“I missed you too, buddy,” Arlo told Wes, only muffled since he was pulling on his shirt over his head.
“So does this mean we need to Lysol down the countertop?”
And then Paul entered the kitchen, still talking on his cell phone. He had, thankfully, missed most of the teasing and by the time he rang off his call, we were more or less straightened up.
“Last-minute stalling tactics from the other side,” Paul said, referring to the call. “I can’t believe these putzes. First they tell me they have a settlement in mind, and then they call back and say hold up before telling my client. That’s bullshit! Oh, hello Arlo. Are you back?”
Arlo smiled. “Yep. Anyone want bourbon?”
Wesley, who’d been fairly quiet in the presence of the raw evidence that Arlo seemed to be back, just stood there giving me that funny look. Like, oh, we have to talk! But he turned to Paul and asked, “It’s after midnight. Do you mean you’re still negotiating with some corporate attorneys at this hour? Jesus! How much are they going to charge Five Star for this?”
“Beats me. I just wish the assholes wouldn’t start jerking me around. I told them we had a firm deadline—midnight. And it’s forty minutes past and they’re giving me grief.”
I found my bag and pulled out my lipstick just as the doorbell rang.
They all looked at me.
“That’s Honnett.”
Holly looked amazed. She pulled me to the side and held up three fingers, whispering “Three?”
Zelli, Arlo, and now Honnett. Yes, I was having a busy night.
“Why not?” I whispered back, and then turned to the group assembled in my kitchen.
“I think I’m onto something in that Vivian Duncan deal. I have to find out. If I’m right, this should be over soon. I just have got to go.”
Wesley turned and asked, “So what about our meeting?”
“Can you stick around? Holly, you’ll find some homemade ice cream in the freezer. And I just put on a fresh pot of coffee before…”
The doorbell rang again.
“She’s crazy,” Holly said conversationally to the room, dismissing me.
“Nutty as a jar of Skippy,” Arlo agreed.
“Did someone say Maddie made some ice cream?” Paul asked.
“One scoop or two?” I heard Wes ask, ever the pleasant host, as I ran to answer the front door.
It was almost one-thirty in the morning when Honnett turned his old Mustang up the quiet street in Altadena, cutting the engine and gliding to a stop at the curb in front of a small house. The corner streetlight didn’t reach this far down the block. A neighbor had left his back porch light on and a house across the street had a car parked in front of it, full of teenagers. It took off the moment our car slowed down.
“Making out, probably,” I suggested.
From the backseat of the Mustang, Detective John Martinez laughed softly. “It’s sex, drugs, or rock ’n roll.”
Honnett, in the driver’s seat, said, “John’s just reciting the three reasons kids hang out in their cars. Hey, you ready to go?”
“Sure,” I answered.
Honnett looked at me, amused, and he kept his voice low. “Not you, Bean. John and I will go up and check it out. This house belongs to a cousin of Nbutu. She lives here alone. Her kids are grown. If Nbutu is in there and if the place is cool, we’ll bring him out to talk. If you can keep quiet, you can stand over there and listen.” He gestured to the only tree in the small front yard. “If we need any information, we’ll ask. Otherwise, keep yourself contained. Got it?”
“Right.”
I stood by the car as Martinez and Honnett approached the front door. After a few minutes of knocking a light came on over the porch. I saw a woman tightening a blue robe around herself in the doorway and then the formalities of badges being shown amid a low rumble of voices. The next thing I knew, both men had been admitted to the home.
Then all was quiet.
I began to hear a faint sound at a distance and strained to make it out. Then louder, I could feel the pump of the rhythmic bass to some rap song as the sound filled the street, louder and louder. I turned to see the same car we’d seen earlier, roaring up the side street, windows down, music blasting.
The car slowed to a stop. The blare of the radio pierced the quiet night, a rapper screaming about “da bitch wid da attitude,” as the car idled a few feet away. I saw two young girls in the back, with a boy in a tank top, his arm around them both. The driver leaned out his window, pounding the door along with the driving rhythm, and yelled to me.
“Hey, mama. You want to go for a drive with me? We’ll have some fun, you sweet thing.”
“You boys want to spend some time talking to cops tonight?” I jerked my hand toward the house, and smiled pleasantly.
“I told you,” the boy in the back yelped.
“Hey, your loss, chica,” the driver said with a smirk, and then the rap-mobile peeled off down the deserted road.
A few minutes passed and I became accustomed to the sounds of the night. The simple landscaping around the yard next door and the yard next to that became familiar shapes I could now decipher in the dark, cool night. The gentle wind rustled the shrubs, moved through the slender trees, chilled me. My eyes adjusted to the low light, filtering dark gray bushes from darker gray fence. There. What was that? I saw a strange movement near the front door of the small house. There in the thick plants. I stared at the area, watching closely.
Nothing. Then a rustling movement, again, from among the sharp, jutting leaves.
An animal, I thought, worried. A pet, perhaps. Or a rat. I looked to the house, but the door was shut tight. Honnett and Martinez were inside and I and the rats were out.
I stared intently, gray upon gray upon gray, watching that porchside bush rustle again. A cat, I thought. Maybe a…
A hand covered my face. Another arm strangled me. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. I could hardly breathe. I had been grabbed, all at once, from nowhere, grabbed from behind.
My God, I thought. Oh my God! Those kids. Those damn kids had sneaked back and attacked me.
I tried to squirm free, to see who held me so tightly. But the assailant had pinned both of my arms with one of his. His hold was strong, unyielding, fierce as iron. This man was taller, larger than those boys had been. More cunning, silent. I tried to kick, but the tree trunk of a man against whose body I was trapped felt none of it.
In an instant, I was overpowered. Completely helpless. Completely vulnerable. I was caught in the night and unable to move or fight back or yell, not forty feet away from the illusory protection of two cops, now inside.
The hand that held my face was hot, rough-knuckled, enormous. I was sure, now, it must be Nbutu.
“Please,” his voice whispered from behind my ear. “Please, not a word, not a sound.”
I stopped fighting, tried to control my breathing, get my heart to stop racing, my brain to think.
“I mean no harm,” he whispered in my ear.
I squirmed harder then, kicking back with my heel into his shin, almost twisting my head away from his tight grip. It was only due to the fact that he was not intent on smothering me that he almost lost his grasp, but he pulled me back firmly and I could tell I’d never again have that slight chance. Surely, I thought, surely Honnett would be coming out. Now, I thought. Now! Come out of the house!
“You must stay still. I will take you somewhere and leave you there. I do not wish to hurt you,” he said.
Leave me somewhere? I could imagine my dead body, left somewhere, some ravine. Some landfill. Some…
“I don’t want to hold you, you see? I don’t want to hurt you. But I must leave now. I must escape.”
Nbutu pulled me back into the bushes that bordered on the yard.
No, I thought, this was getting worse. Not back into the bushes.
“Don’t be frightened,” he whispered. “I will let you go.”
And then, remarkably, he did just
that.
I spat on the ground as his tight fist released my mouth.
“Don’t scream,” he pleaded with me. I spun around and faced him, shocked to be free. Stunned to have a chance to run.
“I let you go,” he pleaded. “Do not turn me in!”
The large black man stood cowering in the bushes and something stopped me from yelling my lungs off. Something in the way he stood there, trembling, not able to go through with the abduction.
“I must get away,” Nbutu said, staring at me. “I can’t take you, just let me go.”
I trotted several feet away, out of his range and then stopped. “Turn yourself in right now,” I said, “and I won’t say anything about you grabbing me.”
“No.”
“Turn yourself in RIGHT NOW!” I yelled. “I’ll get you a lawyer.”
“I can’t,” he pleaded. “I can’t. I can’t.”
The front door opened and Honnett and Martinez came running.
“That him?” shouted Martinez, gun drawn.
“Back away!” Honnett yelled to me. “Get away!”
Somehow, I couldn’t. I was afraid, suddenly, of the police. What would they do if they suspected I’d been held by this man? If I stepped away, would they shoot him? What was really happening?
Quickly, Honnett was there, spinning Albert Nbutu around, pushing him face first into the tall bushes, handcuffing him behind his back.
“Did he hurt you?” Honnett asked me, his voice husky. I’d never seen him treat anyone as roughly as he handled Nbutu. Was this emotion I was watching? The cool Honnett coming a bit unglued?
“Nothing happened,” I said, meeting Albert’s eyes. “He seems scared.”
“What are you doing out here, Albert?” Martinez asked him, his voice aggressive. “Trying to run?”
“No,” I heard myself saying. “He must have been taking a walk.”
The men looked at Nbutu and then looked at me.
“Are you arresting him?” I asked.
“We’re talking to him. If he cooperates, we may not have to drag him downtown. It’s up to him.”
“But the handcuffs?”
“Albert doesn’t mind the cuffs, do you, Albert?” Martinez was not as tall as Honnett, but he was powerfully built.
Just then two patrol cars turned up the small street, flashing lights but with their sirens cut. The officers walked up and talked to the detectives. Apparently Honnett had a search warrant and the men entered the small house. I could hear the protests from Albert’s cousin as she wailed from inside.
“What we want to know about, Albert,” Martinez said, “is what happened at the wedding at the museum? You dropped out of sight, pal, which is very suspicious. But you…you probably got a reasonable explanation, don’t you? So why don’t you just go ahead and explain.”
Albert Nbutu was frightened. Very frightened. In the dim light given off by the front porch and the open door, he looked to be older than I’d first guessed.
“About what?” he stammered.
“About what? Now you see, Albert. That’s the kind of smart answer that gets us ticked off. You don’t want to tick us off, do you, Albert?” Martinez sounded pissed, all right.
“No. No, sir. I don’t know what you are asking about. At the wedding I made the ice sculptures. For each table. Do you want to…”
“Forget the ice animals shit, all right? We look like fools to you, Albert? We’re interested in the death of a lady named Vivian Duncan. You do remember that she was murdered that night, right?”
“Yes,” he said, his head bent.
“Okay. Are we through fucking around? What we want to know is did you see something, Albert? Or did you, maybe, get angry with the lady and do the job yourself?”
“Me? No. No. I had nothing to do with it. I am innocent. You…” The African began to stutter in fear. I was not sure I could watch it anymore. He was being questioned in the middle of the night, out on the street, with his hands cuffed behind his back.
“Honnett!” I yelled his name sharply.
Chuck Honnett looked up, startled, meeting my eyes and holding them for a beat. And then he put his hand on Nbutu’s shaking arm and tried to calm him down. “Look, let’s just go sit you down in our car. How about that? I can’t take the cuffs off, but maybe you’ll be more comfortable. Okay? Easy there, Albert.”
When Albert had been put in the back seat, Honnett began to talk. “Here’s what we know. You are in this country, Mr. Nbutu, without papers. You are an illegal alien, and we will be sending you over to our friends at INS to deal with. But, before we do that, we have got to get to the bottom of this Duncan murder. You know who did it, or you wouldn’t have run. It’s best to be truthful.”
Albert Nbutu sat there, looking out at us, the two detectives next to the car and me, standing in the rear.
“And you?” he said to me, meeting my eyes. “I saw you at the party. Are you INS? That is what I thought. So I gave you a card where they would not tell you how to reach me. I am sorry, but…” He looked down, disheartened. Caught. “Are you also a police woman?”
“No,” Honnett answered for me. “Now what do you know, Albert?”
“At the wedding? I was working outside. What could I see?”
“And you’re saying the only reason you’ve been in hiding out here is because you were afraid of INS? Come on!” Martinez had that macho sarcasm that made me want to punch him.
“I came to this country two years ago,” Albert said, quietly. “How do you think I could stay here so long and not get into trouble? It is because I am so careful, you see.”
“You come from Zimbabwe?” I asked.
Albert nodded.
Honnett shot me a look to cool it and continued his questions. He and Martinez kept asking Nbutu to talk about the night of Vivian’s murder. They asked him where he was standing and what he could see from there. Over and over they asked him to account for each minute of the evening. But all Albert would say is he knew nothing.
After thirty minutes of getting nowhere, Martinez left us and joined the officers conducting the search of the house.
“How old are you?” Honnett asked. The change in subject was a surprise. Albert carefully responded.
“I am forty-nine years old. I was born in a tiny village in Rhodesia, as it was called then. My family was poor. My father worked to build the national mine, so this brought in some money.”
“Sandawana,” I said.
Honnett looked at me. “Yeah, I noticed that tattoo. So that’s the mine where you worked?”
Nbutu nodded. “When I was a child, yes. We would all go down to the mines and search for the emeralds. It was a game. And when I grew older I worked there, too.”
“And you got that tattoo in prison?” I asked. Honnett looked at me.
“Yes.” Albert hung his head.
“In prison? What were you in for? Assault?”
Honnett was such a cop.
“No, no,” Albert said, his voice strained. “It was a mistake. I was arrested by our government.”
Honnett was going to make another scathing remark, I was sure of it, so I put my hand on his sleeve to stop him.
“Is that why you are so frightened now? Because of what happened to you in Zimbabwe?”
He looked at me. “It was a terrible time, miss. Many were imprisoned. So many people, so many men just…disappeared. There was very bad corruption. We were free of the British Commonwealth, but our leaders fought. And then I was arrested. They accused me of stealing emeralds but that is a lie. They made this story up! There was never any proof. There was no trial. There was no witness. It was just done.”
“And you stayed in how long?” Honnett asked, more subdued.
“Ten years. From 1976 to 1985.”
“And then what?”
“The government changed again. And it became a little more stable. My relatives saved their money, and…”
“They bought your way out of prison?” I asked.
>
“Yes. It was very difficult. If the wrong man was in charge, he could have taken their money and had them arrested as well. But this time they let me out.”
“And why did you come here?” Honnett asked, seemingly resigned to talking about the past.
“The United States is a great land,” Nbutu said.
“Right,” Honnett said. “But why here? Why Southern California?”
“I have family here,” Nbutu said.
“Your cousin,” Honnett said, and then he looked at me. “There’s nothing else he’s going to tell us here. We’ll have to take him downtown anyway, so I’m going to…”
“Can I ask you a few more questions, Mr. Nbutu?” I said, turning to the man in the car.
I could imagine what had pushed him near the edge. As a young man, Albert Nbutu had been savagely arrested, illegally thrown into some primitive African jail to rot for a decade, and then he’d had to watch his family barter away their small holdings and risk their own safety just to bribe his way out. I could understand why he’d been driven almost crazy to escape from more police.
“What things do you want to ask?” Nbutu seemed unsure.
“Back in the old days, who sent the militia to arrest you? Was it a white man, perhaps?”
Nbutu looked at me, shocked.
“Was it Jack Gantree?”
Now Honnett looked at me, puzzled. “Are you saying that Gantree knew this guy back in Africa?”
“Gantree was there, in Zimbabwe. His wife’s sister lived there, with her rich husband. Gantree stayed there all the time.”
“When he was making his television series?” Honnett asked, catching on.
“Yes. But he also had a lucrative investment scheme on the side. Big Jack financed an emerald-smuggling operation.”
“You know this for a fact?”
I nodded.
Honnett turned to look at Albert. “Did you know Jack Gantree, like she says?”
“Everyone in Rhodesia knew Mr. Gantree. He made the television films.”
“Is that why you came to Los Angeles? To get back at Gantree for something that happened to you twenty years ago in your home country?”
“No! I swear to you. I did nothing wrong. I did not hurt anyone. Please, I am not lying. I…”
Killer Wedding Page 19