“Listen and listen up good,” Jake said, “because I’m only going to say this once. You give us the information we need, and you’ll walk out of here. If you lie, twist, or hold back the truth, I’ll charge you with being an accessory to murder and make it stick. And a pretty girl like you wouldn’t do very well in the slammer. Believe me when I tell you that you won’t get paid for the tricks you do in there.”
Princess swallowed hard. “I didn’t kill him.”
Jake ignored her plea of innocence. “How many times have you serviced this guy?”
“Three times.”
“Last night was the third?”
Princess nodded.
“What time did you arrive?”
“A little after nine.”
“Did you get right to it?”
Princess shook her head slowly. “He showered first,” she said quietly.
“Then?”
“Then I tied him to the bedposts and we started.”
“With what?”
She turned and looked out the window. “With oral sex. He liked to perform oral sex on me while he was tied down.”
“Then what?”
“He wanted me to do the menthol trick, but I had—”
“Forgotten to bring the cream,” Jake filled in. “Is that why you went to the drugstore? To buy some cream?”
Princess’s eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
Jake didn’t answer.
Princess suddenly nodded to herself. “You were in that damn car across the street, weren’t you?”
“What car?” Jake asked at once.
“The Toyo—” Princess stopped in midsentence, thinking as her lips moved silently. Slowly she shook her head. “You wouldn’t have been in that car. If you had, you would have caught the person who did it.”
“You said it was a Toyota.”
“That’s right,” Princess told them. “A new Toyota.”
Jake and Farelli exchanged quick glances; then they turned back to the hooker and stared at her.
“It was a goddamn Toyota,” she insisted, thinking they thought she was lying.
Farelli asked, “Why did you pay so much attention to that car?”
“Just being careful,” Princess explained. “Maybe some of your Vice buddies had the place staked out and were waiting for me.”
“So you looked at the car real hard?” Farelli pressed on.
“Damn right! Wouldn’t you?”
“Did you see a driver?”
Princess hesitated, thinking back. “Not then. But maybe later.”
“What did you see?”
“When I came back from the drugstore, I pulled into the john’s driveway,” Princess recounted. “As I got out of my car I looked across the street to the parked car. I thought I saw something move in the front seat. Then it was gone. I couldn’t be sure anyone was there.”
The blond hitter had gotten back to her car by then, Jake was thinking. The doctor was stone-cold dead. “And then you went back into the house?”
Princess nodded. “And got the hell out when I found the doctor dead.”
“Was the Toyota still there when you left?” Jake asked.
Princess shrugged. “I didn’t notice. All I wanted to do was get the hell away.”
Jake decided to try a long shot. “Did you ever see a blond woman around the doctor’s house on any of your visits there?”
“Sure,” Princess said without hesitation. “I saw a blonde the night he died.”
“Where?”
“In the driveway next door,” she said. “When I was driving away to pick up the mentholated cream, I saw a blond woman in the driveway by the house next door. I thought she was the next-door neighbor.”
Jake and Farelli glanced at each other and exchanged nods. The hooker’s story fit perfectly with the things Mikey Sellman had seen. The blonde in the driveway was the hitter.
“Are you positive that the parked car was a Toyota?” Jake asked.
“Yeah,” Princess assured him. “I’ve been thinking about buying a new car, and I’ve been checking out all the new models. That car was a new Toyota.”
“What color?”
“Dark. Maybe black or deep green,” Princess said, thinking back. “With a California license plate.”
Jake’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t happen to have the license number?”
“It started with the number four,” she said. “Then came some letters. I don’t recall what they were.”
Jake stared at her skeptically. “You just happened to remember that, huh?”
“Uh-huh,” Princess said easily. “I looked closely at the license plate because most unmarked cop cars have a public employee designation. It’s a little E that comes just before the numbers. That license number started with a four. There was no E.”
“You’re more than just street-smart,” Jake commented, thinking the hooker was sharp and observant and spoke like someone with an education. “You’re plenty bright. What the hell are you doing hooking?”
“You want the long or short version?”
“The short one.”
The hooker fluffed her red hair while she considered how much to tell. “Well, it starts this way. You’re making twenty-four grand a year teaching kindergarten and you’re barely scraping by. A girlfriend tells you about a way to make extra money. You do it, promising yourself you’ll only do it once, that you can always step back across the line. But the money is good and easy, so you do it again and again. You do it enough times and the line I just talked about becomes invisible.”
“Your line is not invisible,” Jake said.
“Sure it is,” Princess said resignedly, and got to her feet. “You got any more questions?”
“No. That’s it.”
The detectives watched the hooker walk out of the office. She closed the door softly, barely making a sound.
“What do you think?” Farelli asked.
“I think our blond hitter just made a big mistake.”
19
Joanna hurried up the gangplank and onto the deck of the Argonaut. Jake was standing near the stern, giving orders to two uniformed policemen.
“And bring his ass back here,” Jake was saying.
“What if we can’t find him?” the shorter cop asked.
“You keep looking until you do,” Jake told him. “Start at the bar across from the entrance to the marina. That’s where his girlfriend works.”
Joanna waited for the policemen to leave. Then she walked over. “What’s this all about?”
“One of the male guests lost a shoe on the yacht the night Rabb was killed.”
“So?”
“So a shoe can make a pretty good weapon to conk somebody over the head with,” Jake explained.
Joanna wrinkled her brow, now envisioning a man’s shoe as a weapon. “The killer would grab the shoe by the toe end so that the heel would strike the victim’s head.”
“Right.”
“But the heels in most boat shoes are made of rubber, and the foreign material in Rabb’s skull was leather.”
“True,” Jake said. “But every now and then I’ve seen heels that are at least part leather or have a leather trim.”
“I think you’re more likely to see that in custom-made shoes.”
Jake nodded. “This crowd could afford that.”
“You sent the cops for the guy who lost the shoe?” Joanna asked.
“No,” Jake said. “They went for the guy who found the shoe.”
Jake explained how one of the female guests remembered that some man had misplaced a shoe. A security guard on the vessel had found it.
“Do you want to guess who the guard was?”
Joanna shrugged.
“Mr. Clean,” Jake went on. “The bald guy dressed in white who was guarding the gangplank on our first visit here.”
Joanna thought back. “And he told us he didn’t set foot on the ship the night Rabb was murdered.”
“We’re going to ask him about that, too.”
There was a sudden burst of laughter from the stateroom below and then a few chuckles followed by loud conversation.
“Apparently they’re not in mourning anymore,” Joanna observed.
“Life goes on,” Jake said dryly.
“With this bunch you wonder if it ever stopped.” Joanna lifted her head up to the sun and felt its warm rays on her face. In the distance she heard a boat’s horn. “Jake, I hope you didn’t bring me down here just to talk about a lost shoe and the security guard who found it.”
“You’re busy, huh?”
Joanna sighed wearily. “You’ve got no idea how busy. I started today looking at dead fetuses and trying to determine why somebody would eviscerate them. By noon I gave up on that one and switched over to the enzyme preparation to see if I could uncover how and why it was inducing cancer in patients. I was in the process of drawing another big blank when I received your phone message. So if there’s nothing more for me here, I’d like to get back to my lab where I can continue to come up with big zeroes.”
“There’s more,” Jake said.
“Like what?”
“Like an invitation list.” Jake reached into his coat pocket and took out a long sheet of paper. “Pay particular attention to the last two names on the list.”
Joanna quickly scanned the list of twenty. Her eyes widened as she came to the final two guests.
Wallace Hoddings, M.D., Institute of Biogenetics, Memorial Medical Center
Eric Brennerman, M.D., CEO, Bio-Med Corporation
“Jesus,” Joanna breathed softly.
“I figure these two will know all about Edmond Rabb and the genetics award he gave to Alex Mirren.”
“That’s for certain,” Joanna said, handing back the list. “And for them to be invited to the party, they must have been pretty chummy with the Rabbs.”
“It gets more and more interesting, doesn’t it?”
Jake signaled over to the policeman standing near the passageway to the stateroom; then he came back to Joanna. “Remember, it’s the genetics business that’s important here. It’s the link between Rabb and Mirren. Don’t give these two guys coming up any wiggle room with their answers. Nail them hard if you have to.”
A moment later Brennerman and Hoddings came up on deck. They waved to Joanna and walked over. Their expressions were relaxed and unconcerned.
Joanna extended her hand to them. Hoddings took it, shaking it firmly. Then Brennerman did the same. Both men’s hands felt cool. “I hope we’re not inconveniencing you,” she said.
“Not at all,” Hoddings said promptly. “This is such an awful business. A fine man like Edmond Rabb getting murdered on his own yacht.” Hoddings paused, raising an eyebrow at Joanna. “It is murder, isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s murder,” Joanna assured him.
Hoddings kept his eyes on Joanna, waiting, as if he expected her to give him all the clinical findings. Several awkward seconds passed. “I take it that the autopsy results were absolutely conclusive,” he prompted.
“Quite,” Joanna said tonelessly, letting both men know that this was not going to be some friendly academic discussion between colleagues. “The night of the party, when was the last time you saw Edmond Rabb alive?”
Hoddings’s face tightened around the jawline. “As I told the detective, we were at the bar having a drink.”
Joanna looked over at Brennerman. “And you?”
“The same,” Brennerman replied. “I believe we were discussing some recent advance in gene splicing. Mr. Rabb was surprisingly well informed in genetics for someone having no training in the field.”
“Was there any particular reason for his interest in genetics?” Joanna asked.
“He had twenty-five million reasons,” Brennerman said, and pointed at the flag blowing in the breeze above the wheelhouse. It had the Bio-Med logo emblazoned on it. “Edmond Rabb provided the venture capital to establish Bio-Med. He owned the vast majority of the stock.”
“I see,” Joanna said, trying to keep her expression neutral. The amount of money involved in this murder was almost too much to count. Bio-Med was thought to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and Rabb owned most of that. Joanna nodded to herself, remembering that big money always attracted big crime. “Who else has substantial holdings in Bio-Med?”
Brennerman hesitated, looking over at Hoddings. If the two men exchanged a silent message, Joanna didn’t see it.
“Well?” Joanna insisted.
“Is that also part of this investigation?” Brennerman asked back.
“It sure as hell is,” Jake growled. “Anything with Edmond Rabb’s name on it is a part of this investigation.”
“I guess it is,” Brennerman had to admit. “Mr. Rabb owned seventy-five percent of the shares, and I owned twenty percent. The remaining five percent was divided up among several others.”
Jake’s ears pricked. “Tell me about the others.”
Brennerman swallowed noticeably. “The Jeanette Hoddings Family Trust owns four percent and Mervin Tuch owns one percent.”
Joanna stared at Wallace Hoddings with contempt, making the man blush and turn away. So the high and mighty had been bought out, too, Joanna was thinking. Hoddings had placed the stock in his wife’s trust, hoping to hide it away from the public eye. That way he could have ownership in an outside medical enterprise and still hold on to his tenured professorship at Memorial.
“My—my wife’s family decided to invest,” Hoddings said apologetically.
“A wise investment,” Joanna said with a hint of sarcasm, all respect for the man gone. “What happens to the shares of an owner who dies?”
“That’s somewhat complicated,” Hoddings replied.
“Well, uncomplicate it for us,” Jake said.
“Th-there are buy-out clauses which I don’t fully understand,” Hoddings stammered, and looked over to Brennerman for help.
“They really are complicated,” Brennerman told them. “The stock passes to the heirs of the deceased, but the other shareholders have the option of buying the stock at fair market value. But no such purchases could occur without Edmond Rabb’s approval. And it would be Edmond Rabb who determined what the fair market value was.”
“So Edmond Rabb controlled everything?” Jake concluded.
“With an iron fist,” Brennerman added.
“But now it’s Lucy Rabb who has all the control,” Jake said, thinking aloud.
“Only if we decide not to buy her out.”
Jake looked at Brennerman quizzically. “But that has to be okayed by Lucy Rabb, right?”
Brennerman shook his head. “She inherits the stock, but not her husband’s veto power on stock purchases. That’s one of the complexities Wallace was just alluding to.”
A tugboat was coming into the harbor, its diesel engine chugging loudly.
Jake lit a cigarette, digesting the new information as the tugboat passed by. Everybody had their hands in this pot. There was a ton of money here, and a lot of hands were grabbing for it. Edmond Rabb had the biggest chunk, and that was now Lucy’s. Then there were Hoddings and Brennerman, two fine and distinguished physicians who were making millions on the side from their science. And there was Mervin Tuch, who got his one percent while screwing Edmond Rabb’s wife.
Jake puffed on his cigarette, while waiting for the noise of the tugboat to fade. Who benefits from Rabb’s death? he asked himself. Cui bono? Lucy Rabb for sure and probably the lawyer she’s screwing. And maybe the two doctors standing in front of him, too. Because with Rabb dead, they would control Bio-Med. Although Lucy Rabb owned most of the stock, she was too much of a twit to become involved with the scientific business.
Jake flipped his cigarette into the water and turned to Brennerman. “Was Rabb a good guy to work with?”
“Really good,” Brennerman said at once.
“Did he ever get in the way?”
“How do you mean?”
Brennerman shook his head. “Never. You have to understand something, Lieutenant. Edmond Rabb was first and foremost a venture capitalist. His only concern was making money, and he had the perfect formula to do it. He would pick the right people, set them up in the right environment, and turn them loose. His interest in genetics was money, not science.”
“But he must have had some interest in science,” Jake countered. “After all, he did set up a genetics award at Memorial.”
Brennerman smiled. “That was window dressing. Like most wealthy people, Edmond Rabb wanted to show the world that underneath all those millions was a pretty decent guy.”
“Was there?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Lucy Rabb came up on deck and walked quickly over to the group. She was wearing a yellow sundress, low cut to expose as much cleavage as possible. “Lieutenant, I hope you’re not going to be a lot longer. It’s becoming very stuffy in the stateroom.”
“We’re almost done,” Jake said, straining to keep his eyes off her breasts.
“The sooner the better.”
“Right,” Jake said, thinking that Edmond Rabb was already a distant memory to his widow.
Lucy turned to Eric Brennerman. “My lawyer and I would like to meet with you as soon as possible.”
Brennerman bowed his head slightly. “At your convenience, Mrs. Rabb.”
“Yes,” Lucy Rabb said condescendingly. “At my convenience.”
Jesus, Jake groaned to himself, wondering if Brennerman had any idea how much bullshit he was going to have to put up with.
The group looked over to the gangplank. The bald security guard accompanied by two policemen was stepping onto the deck. Jake waved them over.
The security guard glanced at Jake and swallowed hard. He gazed down at the deck submissively.
“You lied to us,” Jake said hoarsely.
The guard’s jaw dropped. “About what?”
“About not coming aboard the ship the night of the party.”
The guard thought back, concentrating. “I stayed at my post,” he said, raising his right hand. “I swear to God I stayed on the dock.”
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