by J. D. Robb
“Why did you think she was rich?”
“She had on these mag-o-mag shoes. I’ve seen them in Styling, and they cost huge. And she wore this swank dress. Some redhead comes in here in a swank dress and mag-o-mag shoes, I know she’s rich. But that doesn’t mean she can boss me around and tell me to go out and get her a decent cup of coffee—cream no sugar—for which she didn’t even pay me. It’s not like I get an expense account working here, and that coffee cost me ten. A made it good a couple days ago, but she shouldn’t have done like that. Right?”
“Right. Do you know why she hired A?”
“I wrote up the file. It’s okay to tell you? We’re confidential.”
“I’m the police,” Eve reminded her.
“Yeah, I guess. Well, I wrote up a domestic surveillance file, and the contract for it. We do lots of those ’cause people really cheat, and that’s just not right. A said to leave the amount blank.”
“Is that usual?”
“No way, but I just work here. He said to leave it blank, then he didn’t give me a copy for my files. He said not to worry about it, but I do the billing and the books. I’m good with numbers. Numbers and people.” She smiled, poked out her impressive breasts. “They’re my strengths.”
“Did she come back?”
“No, she only came in the one time. Fine with me. I don’t like people talking down to me. But A’s been in a really good mood since. Except, I guess this morning. He came in and barely said hello, and he locked himself back in his office. He was okay when he left, though. He gave me a wink. Not that we’re like that, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t get like that with the boss. You’ve got to keep that out of the office, right? Or you don’t get respected.”
“That’s smart, Barbie.”
“Anyway, I haven’t seen Ms. I’m-Too-Good-to-Pee-Body since the one time. Is she in trouble? I wouldn’t care, except because of A.”
“You could say she had some trouble. When A comes back, or you’re able to contact him, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell him I need to talk to him.” Eve dug out a card.
“I sure will. I don’t think I’m going to hold the fort much longer, though. We don’t have any appointments in the book anyway. So I’ll leave him a message if I go before he gets back.”
“Thanks. You’ve been very helpful.”
She beamed. “That’s good. I like to help.”
After they left the office, Peabody shoved her hands in her pockets. “These nicknames are pissing me off.”
“But you’re not I’m-Too-Good-to-Pee-Body. Harris is.”
“It’s my damn name. And now I have to pee. It’s like my bladder has to prove something.”
“Pee at the bank. Consider it a deposit.”
They found another recording in the safe box, more cash, and two dated, handwritten receipts from A. A. Asner for fifty thousand each.
They bagged and labeled, and transported everything back to Central.
“Get the cash logged in and secured,” Eve told Peabody. “I’m going to take the recorders up to Feeney for a quick anal. Write it up. When I’ve finished with the recordings, I’ll swing by the studio, check out the vic’s trailer before I head home.”
“You don’t want me with?”
“Figuring her, she’s too paranoid to have much of anything in her trailer. But we’ve got to look, so I’ll take care of it. Get it written up, copy Whitney. And you can send the file to Mira, get me some time with her tomorrow.”
“Okay. Dallas? I’ve been thinking. There’s no murder weapon. We have motive all over the place, and the same for opportunity. Because this is a tight-knit group, when you think about it. They’ve been spending hours together every day for months—and they’re all in the same business—the same world.”
“No argument.”
“Well, I don’t know if any one of them would tell us if they actually saw someone slip out of the theater. I don’t know if any one of them would tell us if they actually knew which one of them killed Harris.”
“Probably not. Or not yet.”
“I don’t see how we’re going to pin this one, or prove it unless the killer decides to come in and confess.”
“Maybe we’ll arrange just that. For now we take the steps, work the case. And don’t put that you think we’re screwed in the report.”
But she had a point, Eve thought as she headed up to EDD. They had a victim no one liked, one who’d threatened or manipulated or pissed off everyone who’d been on scene at the murder.
Three cops, she thought in annoyance, a shrink, and a former criminal now expert consultant, civilian, right there at the time and the place, and they couldn’t appreciably narrow the list of suspects.
It was as embarrassing as it was infuriating.
She walked into the color and sound of EDD. And movement, she thought when she spotted McNab doing a kind of prancing pace around the room. He weaved or sidestepped when one of his fellow e-geeks strutted or boogied in his path.
Like a strange, disjointed dance, Eve thought, where even the chair-sitters bopped, swiveled, or tapped to some constant internal beat.
She stepped in front of McNab, poked him to get his attention.
“Hey.” He flicked off his earpiece. “Got those financials for you.”
“Two withdrawals of fifty large, each within the last ten days.”
“Well, hell. You spoil the fun.”
“We tracked her PI. Anything else interesting?”
“As a matter of fact. Come, have a seat in the parlor.”
He led the way to his cube, recently decorated, Eve noted, with a poster of a monkey in a tutu riding an airboard with a PPC in one hand, a sandwich in the other while its earpiece flashed green. A smaller monkey rode in a pack on her back.
It was titled MULTITASKING MAMA.
“So, I figured I hit the gold with the 50K withdrawals, but I ran through the rest anyway. She’s got auto-payments on her place in New LA, standard autos for standard home expenses, the usual blah stuff. Fees to her agent, her manager. She doesn’t spend a lot considering what she pulls in. Mostly it goes to face and body treatments, wardrobe.”
He swiped through what Eve supposed he considered the usual blah stuff.
“Then I find this nice chunk charged up to I Spy, so I dig down, and it’s the shop here, in Times Square. Follow that up. She bought two spy cams a couple weeks ago. Microminis, with audio, motion, and sound activation, remotes, timers—the works. I got the clerk who sold them to her, and he remembered her. Except he described her as a redhead—a ‘pushy, hard-ass redhead,’ to use his words.”
“Fits. She was a redhead when she hired the PI, and when she rented a safe box at a downtown bank. That must’ve been her go-to disguise. Two cams. Interesting. And interesting timing. That’s good work, McNab.”
“All kudos accepted. One more deal. She also put a hefty deposit down on a high-end, high-class villa—for a two-week stay starting December twenty-third. Olympus Resorts, and she booked a private shuttle—two passengers. She had to give the names. Hers, and Matthew Zank.”
“And again interesting. Send the data to my home unit. I’ll take a look when I get there. Is Feeney in his office?”
“Last I saw him.”
She headed over. The captain of the ship of noise and eye-blasting colors sat hunched at his desk in rumpled shirtsleeves. Silver threaded through his minor explosion of ginger hair. His face sagged like an old, comfortable hammock and looked as lived-in as the rumpled shirt.
As he worked his screen, he reached for one of the candied nuts in the lopsided bowl on his desk.
She gave his open door a one-knuckle rap. “Got a minute?”
“I’m working on a goddamn budget. You can have an hour.”
“I finished mine.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
She smiled, shut the door. And Feeney’s droopy eyes sharpened like arrows.
“You got doughnuts? I don’t smell doughnuts.”
“Then why’d you shut the door?”
“I need you to analyze something.”
“I did your anal. The purse recording. It’s clean. Straight through, no edits, no splices.”
“Good. But this is another one. And it’s sensitive.” She helped herself to a couple nuts, studied the crooked orange, green, and blue bowl. “Mrs. Feeney make this?”
“Nah. She can do better than that now. Mostly. My granddaughter made it for me. Now the kid wants a frigging pottery wheel and a kiln for Christmas. Who can think about Christmas this early?”
Apparently Harris had.
“Do you ever take off,” Eve wondered, “go away, like a vacation, for Christmas?”
“Why the hell would we do that? It’s Christmas.”
“Yeah. Okay, so my vic hired a PI to plant a cam in her former bedmate’s and his current bedmate’s loft. I’ve got two recordings, one she kept in a lockbox in a safe in her hotel suite, one she kept in a safe box at a bank.”
“What did she catch them at? Screwing Dobermans? Plotting a terrorist attack?”
“I can’t say as I haven’t viewed them yet, but I expect she caught them doing what people do in bedrooms.”
“Has to be more than that to lock two copies in separate locations.”
“Well, I have to watch it and see. And I want to know if either of the recordings is the original. Can you tell?”
“Yeah.” He turned to his comp, called up a program, fiddled a moment. “Let’s have ’em.”
Eve took them out, unsealed each, noted down the time, the location, her name, Feeney’s. He cued them into his machine. “Run them simultaneous, split screen. The program will pop out any anomalies, determine generation of the recording.”
He ordered the run.
The screen flickered on with identical scenes as Marlo walked into the bedroom of the loft.
“That’s the actress, right? I heard she looked just like you. I don’t see it.”
“It’s closer when she’s made up for it.”
Offscreen, Matthew called out, asking if she wanted some wine.
“I wouldn’t say no.” She walked to a long dresser with a soft silver gleam, opened a drawer. She tossed what looked like a T-shirt and drawstring pants on the bed, then pulled the sweater she wore over her head.
Eyes closed, she stood a moment in her bra and cargo pants, rolling her shoulders.
Matthew walked in with two glasses of wine—and smiled.
“I like your outfit.”
She smiled back. “I got banged around some in the fight scene today.”
“You rocked it.”
“And I’m feeling every bit of it.” She took the wine, sipped, let out a pleased sigh. “But that’s a start. I’m going to get comfortable, then try to stretch some of the aches out.”
“I can help you with that.” He set his wine aside, put his hands on her shoulders, made her groan when he rubbed.
“You’ve got some bruises, babe.”
“Tell me about it. I can’t imagine how many Dallas had after doing it for real. We should finish it tomorrow, if I can walk. Did you hear K.T. got all over Nadine and Roundtree? She wanted Peabody written into the scene.”
“I heard something about it. Don’t think about her. You’re tensing up just thinking about her. She’s not worth it.”
“I know, I know. She doesn’t care about the production. She just wants more screen time. She screamed at Preston today. I could hear her all the way in Wardrobe. She threatened to have him fired because she didn’t like the angles he used in the bullpen B roll he directed.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake.”
“And she made Lindy from Craft Services cry, something about the pasta. I swear, she gets meaner and crazier every day.”
“A few more weeks, we’ll be wrapped, and she’ll be out of our lives.”
“Until the rounds of publicity and promotion, the media tours, the premieres. Even the thought of … No. I’m stopping. Why am I thinking about that lunatic when my guy’s giving me a shoulder rub?”
He bent his head, kissed her between the shoulder blades. “Just relax.”
“I will. I am. In fact.” She turned around, reaching behind to set her glass beside his. “I have so many aches, so many places that need a good rub.”
“Poor baby.”
She laughed as she caught his hands to draw him to the bed. Then gave him a little nudge to send him down on his back. “I really think skin-to-skin’s the only answer,” she continued as she reached around, unhooked her bra.
“Anything I can do.”
“I’ve got some ideas on that.” She tossed the bra, unbuttoned her pants.
As she slid naked onto him, Eve felt the heat spread over the back of her neck. She had to fight an urge to shift her feet.
What had she been thinking, bringing this to Feeney? Viewing it with him. Maybe it was stupid, but she knew damn well he was as mortified and miserable as she was.
If they’d been watching bloody murder—axes hacking, blood spurting, blasters burning into flesh, neither of them would have blinked. But a naked woman, a half-naked man—okay, shit, altogether naked now—enjoying some playful sex?
Torture.
“Okay.” The sound of Feeney’s throat clearing was explosive. “End run,” he ordered. “That’s enough for the anal. No edits or compromises on either.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke, which made her profoundly grateful. “And both are second-generation copies.”
“Neither is the original?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.” Very carefully he resealed them for her.
“Asner.” Embarrassment faded away as she considered the probabilities. “The PI. Keeping the original, maybe to try a little squeeze of his own. Or maybe he just likes to watch.”
“You can watch a copy.”
“Yeah. He kept the original, and if he sold it, he could bill it that way.” She’d still have to search K.T.’s trailer, but she leaned heavy toward the PI. “Sell it to some gossip channel, or do a little double-dipping with the players. I need to have a conversation with A. A. Asner.” She gathered up the recordings. “Thanks, Feeney.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Cheeks still mortification pink, he hunched back over his work.
As she headed down to her office to gather what she wanted to take home, she pulled out her ’link to try Asner’s office.
Barbie’s squeaky voice informed her the offices were closed, gave her the hours of operation, and invited her to leave a detailed message.
“This is Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD. I need to speak with Mr. Asner as soon as possible. I have some routine questions regarding an active investigation.”
She left it at that. Asner had at least a hundred thousand, and might be tempted to rabbit if she pushed too hard.
Considering the time, how long the trip to the studio, the search might take—especially now that she intended to search Matthew’s trailer as well—she tried Roarke next.
“Lieutenant.” His face came on-screen. “What nice timing. I’ve just finished a meeting.”
“You had a meeting. What a shock.” She frowned at the background noise, the blurred view behind his pretty face. “Are you at transpo? Do you have to go somewhere?”
“No. I had to come back from somewhere. Cleveland, actually.”
“Okay. Listen, I’ve got to go back to the studio, do a search of the vic’s trailer and some other stuff. I’m going to be late.”
“You’re going to be late? What a shock.”
“I should’ve seen that coming.”
“I’ll meet you. There’s an errand I could take care of downtown. I’ll meet you at the studio—Harris’s trailer, you said. When we’re done, we’ll have some dinner with a river view.”
“Sounds like a plan. Nothing fancy, okay?”
“Pizza and beer.”
“Are you trying to seduce me?”
H
e laughed. “Always. I’ll see you shortly.”
She loaded up what she wanted, swung back into the bullpen. “Neither recording’s the original,” she told Peabody. “Asner is still AWOL as far as I know. We’ll try him at home first thing in the morning. Unless you hear otherwise, just meet me there.”
“LT,” Sanchez called out when she turned to leave. “It was the girlfriend—the two dead bangers.”
“Right.”
“Former boyfriend who doesn’t want to be former pulls a knife on the current boyfriend, and sticks him pretty good before current can get his own sticker out. Current’s losing a lot of blood while ex is putting holes in him, and doesn’t have much left to put holes in the ex. The girlfriend picked up the pipe and whaled on the ex. She says she was trying to stop him from killing current—too late for that, but it holds up pretty well. Maybe she wailed harder and longer than might be strictly on the line, but current’s lying there dead or dying.”
“Are you charging her?”
“The thing is, we talked to some people, and they confirm the ex was hassling them, threatening them, started other fights. And he knocked her around pretty good, too, which is what makes him her ex. Maybe we get Man One, maybe Man Two. The PA made some noises, but isn’t enthusiastic about it. Carmichael and me don’t see the point in it.”
“See if Carmichael can talk her into going into one of the victim programs, then spring her if the PA’s good with it.” “Thanks, LT, that’s the way we wanted it to work.” Sometimes, Eve thought, as she sprinted to catch the elevator to the garage, things worked the way you wanted them to work.
She badged her way through security at the studio, and informed them to clear through her expert consultant, civilian, on his arrival.
She went straight back to the small city of trailers.
Lined up close, she noted. Not much privacy here. They looked the same from outside, she thought, except for the names on the doors.
She followed the guard’s directions until she came to Harris’s and the sealed door. Between the woman playing Nadine and the guy playing Feeney. Not, she noted, beside Matthew’s or Marlo’s or Julian’s. She bet that gave Harris something else to bitch about.