by K. K. Beck
There was also a half-empty coffee cup with three circles of blue-green mold floating on the surface and an ancient phone-answering machine in plastic wood.
A red light on Ed’s phone lit up. After a few blips, they heard the sound of tape hissing through the answering machine’s insides. MacNab leaned over and turned a black knob marked volume.
Now they were listening to a woman’s voice, a sexy woman’s voice, a low purr. “Hi there, sports fans!” it said. “Tired of striking out or fumbling at third? Well, forget the bush leagues and step up to the majors. You’ve reached the Home Run Escort Service. Our very satisfied customers haven’t struck out yet. We’ve got lots of lovely young ladies ready to let you slide right into home or take you on a run around all the bases. Just leave your name and number, and we’ll be happy to put you on the roster for the game of your life. We’ll get right back to you.” Here the voice produced a feline growl of passion and then in businesslike tones added, “Visa and MasterCard gladly accepted. Sorry, no switch-hitters.”
“Jesus Christ!” said Franklin. The voice on the answering machine sounded vaguely familiar.
After the beep, a male voice with bar noises in the background came on the line. “Hi, Ed,” it said. “This is Gil. I’ve got a couple of customers over here from Osaka, and we’d like to get a little party together for them at the Sea-Tac Excelsior over by the airport. Three girls, preferably wholesome-looking blondes with big tits. If you can get Candy, that would be great, and tell her to bring the tool kit. And, Ed, get back to me right away, will you? These guys are kind of jet-lagged. Catch ya later, buddy. Use my beeper number.”
They stood there in silence for a second while Bob’s golden voice floated into the office from one of the big speakers in the corner. “So it’s so long for tonight. Gosh, I’ve enjoyed keeping company with you. Get ready now for Teresa, Queen of the Night. Take it away, Teresa.”
Teresa’s intro theme from the second act of The Magic Flute came on, the spectacular coloratura passage from the Queen of the Night’s aria.
Lukowski turned to Franklin and said in a deadpan voice, “You said you weren’t familiar with the station’s day-to-day operations. Were you familiar with the nighttime activities around here?”
Franklin was getting slightly red in the face. “God, no! This was clearly that slimeball Ed Costello’s criminal enterprise. He wasn’t even, strictly speaking, an employee. He was just on commission. No one else around here had any knowledge of any of this, I can guarantee it!”
Teresa’s throaty tones floated into the room. “Thanks, Bob. And hello, all you denizens of the night. As my regular listeners will realize, the reason I love music so much is that it is the most sensual of the arts—the most erotic, if you like. Mmmmm, and I do. To prove my point, relax, lie down, make yourself comfortable, dim the lights, maybe throw that red chiffon scarf over the bedside lamp, as I have done here in the studio, and wallow with me in a selection of my favorite Chopin nocturnes here in an exceptionally beautiful recording with Maria João Pines.”
Oh, shut up and play the music, thought Franklin. He hated Teresa, Queen of the Night, and her sleazy patter. Unfortunately, hers was the only day part that even showed up in the ratings book, and the only profitable shift in the schedule.
“Hey!” said MacNab. “That’s the same voice!”
Franklin realized he was right. Teresa, pitching the charms of hookers for the Home Run Escort Service, had used a more upbeat tone, but it was the same voice, all right.
“Where’s Teresa?” demanded MacNab.
“Beats me,” said Bob. “She’s on tape.”
“Well, we need to talk to her.”
“That will be rather difficult,” said Franklin, realizing that what he was going to say would make him sound even more incredibly stupid and ignorant of what went on at this ghastly radio station than he did already. “She just sends us the tapes, and we mail her a check every month. To a P.O. box. I know my sister has tried to get her to do some publicity for us, but Teresa hasn’t been forthcoming. Of course I’ll make every effort to locate her. She isn’t, strictly speaking, an employee either, actually.”
A man in khaki trousers and a plaid shirt came over with a big plastic bag containing a pair of women’s black pumps with very high heels. He held the bag up to the detectives. “Found these under the couch,” he said.
“Oh, hell,” said Bob. Franklin looked over at him sharply.
“Maybe they belong to one of the hookers who worked out of here,” said MacNab. “Let me know if you find a toolbox.”
“God, I hate this place,” said Franklin to no one in particular.
CHAPTER FOUR
Franklin spent the next hours huddled in his sister’s office worrying about criminal liability and watching people come and go, including the late Ed Costello, now strapped to a gurney. Later, two men came and carried away the sofa bed too. Some vice detectives showed up and grilled Franklin about the Home Run Escort Service. “I had sort of wondered what Ed lived on,” he told them. “I had no idea he was running whores out of here. Jesus Christ!” He hoped his sense of outrage indicated his innocence. He thought about calling one of the criminal attorneys at his firm—Franklin himself was a zoning lawyer—but decided against it.
Watching the police boxing up the contents of Ed’s desk and wastebasket, including the empty Korbel champagne bottle, Franklin thought, Good riddance. He’d have liked to see the whole place boxed up and shipped out of his life.
The only possible good that could emerge from all of this was that perhaps Caroline would now see that running an operation with a bunch of losers was a big hassle. Maybe now he’d have the nerve to come right out and say he wanted to sell the damn thing.
* * *
“Not bad for a guy scraping by on his pay from that crummy radio station,” said MacNab to Lukowski as they walked up the drive toward Ed Costello’s suburban house. “That escort service must have been a little gold mine.” The house was a low, sprawling structure set in an immaculate garden on a large lot. A BMW was parked in the driveway. The license-plate holder said “I’d rather be shopping at Nordstrom’s.”
Lorraine Costello answered the door in a pale green silk bathrobe. She was a good-looking woman, Lukowski thought, and maybe fifteen years younger than her husband, whose driver’s license said he was sixty. Clearly a trophy wife emeritus. Despite the fact she was wearing a bathrobe, the rest of her looked ready to meet the world. Her coppery hair was arranged in a stiff pageboy and sprayed into position, including a little wave at the temple as if a breeze had lifted it just before it was flash-frozen. Her face sported a very careful and thorough makeup job, and she wore diamond earrings. She carried a small, fluffy white dog.
Lukowski let MacNab break the news. She turned very pale and stroked the dog nervously, then led them into the living room.
Lukowski cast his eye over the ivory-colored leather upholstery, where another fluffy white dog was sleeping, the huge Oriental rug covered with dog hair, the massive glass-and-metal coffee tables, the picture window overlooking a glen of rhododendrons.
“I’m afraid we have to ask you some questions,” MacNab said. “When was the last time you saw your husband?”
“Three days ago. He went to work and didn’t come back. He called me from the station at eleven and said he’d be there for another hour or so.”
The detectives looked at each other. Bob LeBaron left at eleven, then came Teresa’s broadcast. Another employee, Phil, came in at six in the morning.
If Mrs. Costello was being truthful, it sounded very much as if Ed had been murdered three days ago between eleven and six.
“Were you worried?”
“He often worked late. In fact, he always did. At least that’s what he told me.” Her eyes began to fill with tears. “I just assumed there was another woman. That he was off having some fling.”
She hung her head. “Strange women have called him here a couple of times. Ed always said the
y were advertising clients, but I knew he was lying. Once I heard him say ‘Never call here again.’”
“I see,” said Lukowski. “I know this is all very painful.”
“And he ignored me,” Mrs. Costello went on. “When I told him I wanted him to help me pick out new guest towels for the bathroom, he told me to go ahead and get whatever I wanted. He said he just didn’t care. I was hurt.” She sobbed. “I’d buy a new outfit and not be sure if I should keep it or take it back, and I’d try it on for him, and he’d say, ‘If you like it, keep it. If you don’t, take it back.’” Her lip began to tremble. “He wouldn’t even go shopping with me anymore. ‘Buy whatever you want,’ he’d say. When we were first married, he loved to shop. Maybe he shopped with those other women.”
“Mrs. Costello, it looks like your husband was running an escort service from his office at the radio station. Were you aware of that?”
Her head snapped up. “You’re kidding!” she said.
“That might explain why he was working late at night and why he got phone calls from strange women.”
“An escort service? Like call girls?”
“Yes. Think about it, Mrs. Costello. Your husband’s boss told us he didn’t make much money there. But you clearly have a very comfortable life here.”
“I wondered what happened,” she said in a bewildered tone. “When I married Ed years ago, he had a great job. Sales manager at KZZ. But then things kind of went downhill. Radio can be very unstable. I kept maxing out the credit cards just buying basic stuff, you know? When he ended up working at KLEG, I thought he’d hit rock bottom. It was so depressing. Instead, we were finally able to live decently and have nice things. I could fix up the house the way I wanted it.” She wiped tears from her eyes and said, “He did it for me. He knew how hard it was for me having to scrimp. Poor Ed.”
After a few more routine questions, the detectives made a cursory check of Ed’s papers in a small study. Mrs. Costello and the dogs hovered around, and she kept murmuring “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about finances.”
It was pretty clear her husband hadn’t kept any records from the Home Run Escort Service at the house. The previous year’s tax return showed a gross income of twelve thousand dollars in salary and commissions from KLEG.
Back in the living room, MacNab said gently, “Is there someone you want to call? Someone to be with you?”
“It’s okay,” she said in the same vague, shocked tones she’d been using since she heard the news. “My personal trainer will be here soon. She’s always there for me.”
“Mrs. Costello,” said Lukowski, “considering what you told us—that you suspected your husband was having an affair—we have to ask you if you were so angry that you might have wanted to harm him, or gone down to the station where he worked late and confronted him.”
“What? No. I never went near the place. It was really tacky. I hardly ever go into the city, anyway.”
“Can we ask where you were three nights ago?”
“Thursday?”
“Yes?”
“I was alone here. Like I am every night. I was watching the shopping channel. In fact, I think it was Thursday that I ordered a really cute tennis bracelet to cheer myself up.” Her eyes glazed over with tears. “And Ed will never get to see it.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have had a grudge against him?” asked Lukowski.
“No. Ed was always friendly and happy. A typical sales guy. Real outgoing. Everyone loved him. He was a great guy.”
As the two men walked back to their car, MacNab said, “She may not think he was such a great guy when the IRS catches up with her.”
* * *
The next morning, red-eyed and not very rested, Franklin Payne sat across the desk from his sister in her office at KLEG, and listened to her berate him. “I can’t believe you didn’t call me. No one tells me anything around here. Why didn’t Bob LeBaron call me? I heard about it on the morning news.”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” he said, avoiding her gaze by looking through glass doors into the outer office. Carl, the record librarian, was shuffling in. As usual, he looked as if he’d spent the night in a Dumpster and chosen his wardrobe there. Today he was wearing a matted mustard-colored acrylic cardigan, paint-stained jeans and rubber thongs. God, didn’t any of these people ever wash their hair? Carl’s lanky strands hung over his narrow little face like a screen.
Franklin waved at Carl through the closed glass door, and Carl gave a toss of his greasy locks and a curt nod before scuttling into the corridor leading to the record library. Franklin took grim satisfaction from the fact that the closed sliding glass door never failed to terrify the paranoid, underachieving, self-righteous leeches known collectively as the KLEG staff.
Whenever he came by the station, which he did as seldom as possible, and strode into Caroline’s office, he made a big deal of sliding the door shut and returning the furtive, hostile glances of the employees with a wolfish smile through the glass. When discussing delicate matters, he always positioned himself with his back to the glass in case there were lip readers among them.
And as he left, Franklin invariably threw a loud parting remark over his shoulder, just for their benefit, as he opened the door. Something like “Remember, Caroline. Lean and mean!” or “Format change: Think about it, Caroline!” Maybe he couldn’t get his sister to listen to reason, but he could at least undermine morale among the bloodsuckers.
Caroline finally wound down, and Franklin said snappishly, “I’m telling you, Caroline, this is serious. We could end up getting a lot of bad publicity. Who knows what sordid stuff will come up during the investigation? And we may have a homicidal maniac on the staff! Seeing as everyone around here is unhinged to some degree, it’s not going to be easy to figure out who the bad apple is.”
“Well, surely the police will figure it out,” she said. “Meanwhile, I think the best thing to do is soldier on. The way Mama would have wanted it. Do we know anything about the funeral arrangements? I think we must send flowers. White is always best for funerals.”
“For Christ’s sake, Caroline! Ed Costello was a pimp! The cops may think we’re involved. You could be a laughingstock. I can see the headlines now: ‘Arts Patroness or Procuress?’ Of course I’d like to see KLEG stay on the air forever, a living tribute to Mom’s memory, making a wonderful contribution to the local arts scene. I want that as much as you do. But it may not be possible.”
“Why do you always have to be so negative?” said Caroline in the grating big-sister tone of voice that always whisked Franklin back to his unhappy childhood. She clicked her tongue contemptuously. “The killer can’t be anyone on the staff. After all, the police found those shoes under the sofa. They don’t seem to belong to anyone here.”
“For all we know, Bob LeBaron gets off wearing heels on his shift,” said Franklin bitterly. “Anyway, the press is bound to descend on us at any minute. Let’s at least coordinate some sort of response.”
Caroline looked thoughtful. “A press release, perhaps. Maybe we can put in a little pitch for KLEG. Seattle’s only AM classical station.” She gazed out into the office as if seeking inspiration. Franklin began to feel a little twitch in his left eye. “Oh, look. Here’s the new salesperson. I think you’ll like her. She’s very sweet. And she’s a musician.”
Great. Another underachieving artist. What they really needed was some sleazebag like Ed who could run around and pick up a few contracts to pay some of the bills. A sleazebag like Ed, but with some push. Not that Franklin wanted the station to be too successful. That would only encourage Caroline. Franklin wanted to avoid a complete hemorrhage of red ink while he looked around for someone to buy this little corner of hell. Of course, now that a dead body was linked to the place, maybe a buyer would be too much to hope for. Franklin hoped there were no more fresh horrors waiting to be discovered, but he wasn’t going to bet on it.
CHAPTER FIVE
There was a feeble kno
ck on the glass door. Judy—the receptionist, a thin-lipped fortyish woman with rounded shoulders, scraggly, transparent hair and pale skin that revealed violet-colored veins around the temples—cringed apologetically at the latch. Franklin leaned over and slid open the door, scowling at her.
He was convinced that Judy listened in on his phone calls to his sister. He had heard ambient office noise and raspy, tubercular breathing in the background, and more than once he’d received mail at the station which was presented to him taped shut with “Opened in Error” scrawled across the front in her repressed backhand.
“Alice wants to know if she can have Ed’s cubicle,” she said. “You didn’t tell me you’d hired her. She just showed up, and I don’t know what to do with her. Am I supposed to train her or what? She’s asking for office equipment and business cards.”
Despite her Uriah Heep body language, Judy habitually emitted rays of rebellious hostility from her scary light blue eyes. She clearly felt she should do the hiring and firing. Caroline had brushed off her brother’s hints that Judy had delusions of grandeur.
“Send her in, Judy,” said Caroline. “I’d like my brother to meet her.”
Judy left and returned with a pleasant-looking woman in her late thirties with curly light brown hair and a rosy face. She was clearly overdressed for the KLEG office, wearing a powder-blue suit.
After being introduced and shaking hands with Alice Jordan, Franklin turned to Judy, who was hovering around in her moth-like way, and said, “Do you think we can get some coffee, or isn’t that in the receptionist’s job description?”
She zapped him with the hate-laser look and said, “Actually, my title is office manager.”
He gave a little smirk and said to Alice, “How do you take your coffee?”
She looked startled and said, “Oh, I don’t want any, thanks,” and gave Judy a smile of sisterly solidarity. She clearly thought Franklin was an oppressor of women. Fine. Might as well start alienating her right away. Happy employees didn’t fit in with Franklin’s plans for KLEG.