Eleventh Hour

by Catherine Coulter

  “It seems,” Sherlock said, “that the videotape was delivered by Gleason Courier Service. We spoke to the man who delivered the film and the letter. He said the package was simply left in their mail delivery drop at the North Hollywood office. Here’s the letter.”

  She stuck it out to Pauley. He took it, stared down at it.

  “Please read it, Mr. Pauley,” Savich said. “Dane and Nick haven’t heard it.”

  Frank read: “Dear Mr. Lido, I’m enclosing an episode of The Consultant. We’ve decided to cancel the series due to many factors, and someone suggested that you might find it appropriate for your audience. Give it a try, see what you think, get back to me.”

  Frank looked up. “He signed my name, and my title. It isn’t my handwriting though, I can prove that.” He was up fast, nearly ran to his desk and pulled some papers off the top. “Here,” he said, shoving the pages into Savich’s hand, “this is my handwriting.”

  “It’s very similar,” Sherlock said at last. “Even the letters are slanted the same way. It’s hard for me to tell.”

  “Not for me.”

  Savich rose. “All right, Mr. Pauley. We will be in touch.”

  Nick just happened to look over her shoulder as she left Frank Pauley’s office. He was standing in the middle of the room, his arms stiff at his sides, his hands fists. Just like he had been standing when they’d come in.

  They were standing at the elevator doors when Dane said, “While we’re here, why don’t we drop in on Linus Wolfinger?”

  “That’s the plan,” Savich said and punched the up button.

  They went through the three secretaries, all of them the same adult crew, still showing no cleavage, just elegant suits in subdued colors. The place hummed with efficiency.

  Nick nodded to Arnold Loftus, Linus Wolfinger’s bodyguard, who was leaning against the same wall, looking buffed, tan, and bored. Sherlock picked up a magazine from one of the end tables and handed it to him.

  Arnold Loftus automatically took the magazine. “Thank you. Hey, you guys are the FBI agents, right?”

  “That’s right,” Sherlock said. “Does the FBI interest you?”

  “Oh yeah, you guys get a lot more action than I do.”

  Nick smiled at him. “How’s tricks?”

  He shrugged. “Never anything going on. Wolfinger prances around, telling everyone what to do and how to do it, and people want to stick a knife in him, but they haven’t yet because they’re more afraid of him than they are of their mothers, at least that’s how it looks to me. I guess if somebody got pissed off enough to go after him, I’d have to save him. Hey, thanks for the magazine.”

  “You’re welcome. Is Mr. Wolfinger here?”

  “Oh yeah, you just have to get past his guard dog.”

  “You’re not the guard dog?”

  “Nah, I’m the ultimate weapon.”

  Savich laughed, just couldn’t help himself. “What’s the guard dog’s name?”

  “I call him Mr. Armani, but his real name is Jay Smith.”

  “Now we’ve got a Smith and a Jones,” Dane said, and looked toward Nick, who ignored him.

  “I don’t think,” Sherlock said after they’d stepped away, “that Mr. Arnold Loftus and Mr. Linus Wolfinger are lovers.”

  “Agreed,” Nick said. “Who was it who told us about that?”

  “I’ll have to look it up in my notes,” Sherlock said.

  Jay Smith, in a beautifully tailored pale gray wool Armani suit, frowned at them. “Mr. Wolfinger is very busy. There are a number of people waiting—”

  Savich simply walked by him, paused a moment, and said over his shoulder, “Do you want to tell Mr. Wolfinger that we’re here to speak to him or should I just go on in?”

  “Wait!”

  “Oh no, this is police business. I don’t ever wait.” Savich winked at Sherlock, and she put her palm over her breast and mouthed, “My hero.”

  Savich opened the door, stepped into the huge, bare office and stopped cold.

  Linus Wolfinger was lying on top of his desk, and he looked to be asleep, unconscious, or dead.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Shall we try CPR?” Nick said.

  “It may be too late for him,” Dane said. “Hey, he doesn’t look bad, if he’s dead. A real pity, he was so young.”

  “I think he looks very peaceful,” Sherlock said. “Do you think I should maybe kiss him? See if he’ll come around?”

  “Like the Sleeping Prince?” Nick asked.

  Jay Smith was wringing his hands behind them. He whispered, “That’s not funny. He’s not dead and you know it. He’s meditating. For God’s sake, you can’t interrupt his meditation. He’ll fire me if I allow it. Oh God, I’m still in hock to MasterCard for this suit.”

  Sherlock patted his Armani arm. “Good morning, Mr. Wolfinger,” she called out, then simply brushed past Jay Smith, who looked to be on the verge of tears. “I’ll be fired, for sure he’ll bounce me out on my ear. What will I tell my mother? She thinks I’m a real big shot.”

  Linus Wolfinger didn’t move, just lay still, looking dead.

  Sherlock walked right up to the desk, leaned down, and said not an inch from his face, “Did you send episode three over to Norman Lido at KRAM?”

  Linus Wolfinger sat up very slowly, and in a single, fluid motion, graceful as a dancer. He stood and stretched. Suddenly he looked just like an awkward nerd again, all sharp bones and angles, three pens in his white shirt pocket, tattered sneakers on his feet. “No,” he said, “I didn’t. I actually had no idea until Frank told me a while ago. He’s very upset about it since some character pretended it was from him and forged his name.”

  Savich said, “Mr. Wolfinger, what did you do that year after you graduated from UC Santa Barbara?”

  Linus Wolfinger pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket, listed to the right, and began tapping, tapping that damned pen against the desktop. “That was such a long time ago, Agent Savich.”

  “Yeah, all of two and a half years ago,” Savich said. “Try to reconstruct the time for us.”

  Linus looked over at Dane. “What happened to you?”

  “A Harley.”

  “A Harley hit you?”

  “Nah, the guy on the Harley.”

  Linus looked thoughtful. “I’ve always thought of Harleys as being cheap Porsches, but every bit as sexy. Now, listen to me. I know you’re confused, that you don’t know your heads from your asses, but I don’t know anything either. All of this is quite a shock. I don’t need to tell you that Mr. Burdock is pissed about the whole thing. The media is sniffing around big time, invading everyone’s privacy, his in particular. And our lawyers are whimpering, hiding in their offices.”

  “Tell us what you did during that year after you graduated, Mr. Wolfinger.”

  Tap, tap, tap went the pen. Linus said on a shrug, “Nothing happened. I just bummed around the western states—you know, Wyoming and Nevada, places like that. I was trying to find myself.”

  Savich said, “What did you live on during that year?”

  “Nothing much. I was by myself, didn’t eat much, just drove around.”

  Nick said, “You said you were driving around Wyoming. My very favorite place is Bryce Canyon. Did you visit there? What did you think?”

  “Gorgeous place,” Linus said, nodding. “I spent a good couple of weeks there. What else can I do for you folks?”

  Savich didn’t have time to continue with Linus because the door burst open and Jon Franken came running in, his handsome face red.

  He came to a dead stop when he saw the four people standing there, watching him. He drew up, sucked in a deep breath, and said, “What I meant to say is that I heard that those idiots over at KRAM showed episode three of The Consultant last night. Why did you okay such a thing?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Franken.”

  “Oh, stuff it,” Jon Franken said. “Why did you do it?”

  “I didn’t. Someone sent it over saying it was from Fra
nk.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Jon said, and dashed his fingers through his beautifully styled hair. Next to Linus Wolfinger, Jon Franken looked like a model, one with style and good taste. He looked very Hollywood with his white linen slacks, dark blue shirt, and Italian loafers, no socks. He looked long and sleek and elegant. And royally pissed. He also didn’t look the least bit intimidated by Linus Wolfinger, who could have him out on his ear in about two seconds.

  Linus Wolfinger wouldn’t stop tap, tap, tapping that damned pen.

  Jon said to Savich, “I’m sorry for bursting in here like this, but I just heard. Belinda called me. What the hell happened? Please tell me there weren’t any murders.”

  “Not yet,” Sherlock said.

  “Good. Maybe this was just a distraction,” Jon said, and streaked his long fingers through his hair again. His hair was so well styled that it fell right back into place.

  Wolfinger showed signs of life at that announcement. “Maybe Jon has a point there. Maybe this was just another planned detour for the police, to get you all panicked. What do you think?”

  “I think you could be right,” Savich said. “Dane, sit down before you fall down.”

  Dane went to one of the two very uncomfortable chairs in the huge, nearly empty office and sat down. He cupped his left arm with his right hand.

  “What happened to you?” Jon asked.

  Linus said, “A Harley.”

  “What?”

  But Jon Franken didn’t wait for an answer, just began pacing. “Look, this has got to come to an end. You’ve got to stop the maniac. Everyone is really freaked.”

  Savich said, “You told us, Mr. Franken, that Weldon DeLoach is around thirty years old. When you showed us that tape, we all agreed that he looked older, forty at least.”

  Jon shrugged. “That’s what he told me. He lives hard, what can I say? This town is really tough on some people, and Weldon’s one of them. You don’t understand—it sounds like a joke, but it’s all too true. People who work in TV die young because they work their butts off—an eighteen-hour day is common. Lots of people just sleep here on the lot, on sets, in trailers. I found one guy sacked out in Scully’s bed on stage five, his foot dangling over the side of the crib at the end of the bed. About Weldon—look, I never had any reason to doubt him. Are you saying he’s a lot older than he told me?”

  “He’s forty-one, nearly forty-two,” Sherlock said. “You’ve known him for eight years, right?”

  “Yeah, about that. I really never paid much attention. Who cares?”

  “A lot of things could hinge on that,” Sherlock said. “We don’t know yet.”

  Savich turned back to Linus Wolfinger. “It’s time for a geography lesson, Linus. Bryce Canyon is in Utah, not Wyoming. So, what were you doing during that year?”

  Jon Franken looked at Linus. “You don’t know where Bryce Canyon is? Jesus, Linus, you’re supposed to know everything.”

  Savich wished that Jon Franken would take himself off.

  Linus just smiled and continued to tap his pen. “The agent over there told me how much she loved it and that it was in Wyoming. I wasn’t about to make her look like an ignoramus. It wouldn’t be very polite, now would it?”

  Well, shit, Dane thought. The politicians in Washington could learn spin from these characters.

  Dane’s cell phone rang just as Nick was seat-belting him into the backseat of Savich’s rental car, a big dark blue Ford Taurus. They were parked on the studio lot because the media couldn’t get into the studio itself, thank God. He listened, didn’t say a word for a good three minutes. Sherlock, Savich, and Nick were all staring at him, waiting.

  “All right,” Dane said. “I’ll get back to you within the hour.” He pressed the end button, stared at Savich, and shook his head. “That was Mr. Latterley, the manager of the Lakeview Home for Retired Police Officers—you know, the nursing home where Weldon DeLoach’s father has lived for the past ten years.

  “Mr. Latterley says that Weldon DeLoach called this morning. Said he wants to come see his father late this afternoon, and was that all right. He also said that when he’d called before they told him that his father fell out of his wheelchair and hurt himself.”

  “But no one told us that Weldon had called before,” Sherlock said.

  “That’s right,” Dane said. He sat back, leaned his head against the seat, and closed his eyes. “No one called at all to tell us. You know, of course, that I left my card with every sentient employee at the nursing home.”

  Savich didn’t say anything else. He pulled out of the studio and onto Pico Boulevard, crammed with traffic and blaring horns. “First things first,” he said.

  Because of heavy traffic, it was forty-five minutes before they exited 405 and wound up Mulholland Drive to Frank Pauley’s glass house. The surrounding hills were dry, too dry.

  FiFi Ann, in her French maid’s outfit, the little white cap on her hair, answered the door and stared at Dane’s arm in its blue sling.

  “Somebody bring you down, Agent?”

  “Yeah, a Harley.”

  “Dangerous fuckers,” FiFi Ann said, leaned down, and smoothed her black-latticed pantyhose.

  “We’d like to see Mrs. Pauley,” Sherlock said.

  “Come with me,” FiFi Ann said, straightening, and turned on her stiletto heels.

  Belinda was drinking a cup of coffee by the blue swimming pool, wearing a very brief bikini, pale pink.

  Both men froze in place for a good six seconds, eyes fixed on her.

  Sherlock went right up to her and said, “Nice-colored Band-Aids you’re wearing, Belinda.”

  “Yes, aren’t they?” Belinda set down her coffee cup and rose, stretched a bit, knowing very well the impact she was having on the men. She grinned at Sherlock. “I like pink. It does wonderful things for my skin.”

  “All shades of pink look great with my red hair. Aren’t we lucky?”

  Belinda laughed, grabbed a cover-up, and slipped it on.

  “That’s better,” Nick said. “Now the guys can breathe and get their pulses back down below two hundred.”

  “Okay, Belinda,” Sherlock said, pulling her chair close, “tell me why you didn’t call me last night the minute you realized episode three was on?”

  She didn’t say anything for almost a full minute. Then she got up and walked to the edge of the kidney-shaped swimming pool and stuck her foot in the water. She turned slowly, looked at each of them in turn, and said simply, with no attempt to excuse herself, “I wanted to see what would happen.”

  Nick nearly fell into a wildly blooming purple bougainvillea. “You what?”

  Belinda shrugged. “You see, I never really believed that the first two episodes were blueprints for those murders. I thought it was at best a stretch, that the police and FBI had just latched onto them because they were close to actual crimes that they couldn’t solve. Listen, my role in this show is a good one. It’s a solid stepping-stone for me. With the show canceled nobody’s going to see me, which means I’m going to have trouble getting another good part. Of course, you, Sherlock, knew I lied to Detective Flynn and Inspector Delion this morning when I told them that I’d taken sleeping pills before the show started and simply fell asleep even before the show was over.”

  “Yeah,” Sherlock said. “They were very angry at you. I think Detective Flynn came this close”—she pinched her fingers nearly together—“to arresting you for malicious mischief. So what you’re saying now is that you—just like that fool Norman Lido at channel eight—wanted to see what would happen.”

  “I wanted people to see me, to see what a good actress I am, to realize that they want to see more of me, not that meathead Joe Kleypas, who’s always rubbing his fingers over his stomach so women will notice his abs. You know, the more I think of it, the more I think it was Joe who sent episode three to channel eight. He’s hungry. He knew, just like I did, that The Consultant is a winner. He even laid off the booze he was so hyped about the ro
le. Then all this happened. It isn’t fair.”

  She toed the water, shrugged, but didn’t look at them. “I’m really sorry if more people die, but who knows, maybe they would anyway.”

  “Don’t even try to excuse what you did,” Sherlock said. “It was a really low thing to do.” She got up from her lounge chair, walked to Belinda at the side of the pool, looked her in the eye, and said, “I am personally very disappointed in you, Belinda.” Sherlock shoved her into the water, and walked to the others, not looking back.

  She heard a sputtering cough behind her, then, oddly, laughter. “Good shot, Sherlock,” Belinda yelled out.

  Sherlock still didn’t turn around to look at her. She said, “I think it’s time we went to Bear Lake. Weldon told them he wouldn’t be at the nursing home until late afternoon.”

  Dane said, “Detective Flynn’s got the place covered and Gil Rainy is there with a half dozen agents. If he shows early, they’ll get him.”

  “I still want to go,” Nick said. “I want to finally see Weldon DeLoach.” She turned to Savich. “He really is over forty. Isn’t that interesting? Why would he lie about his age?”

  “Who knows?” Savich said. “Maybe ten years ago he thought it was necessary. Hollywood is a town for young people, after all.”

  “Maybe,” Dane said. “But he may have had another reason to lie. I really want to look him right in the face and ask him.”

  Sherlock looked over her shoulder one last time at Belinda Gates, treading water in the deep end of the pool, her white cover-up ballooning around her. Sherlock called out, “I was going to show you another photo of Sean at his grandmother’s swimming pool. Dillon is holding him and he’s in a swimsuit, too, and you just don’t know who’s cuter. But I’m not going to show it to you now, Belinda.”

  Belinda just kept treading water. She laughed again.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was another beautiful day at Bear Lake. There was no more snow on the ground, and the air was winter-clear and smog-free. The calm water sparkled under the late afternoon sunlight. It had taken them just a little over an hour and a half to drive I-5.