'I wonder how Nora would feel if she saw that her book launch party made page one of every paper in America,' he said. 'How's Marilyn?'
'Totally spooked,' Terry said. 'I'm surprised you're not a little nervous yourself.'
'I locked my front door, but I just can't see how I'd be a target. I'm just Nora's lowly assistant.'
'Cut the bullshit,' Terry said. 'This is a homicide investigation, not a book party, so let's skip the social amenities. You were a lot more than her lowly assistant. You've been banging her for years.'
'It's part of my job description,' he said. 'Arranging her travel, getting her coffee, giving her multiple orgasms. Gentlemen, I'm a relatively good-looking, thirty-seven-year-old assistant working for a sixty-four- year-old money-machine. This is La-La-Land. Fucking goes with the territory. And for the record, she was damn good in the sack. It was a hell of a lot more fun than filing.'
Terry and I had never seen this candid side of Martin, but of course, we had never seen him without Nora lurking nearby.
'What do you know about Nora's financial picture?' I asked.
'Everything. I see her contracts, I deposit her royalty cheques, I pay her bills - there's not too much I don't know. She was completely open with me.'
'What would you say she's worth?'
'Twenty million. But that was before she went from the arts section to the front page. A violent death is a big boost to any artist's career. People who never heard of her will buy her books now. The money will be pouring into her estate for decades.'
'And speaking of her estate, who's the beneficiary?'
'Nora only had one living relative. Julia.'
'So what happens now that her one living relative is no longer living?'
'You mean does it all go to her lowly assistant?'
'The thought did cross my mind that maybe you could be next in line for the twenty mill.' if only,' he said. 'But alas, Detective Biggs, the University of California at Santa Barbara has that enviable position. Nora's alma mater is going to have themselves one generous fellowship fund. Perhaps you should interrogate them.'
'We're not done with you,' Terry said. 'When was the last time you saw Nora alive?'
'We worked from nine till noon yesterday. Then Julia came over and they went shopping.'
'And where were you from noon till six?'
'I was here in my apartment. I arrived at the book launch party precisely at five forty-five.'
'So nobody saw you from noon till the time you got to the party.'
'Please, Detective, tell me you aren't seriously considering me as a suspect,' Martin said. 'Allow me to refresh your memory. I don't inherit her money.'
'Not a penny?'
'A year's salary. Hardly enough to kill for.'
'I've seen homicides for a lot less,' Terry said. 'Tell me something. Who inherits Julia's money?'
'Julia didn't have any money,' Martin said.
'Sure she did,' Terry said. 'She just didn't have it for long. It appears that Nora was murdered first, which means Julia automatically inherited her mother's estate. Unfortunately for her, she wound up dead a minute later. So now the question is, who gets Julia's money?'
'Probably her husband, but he'd only get Julia's money. He has no claims to Nora's estate.'
'Why not?' Terry said. 'If the crime lab proves that Nora was dead first, her money would legally go to Julia, not to the university. So technically it's Julia's estate that will get passed on. Am I right?'
'No, Detective Biggs, you are wrong. A person does not get to be a multimillionaire for half a minute then pass it along. Have you ever heard of the simultaneous death clause?'
Terry looked at me, and I shook my head. 'Enlighten us,' he said.
'It's a common clause used in most wills. It states that if Julia were to die within sixty days of her mother, it's considered that they died at the same time.'
'Keep enlightening.'
'Let's say a mother and a daughter are in a car crash. Mom dies at the scene. Without that clause the daughter would immediately inherit Mom's estate, and Uncle Sam would automatically be entitled to an estate tax. Now suppose the daughter dies on her way to the hospital. Then somebody in her will inherits the money. The IRS can now collect a second estate tax. The purpose of putting in the simultaneous death clause is to avoid double taxation.'
'So what you're saying is Charlie doesn't get any of Nora's money.'
'It's not what I'm saying. It's what I said. Several times. All Charlie can inherit is whatever money Julia already had, but I've known her for years, and she writes poetry.'
'I heard there's big bucks in poetry,' Terry said. 'Didn't Dr Seuss make a killing?'
'The only money Julia ever earned came from being part of the LA Flippers. I assume Charlie will wind up with her share of the real estate profits, but it's not going to be a ticket on the retirement express.'
'Speaking of real estate,' I said, 'did any of the partners have any major arguments with any of the contractors working on this house?'
'Marisol tangled with a few,' he said. 'She fired two plumbers before she finally found one she could work with. But let's face it, if contractors shot everyone who was pissed off at them, they'd be building houses for each other.'
We talked for ten more minutes. Martin acted a bit self-important, but he was comfortable, not guarded, and if he did have anything to hide, he was hiding it well. We thanked him, and I gave him a business card, with the usual call-us-if-you-think-of-anything parting words. He walked us to the door.
'One last question,' I said. 'What are your plans, now that you're out of work?'
'I'm not out of work just yet,' he said. 'It could take me six months to straighten out all of Nora's business affairs. The estate will pay my salary.'
'And after that?'
'Maybe I'll write a book about my seven wonderful years with Nora,' he said, 'but I'm going to need your help.'
'Us? For what?'
'You can't write a murder mystery without telling the reader who the killer is,' he said, giving us a smug grin. 'Unless you solve it, I won't have an ending.'
Chapter Thirty
Kilcullen called and told us to meet him for lunch.
'Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood,' he said, it's more private.'
West Hollywood is under the jurisdiction of the sheriff's department, so we were less likely to run into anyone from LAPD at Barney's. But knowing Kilcullen, he picked it because they've got killer chilli.
He was already sitting at a table when we got there. He looked at his watch just in case we didn't know we were two minutes late.
'I ordered,' he said. 'Hope you want chilli.' He didn't wait for an answer. 'The deputy chief called me. We've had an outbreak of blue flu.'
It's illegal for cops to go on strike, so one of the few actions we can take is a sick-out. The blue flu.
'A lot of cops called in sick today. Twice as many as on a normal Friday,' Kilcullen said. 'But it's not a job action.
These guys are staying home and babysitting their wives.'
'Do we know that for sure?' I said.
'We don't know shit for sure, but Nora Bannister's murder is all over the TV this morning, and some reporters have put two and two together, and they're asking if there's a guy with a gun out there targeting cops' families. This is exactly why I told the chief not to issue a department-wide warning. We've got the makings of a panic. We need answers. What have you got so far?'
The food came and we filled him in on our meeting with Charlie.
'Charlie had a babe on the side?' Kilcullen said with a mouthful of chilli, cheese, and onions. 'Do you know who she is?'
'No,' Terry said. 'We're guessing she's a cop, but he's not giving her up, because even with an alibi, there's still one hour he can't account for.'
'Well, then he didn't do it,' Kilcullen said. 'He wouldn't murder his wife and mother-in-law, then leave himself hanging without an alibi. He's too smart a cop.'
'Right,' Te
rry said. 'Plus I saw him reading a copy of Perfect Crimes for Dummies, so he couldn't possibly have made any mistakes.'
'You think Marisol had anything to do with it?' Kilcullen said.
'I wouldn't put it past her,' Terry said. 'She's one tough chick, and she lied about not being at Nora's house yesterday afternoon. Her car was spotted around four o'clock. The big question is why would she do it. She doesn't have a motive. Martin Sorensen, on the other hand, has two. Fame and fortune.'
'He wants to write a book about Nora,' I said. 'And he reminded us that nothing sells like a dead celebrity.'
'He's right,' Kilcullen said. 'You should see how many Elvis CDs my wife owns. What do you know about this Sorensen guy?'
We gave him everything we knew about Martin.
'Dig deeper. Check his bank records, credit cards, phone calls, whatever you can find,' Kilcullen said.
'We've already got Muller on it,' I said.
'Tell him to make it priority one. You know me, boys. I don't like to tell you how to work your case, but until this guy is caught, there's going to be an epidemic of cops staying home to protect the wife and kids.'
'Speaking of which,' Terry said, 'can you do any better on Marilyn's protection detail?'
'What's wrong with what we've got?'
'Nothing, if she was an old lady who needed two boy scouts to help her cross the street,' Terry said. 'The guys you had last night were a little green.'
Kilcullen doesn't take criticism well. 'What are you talking about?' he said. 'They're smart, they've got guns...'
'And they're as low on the pay-grade scale as you can go without sending the cleaning crew,' Terry said. 'How about I pay for lunch and you milk the budget for a few more bucks, so I can focus on this case without having to worry about who's looking after my wife and kids?'
Kilcullen held up both hands. 'All right, all right. I'll upgrade. I'll do whatever it takes to take care of them.'
'Good,' Terry said. 'And I'll do whatever it takes to take care of myself.' He sniffled. 'Because I was starting to feel a little touch of the flu coming on.'
Chapter Thirty-One
'Do you know what today was like?' Terry said as we were headed home on the Ventura in bumper-to-bumper Friday night traffic.
'A day without sunshine?'
'No.'
'One of those bad dreams where you show up to take the final exam, and you realise you never went to class all year, and you didn't even buy the book?'
'You're getting warmer, but no.'
'I give up,' I said.
'Today was like the worst part of a romantic comedy movie.'
'I'm from the school of thinking that romantic comedies suck from beginning to middle to end,' I said, 'so you'll have to fill me in on which part actually qualifies for the worst.'
'The failure montage.'
'I still give up.'
‘In every romantic comedy, there's always some dork like Ben Stiller, and they want to show you that he's a total loser at love, so what do they do? A two-minute montage of him striking out on seven different blind dates. That was our day, Mike. A montage of failure in living colour, without the sound track.'
'Ben Stiller's not a dork,' I said. 'He's kind of cool.'
'OK, so he's cool in a dorky way. My point is that the highlight of all our police work today was watching our boss chow down a bowl of beans.'
'And if that doesn't say romantic comedy, I don't know what does.'
'Right. But if this were a movie, and if I were Ben Stiller, the boss would call and tell me that his wife kicked him out of the house, and he'd invite himself to spend the night in my claustrophobic little one-room apartment. And then...' He started laughing. 'And then those damn beans would kick in.'
'We could call the movie Love's a Gas' I said.
For the next five minutes we regaled ourselves in how shitty our day had been.
When you work homicide, you have to find the laughs or you'll blow your own brains out. It's not a job for the faint of heart. You start with some grisly murder. Then you have to break the bad news to the victim's loved ones and watch them go through shock, pain, and anguish. Then comes the investigation, which is basically a series of blind alleys, dead ends, and other let downs.
Today was a perfectly good example. After getting nowhere with Charlie and Martin, we spent two hours trying to track down people on the enemies list Nora had faxed us. The few that we reached either wouldn't talk without a lawyer or laughed at the idea that they might even be considered a suspect.
'What did the old bitch do?' her ex-publisher asked. 'Leave the names of people who wanted her dead? I didn't do it, but I'd feel great if you told me I was at the top of her list.'
Later that afternoon we pissed away more time with Anton Areizaga. Anton is one of our informants, a street hustler whose motto is, 'Information is like pussy. You can always find somebody to pay for it.' He's been a semi- reliable source in the past, but he's also been known to use us to put the squeeze on someone he's pissed at.
'Billy Shoes killed that cop's wife,' Anton told us.
Billy Shufeldt, aka Billy Shoes, is a Hollywood pimp who rotates in and out of the justice system.
'Detective Drabyak is always busting him and his girls,' Anton told us, 'so Billy decided it's payback time, and he shot Drabyak's old lady.'
'And you know this how?' I asked Anton.
'Shoes was bragging about it. Even showed me the gun he popped her with.'
'A nine-millimetre Glock, right?' Terry said, pulling a couple of twenties out of his wallet.
Anton eyed the cash. 'Exactly,' he lied. 'I seen the murder weapon.'
'I'm sorry,' Terry said. 'Did I say Glock? I meant a pearl-handled derringer.'
'Yeah, that's more like it. I think I seen a pearly handle.' Anton reached for the money. His fingers were delicate and neatly manicured.
Terry whacked them hard and yanked the money back. 'How would you like a pearly handle up your ass, you lying son of a bitch?'
'Shit,' Anton said, massaging his damaged hand. 'Wrong gun?'
'Wrong gun, wrong day, wrong cops,' Terry said. 'Get your weasely little ass out of here, and stop wasting our time.'
The only glimmer of hope in our montage of failure came at the end of the day. Muller did a thorough check on Martin Sorensen.
'Nothing unusual in his background,' Muller said. 'Finances, phone records, they all seem pretty straightforward. There is one thing that's kind of interesting, but you may already know about it.'
'We don't have a lot on this guy except for a possible motive,' I said. 'What's interesting?'
'Over the past three years he took half a dozen criminology and criminal justice courses at two local colleges. Forensics, weapons, profiling, stuff like that. There's no record of him being enrolled in a degree program, so I'm guessing Nora had him doing research for her books, and it was probably part of his job to learn as much as he could about homicide.'
'That's funny,' Terry said. 'Martin mentioned filing and fornicating as part of his job description, but he never said anything about becoming an expert on how to kill people.'
'So he not only had motive,' I said. 'He had means.'
'Why don't we pay him another visit,' Terry said.
We drove back to Martin's apartment, but in keeping with the rest of our unproductive day, he wasn't home.
'It's Friday night,' Terry said. 'He's probably out hunting for cougars. Let's come back tomorrow.'
Kilcullen had authorised OT, so working the weekend wasn't an issue. In fact, not working wasn't even an option. At some point during our chilli-fest, the boss had let us know that we'd be working long shifts, seven days a week, until we caught the killer.
It was after eight when we got off the 405 at Sherman Oaks and headed up Sepulveda toward Terry's house.
'So about this failure montage,' I said. 'Once it's over, things start to get better for the hero, right?'
'Oh yeah,' Terry said. 'It's all part of th
e formula, and by the end of the movie he gets the promotion he's been waiting for, he marries the girl of his—' He braked the car hard. 'What the fuck?'
We had just made the turn onto Terry's street, Alana Drive. There were at least ten cop cars scattered in front of his house, lights strobing, radios squawking. A paramedic unit was parked in the driveway.
Terry and I jumped out of the car and ran toward the house.
Chapter Thirty-Two
We ran past a dozen cops who were casually milling about outside the house. Apparently, whatever the emergency was, it had passed, and now they were waiting for orders.
There were two uniforms in the living room, along with Marilyn, Diana, Emily, Sarah, and a third teenage girl I'd never seen before. Emily was on the sofa, sobbing.
'What happened?' Terry yelled.
'It's OK,' Marilyn said. 'We're all fine.'
'What went on? What happened?' Terry looked around for an answer.
Sarah held up both hands. 'I had nothing to do with it.' She pointed a finger at her younger sister.
'Emily?'
'I'm sorry, Daddy,' Emily choked out through her tears. 'I'm really, really sorry.'
Terry sat down on the sofa and put his arm around the girl, it's all right. Just tell me what happened.'
She wiped her nose and ran her arm across her eyes to dry the tears. 'I wanted to go to the mall, or a movie, or anyplace, but Mom wouldn't let me. She said I have to stay home till you catch the asshole who's shooting everybody. Do you know how bad it sucks to be quarantined to your house on the weekend?' She looked at Terry for sympathy.
'That's a family discussion. We'll talk about it later,' he said. He turned to the cops. 'You were on watch?'
The male cop stepped front and centre. He was big, burly, about thirty years old. His female partner was smaller and older, with intense dark eyes. Kilcullen had kept his promise. They were definitely more experienced than the kids who had been on duty last night.
'Tim Kaczmarek, sir,' he said. 'This is my partner, Jane Lester. We were parked outside. We heard a girl scream, followed by three gunshots.'
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