“No coffee?” I said.
She yawned, shaking her head. “Then I’ll be tired and wired.”
“That was Reba on the phone.”
“I figured,” Terry said. “She heard about Hattrick?”
I nodded.
“She got her panties in a bunch?”
I nodded again.
Terry took a sip of OJ and leaned back in her chair. “Maybe we should let her get a gun, after all. Beverly Hills is starting to look more like gang territory every day.”
I had to laugh, in spite of my exhaustion. “She’d look very chic with an assault rifle strapped to her chest, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, but it’ll only happen when Louis Vuitton starts making cartridge belts.”
To our surprise, we were greeted at the door to Reba’s house by Cousin Robert.
“Well, if it’s not the twin lovelies of the desert. How are my little cactus flowers this morning?” He gave us each a kiss, which amazingly didn’t smell like alcohol. Not even yesterday’s.
“We’re fine,” I said, then I noticed his outfit. He was covered head-to-toe in fuchsia velour. A zippered jumpsuit, with what appeared to be big white Bugs Bunny feet protruding from the bottom. Were those running shoes?
“What’s up with the outfit, Robert?” Terry asked, trying not to sound appalled.
“Oh, these are my workout clothes.” He smoothed back a wisp of frizzy red hair that had strayed into his face, tucking it inside a terry-cloth sweatband. “I’m on a new health kick,” he announced, “but don’t think this is a temporary fad. No way. There’s nothing like staring death in the face to put you right with your maker. Henceforth, I’m treating my body like the temple it is.”
A crumbling Jakartan ruin filled with rabid monkeys? I wondered.
Terry and I exchanged a look while Robert began jogging in place. He huffed and puffed, losing breath rapidly.
“See there? See there? That’s with only one day’s training.” His stomach sloshed up and down like a water-filled garbage bag. He swung his arms into the air, stretching up on his toes, then bent over quickly and reached all the way down to his shins.
“Flexibility. It’s all about flexibility. That’s what keeps you young!” He ran toward the dining room, waving us forward. “Come, bambini. Mangia!”
We followed him into the dining room, where Reba sat motionless at the table. She didn’t speak and her eyes never left the porcelain teapot in front of her. It had an engraving of a Shinto temple on its side, steam rising from its spout, and it sat in the exact spot where the coffee service should have been. She stared at it as if she were contemplating wiring it with explosives.
“Come on, Mother. Drink your ginseng. There’s a good girl.” Robert jogged to his seat across the table and plopped down with a satisfied Ugh! as if he’d just run down the side of Mt. Baldy. He pounded his chest with his fists. “Ah, it’s incredible girls. I feel like a new man. Not a drop has passed these lips in twenty-four hours!”
Well, at least he’d stopped drinking. Maybe this would be for the best, even if it was a little annoying at first.
Grizzie entered with a silver tray holding four ceramic bowls, a milk pitcher, and a box of Kashi cereal. She gave Robert a look laced with daggers and slammed the tray down in the middle of the table, sending Kashi and milk flying into the air.
“She’s a little resistant to change,” Robert said, watching Grizzie stomp out of the room. “But she’ll adjust in no time. Kashi, Mumsy? Clear those bowels right out. They’ll be sparkling like diamonds in two weeks.”
Reba lifted her eyes from the spilled cereal to Robert’s face and then looked back at the cereal, not uttering a word.
“I’ll have some,” I said to defuse the tension.
“Good girl!” Robert pushed the tray toward me. “You can’t get this much fiber without gnawing on the bark of a tree or munching whole stalks of wheat.” He sucked in a lungful of air. “There’s no disease but congestion, no cure but circulation!”
“Uh-huh.” I put a spoonful of cereal into my mouth. “Mmm, even better than tree bark.”
“So your little tumble kind of altered your outlook on life?” Terry said to Robert.
“Indeedy do. I realized I’d been letting myself go to an alarming degree. Eating poorly, getting very little exercise, drinking much too much.”
Nah. Drinking too much?
Terry and I didn’t dare meet each other’s eyes.
“And I got up from my sick bed, and I looked around and I said, ‘Robert, life is a gift. It’s a treasure. And what are you doing with it? Squandering it, that’s what. Soaking yourself in alcohol and digging yourself an early grave. Well, that’s no way to be!’ And then next thing you know, I’m off to the Big 5 Sporting Goods Store to buy some workout clothes, and I got a personal trainer, and within twenty-four hours I’m feeling ten years younger. No, fifteen!”
Reba stared straight ahead, her expression unchanging, as if she planned to sit there in stony silence until this nightmare had passed right out of existence.
The doorbell rang.
“That’ll be Sven, now.” Robert jumped up from his seat. “See you later, lovelies. Got to get the lard out!”
I think he meant lead.
I leaned back in my chair and saw Grizzie open the front door. Outside was a man of thirty-five with the best physique I had ever seen on a live human being. He wore an orange tank top stretched over granite pecs, and shorts made of the same jersey material that hiked up on the sides of his bulging thighs, forming a shiny V anchored by his substantial package. He jogged in place, and so did it.
“Good morning,” he said with a Scandinavian accent. “Is Mr. Robert—?”
The door slammed in his face.
“Grizzie!” Robert said, running for the door. “What’s gotten into you?”
“What’s gotten into you, ya great sack of jigglin’ potatoes? Shut up and drink yer whiskey!”
“Why Grizzie, that’s so insensitive,” Robert said. “You know I’m clean and sober now.” Robert opened the door to his trainer as Grizzie stormed off into the kitchen. “Ye’ll be jogging out t’ other side of yer mouth, soon enough!” she muttered.
Robert and Sven shook hands, then Sven whipped Robert around, pinning his arm behind his back. “Well, I can see we are going to have to work on your upper-body strength today, Mr. Robert.”
“Come on,” Robert squealed. “Race you to the backyard!”
The two of them jogged past the table, throwing their big white feet up behind them, pumping their fists with little hammer movements. They went through the French doors, and across the brick-paved patio out onto the grass, where Sven led Robert in a round of jumping jacks.
Reba picked up a little bell and rang it. Grizzie reappeared, sopped up the spilled milk, and took the cereal tray away without even being asked, and was back within seconds with the coffee service, muffins, and mangoes.
“Coffee, girls?” Reba didn’t say a word about Robert’s conversion to health nut, making no move to acknowledge his new life journey. A relapse was all but inevitable, she seemed to think, and the sooner, and the less said about it, the better.
We doctored our coffee and let her start the conversation.
“I’ve decided to drop the case,” she said.
Terry sputtered her coffee onto the place mat in front of her. “What?”
“It’s become far too dangerous. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you two. You’re my entire legacy, now that Robert has irretrievably lost his mind, and I won’t be responsible for getting you killed.”
I glanced out in the backyard and saw Robert trying to do push-ups. He was on his hands and knees, head hanging forward, his arms bent and shaking ferociously under his weight. They collapsed suddenly and Robert fell flat on his face on the grass.
I accidentally laughed.
Reba’s eyes traveled from my face to the backyard where Sven was helping Robert up from the
ground. Then, without warning, Sven hauled off and slugged Robert in the gut.
Robert stumbled backward, his arms pinwheeling in the air. Then he regained his footing and put up his hands for the boxing portion of the workout. Bouncing on the toes of his feet, fists punching the air, Sven ducking and weaving. Upper-body strength, here we come.
Reba sighed and rolled her eyes at me. “I’m thinking of having him committed.”
“To a rehab program?”
“A psychiatric ward.”
“Reba, you can’t do that!” I exclaimed. “He’s just trying to clean himself up.”
“I’m changing my will. I’m afraid if I leave him everything, he’ll donate it to a Swiss spa in exchange for a room with a Buddhist shrine, three bowls of hot gruel, and a cot.”
“Give it a few days,” Terry said. “This happens all the time. People swear they’re going to turn over a new leaf, then within a week they’re back to pounding Cheetos and guzzling beer and watching E! Entertainment biographies on the cast of Gilligan’s Island. Just wait, he’ll be better in no time.”
“Nevertheless. I’m going to set up a trust fund.”
“He’s a fifty-year-old man,” Terry protested. “He’s too old to be a trust-fund baby!”
“He’s unfit.”
I shook my head, exasperated. “He’s trying to get fit.”
“Let’s drop the subject,” Reba said, putting a hand to her forehead. “It’s too depressing.”
Sven popped back in the door. “Excuse me, ladies?”
“Yes?” I said.
“Would you mind to call 911? I believe Mr. Robert has had a heart seizure.” Then he jogged back into the yard and began pounding double-fisted on Robert’s chest, as he lay motionless on his back in the grass.
Reba sighed again and turned around to pick up the phone, punching in 911. “Hello? Reba Price-Slatherton, here. Be a dear and send a cardiac unit to my address. Yes, that’s correct. Well, I believe my son has had a massive heart attack. Thank you so very much.”
As Terry and I sat there open-mouthed, she whipped out an alligator checkbook and readied a Mont Blanc pen.
“Now, how much do I owe you?”
We left Reba’s with a two-thousand dollar check for services rendered, having promised to attend Lenore’s memorial that afternoon, dressed appropriately. It would be held at Beverly Eternal Rest in the warm, still-beating heart of Beverly Hills.
“Curtain’s promptly at three, dears.”
“The curtain?” Terry said.
“Figure of speech.”
Robert’s prognosis was decent. In fact, the EMTs hadn’t been certain he’d suffered a heart attack at all. When I told them he’d been slugged in the gut, they thought it might be something else entirely, like internal hemorrhaging. At which point Sven had jogged out the front door, suddenly remembering he had another client to train.
Robert would be admitted to Cedars-Sinai, and of course we’d try to visit him as soon as possible.
When we got close to Wilshire Boulevard, Terry pulled over and parked, signaling me to get off the bike. Time for a chat. We took off our helmets and sat on the curb.
“Well, are we gonna drop the case?” she asked.
“Yeah, the police are on it now. They’re in a better position to investigate. But hey, we had a good run. And on the plus side, we’re alive with money in our pockets and we’re not in jail.”
She made a face. “Doesn’t feel right, just letting it drop.”
“Yes it does.”
“Wimp!”
“Suicidal idiot!”
“I’m not giving up.”
Oh God. I could see that her mind was made up, and I was going to have a hell of a time talking her out of it.
“Think of it this way,” she argued. “We still have Lenore’s money. She’s crying out to us from the grave to use it in a constructive way, to solve her murder.”
“She wasn’t murdered. And she wouldn’t want us to keep investigating because we’re only gonna turn up something slimy on her.”
“Then consider it her karma. She was doing something bad and the universe conspired to give us her money so we could keep investigating and stop the madness. You know, there’s no reason to think this is going to end with Hattrick’s murder. There’ll be other victims, you can be sure.”
“Well, we can’t use Eli’s office anymore. He’ll be on Reba’s side about this.”
“So we work out of the house, as usual.”
“And no more Greg to help us out,” I warned.
“What are we, chopped liver? This is our chance to prove ourselves, to make our bones as law enforcement agents.”
“We’re not law enforcement agents!”
“I meant . . . oh, you know what I meant.”
“Yeah, you meant superheroines. You meant Charlie’s Angels. You think this is some kind of TV adventure with good guys and bad guys and a happy ending where the only people who get killed are the ones with guest spots on the show.”
“No, I’ll tell you what my motivation is. You want to know?”
I nodded, fighting not to roll my eyes.
“I’m pissed!”
Why didn’t that surprise me?
“I’m pissed at all the people who looked us in the eye and lied. I’m pissed at Lenore for getting us involved without telling us what the fuck it was all about. I’m pissed at Janice for pretending to be mother-of-the-year while she was setting us up to get killed!
“But mostly, I’m pissed at us for being taken in by everyone who had a bullshit story to sell us. And for walking straight into a murder trap and being assaulted with needles, then letting ourselves be laughed at!”
There was justification for being pissed, I had to admit.
I pulled up the sleeve of my scoopnecked tee and looked at the needle mark. My virgin arm had been violated. I’d never even dreamed of shooting up drugs, and now that I thought about it, it really got me incensed. And what about Terry? She’d had a major cocaine problem at one time. What if this malicious act had sent her into another spiral of self-destruction? Wouldn’t that have been a kind of murder in itself?
She was right. We couldn’t stop until someone had been brought to justice for all of this. If for no one else, we should do it for ourselves.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m down.”
She slapped me five and we jumped on the bike, off to right the wrongs of the world. Or at least the wrongs of Beverly Hills.
A truck rumbled past the corner and a guy with a greasy pompadour leaned out the window. “Hey, double your pussy, double your fun!” he yelled at us.
She looked back at me. But she didn’t have to tell me, I knew.
She was pissed.
We parked in a public structure on the west side of Bedford, walking the half block up to Hattrick’s building. We hoped to find Janice in the vicinity so we could grill her about why she had stood us up the previous night.
And who should be standing at the street door, waving away onlookers again?
Officer Dinah Lott.
She shook her head as we got closer, but it was more out of amazement than reproach. “You did it again!” she said. “How do you manage to be on the spot whenever a murder goes down in BH?”
Terry shrugged. “How do you manage it?”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
I pointed to the building. “So what’s happening in there? They still gathering evidence?”
Dinah twisted her mouth. “Yep, still gathering evidence. So, why were you there last night?”
“We were invited by the office manager, Janice. She isn’t here by any chance?”
“Uh, yeah,” Dinah said, nodding toward the front door. “Here she comes now.”
A coroner’s assistant pushed a gurney over the threshold with a full body bag. I lost my balance and fell against Terry, who caught me by the arm. I felt light and tingly and momentarily confused, like I’d been hit in the head with a fast-moving object I never
saw coming.
“How . . . ?” I said, my voice cracking. “What happened?”
“They found her a couple hours ago. She bled to death in a locked storeroom on the fourth floor last night.”
Terry frowned, confused. “Fourth floor? What was she doing on the fourth floor?”
“She was pursued there, apparently. They found blood in the stairwell. They think she’d been stabbed and was trying to outrun her attacker.”
“Oh my God.” Terry looked down at the boot that had stepped in Janice’s blood, and scraped her sole against the sidewalk. “So she didn’t mean to set us up after all. I feel terrible.”
“She has a little boy,” I said to Dinah. “Is someone taking care of her little boy?” My mouth was dry and I wanted to cry for that orphaned six-year-old with the brilliant toothless smile.
“I don’t know. Better talk to the detective on the case. I think you know him,” Dinah said, pointing into the coffee shop.
We looked in and saw Stedman seated at a table with the teenage counter girl, who was blowing her nose into a paper napkin. Her eyes traveled to the window and she said something to him, pointing at us accusingly.
Stedman turned to see us and smiled, crooking a finger in our direction.
“Oh shit,” Terry said. “Here we go again.”
In the hallway leading into the coffee shop I grabbed her arm. “What did we say about bringing in the cops if things got hairier?”
“We said we’d do it.”
“They can’t get much worse. We’ve got to tell him what we know, and let the chips fall where they may.”
“You’re right. But nothing about Mario and the ten thousand. Anything but that.”
I gave her a look. “I’m not stupid, you know.”
“Stupid is as stupid does, sis.”
I shoved past her into the coffee shop, giving my hair an indignant flip.
Stedman offered to buy us coffee, but we declined and asked for herbal tea instead. We sat at the same window table where we’d made the faux John Malkovich sighting, and he brought the cups to the table.
“So where’s your partner?” I asked him, stirring in a spoonful of sugar.
The Butcher of Beverly Hills Page 21