A Tango Before Dying

by Anna Celeste Burke

  “Does that mean Brett’s no longer a suspect? I feel a bit uncomfortable leaving Carol with him without us there to chaperone.”

  “What happened to ‘giving love a chance to bloom?’ The chances are better without us hanging around. That must be obvious from the little dance number we walked in on last night.”

  “I know. I’m in hypervigilant paranoid mode. Carol called me Mom.”

  “Well, it might help you feel better to know that I ran a background check on him.”

  “Wow, Dad, you did raise a daughter, didn’t you?”

  “I ran the check for purely professional reasons—before I knew Carol had any interest in him. The point is, he came up squeaky clean. Not even a parking ticket to his name. The man’s a prince according to those media accounts of his heroics. He gives kids free dance lessons at an after-school program aimed at keeping them out of trouble. I forget the rest, but it’s all good.”

  A little zip of something like static electricity arced through me when Jack had used the word prince. A happy zap given my conversation with Carol about finding her Prince Charming. Maybe she had, even if she’d met him disguised as a fox rather than a frog like most fairytales.

  “That’s reassuring. Thanks!” I shut up and tried to organize my thinking before I called Stacy. The phone call wasn’t long. Stacy was out of the loop on a few things, but Max had underestimated how savvy she was about the situation. Especially the sensitive nature of commenting on a possible suicide by a person with a history of mental illness. Stacy was no lamb being thrown to the wolves.

  Jack and I were back in the hotel parking lot in record time. Max would have been relieved to learn that there was a uniformed officer in the lobby, in addition to members of hotel security.

  “No looky-loos allowed,” the officer said after he’d checked our names against a list of people allowed to go out to the courtyard or up to the fifth floor. He gave us “visitor” tags and added, “it’s not a sight anyone will soon forget.”

  “Oh, ick,” I said. “Do we have to go out there?” I asked Jack. My curiosity does have limits.

  “Let’s decide that after we speak to Gary, okay?”

  “It’s more than okay with me.” Someone from security was on the elevator when we entered. He eyed the tags we wore and hit the button taking us to the fifth floor. When we exited the elevator, there was no question about where to go next. The door to what had to be Natalie’s room was open, and a police officer stood watch. I didn’t see Julie Spencer or Sergeant Jarvis, but the woman from the forensic lab we’d seen in Charlotte’s suite was in the room. Gary was speaking to her when we arrived.

  EMTs were tending to a man who I pegged as Natalie’s lawyer. He was sitting up in a chair in one corner of the room, holding his head in his hands as if he was sick. Gary motioned for us to join him.

  “Thanks for getting here so quickly.”

  “Does Detective Spencer know that we’ve been dispatched once again by his royal highness to see that the police force does its job?”

  “I figured he would, which is one of the reasons I called her. As you can see, uniformed officers have arrived. Another member of the forensic team is with them in the courtyard below. Julie Spencer’s not here because she was called to the hospital before Natalie’s body was discovered.”

  “Oh, no! It’s not Kevin Whitley, is it? He’s not dead, too, is he?”

  “No, in fact he’s very much alive. Kevin says Carter visited him last night and ‘dropped a bomb’ before getting into a shouting match with him.”

  “What the heck could it be?”

  “I don’t know, but the argument became so heated that hospital staff made Carter leave and sedated his grandfather. This morning, Kevin Whitley was still upset and demanded to speak to the detective. She’ll get here as soon as she can sort out what’s going on between Kevin and Carter Whitley.”

  “Well, my orders from Max were for you to commandeer the hotel and keep everyone out of here—especially anyone from the media and get this situation under control. It appears that you’ve already done that.”

  “We can’t stop guests from leaking information to the press, but we threw up a tent over the spot where Ms. Bucco landed. Hopefully, that will keep anyone from taking lurid pictures that can be sold to the tabloids or posted on the Internet. I believe there’s someone from Marvelous Marley World down there speaking with the hotel manager about how to handle the news media.”

  “Yes, that’s Stacy Peterson, our PR Director.”

  “So, what have we got, Gary?” Jack asked.

  “There’s a typed suicide note but no typewriter anywhere in her suite.” As he said that, the woman from forensics held up a clear plastic evidence bag with a sheet of paper in it. I leaned in to read the words typed on it.

  “Jack, it’s a confession.”

  “May I?” he asked. “It’s not a very long confession—no details at all.”

  “There’s not much of an apology, either, is there?” I added. “A few typos, too, like it was written in a rush.”

  “Will you show them the drug-related items you’ve bagged and tagged, please?” The woman nodded and then pulled several bags from the evidence container. I gasped.

  “That has to be the kit Kevin said was lost or stolen. Did you tell Julie Spencer about it?”

  “Yes. She knows about the drugs, too. Not just what looks like empty insulin vials, but capsules that probably contain sedatives used to knock out Charlotte Chantel.” I shook my head in disbelief.

  “Did you find all this stuff just lying around waiting for you to catalog it?”

  “Almost,” the woman responded. “A corner of the black bag was poking out from under the mattress in the bedroom. When we lifted the mattress, it was all under there.” Then she pulled out another bag. “These, too.”

  “The whiskers, too! How convenient of a diabolical killer like Natalie Bucco to put everything you needed to pin the murder of Madame Chantel on her, all in one place.” Even given the bad shape she was in, this was just too easy.

  “Not everything. The hypodermic needle and shoe were in evidence already,” Jack added.

  “True, but Julie Spencer says forensics found strands of hair in the garbage they went through. They’ll do a more thorough analysis since forensics has taken samples from Natalie Bucco, today. They could be a match, too.”

  “You can put away all the items. Thanks.” The forensic investigator did as Gary suggested.

  “I have more to show you, but let me tell you about the man sitting in the chair hanging his head. He’s Barry Murphy, her longtime lawyer, and he’s got the hangover to end all hangovers. He may be in good enough shape to speak to you, but when we got here, I thought he was dead, too. He claims someone slipped him a Mickey Finn, but he’d been drinking.”

  “Was Natalie drinking, too?” I asked.

  “Yes. We’ve collected a nearly empty bottle of gin. He swears he tried to keep Natalie from drinking, but without any luck. There were some heavy-duty drugs on her bedside table, so with enough gin in her system, she wouldn’t have needed to jump. Anyway, Attorney Murphy says they were talking about a meeting with her psychiatrist, and things get cloudy after that.”

  “Was there anyone in here besides Natalie?”

  “Murphy says no. He says he was sitting right where he is now until he lost consciousness around midnight when he may have heard Natalie talking to someone.”

  “Where did he get the gin?” Jack asked.

  “He stopped and bought it because he didn’t want to have to open all the little bottles in the minibar. Not to mention, he’s a fan of the higher-priced stuff. It’s not likely it contained drugs before it was brought into the room, if that’s why you’re asking.” Jack nodded.

  “Some babysitter,” I muttered. “If he’s right, Natalie’s the one who drugged him.”

  “That’s what he believes. He’s going to the hospital with the EMTs. They’ll collect blood and urine samples. The gi
n and the bottle have been taken into evidence, along with two glasses. Barry Murphy says the glass with lipstick on the rim is the one Natalie Bucco was drinking from. The ME’s office has someone collecting blood and urine samples from the dead woman’s body in case she was drugged too.”

  “It won’t be a big surprise if they find one of the drugs hidden under her mattress in his system. She wouldn’t have had much trouble slipping something into his drink—especially once he’d had a few already.” I tried to feel sorry for the man who was obviously sick as a dog, but he was supposed to have watched out for her!

  “Have you checked to see if she had any visitors after midnight?” Jack asked.

  “Yes. No one shows up in the surveillance video after she and her lawyer arrived, but there are numerous blind spots on this floor. Because it’s the “Club Level,” the lounge and storage areas extend into the camera’s line of sight. All the extra foliage and designer flourishes on this floor are a problem, too.”

  “So, are you saying it’s possible someone got in here after Barry Murphy nodded off, and he really could have heard people talking?”

  “What I’m saying is that I can’t completely rule that out. There’s something else I want you to see.” Gary led us out onto Natalie’s balcony. A chair was pulled up to the rail. I could only imagine one reason it was in that position.

  “The chair at the rail makes it appear as if Natalie Bucco used it to jump. But watch this.” He touched the chair, and it wobbled badly. “I don’t want to monkey with the evidence even though I’ve already made sure the forensic investigators have noted the problem. They’re going to take it back to the lab where they can test it—if it makes it there in one piece. I’m certain this chair wouldn’t have held steady long enough for her to jump. In fact, if I lean on it a little bit more, I’m pretty sure it’ll topple over or collapse.”

  “How do we know that it wasn’t damaged because she used it to jump?” I asked.

  “It’s one of a batch of chairs that were identified as defective. The blue strip dangling from the seat means it was tagged for removal. I’m not sure why it’s still here, but the chair was damaged before it was in this spot. Here’s another thing. Let’s say she had been able to use it. I still don’t see how she ended up there where they found her body unless she ran, hit the chair like it was a springboard, and dove off like an Olympic champ.”

  “What do you suggest instead?” Jack asked.

  “Falls are tough to deal with forensically, so this is speculation. It may stay that way, too, unless the killer decides to tell us how he or she killed her. My guess is someone gave her a big shove, propelling her away from the balcony, or threw her off.”

  “If she didn’t jump on purpose, why didn’t she scream or call out for help?” Before he could answer, I got it. “She was drugged too, wasn’t she?”

  “The ME will have to tell us, but that would have been one way to keep her from crying out. If she was drugged, she may not have even known what was going on when her pal gave her a push.”

  “I should listen to my wife more often. She suspected that Natalie Bucco was involved with the killer somehow.”

  “Given how she’s ended up, I hope you didn’t listen to the part where I suspected her of conspiring with the killer. Used her is more like it. I’m not sure why the culprit bothered to plant those whiskers on Charlotte’s body if Natalie was going to be the ‘fall guy’ all along.” I paused, but not long before another question popped into my mind. “Could one person have done it—shoved her hard enough to send her flying or tossed her off the balcony?”

  “I don’t know. If she was drugged, but still on her feet, she could have been led out onto the balcony, and one person could have shoved her off. Out cold, she would have been dead weight and tossing her might have required two people. Who knows? Like I said, falls are tough for investigators. I could be making something out of nothing.”

  “The forensic team will weigh in on this, I’m sure,” Jack added. Gary nodded.

  “Do you want to have a few words with the lawyer before they roll him out of here on a stretcher? He’s going to let the EMTs take him to the hospital to make sure he’s okay.”

  “Why not? Maybe now that he’s almost sober, he can remember who Natalie spoke to or something that she said.”

  19 A True Fox

  “Come on, you must have heard of attorney-client privilege, Detective.”

  “Your client is dead. I don’t believe she can benefit from that protection anymore, can she? If she told you something—anything that might help figure out who killed her, why not tell us?”

  “That won’t help her now either, will it?”

  “It might help you,” I commented. “You’re lucky the killer didn’t give you a larger dose of whatever drug was used to knock you out. Who knows? Maybe it’s an accident that you’re still alive, and you’ll remain a marked man as long as the killer is on the loose.”

  “Look, I already told the retired cop that Natalie drugged me.”

  “Did she tell you she was suicidal?”

  “No. If she had, do you believe I would have ignored her and not called 911 or taken her to the emergency room? She was ranting about ‘getting out of here,’ which she did, didn’t she? If she hadn’t left the note behind, I would have told you this was a horrible accident, and she fell off the balcony believing she was a cat with nine lives or something equally bizarre. I knew she was in bad shape, as I told the judge. The psychiatrist she knows and trusts arranged to fly here from Santa Barbara to see her today.”

  “What happened once you got here and decided to have a few drinks with her last night?”

  “I told her not to drink. This suite is loaded with booze—not just the single shot bottles, either. As soon as I brought her up here, she thanked me for getting her out of jail and asked me to leave. I told her I couldn’t leave, nor could she, and I was going to sit right here in this chair until her psychiatrist arrived this morning. Natalie said she didn’t care what happened even after I reminded her that the judge said if she skipped out on her bail, they’d issue a warrant for her arrest.”

  “Why didn’t you return her to custody or have her admitted for observation overnight if she was so out of it?”

  “This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen her like this. She’s often belligerent and her judgment is poor when her medications aren’t working for one reason or another. It wasn’t unusual for her to tell me to get lost, either. I’m not sure why it was different, this time, except I’m not typically responsible for her care overnight. If this had happened in Santa Barbara, her shrink would have admitted her to a local clinic for several days while he adjusted her medications. He was opposed to having her taken to a new facility without accompanying her.” Barry Murphy held his head in his hands again. “You’re probably right about the close call I had. Drugs and alcohol don’t mix.” I heard a noise at the door, and the EMTs who’d left to fetch a stretcher were back.

  “Did she say anything about asking you to leave because she had help from someone else?” Jack asked.

  “She might have said ‘I will no longer be needing your help’ when she dismissed me. That’s not very clear, though, is it?”

  “This is a longshot, but did she mention anyone named Marie or Carter?” Something registered on his face when I asked that question.

  “As in people who are still alive, you mean?” I borrowed Jack’s ambiguous nod. One of the EMTs helped Barry Murphy stand and then guided him to the stretcher. He paused to speak to us before getting on it.

  “Her shrink can tell you more about this than I can. Years ago, she had a close friend she met in rehab named Marie. Natalie, Marie, and several other women were living together in a halfway house when Marie overdosed. Natalie’s the one who found her. The name often comes up when Natalie unravels. Sometimes, she even talks to the dead woman. Maybe that’s what was going on when I thought I heard voices. I promise you, if she’d mentioned that woman’s name b
efore she drugged me, I would have taken her to the ER.”

  “Does Marie have a last name?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of. Ask her shrink. He’ll be checking into the hotel soon. Do me a favor, please, and don’t let him find out about Natalie from some loose-lipped baggage handler or front desk clerk? He’s bound to notice the police presence and ask about it.”

  “We’ll do our best,” I said, just as a man came rushing in through the open door. “Too late,” I muttered under my breath as the man stood next to Barry where he lay prone on the stretcher.

  “What’s going on?” In response, Barry retched. “She’s dead. Natalie’s dead. She may have tried to kill me. You can ride along to the hospital, and I’ll tell you what I can. Or you can ask these people.” The shrink examined us warily.

  “Are you with the police?”

  “I’m Detective Jack Wheeler. This is Georgie Shaw, a representative of the organization that’s sponsoring the dance competition that brought Ms. Bucco to LA.” I could tell the shrink was ready to bolt.

  “Can you answer one question for us?” I asked. “Natalie’s old friend, Marie, who died from a drug overdose, sounds like she could be Marie Whitley. Was that her last name?” He looked horrified.

  “I don’t care who you are, I’m not going to answer a question that has anything to do with a client in my care who may have jumped to her death from a hotel balcony.”

  “You can answer her question now, or the police can ask you the same question, later,” Gary argued. “There’s also a chance your client may have been murdered.”

  “Murdered!” The expression of horror returned. “I’m going to the hospital with Barry. If the police want to conduct a formal interview, you’ll all know where to find me to arrange it.”

  “Thanks for trying,” I said as Gary stepped away and the EMTs rolled Barry Murphy out of the room.