A Star is Dead

by Elaine Viets

  I finally decided she didn’t. Someone connected with Jessica gave her that money and scribbled that phone number on it. The question was, why?

  I felt the walls closing in on me. Restless and hungry, I left home and stopped at a local lunch spot for a quick chicken sandwich, and nearly lost my appetite when the waitress said, ‘That comes with a side of fried potatoes.’ She didn’t understand my vehement refusal, but reassured me I could have fresh fruit instead.

  It was about four o’clock when I finished lunch. I wandered over to the ME’s office at SOS. Katie was writing up Thomas Murphy’s autopsy report, angrily pounding the keys on her computer.

  ‘Finished with Tom Murphy?’ I asked.

  She nodded. She had on a fresh lab coat over one of her practical brown suits. A cup of coffee that looked like crankcase oil was next to her.

  ‘What did you find?’ I asked.

  ‘That poor bastard.’ She shook her head. ‘His wife nearly pounded his head flat with that frying pan.’

  I winced, and a picture of Tom Murphy’s battered, bloodstained head flashed in my mind. It would be a long time before I forgot his death.

  ‘She must have hit him at least twenty times with that cast-iron skillet,’ Katie said. ‘He put up his hands to protect himself, and she burned them with hot grease, then she cold-cocked him and kept hitting him. Nearly crushed his head. He bled out. It was overkill, plain and simple.’

  ‘He had other bruises, too,’ I said. ‘Old ones.’

  ‘I saw. She tortured that poor man. He was burned and bruised front and back. That big bruise you noted in your report injured his liver.’

  ‘Tara Murphy claimed he was high on oxycodone,’ I said.

  ‘The hell he was!’ Katie said, fire in her eyes. ‘We checked his urine. Oxy is detectable in a urine test for three to four days, and his was clean. Clean! So was his blood – oxy stays in the blood for about twenty-four hours. Not a trace.’

  ‘What about his hair?’ I asked.

  ‘Oxy can be detected with a hair follicle drug test for up to ninety days. We don’t have those results back on that test yet, but his blood and urine were negative, so he was clean for three days. She can’t use that excuse.’

  ‘His wife said he was addicted.’

  ‘If he was, he had a good excuse – whoever did the surgery on his broken arm botched the job. He must have been in constant pain, along with having the wife from hell. What a life.’

  ‘Is Jace going to arrest her?’

  ‘Already has. I hope they throw the book at her.’

  ‘I’ve never come across a man’s domestic violence death before,’ I said.

  ‘I have,’ she said. ‘Happens more than you think. About 830,000 men a year are victims of domestic violence. Women are almost twice as likely as men to get beat up, but men are more afraid to admit it. They’re ashamed.’

  ‘Of being hit?’ I said.

  ‘Society expects a man to control his wife,’ Katie said. ‘Men are wimps if their wives beat them up. And this guy was what – a construction worker?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I rest my case. He tried to take it like a man. That’s what guys do.’ Katie took a sip of the coffee, winced and tossed it in her trash can. ‘So what’s going on with the case you’re not supposed to be investigating, Angela?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m stalled. I’m trying to have lunch with Will, Jessica’s make-up artist. And I want to track down Suzy, the homeless woman who was at the Du Pres’s party that night.’

  ‘Ever figure out what Becky’s jingle meant: It’s not the red – it’s the blue?’

  ‘No,’ I said. And I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind that I was overlooking something.

  Something that was the key to the whole case.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The next morning was frighteningly warm for February. The temperature shot up to almost eighty degrees. I was in St Louis searching the hot concrete canyons around the Lux Theater. I checked smelly alleys, stinking dumpsters, and any cardboard container bigger than a breadbox. I was hunting for Suzy, the homeless woman who’d been on-stage with Becky the night of Jessica’s last performance.

  Panhandling was increasing in the city, mostly because that’s where the homeless shelters are. Beggars are slowly spreading out west toward the rich county areas, panhandling at the highway exits. So far, Harold Galloway was the only one who’d reached the enchanted environs of Chouteau County, and he paid for that with his life.

  Near the Lux Theater, I saw lots of homeless people with their hands out, but none were Suzy.

  I wondered how she’d felt after she’d been mocked on-stage that awful night at the Lux. Suzy looked dazed as she was pushed out into the limelight in her ragged clothes. She wore two dresses – a once-white summer dress over a dirty beige wool number with a dragging hem, and a gray Salvation Army blanket for a coat. Suzy was toothless, with urine stains on her clothes. She paraded around, carrying a bottle of Rosie O’Grady wine, while the crowd laughed and hooted. Then she flopped down and swigged the wine on-stage. The well-dressed, well-fed audience applauded, damn their shriveled souls.

  Suzy didn’t seem as tough as Becky. Suzy was easy to bully. At Reggie Du Pres’s party, Suzy had let the old man talk her into having a hot dinner and a shower in his pool house. He hid that smelly, unwanted guest, and Suzy never complained. Becky was tougher. She’d refused Reggie’s ‘kind offer’ to stash her in the pool house. She’d defied the formidable old man and paraded her unwashed self around the Forest’s upper crust, eating choice delicacies from the buffet.

  Now Becky was dead and I had to find Suzy. I needed to solve Jessica’s murder and free my friend Mario. Suzy might know what Becky’s odd, taunting jingle meant: It’s not the red – it’s the blue. Breakfast is on you.

  The red what? Why was Becky killed before I could buy her breakfast? What did she know? Why didn’t she just tell me?

  Now Suzy had disappeared. Was she hiding after Becky’s sudden death? Was she afraid someone was stalking the bedraggled stars of Jessica’s show?

  By noon, there were hordes of panhandlers out on this unseasonably warm day, trying to shake down wary workers. Most of the suits kept their eyes fixed on the sidewalk. They’d all been warned not to give money to panhandlers. Some office types crossed the street to avoid the more aggressive panhandlers.

  A block from the Lux, a disheveled black woman in a long gray dress and black winter coat stopped a fifty-something white man in a dark suit. She was drinking a bottle of something in a brown paper bag, and from the way she was weaving down the sidewalk, I didn’t think it was water.

  ‘Change, mistah?’ she asked. Actually, it was an angry demand.

  Her target kept his eyes down and mumbled, ‘Sorry,’ as he sidled by her.

  The woman roared at him, ‘You’re a racist!’

  He took two more steps, then whirled around and blasted the woman. ‘I don’t care what color you are!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t give money to inappropriate users! How dare you call me a racist! You don’t even know me!’

  ‘Bastard!’ she said. But quietly, under her breath. The man stomped down Olive Street, his pale face red with fury.

  Too bad. They were both right. The businessman probably wasn’t racist – he just wanted to walk down the street without being accosted. And the woman was probably trapped. Nearby St Louis University was growing like a cancer, but when the school tore down or took over the old buildings to expand, no provisions were made for the homeless people who haunted the area. There weren’t enough beds in the shelters – or programs to help the homeless. Panhandling was dangerous work, especially for the homeless. They were robbed, beaten, even set on fire. People shook their heads when they read the news stories about their deaths, but too many secretly thought, ‘One less. Maybe now they’ll go away.’

  I was about to wrap up my search and come back tonight when I saw a woman rolling a shopping cart down the sidewalk. The cart zigzagged
and nearly sideswiped a lamp post. The woman looked familiar. I recognized the baseball cap, black hoodie and green army jacket. Where had I seen her?

  I hoped she was Suzy, but as I got closer, I saw those haunted eyes. Then I knew: this wasn’t Suzy. It was Jessica’s third ‘model,’ the one who’d warily circled the stage with her cart, as if she feared Jessica would steal her trash-bagged treasures. She’d been too afraid to abandon her shopping cart to go to the Du Pres party that night. What was her name? Diana? Debbie? No, Denise. That was it.

  I called, ‘Denise! Denise!’

  She stared at me, then made a U-ee with her cart and took off in the other direction.

  I fished a twenty out of my purse and called ‘Denise!’ again, waving the twenty-dollar bill. ‘Denise, wait!’ She glanced over her shoulder, as if the devil were pursuing her, then saw the money and slowed down. Meanwhile, the other panhandlers were closing in on me, grabbing for the twenty. I shoved it in my pocket and tried to outpace the hungry horde.

  ‘Denise!’ I called again. Now she turned around and came my way.

  ‘Is that for me?’ she asked, her voice tentative, her eyes lit with a strange fire. ‘Can I have the money?’

  ‘If you’ll answer some questions,’ I said, dodging a large woman in an orange muumuu.

  ‘Can’t talk here,’ Denise said. ‘Follow me.’

  She turned off into an alley near a parking lot. The pan-handlers stayed on North Grand Boulevard, where the prospects were better.

  I followed Denise down the alley for about a block. We passed a dumpster and she parked the shopping cart next to it, then took a seat on the rusty iron stairs at the back of a tall redbrick building. I was going to sit next to her, but as I got closer, her unwashed odor was overpowering. I leaned against the cart. She eyed me uneasily. I backed away from her belongings.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked. Her face was gaunt and yellow, her body lean and ropy, her eyes bright with suspicion.

  ‘I’m looking for Suzy.’

  Denise crooked her pinkie, mimicking a piss-elegant woman. ‘Her ladyship don’t bother with the likes of us no more.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She has a room at the Hoffstedder,’ Denise said in a mock-English voice. ‘She’s too good to panhandle. Now she’s an entrepreneur.’

  ‘What’s she do?’

  ‘She sells cold water to the afternoon rush hour traffic. Buys herself a case of bottled water at the liquor store for six bucks. Humph! The likes of her buying water! Never touched the stuff before. Fills a bucket with ice, and hauls it all down to the Highway 40 exit. Sells each bottle for a buck apiece between four and six every afternoon. Sells out the whole case nearly every day.’

  ‘And she makes money that way?’

  ‘Fifteen to twenty dollars a day. Now that she’s making money, she says she’s going to expand to the Lux crowd on warm nights. Or so I’ve heard. She’s too good to associate with us now. I asked her for five dollars for food and she told me no.’

  ‘Where did Suzy get a bucket for the ice?’

  ‘Found it in the alley. Next thing we know, she’s living at the Hoffstedder. Wearing nice clothes, too. And don’t ask me where she got that money. All I know is she suddenly has plenty of money, got herself a hotel room and began selling water. She doesn’t have a permit, either. The police are going to put a stop to that.’ I could hear the satisfaction in her voice.

  I gave Denise the twenty, thanked her, and headed for my car. Suzy had almost four hours before she started her next round of sales near the highway exit. Maybe I could catch her at the Hoffstedder.

  I found a parking spot near the old hotel, and noticed a new trendy farm-to-table restaurant across the street. It wouldn’t be long before this SRO hotel would be gentrified, and then where would the marginal people like Suzy live?

  Inside, the elegant woman behind the Hoffstedder’s front desk said Suzy was in 512, a suite on the fifth floor.

  A suite? She did have money.

  I took the stairs rather than brave the slow, groaning elevator, and tried to ignore the stink of disinfectant and urine in the staircase. Suite 512 still had its original brass plaque on the door. I knocked, and thought that I saw a shadow at the peephole.

  ‘Suzy, it’s me,’ I said. ‘Angela Richman, from Chouteau Forest.’

  She opened the door with a smile.

  I was stunned. Suzy was a changed woman: she was clean, her mousy hair was washed and permed, and she wore a freshly washed purple polyester pantsuit and a necklace. Her shoes were new black Nikes. Suzy bore no resemblance to the drunk who’d paraded across the stage.

  ‘I remember you,’ she said. ‘You were at the party with Jessica.’

  ‘Yes. You look terrific.’

  She gave me a toothless smile. ‘What do you think of my room?’

  Her pride was obvious. The sagging bed had a puffy new blue spread and pillow shams, the chest of drawers was polished, and the curtains opened onto the midtown cityscape. I saw fresh flowers on the coffee table, along with two new hardback mysteries and the latest Vanity Fair. The room’s worn gray carpet was covered with a large flowered area rug. To the left was a small galley kitchen. A loaf of bread and half a sliced ham were on the counter, along with a basket of fruit. Suzy had come into money. Major money.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘I love your view.’

  ‘I’m working now. I sell water.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said.

  ‘I go to AA meetings at the church,’ she said. ‘I’m going to turn my life around.’

  ‘I can tell you’re on your way. I’m hoping you can help me. It’s about Becky.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Suzy said, and instantly looked sad.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘I was supposed to meet her for breakfast. I’m the one who discovered her body. The day before she died, Becky told me, “It’s not the red – it’s the blue. Breakfast is on you. Ten o’clock. The St Louis Pancake House. You’re buying.” Do you know what that means?’

  Suzy looked thoughtful. ‘Becky really, really liked the Pancake House.’

  Was Suzy being deliberately obtuse? ‘What did she mean by “It’s not the red – it’s the blue”? I feel that’s a clue,’ I said.

  ‘You’re rhyming, too,’ Suzy said, and giggled.

  ‘I know that, but I’m serious, Suzy. Please help me.’

  She looked at her watch, a square-faced Kate Spade. Where did she get the money for a designer watch?

  ‘Oops. Time for me to go to work,’ she said. ‘I have to leave.’

  ‘Then you won’t help me?’

  ‘I’m sorry about Becky,’ she said. ‘We all are – but I don’t know anything.’

  She stood up, and I followed her to the door. She turned for a moment, and I caught a glimpse of her necklace, before it disappeared inside her purple pantsuit.

  It looked familiar. I wished I knew why.

  I left knowing nothing new – except that for some reason, Suzy was lying.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Mario looked awful. I saw him at the Chouteau County jail, after my useless interview with Suzy. Either Mario was wearing an orange jumpsuit three sizes too big, or he’d lost weight in the last few days. His normally thick, shiny black hair looked thin and dirty. Worse, he had a black eye going from sunset purple to sickly yellow-green. If his eye hurt as bad as it looked, he was in serious pain.

  Men awaiting trial were kept at the Chouteau County jail. The building was fairly new, and on the outside it looked like a junior college, if students went to school behind razor wire. Inside, the building scared the heck out of me – the foul air, the inmates’ weird cries, and the grim gray walls.

  I stashed my purse and cell phone in a locker and was directed to a small booth with a Plexiglas barrier and a phone. Mario and I both picked up our phones. I was the first to talk.

  ‘Mario! What happened to your eye?’

  ‘Some idiot thought I was Mexican
and told me to go back to my own country,’ he said. ‘I told him this was my country – I’m a US citizen. Then I said, “You’re so stupid you don’t know the difference between a Cuban and a Mexican.” After that, things got nasty.’

  ‘Your eye looks painful,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘It is nothing. You should see him.’ He tried a wobbly smile.

  I didn’t smile back. ‘Did you get in trouble for fighting?’

  ‘No. At least everyone leaves me alone now.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be. It is not your fault.’

  He switched topics so quickly I nearly had whiplash. ‘What have you done to your hair, Angela?’ Despite his badly injured eye, his disapproval was obvious.

  ‘My hair?’ I patted a hunk hanging over my forehead. ‘Nothing. Why are we talking about my hair?’ It was a bit flat and frizzy after my morning search for Suzy.

  ‘It looks terrible,’ he said.

  ‘Not as bad as your eye.’

  I felt a little better. If Mario was fussing about my hair, he was OK. Right now, he looked like he wanted to rip out the Plexiglas barrier and start styling my hair.

  ‘Mario, I know you don’t like my hair, but we have more important things to worry about.’

  ‘Your appearance is always important. Always. Promise me if you go anywhere while I am in here, you’ll call Carlos at the salon. He is new, but he shows promise.’

  ‘Mario, I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Promise me anyway.’

  ‘OK.’

  He knew I wasn’t serious. ‘For real.’

  I put my hand on the Plexiglas and said, ‘I solemnly swear that I will see Carlos at Killer Cuts if I go anywhere before Mario gets out of here.’

  He looked happier at that. At least he managed another smile. ‘I know you are trying to help. Any progress?’

  ‘I’m working on it.’ I kept my response as vague as possible. I didn’t want to discuss my failures, especially after my disastrous search this morning. That would only discourage him.