Gunnar then flipped through the magazine, skimming article after article, until he came to the “Sneak Preview” on the last page. This was the coming attractions trailer for the following month’s issue. The “Sneak Preview” promised blowout features on advanced superset training, Arnold Tempelton’s biceps blasting techniques, and Ms. Empire, Mary Ann Jennings’ sizzling swimsuit layout. Plus, the column reminded, it would have muscle-to-muscle coverage of the Sun State Classic. Underneath this promise, they ran a picture of Frank Jankowsky and Christy Gilmore holding each other’s hands up in victory, with the first-place gold medal around both their necks. NATURE BOY AND GOLDEN GIRL TAKE SUN STATE CLASSIC, a caption ran. As Gunnar’s eyes skipped to the paragraph promising an “Experts’ Corner” of muscle-building nutrition, he felt as if his blood had run cold.
“I think I’ve got it,” he moaned, feeling the pulse pounding in his ears.
“Huh?” Erika asked.
Diane’s eyes widened, though, and fixed on Gunnar.
“I’ve got what we need to place Laura at the scene of the crime, at the time of the murder. To place her there at the time she claims she was on her way to Pomona,” Gunnar said with more conviction. Staring at the magazine in his hand, though, he was certain that he was seeing everything come into crystal clear, flawlessly perfect clarity.
“What are you talking about?” Erika asked slowly, carefully.
“That’s what Laura told me,” Gunnar said. “That’s how she challenged me. Prove that she was there after Bo Sullivan, the college kid, the film student at the door, saw her drive away. Well, now I think I can prove it.”
“You saw something in there just now?” Erika said, glancing at the magazine.
“Yeah, and I remembered something from the night of the contest. Arnold helped me solve it.”
“Tempelton?”
“No, the other one.”
CHAPTER 68
“Skin lotion,” Gunnar said as the two women were now crowding him, demanding answers immediately.
“Skin lotion?” Erika snapped, her voice tense, impatient. “Your key to this whole thing is skin lotion?”
“All right, all right,” he replied with a chuckle. “Let me start from the top and explain the chain of events the way I figure it. While at the contest, Laura laid down a very subtle yet effective exit from the contest. She got up and left at seven fifteen and was never seen again.”
“Yeah, and Amy’s story of the drama student at the door confirms it,” Erika said. “Just like we discussed it several times already. Give us something new!”
Gunnar nodded. “Yeah, the drama student confirms it because Laura hints at the job offer. That’s gotta be suspicious in itself. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeanie’s agents got to fight off film and TV students looking for jobs every day.”
“For a YouTube channel?” Diane asked, incredulous.
“For a very successful YouTube channel,” Gunnar said. “And in L.A., every second person on the street is an aspiring filmmaker.”
“Okay, got it,” Diane replied.
“So, she leaves,” Gunnar continued. “Apparently, to go and see her sister up at the Fleming Institute, way over in Pomona. But in reality, she first goes off to the parking lot, enters through the kitchen, and takes the emergency back stairs—”
“What? Somewhere behind—” Erika cut in.
“Yeah. Behind the stage. She goes from the kitchen to the backstage, through the women’s prep area, to the emergency exit, then up the back stairs to Brad’s room.”
“And that’s when she calls Brad on the cell and asks him to come upstairs?” Erika asked.
“Exactly. That’s where the poisoning takes place. Somehow, without Brad noticing, Laura lets him have it. Slips him the poison when he doesn’t notice. She somehow gets it into his bottle of energy juice. Brad might even drink the whole thing there because he’s in bad shape again but doesn’t notice Laura making off with the bottle afterward.”
Diane cut in now with, “All she’d have to do is put it in the wastebasket maybe, and room service would get rid of it.”
“Sure,” Gunnar agreed.
“And then they go their separate ways?” Erika asked. “When Brad doesn’t know he’s about to die?”
“Right. Laura goes back downstairs, taking the back stairwell again. She tries to go out the back of the building, but she realizes she can’t. The construction equipment’s blocking the door. Instead, she crosses the women’s prep area and slips out through the kitchen. And this is where the lotion plays into the plot.”
“Ah, at last,” Erika said, sounding quite relieved.
Gunnar said, “Walking through the women’s section, she passes these female contestants. One of them is Christy Gilmore. She’s doing light dumbbell curls. In her posing bikini. And Laura’s photographed, and the picture is put in Muscle Quest.”
“But couldn’t that have been before Laura left?” Erika asked. “You know, earlier in the evening.”
“Absolutely not,” Gunnar said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Sure. Because when Franky took me and Kelly backstage before the contest, I happened to overhear an interview Christy was giving. She was talking about her glowing tan. The magazine called her Golden Girl. It was the look she achieved through a special preparation of lotions and oils and warming up while in her sweats. It was a lotioning process used by Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the interview, she said how she didn’t take off her warm-up suit before the contest began. The last time Laura was backstage was when I was there.”
“When Christy was in warm-ups.” Diane suddenly got the point.
“She was never in a bikini backstage before the contest,” Gunnar said. “She was never in a bikini before we went there! And then Laura leaves gets in her seat, the show begins, Christy takes off her warm-ups before the women go on stage—”
“When Laura should have been in her seat,” Erika said.
“When Laura was in her seat because I saw her there,” Gunnar said. “Because it is just before the women’s lineup. During the men’s preliminaries, she leaves. She’s upstairs and waiting until the break until Brad shows until she poisons him until she reappears backstage and in the same picture as Christy in her posing bikini.”
Then Diane said, “So, the alibi she so carefully corroborated with that kid at the door’s going to hang her?”
“Yeah,” Gunnar said.
But Erika quickly interjected before he could say anything more, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute!”
Gunnar knew what she was going to say next, but he kept quiet.
“Isn’t this still a bit thin? I mean, do you think this is a true smoking gun?”
“It’s pretty damn close if Laura first swears she was nowhere near the contest after intermission.”
“It’s pretty circumstantial.”
“It’s a lie, is what it is. But we’re going to go and add a little more evidence to seal the case right now.”
“The listening devices?” Diane asked.
“Hell yeah,” Gunnar said with a bitter smile.
CHAPTER 69
“I think I’m almost sorry we’re here,” Erika said as Gunnar pulled the Charger into the empty parking lot next to the Foundry Gym.
Gunnar could hear the edge in her voice and the exhaustion as well. But he also felt both. On the one hand, adrenaline pumped through his body, primed his brain as he looked forward to a risky gambit at taking Laura down. On the other, he was also dead tired. This was the second night he wasn’t going to sleep through.
“Oh?” he replied to Erika’s vague statement.
“Somehow, I can’t come to terms with this case. I know I should see good guys and bad guys somewhere, but I can’t really.”
“Laura and Brad, you mean.”
“Holt was a worthless bastard.”<
br />
“Yeah, he was,” Gunnar said slowly. “But Laura tried to kill us both. She used those hitmen as weapons. She sent them after us. She sent them after Amy. She was ready to take out anyone who could tie her to Billy Webb’s killing.”
“I know,” Erika said quietly.
“Billy Webb,” Gunnar said and glanced at Erika before he pulled his car into a parking slot below the outside stairway climbing to his office. “Think of him as a good guy in this. He didn’t do anything to deserve to die.”
Erika nodded as Gunnar turned off the Charger’s engine. Outside, Diane was already waiting for them. She had arrived a couple of minutes before Gunnar and Erika.
“Let’s put on a good show,” she said as Gunnar got out of his car.
“Yeah,” he said. “Somewhere, Laura will be listening and recording everything we say in there. We have to make it good.”
He looked at both Diane and Erika now. Both women gave him a resolute nod.
“Let’s break a leg,” he said and started climbing the stairs to his office.
Erika followed right on his heels, and Diane brought up the rear.
Opening the rear door to the office, he stepped into nearly perfect darkness inside. The gym below had been closed for hours, its confines dark. Barely enough light entered from outside to let him see anything in his office.
He was about to reach for the light switch, but someone else beat him to it. Someone must have turned on the switch at the other door, the door leading out to Alexandra’s desk and the reception area.
The scene before his eyes took his breath away. He could hear Erika gasping behind him. There were five people in the room. Three of them Gunnar had never seen before in his life.
The other two people, however, were all too familiar. Laura Preston stood quietly in front of Gunnar’s desk. Some six or seven feet away on her left stood Amy. Both their features looked pinched, exhaustion and stress obviously wearing both women down.
Their problem was obvious. They were both flanked by a pair of young, tough-looking, cold-eyed men. Both women had large-caliber handguns pointed at them.
The third man sat at Gunnar’s desk. He was leaning back in Gunnar’s chair, his feet up on the desk. The man’s right fist had a firm grip on a massive Desert Eagle .44 magnum automatic handgun pointed at Gunnar’s chest.
“Welcome back,” the gunman behind the desk said. “Come on in, Biff, join the party. And let’s close the door, shall we?”
Gunnar heard the door closing behind them—Diane, obviously listening to the intruder’s orders. Too bad, Gunnar thought. Sure, Diane must have been as stunned by this turn of events as he was, but he still wished the woman could have taken advantage of her position at the rear of the party, turned, and tried to run for her life.
A moment later, things completely stopped making sense. Gunnar heard a gun cocking close behind him. Diane sprang forward, pointing the Smith and Wesson 637 .38 caliber revolver at Gunnar’s head. Momentarily, she swung it toward Erika, then back at Gunnar.
“Don’t either of you move!” Diane said and backed toward Gunnar’s desk. “Drop your guns, both of you!”
“Do as the lady asks,” the gunman behind the desk ordered. “Now, damn it.”
Neither Gunnar nor Erika had a choice. They both placed their handguns on the floor.
“Kick it over here,” Diane said. “Don’t either of you try anything.”
CHAPTER 70
“God, Marino, that look on your face is priceless,” Diane Holt’s chief accomplice taunted from behind Gunnar’s desk. He might have looked cool, cocky even, knowing he was completely in charge, but his gun hand never wavered. The big, triangular barrel of the Desert Eagle .44 magnum pointed straight at Gunnar’s chest at all times. The guy wore jeans and cowboy boots, along with an unbuttoned dark blue denim shirt over a white U-shirt. The tight U-shirt advertised the man’s sturdy, muscular build. He was nowhere near a bodybuilder, Gunnar noted, but there was a hardness about him that suggested the gunman would be a formidable opponent in a fight. The most distracting thing about him, however, was his long, dark brown hair flowing around his chiseled, square-jawed face. With his bright blue eyes, slight stubble, and full, vaguely feminine lips, he looked sort of like one of those brooding European male models. Gunnar hated him on sight.
The guy threw a fleeting glance toward Diane and mocked again, “My, my, my, just how does she figure into all this?”
Diane, in the meantime, picked up and tucked Gunnar’s Sig Sauer into the waist of her pants and placed Erika’s Beretta on the table.
“Who are you people?” Gunnar asked.
“Who are they?” Diane snapped at him. The look on her face was cold, cutting contempt. “The people I should have turned to in the first place, you dumb, useless, sentimental oaf! That’s who they are.” She glanced for a second at the long-haired punk behind the desk and said, “Eddie, sweetheart, I’m going to ask that after you kill the others any way you want, you take this big, dumb ape and just beat him to death, really, really slowly. Please! Oh, I’m sorry, not all the others. Just the two besides Laura Preston.”
“Correction noted, baby,” Eddie said. “I was about to say. Miss Preston here’s gotta give us a whole lotta money to keep our mouths shut about all this murder and mayhem she’s been causing. How much was it you said? About two million dollars?”
Things were making sense very quickly now, Gunnar realized. “You needed the blackmail material. That’s what this has all been about. Not Brad’s death.”
“Very good, lover,” Diane said. “Now the pieces fall into place.”
Eddie sprang from his seat now, the big weapon in his hand pointing toward Gunnar at all times. “You’re gonna die for that one real slow,” he hissed. “Lover.”
Gunnar very conspicuously ignored him and looked Diane in the eyes. He sensed that she was completely in charge of these three men. She was probably sleeping with Eddie, who appeared to be the captain of the other two young punks holding the guns on Laura and Amy. The two other hoods somehow had the bearing of natural followers. Although Eddie might—or might not—have been a few notches higher in IQ, or perhaps viciousness, than his underlings, he was probably well-controlled by the right amount of sex from Diane.
“Let me guess,” Gunnar said, looking at Diane. “You knew your brother was blackmailing someone, but not who. You had to find out who it was or where his blackmail stash was and start taking over the shakedown. Just tell me one thing.”
“Screw you, asshole,” Eddie barked at him. “It’s about time you—”
But Diane smoothly cut him off. “Eddie, honey, relax. A dying man should at least know how dumb he was all this time, shouldn’t he?”
“Come on,” Eddie protested. “We’re wasting time.”
Still looking at Diane, Gunnar asked, “If Laura hadn’t done the job, would you have knocked off your own brother to get the blackmail materials?”
Diane’s features darkened further still. “You’ll pay for that,” she hissed.
“Come on,” Gunnar pressed. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“I want to take care of this bastard right now,” Eddie threatened, although his tone made it obvious he was asking Diane’s permission.
“Not yet, Eddie,” she said. “We have to get the others taken care of and out of here first.”
“And it was a good thing, wasn’t it,” Gunnar said, “that Brad got stuck in the ground as quickly as he did?”
“Yes, it was,” Diane replied. She stared right back into Gunnar’s eyes, daring him to acknowledge the homicidal evil looking at him. “A brilliant stroke of luck. Your girlfriend could actually make a good case that a chunk of Laura’s money should rightfully belong to her.”
“Nice job, honey,” Gunnar couldn’t help mumbling toward Erika.
“I’m sorry for doing my job righ
t,” she replied, her words aimed at Diane, her tone defiant through and through.
“If the cops would’ve pursued this investigation, you might never have gotten your hands on the blackmail materials,” Gunnar told Diane.
“Thank you, Dr. Lindstad,” Diane said. “And yes, Gunnar, you were just about half right about everything. You figured out who did it, how Laura killed Brad, and exactly how she did it.”
“And all this?” Erika asked.
“Yeah, what the hell is going on here?” Gunnar asked.
“Like I said,” Diane replied quickly, sounding very clearly like she was gloating. She wanted to tell them the whole story, Gunnar realized. She wanted to let them know exactly how much smarter she was than everyone here. “You were half right about every single thing in this case. Laura killed Brad to get out from under his blackmail, and when you started poking around, putting the pieces together, she needed the listening devices Monty Montgomery put in this office. Yeah, they’re in here.”
Gunnar said, “And you—”
“Yes, I took advantage of them. I figured out how to use this stuff to manipulate her even before you started vacillating like a dim-witted, moralistic idiot about whether she’s worth taking down.”
Gunnar just replied with a quizzical look.
“That’s the truth, isn’t it, Marino? You were asking yourself, ‘Who do I dislike the most? Brad, or little sister Diane?’ Isn’t that right, you self-righteous ass?”
“How did you find out about—?”
Diane cut him off. “Montgomery’s listening devices? Well, believe it or not, he told me.” She glanced at Laura. “Yeah, sweetheart, he sold you out. He was facing some legal problems, it seemed.”
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