by Paul Heald
“What are you doing here?” She showed no surprise at the unexpected guest, greeting her as if she were a Jehovah’s Witness rather than an old acquaintance.
“Hi Susan! You remember the interview you did with Professor Hopkins for his book a couple of weeks ago?” Janet stood up and spoke brightly, trying to dispel the suspicion that showed on the woman’s face. “He asked me if I could talk to you and ask some follow-up questions.”
“Why you?”
“Well,” she dissembled quickly, “he’s hired me as a research assistant.”
The immediate response was a skeptical laugh. “So, you’ve decided to go straight, huh? Are you having trouble getting roles or did you finally wake up and smell the coffee?” She pushed her way by Janet before she could answer. Susan slid open the glass door. “You might as well come in. I’ve gotten enough sun for the day.” She sat down on a padded wicker couch without offering her guest anything to drink or eat. “So, what do you want to know?”
Janet sat across from her in a matching rocker and spoke confidently. “Well, a lot has happened since the professor spoke to you. In particular, we were wondering if you had any thoughts about the murder of Jade Delilah?” She took out a pen and a pad of paper from her purse.
“The wages of sin are death.” Susan gave her a bland smile. “That’s my thought. That’s what happens when you sin again and again and fail to change your life.”
“I’ve known a lot of sinners who haven’t gotten bludgeoned to death with a fraternity paddle.” Janet didn’t care whether being provocative was a good strategy or not; she just wanted to wipe the smirk off of Susan’s pale, pasty face.
“Some people pay for their sins earlier than others, but eventually everyone pays, either now or in hell.” She spoke with utmost confidence in the wisdom of her message.
“Do you think Don did it?”
“Of course he did,” she responded. “A woman who tempts a man is bound to become his victim.”
“Do you really believe that?” She put down her pen and looked up. “Then it’s a wonder there are any porn stars left alive.”
“Like I said. Everyone pays eventually, even you, Layla.” Susan spoke her stage name as if it were a dirty word. “I’ll bet you have a nice place to live, but where are your children? Where is your husband? Can you even go shopping without wondering whether the guys in the checkout line will recognize you?”
Janet answered the last question in her head: if you don’t dress up like a whore when you shop, no one recognizes you. Instead of arguing, she changed tactics and gave her best dramatic sigh. “You’re right about the house and kids. Until I get out of the business, a family is not going to happen.”
“It’s never too late to turn around, Layla,” the former starlet’s voice became more animated. “I’ve started a survivor’s support group that meets every Wednesday night in Malibu. You should come.”
“I’ll think about it,” Janet replied with apparent earnestness, successfully managing to keep any trace of contempt out of her voice. “By the way, were you invited to the party where Jade was killed? I know you used to work for Don, and he still respects you. That’s why he put your name on the interview list. I thought he might have given you an invitation.”
“He did, and I tore it up.” She sat primly on the sofa. “I’m not a hypocrite.”
“So, what did you do that night instead?” She phrased the question as casually as possible.
Susan took a moment to answer and a wary tone entered her voice. “I’m not sure it’s any of your business, but I stayed at home and watched television.” Janet stole a page from her elementary school principal’s book and just stared at her host until she spoke again. “I stay in most nights and read or watch TV. Survivor was on that night.”
Janet sat with her for another half hour, listening to more judgment being passed on her profession. When Susan began to repeat herself, Janet stood up and changed the subject. “The professor wanted me to search for anti-porn books or websites that he should mention in his book. Most actresses aren’t as critical as you. He’d like to acknowledge your position and include some links.”
Susan seemed pleased by the request and reached over the arm of the sofa to uncover a copy of the Bible hidden under a pile of magazines. She declared triumphantly, “This is the only thing he needs to refer his readers to. There’s no better anti-porn book anywhere.”
Janet nodded knowingly and fought back the temptation to ask about King David’s steamy peep show of Bathsheeba bathing, Salome’s dirty dancing, or King Solomon’s parade of red-hot concubines. “I’ll pass that along,” she replied as she got up and walked toward the front door.
“No,” Susan said suddenly and motioned toward the sliding glass doors. “It’s easier this way.”
Janet reversed direction and stepped out on the back deck, turning to ask one more question. “Is there anyone who can confirm you were watching television on the night of the murder?”
Susan’s face frowned in irritation. “No, I don’t think so. It’s always just me and the TV.” With that, she shut the door, locked it, and pulled the curtains shut.
Janet walked around to her car and sat for moment before she drove off. She could honestly report that Susan hated Jade and all she stood for. McCaffrey would not be overly impressed. If Survivor was not on the night of the murder, however, she would have something for the detective to think about.
* * *
Stanley drove past the small bungalow where Samuel Wilhoit resided and saw that he was only a short walk from Belle Meade College. As he had weeks earlier, he wondered how life might have been different if he had chosen to accept the job at the small liberal arts college instead of the research-oriented post at BFU. One thing’s certain, he thought bitterly: Max Kurland would not be answering the phone at his house instead of his wife.
As he reversed his direction and parked, he saw a large brown delivery truck pulling into the driveway. He watched a uniformed driver knock on the door and hand a clipboard to a woman who looked a lot like the missing secretary. She walked out of the house and led the young man to the garage where he picked up two large uncovered boxes which contained a number of DVD-sized packages. The driver slid the boxes into the back of his truck, and the two chatted for a minute before he drove away.
Stanley approached the house on foot and walked around to the side of the garage. He peeked in the side window. A gap in a dirty pair of curtains revealed a pile of cardboard boxes partially covered by a tarp. It looked like a substantial supply of DVD’s had been taken from Eden Studio before the conflagration had destroyed it. He headed up the walkway to the front door but stopped when he noticed it was recycling day in the neighborhood. At the end of the driveway, a bright green container full of paper, cans, and bottles sat on the curb. He walked over to the bin and was rewarded with the sight of a flattened cardboard box with Eden stamped on its side. He plucked the evidence out of the tub, walked up to the house, and knocked on the front door.
Miriam Wilhoit opened the door but slammed it shut when she saw Stanley holding the Eden Studio logo up at eye level. “Ms. Wilhoit!” he sang out. “I just need a few minutes with you.”
“Go away!” she yelled. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Ms. Wilhoit. I know what you’re hiding in the garage.”
“Talk to my lawyer!” He was not going to give her enough time to load up the stash of porn in the back of her SUV and dispose of it. “Get off of my property!” she added when he did not respond.
“Ma’am,” he cried out, changing his strategy, “would you like me to call Chance Geary and tell him where you are?” This question was met with silence. “If you’ll talk to me, I promise not to tell him or the police about what you have locked up in the garage.” After a minute, the door opened a crack.
“You promise?” As she poked her head out, she looked more like the timid next door neighbor from a fifties sitcom than a thief and possible arsonist. She
was wearing a faded pink housecoat and matching slippers. Her hair had been recently permed, and she showed a surprising level of deference for someone who had just been threatening him with lawyers.
“I promise.” But he had said nothing about revealing her confidences to Don. “Can I come in?”
She led him through a small foyer into a sunny living room at the front of the house and offered him some coffee, but he declined and sat down with her on a faded floral sofa. “Is your son home?”
“No,” she replied with alarm, “he’s still in class, and he knows nothing about this. Nothing!” Her plea was unconvincing, but he cared little about her son’s complicity in the theft. He was merely worried about the complications that might be posed by an overly protective child.
“Ms. Wilhoit, I just spoke with Chance Geary, who is looking for you by the way, and he said that you were paying him a percentage of what you earned from stealing and selling Eden videos.”
“Stealing?” she spat out the word with disgust. “If a drug dealer leaves his cash laying around, is it stealing to take some? Can you steal from a pimp? You can call it stealing if you want, but all I was doing was diverting income from a pornographer to a university.” She straightened up and puffed out her chest. “I think it’s public service. That money went to pay my son’s tuition instead of going to a bunch of whores and pimps.” She leaned back on the couch with her arms crossed, ready to meet any arguments to the contrary. His lack of interest in the morality of her position seemed to take her by surprise.
“What time did you go to visit Geary on the night of the party?”
“I visited that disgusting shop of his around seven o’clock or so. I left the studio at five, ate dinner out, and then brought him the money.” The look on her face told him everything he needed to know about her opinion of Jade’s agent.
“How long were you there?”
“Maybe two minutes. I had no desire to chit-chat with him. He’s a pig.”
“Jade was murdered around 10:30 p.m. Do you think he would have had time to get the money from you and get back to the studio to kill her?”
She looked surprised and then thought for a moment. “Maybe . . . but I thought Don killed Jade. Didn’t they find the murder weapon with his fingerprints on it?”
“Yes,” he replied, considering carefully how much he should reveal in the attempt to pry information from her, “but there should have been other prints on the paddle, mine and my wife’s, for example. Someone wiped it before Don touched it. Someone else might have killed Jade, wiped down the handle, and placed it in Don’s hand.”
“That sounds kinda far-fetched to me.” She looked skeptical but then a cloud passed over her face, as if she had just seen something indistinct flash in the distance.
“Yeah, but it’s a theory backed up by blood tests showing Don could easily have been passed out due to a combination of pain killers and wine.” Stanley built up to the most important question. “By the way, where did you go after you left Geary’s motorcycle shop?”
“I came back here,” she replied, more distracted than offended by the question. “My son was here too. He was studying and I was reading.” She shifted in her seat. “Surely you don’t think that I had anything to do with Jade’s death?”
The previous day, he might have probed gently and used his best manners to elicit information, but he was in no mood to be polite. If there had been a motorcycle in the room, he might well have pulled it down on her. “Why shouldn’t I think that, Ms. Wilhoit? I know for a fact that you’re a thief, and I have a very strong suspicion that you’re also an arsonist. Did you know that a janitor had to be hospitalized after the Eden fire?” He made up the last claim, but she looked appropriately rattled. “In my book, someone capable of criminally endangering the lives of others is also capable of murder, especially when the murder destroys a business that she hates.”
“That’s nonsense!” she struggled to express her outrage. “I did not burn down Eden Studio! I was right here with my son when that fire was lit.” He was about to point out that the official finding of arson had not yet been released to the press when he heard the front door open and saw her son enter the house. He was a surly kid who looked like he would be more at home on the offensive line of his college football team than in the classroom. Miriam stood up. “Sam, this is Professor Hopkins, an acquaintance of mine from work. He was just going.”
There was more that he wanted to ask the former secretary, but he realized that she would be unwilling to say anything more in front of her son. He stood up. “I’d like to talk to you again sometime soon.”
“I don’t think so,” she replied as she led him to the door. “I’ve got a trip planned.” A cloud passed over her face again and she drew him aside and spoke quietly as she opened the door for him. “If I were you, I’d spend some time looking at the video surveillance recordings.”
Frustrated that the interview had been cut short, he had little patience with her cryptic suggestion. “I’ve already studied every damn minute of that party DVD.”
“Watch the whole day, Professor.” She gave him a pensive look. “Watch the whole thing.”
XXXI.
A TRIP AND A DINNER DATE
Angela wanted to get to California as quickly as possible, but she could not get a seat on a flight until the late afternoon. So, while Detective McCaffrey was breaking up Don Johansson’s investigative team, she was showing houses to prospective buyers and avoiding the real estate office like it was the center of an Ebola outbreak. The morning passed in a fog as she debated how to confront Stanley when she arrived. Should she accuse him of cheating on her and demand a confession, or should she give him the chance to explain that everything was just a misunderstanding? Should she tell him about the baby right away, or hold that bombshell in reserve? Should she slap him in the face, or fall into his arms weeping? Without knowing whether he had succumbed to temptation or whether he had stood firm, she had no clue what to do. Her anger with him for staying in Los Angeles, regardless of any sexual dalliance, only made matters murkier.
As she packed, she decided to do a little bit of sleuthing of her own. There was no reason why she could not follow her husband around for a bit to learn whether he was a philanderer or just a loyal friend doing his duty. After she packed, she called the hotel where they had stayed and asked for her husband. The desk clerk offered to transfer her call, so she knew that he was at least still paying for the room. Where he was spending his nights might be a different story. She called again later and booked herself a separate room. With a shiver of excitement and dread, she decided that the next morning would find her sitting in a shadowy corner of the hotel lobby (behind a potted plant?) reading the morning paper and waiting for her husband to emerge—or not—to begin his day. She had to know for sure. Until she learned who he really was, she simply could not decide what to do.
* * *
“Susan Jenkins lied to me about her alibi,” Janet declared to the detective. It was her second trip of the day to his inner sanctum, but this time she thought she would have the upper hand. “I asked Sheila—Susan—whatever the hell you want to call her— what she was doing the night of the murder, and she said that she was home alone watching Survivor.” She paused before delivering the news, “Survivor was not on that night.”
McCaffrey stifled a yawn and leaned back in his chair. “And that proves she murdered Jade Delilah? Do you remember what you were watching on television two weeks ago? I sure as hell don’t.” He unwrapped a piece of gum and slipped it in his mouth. “Is that all you’ve got?”
With no physical evidence to tie her to the murder, it was a stretch to divert the detective’s attention, but she gave it her best shot. “Look, just go out and talk to her. She told me that Jade deserved to die, for chrissakes. Deserved to die! ‘The wages of sin are death’: those were her exact words.”
“I think that’s a quote from the Bible,” he replied. “Maybe I’ll find my priest and charge
him with murder.”
“Look,” she explained, “you’ve got a woman who hates the porn industry and a murder that destroyed its biggest studio, stopping the first mainstream porn release in decades. She says that the victim deserved to die and she’s lying about her alibi, and you tell me that you’re not even interested in following up?”
“Why should I?” He slowly popped a big pink bubble. “I’ve got someone in the county jail right now who’s pleading guilty to the crime you’re talking about.”
“What?” She was dumbfounded. “Don’s pleading guilty?”
“Yup,” he replied. “He told me a couple of hours ago that he’s willing to enter a formal plea before the judge the day after tomorrow.” The detective cocked his head and studied her. “It’s interesting what people will do to avoid a charge of capital murder.” He gave her an inviting grin while he spoke. “Now if someone else were to come forward and confess, we might forget about Mr. Johansson’s offer, but at this point in time, that’s about his only hope.”
* * *
After his talk with Miriam Wilhoit, Stanley called the detective on his cell phone and drove straight to his office. McCaffrey held the original Eden surveillance recordings, and since the fire had destroyed the copies, he had no choice but to watch it at the police station. The more he thought about Miriam’s hint, the more convinced he became that he would see the image of Chance Geary lurking about the Eden Studio anteroom the afternoon before the party. If Jade’s agent had managed to get in early enough, he could have hidden in Don’s office, waited patiently to kill Jade and then escaped out the back window. He was glad that Janet was not there to watch the recording with him. If Geary was implicated, then he owed her a huge apology.