High Profile js-6
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Jesse sipped some scotch.
“And she said, ‘Why is this bottle of scotch in the glove compartment?’ . . . and I looked at it and said, ‘What bottle of scotch?’ ”
“You were caught in something you were ashamed of and you didn’t know what to do,” Sunny said.
“It happens,” Jesse said. “You get caught and you’re humiliated. It’s too horrible, and you say anything. You deny the fact before you.”
“You think she made this up?” Sunny said.
“I don’t know.”
“Why would she make it up?” Sunny said.
“I don’t know.”
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Jesse’s room was dark. The small light that had come from the air shaft had disappeared with the day. He put his head back against the cheap fabric covering of his chair.
“I’m going to find out,” Sunny said.
Jesse didn’t speak.
“Focus on the murders,” Sunny said. “I’ll do this.”
Jesse finished his glass. He looked at the bottle. Plenty left.
“There’s a key to her apartment in the drawer of my desk in the police station. It’s labeled.”
“Will you clear me with Molly?” Sunny said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll go get the key,” she said.
They were both quiet.
“We had a good time in Los Angeles,” Jesse said after a time.
“Yes. Things change,” Sunny said.
“Sometimes.”
They were quiet again.
“I think it’s time for us to hang up,” Sunny said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Good,” Jesse said.
They hung up. Jesse sat motionless for a time, holding the empty glass.
“We’ll always have Beverly Hills,” he said out loud in the silent room.
After a time, Jesse turned on the light next to the bed. Then he stood and made himself another drink. He took it 1 8 3
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to the window and looked at the air shaft. Then he turned and walked to the dresser and looked at himself in the mirror. The reflection was shadowed by the single light.
“A second-rate hotel with a window on an air shaft,” he said, staring into the mirror. “And a bottle of scotch.”
He raised his glass to his reflection.
“Perfect,” he said, and drank some scotch.
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Jesse had lunch with Stephanie Weeks in the hotel coffee shop. The room was noisy with families. Scattered among them were a few businessmen, sitting alone, hunched over their meals. Stephanie ordered a Grey Goose martini. Jesse had coffee.
“You don’t drink?” she said.
“Not at lunch,” Jesse said.
“You’re actually staying here?” Stephanie said.
“Yep.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who stayed here.”
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“The poor sometimes have to travel,” Jesse said.
“Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I must have sounded so snooty.”
“A little snooty,” Jesse said. “We have a bit of new informa tion about the murders and we’re reinterviewing everyone.”
“What is your new information?” Stephanie said.
“We were wrong on the time of death. When is the last time you saw Mr. Weeks?”
“Oh God, I don’t know. A year? I mean, we were divorced a long time ago. We aren’t enemies, but we’re not pals. . . .”
Stephanie smiled faintly.
The waitress came with salads. Stephanie ordered a second martini.
“Goes good with salad,” Jesse said.
“Goes good with anything,” Stephanie said.
“Why the smile?” Jesse said. “When you said you weren’t pals?”
“Except once in a while,” Stephanie said. “We’re pals.”
“How so?”
Stephanie smiled again.
“Old times’ sake?” she said.
“What did you do?” Jesse said. “For old times’ sake.”
“Well,” Stephanie said. “Aren’t you nosy.”
“I’m the police,” Jesse said. “I’m supposed to be nosy.”
Stephanie colored a little. The waitress returned with her martini. She sipped it and took out an olive and ate that.
“Sometimes I think it’s all about the olives,” Stephanie said.
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“So what did you do, for old times’ sake?” Jesse said.
“Walton was in many ways a sexual athlete,” Stephanie said. “He never tired. He never ejaculated. He could do sex, it seems, forever.”
“Not always a bad thing,” Jesse said.
“Twice a year, it was good,” Stephanie said. “Not on a daily basis.”
“Did his failure to ejaculate bother him?” Jesse said.
“He never said.”
“Even when you were married?”
“Children were an issue early on, but then . . .” She spread her hands and shook her head.
“His current wife know about this?”
“About me?” Stephanie said. “I don’t know. I was the least of her problems anyway.”
“He was a philanderer,” Jesse said.
“Relentless,” Stephanie said. “But, hell, so was she.”
“Lorrie?” Jesse said.
“Sure.”
“Revenge?” Jesse said.
“Maybe, but I think she would have fooled around even if Walton were Goody Two-shoes.”
“She promiscuous or did she have a favorite?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know. I didn’t follow it all that closely. Tom Nolan said she was pretty hot and heavy with Alan Hendricks.”
“The researcher.”
“You could call him that,” Stephanie said.
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“What else could you call him?”
“Power behind the throne.”
“Tell me about that,” Jesse said.
“More and more, Alan did not only the research but the writing. More and more he decided what the subject matter would be. More and more he was doing the interviews, and writing the stuff, and Walton would say it.”
“How do you know,” Jesse said.
“Tom Nolan.”
“You’re friendly with him.”
Stephanie smiled again.
“Yes, I am,” she said.
“How’s Tom’s staying power?”
Stephanie smiled widely.
“Sufficient,” she said.
Jesse smiled with her.
“How come you didn’t tell me all this stuff when we talked before?” he said.
“In front of all those people?”
He nodded.
“What else is there?” I said.
Stephanie drank the rest of her martini. She hadn’t yet eaten any of her salad.
“He left me ten thousand dollars in his will,” she said.
“Old times’ sake,” Jesse said.
“He left ten thousand dollars to Ellen, too.”
“And the rest?” Jesse said.
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Stephanie was looking for the waitress. When she saw her she gestured with her empty glass.
“Lorrie,” she said.
“How much?”
“Thirty million, give or take. Plus the whole Walton Weeks enterprise.”
“Is that worth anything without Walton?”
“There’s always Alan.”
“TV, radio, the whole thing?” Jesse said.
Stephanie ate a bite of her salad. The martini came. She turned her attention back to it.
“I don’t know. You’d need to ask Tom about that.”
“Nolan, the manager,” Jesse said.
&n
bsp; “Yes, and Sam.”
“Gates? The lawyer?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Nothing in the will about Carey Longley,” Jesse said.
“No.”
If the martinis were affecting Stephanie, she showed no sign of it. Except that she had slowed down on the third one, interspersing a sip with the ingestion of salad. The hotel coffee shop was not a place of lingering luncheons, and most of the tables had emptied.
“Do you know Conrad Lutz?” Jesse said.
“I’ve heard the name. He was Walton’s bodyguard, wasn’t he?”
“He wasn’t with Walton when you were?” Jesse said. 1 8 9
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“No.”
“Do you know any reason,” Jesse said, “why Walton would need a bodyguard?”
“Well, he annoyed some important people, certainly. But, no, not really. When I was with him he never seemed to need one.”
“Who would,” Jesse said.
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Ithought I’d ask Sam to sit in with us,” Tom Nolan said.
“If you think you need a lawyer,” Jesse said.
“I’m an entertainment lawyer,” Sam Gates said. “If we were concerned about criminal matters, I wouldn’t be the one.”
“It’s just that I know Walton’s business from one side,”
Nolan said. “And Sam from the other.”
“Sure,” Jesse said. “What’s the future for Walton’s business now?”
“We plan to carry forward with Alan,” Nolan said.
“Hendricks?” Jesse said.
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“Yes. The enterprise will still be called Walton Weeks, but now it will be Walton Weeks, with Alan Hendricks.”
“The market will bear that?” Jesse said.
“Yes. Alan has sat in for Walton in the past. People like him. We’ll market it as the legacy renewed.”
“So the beat goes on,” Jesse said.
“Of course there’s only one Walton Weeks,” Nolan said.
“But yes, the enterprise will continue.”
“And this was predictable?”
Nolan looked at Gates.
“Predictable?” Gates said.
“If I told you last winter that Weeks would die, would you have known that the, ah, enterprise would survive?”
“Well, of course, no one was thinking about that last winter,” Gates said. “Walton was not an old man. He was in good health.”
“But if you had thought about it?” Jesse said.
“I assume we would have concluded that the franchise was still viable,” Gates said.
“That would, of course, have been up to Mrs. Weeks,”
Jesse said.
“Of course,” Gates answered. “She being the sole heir.”
“And she’s in Hendricks’s corner,” I said.
“She thinks Alan would be a suitable replacement,” Gates said.
“Would it have been apparent that she thought so six months ago?” Jesse said.
“What are you getting at?” Nolan said.
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Jesse smiled and shrugged.
“I’m just floundering,” Jesse said. “You know, small-town cop in over my head.”
“I’m sure you’re doing your best,” Gates said.
Jesse looked grateful.
“So did Lorrie and Alan get along okay?”
“Yes,” Nolan said. “Of course.”
“How well?” Jesse said.
Nolan looked away.
Gates said, “Are you implying something?”
“To imply something,” Jesse said, “you have to know something. I’m just trying to learn.”
“I doubt that either Tom or I could speak to their private lives,” Gates said.
“And the question of how well did they get along,” Jesse said, “is about their private lives?”
“I didn’t say that,” Gates said.
“How about Lorrie and Walton?” Jesse said.
Nolan looked at Gates again. Gates was silent.
Then he said, “You’re a pretty good small-town cop.”
Jesse smiled.
“Well,” he said. “I am the chief.”
Gates nodded.
“How were Mr. and Mrs. Weeks getting on?” Jesse said.
“May we be off the record here?”
“No,” Jesse said. “I won’t talk about anything to the press. But if I have evidence, I will share it with the DA.”
“But no press.”
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“Not from me,” Jesse said.
Gates nodded again. Jesse waited.
“Walton asked me to refer him to a divorce lawyer,” Gates said.
“He did?” Nolan said.
No one paid him any attention.
“When?” Jesse said.
“Three months ago.”
“And did you?”
“Yes,” Gates said.
“Who?”
“I believe that would be covered by privilege,” Gates said.
“No doubt,” Jesse said. “Of course, the client is murdered and I’m trying to find who did it.”
Gates nodded. “That would be a consideration,” he said. Jesse waited.
“Esther Bergman,” Gates said.
“She here in the city?”
“Yes. Hoffman, Dalton, and Berks,” Gates said. “Downtown.”
“Did he consult her?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know.”
“Was Mrs. Weeks aware?”
“I don’t know.”
The three men were quiet for a time in Nolan’s penthouse office.
“What effect would a divorce have had on the enterprise?”
Jesse said finally.
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Nolan looked at Gates. Gates nodded.
“None, would be my guess,” Nolan said. “Walton was a name brand. He’d been divorced before. I don’t think it would have had any effect.”
“And on the former Mrs. Weeks?” Jesse said.
“Lorrie?” Nolan said. “I suppose that would have depended on the settlement.”
“But she would be unlikely to remain an heir.”
“Unlikely,” Gates said.
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Jenn’s apartment was clean, but it wasn’t neat. Clothes were scattered about. The dirty dishes and scattered crumbs of a small and hurried breakfast were in the kitchen. There was a chaos of makeup in the bathroom and a wet towel wadded on the floor near the shower. Sunny smiled. Running late this morning.
In the bedroom, on the bureau, was a big picture of Jesse. He was hatless and the sun was full on his face. Sunny looked at the picture for a time. Then she went back to the living room and sat at the little painted writing table with French legs that Jenn appeared to use as a desk. There was a phone
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on the desk and a laptop computer, open, the screen lit. Sunny opened the address book at the bottom of the screen. There were a lot of addresses. Jesse’s e-mail address was there. And so was tpat@cybercop.com, which when she clicked on it proved to be Timothy Patrick Lloyd.
That was easy.
The smell of Jenn’s perfume was strong in the apartment. The place was expensive and, Sunny thought, a little overdecorated.
Well, I’m here. I might as well learn what I can. She opened the drawer in the writing table. It was like most people’s desk drawers. Pens, paper clips, papers that weren’t necessary but couldn’t be thrown away yet, a ruler, a box of notepaper, some scissors, a roll of stamps. In the small second drawer was a checkbook and some bills. Systematically, Sunny went through the apartment. In a drawer in the buffet in the dining area, she found a photo album/
scrapbook. There were pictures of Jenn and Jesse at their wedding. There were several different pictures
of Jenn with several different men, one of whom was a recognizable actor. There was a picture of Jesse, very young, in a baseball uniform. And a clipping from the newspaper about Jesse’s part in the capturing of two serial killers in Paradise several years ago. There were pictures of Jenn on air, and publicity head shots of her. There were also two pictures of Jenn, in a bikini, with Timothy Patrick Lloyd, on a beach somewhere. Sunny took the two pictures and put them in her purse. She went through the rest of the album. There were no family 1 9 7
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pictures in the album. No one who appeared to be a parent. No pictures of Jenn as a child. Sunny put the album back. In Jenn’s bedroom closet was nightwear from Victoria’s Secret. The lingerie in her dresser drawer had been selected for appearance far more than comfort. Sunny smiled to herself. The medicine cabinet had a partly used package of birthcontrol patches. The makeup was expensive and showed thought. The perfume was very good. The hair products were mostly what Sunny used. The hot-roller device was the same one Sunny had.
She’s not that different. Looks good. Wants to look better. Nothing remarkable, except she’s a liar.
Sunny stood for a few moments in the silent living room and looked around. The apartment was new and stylish, and clean and careless and ordinary and still. Sunny spoke aloud, her voice much too real in the empty space.
“God, I’m glad I have Rosie,” her voice said.
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Walton Weeks Enterprises had offices in a building near Penn Station. There were several secretaries in a big front space, Walton’s imposing office, now bearing silent witness in the corner, and a somewhat smaller but still substantial office beside it where Jesse sat with Alan Hendricks.
“You nervous?” Jesse said.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re about to become Walton Weeks,” Jesse said.
“Does that make you nervous.”
“Well,” Hendricks said. “They are certainly big shoes to fill.”
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“Of course, you’ve walked some distance in them already,”
Jesse said.
Hendricks’s face looked stiff to Jesse.