“Hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” she said.
“Oh no-o-o-o,” I said, bitterly.
Just the lay of the century, you passive-aggressive—
“I’ll give you a hand,” Boatwright said to her, heading down the stairs.
I watched them remove the rest of the broken panes from the window and sweep the area again, going over it with wet paper towels to make sure there were no glass splinters. Then Boatwright nailed a piece of plywood over the hole in the door.
It might have been a good idea, even necessary, but that wasn’t why Terry had picked this moment to do it. She was trying to sabotage my relationship with Boatwright out of jealousy, I just knew it.
By the time they were finished, the moment had been lost.
“Want me to stay?” Boatwright said to me, stroking my cheek.
“No thanks. We’ll be fine.” I didn’t want to force the intimacy issue now. I wanted him to stay because he wanted me, not because his guard dog instincts were aroused.
He looked around. “I’d feel better if you had a gun. Or even an alarm system.”
“I think we’ll stay with our great-aunt tonight. She’ll have a cow if we don’t.”
He nodded. “Good idea.”
We stood in awkward silence for a moment.
“So, I’ll call you?” he said.
If you value your life.
“Sure,” I said lightly. “Give me a call.”
He smiled and reached for the doorknob. “Good night, Terry!”
“’Bye!” she called back from the kitchen. “Thanks for the help!”
I gave Boatwright a kiss on the lips, inhaling his scent so I could remember it after he’d gone.
He stepped onto the porch, waving good-bye. I waved back, and when he was out of sight, I picked up the hammer and headed for Terry in the kitchen.
Justifiable homicide, if ever there was one, I thought. Manslaughter second-degree murder at the most. Five years’ probation—
The phone rang, snapping me back to my senses.
It had to be Boatwright, calling on his cell phone to say he couldn’t wait to see me again, it had to be tomorrow, he could still smell my perfume on his hands, it was driving him crazy, he’d never wanted anyone so much in his life—
I grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”
“Kerry? Terry?”
Damn, it was Eli.
“Hi, it’s Kerry. Whassup?”
“What did I tell you about jumping to conclusions?”
“I got it. You don’t have to beat me over the—”
“Binion bit it earlier tonight,” he said.
My jaw dropped. “What?”
“He isn’t your criminal mastermind, after all.”
“When? How?”
“Channel four,” he said, then hung up.
I ran to the TV yelling for Terry. She rushed in from the kitchen with an apple in her mouth, blissfully unaware that it had almost been her last.
“We’ll have more on the brutal slaying of one of Beverly Hills’s most prominent attorneys right after this message,” an announcer said.
“Binion?” Terry said, chewing the apple. Then she frowned at seeing the hammer in my hand.
“Um . . . had it for self-protection,” I said, tossing the hammer on the couch. I could always kill her later, we had other concerns at the moment.
“Yeah, it was Binion,” I told her. “Eli just called with the news.”
“Who did it? Sergei?”
“Why would Sergei do it? Binion’s his protector.”
She shrugged. “Maybe it’s what you said after Suzie was killed. Dishonor among scumbags. They’re all into something together, and one of them is bumping off the rest.”
We waited through the commercials for feminine spray, and Scrubbing Bubbles toilet cleanser, and something called an “in-the-egg scrambler,” which was a tiny drill poked through the top of an unfertilized egg for the purpose of whipping the yolk and the white together without the bothersome chore of cracking the shell.
I groaned at the commercial.
“Hey, don’t knock American innovation,” Terry said. “It took us to the moon.”
When the news finally came back on, they broadcast a prerecorded segment showing Binion’s high-rise apartment on Wilshire Boulevard, with the usual three-ring circus of cops, looky-lou’s, crime-scene techs, and ambulances. An on-the-scene reporter recounted how the famous lawyer had been found in the Jacuzzi of the luxury condominium, nude. The reporter confirmed that Binion’s throat had been slashed, and added a sumptuous detail for any viewers who might be trying to swallow their dinners: Binion had been in the pool for hours, and was found floating in water that had been dyed red by the blood.
“Police are anxious to speak to a young woman who was seen in Binion’s company earlier in the evening by building staff. She is said to be in her twenties or thirties, with dark hair.”
“That rules out Pavlov,” Terry mused. “Unless it’s Mrs. Pavlov.”
I stared at the image on the TV. Something had caught my eye in the throng of the curious onlookers. I ran to the screen and pointed to a half-visible woman in the right foreground. She wore a police uniform and had her back to us, hands on her hips, head turned to the right as she spoke to someone off-screen, showing a one-quarter profile.
“Terry,” I said. “Who is that? In the foreground. Get a good look.”
Terry squinted at the screen, focusing on the dark outline of the woman. “Oh, it’s Dinah, isn’t it?”
“Yep. Miss Johnny-on-the-Spot.”
“Well, what do you know.”
I gave Terry a searching look. “Why is she on the spot whenever someone gets killed?”
“Oh God,” Terry said, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Now what?”
“You do realize that Binion’s death blows our whole theory of the crimes.”
“How so?”
“He helped Sergei evade the authorities. He was an ally, someone who could help him in the future . . . I say it again, why would Sergei kill him?”
“Maybe he thought Binion was going to give him up.”
“Binion’d go out of business in a second if he gave up his clients. And they’d have a hell of a time forcing him to, because of lawyer-client privilege.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That we may have been focusing on the wrong person. Maybe nobody’s been able to locate Sergei because he’s worm food. Someone else could be doing the killing, knowing he’d get credit for it. Maybe you were right and it was a woman who shot at us tonight.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I like where this is going.”
“You have to admit, there’s something very strange about Dinah.”
“She works a lot and she dresses like a cowboy, so? That doesn’t make her a mass murderer. Anyway, you were completely convinced that Sergei was the bad guy not five minutes ago.”
“Sometimes you don’t see the obvious because you’re convinced of something else.” I chewed my nail, trying to banish the image of Boatwright’s perfectly sculpted chest from my mind.
“But they said they wanted to question a woman with dark hair,” Terry argued. “Dinah has blond hair.”
“Hello! Ever heard of wigs? Seen one on your own aunt, lately?”
“Yeah, so maybe Reba did it.”
“I’m serious about this.”
“Seriously whacked.”
“Humor me,” I said.
“And how would I do that?”
“Let’s invite Dinah out for another drink, feel her out.”
Terry let out a melodramatic sigh. “Fine. If it will ease your paranoia, call her.”
It felt like the middle of the night but it was only ten o’clock—still a decent hour to call up a friend for drinks. Dinah was listed in the Beverly Hills directory. She answered on the second ring, and I would have sworn she was surprised to hear from us.
“You guys okay? Heard you had some
trouble tonight.”
I mouthed to Terry—Surprised we’re alive?
“Yeah, we’re all right,” Terry said, giving me a disgusted look.
“I told you this case might bite you in the butt,” Dinah said.
“Listen,” I said, “we’d like to talk to you about these developments. Are you free for a drink?”
“Oh, uh . . . I’d like to, but I promised Helga I’d stay home tonight. I’ve been out late a few nights in a row.”
Who’s Helga? Terry mouthed to me. Lover?
Dog, I mouthed back.
“I tell you what,” Dinah said. “Why don’t you girls come over here for a drink? You can bring your dogs if you want, and they can play with Helga.”
Yeah, play dead. Dinah had said she had a German shepherd. I didn’t think throwing a pug and a Pom puppy and a shepherd in the ring together would be much of a fair fight.
“Another time. We’ll come by ourselves. Where do you live?” Terry said, snapping her fingers for the steno pad and a pen.
Yes, memsahib I mouthed to her, handing them over.
She wrote down Dinah’s address, an apartment on Gregory Way, then hung up the phone.
“Let’s rip,” she said.
“Uh. We’re going to her place?”
“That’s where she is,” Terry said slowly. “You wanted to talk to her, that’s where we have to go.”
“Maybe we should wait until tomorrow. It’s late and we’ve been through a lot—”
“No! You insisted we call and we called. Now we’re going.” She grabbed her leather jacket and pushed me toward the door.
“I’d feel better if we had protection.”
Terry howled with laughter. “Oh, now you want a weapon? It’s like they always say, a conservative is just a liberal who’s been shot at.”
“Okay, I’m a big fat hypocrite,” I admitted. “But I’m kind of shaky right now.” Like a tub full of Jell-O.
She patted me on the shoulder. “All the more reason to go. You’ll feel better once you get over this crazy suspicion of Dinah. She’s just a good ol’ gal bull dyke and a good cop. She’s not the one we have to worry about. Bring your hammer if it makes you feel any better.”
“Better not.” It might come crashing down on your skull on the way there.
I walked out the door, trying to rationalize the situation. We were going to an apartment building with lots of other tenants. Even if she was the bad guy, Dinah wouldn’t bump us off right there, would she?
We pulled up in front of a four-story brick apartment building in Beverly Hills’ version of a ghetto—a string of housing units built in the forties and fifties at the southernmost edge of the city. The brick buildings were well-maintained and nicely landscaped. Nothing fancy, but the rents were reasonable and you had your own police force at your door within seconds of a prowler sighting.
“I’ll bet the neighbors love having a cop in the building,” Terry said.
I arched an eyebrow. “I guess that would depend on who the cop was.”
She made a face and knocked on the door. We waited a few seconds then heard a bestial yowl like the hound of the Baskervilles, echoing thunderously down the block.
The door swung open and a huge hairy beast leaped out at me, fangs bared. Its massive paws landed on my shoulders, its maw gaped in my face. I felt its hot wet breath on my skin as I stumbled backward, and I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to die.
“Helga, no!” Dinah yelled. She yanked the gray and black slavering monster off of me. But Helga continued to bark, straining against her choke chain.
“I’m sorry, she just loves women,” Dinah said, hauling Helga away from the door, the dog’s claws scraping against the floor as she tried to lunge at my throat again. “Come on in.”
Terry strolled right in without a second thought. “She doesn’t bite?”
Dinah gave her a crooked smile. “Only if I tell her to.”
Oh, great. Where’s my Uzi?
I brushed off my shirt and followed Terry into the apartment, keeping her between me and the dog. It was then that I noticed that Dinah was still in uniform, shirt tucked in and everything. Sure didn’t look like she had planned to spend the evening lounging about.
I glanced around the living room, which was decorated in early Roy Rogers: a wooden rocking chair on a Navajo rug, wagon-wheel coffee table, and a daybed covered in horse blankets with real horse hair stuck to them—a pinto by the looks of it. A white child-sized saddle with turquoise stitching sat on a stand in the corner, and a family portrait hung on the wall below a rusted spur. I walked over to the photograph to take a closer look.
It appeared to be mom, dad, Dinah, and baby brother. Dinah was only about eight years old, but her parents looked sixty. They were careworn and weather-beaten, like people who had lived their entire lives outdoors, with little money or amenities, or whatever lightens a person’s load in this life.
“That’s my family,” Dinah said, noticing my interest in the photo. “My dad Billy, my mom Lou Ann, and my little brother Jonah.”
“Dinah and Jonah,” Terry said. “That’s nice.”
“They named him that ’cause my mom was so darn big when she was pregnant, my dad said she looked like a whale. And then she said they should name the baby Jonah if it was a boy,” Dinah said with a dopey grin, as if this was the most wonderful family legend anyone had ever heard.
Terry and I smiled. “Ha ha, that’s good,” we said in tandem.
“Where’s Jonah now?” I asked.
Dinah didn’t answer right away. She stared at the baby for a long moment, then her smile disappeared.
“Dead,” she said at last.
I swallowed. “That’s too bad.”
“It was his own damn fault!”
Dinah’s outburst hung in the air like a nuclear cloud. We backed up a step, clearing our throats. “Um, how about your parents?” Terry said.
“Huh?” Dinah wrenched her eyes from the photograph.
“Are your parents alive?”
“Nope,” Dinah said, her tone completely flat. “Everybody’s dead.”
We stood there tongue-tied for about fifteen seconds.
Suddenly Dinah clapped her hands. “So!” she said brightly. “How about that drink?”
“Sure!” Terry and I said, clapping our hands in response.
“Come on out to the kitchen. I’ll feed Helga and get us some beer.”
The overhead kitchen light cast long shadows beneath our noses. There was a big iron kettle and matching skillet on the stove, and a gingham dish towel hanging off the dish drainer, which contained a single bowl and a wooden spoon. I wondered what Dinah cooked in the iron pots. Probably baked beans with ham hocks in the big one, bacon and fried eggs in the skillet.
An ancient aluminum coffee percolator sat on a third burner. Well, she was only forty years behind the times. Had she never heard of Mr. Coffee? Never known the joy of a preset timer that brewed your first cup before you even rolled out of bed?
She was more peculiar than I’d imagined, even allowing for regional differences. I wondered if Jonah had died later in life, or if it was somehow “his fault” that he died as an infant. Maybe he’d cried too much and had to be shut up with a pillow over his face.
Dinah opened the fridge while Helga did a little dance in the middle of the kitchen, whimpering in anticipation.
“Hold on there, girl. It’s comin’!” Dinah said. She hauled out a raw rump roast, thumping it on a wooden board with a wet slapping sound. Blood pooled under the meat, reminding me of all the carnage we’d seen in the past few days.
I felt my stomach spasm.
I started to excuse myself to go to the bathroom, but Dinah picked up a meat cleaver, swung it into the air just inches from Terry’s head, and then slammed the sharpened blade down into the wet hunk of meat.
I screamed.
Dinah wheeled around in shock, one hand holding the meat, the other gripping the bloody cleaver
. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” she yelled.
In a split second, Helga jumped into the air and snapped the meat out of Dinah’s hand, biting her finger in the process. Helga then wrestled the meat to the floor, ripping into it like a hyena into carrion.
Dinah looked at the blood beading up on her finger and grabbed for the dish towel, scowling at the dog. “She’s never bit me before.”
I had a flash of Helga losing her fluffy plume of a tail to the angry meat cleaver, leaving her with only a bloody stump.
“It . . . it was my fault,” I stammered. “I thought . . . I thought you were gonna chop off your hand. The cleaver looked like it was headed straight for your wrist.”
Terry sighed noisily, her eyes rolling.
“Raw meat’s tough,” Dinah said slowly, as if to an idiot or a small child. “You have to really whack at it.”
“Oh, is that right?” I said, nodding my head eagerly. I was willing to learn all about hacking raw meat, as long as I wasn’t the raw meat in question.
“When she was little I used to give her raw chicken,” Dinah said. “I’d chop apart the whole chicken and toss it to her piece by piece. I’d hate to see how you’d react if I hacked up an entire bird!” She ran cold water over her hand.
“You can give a dog chicken bones?” Terry said. “I always thought that choked them.”
“That’s only cooked chicken bones,” Dinah explained. “Anyway, Helga’s no dog. She’s eighty percent timberland wolf, twenty percent shepherd. Wolf hybrids can eat raw bones with no trouble.” She looked down at Helga with obvious pride.
“But don’t tell anyone about that, okay?” Dinah said. “People don’t like to know they’re living next to a wild animal, and I hate to think what would happen to my little girl if the neighbors found out. They’d probably run her outta town or shoot her or something.”
Yeah, probably. If they had a gun.
“Listen, I better put something on this, okay? You all help yourselves to some beer. I’ll be right back.” She exited the kitchen, clutching a paper towel to her finger.
When she was out of earshot I started across the kitchen to strongly suggest to Terry that we get our asses out of there. But I must have stepped into Helga’s zone of discomfort. She looked up from the raw meat she was gnawing and growled from somewhere deep in her belly, her black lips curling up over the yellow fangs.
The Butcher of Beverly Hills Page 27