Dead and Not So Buried

by James L. Conway

  “That’s right. I wanted you to know just how big a schmuck you really are.”

  “Fine. I’m all ears. Let me have it.”

  “I was in the Sugar Shack three months ago feeling sorry for myself. I’d been passed over for promotion, again. As I had been ever since you got kicked off the force for planting that knife. So I’m sucking on a Cosmopolitan, wishing I were rich enough to quit and move to Maui, when the bartender turns on the TV and a Lisa Montgomery movie comes on. That one where she plays a race car driver.”

  “Bittersweet Agony,” Hillary said.

  “Whatever. There’s this big close-up of Lisa and I mutter, ‘Bitch,’ just as the guy next to me mutters, ‘Bitch.’ We look at each other, surprised. So we start talking.”

  “He tells you how Lisa ruined his career, you tell him how Lisa ruined our marriage, and you both decide to get even,” I said.

  “When he mentions Winslow and David Hunter,” Lisa went on, “I start seeing dollar signs. Figure we can raise six million in ransoms, divided by two is three million—reason to retire from deadendsville.”

  “Then you did a little checking and found out Winslow was broke.”

  “That’s right. Roy solved that problem. While he was making Ramrod, Winslow made him read the three books he’d written. Roy remembered Eternal Love and came up with the idea of kidnapping Christine.”

  “You knew I’d follow that trail to Winslow.”

  “Yep.”

  “Roy snatches Hunter’s dog, you make the dog collar, and everything’s going according to plan until Piccolo starts shooting up Magic Land.”

  “He can be such a jerk sometimes.”

  “But you were dating him.”

  “It beat hanging out in single bars. And he was in love with me. Took care of me.”

  “You do know he’s dead.”

  That surprised her. “He is?

  “It’s a long story, but suffice it to say Jason Tucker made a belated, unexpected entry into the proceedings. Piccolo died in a bloody shoot out.”

  Her eyes dropped to my wounded arm. “He shoot you?”

  “Yep.”

  “You kill him?”

  “Yep.”

  She shrugged. “C’est la vie.” But she couldn’t hide the flash of regret behind her eyes.

  “Speaking of Jason Tucker, how’d he fit into the picture?”

  “A lucky accident. Three weeks ago Folsom called with a FYI about his accidental release. I just happen to be the one to answer the phone. With Jason Tucker on the loose, I realized I could set him up as the logical suspect and keep anyone from looking too closely at Roy’s connection to all the victims.”

  “You leaked his name to the press and everyone assumed he was the Gravesnatcher.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But why’d you fake your own death?” Hillary asked.

  “It wasn’t part of the original plan. The original plan was simple: Gideon and Lisa go to the zoo, Roy plants the bomb, Gideon and Lisa are blown to kingdom Come. Roy and I split up the money, he disappears. I wait six months or so, then quit and retire to Hawaii with my safe deposit box full of cash. But I was afraid the spoiled bitch would chicken out. So I paid Gideon a visit, just in case.”

  “And softened me up so I’d push to get you back on the case.”

  She quoted herself. “ ‘What if I were to tell you that spending so much time with you the last few days made me remember how good we were together.’ God, I can’t believe you bought that line. And Roy thought he was a good actor. I don’t know how I kept from throwing up when I had to kiss you.”

  Humiliation, good. I knew there was an emotion that had been missing from this evening.

  Stacy continued. “So when Lisa did bolt, I saw it as an opportunity. If I was dead I could start my vacation six months early.”

  “But you needed a body.”

  “Five dollars and the promise of a hot meal got the homeless woman into my car. Chloroform kept her there. Special Operations did my hair and make-up for the Lisa Montgomery transformation, but I’d brought my own dress. One of two that had been purchased the night before.”

  “The homeless woman was dressed in the other.”

  “Roy was parked in the lot when you and I drove into the zoo. While we walked up to the gorilla cage he put the starving Christian in your passenger seat. When you went back for the purse, Roy made sure she’d never go hungry again.”

  “You killed Barry Winslow, David Hunter, and an innocent homeless woman.”

  “Don’t forget Roy Cooper,” Hillary added.

  “And Roy Cooper. How could you have traded every moral value you ever had for money?”

  “Don’t lecture me about morals, you hypocritical bastard. You traded your morals to frame an innocent man.”

  “But I thought he was guilty. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “You weren’t. He wasn’t guilty! And even if he had been, would planting evidence have been moral?”

  “Yes. Legal, no. Moral, yes. Unlike your murders. Legal, no. Moral, no.”

  “Don’t get self righteous with me. This is all your fault to begin with.”

  “My fault?!”

  “You knocked over the first domino, Gideon. When you planted that knife in Ernie Wagner’s closet. That was the start of the chain reaction. Ernie gets killed. You’re forced to resign. My career is ruined by association. I get disillusioned. I meet Roy Cooper. Your fingerprints are all over his soul, too. We bond and plot our revenge. Don’t you see, Gideon? If you’d never planted that knife, Ernie Wagner, Barry Winslow, David Hunter, Piccolo, the homeless woman and Roy would still be alive. It was your one goddamn moral act that started this Greek tragedy.”

  Wow. Now even Stacy was hooked into my Celestial conspiracy theory. Even scarier, it was starting to make sense.

  Unexpectedly, Hillary chimed in: “If you’re an advocate of Predestination, Stacy, I should warn you that its philosophical validity is a hotly debated topic. I mean, it, like, completely eliminates free will and the laws of natural science as mitigating circumstances. Let’s take your domino analogy—”

  “Let’s not,” Stacy snapped. “I don’t give a shit about predestination, fate, karma or destiny. My life sucked, and now it’s going to be great. I’ve got six million dollars and—”

  “Three million,” I interrupted.

  “Six million.” She tugged on the bag. “This three million and the three million I’ve got stashed in a car equals six million.”

  “You didn’t really think I’d give Roy the money until I was sure Hillary was all right? The plastic bag is full of newspaper. Not money.”

  Stacy looked dumbfounded, then her face cleared, a canny smile playing on her lips. “Oh, I get it. This is a trick to buy time. Forget it, Gideon,” she said, untying the plastic knot on top of the bag. “I’m not falling for it.” Stacy pulled open the bag.

  The explosion was bigger than I expected. Stacy was catapulted back, screaming. Her hands were gone, pulped by the explosion. Blood gushed out of the ragged stumps that had been her wrists. Her face was bleeding, shredded by shrapnel, and her hair was singed and smoking.

  My other surprise of the evening. The letter bomb I had made for the backpack that Roy had so thoughtfully returned. I had swung by the office on my way to the zoo and put it in the plastic bag.

  I clambered over Roy’s body to Hillary. She was dazed; her face had a couple of cuts, nicked by flying debris. Like a child waking from a nightmare, she threw her arms around me, desperately clinging. “You okay?” She nodded, her face buried deep in my shoulder.

  And as I held Hillary, rocking her gently, I watched the life ebb out of Stacy. She lay in a pool of her own blood, but the writhing had stopped. The blood just seeped out of the stumps at the end of her arms, her heart too exhausted to pump any harder.

  Then she died.

  The End of The End

  “There’s something I have to tell you. I love you.”

>   “Cut it out.”

  “No, I really do.”

  “Stop it, Ernie, or I’m going to find another agent.”

  “But this is better than I ever hoped for. We’ve got sex, kidnapping, murder, betrayal, double-crossing, triplecrossing, gunfights, bombs, bodies ... Gid baby, you are so hot that your fame’s been extended to a full thirty minutes. Now start writing.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said and hung up. I was at my desk in my office. Hillary sat on the couch, sifting through a mountain of phone messages.

  It had been only three days since “The Great Hollywood Massacre,” as the L.A. Times had dubbed it, and a lot had happened.

  After Stacy died I dug out my cell phone and called Mary Rocket. “This better be good, Gideon,” she said, “because I’m in a helicopter circling the Hollywood Bowl, along with two other choppers full of SWAT team members, not to mention the twenty-five black and whites I’ve got on tactical alert, and I don’t see anybody. Now, I can’t believe you’d be stupid enough to lie to me again, so I am hoping, I am praying, I am counting on all my lucky stars that you are hiding backstage, or under a seat or in the goddamn bathroom, but that you are, for a fact, here at the Hollywood Bowl.”

  “Hollywood Bowl? I told you the Hollywood Sign.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “No, I’m sure I told you the Hollywood Sign. You must’ve misunderstood me.”

  “All calls to my office are recorded. Shall we check the tape?”

  Oops. “You know, it doesn’t really matter whose fault it was. Bowl, Sign, the important thing is, it’s over. I’ve got the Gravesnatcher. I mean, Gravesnatchers.”

  “Gravesnatchers? As in, more than one?”

  “As in two. You’d better bring some PR people. You’re going to need some spin control.” Big time spin control. Think about it. Stacy, one of the lead detectives in the Gravesnatcher Task Force, turned out to be a Gravesnatcher.

  We stood around on Mount Lee all night trying to find a way to spin it. There wasn’t one. Mary Rocket also spent a lot of time ranting and raving, threatening to lock me up forever.

  If you added together all the traffic laws I’d broken, threw in Obstruction, Collusion, Aiding and Abetting, Reckless Endangerment … well, you get the idea. I was in serious trouble.

  Until Hillary solved everyone’s problems: “What if Stacy died a hero, killed by Roy Cooper while she was trying to save Gideon and me? No one has to know she was a Gravesnatcher.”

  “What about her ‘death’ at the zoo?” Mary Rocket asked.

  “A clever police ploy to trick the Gravesnatcher.”

  You could see the light bulbs go off on all the LAPD spin doctors. There were encouraging mumbles of:

  “Good.”

  “I like it.”

  “Could work.”

  Hillary wasn’t finished. “Of course, for Gideon and me to live such a huge lie, we’d need to have some sort of accommodation.”

  “What sort of accommodation?” a wary Mary Rocket asked.

  “You drop all charges against Gideon. He’s hailed as a hero, too. Which he is, by the way.” She turned to me. “Thanks for saving my life.”

  “Thanks for being worth saving.”

  “Hold it, Kincaid.” Mary Rocket said. “There is no way I’m letting you walk!”

  “Hey, don’t yell at me, Captain. This is all Hillary’s idea. If you want to send me to jail as your last official act before you are humiliated before the entire world and forced to resign by an embarrassed department, fine by me.”

  Mary Rocket thought about it for a few beats, then grumbled: “All right. Stacy died a hero.” Sticking a finger in my face, she added, “But you are officially on my shit list.”

  I may have been on Mary Rocket’s shit list but I was on a lot of other people’s hit list. When we got back to the office the phones went crazy. We got calls from TV reporters, newspaper writers, magazine journalists, and movie studios, wanting to buy rights to our stories.

  Also a ton of calls from potential clients. As Elliot said, nothing like a little ‘publicity, murder and mayhem’ to boost business. The phones were so crazy, in fact, that Hillary and I couldn’t handle them. We had to hire Barry Winslow’s former secretary, Maggie, to help us.

  Hillary and I have been spending a lot of time together. Work at the office. Dinner afterwards.

  Always platonic. We’d been through so much lately that just being together has been helping us both to heal.

  I’ve often wondered what happened when she was with Roy Cooper—if he had raped or abused her in any way. She hasn’t mentioned it. I haven’t asked. She is in pain, though, I can tell.

  And there’s something else on her mind. More than once she’s come into my office and said, “There’s something I want to tell you.” When I ask her what it is, she hesitates and says, “Never mind.”

  I’m not going to push her. I figure she’ll tell me when she’s ready.

  “Gideon,” Maggie said, sticking her dreadlocks into my doorway. “Lisa Montgomery is on line one.”

  From the couch, Hillary shot me a surprised look. I hit a button, putting the call on speakerphone.

  “Hello, Lisa. I’m here with Hillary.”

  “Hi,” Hillary said.

  “Hi, guys. I just called to let you know how happy I am that you’re okay.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “And Hillary, I owe you such an apology. Can you ever forgive me?”

  Hillary frowned, no doubt still angry. But she took a breath and said, “No worries, Lisa. I know you were totally freaked out.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I fired Joan Hagler.”

  “How’d she take it?” Hillary asked.

  “She’s suing me.”

  “Figures,” I said. “By the way, a lot of studios are calling. They want to make this whole thing into a movie.”

  “I know. I’ve been talking to a couple people at Fox.”

  “Hillary’s been playing this game, trying to figure out who should play us.”

  “Robert Downey, Jr., or Bradley Cooper for Gideon,” Hillary said. “And I’m thinking Rachel McAdams or Amanda Seyfried for the pretty secretary with the heart of gold.”

  “But I guess we all know who’ll play Lisa Montgomery,” I said.

  “Actually,” Lisa said. “My part was too small. All I did was run away. I was hoping to play Stacy.”

  We laughed.

  “Seriously. Gideon, Hillary,” Lisa said. “I’m glad you two are okay and I’m so relieved this nightmare is finally over. You guys are my heroes.” With that she hung up.

  Heroes. Funny, I didn’t feel much like a hero. Too many innocent and not-so-innocent people were dead. But Lisa was alive. And now she could have Hudson King’s baby whenever she wanted. Hey, maybe her baby would cure cancer …

  “Gideon,” Hillary said, pulling me out of another insane reverie. She was pointing at her watch. “Time to go.”

  “Right,” I said, getting up. “We can’t keep the lady waiting.”

  The lady was Christine Cole. Hillary and I picked up her remains and returned them to Alex Snyder.

  Hillary and I watched as Alex and Bernice placed Christine’s remains back in her crypt. There was no ceremony. It was just the four of us. But, standing there, I imagined what it must have been like in 1967. Hundreds of reporters, photographers, police and fans mobbed outside the gates as Alex played “Yesterday,” and thirty-five grief-stricken mourners said farewell to one of the biggest stars in the world.

  She’s an even bigger star today. An icon. She is an inspiration to thousands of actors and actresses—like Roy Cooper—who flood Hollywood every year.

  And she is a poster child for the terrible price that some must pay.

  “On behalf of Christine Cole fans everywhere,” Alex said, “thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  “So what happens now?” Alex asked.

  And as I stood there, at
the very spot where this crazy case had begun, a thought occurred to me. A lot of the emotional loose ends from my life had finally been buried, too. In a lot of ways I’d be starting over.

  Judging by the phone calls, I’d have plenty of work as a detective. And, if you can believe Elliot, I might actually be able to sell a book or two. To be perfectly honest, I can’t wait to see what happens next.

  THE END

  BUT WAIT!

  Before you go, we’ve included an excerpt from another novel by James L. Conway – a wild and wicked thriller full of humor, unforgettable characters and nonstop action – Sexy Babe…

  ONE

  The worst day of my life began with an orgasm.

  His, not mine. So what else is new?

  His name was Jason Settles, an actor who had that bad-boy thing going on. Jason had long sun-bleached hair, brown bedroom eyes, a perpetual three-day beard and these incredibly perfect white teeth, well, caps really, but this was Hollywood and everyone had caps, or wanted them.

  Jason was usually typecast as Sexy and Dangerous, and his girlfriend, Grace Taylor, that’s me, was usually cast as the cute, perky, blonde, blue-eyed Girl Next Door. Which, I guess I looked but rarely felt like.

  Jason lived on Wonderland Drive just off Laurel Canyon in this little blue bungalow with a hot tub in back. It seemed like every house in Laurel Canyon had a hot tub, some kind of weird remnant of the 70s, I think. It was in that hot tub that Jason and I had first made love. And the answer is no, I didn’t get off that night either. To be perfectly frank, I generally need a little mechanical help, if you know what I mean. It kind of freaks guys out, though, when you ask them to use a vibrator on you. Makes them feel inadequate or something. So I usually just fake it and take care of myself later.

  Okay, that’s probably too much information. Anyway, after Jason’s wham bam thank you Grace, he climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom. “You want the shower first?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I need to get home and change. I’ve got an audition at ten.” Then I bolted up in bed. Shit! My agent was supposed to fax the scene to me here at Jason’s house. I leapt out of bed and raced to Jason’s fax machine. Thank God, the scene was there.