by Meg O'Brien
“I didn’t have much time. There was a high-pressure El Segundo police detective waiting to hear my pearls of wisdom. Why was I there? What time did I get there? How did I get in? How long had I known Craig? Did he have any enemies?”
“Geez. All that, a shooting, and a shopping bag lady at your door.”
I gave her a look and she said, “Sorry. Your close friend at your door. What a night.”
I didn’t see a need to tell her that even before Lindy arrived, the “yummy” Detective Rucker and I had become close friends, too.
Or whatever one might call it.
Nia went back to her desk, but left the connecting door open so we could talk back and forth if necessary. I continued to go through my author files, calculating who to push for the big money next—who was already in place to get there, and whose numbers were where they should be.
Now and then my mind wandered back to the previous night and Dan Rucker. I was busy wondering if I’d ever hear from him again, when my outer-office door opened and Himself walked in. He was accompanied by another man, dressed in a gray pin-striped suit and wearing an out-of-date bowler hat. He had a severe expression on his face that might have been permanent or might have had to do with me. I couldn’t be sure.
Nia started to get up and shoo the uninvited out, but I stood and motioned to her to stay where she was.
“Nia, you’ve already met Detective Dan Rucker,” I said. I turned to the other man. “And you would be…?”
Dan introduced us. “This is Mr. Gerard Burton. Mr. Burton is an attorney from San Francisco, and he would like to talk to you about the incident at your house last night.”
Dan was poker-faced, giving nothing away, so I was left to wonder how Mr. Gerard Burton, all the way up in San Francisco, had heard about the break-in. And why was he here with Dan, an LAPD officer, when the break-in had been in the sheriff’s jurisdiction?
I held out my hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Burton. Please, sit down. Would you like coffee?” I looked at both men.
Dan shook his head, but Gerard Burton, Esquire, said in a rather mannered voice, “That would be quite nice. I’ve just now come off the plane, and I could do with a bit of caffeine.”
“I’ll make some fresh, then.”
“I’ll do it,” Nia said. “I have a few phone calls to return, and I can do that while I wait for the coffee.”
I nodded and sat, glancing at Dan, then turning to Gerard Burton. “You wanted to talk to me about the intruder at my house? And you’re from San Francisco? I’m amazed you heard about that so quickly—or that the break-in could possibly interest you.”
“News travels fast…in some circles,” Burton said delicately. “I’ve been sent here at the behest of a client who was not able to come personally.”
“A client in San Francisco?” Let me guess, I thought. Couldn’t be anyone but Roger. Still, I think I managed to look baffled.
“I see,” I said. “What can I do for you then, Mr. Burton?”
I gave Dan another quick glance, and he made a small sideways movement of his head. It was so minimal, I knew it must have been meant only for me.
Now, I thought, if only I knew what it meant.
“I understand,” Gerard Burton said, “that there was another woman with you last night when the…the incident occurred.”
“That’s right,” I said, knowing it had to be on the police report. “A friend.”
“According to the police, your friend’s name is Lindy Louise Van Court?”
“Are you asking or telling me?” I countered.
“Simply confirming. Tell me, where may I find Mrs. Van Court? I’d like very much to talk with her.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m afraid you’re too late,” I said. “She left my house early this morning, and I haven’t seen her since.”
In a way, it was the truth. Dan gave me a look, though, that said he knew it wasn’t quite the whole story. I wondered how he could know, but was grateful when he said nothing.
“I have a few questions of my own,” I said. “Did Mr. Van Court—Roger, that is—send you here?”
“My dear young lady, no one sends me anywhere,” Burton replied in a huff.
“Except for your client,” I said quietly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said you were here at—I think the phrase was—the behest of a client.”
He went silent.
“Mind telling me if your client is Roger Van Court?”
He stared at me a few moments and finally said, “That information would be confidential.”
I stood. “Well, the incident at my house last night was not confidential. I told the sheriff’s deputies everything I knew, and their report is a matter of public record. You could have saved yourself a trip all the way down here, Mr. Burton, just by asking them to fax you that report.”
I walked over to the door between my office and the outer one. Nia was at the coffee machine, pouring hot brew into cups. “Nia? Sorry, but we won’t be needing the coffee after all. Could you please show the gentlemen out?”
“Mary Beth—” Dan began.
“In case you’ve forgotten, Detective Rucker,” I said stiffly, “I’ve suffered a few losses in the past two days. I really don’t have time for this, and I would appreciate it if you would call before you bring anyone else by to interrogate me.”
“I would hardly call this an interrogation,” Mr. Burton said just as stiffly. “I merely thought it might help you to remember a few important details if we talked in person.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I have no more details. Check the report.”
Turning to Dan, I said, “Just what is your connection here?”
“Professional courtesy,” he answered. “Mr. Burton called the captain and asked if someone from the LAPD would escort him from the airport to your office. He and the captain are old friends, so he asked for a volunteer. That’s me.”
“Well, isn’t it a nice coincidence that you happened to be around and available. For escort service, that is. They must give that duty to their finest.”
I ignored Dan’s exasperated look and went back to my desk, sorting through papers. When he didn’t follow the San Francisco attorney out the door I raised my head. “Something else I can do for you?”
“You are audacious,” he said.
“Really? You didn’t mention that last night.”
“I had other things on my mind last night.”
I couldn’t help blushing as his gaze undressed me from head to toe. “Look, I really do have a lot to do this morning,” I said, staring down at the papers.
“What about tonight?”
“Tonight?” I looked up.
“I thought I might take you and your friend to dinner.”
“My friend? Oh, you mean Lindy? I told you, she’s gone.”
“Not to worry. I’ll bet I can find her.”
I studied him. “You know where she is.”
“You betcha,” he said, closing the door softly behind him.
As soon as Dan and Gerard Burton left, I called the Malibu Beach Inn and asked for Rhonda Parks, the name I’d registered Lindy under. She answered after a few rings.
“Mary Beth? Oh, God, this place is wonderful! I’ve been out on the deck just soaking up the sun! You know how often you see sun in San Francisco in the summer? Almost never! And I ordered lunch up here, I hope you don’t mind. I ate it out on the deck and the gulls came by and tried to scoop the lettuce off my plate—it was such fun, Mary Beth! Really, it’s heaven here.”
“You ordered lunch in?” I said. “I told you not to open the door to anyone.”
“Well, I had to eat, Mary Beth! And room service isn’t just anyone. I didn’t think you meant that.”
Since I hadn’t even thought to provide her with a lunch, I let it pass. “Have you talked to Roger?” I asked.
“Roger! No, of course not.”
“How about anyone else? Anyone who might have told him you were here.�
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“I haven’t talked to anyone but you, Mary Beth. You told me not to.” Her tone became wary. “Why? What are you saying? Does Roger know I’m here?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not really sure. Lindy, you said you’ve decided to try to see Jade.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not afraid of running into Roger at the house?”
“Well, of course I have been, but now I think it’ll be okay, if I call and talk to Irene first. She can tell me what hours he’ll be at work for sure, and I can go during that time.” Her voice softened. “I think you’ve given me the confidence to do that, Mary Beth.”
“Well, if I have, I’m glad. Now, does Irene live in? Is she at the house all the time?”
“Yes. I could call her now—”
“No, don’t do that yet. Just listen. I’m going with you, and I think we should leave tomorrow morning. I have some things to finish up here today, but I’ll try to leave early. Just stay there and don’t talk to anyone. Don’t even answer the door. No room service, no nothing. Promise me, okay?”
“Okay, sure, Mary Beth. That won’t be hard. My soaps are coming on soon, so I’ll just lie in bed and watch them. That should be all right, shouldn’t it?”
“Yes, Lindy. That should be fine.”
I felt uneasy, hanging up and just leaving her there. If Dan Rucker knew she was there, how had he found that out? Had someone been following us since last night? And if so, for what purpose?
I couldn’t get the vision of Craig Dinsmore out of my mind, lying dead on that bathroom floor. God help me if someone got to Lindy.
“You’re a world away, Mary Beth,” Nia said, coming in with coffee cups in each hand.
“Not that far, I’m afraid. Just at a deadbeat motel on Imperial Avenue.”
“Speaking of which, what about Craig’s wife? Do you think she knows about Craig?”
“Julia? They were divorced long ago. I don’t even know how to reach her.”
“Come to think of it, I seem to recall that she moved to New York City.”
“Right. She owns an antiques store.”
“I don’t have an address for her, though.”
I tapped on my desk with my nails, thinking. Finally I said, “Try to find her, will you? If you can’t, well…somebody has to bury him, Nia. And the others.”
“Yes.” She sat there sipping her coffee till the lightbulb went on. “Good God, Mary Beth, not you! You need to stay as far away from that mess as you can now.”
“Nia, I cannot let my authors get buried by the county in some bare, ugly plot. Besides, Craig was with me for a long time.”
“With you, maybe, but he wasn’t producing lately. You haven’t even made enough in royalty commissions from him the past couple of years to pay for a funeral.”
I was surprised at Nia’s reaction, but then I realized she was only trying to give the situation some balance and keep me from overreacting—something I tend to do now and then, when emotions run high.
“You haven’t even cried yet, have you?” Nia asked.
“You mean for Craig? No, of course not. It’s not as if we were personally close.”
“Not for Craig, silly. For Tony. And maybe even a little bit for Arnold. That dear, sweet man—”
“Nia, Arnold was a nutcase,” I said, though not without fondness. “He actually tried to get me back a few months ago. Remember the Memorial Day party at Tony’s? He kept putting on CDs with all my old favorite songs. Then, as we were both going out to our cars, he tried to kiss me.”
“Geez, I didn’t know that. What did you do?”
“I reminded him that he never really liked kissing me. Or any woman.”
Nia smiled. “You know what? If he wasn’t gay, maybe he was a monk in another life, and he just doesn’t like sex at all in this one. You know, a carryover from his other life.”
“You think monks don’t like sex?”
“Hmm. You may be right. Anyway, about Arnold, it must have taken courage for him to try to get you back. He was probably really hurt after you left him.”
“But that was ten years ago. He should have gotten over it by now, don’t you think?”
She shook her head. “Arnold was a Virgo. Some Virgo men tend never to forget their first loves. They also tend never to forget how those women hurt them, and they like to believe their sorry lives are all the woman’s fault. Which makes for a rather difficult and bitter blend.”
“Well, it’s not as if I left him without reason,” I said defensively. “For God’s sake, Nia, you’d have thought I was wearing a chastity belt! A couple of years of that was about all I could take.”
“And I’m guessing you’re making up for lost time now?” She said it with a smile, so I couldn’t take offense.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Oh, no? The attractive Detective Rucker? I saw the way you were looking at him.”
“You did not,” I argued. “You’re just guessing.”
“Hardly. He was looking at you the same way.”
Heat rose in my face. “Well, I never saw any of that.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, sashaying out into the front office.
“Swing your hips any more,” I called after her, “and you won’t fit them through the door.”
While Nia was in the other office returning the last few calls, I spent some time thinking. The calls had slowed down today, she’d told me, which was to be expected now that we were well into June. In summer, just about all of New York takes flight to the beaches, and very little work gets done. Most agents and authors know that, so we try to get important proposals in before the end of May. Otherwise, we might as well twiddle our thumbs till September.
Right now, I was grateful to have a slower schedule than usual. I would have to make appointments today to work out burial plans for Tony, Arnold and Craig. Tony and Arnold had both lost track of family after moving to L.A. years ago, though not by design or by a mutual choice of any kind. It’s just what happens, sometimes, when people—especially young men who are sowing their oats and think they have no need of family—end up in La-La-Land.
As for friends, Tony had always boasted about having a huge number of them, but the truth was, he never really was close to anyone. He spread himself too thin, going for quantity rather than quality. And when he referred to someone in the “arts,” as he rather proudly put it, he would say, “My friend the dancer,” “My friend the screenwriter,” “My friend the author.” So he never actually dropped the names—only the jobs they did. I often wondered if he even knew what their names were. Even when he’d introduce me to someone, he’d say, “My friend the agent.”
I know what you’re thinking. Three years. Three years you lusted after this schmuck. I’m beginning to believe that what Nia has always said is right: I did it because he was safe. If he’d ever come near me with anything fatter than a pencil, I’d have probably run a mile.
Which I know is contradictory to my fall from grace with the good detective. But there it is.
Gulping the last of my coffee, I reached for a phone book on the shelves along a wall next to my desk. The five shelves were piled high with manuscripts and published books, while the runover was stacked on the floor. In an ordinary week I might get hundreds of manuscripts, some at my request, but most not. Every night Nia took home a bunch of the ones I’d requested, where she would read them and write up her thoughts about each book. I paid her extra for this, as I would any reader, since they’re the angels in an agent’s life. Being an agent entails long hours on the phone making deals, and there isn’t time to read much when one is trying to sell books. Even the ones we do read are accepted or rejected on the first ten or twenty pages. That’s usually all it takes to know whether the book is written well and if it’s right for us.
“There aren’t any calls to return,” Nia said, sitting in the chair across from me. “Or, I should say, nothing important. There have been all kinds of
calls from the media, wanting information on Tony. How he died, what’s going to happen with his books now, does he have any family, etcetera. I started telling them ‘no comment,’ but they kept on and on, so I’ve decided to let the answering machine pick up and weed them out.”
“Good idea. I’m not expecting any urgent calls today. Are you? About book business, I mean.”
She shook her head. “I took care of the ones who called yesterday. As for editors and so on, it seems that word’s spread around NYC about Tony and Craig, so there’s probably no one you need to inform.”
“That’s good. You know, this is all starting to catch up with me.” I rubbed my eyes. “I think I’ll go home and take a short nap, then make an appointment with an undertaker. I also have to find out when the bodies are going to be released.”
Nia crossed her arms and gave me a stern look. “So you won’t listen to reason and forget all that?”
“I just don’t think I can.”
She shook her head. “Well, then, how can I help?”
“I’m glad you asked. I have to go away for a couple of days, maybe longer. Could you hold off on that vacation till I get back?”
“Like I said, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Great. I’ll call in on my cell, but I don’t want anyone to know where I am.”
“Ooh, a mystery.” She rolled her eyes, then sobered. “Are you gonna be all right, girl?”
“I’ll be fine. As for you, you go home now, too. Take a nap, whatever. You stayed here late last night, didn’t you?” I hadn’t missed the small mountain of foam coffee cups in the wastebasket next to her desk.
“Well, I didn’t do much. Just stuck around reading manuscripts, in case you called and needed me. Oh, one other thing. I did some research on Chinese dildos.”
“Oh? Where did you hear about them?” I asked sharply. The police had specifically told me not to mention that aspect of the case, and I was certain I hadn’t told Nia.
She blinked. “I, uh…I don’t think I remember. Maybe someone who called yesterday mentioned it. ET or one of those magazine shows. Does it matter?”
“No…no, I guess not.” ET and Access seemed to get info out of nowhere.
“Anyway, I looked them up on the Net yesterday when I didn’t have anything else to do. Specifically, I checked out ancient Chinese dildos.”