The man was definitely on the spooky side.
Before he could jump into her head completely, she moved away from him to an empty desk. She remained there, consulting her notes until the detectives arrived with a remarkably composed Dyana Cooper.
Goodman invited Nikki into the room to observe the interrogation. She carried her own metal chair, which she placed in a corner, removed from the scene of the action. She sat there quietly, watching the two detectives do their job and Fallon do his.
“Did you murder Madeleine Gray, Ms. Cooper?” Goodman asked casually.
“No, I did not.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“The evening of her death.”
“At her home?”
“Office. Home. Yes.”
“You were there because...?”
“We’d met at a restaurant—”
“The Ivy, right? When we visited your home, I remember your telling us about that,” Goodman continued. “You said you went with her to buy gloves.”
“Yes. I told you that.”
“But it wasn’t true,” Goodman said.
“No.”
“We know that because we talked with the parking guy at the Ivy. That’s a problem with being famous, Ms. Cooper. People remember every little thing you do.”
“That’s one of the problems,” she said.
“What are some of the others?”
“When Ms. Cooper writes her autobiography, detective,” Fallon said, “we’ll send you an inscribed copy.”
“According to the carhop, all you did was whisper a few words with Madeleine Gray. Why’d you tell us you drove away with her?”
“I...it seemed a simple way of explaining how she got my ring.”
“Okay,” Goodman conceded. “Why don’t we move on to why you happened to be at Madeleine Gray’s home that night.”
“That evening,” Jesse Fallon corrected.
“Yes, that evening,” Goodman said.
“Well, I bumped into Maddie at the restaurant and she said a studio publicist had asked her to interview me about my new film, Whirligig. She suggested we meet at her place to go over a few of the topics we’d be discussing.”
“Sort of a rehearsal?”
“Maddie preferred an informal run-through. It seemed like a good idea. Especially since we really didn’t know each other all that well.”
“How would you describe your relationship?” Goodman asked.
“We exchanged hellos a few hundred times. I’d go on her show if I had something to promote. I suppose we were acquaintances.”
“That true of your husband, too?”
“I think so. But you’ll have to ask John about that.”
“So you went to her place in the Canyon.”
“Yes.”
“Anyone else there?”
“Just Maddie and me. Which I thought was a little unusual. I was expecting a secretary to take notes, possibly an audio guy to tape our conversation. But it was a Sunday.”
“In the past, these kinds of assistants were present?”
“Yes. This was quite different. Maddie had been drinking and she wanted me to drink with her. When I refused, she got upset. Started screaming at me that I thought I was too good to drink with her. Nonsense like that.”
“Any idea what was on her mind?”
“I never found out.”
“Meaning ...?”
“I left.”
“Not even a guess as to what was bugging her? Why she was drinking that day?”
“No idea. As I said, I didn’t know her on a personal level.”
“She mention anything to you about money?” Goodman asked.
Nikki noticed that Dyana Cooper hesitated, her eyes shifting to Jesse Fallon. If a signal passed between them, Nikki missed it.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Dyana Cooper said to Goodman.
“You unnerstan’ money, huh?” Morales asked, entering the discussion. “Cash.”
Dyana Cooper’s mouth twitched, possibly in annoyance.
“There was no reason for Maddie and I to discuss money. I wasn’t being paid to do the interview.”
“What about you paying her to keep her mouth shut?” Morales asked.
“Oh, my,” Fallon said, “where do you people get your fanciful imaginations? If you have no more earthbound questions to put to my client, I suggest we call it a night.”
Goodman ignored the suggestion. “Wasn’t Madeleine Gray blackmailing you, Ms. Cooper?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Was she blackmailing your husband?”
Again Dyana Cooper turned toward Fallon, who replied, “If you would like to pose that question to Mr. Willins, I will try to arrange it.”
“I’d appreciate that, Mr. Fallon.”
“Are we finished here?”
“Not really,” Goodman said. “Ms. Cooper, how did your ring come to be in Madeleine Gray’s possession?”
“When she started getting abusive, I stood to leave and she pushed me back onto the chair. That’s when she saw the ring on my finger. She grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand close to her face so that she could get a better look at it. Then she... yanked it off my finger.”
“You just sat there and let her take your ring?”
“It was so unexpected. I didn’t really comprehend what she was doing until she had it. Then she tried it on and couldn’t get it off.”
“So you struggled over the ring?”
“Yes. But it wouldn’t come off. Maddie went crazy. Yelling. Screaming. She scratched me.” Dyana held out an arm and drew back the sleeve of her blouse to disclose three inch-long parallel healing scratches along her right wrist.
“We’ll need to photograph that,” Goodman said. “And we’d like blood samples.”
Dyana consulted her lawyer, who shook his gray head. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t need permission, detective,” Nikki said. “This isn’t testimonial or communicative evidence. The right against self-incrimination doesn’t apply here.”
“No, Ms. Hill,” Fallon said. “What we have here is a simple Fourth Amendment unreasonable search and seizure issue.”
Nikki shrugged. “All right, so I’ll get a search warrant for the blood,” she said. “Or get a court order at the arraignment.”
“Just want to keep everyone honest,” Fallon said. “Now may I arrange bail for my client?”
“We’re not finished here,” Goodman said. “Ms. Cooper, what happened after Madeleine Gray scratched you? What did you do?”
Dyana looked at her lawyer. This time, Nikki saw him nod. Dyana said, “I ...I panicked a little, I’m afraid. I hit her.”
“Hit her?” Goodman asked. “With your hand?”
“No. With some sort of sculpture that was on the table.”
“Could you describe the sculpture?”
“Round and smooth. Globular.”
“How many times did you hit her?”
“Just once,” Dyana said. “Then I dropped the object and ran out of the house.”
“You sure you didn’t hit her a couple more times?”
“Ms. Cooper answered the question, detective.”
“So you hit her... once... and ran. Was she hurt?”
“She... There was a little blood on her forehead. But she didn’t seem hurt. She chased me along the drive out to the road, cursing the whole time. It was a nightmare. I got into my car and drove away.”
“Your car being the beige Jaguar we impounded?”
“Yes.”
“That was the last you saw of Madeleine Gray?” Dyana nodded.
“Could you answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for the tape recorder?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do then?”
Dyana frowned. “I’m sorry. What?”
“After this unpleasant episode with Madeleine Gray, what
did you do? How’d you spend the rest of the evening?”
“I...I drove home. Put something on my scratches and did some relaxation exercises.”
Morales leaned forward and grinned at Goodman. “Some what?” he asked.
“Relaxation exercises. To calm down.”
Still looking at Goodman, Morales said, “I bet your hummin’ sounds a lot better than some I hear.”
Dyana Cooper looked perplexed.
“So you was pretty relaxed after that?” Morales went on.
“Reasonably. Considering what I’d been through.”
“Was yo’ husban’ relaxed, too, when you tole him about it?”
The question prompted another silent communication between client and lawyer.
“No. He was... upset,” Dyana said.
“He start hummin’?”
Dyana’s eyes flashed. “No. He tried calling Maddie. No one answered.”
“So you two jus’ sat aroun’ tellin’ each other what a bad girl Maddie was?”
“Where’s this leading, detective?” Fallon asked.
Morales regarded him sleepily. “Jus’ tryin’ to find out how your client spent the rest of the evenin’.”
“Then ask that. It’s getting past all our bedtimes.”
“Aw’right. Ma’am, how’d you and your ole man spen’ the rest of the evenin’?”
“We had dinner at home. I put our little boy to bed. We watched a video and went to bed ourselves.”
Morales wiggled his eyebrows and Nikki expected him to make some comment about the Willinses’ bedtime activity. He fooled her. “So you’re tellin’ us that you were at your home that night between the hours of, say, six P.M. and six A.M. the next morning?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“Then how can you explain your car being observed at Madeleine Gray’s home that night?” Goodman asked.
Dyana Cooper looked genuinely puzzled, but she was an actress. “There’s nothing to explain,” she said. “It could not have been my Jaguar.”
“Certainly that must wrap it up, detectives,” Fallon said. “Shall we call it a night?”
Goodman studied the woman, who stared back at him, unblinking. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll be transferring Ms. Cooper to Sybil Brand.” The Sybil Brand Institute was the county jail for women.
Fallon seemed surprised. “Why not work out the bail details here?” he asked.
“Nothing to work out, counselor,” Nikki said. “Ms. Cooper is here on a no-bail warrant.”
The elderly lawyer sighed, again the patient parent addressing an unreasonable child. “Why are you doing this? You know she’s no flight risk.”
“You can hash this out with a judge on Monday morning,” Nikki said. “But your client will be a guest of the county this weekend.”
The look Fallon gave her was almost wistful. “Life would be so simple if only people would cooperate,” he said.
“Who wants a simple life?” Nikki asked.
FORTY-TWO
Hey, you behave yourself,” Nikki instructed the big dog as they both went to answer the door buzzer just before midnight. “This man’s special.”
She assumed Bird had already figured that out. He’d watched with mild curiosity as she spent the last hour cleaning up the house, preparing for Virgil’s arrival. Putting fresh linen on the bed, she thought she saw the dog rolling his eyes.
If he really understood her feelings for the detective, he chose to ignore them. As soon as Virgil entered the house and took Nikki in his arms, the dog burrowed his way between them.
“You wanna go to your room?” Nikki asked him sternly.
Bird ducked his head and backed away, allowing them the pleasure of a full-body press.
“Think he’ll ever get used to me?” Virgil said.
“Sooner than I will, maybe,” Nikki said.
She walked into the kitchen, turned down the lights, and turned on the stereo. Aaron Neville was telling it like it was as she led Virgil past the sliding door to the rear patio. There she’d set up two deck chairs and a metal table that she’d bought at an all-night furniture barn on her way home from the office. A thick Mexican candle shared the table with a bottle of good cognac and two snifters, also recent purchases.
Bird watched them suspiciously as they sat down.
“Nice out here,” Virgil said, looking at the flickering lights of Westchester and Venice, and in the far distance, Santa Monica.
“How was the action at Baby Doe’s tonight?” Nikki asked, pouring a few inches of cognac into their glasses.
“Askin’ the wrong man,” he said. “I was at home, just me and the tube.”
She cocked a skeptical eyebrow.
He clicked his glass against hers, then sampled the cognac. “Umm-umm, tasty,” he said. “My hometown music, too.” The Nevilles were singing “Fire on the Bayou.”
“So you were watching television all by yourself on a Friday night?”
“Watchin’ the election.”
“What election?”
“New Miss Universe. Miss Venezuela got my vote, but . . .” He was staring down the hillside. “Are those tombstones down there?”
“It’s a little cemetery,” she said. “Bother you?”
“No. I sorta like it. Kinky,” he said. “Anyway, they threw the contest to Miss Bolivia, who was on the skinny side. Poor Miss Italy—there is nothing skinny about that woman—was right in the middle of her ‘This is such a great opportunity’ speech when they broke in with the news that Dyana Cooper had been arrested. They quoted an unidentified ‘spokesperson for the D.A.’ Wasn’t you, was it?”
She shook her head. “Nope, I had other fish to fry.”
“You there when Goodman and Morales put it to her?” he asked.
“Uh huh.” Before he could push her about that, she asked, “Was there an official announcement?”
“Oh, yeah. The little man was all over the tube at ten,” he said. The little man was Chief of Police Philip Ahern, a diminutive, wiry specimen who, with his pinched face and combed-over hair, usually resembled a stern schoolmaster at the end of his patience.
“How’d it go?” Nikki asked.
Virgil chuckled. “Well, some reporter from the Times asked him if the LAPD was on riot alert and Ahern looked like he ate a bug. ‘Who do you suppose will riot?’ he asked the guy. ‘Shareholders at Monitor Records? Members of the Motion Picture Academy?’
“So some woman from Channel Two informs the chief that Dyana Cooper is an icon for all us Af-ri-can-A-mer-icans. And Ahern says he likes Dyana’s movies as much as the next guy, but that doesn’t mean she can operate under a different set of laws than the rest of us.”
“That’s okay, isn’t it?” Nikki asked.
“I suppose. It might have sounded better coming from a black officer.”
“Or my boss, maybe,” she said.
“Yeah. Even him. Anyway, the little man ended up with the comment that as hard as it may be for folks to believe, not all murders are racially motivated. Then somebody wanted to know, if race wasn’t an issue, why does the LAPD keep arresting black people for the crime.”
“Ouch.”
“It ended the chief’s big moment on a definite downer,” he said.
“They’ll probably be repeating his ordeal on Headline News. ”
“You’re going to watch TV now?” Virgil asked, his fingers tracing a circular pattern on her knee.
“Guess not,” she said, glad she’d had time to throw those Bugs Bunny slippers out with the garbage.
At a little after eight the next morning, she was sitting at the kitchen counter, reading the paper, when the district attorney called. “I thought you told me Dyana Cooper was, in your words, ‘tucked away at Brand,’ ” he said heatedly.
“She is.”
“Really? Then who am I looking at on Channels Two, Three, Four, Seven, and for all I know, every bloody channel on the dial, including cable and the Internet? Find out and get back to me.”
With a sinking feeling, Nikki exchanged the phone
for her remote control clicker. In seconds she was watching Dyana Cooper, live and among polite society, on the lawn of her estate. At least twenty media representatives were seated on folding chairs, facing her.
“What’s up, Red?” Virgil asked, entering the kitchen, wearing his slacks and dress shirt from the night before. Bird, who refused to let the detective out of his sight, followed at his heels.
“Dyana Cooper’s got something she wants to tell the world,” Nikki said.
When he sat down beside her, she could smell her rose soap fragrance on his body, mixing with the pungent coffee aroma in the cup he’d just filled. “She’s out already?” he asked.
“Justice is swift,” Nikki said. “Screwed-up. But swift.”
The video camera shifted and they could see John Willins sitting behind his wife, wearing a solemn expression, a sincere dark suit, and with their little boy squirming on his lap.
“Man looks like a ventriloquist with his dummy,” Virgil said.
“. . . Police Chief Ahern graciously says he likes my work on film,” Dyana was saying. “I’m sorry, but I don’t like his work. Last night he told the world I am a murderer. We’re supposed to be living in a country where a person is innocent until proven guilty. Chief Ahern doesn’t seem to understand this point of law. Fact is, he and the district attorney are so desperate to respond to the public demand for action they will do anything or say anything to get the pressure off them and onto someone else.”
“Does that include manufacturing evidence?” a young man with glasses asked.
“Tell me it hasn’t happened here before,” Dyana Cooper replied. “Don’t forget, only a few days ago, they were claiming Jamal Deschamps committed the crime, in spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary.”
“This is really gonna make your boss’s day,” Virgil said.
An intense middle-aged female reporter from Channel Eight asked, “What do you think their purpose is in dragging you into their investigation?”
“I was unlucky enough to have seen Maddie on the day she died. That’s about it.”
“Surely there must be more?” asked a plump black man from Channel Twelve.
“If so, they haven’t told me about it,” Dyana said. “I don’t know what it could possibly be.”
The Trials of Nikki Hill Page 18