“Will you shut up?” Terry hissed at me.
“I’m just saying—”
“And I’m just telling you to shut your hole until Eli gets here!” she snapped, her eyes bugging out of her head.
“Temper, temper,” Stedman said.
I sucked in a breath, clenching my teeth. Thanks to Terry, we were looking like hot-tempered redheads who had something to hide.
I smiled, and said in my calmest, most relaxed voice, “I’m so sorry, gentlemen. I know you have a job to do, and I have the utmost respect for your work, bringing criminals to justice. But you see, we happen not to be criminals—”
“Then talk to us!” Boatwright said.
“And we’re not unaware of our right to representation. If Eli Weintraub doesn’t present himself in the next ten minutes, I suggest you provide us with another attorney free of charge, as is our constitutional right.”
Boatwright exhaled and glanced over at Stedman. “Well, they’re too smart for us.”
Stedman shrugged and the two of them sat back in their chairs.
“So, how ’bout those Lakers?” Boatwright said, smiling at me, before taking a bite of his tuna salad sandwich.
They gave up after a few more minutes of good cop/good cop, then left us to our own devices in the interrogation room, having turned off the video camera.
Terry got up and looked at herself in the two-way mirror, running her hands through her hair and checking her teeth for lettuce. She found a piece stuck to her front tooth. She picked it out and flicked it onto the mirror.
“Eat that,” she said.
“Terry—”
“Don’t say a word, or I swear to God . . .”
I realized we were both extremely tense and, in spite of Terry’s cocky stance, more than a little afraid to have found ourselves in this situation.
She punched the mirror with her fist. “Where the hell is Eli?”
“Calm down, he’ll be here.”
“It’s been two and a half hours! Where is he? Ringside at a mud wrestling match?”
“He’ll be here, he’ll be here,” I said out loud. In my head I chanted, Please God, please God.
And right on cue, a lady sergeant opened the door and ushered him in. He was wearing a coat and pants that actually matched, a tie that didn’t clash with the ensemble, and a minimum of stains on his shirtfront. Had someone else dressed him tonight?
I jumped up and threw my arms around his neck. “Eli! You’re here!”
I picked up the scent of a woman’s perfume, a familiar aroma that I couldn’t quite place, mixed as it was with garlic, scotch, and cigar smoke.
“Hey, girls. Sorry I was incommunicado. I had work to do tonight.”
Work? Okay, but there was that dreamy cast to his eyes and the little matter of the perfume, the name of which was right on the tip of my tongue.
Terry was in no mood for apologies. “We’ve been sitting here being grilled by those bozos for three hours. It’s about fucking time!”
“Whoa, baby, whoa!” Eli said, holding up a hand. “Now the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna chill right out, okay? We don’t want to be looking like a couple of rage-aholics under the circumstances, know what I’m saying?”
“Listen, we’ve got dogs now,” I said to him. “We have to get out of here.”
“Really? What kind of doggies?” he asked, smiling.
Terry slammed the table with her palm. “The kind that has to eat and go to the bathroom! And we haven’t been home for hours!”
“Well, this is serious,” Eli sat, tossing his battered briefcase on the table.
“Can it, Terry,” I said, shooting her a warning look.
“Yes, I didn’t realize that there were innocent victims in this scenario,” Eli continued. “That some poor little pups were going to go motherless, when they lock your asses up for breaking and entering, felonious drug theft, and murder one!”
Terry melted into the chair across the table from Eli. Tears swam in her eyes and she gripped his hand. “I can’t go back in, Eli. I can’t!”
She had always made light of her prison stint to me. It wasn’t that bad, Ker. It was actually kinda fun. Even made some new friends—junkies, whores, and killers, but really nice girls, underneath it all.
But here was the naked truth. She was terrified of going back.
“You’re not going in, sweetheart,” he said, patting her hand. “Thing is, they know there’s a story and they’re gonna be real hard-ons about this unless we give them something.”
“Give them something?” I said.
“First,” Eli said, “tell me what happened tonight.”
We explained that we’d accused Janice of complicity in the doctor’s prescription drug trade. It was only a bluff, but we thought it had worked because she invited us to the office to show us some evidence.
“Looks like she called your bluff,” Eli said.
I searched his eyes. “You think she set us up?”
He shrugged. “We’ll let the cops figure that out. For now, I don’t want you going into your blackmail and drug theories. Let’s not muddy the waters. Our only concern is getting you out of here.”
We nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly with that strategy.
“So, here’s our line—you were concerned about your former client, Lenore Richling. She may have been the victim of malpractice, and you were investigating on that basis.”
“But we got there and found the doctor murdered,” I said.
“Right. That works.”
“But why didn’t he—whoever he is—kill us too?” I asked Eli.
“Or she,” Terry said.
“Yeah, or she,” I echoed. I wondered if it had been more than a setup, if Janice had done the deed herself. But I couldn’t believe she was capable of the butchery we’d seen tonight, even if Terry had overestimated her good qualities.
“You weren’t on his to-do list,” Eli said. “Yet.”
“But why not? It would have been easy enough,” I said. “Why leave us there as witnesses?”
“Well, what did you witness, really?”
I thought about it. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I only saw a big dark shape.”
Eli pointed a finger at me. “It was a warning, or a setup, or both. If you guys got nailed for the murder, terrific. If not, you’d probably be smart enough to leave it alone after this. If he’d killed all three of you, they’d be out looking for him right now, and the more time and obstacles he puts between the cops and himself, the better off he is.”
“Or she,” Terry said.
“Or fuckin’ she, all right?” Eli shook his head. “Now, I’m gonna invite them back in, and I want you to look cooperative. But stick to our line—you went there to get information on the doc. All you know about him is that he operated on your client before she died, okay?”
“Gotcha,” we said.
“And any question I don’t want answered, I’ll give you the signal—” he gave us a tiny shake of the head, eyebrows joined over his nose, “and you’ll clam right up, okay?”
We nodded.
“Good,” he said, standing up from the table. “I’ll be right back with the dicks.”
Boatwright and Stedman were all business when they came back in, no more game playing. They conducted themselves like complete professionals, for which I gave Eli all the credit. He had convinced them that we would answer their questions truthfully, and they were only too eager to get on with their investigation and find the real murderer, which they didn’t seem to think was us after all.
The first part was establishing names, dates of birth, phone numbers, professional information, and so forth. They announced to the camera that we had been apprised of our rights, to which Terry and I readily agreed. Then Stedman put the questions to us.
“What were you doing tonight at 244 Bedford Drive, office number 303?”
Terry answered, “We had a meeting with the office manager.”
“Name?
”
“Janice.”
“Last name?”
We both shrugged.
“What was the purpose of the meeting?”
“We were trying to get more information on her boss, Daniel Hattrick.”
“Why?”
“We think . . . thought he might have played a part in the death of our client.”
“Your client’s name?”
I looked at Eli. He nodded.
“Lenore Richling,” I said.
“So you were conducting a private murder investigation?” Boatwright said, giving me a sad-eyed look of disapproval. “You must know it’s illegal for private eyes to investigate a homicide.”
“No, no,” I said. “We didn’t think it involved murder, but the circumstances of her death were somewhat unusual. Lenore was a friend of our aunt’s, and we’d been working for her when she died. Our aunt asked us to look into her death, that’s all.”
“You thought the doctor was involved in foul play of some kind?”
Eli gave me a little jerk of the head.
“No-o-o. But he’s been investigated for malpractice before.”
Stedman didn’t seem too interested in this revelation. He took up the questioning again. “And where was this Janice?”
“We don’t know,” Terry said. “You’ll have to ask her that.”
“We will, we will,” Stedman said, giving Boatwright a look from the corner of his eye. Boatwright jotted something down in a spiral notebook. “What were you investigating on behalf of Ms. Richling?”
Eli jumped in. “A confidential matter, gentlemen. Of a domestic nature.”
Stedman turned to me. “How did you know the doctor had been investigated for malpractice?”
“We picked that up in the course of our investigation.”
“From who?”
“It’s a matter of public record.”
“Okay. How do you know Janice?”
“We met her a couple of days ago,” I said, “when we went to the doctor’s office. We took her out for a drink and she told us Hattrick was losing it, emotionally and financially. He had several very angry patients.”
“Uh-huh. Did she mention anybody mad enough to kill?” Boatwright said, knitting his thick eyebrows together.
I was finding this man distressingly attractive, especially in the face of a hard line of questioning. Remember, I thought, he’s a wolf in hunk’s clothing.
“No,” I said, “she didn’t mention anyone.”
But even as I said it, Tatiana’s voice came back to me—He’s ruin my life! Had she hated the doctor enough to kill him? Or had our trip to the hotel caused Alphonse to strike out, as I’d feared?
But this was all speculative, I realized, and Eli had warned us against dragging in extraneous information.
“So you went to the office and Janice wasn’t there,” Boatwright prompted me.
“No one was there,” Terry said. “Or so we thought. The lights were out. But the door was open and we went in, and then we thought we heard someone.”
“At which point you left the office, like the smart girls you are, and called the police?” Stedman said, the sarcasm creeping back in. “No, wait. You didn’t do that, ’cause the call we got was from a Mr. Nguyen, the night janitor. So I guess that means you went right into a darkened office, ignoring the sound of someone inside, and walked straight into an ambush.”
“We weren’t sure about the noise,” I said, a little too anxious to exonerate us on the stupidity charge. “Sometimes we freak ourselves out and hear, or think we hear, bogeymen who aren’t there.”
Terry rolled her eyes all the way back into her skull.
“Bogeymen? Okay . . .” Stedman had a little chuckle at this, and Boatwright joined in. Even Eli permitted himself a short laugh.
“So,” I continued, “we picked up a stapler and a paperweight and went to see what the noise was—”
“Back up,” Boatwright said. “What was this about a paperweight?”
“You know, for weapons. A stapler and a paperweight.”
“Are you licensed to carry a paperweight?” Stedman said, and this time he and Eli and Boatwright all had a good, full-on laugh at our expense. I felt my cheeks broiling.
“Like I said, we didn’t really think anybody was there.”
“Okay, okay,” Boatwright said, smiling at me. “Go ahead,”
“And Terry kicked in the door to the examination room, and it swung back and hit her in the head and knocked her on her ass—”
“Wooo-haaaa-aaaa!” all three men erupted at once. Terry shook her head at me with a deadly look in her eye.
Eli said to tell the truth—I telegraphed to her. In for a penny, in for a pound. Anyway, bumbling bimbos seemed like a better way to go than psycho hypo-killers at this point in the proceedings.
“And then what happened?” Stedman hiccuped. “Oh, excuse me. I should never laugh on a full stomach.”
The three men hooted, while Terry scowled at them fiercely.
“I ran to see if Terry was all right. Then I heard rubber squeaking on the linoleum, and I turned around to look and somebody kicked me in the jaw,” I said. “My head bounced off the wall and I passed out.”
“Uh-haw-haw-haw!” the men responded.
Terry gave them the dirtiest look in her repertoire. The one usually reserved for guys with pick-up lines like, Hey, what d’ya say? Can I double my pleasure, double my fun tonight?
“Squeaking on the linoleum?” Stedman yukked. “Is this the Case of the Killer Nurse Shoe?”
Terry and I waited through another bout of hilarity, grinding our teeth, then I jumped in again, hoping to put an end to this torture session.
“And when we woke up, the Vietnamese janitor was there, and he hit me with the mop, knocked me to the ground, then jumped on my back to get out the door.”
“Uh-huhuhuhuhuh!”
Stedman fell right off his chair. Boatwright plopped forward on the table, convulsing with laughter. Even Eli was wiping tears from his eyes with his dress tie.
“And then the cops came in and the rest is history,” Terry finished.
“I gotta, I gotta, I gotta . . . go to the can,” Stedman said, between hiccups. “I’m gonna lose my dinner!”
The interrogation went on for another fifteen minutes, having technically become a witness interview. We were released without further incident, none the worse off, except for the black smudges on our finger pads and a burning indignation at being ridiculed.
“Aw, don’t be mad,” Eli said, as he drove us back to our motorcycle. “I got you out of it, didn’t I?”
“I think we did that ourselves,” I said. “We convinced them we were too incompetent to murder Hattrick.”
“Yeah, you were great.” Eli laughed, his jowls jiggling like Hanukkah Harry’s. “Really hilarious.”
“I’m glad we could amuse you.”
“Look at it this way—you’re off the hook. And you did your civic duty, reporting a murder in your own, inimitable fashion. Did the janitor really jump on your back?” He cracked up again.
I slapped him on the belly. “Hey, whose side are you on?”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “But you know, it could have gone a lot worse in there. You should be happy you’re going home to your doggies.”
That was true. I’d never been so anxious to go home and snuggle with another creature in my life. Especially one with whom I had no hope of sexual intimacy.
The snuggling concept jogged something else in my memory. A certain eau de toilette on Eli’s person when he walked in tonight. “By the way,” I said to him, “who were you out with tonight?”
Eli got very sober suddenly, clearing his throat. “Oh, just some babe. Nobody you know.”
Wait a minute, I had it now! Chanel No. 5!
Not the kind of perfume worn by the usual divorcées on the prowl. But it was worn by our great-aunt, whom he had been desperately trying to impress earlier . . .
He
changed the subject quickly. “So who killed the doc, Sherlocks?”
“Well,” I said, “we had been thinking the doc himself was the bad guy.”
“Guess you need to keep thinking, huh?”
“I already have,” Terry said. “I vote for the supplier—your former client, Sergei Pavlov.”
“Oh? How come?”
“I figure it like this,” she said. “The doc got too free and loose with the merchandise. It was interfering with his performance, and he was being sued to hell and back. If the guy’s got no patients, then there’s no one to get hooked on drugs.”
“Besides, a junkie’s a liability all around,” I said. “There’s always the risk he’ll be picked up and spill the beans on the whole operation.”
“Yeah, if Sergei was involved with this alleged drug ring at the hotel and if the doc was pushing the drugs to his patients,” Eli said. “Still needs that little thing called proof.”
“Well, duh, we’re gonna prove it,” Terry said.
I didn’t see how, but hey. We could get lucky.
If we didn’t get dead.
When we got back to Bedford Drive, there was a parking ticket on the motorcycle. Could have been worse. We could have been spending a heck of a lot more on a bail bond, while sharing a communal toilet with a lot of really nice girls.
I didn’t share with Terry my thoughts about Eli and Reba’s budding romance. After all, It was only a suspicion. And with all the paranoia swirling around my brain, I hardly knew when to trust my instincts and when not to.
Despite the fact that we’d arrived home at close to three in the morning, Reba had called shortly after nine. She’d heard from Eli about Hattrick’s murder and our arrest, and had insisted that we come over to talk about it, immediately.
I dragged myself down to the kitchen and found Terry seated at the breakfast table, hunched over a glass of orange juice. She was barefoot, her hair going in all directions, dressed in flowered yellow leggings under a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt. Muffy and Paquito were perched on top of the table, lapping at a saucer of half-and-half.
The Butcher of Beverly Hills Page 20