EMBRYO 5: SILVER GIRL (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller)

by J. A. Schneider

  It was late. They had to go.

  “Get some sleep,” Alex told them. Kerri gave a glum wave, and asked them to hug Jesse for her.

  They started out the front, busy with uniformed officers and their squawking radios. They turned, carefully skirting the crime scene, and went down the back steps.

  Past Edna’s apartment, around the house and up the brick walk. There was no moon. They could barely make out the house’s wall, piled with sprawling garbage bags. The smell was ripe so they walked off the path, through thick ivy.

  Almost a week now, the garbage strike. The whole city was under Hefty bags.

  “Wait a sec.”

  David stopped, got out his flashlight, and beamed it over the bags. Some of them tumbled in a mess. “They don’t look right.”

  Jill speed-dialed Kerri inside. “Check out the garbage bags on the west side of the building.”

  She started to head that way but David caught her. “It’s almost one,” he whispered. “Our alarm goes off at six.”

  Cops pulling on gloves were coming toward them from the front of the building. “We got it,” one called. “Stand clear.” They started to pull at the bags.

  Jill and David went to the corner and hailed a cab.

  And in the house, in a lower bedroom at the rear, a fluffy pink-haired head tossed on her pillows. “…been like Grand Central Station,” fretted the frail voice. No answer from the small dog curled inches away. Tenderly, Edna Polsen’s bony hand adjusted Misty’s covers. “That first time just wore you out, didn’t it? Poor baby, all that barking and barking.”

  Misty wheezed and snored, exhausted and no wonder.

  Such noise and comings and goings tonight! Worse than usual!

  Edna tossed, finally got comfortable, and closed her eyes. Tomorrow, gently of course, she’d remind Jody again to keep it down up there…

  9

  STREETBEAT! read the tall cutout’s caption. Call THEM to the rescue!

  “Right,” groaned the young woman standing by Ted Connor and Ray Zienuc. “More like, hide your children.”

  Her name was Robin Abel. She had short dark hair, was quite attractive, and looked wrung out. Not surprising, since she was Deborah Wylie’s assistant who’d joined her boss’s frantic rush to the hospital and just gotten back. She’d admitted Connor and Zienuc to the swank townhouse sputtering that someone had said the police were here, and looked sorrowfully around the debris of an elegant, abandoned party.

  The detectives waited in the center hall, staring at STREETBEAT’S three-glamorous-cops cutout of blond Jody Merrill and her two co-stars: the center one handsome Eric Rennie with his gun drawn, feet splayed heroically as Jody hung onto him - and on his other side red-haired Celie Jarrett, Jody’s fellow rookie. Both young women clung to him like comic-scared centerfolds.

  “Someone use this for target practice?” Zienuc asked dryly.

  The cutout was smeared, and the green oriental rug at their feet sprouted cheese balls, assorted olives and squished stuffed mushrooms.

  “Oh,” Robin Abel said wearily. “Before we…heard, some actors and crew members got drunk and furious at Jody for quitting” – she drew breath - “and threw things. I tried to tell them, Don’t, that’s a Tabriz rug-”

  “Headed to the repo man like the rest of this palazzo,” said another woman, early forties and a little plump, coming from the winding-down kitchen at the end of the hall. She indicated a covered bowl she carried. “Leftovers,” she gloomily told Robin. “Caviar for Queens.”

  “I’m so sorry about tonight,” Robin said, introducing her as Lori Danek to the detectives.

  “No worries, ha. There must be lots of writing jobs just begging in this economy.” Lori stopped to look at the cutout. Then, a cop show writer, she seemed to make the two men as police.

  “I’m truly sorry about Jody,” she told them. “But hell” – she turned to Robin – “I thought she was clean and sober.”

  “She was,” Robin said defensively. “Well okay, the booze tonight-”

  Her phone buzzed. She excused herself and stepped away. At the foot of some winding stairs began a tense conversation, arguing softly.

  Connor and Zienuc showed Lori Danek their badges. “We’re here to see Bruno Shepard,” Connor said.

  “Herr producer’s hiding.” She fussed foil tighter over her caviar. Her hand shook and she seemed grateful to talk. “This horrible business. Bruno’s two previous shows and a pilot bombed, and the star of his first hit series in years ran out tonight shrieking that she was quitting. Now she’s dead? He may shoot himself.”

  From the food-laden dining room on their left, a man staggered out, clutching a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff. “Gonna sleep on the sofa,” he slurred, slip-sliding over the squishy ruined rug toward the furniture-crammed parlor on their right.

  “Yeah, sleep on the sofa,” Lori said. “Gary’s in there, too, out cold. Hey chill, she called me a hack too.”

  Robin Abel finished her call, turned and gestured to the two cops. “You can come up now.”

  Lori whined to her, “Everyone’s saying Rennie got Jody back on coke. Or maybe she got him back on it. Celie, too. Celie didn’t even show up tonight. How nice.”

  She looked back to Connor and Zienuc, cocked her head to the cutout. “That’s Celie Jarrett. The redhead.”

  “Maybe she’s feeling sick,” Robin said lamely, stepping back to them.

  “She would have called! Has she even called about Jody?”

  “Uh, no.” The detectives saw Robin swallow. “She’s probably sleeping it off at her boyfriend’s. It’s happened before.”

  “She would have called drunk! She likes to call drunk! What’s new about her being shitfaced?”

  A brief, heated exchange as Connor and Zienuc traded looks, and a woman in a black and white uniform carried a silver tray of smoked salmon out to the kitchen. A man following her carried out two chafing dishes.

  Robin was back at the foot of the winding stairway, waiting tensely. “You can come up now, gentlemen.”

  They ignored her. “Jody and Celie Jarrett were good friends?” Ted Connor asked Lori.

  “Oh yeah.” She was getting glares from Robin but so what, she was outta here. “Celie was Jody’s only show biz friend. They both hated being turned into TV bimbos and wanted to do serious acting. Celie was also Jody’s soul mate to cry over Eric, who’s a total turd.”

  “Was he at the party?” Zienuc asked, noting Robin Abel back on her phone.

  “Yes,” Lori said. “He had his charm on full blast - until Jody picked a fight with him. Told him he was a lousy actor like the lousy writers, and he could never compare to Reid. That’s Reid Wylie, her other entertainment lawyer who’s gorgeous and she was all over him in front of everyone, including his wife and” - Lori rolled her eyes to Robin Abel – “some other people who have the hots for him, if you catch my drift. I think some people minded it worse than Reid’s wife, who’s probably used to it. Anyway, Eric stormed out. People were upset and started leaving. Nice party.”

  Robin Abel tensely hung up from her call.

  “Gentlemen? Please come now or you’ll need a court order. Mr. Shepard isn’t feeling well.”

  10

  Connor scribbled a quick note about Robin, then they followed her up the winding stairs to the top landing. Bruno Shepard’s production company, the whole floor. Lamps were on in the audition room, the waiting room, and his assistant’s office. The suite looked busy, ready for contracts battle. Must have been prepped before they heard from the hospital.

  A door in the hall was open and they peered in. The bathroom, a decorator’s acid trip in marble with a home gym, gilt sink and faucets, silk ferns, and fake busts on columns. Hail Bruno.

  “Understated,” Connor muttered.

  “Think it eases his stress?” Zienuc smirked.

  Robin waited grimly before a door she’d opened at the end of the hall. Ahead, at a large, littered desk, a man leaned with his hand pressi
ng an ice pack to his brow.

  “The police, Bruno,” Robin said.

  “Mmff,” he said, not looking up. A bottle of Martell and a drained brandy glass sat by his elbow.

  They entered, glancing around at a cashmere jacket and silk tie flung onto a leather sofa. Shepard had rolled his sleeves way up – presto! – changing personas from artiste/Cashmere Guy to working man complete with muscled arms and a tattoo. What a laugh. He wore his thinning hair longish and dyed blond, which almost made him look younger than fifty. Bruno the construction worker.

  “Whaddya want?” he said, raising his watery eyes to them. Heavy gut, florid face - the look that Jill and David would call Time Bomb High Blood Pressure.

  “All I know is, I’m dead,” he snapped. “Interview over?”

  “No,” Connor said, taking a seat with Zienuc. “Tell us about Jody and what happened tonight. We’ll also need a complete guest list.”

  The watery gaze dragged to Robin standing uncertainly in the door. “Guest list,” he said gruffly.

  She left, closing the door.

  Then Bruno looked out at Connor from under his ice pack. “A tragedy happened tonight, that’s what. My star quit the show and I can’t drag her back ‘cause she’s dead. Her co-star Celie didn’t even show up. Jody’s lawyers called from the hospital, said she died from penicillin.”

  “Anaphylactic shock from penicillin,” Connor corrected.

  “Whatever.” Shepard plopped his melting ice pack on his desk. It oozed water on papers he stabbed with a pen he’d picked up. “Copy of Jody’s contract,” he said incongruously. He was drunk. “When we heard, her lawyer Deborah was sitting arguing with me right there” – his pen jabbed at Zienuc – “insisting on the damned original copy, so Reid hadda run down to their office for it.”

  He held up a dripping page and shook it. “See this paragraph twenty-three? The liquidated damages clause says if Jody breaches she owes me her income from her next two lifetimes. Guess she’s paid up, huh? I’m screwed!”

  The cops flicked glances at each other: Keep him focused.

  The door opened and Robin was back, handing a printout to Connor. She sank down on the leather sofa, pulling off the jacket of her dark pantsuit, fussing with her scoop neck dark sweater underneath. “The guest list has all phone numbers and addresses,” she told Zienuc, who was good-looking and younger than Connor. She smiled uneasily at him, leaning and fussing with the zipper of her black boots.

  Both detectives thanked her as Bruno sloshed more brandy into his glass. Connor skimmed the guest list. Zienuc watched the brandy go down.

  “How did Jody get home?” he asked.

  Bruno scowled. Started yammering how should he know, he was out back in the garden. His wife Nell – “she’s in bed” - insisted on designer daffodils some bossy mincing flower designer and his crew just planted that afternoon, and people were stepping on ‘em, fer Chrissakes!

  He stopped for another slug and Robin leaned forward.

  “In a town car, Eastside Limos,” she told Zienuc. Her legs were crossed and she clutched a knee, white-knuckled. “Reid called it but Jody wouldn’t get in. Kept pleading with him, had her arms around his neck. He practically had to force her in.”

  “You saw this?”

  A nod. “I was standing there, out in the street with Deborah. She and Reid were pretty upset.”

  “Do you know where Reid went after that?”

  “Deborah asked him to go to their midtown office for Jody’s contract, the original.” Robin delicately licked her lips. Pink lipstick freshly applied. “That’s where he was when he heard, and called Deborah. They met at the hospital. I ran there too with Deb, then I had to rush back.”

  Zienuc found a hole and bored in. “Reid called from his office when he heard?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know? Did he call on his cell phone?”

  Robin reddened. She really was quite attractive. “Uh, I guess so. Deborah was upset. She didn’t say where he was. He must have been at their office.”

  “But you don’t know if he used his cell or a land phone?”

  “No.”

  “And if he used his cell phone, you can’t really know where he was.”

  A defensive shrug. “I guess not. But Deborah would know. You can ask her.”

  They could also check Reid Wylie’s phone records. If he used his cell, he’d have no alibi for his whereabouts after he put Jody in the car.

  Connor’s eyes left the guest list and studied Robin. She didn’t seem to like his gaze, and suddenly realized that Zienuc was questioning her. Her hands gripped her knees more tightly.

  Bruno had poured more brandy. Was tapping his fingers, glaring at nothing.

  “At the hospital,” Connor asked Robin carefully. “Did Reid have Jody’s new contract with him?”

  The nail polish matched the lipstick, and Robin’s hands wrung each other. “I don’t know. I only saw them for a few minutes. Who noticed anything? Everyone was hysterical.”

  Then she frowned. “Wait. Why would Reid have the contract with him if he’d heard Jody had died?” Her eyes flashed at the detectives. They’d both been testing her reactions. She started to look uncomfortable.

  Zienuc looked down and scribbled.

  Bruno Shepard bunched his fist and glowered at Robin. “I blame Africa,” he said.

  And got odd looks. He was off daffodils, at least.

  “Last summer,” he slurred sarcastically. “Jody works on this oh so sensitive indie film, befriends an African orphan in it and really starts living her part, moves into the village, even. By fall, after her rehab” – he snarled the word – “she hears buzz that she’s so great in it, above doing television, starts getting movie offers… Hell, wouldn’t everyone in TV love to quit the daily grind for occasional little three-month-shoots and live in Pago Pago or Kauai.” He yanked out his phone and hollered down for more ice.

  What an oaf. Connor and Zienuc traded glances: More from Robin. They stood, gave Shepard their cards, and said they’d be back.

  “Robin?” Connor looked at her. “We’d like to ask you some more.”

  She gave a tense shrug, and started down the stairs with them. Connor’s first question to her was: “Did you like Jody?”

  She hesitated, then gave in to a sad nod. “Yes. Deborah did too, despite everything. Deborah’s too forgiving. Frustrated maternal feelings, maybe. Jody was so childlike and vulnerable. Unstable, maybe really crazy, but hard not to care about.”

  They asked her about Jody last January. She told them.

  The brief romance while Reid and Deb were separated. When they reconciled, Jody at first couldn’t handle it. Then was begging forgiveness, reassuring everyone she was back with Eric Rennie. But she’d flip-flop, be unpredictable.

  “She’d still get occasionally drunk and call Reid at the office. He was still in a lot of pain with Deborah. Tried to get her to send Jody packing, but she felt sorry because of Jody’s awful childhood, and wouldn’t. Finally things seemed under control…until tonight.”

  They reached the foyer. Robin looked around like someone coming up from a bomb shelter, seeing a desolate new landscape with everything familiar gone. Without looking at the detectives she said, “Celie tried to warn Jody about her two-men Reid-Eric craziness. It was all so toxic. Celie actually liked Reid. It was Eric she couldn’t stand.”

  “Celie Jarrett,” Connor repeated, to watch her reaction.

  There was none. Robin looked at the laid-waste dining room, then into the parlor with its unhappy drunk writers sleeping it off. She was avoiding their gazes. Zienuc noticed too; raised a brow at Connor.

  “Yes, Celie Jarrett,” Robin finally said. Her gaze barely brushed Connor’s. “She has her own boyfriend troubles, but Eric Rennie’s jealousy was over the top. He scared her. She scolded him once, and he chased her out of Jody’s in a fury. She fell three steps down Jody’s fire escape and twisted her ankle.”

  “Chased her down th
e fire escape?” Zienuc frowned. It didn’t make sense.

  “It’s really a fancy, wrought-iron stairway,” Robin said. “Jody’s landlady thought her friends were too rowdy. Asked her to have them all come up that way.”

  Someone shouted, “Oh Jesus, a hand!”

  Other policemen came rushing to help lift bulging Hefty bags. Between two of them a dead girl lay, her face bloodless-gray under their flashlights. There were moans, and stomachs clenched as they beamed their lights over her long, reddish hair, her torso gone to red pulp.

  Yelling into radios, crackling responses. In minutes more blue-and-whites with their lights flashing were pulling up, with uniforms everywhere, electronic voices squawking and floodlights going up.

  Kerri Blasco and Alex Brand knelt inside the yellow crime-taped area, examining the body, the pool of blood soaked into the bricks.

  “The witness caught looking through the glass doors,” Kerri groaned. “I’ve seen Streetbeat. The co-star has red hair.”

  Alex said he felt sick. “Can’t even count the stabs.” The floodlights cast lurid shadows as his gloved hands worked. “God, look how jagged these cuts are. They have to be from that missing dagger.”

  “Definitely,” Kerri groaned again.

  On the first floor a window creaked open, and a sleepy, pinkish head with a mouth like a dot peered out. “Now what is the meaning of this?” piped the frail voice. Feeble yipping sounded behind her. “Oh dear, policemen. Oh no!”

  Alex called up to her but the window slammed shut. He headed back into the house.

  A second CSU vehicle arrived. The morgue van pulled in behind it.

  11

  Heavy. So heavy and sad they felt.

  They stumbled around in their apartment, checked Jesse on their baby apps - “Sleeping like a baby,” David muttered - and finally got to bed.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. They lay on their pillows and Jill cried again, struggling with feelings that stormed at her. Life is too hard. Jody had tried to live and grow, and been struck down. Brutally. Horribly. Not fair. She was such a good soul.