Weakland's mouth was full, but he nodded vigorously. He finally came up for air and sucked down a swig of beer. "That's what I've been thinking, guys. I mean, this is all very interesting about the mysterious husband-slash-boyfriend and the bait and switch, but I doubt it means anything. And as to whether he's part of some royal family somewhere, who cares?"
I shrugged. "To me it makes things much less clear. Melanie just did not seem like a druggie. I only met her once, but I just didn't get that sense from her. And now we find out she's married, and the family didn't even know? And on top of that, we don't even know who the husband is because two different people have put themselves forward as Henry John Kent, a guy who's been asking for Melanie's money to help with some supposed lawsuit in England."
Mike, who had been devouring the wat, finally piped in. "And Kent is a guy who has at least one other girlfriend that we know of. We watched him spend an awful lot of time with a Japanese girl in Vegas, and she was giving him money too."
Weakland was trying to seem unimpressed, but his face betrayed a touch of concern. I supposed that, to him, all this information we were throwing at him meant a lot more work. Like everyone else, cops like things to be as simple as they appear, and they had no incentive to go poking around to make more work for themselves. Starting an investigation meant diverting resources from elsewhere, and in this case it might mean ruffling the feathers of a very well-heeled and influential family. I sympathized with Weakland's position, so I wasn't going to be too hard on him for not accepting the obvious, which was that something very fishy was going on.
Mike wasn't quite so understanding. "So that's not enough to get an investigation going? The two husbands, the secret marriage, the girlfriend in Vegas? What's it gonna take?"
Weakland smiled. "Well I haven't said 'no' yet. Let's just be patient, keep snooping around, and wait for the tox report. That should be next week sometime."
"Can you expedite that?" I asked.
He chuckled. "I get asked that question about twice a year. The answer is, no way."
I shook my head and turned back to my meal. Weakland's beer was looking awfully tasty, but I decided I didn't have time to take a nap after lunch. Mike and I would have some work to do.
We all attacked the remnants of our lunch in silence. I didn't think I'd be able to finish my bowl, but I did, and I managed to be the first one done, which was nothing new for me. It left me in the unenviable position of watching the other two enjoy the same deliciousness that I had already polished off. We left things hanging without any kind of resolution.
"So, you have my number," Weakland said. "Let me know if anything comes up."
I nodded, and when the check came Weakland was happy to let me pick it up, which I didn't mind, especially since we were the ones giving him more work and asking all sorts of nosy questions.
Weakland excused himself, leaving Mike and me to digest.
"He's right," Mike said. "That was very good. I've never tried Ethiopian before."
I smiled. "Keep hanging out with me, kid, and I'll show you the world."
He leaned back and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you're a regular Rick Steves."
"Huh?"
"He's a travel guide on PBS," Mike explained, a pillar of patience.
"Oh, you mean that dorky looking guy with the glasses? I used to watch his show with my grandma."
Mike nodded. "Yeah, but he's not dorky."
I smirked. "No, I guess you wouldn't think so. You two have the same fashion sense."
Mike sighed and fixed me with a pained expression. "So many insults. You think that doesn't hurt? You think I'm not crying on the inside?"
I choked on my water, with a half a gulp ending up on my chin and the other half on my shirt. "I call bullshit on that."
Mike beamed, proud of the fact that he'd caused me to make a mess all over myself. "Mission accomplished," he said. "Now let's get the hell out of here." He said "hell" with the relish of a seven-year-old who was trying to get a rise out of a grown-up.
"What's next, the F word?" I asked.
He shrugged, still grinning. "Since you've taken me under your wing and shown me the world, the sky's the limit."
"It's good to have goals, kid," I muttered. We got up and headed out of the restaurant. "Now what?"
"I think we have to bother the family," he said, holding the door open for me.
"Yeah, I was worried you were going to say that."
We stood for a minute outside my car. I was eyeing the clouds, which were beginning to look dark and threatening.
"That means we have to stay another night," Mike said. "At least."
I perked up. "And you know what that means?"
He cringed, almost imperceptibly. "No. But you'll tell me."
"Shopping!" I chirped, a little too excitedly. "I'm out of clothes."
Mike steeled himself and maintained a stoic expression. "We have some work to do, though, right?"
I pouted. There would be time for shopping, but it was going to have to wait. We climbed into the car, Mike behind the wheel, still without a plan.
Mike was concentrating, but all I could think of was how cute he looked when he was thinking. With his face in profile, I could tell it was drawn, his eyebrows furrowed slightly, with his slightly oversized, straight nose accentuating his strong jaw and cheekbones. He must have sensed my appreciative gaze.
"May I help you?" he asked, turning to face me.
"No, I'm good. I just decided to let you do all the thinking for both of us."
"That line's from a movie, right?" he asked.
"Yup."
"Care to share?" he asked.
"Nope."
His eyes got really big, and his face crinkled into a look that I translated as this chick is wacko. "Okay, then," he said simply. "I'm gonna guess Melanie's dad will be kind of hard to get in touch with, given that he's a high-powered billionaire with limos, chauffeurs, and bodyguards. So I'm thinking let's try the mom and see if we can get anything out of her."
That was essentially what I had been thinking, but I was enjoying him taking the lead. "We go to their house and just show up?"
"Got any better ideas?" he asked. "It's too late to catch them at the burial."
"I could cyberstalk her," I muttered, only half-joking.
"Um, let's go with Plan A." He checked his watch. "How long do you think a burial takes? I've never actually been to one."
"Half hour, hour," I guessed. "And they they'll probably have a fancy lunch or something somewhere."
"So they won't be home for another hour or so," Mike said. "At the earliest. And it might take us an hour just to find their place," he added. "And who knows how the hell we're going to do that."
"Way ahead of you, Sherlock," I said, smiling. I produced a little scrap of paper from my pocket with an address on it.
"10308 Greendale Drive." He read aloud. "90077." He shot me a blank look.
"That's their address," I said.
"And you got this how?"
I smiled, more than a little proud of myself. "There was a visitation book in the back of church. Everyone who came to the funeral was supposed to sign in. Guess whose name and address appeared in the very first line. Her parents. Must have been her mom, from the look of the handwriting."
He nodded his head up and down. "Nice work."
"You never know when you're going to need something like that. It's not as if they're gonna be in the phone book."
"Well let's get over there and see what the place looks like." He punched the address into my car's navigation system, cursing under his breath at the cumbersome process, and then we headed off into the city.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I was enjoying having Mike chauffeur me through the heart of Los Angeles, a city I'd visited a few times on "business" but had never appreciated as a tourist. When I was younger, I'd filled out an "application" to attend a party at the Playboy mansion, and I'd even made the cut, scoring an invite signed by Hugh
Hefner himself. But the night before the party I walked face-first into one of the stripper poles at Cougar's and sported a long, red welt across half my face. I didn't think Hef would go for that, so I backed out.
The neighborhood we were driving through looked like the kind of place you would expect to see the Playboy mansion, or at least its famously forbidding gates. We had gone north and west from the Ethiopian restaurant, up Sunset Boulevard and north on Beverly Glen Boulevard into the neighborhood of Bel Air. The homes, to the extent you could see them through all the shrubbery, were not so much houses as they were statements, grandiose and imposing monuments to their owners' success, or at least that of their parents or grandparents.
When we turned up Beverly Glen Boulevard, the GPS started chirping at us to slow down. The Westons' street soon appeared on our right, and Mike eased us into a little patch of road next to a tree-lined lot abutting a gated entrance defended by two imposing stone columns and a wrought iron gate. We got out and hung around awkwardly, hoping nobody would call the cops.
"Check it out," Mike said. He had been peering through the tall, dense greenery to try to get a glimpse.
I wedged my way into the trees while he held a branch back to let me in.
"Wow," I muttered. About a hundred feet past the trees lay a basketball-court-sized driveway paved with exotic looking stones, leading the way into an eight- or ten-car garage. Perched above the garage, atop an impressive stone wall, was a Tudor-style palace that looked as if an Alpine ski resort had been plucked off the side of a mountain and plopped down into LA
"The guy's a billionaire, after all," Mike said. "Not too surprising. I bet there's a helipad in back, over there." He was pointing at a large flat spot behind the stone patio.
"The place seems deserted," I said, eyeing the absence of any cars on the pavement. "Probably still out doing funeral type stuff."
We stood outside the gates for another few minutes until we began to feel the first warm little droplets of rain, which got both of us scampering back to the car.
"How long do you want to wait?" Mike asked. He had been very patient with the whole thing, but I wondered what his tolerance was going to be. Even though he was never super-busy, I knew he had to get back to Vegas at some point.
"Not all day, don't worry," I said. "If they don't show up soon, we'll come up with another way to get in touch. Right now, though, I think this might be our best shot. The family will all be together, and we can let them know what we've learned and maybe get some answers out of them."
He nodded, seeming satisfied. The drizzle had turned into a solid, drenching rain, but that didn't dissuade a visitor from pounding on the driver's side door.
Mike and I exchanged puzzled looks. "Open the window a crack," I said.
"You guys are trespassing," the visitor said. He was a giant of a man, with bushy black eyebrows and a massive nose, his face streaked with rain.
"Sorry," Mike yelled, trying to make himself heard over the rain pattering down on the windshield. "We're private detectives and have some important information for the family. Are they coming home soon?"
The guard flashed a thin smile. "Do you think I'm going to share that with you, Jack?"
I sighed. This might take a softer touch, I thought, a resort to the lowest common denominator.
I reached into my purse and pulled out my private investigator's license. When I leaned across Mike to hand it to the guard, I made sure my top revealed a veritable Grand Canyon of cleavage. And just to make sure the effort was not lost on him, I pressed myself onto Mike's torso so that my breasts almost jumped out of my bra.
The effort backfired. "Look, lady, I don't care who you are. You're parked on private property. This ain't no parking lot."
I cringed silently at being called "lady."
"All right," Mike said, "we'll move. I didn't catch your name, though."
The guard looked confused. "It doesn't matter."
"Well, when we meet with the family, they will be interested to know who kicked us off the property, despite the fact that we have information about their daughter's death."
The guard seemed to reconsider, his brain working on overdrive.
"Get outta here," he finally said. "Send 'em a letter or something. Don't be dragging me into this."
Mike nodded and rolled up the window. "I guess that's that."
"Wait," I said. In my rear mirror, I could see headlights. Lots of headlights.
The guard looked up, stiffened, and then lumbered off toward the gate. I watched him in the mirror as the driver's side window of the first car rolled down. The guard and the driver were having a conversation, cut short by a curt nod from the guard.
Mike smiled and rolled the window down. "He's coming back."
The sopping-wet guard cocked his head to one side and stared Mike down. "They said to go on in," he mumbled. "Just follow the last car."
Mike nodded somberly, too classy for an "I told you so" retort. When the cars had all filed in, Mike backed us up and then nosed the Audi onto the property. The gates closed behind us, creating an ominous effect in the pouring rain.
The first two cars had driven right into the massive garage, which could have passed for a small automobile museum. An attendant of some kind helped the drivers and passengers out, and then immediately got to work wiping down the cars. From what I could tell, the first car was a Maybach sedan and the second was something Italian, maybe a Maserati, but it was a four-door coupe rather than a sports model. The garage doors then closed, leaving three other cars and their occupants outside. Mike and I sat inside our car, awkwardly waiting to see what happened next.
It didn't take long. Three Latinos in identical red rain jackets emerged from the front door hefting a dozen or more umbrellas under their arms. Stupidly, I got out of the car before they reached us, and it only took ten seconds of heavy rain to get me thoroughly soaked. I gratefully accepted the umbrella from the young man, who fixed both of us with a confused stare but nevertheless waved Mike and me inside with them. Obviously, we were not part of their post-funeral plans.
We entered through twelve-foot double doors, thick as Bibles, and into a dark, cavernous foyer lit with sconces holding real live candles. The décor was two parts English estate, one part hunting lodge, with dark brown wood paneling predominant, particularly on the massive stairway and its oversized railing. Mike and I closed up our umbrellas and dripped off onto a burgundy carpet that was probably not accustomed to the humble role of absorbing raindrops off of non-billionaires. One of the guys in the red raincoats took our umbrellas, but the family disappeared into the back of the house. We stood in the foyer, alone and awkward, examining the surroundings and waiting to see what would happen next. A stuffed eagle peered down at me from a perch on the wall.
"Creepy," I whispered, as though we were in church.
Mike nodded. "If the goal of this place is to make visitors feel intimidated, it succeeded."
"It's not just an ostentatious display of wealth," I said. "It screams old money."
"And power," Mike whispered. I found it amusing that we both felt the need to whisper.
After another minute of scratching our butts, a middle-aged man in an impeccable gray suit appeared from the back rooms. His light brown hair was thinning on top, and his flitting and slightly effeminate mannerisms reminded me of Niles Crane, from Frasier, one of my favorite reruns.
"Welcome," he began, "although I wish it was under more hospitable circumstances. My name is Lee Mavis—I work for the family. The family has asked me to hear what you have to say, although of course they are in no condition right now to involve themselves in these matters."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I know it's bad timing, but I wanted to put this out there before—"
"Let's have a seat," he said, cutting me off. "They'll bring us something to drink." He motioned us to a parlor off to the left of the foyer. In contrast to the manliness of the dark foyer, the parlor was painted a robin's egg blue and sported a
iry, white moldings and a plastered ceiling. A real fire was roaring in the marble fireplace, lending a welcome warmth to the room. I found a seat on a chair that was probably worth more than my car.
"So, are you the butler?" Mike began, half-smiling.
Lee bristled at the question. "I am the personal assistant to Mr. and Mrs. Weston. We don't have a butler," he said, his contempt for the term abundantly clear.
"Sorry," Mike backtracked. "Anyway, I assume you've heard the gist of what we wanted to talk about, right?"
Lee nodded. He paused, choosing his words carefully. "Yes. That, after all, is why you're sitting here and not in jail for trespassing."
Mike and I exchanged a look. Lee was not exactly Mr. Sunshine.
"I understand the timing is very unfortunate, with this being the day of the funeral and all. But it's very important," I said.
Lee nodded. "Go on," he said simply. A woman arrived holding a silver tray with coffee. I accepted a cup and slurped at it just a little bit too loudly before continuing.
"First of all, is Kent here?" I asked.
"No. He said he had classes in Las Vegas and had to get back."
"Had you ever seen Kent before this week?"
Lee crossed his legs. "No, none of us had."
I nodded. "We believe that the man who was here this week was not the real Kent. That Melanie's husband was someone else, another man who also lives in Las Vegas."
Lee nodded, but looked unconvinced. "And what gives you that idea?"
I pulled out my phone and showed him a picture of the other Kent. "This man is enrolled at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and passes himself off as Henry John Kent. This is the man Melanie married."
Lee studied the photo then shrugged. "Never seen him before. Why should we believe you? They told me you're a private detective, but what's that got to do with anything?"
I was puzzled by Lee's defensiveness. I had assumed that he and the family might welcome some information that, to me, seemed extremely important. But then again, it wouldn't be the first time the messenger got shot for delivering an unwelcome message.
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