” a voice at Liza's elbow demanded.

She turned to see Ava Barnes giving her a quizzical look.

“I came to get some information, but I think I'm suffering from information overload,” Liza admitted.

“So you don't have a solution to the problem of Oliver Chissel?” Ava asked with a grin.

“It's like when I got my first sudoku techniques down,” Liza said, “but the whole X-wing thing was beyond me. I was vaguely aware that there were patterns—I just couldn't
see
them.”

“It was a lot easier when we had secret messages to decode,” Ava agreed. “This time, so much stuff seems off the wall. Like the way Chissel was found—why wouldn't the killer bury him all the way? It's like the misdirection in a magic trick—somebody is trying to get us all looking in the wrong direction.”

Liza's boss suddenly went businesslike. “By the way, I liked the new stuff you sent in. That will cover us for about a week, but we'll need more, so get to work! That story you started about learning the X-wings—could that be a column?”

“Maybe,” Liza said, hoping Ava wouldn't notice the sudden faraway look in her eyes. Being reminded of this job had unfortunately reminded her of her other job. She'd been staying away from the set—Jenny had to learn to handle some problems without always being able to run to a publicist.

Now, though, she needed some sort of read on the temper of the set, not just for her second job as a publicist, but for her third—finding Chissel's killer.

Liza headed home to clean up, then walked back downtown. The crew was shooting at the harbor again, with a complicated arrangement of tracks extending down the boardwalk for the camera to roll along.

There wasn't much in the way of an audience. The townsfolk were pretty much bored with filming by now, and there weren't any tourists around.

Liza stepped past a PA who waved her along. She carefully kept out of the way as she watched the scene being set up. Jenny and Guy Morton were to walk down toward one of the piers while the camera executed a tracking pan. Olbrich watched in silence while they went through two takes. Then he suddenly started berating Guy.

“Maybe that hambone style of acting worked when you were still a stuntman pretending to be an actor. But times have changed, Morton. You actually have to show something more than that constipated hero face from the old-time serials.” Olbrich jerked his chin nastily at Jenny. “Keep teaching that crap to the girl, and the only job she'll get in the movies will be selling popcorn.”

He gestured impatiently. “Let's try it again.”

The same scene proceeded, but this time Liza was amazed at the difference still-raw emotions could make. Morton's steaming anger, even though he repressed it, leaked through as an air of menace.

And Jenny's upset, not so well masked, showed as a sense of unease and vulnerability as the two actors walked and said their lines.

Liza was suddenly reminded of a hundred-year-old story from the theater world about legendary producer/director David Belasco. The man had a clear, almost dictatorial view of how a production should go—and an unscrupulous manner of getting his way.

One of the director's favorite tricks was to work himself up into a serious rage about some argument over interpretation or characterization, consummated by yanking the pocket watch from his vest, throwing it on the floor, and stamping on it.

A second later, Belasco would gasp, stepping back in horror. “My father gave me that watch on his deathbed!” he'd cry.

Of course the chastened actor or actress targeted by the stratagem, feeling terrible, would give in to the great man.

Olbrich's scam, if anything, did Belasco one better. He'd get a couple of insurance takes in case his mind game didn't work. Then he'd drop a bomb to elicit the emotional responses he wanted.

If that's the kind of abuse he dishes out in his mind games, I'm not surprised Olbrich drove some poor kid to the booby hatch
, Liza thought.

But she had to admit the director was smart, flaming Guy Morton to get two reactions for the price of one tirade.

The crew was already preparing for a different scene. Liza could see where Olbrich was getting his slave driver reputation.

Jenny spotted Liza and hissed. “You see what he's doing? We barely have enough time to get these new lines down. And before we even get comfortable in a scene, he starts screaming at somebody.”

“Pardon me, Ms. Kelly—Jenny.” Peter Hake, in a black car coat and jeans, made his way past them.

“Do you think it's such a good idea that Olbrich is rushing us along like this?” Jenny demanded.

“I'll talk to him,” Hake promised, “but he is the director.”

And Hake is just the special assistant to the dead boss
, Liza thought.
I wonder how long it will be before Mirage cuts him loose?

She didn't even have a chance to talk to Jenny. Olbrich just blew Hake off, instead yelling for his actor for the next scene.

This time around Jenny stood alone at the end of a pier. Apparently, she heard something, because she turned, looking surprised and wary.

Again, they did a couple of takes. Liza made her way closer, staying behind the camera. She watched as Olbrich leaned over to his cameraman. “Focus in on her face,” the director muttered, “and keep rolling until the second time I yell ‘Cut!'”

They started the scene again, with one of the PAs yelling, “Sound cue!” for whatever noise would be inserted.

But as Jenny turned, Olbrich howled, “Cut! What are we even bothering with this for? We're just wasting film! Cut!”

Even with the whole pier between them, Jenny could see Jenny's mobile face register shock and, yes, a little fear. In close-up, such a naked reaction could make a scene.

Brilliant
, Liza thought.
But nasty.

In fact, Liza was so caught up in the little game going on in front of her, she missed the first yells from behind.

She turned to see one of the big equipment trucks wobbling its way onto the pier. One of the crew members was trying to wave it back—until he suddenly realized there was no driver behind the wheel. The guy had to jump out of the way—and into the harbor.