by Dave Daren
I stopped taking notes and looked up at them. Julianna was crying now.
“Okay,” I said. “We’d have to find out who the killer really is. Do you have any idea who might want Beyo dead?”
She sniffed. “No. But there were protestors that night, and there was one lady going around throwing paint on everyone.”
“Paint?” I repeated.
She nodded. “She had buckets of green paint, and she was going around throwing it on us and yelling about covering our nakedness. That’s why the show went on late, because we were washing the paint off.”
I hadn’t noticed the show was late, but the audience was late, too, so it all worked out, I guess. I did remember encountering green paint a couple of times backstage.
“Was she dressed like a cheetah?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “She was.”
Cheetah lady. I had known that woman was bad news.
“I take it you have somewhere to stay in Sedona, then, since you were planning to move here?” I asked.
“My place,” Gabriel said. “I have a condo.”
“Alright,” I said. “We can get you released on bail, and you’ll be out in less than twenty-four hours. But then we’re going to have to go to work to find out who really killed Beyo. Or at least enough to show that you might not have killed him.”
“Then you’ll take our case?” she asked.
I smiled. “Yeah. You need me to call anybody? Get you anything?”
They looked at each other and shrugged.
“I think we’ve called everyone,” Julianna said.
“Alright,” I said. “We’ll have you out soon.” I left the visitor’s room and went to sign out. The receptionist was gone, and the lobby was empty, but I knew the drill well enough. That’s when Leonard found me.
“They’re sticking with their story, huh?” he asked as he leaned against the desk and sipped a cup of coffee. “Not guilty?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll have to prove reasonable doubt.”
“I don’t see how,” he said. “The murder weapon was clearly hers, she made a big show of buying it, and she was seen in a heated argument with him, and then she flees the scene.”
“Most of that’s circumstantial,” I said.
“So you’re buying the whole, ‘he stole my knapsack’ routine,” he said.
“I think the story deserves a fair chance,” I said.
Leonard gave me a once over. “Are you sure you’re giving this an objective viewpoint?”
I felt my blood run hot at the question. “What do you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“No, I don’t,” I said. “If there’s something you have to say, say it.”
He shrugged and sighed long and deep. “Look, I know you and Vicki got something real good going on. Everybody knows it, and when it comes to her, there’s not a man in Sedona that wouldn’t give up everything they have to be you for just one day.”
“What are you trying to say, Leonard?” I asked.
“I’m just saying, you and Julianna go way back,” he said. “Don’t fuck up what you’ve got going on because of some unfinished business that needs to stay in the past.”
“No, Leonard,” I said. “I don’t have unfinished business with Julianna. You do.”
He swallowed hard, and I could tell I hit home. His eyes flashed hard, and he shook his head. “I don’t get you, Henry. I don’t have what you have. The good looks, the charm, the smarts. And you just give it all up.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked incredulously.
“You should have stayed in L.A.,” he said, and then he turned to leave.
I made a conscious choice not to take offense at the statement. Instead, I decided to address the jealousy angle of the whole conversation. Leonard was Kermit green with envy that all those years ago, I could have gotten with Julianna and didn’t. But, for the last several months, he had been dating a charmingly moody poet named Julie, and they seemed happier every time I saw them.
“Leonard,” I said before he could go, “Don’t fuck up what you have going with Julie, because of unfinished business with Julianna. You’re happy with her. Julianna may be the one that got away. But I see the way you and Julie look at each other. You fit. Don’t let some old business from the past confuse you.”
He shrugged sheepishly but didn’t smile. “Yeah, well, it’s not my business anyway. Point taken.”
That wasn’t my point, but I’d settle for it.
He nodded, “Yeah, see you around.”
I tried to shake the encounter as I headed out to my car. I knew he was just projecting his jealousy onto his opinions about my career decisions. But it still bothered me.
People in town are saying I’m selling myself short? Was I? I thought about it on the drive back out to the office. Maybe if I were just going around trying murder cases and the like. But, I had just spent the evening with Marvin Iakova. I had met the mayor--in a group conversation at a party--but I had met her. The estate I managed has a board of six trustees, some of the most powerful men in the city and state. No, I decided. I wasn’t selling myself short at all. I was climbing city politics. In L.A., I’d just be another suit. Leonard needed to go home to his girlfriend and get over his high school crush. That was all this was.
I arrived back at the office to find AJ in the kitchenette pulling cookies out of the microwave.
“Cookies?” I raised my eyebrows at her quizzically.
“It’s dough roll,” she held up the package. “It creates ambiance and adds a welcoming smell.”
I turned to Vicki who barely looked up from her laptop. “Where’s the remote for the Stepford Wife over there?”
She laughed. “Landon.”
I smirked. Landon comes to town, and my investigator turns into Suzy Homemaker. This is as good a case as any for the abolition of summer break.
She brought me a small paper plate with hot chocolate chip cookies.
“They’re good. Try them.”
I picked one up, took a bite, and had to admit she was right.
“They are good,” I said. “Hard to imagine they came from a roll.”
Vicki had a plate of her own, and she asked me around bites, “How did it go with Julianna?”
“Oh, yeah,” AJ said. “Vicki’s filled me in on that.”
“She wants to plead not guilty,” I said. “They want to charge her with homicide, and her boyfriend Gabriel with aiding and abetting.”
“She’s got a boyfriend?” Vicki’s tone indicated she was glad to hear that.
I made a face. After the conversation I just had with Leonard, the insinuation bothered me.
“Yes,” I said, an edge to my voice. “His name is Gabriel Montego. She claims she wanted to leave the dance troupe, and she was going to run off in the middle of the night with him. That had been her plan for months to leave that night, so that’s what she did. She had no idea there was a murder in her absence.”
“What about the murder weapon?” AJ asked.
“Allegedly Beowulf tried to stop her, and he took her bag and locked it away in the dressing room to keep her from running away,” I told her. “He thought it had her wallet and money. Turns out, it mainly just had the dagger which she had bought for Gabriel. So, she ditched the bag and ran off with him anyway.”
“Well, why would he try so hard to stop her from leaving?” Vicki asked.
I smiled. “That’s the thing. They were all lovers. All of them.”
Vicki and AJ both smiled in shock.
“Oh. My. God,” Vicki said. “These people, Henry, where do you find these people?”
“They find me!” I protested. “I’ll just be minding my own business, and they show up with their dead bodies and pet tigers.” I was referring to our last big case that had to do with a dead copper mogul that lived in a mansion with his pet tigers and his two girlfriends.
“It makes the O’Briens look normal now,
” AJ muttered.
“Eh,” Vicki said. “Nothing about tigers is normal.”
“True,” AJ said. “Okay, so these freaky-deak-kinky naked dancers somehow couldn’t leave the group?”
“Well,” I said, “They could. But, it’s quitting your job and breaking up with four people all at the same time. Not an easy feat.”
“So, he tries to stop her because he’s in love with her,” Vicki said.
“Presumably,” I said. “But I got the feeling that it’s less love, and more lust and control.”
“It’s an emotionally abusive five way relationship,” AJ said.
“Yeah,” Vicki agreed. “That’s why she wanted to leave.”
“And why she ran off without telling anyone,” I said. “And left her bag with an expensive dagger.”
“Then who would want him dead?” AJ asked.
“Well,” I said. “That’s what we’ve got to find out. There was a protester that night that Vicki and I ran into. She was dressed like a cheetah. Apparently she slipped backstage and was throwing paint on everyone. She had motive, opportunity, and if the dagger was backstage, she could have grabbed it.”
“But why would she have gone through a bag to find a murder weapon?” AJ asked.
“That’s a good question,” I said. “But right now, she’s our biggest suspect.”
“Who is this woman?” AJ asked.
“We’ll have to find out her name,” I said. “It shouldn’t be hard. I’m sure Marvin could track it down pretty fast.”
It occurred to me at that moment Marvin had probably hired her in the first place, for everything. Ratings, after all. I realized then, that could have stumbled into a scandal that brings down one of the most powerful men in the state.
Chapter 5
It took a couple of days for Julianna and Gabriel to post bail, mainly because Julianna had to track down her mother, who lived in a penthouse in Tucson.
Zondra Spencer-Redding was on her eighth marriage, if I wasn’t mistaken. Julianna’s dad had been her third. She had been a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader in the early 1990s, and he was an engineering nerd before being a nerd was cool. All it took was the mere fact that a hot girl even so much as spoke to him, and he was all but ready to put a ring on it. They were divorced before Julianna was born. Or so I was told.
The mother and daughter duo moved to Sedona at the behest of the fourth husband, a free spirited Zen hippie who thought the healing vortexes would be a way to cleanse out the spirit of the ex-husband or something of that nature. I met him a couple of times, and even I knew the marriage was doomed, and I was only eight at the time. God only knew where the poor chap was now, and what Zondra had done to his head.
Now she lived high off the collective wealth of her marital conquests, and she arrived to our office in a green Jaguar that she parked illegally in front of the door.
“Oh, my gawd,” her thick Texas drawl filled the room. “What have y’all done with her?”
“Hello, Zondra,” I said. “Good to see you after all these years.”
She was definitely attractive, but I don’t know what was bigger, the fingernails or the hair. She had her platinum blond extensions teased out to about three to four inches from all sides of her head, including the top. She had rhinestone studded acrylic fingernails in maroon that were so long they curved at the ends. Not that anyone would have noticed with the vault of bling adorning her fingers and wrists. She wore a simple black dress, but her face was caked in cosmetics, and between that and the Botox, she looked a good twenty years younger than I knew she was.
“Lordy, Lordy,” she approached me and shook my hand. “Henry Irving, you grown up all nice and pretty.”
I smiled faintly. I was beginning to tire of the whole, wee-little-tike-all-grown-up routine I was getting from all sides these days. I guess that was my punishment for leaving town at eighteen and not bothering to show back up for another ten years.
“What can we do for you, Zondra?” I asked.
She took a seat in front of my desk and crossed her legs primly. “How the hell do we get her out of this bullshit mess?”
“So has she been released on bail yet?” I asked.
She nodded. “I bailed them out this morning. Now, how do we stop this ridiculous shit show of legal charges?”
“Well,” I said. “Right now, she’s been charged with manslaughter, and he’s been charged with aiding and abetting.”
“Oh, god,” she fanned her face with her hands as if hearing the charges gave her vapors. I half wondered where I would find sniffing salts. “What do we do now?”
“They’ll have an arraignment here in a couple of weeks,” I said, “and they’ve indicated they want to both plead not guilty.”
“Damn right, they’re not guilty!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know what kinda kool aid the people in this town are drinking that they think a five foot three former cheerleader that volunteered at the animal shelter is a cold-blooded killer.”
I didn’t bring up the point that working at an animal shelter required a fair amount of cold blooded killing in itself.
“In the meantime,” I began, “we’ll work on finding Beowulf’s real killer.”
“I know who it was,” she said.
“Who?” I was curious, but not convinced.
“It was that ex-wife from Manhattan,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Was she in town that night?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, she hired a hitman,” she explained.
“And how do you know this?” I replied.
“I had my psychic do a reading,” she stated.
“Your psychic?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Would you go into a murder case without one?”
“So the psychic said the ex-wife hired a hitman?” I asked.
“I met the ex-wife once,” she continued, “the psychic described her and said that there was an exchange of goods for his demise. Her name is Evelyn Dubois.”
She pulled a sticky pad out of her purse and scrawled down a number from her phone. She handed me the sticky, in the shape of a glittery pink ‘Z.” Of course, what other kind of sticky would Zondra Spencer-Redding own?
“This is her name and number,” she said. “Don’t ask me how I got it, but I had a nice long chat with her about Beowulf, and I got her address to send her a gift basket. Charming woman. Too bad she’ll go to jail.”
I stared at the sticky. “And what motive would Evelyn DuBois have for killing her ex-husband?”
“Oh,” she said, “it’s on account of the app.”
“The app?” I asked.
“They created it when they were married. It’s a ghost locator.”
“A ghost locator?” I asked.
“Yeah,” her tone was matter-of-fact. “It lets you know when there are ghosts around.”
“I guess that’s what a ghost locator app would do,” I said. “And how did said business venture contribute to Beowulf’s demise?”
“The ghost in her house kept stealing her stuff.” She shook her head and sighed, “And the app told her it was him. He was haunting her. So she called him up and told him to stop haunting her.”
“As she well should,” I said.
“But, he wouldn’t stop,” she shook her head with disappointment. “And I guess she just one day decided she had had enough.”
“So she killed him because he haunted her?” I asked. “I thought you were going to say it had to do with money.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “She killed him because he was ghosting her.”
“That’s not what that phrase means,” I said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Nevermind,” I said. “How do you know this?”
“I told you already.” Her tone had become frustrated. “I called her after my psychic told me she had hired a hitman.”
“Did the psychic tell you who the hitman is?” I asked.
“No, silly,” she laughed. “
Psychics don’t do that.”
“No,” I agreed. “That would be preposterous.”
“Now,” she said, “I’ve solved the murder. All you have to do is reel it in. See how easy I made it for you?”
“I see that,” I said.
She winked and headed out the door. After she left, I sat down in my chair, and the three of us laughed.
“Ghost hunting,” I said. “Sometimes I love this job.”
“Twenty bucks says we’ll end up ghost hunting by the end of the year,” Vicki said.
I shot her a look. “No bet.”
I shoved the ex-wife’s name into a drawer. Something told me I would need it. Maybe it was the ghosts.
Not long after Zondra the psychic ghost lady left, AJ announced she found the cheetah lady on Facebook.
“Her name is Judith Klein,” she said. “She runs the local chapter of Ms. Avengers.”
“Ms. Avengers?” Vicki said. “Could they have come up with a dumber name?”
“You haven’t even seen the best part,” she said. “See?”
She flashed Vicki and I her phone screen.
“They’re all dressed up like the Avengers,” AJ said.
There they were, in superhero outfits and hardcore expressions. One lady even had a Thor hammer.
“Well,” I said, “That’s how to get the world to take you seriously.”
“What do you mean?” Vicki laughed. “Nothing says ‘don’t mess with me’ like Thor.”
“I can’t argue that,” I said.
“I’ve got a call in to Judith Klein, we’ll set an interview this week,” she said.
I nodded. “Where are we on the immigration case with Elena?”
“It’s going to be a tough one,” Vicki said. “You’re supposed to file for asylum within one year of entering the country, and she did, but her application was rejected because she said there was some problem with her mail, and she didn’t get the notice to attend an appointment. And she didn’t really understand how to appeal on her own, and she couldn’t afford a lawyer. So, the whole thing is a mess.”