“Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“It’s more fun if you guess.”
“Not even a hint?”
“Close your eyes, give me your hand, and I’ll slide it in,” she whispered, and like any good lap dog doing tricks for a treat, he obeyed.
By the time Gus felt his finger against the cold steel of the trigger, it was too late for guesses. She squeezed her hand hard on top of his, and the gun went off.
Haven recoiled, less horrified by the Picasso she’d created with bits of blood and brain on her favorite Frette sheets than by the noise a gun makes when you actually blow somebody’s head apart with it.
Although, technically, Gus had shot himself, and there’d be powder burns on his hand to prove it. Of course, she had powder burns, too. She’d shielded her face with the pillow, but her hand and arm were exposed, and there was blood spatter on her nightie. But it could all be explained away if she just kept her nerve. Ears still ringing, she suppressed her gag reflex and steeled herself for what had to come next.
Well, I’ve had to do worse things in bed with the big dope, she thought as she lay herself down on top of Gus’s bloody body and rocked back and forth. It was only natural that, hearing a shot and finding her husband dead, a young widow, overcome with grief, would throw herself on his body, sobbing till the police arrived. As for motive, an old man distraught over losing his money: He obviously just couldn’t live with the disgrace.
Peeling herself off the sticky corpse, Haven looked down once more with regret at the exquisite sheets, the only memento from her trip to Milan. Then, with genuine tears in her eyes for the lost linens, she reached for the phone and called the police.
Nine
The inside of Nola’s T-bird was like a meat freezer. The dashboard clock read three a.m., meaning it was really two a.m., since she never bothered changing it for daylight saving time. She’d barely said goodnight to Nancy and climbed into bed when the call came in. Another cold morning, another cold-blooded murder or possible suicide. The truth was still TBD. Sam would naturally be hoping for suicide, since there probably wasn’t a convenient little junkie to pin it on this time.
Tony’s blue Audi was idling in front of the electric gates, waiting to be buzzed in, when Nola pulled up behind him. If she’d known the length of Augustus Gillette the Third’s driveway, she would have suggested they carpool to save gas.
The imposing pile of bricks that Gus and Haven called home was surrounded by six acres of avocado trees, and the front lawn was just a few feet shy of the ninth hole at Augusta. As they climbed out of their cars, Tony let out a low whistle. “Maybe the guy killed himself over the water bill.”
“I’d laugh, but my brain’s on energy save.”
“Drinking alone last night?”
“No.”
“Come on, you can’t hide those Visine eyes.”
“I was drinking, just not alone.”
“New guy?”
“New neighbor. Her boyfriend broke up with her in a tweet.”
“Really, is that cool now?”
“NO! Same goes for email, Facebook, Tumblr, and smoke signals. Why do guys think ‘easiest way’ is synonymous with ‘best way’?”
“You’d understand if you’d ever peed standing up.”
There was an empty patrol car and an ambulance already parked outside the house. Tony knocked on the window of the meat wagon. The paramedics inside were packed up and ready to roll. They’d been in and out, and there was nothing they could do. When Alex arrived to officially examine the body, he’d take it back to the morgue in his own ride, so they figured they might as well be heading home. Their unanimous opinion was “very messy suicide” by gun. The patrol cops who’d arrived on the scene first had come to the same conclusion.
“Are they inside now?” Tony asked the ginger-haired ambulance driver.
“No, they’re checking the grounds for signs of an intruder, just doing due diligence, I guess. She’s in there by herself.”
“You mean the victim’s wife?”
“I mean . . . oh, hell, I don’t know what I mean,” the guy said, laughing. “But I’m probably going to hell for what I’m thinking.”
Tony wanted clarification, but Nola was shivering and central heating was just a few hundred feet away. She thanked the paramedic and spun Tony toward the house. “Whatever he meant, we’ll find out inside.”
The carved mahogany front door was high and wide enough to accommodate a small parade float. Nola rang the bell as Tony covetously eyed the layout.
“Jealous much?” she asked, rubbing her hands against her arms to get warm.
Tony didn’t have time to answer. The sight of Haven, looking like she’d just come in first in a bloody-wet-nightie contest, hit him like a stroke. Nola felt a momentary pang of envy and was instantly ashamed. Envious of a beautiful young woman covered in her dead husband’s blood? Am I really that screwed up?
Nola made perfunctory introductions and “sorry for your loss” remarks as Haven ushered them into a foyer that was roughly the size of Versailles. Tony regained his senses enough to express his own condolences and politely ask to be shown to the body.
“It’s horrible,” Haven murmured, before tossing back a million-dollar mane of highlighted hair and leading them up the five or so miles of stairs to Gus’s bedroom.
As they climbed the staircase, Tony threw Haven a few softball questions about the night’s events, and Nola took notes. The results were as follows.
PRELIMINARY WITNESS ACCOUNT: HAVEN GILLETTE.
Asleep in adjoining room.
Awoken by gunshot shortly after one a.m.
Immediately went to victim’s room.
Recalls no signs of intruders.
Believes gun in victim’s hand to be victim’s gun from library desk.
Collapsed on body, distraught.
Has Detective Angellotti eating out of her pretty little hand.
When they reached Gus’s bedroom, Tony asked Haven to please remain outside and not wash any evidence off her body till the crime unit arrived. The “perfect” before “body” was implied.
Nola’s first grim look at what was left of Gus Gillette seemed to back up most of Haven’s statements. Victim in bed, no signs of a struggle, gun in hand, shot distance consistent with distribution of bone and gray matter all over the, wow, really gorgeous sheets. From the other side of the enormous bed, Tony was coming to the same conclusion.
“Looks like she’s probably telling the truth,” he said as he counted up fragments of skull.
“Maybe,” Nola replied, wondering if things were really as straightforward as the evidence suggested. For a woman who had thrown herself on her husband’s body in grief, Haven had remarkably un-smudged makeup. Either she had magic mascara or there was more to her story than met the eye.
“Ba ba bump.”
“What?” Tony asked.
“Rim shot. I made a bad pun in my head.”
“You’re a very odd woman.”
“So I’m told.”
The forensic unit arrived. Alex began his investigation of the body and various pieces of its head. The crime scene was coming to life. Nola nudged Tony when she caught sight of a boner on the fat cop swabbing Haven for gunpowder residue.
“There’s something you don’t see on NCIS.”
“Hey, every guy in this room is waging that war. He just happens to be losing.”
When Haven was done being mopped and swabbed, Nola escorted her to her bathroom so she could shower off the blood that was beginning to dry and crust on her dazzling Dior nightie. On her way back, Nola was waylaid by Sebastian Jones, SBPD’s straight-outta-Caltech crime geek. Nola had always wanted a puppy, but her condo had a strict no-pets rule. Shaggy, sweet, and anxious to please, Sebastian was proving to be the next best thing. He was so naturally lovable that whenever his forensic cyber-spying helped solve a case, she was secretly tempted to tousle his hair, coo “Who’s a good boy?” and toss him a Sna
usage.
Haven had given them permission to search Gus’s laptop in the den for a suicide note, but claimed she didn’t know Gus’s password to get in. Judging by the mile-wide grin on his face, Sebastian had worked out the magic words, or at least bypassed them.
“Hey, good news!” Sebastian shouted, stopping just short of bowling Nola over in his excitement to reach her.
“You cracked the laptop?”
The words flew out of Sebastian’s mouth like bullets from a machine gun. “Yeah. First, I found a shitload . . . I mean . . . a bunch of emails from Gillette to that Ponzi-guy, Ridener-Howe. They start out tough, threatening to go all Tony Soprano if Howe doesn’t give him his money back, but the last couple are just weak.”
“Weak?”
“Yeah, guy’s begging like a little bitch.” A flush of red started at Sebastian’s neckline and raced toward his forehead. “Not ‘bitch’ like a woman, ‘bitch’ like —”
“Yeah, I get it. Keep talking.”
“Right, sorry. Well, everyone knows to diversify, right? But your dead guy —”
“The deceased.”
“The deceased went all in with Howe and lost everything. His bank statements were bleak. Dude’s surviving on fumes, or at least he was till he whacked himself.”
“If he whacked himself.”
“Right, if.”
“How’d you crack his password so fast?”
“Old people keep it easy, so they won’t forget. He had a picture of his boat next to his laptop. The back of the boat said I Got Mine, and that got me in.”
“He named his boat I Got Mine?”
“Yeah, the guy, I mean the deceased, was pretty much an A-hole.”
“Okay, first rule of policing is ‘never dis the victim,’ and yeah, sounds like he pretty much was. Anyway, great work.”
“Thanks, but like I said, it was easy. Old people always leave obvious clues.”
“So weak,” Nola said, making a mental note to move the engraved photo of her adored childhood cat, Gracie, from its obvious spot by her Mac.
“Find anything else interesting?” she asked.
“There was the usual porn stash, nothing you haven’t seen a million times before.” Sebastian blushed again. “I don’t mean you personally have seen a million times, I mean you as in someone who’s seen a lot of porn. Which, of course, wouldn’t be you.”
“Really? Why not me?” She couldn’t help teasing. It was too adorable watching him struggle to get his paw out of his mouth.
Sebastian hemmed and sputtered and finally gave up. “I have no idea what to say right now.”
Nola laughed. “You’re doing great, dude. Anything else?”
Relieved to be out of his porn spiral, Sebastian came quickly back online.
“A draft of a speech to the Coastal Commission recommending they okay the sale of some beachfront property to the Wyatt Development Corporation, and some pretty ugly IMing with his ex-wife, Angry Susan.”
“Angry Susan?”
“That’s what he calls her. They fought a hella lot about money.”
“Alimony?”
“Can’t get blood from a stone, bitch.” Sebastian’s smile froze. “. . . is what he wrote to her, I wasn’t saying that to you, obviously.”
“What’d she write back?”
“‘Piss off, Fuck Face’ — Uh, again, that’s her to him, not me to you. Oh, and there’s one more thing. I think he had pancreatic cancer.”
Nola took a mental step back. “Wow, didn’t see that coming. What do you mean, ‘you think’?”
“Well, he had a follow-up appointment with an oncologist yesterday, and his browsing history is riddled with panc-cancer info. It’s kinda blatant, really.”
“Sebastian, I need you to print out the doctor’s address and number, ditto on the angry ex-wife. In fact, print out everything on the guy’s hard drive for me, except the porn — well, maybe just the really nasty bits.”
Nola threw the stick and Sebastian chased after it. “Um, is there anything special you’re into, or should I just kinda do a random sampling?” Realizing he had a mouthful of stick, Sebastian blushed for the third time. “Oh, right. You’re kidding. I’ll get the stuff printed out right away.”
Nola watched Sebastian bound down the endless staircase two steps at a time. All that energy at three-thirty in the morning — maybe he was half puppy. Leaning against the balustrade watching Sebastian disappear, she started formulating workable scenarios to account for Gus’s death.
The first was that Gus had simply chosen to off himself in the comfort of his own opulent bed rather than spend his remaining days wasting away, broke and humiliated, in some county hospital for the indigent. A group he’d undoubtedly voted against helping in every election while simultaneously attending every boozy fundraiser thrown in their honor. But if that was the case, why no suicide note? And why bother drafting a speech to the Coastal Commission that he never intended to deliver?
The second scenario was that Gus’s ex-wife, Angry Susan, had hated him enough to have killed him for the sheer joy of it. She most likely knew from their past life together where he kept his gun and what night he gave the servants off. Checking Angry Susan’s alibi jumped a notch ahead of a quick stop at Sephora to pick up S.O.S. Morning Eye cream on Nola’s perpetually re-prioritizing to-do list.
Then there was gorgeous possibility number three. Haven could easily have taken Gus’s gun and popped a cap in the old guy’s head, hoping to salvage whatever was left of his dwindling fortune for herself. A sleek bronze hyena scavenging scraps from the safety deposit box after the banks had secured the lion’s share. The flaw in this theory was that Haven stood to gain more if Gus had a life insurance policy and she let him die of cancer. Of course, maybe he hadn’t told her about the cancer. Or maybe she knew the insurance policy had lapsed in the financial meltdown. There were a lot more questions Mrs. Gillette would need to answer.
Tony came out of the “suicide” room and joined Nola in the hall. “Wicked-sexy widow’s still in the shower?”
“Yeah, she’ll meet us in the ‘Great Room’ when she’s dressed. How we’re supposed to tell one great room from another in this joint I don’t know — guess we’ll have to guess. In other news, Baz cracked our victim’s laptop.” Nola eyed the bottomless staircase. “I’ll fill you in while we hike down to base camp.”
“You think we should risk it without a Sherpa and some bottled water?”
“If we get lost and die waiting for help to arrive, at least I’ll have gotten my cardio in.”
“I’ll try to find a coffin that doesn’t make you look fat.”
“Actually, I want to be cremated. It’s my last chance to hit my goal weight.”
Ten
When the forensics had been bagged and tagged and Gus’s body was on its way to autopsy, the cadre of cops went home, and a mausoleum-like quiet descended over the big, lonely house. Nola and Tony had found the ‘Great Room,’ which turned out to be an understatement, and were waiting for Haven, who was still upstairs showering off Gus’s blood. Or was it her guilt? Nola still wasn’t sure, but if Haven was guilty, it was going to take a Lady Macbeth–size loofah to exfoliate that hot mess.
Nola yawned. It had been a long, virtually sleepless night, and dawn was already beginning to break. A brilliant wall of windows was gradually revealing a giant swath of the Pacific Ocean. Pink and purple light glinted off the Channel Islands. The distant offshore oil rigs glowed like a flotilla of shiny little boats. Staring out at them one drunken night from an Isla Vista beach, Jim Morrison had been hit with the inspiration for “Crystal Ship.”
“The Crystal Ship is being built, a thousand girls, a thousand thrills . . .”
The old song drifted through Nola’s mind as she stared out at the beginning of a brand-new day. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” She sighed.
“Almost as good as the real thing,” Tony replied, his eyes fixed on a dazzling oil painting of Haven over the fireplace.
<
br /> “I was talking about the view.”
“So was I. Stimulating. Don’t ya think?”
“I imagine it keeps the crows away.”
“Is it me, or can you almost see through that dress?”
“It’s you, and every other guy who isn’t gay,” Nola replied. “Strikes me, there’s something a little predatory behind the evening gown and pearls.”
“Really? ‘Cause I’m thinking this may be one of those cases where the smokin’ hot widow ends up falling for the sexy, boyish detective.”
“I suppose it could happen . . . if you start opening car doors, leaving the toilet seat down, and suddenly inherit a billion dollars. This one’s not your usual catch and release.”
“Maybe I’ll keep her.”
“Please, you’d have to sell a kidney to afford that painting of her. And I can’t see you honeymooning in a conjugal trailer.”
“You think she did it?”
“It’s a definite possibility. Why? You buying the suicide?”
“I am.”
“Lightning round fact-off?” Nola proposed.
“You’re on,” he said, rubbing his hands together with cartoon relish. Tony lived for competition, and outside of softball, poker, and fishing tournaments, Prove Your Case was his favorite game.
“Even though I’m a lady, I’ll let you go first.”
“Thanks. Since you’re really more of a broad, I will. FACT: Sick old guy loses his net worth in a very public swindle. CONCLUSION: Guy figures volcanically hot babe of a wife won’t be jonesing for his wrinkled rocks in the poor house, so he offs himself. Makes perfect sense.”
“Why no suicide note?” Nola challenged.
“His problems were so obvious he thought a note would be redundant.”
“Oh, but drafting a speech he never planned to give made sense?”
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