O’Neal stepped in then. “All right. All right. I think that’s good. Thank you, Jed. Thanks for coming over here and putting a few lights on this for us.”
I was listening to O’Neal but keeping my eyes locked on Crashaw’s, half expecting him to try taking a swipe at me. He didn’t, just stared back. Finally, I looked away, not really minding that it meant I was the one to blink first. Turning my gaze on O’Neal, I nodded and said, “You’re welcome.”
“Come on,” she said. “I think we’ve bothered you all we need to.”
I followed her out of the house, and it was only after I was outside that I remembered I didn’t have a car with me. There was no way the cops were going to let me use the dead woman’s phone to call for a cab, so I was going to have to hoof it out of the neighborhood and back to Wilshire before I could find a phonebooth.
O’Neal didn’t seem to notice my predicament. She simply led me through the maze of officers who were milling around on the lawn, waiting to be told what to do by the higher-ups.
“What’s with your new partner?” I asked. “You really can pick ‘em, you know?”
That last was a jab at the late Detective Miller, who’d just about taken me out of the game when I’d first gotten to California. He’d ended up taking a lot from me anyhow, more than I figured I could ever get back. I’d killed a lot of men in the war, all of them enemies bent on doing the same to me. Miller was the only man I’d ever been glad to have shot.
O’Neal ignored the comment. She stopped at the curb and pulled a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket, offering one to me. I declined. As she lit up and blew a cloud of blue smoke into the air above our heads, she said, “I’ll be here all day canvasing.”
“Yeah?”
I didn’t know why she was saying the obvious.
“You sure there’s nothing you left out in there? Anything else that might make my job a little easier here?”
I thought about it for a moment and then said, “Yeah. There’s nothing else.”
She nodded. “What about your friend? The, uh, mechanical.”
“Carmelita? What about her?”
“She know you were supposed to meet with Mercy Attentater?”
I didn’t like where this was going. “Why would she care?” I asked.
“Did she know, or didn’t she?”
With a raised eyebrow and deliberately unraised voice, I said, “Yeah. She knew. She was there when I got the call.”
“And yet you were alone for the nap that followed?”
“Yes.” I didn’t want to say the next thing because I knew O’Neal would skewer me for it at a later date. But I went ahead and said it anyway. “I sent Carmelita out on another case.”
“And that was?”
“A surveillance job in Hollywood, off of Franklin. I think there’s some other activity from your colleagues going on up there that I’d like to keep Carmelita out of, if you know what I mean.”
She ignored that. “What are the chances she knew the deceased’s address?”
“Wait,” I said. “Are you saying you think she did this?” I pointed back to the house, and now I wanted one of O’Neal’s cigarettes.
“I don’t know,” O’Neal said. She tilted her head toward the house. “I didn’t want to say anything in there. Wanted to give you a chance to think things through without Crashaw leaning on you.” She blew smoke into the air. “So, what do you think? Would Carmelita have known the address?”
“It’s possible,” I said although I knew that wasn’t the truth. Carmelita had heard me repeat Mercy’s address when I’d been on the phone and had seen the address when she’d written the number to Guillermo’s portable phone on the same tablet.
“How so?”
I shrugged. “I wrote the address down before Mercy said she was coming to my office. Carmelita might have heard it.”
“And then she left your office right away?”
“Are you asking if she had the opportunity to kill that woman?”
“I am.”
Astounded, I said, “Technically speaking, I suppose so. But wouldn’t tens of thousands of other people have had the opportunity, too? It’s a big city, after all.”
“Are you calling her a person, Jed?”
“It doesn’t matter what I call her. What would have been her motive?”
“She the jealous type?”
“Jealous?” I echoed, incredulous.
“Sure. Is she a little possessive of you? Her guardian angel?”
“That’s ridiculous,” I managed to say even as I recalled the way Guillermo had explained that Carmelita’s brain had essentially taught itself to think after his initial programming of it. I had seen more than once that she had learned not just to think but also to feel, and although jealousy wasn’t anything I’d seen her exhibit, I knew it wasn’t out of the question. All of this made me wonder if jealousy hadn’t been at the heart of the angry display I’d encountered while crossed over. Had the Jed Strait in that world made his robot assistant jealous? And, maybe the more pressing question now: had I somehow managed to do the same thing?
O’Neal nodded and drew on the cigarette again. “Have it your way,” she said as she exhaled. Then she nodded back toward the house one more time. “Won’t know for certain until the Coroner does her thing, but it looks to me like a strangulation. Something tells me your Carmelita might not know her own strength. She have a temper, Jed?”
Again, it was impossible not to recall the sight of her coming at me, murder in those mechanical eyes. That, and the way she’d fought back against Detective Miller when he’d tried—and eventually succeeded—in abducting her last year.
Still, all circumstantial evidence to the contrary, this whole idea of O’Neal’s was ridiculous. I had only to consider the eagerness with which Carmelita had lobbied for a promotion to know that there was nothing sinister going on, no hidden agendas or motives, no reason to kill Mercy Attentater. Maybe in another world, maybe in dealing with another Jed Strait who’d messed things up or put Carmelita in danger or forgotten the intricacies of her programming, but not here. At least, I didn’t think so.
“What are you thinking, Strait?” O’Neal asked.
“I’m thinking you’re barking at the wrong cat, Detective,” I said despite my worries. “I’m sorry, but you are. Guillermo re-programmed Carmelita more than a month ago.” This was entirely untrue, but I figured O’Neal would buy it, as it had been something she had suggested Guillermo do when she’d first learned about Carmelita’s true identity. Guillermo had not only been hesitant to invade Carmelita’s brain and change her personality without her awareness or consent, but he also lacked the know-how; by now, Carmelita’s internal learning process had advanced far beyond anything Guillermo could have come up with on his own, and it had evolved so much since he had first lost her and then found her again that he probably couldn’t have forced a return to some older, more docile version of Carmelita’s personality even if he had wanted to.
O’Neal raised an eyebrow at this information. Then she proceeded to suck the life out of her cigarette. “That so?” she asked.
I didn’t hesitate to answer. “That’s so.”
“All right then. For now. I’m not going to cross her off my list of possibles, though, Jed.”
“Fine. Just don’t stop there. Consider all the options, huh?”
“Of course. I’m a detective, aren’t I? Considering the angles is what I do.”
That makes two of us, I thought. And now I had a lot more angles to consider than I’d had an hour ago.
Chapter Six
O’Neal snuffed her cigarette butt on the green lawn that grew next to the curb and headed back to the investigation, leaving me to walk the short distance back to Wilshire. If she’d noticed that I was there without a car, she didn’t bother offering me a lift or access to Mercy’s phone so I could call for a cab. I doubt she noticed, though. Her mind was elsewhere, and I guessed that among all the wheels spinning in
her mind—wheels that included the murder scene and Carmelita and everything else the clues inside the house might be pointing toward—one of those wheels had something to do with managing the temperament of her new partner. That was why she’d walked me outside to broach the subject of Carmelita’s motives.
I didn’t mind the walk. It wasn’t that far, and it gave me a few minutes of quiet so I could think things through. Despite the insistence with which I’d tried to press upon Carmelita the need to work cases only for which we were getting paid, I now had a strong motivation to run my own investigation into the murder of Mercy Attentater. Though O’Neal hadn’t said so, I knew I wasn’t officially crossed off the list of suspects; she might not have wanted to put me on it, but Crashaw was another story. I wasn’t worried about having my neck in the noose on this one, but I would still feel better knowing I was completely cleared.
And then there was Carmelita. As much as one can owe a machine, I felt that I owed it to her to clear her name; I also owed it to Guillermo. Sure, it was possible there was some link between Mercy and Carmelita, maybe even connected to my vision in the High Note, but I felt strongly that that wasn’t the case. Whatever had caused that bullet hole and crazy-eyed attack in another world, it was hard for me to believe that the Carmelita of this world would have sought out and killed a woman just because she’d made an appointment to engage my services. And, if it turned out I was wrong, then I had bigger problems than being in the wrong world, problems that were going to be solved only by digging into a case I wasn’t going to get paid for.
Once I got to Wilshire, I spotted a coffee shop about half a block away, so I headed there and found a phonebooth in the lobby. Its walls were frosted glass, which I didn’t like, as the glass kept me from being able to see who was around even as I guarded my privacy; I wasn’t really concerned about privacy or about being waylaid in the lobby of a coffee shop, but having spent the better part of the last several years trying to avoid getting shot at made me a little jumpy in any situation where I didn’t feel I had the complete lay of the land. Even so, I closed the door and dropped a nickel into the slot.
I tried the office first, figuring that’s where Peggy probably would have brought Carmelita if she’d been successful in getting her away from whatever was happening outside of Ginny Flynn’s. There was no answer. I tried Peggy’s house next and then my own. No answer in either place.
The steady parade of unanswered rings was making me nervous. I considered calling Guillermo’s house but held off. That would just make the old man nervous, and I saw no point in that. I had one more thing to try first. Feeling like it was a longshot, I called the number to the portable phone.
Carmelita picked up on the second ring. “Hello?” she said.
The static and background noise weren’t as formidable as the first time I’d been contacted with that phone.
“It’s Jed,” I said, speaking more loudly than I was comfortable with in a public place, but I knew the frosted glass would muffle most of what I said if anyone was standing near enough to the phonebooth to hear me. “Are you all right?”
There was a moment’s delay, and then Carmelita said, “Yes. We’re fine.”
“Does that mean Peggy’s with you?”
“I don’t know about Peggy’s issue.”
“Is she with you?”
Hesitation, and then she said, “Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“Driving.”
“Driving where?”
“Heading back to the office.”
“Good. Were you able to get out of there without a lot of attention?”
“There was no contention.”
“No, no. Attention.” I dropped my voice a little lower. “From the police.”
“I don’t think they noticed us at all.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“I had to leave your car.”
“Why?”
“Long story.”
“All right. Ask Peggy if she can give me a ride back to get it.”
I could hear a muffled noise that I assumed was Carmelita relaying my request. When she came back on the line, she said, “Peggy says that’s fine.”
“Good. Now why don’t you ask her to just take you to our house instead of the office? I want to shut things down for today.”
There was no hesitation now, and no muffled speech. Instead, Carmelita quickly replied, “No, Jed. I want to go back to the office. There’s…I have to do.”
I cursed and almost asked to have her put Peggy on the line, but then I pictured Peggy struggling with Guillermo’s phone while trying to drive and thought better of it. My luck had probably already been pushed beyond the limits of reason for one day, having dodged trouble with the cops a couple of times. Trying to explain what had caused Peggy to have a car accident to a suspicious officer would not make the day run any smoother. “Fine” I said. “I’ll be at the office as soon as possible.”
As soon as I heard the line click, I tapped the cradle to get a new dial tone. Then I popped another nickel into the slot and called a cab.
* * * * *
I paid the driver and headed up the stairs to our office. When I got there, I found Peggy at her desk doing a crossword and Carmelita in the inner office with the door closed. I decided to leave it that way.
“How is she?” I asked Peggy.
My secretary looked up from the crossword and gave me an eyeroll. Then she said, “She’s okay, considering.”
“What happened?”
“Well I got to the street where the Flynn woman’s house is and found it blocked off by a police cruiser. When I drove around the block to try to come at it from above, that way was blocked off, too. I parked for a sec and could see your car parked halfway down the block, and I figured Carmelita was still sitting in there. Lots of cops were milling around.”
“So, how’d you get her out of there?”
“I should bill you for hazard pay, Jed.”
“What did you do?”
“I parked on the next street over in front of a house where there weren’t any cars parked. And I took my chances. I’ll tell you what—it’s a good thing there were no dogs.”
“You cut through the backyard?”
“I did. There was an unlocked gate, so I went through, and the only thing separating that yard from the next was a little wooden fence.”
“How little?”
She shrugged. “About five feet, I suppose.”
“In that outfit,” I said, nodding toward her to indicate I was aware of the green dress she was wearing.
“In this outfit. It wasn’t the most ladylike endeavor, I can tell you. But I made it over and through the next yard. If anyone was home, they weren’t in the house, so they missed a good show as I climbed over. I made it through another gate and out to the street. The whole neighborhood was out on the sidewalk, gawking. I squeezed through the crowd and went straight up to your car, hopped in and told Carmelita we were getting out of there.”
“Back the same way?”
“You kidding me? I didn’t think that fence would take kindly to Carmelita climbing it. That girl’s more solid than she looks, right?”
I smiled at this. Peggy knew about Carmelita’s true nature and was a huge help to me in keeping Carmelita in the dark about her absent humanity. “So, what did you do?”
“I walked her down to the end of the street. We waited for a car to come along and distract the cop in the cruiser and then we high stepped it around the corner and through an opening in a hedge. Then all we had to do was keep going ‘til we got all the way around the block and back to where I’d parked. The toughest part really was gathering up that length of wire she had spread out all through the inside of your car. Like to strangle a person, you know?”
“Yes,” I said. “I can imagine.”
“The first thing she wanted to do when we got going was to unspool it again in case you called. Which you did, of course. She looked pretty smug when t
hat little phone rang, I can tell you.”
“Okay. Thanks for getting her out of there. Did you find out what was happening at the Flynn house?”
“Not exactly. Carmelita said she was sitting in the car and watching the street when Flynn came home. She parks in the garage and goes in through the back porch. Then Carmelita hears screams. I think she was a bit paralyzed there in the car, but it’s not five minutes later that the first black and white shows up. From the chatter I picked up cutting through the crowd, the rumor is Flynn found a dead man inside her house.”
“Mullen Peale?” I asked.
Peggy shrugged. “No idea.”
I let out a long breath.
“All right. I’ll go talk to Carmelita. Then, can you take me back to my car?”
“Sure thing.”
I left Peggy in the reception area and entered the inner office. Carmelita was writing something on a tablet and barely glanced at me when I walked in.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Right as ribbon,” she said as she fully made eye contact with me and gave me a smile that looked about as genuine as any other smile I got out of her—which is to say that it didn’t look quite human, but that was only because I knew what to look for.
“Sounds like you were in a bit of a tight spot. The cops never came over to talk to you?”
“No. I had a story worked out ahead of time in case they decided to, though.”
I didn’t bother asking what the story was even though I guessed she was dying to share it with me. “You ready to head home?” I asked instead.
The smile faded just a little. “No, Jed. I’m not ready. I’ve got work to do.”
“Like?”
“Like putting the pieces of this thing together. You gave me three days to solve this thing, and I’m going to do it.”
I nodded. “And what if that was Mullen Peale’s body they found in Ginny Flynn’s house? Case closed, right?”
“It wasn’t Peale.”
“How do you know?”
She tapped the tablet she’d been writing on. “I’ve got a contact at the Record. She just told me that—”
The Double-Time Slide: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 2) Page 7