Pie A La Murder (14 page)

Just as I was on the last page, reading the name of the printing company that had produced the pamphlet, John came to the entrance to the squad room and gestured for me to follow him.

Escorting me down a hallway, John said, “Liddy called you.”

“Here?”

“On your cell. I answered. She’d heard about Redding on the eleven o’clock news. I asked her why she was calling you about it. She told me she took you and D’Martino’s daughter to a Hollywood luncheon where you two met Redding. Apparently she doesn’t know anything else.”

“Didn’t she ask why you were answering my phone?”

“That was the first thing out of her mouth when she heard my voice. She wanted to know if you were all right. I told her you were, that you were giving me some background information. I said you’d call her tomorrow.”

“Did your tech person look through my phone log?”

“I did. I saw your calls to D’Martino. And you got a call from his cell at seven forty-one tonight. No message.”

“I was on the air.”

“Yesterday afternoon you dialed Alec Redding’s number. The duration was too short for you to have talked to him, or left a message. Why did you call him?”

I felt my cheeks grow hot and hoped that John couldn’t see that in the ugly fluorescent lighting in the hallway. “I was thinking about having some professional pictures taken,” I said. “Now, may I have my phone back?”

He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. I was sure he knew I wasn’t telling the truth. He didn’t say anything, but until the murder of Alec Redding was solved, my fib was going to lie between us like an unexploded bomb.

John fished my cell phone out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me.

Hoping to distract him by going on the offensive, I said, “You could have asked me for it, instead of demanding I turn it over.”

“Would you have given it to me?” he asked.

“Certainly.”

“Would D’Martino have?”

I couldn’t answer that. And I didn’t have to because we’d reached the first of the interrogation rooms. He opened the door and ushered me inside.

Nicholas was sitting at a rectangular wooden table that would have been no thing of beauty when it was new several decades ago, and had since aged badly.

Olivia and Nicholas sat together on one long side, with Hugh Weaver at the far end, next to Nicholas. I was relieved to see that Nicholas wasn’t handcuffed.

John indicated that I sit opposite Weaver, and near Olivia. He placed himself across from Nicholas and Olivia.

My chair was hard and uncomfortable, and I felt a sharp splinter stabbing the back of my right knee. I reached down, broke it off, and placed it on the tabletop.

Indicating the splinter, I said, “I’m going to report this seating to Amnesty International.”

Silence greeted my attempt at humor.

I smiled at Nicholas, who nodded in response. He looked tired.

In front of Olivia was a sheet of paper with handwriting on it. Next to that sheet was the page she had taken from me. I recognized it immediately because of the creases where she had folded it into quarters.

“Your two statements match,” Olivia said. “At least from the time you discovered Redding’s body.”

Weaver said, “D’Martino says he got to the vic’s house two minutes before you came in. Prior to that, he claims he was at home with his daughter. We haven’t been able to reach the daughter for confirmation.” Weaver’s tone dripped with sarcasm.

“She’s eighteen, probably out with her friends,” Olivia said lightly. “You can ask her tomorrow, in my presence.”

“Eighteen’s old enough she doesn’t need a babysitter to talk to us,” Weaver said.

“She will be discussing my client. You interview her with me, or we’ll let a judge decide, and that will likely delay your interview by several days. That’s my offer.”

Scowling, John said, “I want her here at nine AM.”

“You’re not going to question her
here
at all,” Olivia said. “I’m not going to subject an innocent young girl to the intimidation of being questioned in a police station. You can talk to her tomorrow, in my office. Noon. The address is on the card I gave you, Detective O’Hara.”

“To make sure he doesn’t coach the girl, D’Martino can stay here tonight, as the guest of the city of Los Angeles,” John said.

“No way, Jose. My client is not under arrest.”

“That can change,” Weaver said.

I felt like a spectator at a tennis match, my attention swinging from one speaker to the other. But I kept silent in order to remain in the room.

Olivia ignored Weaver’s implied threat and spoke directly to John. “I have another arrangement in mind. My client can stay in my guest room tonight. I will guarantee that he has no contact with his daughter, or with anyone except myself, before you talk to the girl tomorrow.”

Nicholas sat up straight, his face animated for the first time since I’d come into the room. “No,” he said. “If I don’t come home Celeste will wonder about what’s happened to me. And I don’t want her staying in the apartment alone.”

“She can stay with me,” I said.

“No!” John and Weaver barked at me simultaneously.

“Come on, fellas,” Olivia said. “She’s old enough to vote, join the army, get married without parental consent, so she’s old enough to stay by herself tonight. I will phone her later, introduce myself, and make arrangements to pick her up tomorrow. You have my guarantee as an officer of the court that I won’t tell her what D’Martino said, and father and daughter will not have a private conversation before you interview her. Good enough?”

In the end, they agreed that it had to be good enough. John didn’t look happy about it, and I saw Weaver patting his jacket pockets for the cigarettes he no longer carried.

A few minutes later I climbed into my Jeep and fired up the motor. With Eileen looking after Tuffy and Emma, I knew I didn’t have to go home immediately.

I drove to the next block and then worked my way north to Wilshire Boulevard. At Wilshire, I turned east, toward the Olympia Grand Hotel.

Where Nicholas’s ex-wife and her hemophiliac prince were staying.

And where, I suspected, I would find Celeste.

Guessing that she probably called herself by her maiden name, Tanis Fontaine, I gave the clerk at the reception desk my name and asked him to connect me to her suite. At first, he balked, citing the late hour. I assured him it was important. He looked doubtful, but phoned upstairs, apologized, and recited what I had told him. Presumably he was granted permission because I was put through.

The voice that answered on the first ring was male.

“And vat does your call at this hour concern?”

His voice was light—pale, if I were to assign a shade to it—and with a slight German accent.

Aware that the reception clerk was trying to listen, I moved as far away as the telephone cord would allow, turned my back on him, and kept my voice low.

“I am sorry to have disturbed you tonight—”

“To be precise, it is now morning.”

I visualized a man in a gray military uniform asking for my “papers,” but pushed the image aside. “
Last
night now, a photographer named Alec Redding was killed.”

“Ah.” Then silence.

“I believe it would be helpful to Ms. Fontaine, her daughter, and perhaps yourself if I could speak to you before you’re questioned by the police.”

Another silence, but a brief one.

“Come up. The Presidential Suite. Take the private elevator.”

“Yes, I will.”

I remembered where the private elevator was: on the far side of the public elevators, separated from them by a potted tree. When the hotel’s previous owner lived here, it was the way up to his apartment. I guessed that the space had been renamed “The Presidential Suite.”

The inside of the elevator was as I remembered it: polished brass, a mirrored back wall, and a bench padded in dark red velvet for anyone who needed to sit down during the fifteen-floor ride.

When the elevator stopped, it opened onto a corridor painted in a shade I would call Pippin apple green and lighted with a succession of small brass and crystal chandeliers. Across the hallway, directly facing the elevator, were a pair of polished oak double doors with “Presidential Suite” in brass letters affixed to them. To my left, perhaps fifty feet down the corridor, I saw another pair of double doors. Probably another suite, but before I had time to speculate further, a door to the Presidential Suite opened.

I was greeted by a man in his sixties, with close-cropped silver hair, gray eyebrows over dark eyes, and a soft pink complexion. He was incongruously—for the late hour—dressed in a black frock coat and gray trousers. The prince was considerably older than I had imagined.

Then the man spoke.

“This way, madame.”

The accent was British. I realized my mistake. I had been admitted by a butler, not a prince. Mickey Jordan, owner of the Better Living Channel, has an English butler at his house in Beverly Hills: Maurice, pronounced “Morris.” I should have registered the similar manner of dress. Over time, Maurice had begun to smile when he saw me at the Jordans’ front door. I doubted that I would know this man long enough for that congeniality.

While the interior of the private elevator had remained the same, the suite had been redecorated. In keeping with the Forest of Arden theme below, the walls were hung with hunting tapestries and the electric wall sconces were carved to look like tree branches. The public rooms of the suite now resembled the interior of an English castle—or one of the sets from that old musical,
Camelot.

I followed the butler deeper into the suite and saw a slender man rise from a green couch. Narrow face. Almost colorless blond hair, thinning, cut into a fringe above a high forehead. Intense—no, more like
steely
—pale blue eyes set in a pasty white complexion. He appeared to be in his midto late thirties, which would make him about ten years younger than Tanis. In spite of his less-than-robust appearance, he was an attractive man with fine features.

He extended his hand to me. “Frau Carmichael. I am Fredric von Hoffner. Here in America, ve can ignore titles.”

I took his hand. His skin was soft—he had probably never done anything remotely resembling manual labor in his life—but his grip was surprisingly firm.

“How do you do,” I said. “I was hoping to find Tanis and Celeste here.”

“They are in their bedrooms, asleep for some time. I prefer not to disturb them.”

His accent was definitely German, but it wasn’t heavy. I guessed that he had been educated in England.

Fredric von Hoffner—
a prince by any other name
—gestured for me to take a gilt-framed straight-back chair opposite the couch.

“May I offer you something to drink? Perhaps a port? Or tea?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

“Port for me, Mordue.”

With barely a nod, the butler went to a wet bar on the back wall of the room. I saw two doors in the far wall, perhaps leading to bedrooms, and a third door next to the bar. All were closed.

“You said you came to discuss something about the man who vas killed?” Von Hoffner’s manner toward me was cordial, but guarded, his features composed in a bland expression.

“The man was a photographer named Alec Redding.” I wasn’t sure how much he knew. Tanis had said he was a hemophiliac and that she was concerned about the effect of stress on him, implying that his health was fragile. I chose my words carefully. “Redding took the portfolio pictures of Celeste.”

He produced a short grunt of disgust. “You are referring to that ridiculous picture vit a pie? Children can be most foolish. Vy do you bring this up?”

Mordue carried a silver tray with a small crystal glass of port on it and placed the glass in front of his employer. “Your highness.”

“The police are certain to find out about that photograph,” I said. “And when they do, they may think of it as a possible motive for Redding’s murder.”

Von Hoffner took a sip of the ruby red port and shrugged. “Vy are you telling me this?”

“Where were you and Tanis this evening around nine o’clock? And Celeste? Where was she?”

“Ah, so that is vat you think?” His lips curved into a smile, but there was no sign of amusement in his eyes. He said, “Mordue.”

“Yes, your highness?”

“My fiancée, her daughter, and I were here all evening, playing cards, ya?”

“Yes, your highness.” There was not a flicker of expression on the butler’s face.

“So, you see, Frau Carmichael, this matter is no concern of ours.” He stood. “Now, if you vill not think me rude, ve shall say good night, ya?”

“You were all here, together?”

“Just so. Mordue, ring for the elevator for my guest.”

I kept my face as devoid of expression as was that butler’s. I did not believe “his highness,” nor his robotic servant.