Now I really had to pee.
Covering my hand with the end of my knit tunic, I grasped the doorknob and closed the door, hoping to wipe my fingerprints clean in the same motion. I backed up, keeping my eyes on the door as if I expected Gunn to become a zombie and follow me. When I reached the ladies’ room, I pushed the door open and ducked inside.
There were two stalls—one large handicapped stall and one regular—both empty. The only other items in the room were a small vanity with mirror and sink, a paper-towel dispenser, and a large trash can that was nearly full. With my chest heaving with anxiety, I went into the smaller stall and did my business, worried the whole time the killer was out in the hallway, waiting to pounce on me. The last thing I wanted was to die with my panties around my knees; they weren’t even my nice panties.
Finished, I pulled myself together and washed my hands. I looked in the mirror. Terror looked back at me. Pulling a lipstick out of my bag, I applied fresh color to my pale lips, stalling the moment when I had to step out into the hall.
The door to the bathroom popped open just as I was finishing my lower lip. I jumped a foot into the air, leaving a gash of Sunset Mauve from my lips halfway across my lower right cheek. It looked like I was underlining the scabbed-over scrape.
“Are you okay?” It was Sally Kipman. “You’ve been gone so long, we got worried.”
Grabbing Sally by the collar of her shirt, I pulled her into the bathroom. “No, I’m not okay,” I said in a hushed voice. “I … I found another body.”
“What!”
I clamped a hand over her mouth just as I heard footsteps outside the door. With my other hand, I put an index finger to my clownish lips and tugged her into the handicapped stall. Once there, I slowly removed my hand from her mouth and together we listened. The footsteps went away.
“It’s Marvin Gunn,” I told Sally, my voice barely audible. “He’s in his office—dead.”
“How do you do this?” Sally plopped down on the toilet and put her head into her hands.
Before I could answer, the bathroom door flung open. Sally stood quickly and we huddled together in the confines of the stall, waiting for whatever came next.
“I’m having such an awesome time,” said a woman. I peeked through the slender gap between the stall wall and door. I couldn’t see much, but I did see what looked like a veil. Chances were it was the bride from the bachelorette party.
“Yeah, drag queen bingo is so cool,” answered her companion.
“I’m totally wasted,” the bride giggled. “Hey, what’s with that guy at intermission?” The bride went into the stall next to us, and soon we heard tinkling.
“His name’s Mike. Says he’s a lawyer and asked for my number.”
“You gonna give it to him? He’s kind of cute for an old guy.”
A giggle, totally of its own accord and not remembering the severity of our situation, escaped my lips before I could stop it.
Long hair hit the floor in a silent waterfall as the girl by the vanity looked under our stall door. “There’s two girls in the next stall,” she whispered to the bride as if we couldn’t hear her.
The bride giggled. “Whatever lifts your skirt, literally.”
We heard a flush as the bride left her stall, followed by the sound of water at the sink. Her friend quickly peed next. After more hand washing, one of them knocked on our stall. “Next time, ladies, get a room.”
After they were gone, we poked our heads out of the stall. “We have to get out of here,” I told Sally.
“We have to report the murder, Odelia.” Her voice wavered, so I knew she could be persuaded to leave the corpse be.
I was peeking out the door, hoping the coast was clear. I turned back around to find Sally was now in the stall with the door closed, making her own waterworks.
“No,” I hissed to her through the door. “Let someone else find this one.” With a quick look in the mirror, I grabbed a paper towel and rubbed the lipstick off my face. Then I adjusted my wig.
While Sally washed up, I nodded toward the door. “Let’s get the cute old guy and get the hell out of here before the entire police force shows up.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“No, and I don’t want to.”
We opened the door and slid out into the hallway. Sally first, me behind her. “Get Steele,” I instructed her. “I’m heading straight out the door.”
As Sally trotted off on her mission, I took one final glance back at the office door, gasped, and stopped in my tracks. Like Lot’s wife, I was as white and still as a pillar of salt. The door, which I had taken such pains to close, was open—not wide open, but a couple of inches open. I was sure I’d closed it tight. I’d even listened for and heard the soft click of the latch. Finding my feet again, I double-timed it to the front door. Steele and Sally came out moments after.
“What’s up, Grey?” Steele asked when I stepped out of the shadows of the building to join them. The summer sun hadn’t been down long, but it was dark enough to give some cover.
I was about to say something when we heard a scream, followed by several more.
We all turned to the door. From inside the club, hysteria was starting to build. I looked at Steele. “My guess is they found the body.”
“What body?” Steele asked, his voice a near squeal.
I started walking. “Let’s get moving.”
Sally had parked her SUV several blocks away. It had been the only parking spot she could find when we arrived. Now I was glad it wasn’t close to the club. During the walk, Steele tried several times to find out what was going on.
“You didn’t tell him?” I asked Sally as we walked with a quick step. I wanted to run but didn’t want to collect any suspicious looks.
“No time.”
“Tell me what?” Steele stopped. “I’m not moving another step until you tell me what in the hell is going on.”
Sally backtracked to Steele and said something to him while I continued walking.
Behind me, I heard Steele gasp. “What?”
Steele and Sally caught up to me. “This is a joke, right, Grey?”
“No, Steele, it’s not. Marvin Gunn is back there in his office deader than a doornail. Trust me on this.”
Steele grabbed my upper arm. “Tell me you didn’t do it, Grey. Even in self-defense.”
I yanked my arm away. “Are you insane? Of course I didn’t. But I’m not sure if anyone saw me find the body. Hopefully no one did, especially the killer.”
As Steele studied my face in the glow of a street light, a police car, siren wailing like a lost child, sped by. It came to a screeching halt in front of Billie’s Holiday.
“You’re right, Grey, we need to get out of here.”
Once Steele had us safely bundled in Sally’s vehicle, he gave us our marching orders. “Kipman,” he barked to Sally. “Take Odelia straight home. Got that?”
Sally saluted, but when she snapped her hand away from her head, I noticed she’d folded all fingers in except her middle one. “I’m not one of your dumb-ass bimbos, Steele. I can take care of Odelia.”
Before I had found Gunn’s body, the two of them had been getting along fine. Clearly the stress of yet another murder was taking its toll.
“Okay, you two,” I snapped from my position wedged between them. “Calm down or I’m calling Greg for a ride home.”
I turned to Steele, who was standing outside the SUV, talking to us through my open window. “Where’s your car, Steele?”
“Back that way.” He tossed his head in the direction of the club.
“Then get in,” I instructed. “We’ll drop you off at your car, then we’ll all go home. It’s been a rough night. A good night’s sleep and a long talk with Clark will help me decide what to do.”
My words seemed to knock some civility back into my sidekicks. With some reluctance, Sally released the locks on the back seat. We heard another police siren. Quickly, Steele climbed in. “My car’s just past
the club on the same side,” he advised her.
We pulled out of the parking space and made our way in the direction of the club. We had to take it slow because traffic had backed up. As we got closer, we saw one of the police cars had parked in the far right lane, forcing the two lanes heading north down to one lane. Traffic was further hampered by cars slowing down to gawk. A uniformed cop was in the street, directing traffic around the scene and telling people to keep it moving.
Unfortunately, one of the police cars had blocked in Steele’s Porsche.
“Damn it,” Steele swore from the back seat. “Now what am I going to do?”
“You know, Steele,” Sally ventured. “It’s not like you’re guilty of anything but being a lech. You could just tell the cops that’s your car and you need to go home. How would they know you’ve been in the club?”
“Because he was a lech, that’s how.” I pointed out the window. Standing on the sidewalk was the gaggle of drunk bachelorettes. A police woman was talking to them.
Steele slunk down in the back seat. “I really do not want to spend the rest of my evening being questioned.” He looked longingly at his spiffy sports car and sighed. “Take me home, Kipman. I can come back later tonight or even tomorrow morning to get the car.”
“Is that an order or a request, Steele?” Sally glared at him in the rear-view mirror. “If it’s a request, I didn’t hear the word please.”
I was beginning to think I should go back to the club and confess to anything just to get taken into police custody and away from Frick and Frack here.
Steele gave in. “All right. Please, take me home.”
“Now that’s more like it.” Sally looked in the rear-view mirror again. “A few more please and thank yous to Jill once in a while wouldn’t kill you either.”
Steele shot forward. “That’s what this shitty attitude of yours is about? You don’t think I appreciate Jill?”
“I appreciate her,” I said, hoping it would be enough to mollify Sally. It wasn’t.
“I didn’t say that, Steele,” Sally volleyed. “I’m just saying you could be more polite and thoughtful, considering all the bullshit she takes from you. According to her, it’s escalated lately.”
“I have to agree, Steele,” I volunteered. “You’ve taken snide and snarky to new heights lately in the office. Everyone’s noticed.”
“Sorry, Grey. I didn’t realize part of my job was to enhance your personal employment experience.” He turned to Sally. “As for Jill, you tell her if I were polite and thoughtful, there’d be no bullshit. And where’s the fun in that?”
Sally slammed on her brakes. If it weren’t for the narrowness of the space between the front seats, Steele would have shot into the windshield like a missile. Sally glared at her partner’s boss while folks behind us honked.
“Better put your seat belt on, Steele,” Sally told him through clenched teeth. “It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”
My hand was on the door handle, ready to throw myself at the nearest uniform and beg for mercy.
Steele’s beachside condo was in Laguna Beach—in the opposite direction. Once Sally got the SUV moving again, it seem like forever before we worked our way past the traffic jam caused by police presence at Billie’s Holiday. Next, we had to find a suitable place to make a U-turn.
“So, Grey, who do you think killed Gunn?” The question came from Steele. After the word war with Sally, the two of them sulked in silence as we inched our way through the traffic. The quiet, thick as it was, was music to my ears.
“I have no idea. It could be any one of dozens of people. I still don’t know how he’s tied in with Clarice and her friends, or if he is at all. As of this afternoon, I would have said he wasn’t, though while you were making cow eyes at those girls, Sally and I found out that Lillian Cherry is Aaron Gunn, Marvin Gunn’s brother.”
“Really?”
Sally cut her eyes from the road to me. “Maybe he killed his brother. Didn’t you tell me on the way down here that Marvin bailed out his brother financially from time to time?”
“That’s what Clark thinks. I do know that Aaron Gunn is one of the partners of Rambling Rose, though I got the impression that Shirley did most of the actual work. And it sounds as if even Clarice was more involved than Aaron.”
“So you think it’s Aaron, not Marvin, who is in that photo with Clarice and Alfred and the others?” Sally braked for some fool trying to cut into the line of waiting traffic.
“I’m almost positive now. While Marvin owned the club, he doesn’t seem to have any connection to the other people, except for Scott Johnson showing up at the service. And his appearance doesn’t mean he knew Marvin.”
“You know,” said Sally, “during intermission, Lillian left the stage and went to the back. He could have killed his brother and made it back onstage with no problem.”
I thought about that. “During intermission, there had to be a lot of foot traffic in that hallway because of the bathrooms. Someone had to have seen someone going in or out of the office.”
“But,” Steele interjected, “no one would think twice about Lillian going back there, would they?”
“You’re right,” I said, moving that information to the forefront of my brain. “As Lillian Cherry, he was a performer. As Aaron Gunn, he was the owner’s brother. No one would think it odd if he were back there. And,” I said, raising an index finger high in the air, “from my brief look at the body, it didn’t look like Marvin struggled—same as Shirley didn’t. I’ll wager that whoever killed them, whether it be the same person or two people, both knew their killers and trusted them.”
Steele unfastened his seat belt and leaned forward between Sally’s seat and mine, totally forgetting Sally’s earlier threat. “Assuming for the moment the killer is one and the same, who is common to both in such a capacity?”
I didn’t have to give it much thought. “That would have to be Aaron. He was in business with Shirley, and Marvin was his brother. No one else appears to have the same level of familiarity with both.”
My head was beginning to hurt from all the suppositions. “But what about Alfred Nunez?” I asked. “He doesn’t fit with either. Nor does Roslyn or Scott. What’s their connection?”
Sally gave a little snort. “And here we are again, back at the same question. It would be a fairly cut-and-dried puzzle if not for them.”
Finally, Sally spotted a place to legally make a U-turn.
“Rambling Rose is just ahead on the right,” I told them as we started south on PCH. “It’s a few blocks north of the club.”
Traffic going south was just as slow as that going north, thanks to all the cars slowing to watch the police activity. Once we got past Billie’s Holiday, it should increase to normal speed. I was thankful it was a Monday and not a weekend, or the traffic would have been twice as bad.
“There it is.” I pointed out the window to the cheerful office with the striped awning perched on the corner of PCH and a small side street. “Just ahead.”
As we inched past Rambling Rose, my eye caught on something in the back of the building. “Pull over,” I yelled.
“What?” Sally shot a look of surprise at me. From the back, Steele leaned forward, all ears at this change of events.
“Pull over. No, wait. Turn right at the next corner.”
Sally made the requested turn at the side street.
“Now turn right at the next street,” I directed, “then right again.”
The turns took us down some narrow, cute residential streets and deposited us on a side street heading back toward Pacific Coast Highway.
“Now slow way down,” I cautioned Sally. “Up ahead on the left, on the corner, is Rambling Rose.”
“What is it, Grey?” Steele leaned forward again, his mouth close to my ear as he spoke. The smell of onions and beer blew softly past my nostrils.
“I want to check out Rambling Rose. I think someone is in there.”
The car edged forward. On the si
de of the building that didn’t face PCH was a small parking lot that only had room for a few cars. The lot was empty. I studied the windows that faced the lot. There were only two of them—rectangular windows near the back of the building. I also spied a back door that opened to the parking lot. It was close to the far end of the building
Steele lowered his window and looked out. “I don’t see anything, Grey. And the lot is empty.”
As the car rolled past the building, I craned my neck to see if there was any sign of life at the front of the building. “Go around the block again, Sally.”
In response, Sally eased her vehicle into a right turn onto Pacific Coast Highway, then took the next right as we retraced our steps back to the side street that held the wedding shop.
Before we got too close to Rambling Rose I told her to pull over. I unbuckled my seat belt. “I’m checking it out.”
“Oh no, you’re not, Grey.” Steele placed a strong hand on my shoulder as I started to open the door.
“Shit, Odelia,” snapped Sally. “The car’s still moving.”
“Then stop it.”
“Hang on a minute. There’s an open spot just a few feet ahead.”
Steele wedged his body so far forward between the seats, he was nearly driving. “Keep the damn car moving, Kipman. Don’t let her out.”
Sally pulled into the empty spot. “Is that another one of your orders, Steele?”
“She’s just going to get into trouble.” He turned to me. “Isn’t a dead body enough excitement for one night, Grey?”
I aimed a cocked eyebrow at my boss. “I thought you wanted to be part of the excitement, Steele. Well, here’s your chance, and all you have to do is sit in the car.”
When I opened the door, Sally turned off the engine. “I’m coming with you.”
“No need,” I told her. “I’m just going to see if I can peek in a window, that’s all. Maybe Clarice is sneaking around in there. I still need to question her.”
“And maybe Clarice is the killer,” Steele said, his voice getting higher with his frustration. “If so, I hardly think she’s going to want to have a little chat with you or anyone.”
Twice as Dead Page 18