The FBI Thrillers Collection (43 page)

LOS ANGELES

Jon
Franken, assistant director of
The Consultant,
said, “We couldn’t find any photos, but as I told you on the phone, Inspector Delion, we did find something every bit as good.” He flipped a switch on the video feed and pointed. “That’s Weldon—second guy on the left, the one just standing off to the side, arms crossed over his chest, watching everyone be idiots. He watches a whole lot, just stands back in the shadows, claims it gives him ideas. Whatever, he does have brilliant ideas.”

“Freeze it,” Dane said and looked at Nick as the screen held the image. The fact was she already looked frozen. She had to be afraid, looking at the man who very possibly hired Milton McGuffey to murder her, the man who might have killed his brother. Dane lightly touched his fingers to her forearm. “Nick?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t know.” She turned to look up
at Dane. “Maybe the bone structure is similar.” She shrugged. “It’s pretty scary.”

“I know. Now, Nick, I want you to forget the hair, the tan, the eyes—it could all be cosmetic alterations. Study his face, the way he moves, how he talks using his hands.”

She said finally, “Maybe, I just don’t know. I just can’t be sure. He looks so different.”

Delion said, “Milton McGuffey—would you have spotted him if he hadn’t shot you?”

“You want brutal honesty here? The answer is I’m just not sure. Probably. Yes, I probably would have said something.”

Flynn said, “From everything you’ve told me, the reason our perp selected McGuffey is because of the way he looks—that is, he looks a lot like him. Now, Mr. Franken, you still don’t have a clue where Weldon DeLoach is.”

Franken shook his head. “Sorry, like I already told you, he’ll be here when he wants to be here. If he’s in LA, he’ll be coming around. Weldon is a man of very set habits.”

“Mr. Franken,” Nick said, “has Mr. DeLoach always looked like this? Darkly tanned, really light hair?”

“Why, yes,” Franken said. “As long as I’ve known him. And that’s about eight years now. Why do you ask?”

Dane said to Nick, “If our guy is DeLoach, then when you saw him, he was most certainly wearing a wig, contacts. As for losing the tan, I’m not sure how that would be done except with makeup.”

“But why would he bother?” Nick said. “He sure didn’t expect me to be sitting in the church.”

“Yeah, but he would have seen a lot of people while he was in San Francisco. Maybe the disguise was for any- and everyone.”

Franken said, rubbing his elegant long fingers over his chin, “I don’t think Weldon DeLoach is the murderer. He—he’s just not the type to kill anyone. As I told you before, it’s just not in him.”

Dane remembered Wolfinger had called DeLoach a weenie. “You mean you believe he’s a coward?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just—no, not Weldon.”

Nick said, “The killer wanted McGuffey to look like him, Dane, and that’s why he hired McGuffey to kill me. So he has to be dark and really pale-skinned.”

“You’re probably right, Nick.” Dane asked them to zoom in to get a close-up of Weldon DeLoach, which Franken did. Wolfinger had said DeLoach was around thirty. Well, he didn’t look thirty. He looked forty, maybe more. He looked like he’d lived hard, that, or certainly a lot of stress. According to other writers interviewed, he wasn’t a cocaine neophyte. “But those years are over,” one of the lighting guys had told them. “Weldon hasn’t done bad stuff in a long time. He’s been really straight.”

DeLoach’s dark tan really stood out against his white shirt and white pants. His eyes were a pale blue. He had thinning hair—nearly white it was so blond.

Dane said, “Do you have anything with Weldon DeLoach speaking?”

“Why?” Delion said. “Nick never heard him speak.”

“Maybe she’ll recognize some of the moves he makes when he’s animated and speaking. Besides, I want to hear his voice, too.”

When Franken ran some more footage, there was Weldon DeLoach at a birthday party being held on a set, giving a toast. He had the softest voice Nick had ever heard, soft and soothing, without much expression or accent. She studied him carefully—the way his arms moved, his hands clenched and unclenched around a cup of booze he held aloft as he spoke, the way he held his head.

When it was over, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t be sure. But you know, if the San Francisco police can catch Stuckey, maybe he’ll identify DeLoach’s voice.”

“Good idea,” Dane said, and jotted it down in his small notebook. “Could you give us a copy of the tape?”

Franken nodded, said, “No problem. You’re really hoping that Weldon DeLoach is the madman who’s copying the scripts for
The Consultant
, aren’t you?”

“Fact is,” Delion said, sitting forward, “when we find him, we really want to sit down with him and have a nice cozy chat. We’ll see.”

“It’s not Weldon,” Jon Franken said again.

“Now, Mr. Franken,” Flynn said, “you said the first two episodes of
The Consultant
were Mr. DeLoach’s scripts, almost exactly, right?” Dane noticed that Flynn’s left hand always moved slightly up and down when he concentrated, as if he were dribbling a basketball.

“Yes,” Franken said, “DeLoach was really excited about the series.” His cell phone rang and he excused himself. When he came back, he said, “That was my assistant. She said one of Weldon’s friends just told her that Weldon was going up to Bear Lake to spend time with his dad. Said he was going to take at least three weeks and he wanted to do some fishing, too. His father’s in a home up there, Lakeview Home for Retired Police Officers.”

Delion said, “You mean DeLoach’s father is a retired cop?”

Franken said, “Yeah, I guess so. I do know his dad’s been there a long time. Once Weldon told me that his father was confused most of the time.”

Flynn said, “We already knew Weldon didn’t ask the people here at the studio or anyone else to make him any airline reservations. If he did fly somewhere, we would have found a record, what with all the security.”

“Bear Lake,” Delion said thoughtfully. “That’s up in the Los Padres National Forest, isn’t it? In Ventura County?”

“That’s right,” Flynn said. “Just an hour north on I-5, over the Tejon Pass. Well, maybe more, what with our godawful traffic.”

“And that means, of course, that DeLoach could have easily driven up to San Francisco anytime he wanted. And Pasadena,” Nick said.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Flynn said.

“Thank you, Mr. Franken,” Delion said, rising. “Detective Flynn’s people have interviewed all the other writers and employees of
The Consultant.
Everyone checks out, at least on the first pass, which is admittedly shallow. Oh yes, Mr. Franken, where were
you
last week?”

Jon Franken was gently swinging his foot with its Italian loafer tassel falling to one side, then to the other. He raised an eyebrow, but answered readily enough, and with good humor, “I was right here, Inspector Delion. I’m working on
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
at present. Very long days.”

Delion nodded, then turned away, saying over his shoulder, “Oh yes, what’s the name of Mr. Frank Pauley’s wife? You know, the one who plays the girlfriend on
The Consultant
?”

“Belinda Gates.”

“We’d like to speak to her. And the star of the show, Joe Kleypas.”

“Of course. Watch it with him, Inspector. Joe isn’t always mellow, particularly when he drinks. He’s got quite a temper, actually. If you accuse him of being a murderer, his smile might just drop off his face.” He looked Savich and Dane up and down, smiled to himself, and said, “Of course, it would be interesting to see what would happen if he went at it with you guys.”

Jon
Franken took Savich and Sherlock to the commissary for lunch. “Belinda’s working a soap this week,” he said as he chewed slowly on a single french fry. “A guest slot. There were some problems, so I know they were shooting today. Maybe she’ll be here. If she doesn’t show, I’ll take you to her trailer. It’s pretty rare that the bigger stars come in here. They hang out in their trailers most of the time. You probably noticed trailers scattered all over the lot.” He shook his head. “What a life, not much glamour sitting in a trailer.”

Sherlock said, looking around the big rectangular room, “I guess I expected a big buffet, cafeteria-style. I do like all those 1930s murals on the walls.”

“I like all the ape characters from the new
Planet of the Apes
you’ve got set around this big room,” Savich said. “They’re really lifelike.”

“This is Hollywood,” Jon said. “We never stop advertising or patting ourselves on the back. Actually, though, this commissary doesn’t compare to the one over at Universal. You can catch some really big stars over there because the place is so opulent.”

Belinda Gates walked in some ten minutes later. Sherlock said, “Goodness, she’s got rollers in her hair, Dillon, those big heat rollers. Do you remember the last time I used them to straighten my hair? You helped me roll them in?”

He said as he wrapped a long red curl around his finger, “Let’s do it again. It was fun.”

Sherlock paused a moment, remembering very clearly what they’d done just after pulling the rollers out. She said to Franken, “That’s really Belinda Gates? She’s very beautiful.”

“Yes, that’s her,” Franken said, and smiled as he chewed another french fry. “She is beautiful, and most important, the camera loves her face.”

Both Savich and Sherlock realized in that instant that Jon Franken had slept with her.

Sherlock said, “Tell us a bit about her, Jon.”

Franken ate another french fry, shrugged his elegant shoulders. “Belinda is basically a lightweight. She learns her lines, takes direction well, and has enough talent to keep the wolves at bay—of course, now that she’s nailed Frank Pauley she doesn’t have to worry. She works when she wants to, which probably means that her head’s less screwed up than it was. The thing is, she doesn’t have much fire in the belly; she just doesn’t have it in her to go for the jugular. If you’re looking at her as a suspect in this
mess, all disguised and made up to look like a man, I’d say she wouldn’t be able to make it through the first audition. Now, if you’re interested in Frank Pauley as your murderer, maybe Belinda will give you something incriminating. Pauley just might have enough acid in his gut to do something like this. The thing is, I just don’t know why he’d sabotage his own show.”

“And you could? Make it through the first audition?” Savich said. He ate a carrot out of his huge salad.

“Oh yes, believe it. Listen, I’d still be sweeping the studio floors if I didn’t have it in me to take out a few jugulars, if I didn’t want to move up in this business more than I wanted to eat, which was in question in those early years.” And then he smiled again, wiped his hands on a napkin. “I’ll introduce you and let you at her. A few years ago, Belinda had some problems with the cops. She might not be all that easy for you.”

Jon Franken rose. “Forget what I said about Pauley. Even if his worst enemy were backing this show, he still wouldn’t have the guts or the imagination to try to bring it down through this convoluted, god-awful violence. Ah, Belinda is taking her lunch out. This should be a good time. She doesn’t tape for another hour or so; I checked.”

Sherlock and Savich met with Belinda Gates in a small green room connected to a talk show stage. She didn’t look friendly. She looked suspicious, her lips tightly seamed together.

A challenge, Sherlock thought, smiling at her, remembering what Franken had said. She introduced herself and Savich, carefully showing Belinda Gates their FBI shields up close.

“You’re both FBI?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Savich said, sitting back so he wouldn’t overwhelm, so just maybe she would relax.

“Partners?”

“Sometimes,” Sherlock said, sticking out her hand so
Belinda Gates was forced to shake it. “Actually, we’re partners all around—we’re married and we’re FBI agents. Isn’t that a kick?”

Belinda said, looking back and forth between them, “You’re really married? To each other?”

“Oh yes,” Sherlock said. “We’ve got a little boy, Sean’s his name. He’s nearly a year old now. He’s walking, but he can also crawl as fast as I can walk. Besides being good parents, we’re good agents. We’re here to catch this killer and we need your help. We assume you know all about this, Ms. Gates?”

Belinda Gates leaned toward Sherlock, less wary and suspicious now. “Oh yes. Your husband—he looks like he could star in that new series Frank just dreamed up. It’s about a sports lawyer who’s a real looker and a hunk, stronger than most of his athlete clients. His clients are always getting him into trouble.” Belinda cleared her throat. “Listen, I’ll do whatever I can to help you find this horrible person. Is your name really Sherlock?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Cool.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock said. “We really appreciate speaking with someone who knows the ropes and all the players. I was very impressed with your role on
The Consultant.
I only saw the first two episodes, but you were really good. Your Ellie James character was believable, sympathetic, and beautiful, of course, but you can’t help that.” She paused a moment, and Belinda smiled.