The Trials of Nikki Hill (7 page)

“Deschamps belongs in jail, damn it. You can’t see he’s dirty, you better get glasses. Whose side you on in this anyway?”

“Side?” Goodman suddenly shouted. “This isn’t a fucking football game!”

The senior detective’s outburst caught Nikki by surprise. She remembered the battles Blackie and Carlos would get into, but they were both aggressive and hot-tempered. Her initial assessment of Goodman was that he was the contemplative type. But Carlos could probably try the patience of a saint.

The two detectives seemed to be locked in a stare-down. “You boys decide to start whaling on each other,” she said, “you might want to take it outside where you won’t be bouncing against any evidence.”

The older man blinked, shook his head, and casually leaned against a wall. He was breathing rather heavily.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Hey, amigo, you look shaky.” Concern had swiftly replaced Morales’s anger.

“I’m fine,” Goodman told them.

Nikki wasn’t so sure. The blood had drained from his face, leaving it an unhealthy pasty gray.

He straightened, assumed his usual laconic stance, and said, “Sorry about the show of temperament, Ms. Hill. Why don’t we go consult with somebody who might give us some honest-to-God facts about the bracelet?”

“I doan mind facts,” Morales said as they walked from the room. “Long as they doan get in the way.”

They found Arthur Lydon, Madeleine Gray’s assistant, in the office at the rear of the house, staring at the phone in frustration. He was a small man with short, spiked hair and a boyish face tanned so evenly it couldn’t have been natural. He was wearing tight black pants, a lavender sailcloth shirt, and several tiny metal studs embedded in his right ear. “Ms. Hill,” he said to her when Goodman had introduced them, “can you tell me how I might find out when Maddie’s body . . .” He paused and almost gave in to tears. “. . . when she will be available for a farewell service?”

Nikki said, “The autopsy has been scheduled for tomorrow morning. You should be hearing from somebody after that.”

“Mr. Lydon,” Goodman said, “we’d like you to help us with something.”

The small man’s eyes brightened with curiosity as Goodman handed him the baggie containing the bracelet. “
Très
tacky,” the young man said.

“Ever seen it before?” Morales asked.

Arthur Lydon shook his head from side to side emphatically.

“Check out the inscription,” Nikki suggested.

Lyndon picked a pair of eyeglasses from his desk. They had round tortoiseshell frames that enhanced his schoolboy appearance. “Oh, I don’t believe it,” he said. “You’re not going to tell me this trinket belongs...belonged to Mad-die?”

“You never noticed her wearing it?” Nikki asked.

“Definitely not. Maddie rarely wore jewelry. Maybe a string of pearls.”

“Nothing that she wore all the time?” Goodman asked. “Like a ring?”

“No way,” the young man said. “She spent so much of her life in front of a camera. The folks out in TV land don’t like their trusted newspeople to be too flashy. And this . . .” he handed the baggie back to Goodman. “This isn’t her style at all.”

“Was she in Paris recently?” the detective asked.

“Several months ago,” Lydon said. “She had a week off and she up and went. Maddie was very... spontaneous.”

“Go on a long trip like that by herself?” Nikki asked.

“To my knowledge,” Lydon said, “and I made the arrangements.”

“Couldn’t she have changed your arrangements and taken somebody?” Goodman asked.

The young man considered the question and frowned. “Well, as I told you, she
was
spontaneous.”

“She like black guys?” Morales asked.

Lydon looked quickly at Nikki and away. “Maddie was unattached,” he said, pursing his lips. “She liked men. All kinds of men. Who doesn’t?”

Morales rolled his eyes. Ignoring him, Goodman said, “There’s a room upstairs, Mr. Lydon. Got a desk with a computer, filing cabinets.”

Lydon nodded. “Maddie’s private work space.”

“Want to come up there with us for a minute?” Goodman asked.

Lydon’s eyes dropped to the papers on his desk. “Sure. This can wait.”

They trudged upstairs, gathering at the doorway to the cluttered room. “Wow,” Nikki said. “I thought my place was a mess.”

“Look around, Mr. Lydon,” Goodman said. “Tell us what you think.”

The young man took a step forward. “Let’s just stay here,” Goodman cautioned.

Lydon’s eyes flitted around the room, finally setting on the filing cabinet. “It’s a dreadful mess, of course,” he said. “And someone’s pried open that cabinet drawer.”

“Not very professional,” Nikki said.

“That’s odd,” Goodman said. “The lab folks haven’t hit here yet, but I coulda sworn that drawer was open only a few inches last time I looked.”

He moved past Lydon, putting on his thin rubber gloves. He used one finger to push the drawer open even more.

“What did your boss keep in there?” Nikki asked Lydon.

“I don’t know. This room was off limits.”

“Folders,” Goodman said, staring into the drawer. “Folders labeled with nicknames. ‘Hummer.’ ‘Jailbird.’ ‘Porn Pop.’ ‘Team Player.’ ‘Booty-Bandit.’ ”

He joined them, rolling off the gloves. “When was the last time you were up here, Mr. Lydon?”

“Yesterday afternoon. Maddie summoned me to say I could leave early.” “You usually work on Sunday?” Nikki asked.

Lyndon nodded. “Prepping for Monday’s show.” “But yesterday she sent you home early,” Goodman said. “Every now and then she would do that. Other times she’d ask me to stay late. It evened out.”

“Why do you suppose she wanted you out of here yester

day?” Nikki asked.

The young man shrugged. “She expecting a boyfriend?” Nikki asked.

“I imagine she told me to go so I wouldn’t know what she

was expecting.”

“Could she have done all this damage?” Goodman asked. “Maddie had her paper-tossing moods. But she wouldn’t pry open a cabinet.”

“Did you know about those files?” Goodman asked.

“When I first started working here five years ago, Maddie made it very clear that this room was private. I was to enter

it only at her request.”

“Didn’t that seem a little weird?” Nikki asked. “Maddie’s business was secrets. So, no, I didn’t think it weird.”

He paused, raised an eyebrow. “I wonder . . .” he began. “What?” Goodman asked.

“I assume you think that whoever...killed Maddie also

broke into the cabinet?”

“Possible,” Goodman said.

Lydon took a step into the room. Goodman’s shout to hold it stopped him in his tracks.

“Sorry, I just wanted to check...There’s a hand-carved wooden box on the desk you might find interesting.”

Goodman took a few steps to the desk. “Yeah. I see it.” He lifted the box’s lid very gingerly.

“Key to . . .” Goodman blinked and squinted. “. . . Bank of... Beverly.”

“One afternoon,” Lydon said, “while I was standing at her desk waiting for her to finish a phone call, I happened to notice that key in the box. She’d forgotten to close the top. She saw me looking at it and went a little postal. Slammed down the receiver. Called me a sneak and ordered me out of the house. Before I got to the front door, she’d calmed down. She felt so bad she gave me her tickets to a Liza concert. Maddie was like that. Big temper, big heart.”

Before Lydon got too misty-eyed, Goodman said, “There’s something else I want to show you.”

They all moved downstairs to the room with the dark green walls. “Anything unusual?” the detective asked.

“The rug’s gone,” Lydon exclaimed. “Why would anyone want to steal that?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Goodman asked.

“It was just a modern Romanian copy of a Kashan. Couldn’t have been worth more than six or seven hundred dollars.”

“Could you describe it?” Nikki asked.

“Like I say, a copy of a Kashan. Basically red, with yellow and blue triangles around the edges.”

“How big?”

“It was in the center of the room. I’d say eight feet by twelve.”

“Anything like that in Deschamps’s place?” Goodman asked Morales.

“Closest thing to a rug was the food on the guy’s kitchen floor.”

Nikki asked Lydon, “What was Maddie wearing yesterday when you left?”

The young man looked at Goodman. “I gave that information to the detective.”

Goodman took out his notepad. “Red Dana Buchman suit,” he read. “Silk paisley blouse, red and yellow. Black Ferragamo pumps.” He looked at her as he put away the pad. “All missing.”

“Lemme call over to Jamal’s,” Morales said. “See if they found the rug or the dame’s clothes.”

“Do it from the car,” Goodman said. “We’d better get going if we expect to hit the bank before they lock up. You want to drive with us, Ms. Hill?”

“Nikki,” she said. “Yes, I’d like to tag along.”

“Fine. Thanks for your help, Mr. Lydon. I imagine we’ll be talking with you again.”

“Be still, my heart.”

Nikki was surprised at how excited she felt at the opening of Maddie Gray’s bank box. Sharing the small room with the two detectives and an officer of the bank, she was almost holding her breath as Goodman lifted the long metal lid.

“It’s fulla cash,” Morales said, staring down at rows of bound bills. He quickly began counting the packets. There were twenty, each containing twenty-five one-hundred-dollar bills. Under the last stack was...another key.

By the time they were finished, they’d opened four of the late Maddie Gray’s bank boxes and amassed a total of two hundred thousand dollars.

“That must’ve been some rainy day Maddie was waiting for,” Nikki said. “I don’t get it. She was making all she needed with her show. Why would she screw around with blackmail?”

“Control,” Morales said. “Lady liked to make people squirm.”

“I wonder why,” Nikki said.

“Why? She was one mean bitch.”

“What do you suppose made her that way?”

“Not our problem,” Morales said. “We only care about who made her dead.”

They replaced the boxes. Goodman told the bank manager that someone from the LAPD would be returning for the cash, which was now evidence.

As they drove away from the bank, Morales turned to Nikki on the backseat. “Like ole times, eh? ’Cept for Blackie not bein’ here, of course.”

“Except for that,” she said. In truth, she didn’t think it was like old times at all.

N
INE

J
immy Doyle spent the better part of the afternoon strolling around the Beverly Hills shopping area, checking out the boutiques along Rodeo and Little Santa Monica. He didn’t have much else to do until the cops got their act together. If they ever did.

The sun was just starting to dip in the west when he was drawn to a shop called L’Homme Magnifique, where five years before he’d purchased a couple of three-hundred-dollar silk shirts that the buttons had fallen off of the first time he wore them. “So?” the salesman had told him when he’d complained. “Have your butler sew them back on.”

Doyle was amused by that kind of brass. He looked around the small showroom hoping the snotty smart-ass was still there, but the only salesperson on the floor was a woman wearing dark green lipstick that made her pale face look like something out of a Stephen King novel. Good body though. He asked her if Harold was still working there.

“I don’t know any Harold,” she said, not giving it much thought. “There’s a Raoul who does the books.”

“It’s not important,” he said. “I’ll just look around.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” she said, purposely glancing at her watch.

He was fingering a cashmere sport jacket so soft it felt like eiderdown when his beeper gave a chirp. The blinking number was Hobie Adler’s private line. Doyle patted his breast pocket and realized he’d left the cellular in his hotel room.

“Got a phone I can use?” he asked the voluptuous ghost woman.

She looked at the little disk on her wrist again. “Sorry, closing time,” she said.

They could be rude in other parts of the country, but no place beat Rodeo Drive for attitude. He loved it.

“Suppose I buy this?” He held up a silk tie—blue with tiny white dots.

She shrugged, then pointed a green fingernail at a telephone resting on a tiny counter at the rear of the store. “It only works for local calls,” she said.

“This tie really two hundred and fifty bucks?” he asked.

“If that’s how it’s marked.”

“Ring it up for me while I make my call,” he said.

“Cash or card?”

“You get a lot of people plunking down two-fifty in cash for a tie?” he asked.

“You’d be surprised,” she said, taking his card with a practiced boredom.

Hobie Adler seemed to be awaiting his call. He picked up on the first ring. “Me,” Doyle said. “What’s up?”

“I have the file,” Adler said. One of his minions had removed the Manila folder containing Dyana Cooper’s secrets from Madeleine Gray’s home. “I don’t suppose you want to see it.”

“Not in this lifetime,” Doyle said. “You take a peek?”

“No.”

“Good. What you don’t know for a fact won’t lead to perjury. Give your shredder a workout.”

“I gather there were a number of other files,” Adler said.

“I hope your boy left ’em,” Doyle said. “We want ’em found. We want the world to know the kind of broad she was.”

Adler cleared his throat. “Ah, Jimmy, we’ve learned that the district attorney is probably going to charge the young man they arrested.”

“Good source?”

“Hasn’t failed me yet. So it seems unlikely we’ll need your services. I just got off the phone with John Willins, who wanted me to convey how grateful he is for your help...”

There was a time when Doyle would have been happy to take the short-end money and head back to D.C. without having to lift a finger. But pickings had been slim for a while, and in truth, he’d been looking forward to the action as much as the cash.

“Is he thirty grand grateful, you think?” he asked.

Hobie Adler was silent for a beat, then replied, “That should be acceptable. John is sitting on top of a three-billion-dollar music empire.”

“Then let’s make it forty grand.”