Strange Bedfellows v5

by Paula L. Woods

  “We will,” I said, flipping my notebook closed. “But what I don’t get is . . . why didn’t you tell us this before?”

  Renata Lippincott’s body stiffened and she lifted her head, suddenly above it all. “I would have, but Mr. Merritt advised me to let it go. He said that while the investigator proved Alma was a deceitful little bitch—those weren’t his words exactly—lying to trap a man isn’t exactly a crime. And if I continued to pursue it, it might stir up problems the company or I personally didn’t need.”

  Like alerting her new boyfriend to his wife’s obsession with her ex. “You said you knew Chuck would have divorced Alma if he’d had time. Does that mean you told him about the investigator’s report?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that!” Eyes as wide as her face-lift allowed, Renata Lippincott raised a hand to her chest in a sign of feigned innocence.

  “But someone else did?”

  Her lips twitched. “Mr. Merritt said he would talk to Chuck. I remember he said there were some parts of the story Chuck should hear directly from him.”

  Or maybe Merritt was trying to spare his boss the embarrassment of hearing the news from his ex. “I just bet he did,” I said. But as I watched the fierce gleam in Renata Lippincott’s eyes, I wondered if Merritt’s motive in talking to his boss privately might be for some other reason entirely.

  18

  Smiling Faces

  After getting the documents processed by Latent Prints back at the PAB, we spent the rest of Friday night discussing what we’d learned in our interviews and reviewing reams of paper from our combined searches. By Saturday morning, guided by Perkins and the guys from the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, we’d assembled an ugly picture of embezzlement at CZ Toys—fifteen million over four years that Wunderlich said topped anything the Feds had seen thus far on the West Coast. But to tie it to the shootings, we needed more, so Thor got MIA to pull a few strings with the commanding officer at SID to get one of their graphologists to join us on Saturday afternoon to review some documents.

  “We think we’ve got enough evidence to tie Natalie Johnson, the company’s accounts payable manager, to a scheme involving executives in three of the company’s offices worldwide,” Thor explained to Terrell Vaughan, a wiry black man from SID’s Questioned Documents, who’d been called in to review writing samples from our suspects. “We just need to know if Johnson’s signatures approving the payments are authentic.”

  “You got any other suspects’ handwriting you want me to consider?”

  I showed Vaughan Mario’s handwriting in the greeting card and other items seized from his office and home. “It could have been Zuccari’s son, Mario. He’s the company’s CFO and could have been approving the payments, forging Johnson’s name.”

  “Or Felton Carruthers, the company’s controller,” Perkins said, laying out his handwriting samples next to the documents from Mario’s house. “He countersigned most of the approvals. We need to authenticate his signatures, too.”

  Billie placed another packet on the table. “We also need you to compare Chuck Zuccari’s handwriting in these samples obtained from Mario’s house with a note allegedly sent by Chuck to a kid who worked in Accounts Payable, trying to scare him into abandoning his investigation into the fraud. We know Chuck Zuccari couldn’t have sent it because he was in a coma, but we don’t know if it was sent by Mario, or Johnson, or Carruthers.”

  Arms crossed over his chest, Vaughan leaned over to consider the documents, mouth twisted in concentration, then glanced at his watch. “It’s two now. It’s going to take me a good eight hours to analyze all these documents. Couldn’t this have waited until Monday?”

  “Some of these suspects have the means to flee the country at the drop of a hat,” I replied. “And without an indictment, we can’t just go to a judge and get an order to have their passports lifted. The Feds have got them under surveillance for now, but we need some answers before they get in the wind.”

  “Look,” Wunderlich broke in, “if having these documents examined through the LAPD’s lab is going to be too cumbersome, we can send them to our lab for analysis. The embezzlement piece of this case is in our bailiwick, anyway.”

  Wunderlich was still angling for control of the evidence, and with it the case, but Thor wasn’t going for it. “That’ll take forever,” he argued, “plus if we separate the evidence, it’s going to slow us down in making our case on the murder to the DA.”

  “So far, you don’t have a case, Thorfinsen!” Wunderlich reminded him as he and his colleagues gathered up their things. “All we’ve got so far is the embezzlement, and unless you can come up with something else, we’re going to have to take over.”

  “Give us until the end of the day Monday, Wunderlich, to see what we can pull together.” Thor gave Vaughan a meaningful look. “Everybody here understands the importance of hooking up a suspect on the murder, don’t we?”

  After the others left, Vaughan sighed wearily as he gathered up the documents and signed for them. “I need to look at this stuff in my office,” he muttered, “but I’ve only been authorized enough overtime to work on this until six tonight. What I can’t get to today will have to wait until Monday morning.”

  “You heard what that Fed said, Vaughan. Who do I have to call to get you in here on Sunday morning?”

  “I’ll get you your results by Monday morning,” Vaughan grumbled, “but don’t sweat me about Sunday morning—I’ve got to go to my kid’s christening. Some of us do have lives outside of the office, you know.”

  While getting a hand from us was going to help the Feds make their embezzlement case, I wasn’t certain that by the end of the day we’d be any closer to finding our shooter. Yet, I felt in my bones that the documents we’d obtained were the key to breaking open this case. I picked up copies we’d made of the correspondence and other documents seized from Mario’s home. “Perkins, you were saying earlier that Mario wrote a lot of checks out of his personal checking account.”

  “That’s been his pattern for the last year,” she nodded, leafing through the bank statements. “About fifteen thousand a month, between checks to individuals and those written to cash easily forty, fifty checks a month.”

  Billie whistled. “That’s a lot of checks. He supporting a lover somewhere?”

  “Some of that might have been going to whoever he was sending that greeting card to,” I noted, sliding the Xerox copy of the “Thinking of You” card I’d found on Mario’s desk to Billie. “See, it says: ‘I don’t want you worrying about money. I’ve taken care of everything.’ The card hadn’t been addressed yet, so we don’t know who it was intended for.”

  “I’ve never seen money sent to a contract killer in a greeting card,” Billie noted, giving me an uncertain look.

  “As I said, he writes a lot of checks.” Perkins leafed through the stack. “There are a bunch to Blanca Ortiz, but those are relatively small.”

  “That’s his housekeeper,” I said. “Anything larger?”

  “I won’t know until I sort all these checks into a list of individuals and businesses and verify their receipt of payment. That could take a week.”

  “But we’ve only got until Monday!” I snapped. “Maybe while Perkins is working on the checks, I should dig into Lippincott’s accusation about Alma Zuccari. If Chuck found out his wife was passing, that could have given her a motive to have him killed.”

  “I know you think it’s important, Justice, but it just doesn’t strike me as a motive for anything.”

  “This isn’t about what you or I would do, Thor. It’s about a young black woman who’s passing for white being married to a sixty-four-year-old ultraconservative Republican and keeping a secret that could blow the lid off his perfect little world!”

  Thor made an impatient gesture. “If it makes you happy, check it out, but don’t let it interfere with reviewing the rest of these documents on Natalie Johnson and the other CZ Toys employees. They’re our most likely ta
rgets.”

  “Weren’t you going up to Oregon to see your granddaughter?” I asked.

  He shook his head emphatically. “I couldn’t leave you all high and dry.”

  Don’t worry, Thor,” Perkins said. “If Vaughan or the Latent Prints guys come up with anything, I’ll be here. I need to spend some more time examining Mario Zuccari’s and Johnson’s financial statements, see if there’s a pattern to the withdrawals and deposits.”

  “And I’ve got some paperwork to attend to,” Billie said, waving him off.

  “Go,” I agreed, “even if it’s just for the day. We’ve got everything under control. Your granddaughter needs you.”

  A couple of hours later, Perkins went outside for a cigarette break, and I used the opportunity to walk over to Billie’s desk. “While we’re killing time,” I whispered, “why don’t we follow up on Lippincott’s accusation about Alma Zuccari.”

  “Two reasons.” Billie closed the blue binder she’d been working on with a thud. “One, the original murder book is full of a bunch of loose ends on the Nazis and the Black Muslims I need to tie off before we turn the file over to the D.A.’s office. And, two, you heard what Thor said—he wants us to concentrate on Johnson and the CZ Toys employees.”

  The clock on the wall said it was after four. “Thor can’t ding us for pursuing it on our own time.”

  “Damn, Charlotte!” Billie exclaimed, a scowl on her face. “I was hoping to finish this paperwork and get home before sundown. I haven’t seen my daughter in the daylight all week. She’s gonna think I’m a vampire.”

  “Sure, go ahead. But while you’re playing with Turquoise, do me a favor.” I reached for my handbag and unearthed the card Pete Collins had given me at the hospital. “See if Collins can locate Robert Merritt, the head of the legal department at CZ Toys. I want to see if he backs up Renata’s story about engaging the private investigator.”

  “Do you really think this is that important?”

  “My maternal grandmother passed all the time in her dressmaking business. There were times she’d publicly deny my darker-skinned uncle if it meant getting some big contract. He used to smile and laugh about it, but it had to hurt.”

  “But enough to make somebody want to kill?”

  “I don’t know. But you know like I do, color prejudice is one of America’s dirtiest little secrets. The only question is—how far would Alma Zuccari go to keep hers?”

  Billie reluctantly took the card and tucked it into her jacket pocket. “But what are you going to do?”

  “See a woman about a doll.”

  You would have thought it was a film premiere the way the cars were inching along Venice Boulevard toward Broadway Federal S&L. Inside were the usual hodgepodge of notable black Angelenos—the bankers and doctors, divas and dilettantes and various poseurs in between—interspersed with an equally diverse group of the city’s African American Muslim population, if the subdued garb and covered heads were any indication. From high yellow to espresso black, in kuftis and cashmere, these two very different sides of black L.A. had come together, not to see Spike or Clint’s latest film but the unveiling of the Malik Shareef Black Doll Collection.

  I thought I was going to have to drag Aubrey kicking and screaming to the event. He wouldn’t stop complaining until I told him I thought my family would be there as well. “Come on honey, it’ll be fun,” I wheedled when I’d called him about it from work.

  “Why are you just now telling me?”

  “You’d gone inside the other night when Mother mentioned it,” I replied as if my mother and I had planned this excursion all along. “You’re the one who’s been telling me I should show up for more family events.”

  But Aubrey wasn’t buying it. “Don’t bullshit me, Char! This is not a family event. This is about the Smiley Face shootings and you know it.”

  “I just need to ask Malik Shareef’s widow one question, then we can leave. Besides, I know how you enjoy talking to my father.”

  A pause, then: “If your dad’s going to be there, I guess I can run through there with you. But you owe me a decent dinner afterward!”

  “Campanile?”

  “And dessert afterward, and I’m not talking profiteroles!”

  But first Aubrey had to get through the dozens of dolls on display throughout the small branch. “Good thing they’re serving drinks,” he said, a comment I heard echoed by more than one man as their wives and girlfriends moved among the display cases, oohing and aahing over the rare dolls and artifacts while the men stood in protective little clusters, arguing over the NBA standings or the latest scandal in the current mayoral race.

  Aubrey said, “I see some of my fellow Omegas got shanghaied tonight, too,” as he walked toward the bar and a short dark-skinned brother I didn’t know. On the other side of the room, I spotted Habiba Shareef talking to the bank’s young CEO. I was about to head that way when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  “Hey, girl,” Louise said, giving me a hug. “Your mother didn’t tell me you were coming, too.”

  “I wanted to surprise her.” Over Louise’s shoulder, I saw Joymarie and Uncle Syl dragging my father to look at the dolls while Perris strode toward the bar and gave Aubrey and the dark-skinned guy the Omega Psi Phi fraternity handshake. Other than looking more tired than usual, the Dark Prince was doing his thing, smiling and glad-handing, laughing with his frat brothers as they saluted each other with the old Omega phrase—Q Psi Phi ’til the day I die. But every once in a while I saw my brother’s eyes rake over the crowd. Was it just another leftover habit from his days on patrol, or was Perris looking for his frat brother Paul Taft, the Q who wasn’t there? “I see my big brother is up to his usual tricks.”

  “He’d better be getting a Coca-Cola,” Louise replied, craning her neck to see what Perris was doing. “We had a long talk after Film Night, Char. He’s promised he’s going to stop drinking. He even went to a meeting this afternoon.”

  “AA’s a start.” Across the room, Perris caught my eye and gave me a wary nod. “Did he tell you I called the other day?”

  “No! Did you two talk?”

  “Not yet, but I left a message, which he hasn’t returned.”

  Louise put a hand on my arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Well, I know he wants to talk to you. He said he needed to get some things straightened out.”

  “Yes, he does,” I murmured, wondering if Uncle Henry had warned him I was on the warpath about Keith’s files.

  “I told him if he didn’t do it soon, I was going to make him sleep in the garage!”

  I hugged Louise again, whispered, “Thanks, sis,” and continued on toward Mrs. Shareef, where I hung back a few feet until she was finished with her conversation. “What is it now, Detective?” she whispered, leading me out of the flow of well-wishers and the press.

  “Just need to get your reaction to some new information.”

  Her eyes on the crowd, Mrs. Shareef went over to give a kiss on both cheeks to a Muslim female, then shook hands with a lawyer here, a state assemblywoman there. “I’m not going to have you drag my husband’s memory through the mud in front of all these people!” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.

  “This is not about Malik. It’s about Alma Zuccari.”

  Habiba Shareef’s expression hardened as she turned on me. “Haven’t I heard enough about that woman?”

  I told her what we’d learned about Alma and her family, which caused Mrs. Shareef’s brow to unfurl and her face to go slack with relief. “So that’s what it was! Malik always said she was a troubled spirit, but I don’t think even he would have guessed she was passing! And now that you say it, her behavior makes sense. Did I tell you she even asked us to add an ultra-fair-skinned doll to the collection? Too bad she just couldn’t come out and tell us. All that exposure to our dolls didn’t teach her a thing about loving herself.”

  “Maybe it did,” I replied, wondering for the first time if Alma’s obsession with the Shareefs’ dolls cou
ld have drawn the wrath of her husband.

  I heard a throat clear behind us. “Char, can you introduce us?” Louise had slipped up behind me, my brother in tow, beaming at Mrs. Shareef as if she were Coretta Scott King and Ethel Kennedy rolled into one. “My husband and I are great fans of your and your husband’s book. Are any of the dolls your husband used in his research here in the exhibit?”

  Habiba Shareef walked Louise over to the topsy-turvy doll and began explaining how it was used in focus groups to determine children’s racial preferences. Perris lingered behind, gazing off in another direction, his body turned slightly away from me, as if positioning himself for a quick escape. “Uncle Henry called. He’s pretty pissed off at you for forging his signature.”

  “I’m just trying to reconstruct a file that seems to have gone missing. You have any idea what I’m talking about?”

  “Look, Char, I—”

  “Let’s cut to the chase, Perris. What do you want?”

  “I got your message about Paul Taft,” he mumbled.

  “You didn’t call me back.”

  “I had walked over to invite you to breakfast in the morning,” he replied. “I was hoping we could talk face-to-face, clear up a few things.”

  I positioned myself so I was in his line of sight. “We’re face-to-face right now.”

  He turned the other way. “This isn’t the place, Char—”

  I stood in his way again. “We can take it outside.”

  Perris looked at me sharply, as if I’d challenged him to a fight. “Fine,” he sighed at last. “Might as well get this over with.”

  We stepped into an evening that had cooled off considerably, dark clouds backlit by moonlight as they skittered across the sky. “You know Paul Williams designed this building,” Perris began, leaning against a column and jiggling the ice in his cup. “The bank’s CEO is his grandson.”

  “Spare me the black L.A. history lesson.” I grabbed his cup, sniffed its contents. “What was in here, a screwdriver?”