In Other Words...Murder

by In Other Words. . . Murder [MM] (retail) (epub)

  Dean allowed herself a polite smile at the idea I could be charming in any form. “Have you located Dickison’s contact information yet?”

  “Not yet.” In fact, I hadn’t looked. I’d had more pressing matters on my mind, like averting a potential lawsuit and postponing my inevitable homicide for as long as possible.

  “Has the body been IDed?” I asked. “Are you sure it’s Dicky’s?”

  “The body has not yet been officially IDed,” Dean returned. “We’d like to get in touch with Dickison’s family.”

  DNA sampling. That’s what she was after. My stomach rolled over like a cruise ship right before it sank to the bottom of the sea.

  “Right,” I said. “That’s not information I ever had, though. Dicky was estranged from his family.”

  That caught her interest. “Is that so? Any idea why?”

  “He was from some backwoods town in one of the Carolinas. I think his father was a minister.” I frowned. “Or maybe he was a banjo player. Maybe it was the one before Dicky with the minister father. Anyway, whichever it was, Dicky’s father threw him out of the house when he came out.”

  Dean looked confused. “When he came out of where?”

  Quigley said, “You can’t remember if the man’s father was a minister or a banjo player?”

  “The closet,” I told Dean, who blushed—and rightly so. After all those hours of taxpayer-funded sensitivity training? To Quigley, I said curtly, “I’ve had a lot of personal assistants through the years.”

  For some reason, he didn’t seem to want to take my word for it. “Is that so? How many is a lot?”

  “Twelve. At least. Twelve who stayed at least a year. There were a few who didn’t last more than a few months—and not because I didn’t pay them well, for the record.”

  “Going by Dickison’s final paycheck, you paid ’em okay.” Quigley said it as though there was something suspicious about how well paid my personal assistants were. What nefarious things did he imagine I demanded of them?

  Dean wrenched back control of the runaway interview. “How long did Mr. Dickison work for you?”

  “Two and a half years. He was definitely the best of the batch.”

  “And his employment ended when he and Mr. Gordon decided to…” She hesitated.

  “Don’t bother being tactful at this late date,” I said. “His employment ended when David informed me he was leaving me to be with Dicky.”

  She tried to be tactful anyway. “What kind of an employee was Dickison?”

  “Treacherous, it turns out. Though if you’d asked me at the time, I’d have said exemplary. He was smart, efficient, good in a crisis and, well, fun.” Yeah, that was what hurt. We had laughed a lot in between the regular publishing crises. I had liked Dicky. I had hoped he’d want to work for me forever. I thought he had liked me too. He had certainly seemed to enjoy his job.

  Anyway, I had been mistaken. In many things. Life goes on.

  Quigley said, “How do you think your ex would have reacted if Dickison told him he’d changed his mind?”

  “Loudly.”

  “Do you think he might have become physical?”

  “You already asked me this on Saturday. The answer was no then, and it’s still no. I don’t believe David killed Dicky. David has a temper, but he’s not violent.”

  Dean said, “And yet, interestingly, he thinks you might have killed Dickison.”

  Yes, David did apparently think there was a good possibility I’d committed murder. It was truly disconcerting.

  I shrugged. “Turns out neither of us actually ever knew the other.”

  Quigley said, “It’s kind of suspicious—”

  He was interrupted by one of the white-garbed crime-scene technicians, who joined us to announce, “We’ve found another set of remains!”

  “What?” I think I might have actually rocked back on my heels. I felt like I’d been punched.

  And it didn’t help to see the look of glee on Dean’s face. In fact, it was terrifying. Career-making case, that was what Dean was thinking. I think blood-spattered stars twinkled in her eyes for a second or two. Quigley just looked bewildered. Like a walrus that finds himself on an ice float surrounded by killer whales.

  “Animal,” the technician added apologetically before they could get too worked up. “It was buried in the roses outside the pool yard.”

  Dean’s face fell.

  My horror gave way to ire. “Are you kidding me?” I yelled. “That’s my cat! Those remains belong to Marple!”

  “It is a cat,” the technician admitted. “Was.”

  “You goddamned barbarians!”

  Dean said coldly, “I’m going to have to ask you to calm down, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Ask away!”

  Quigley bristled on her behalf. “Were you aware that LA municipal code states: ‘No person shall bury an animal or fowl in the city except in an established cemetery’?”

  “No.” And it wouldn’t have made any difference to me. I didn’t say that, though. I was even less tactful. “Are you aware you’re an idiot? I’m thinking probably not.”

  “OKAY. TIME OUT.” Dean put a hand on her partner’s beefy arm. “We’re sorry about disturbing the remains of your pet, but unfortunately this is a murder investigation. It’s our job to—”

  “Dig?” I snapped. “Yes. Got it. I’ll leave you to it.”

  That was an exit line if there ever was one, and I took advantage of it before Quigley could come up with another LA municipal-code violation worth throwing my butt in jail over.

  I crunched my way over the dried straw of my former lawn, narrowly missed tripping over the spike of a small Jack-o’-lantern solar light, and started down the sidewalk.

  “Hey there, Mr. Holmes!” shouted Reggie Chow, who once upon a time had delivered the LA Times to my front door. That was nearly a decade ago, and Reggie had since moved on to less wholesome occupations like breaking into mailboxes and stealing UPS parcels off unguarded front porches. Still, it was nice to see him out of jail again.

  I raised my hand in greeting but kept walking. I was not feeling sociable, and the uneasy knowledge that one of these neighborhood lookie-loos might be a homicidal litterbug did not warm my heart.

  “Christopher!” another voice called.

  My heart jumped.

  The voice was male. Familiar. I turned, on guard, to see a tall, silver-haired man in jeans and a yellow Lacoste polo shirt crossing the street toward me.

  Though I knew the voice, it still took me a second to recognize him—his hair had grayed considerably in the past year. Worry over his missing boyfriend? Guilt for having done away with his boyfriend? Regret for having unceremoniously dumped me? Or just an unlucky draw from the gene pool?

  “David,” I said.

  I turned my back on him and started walking again.

  Chapter Six

  “Christopher, we need to talk.”

  “No, we don’t,” I said without turning around.

  I heard his footsteps speed up. I stopped walking, turned, and waited for him.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “The same thing as you. Returning to the scene of the crime. By which I don’t mean Dicky’s demise. But thanks for thinking I’m capable of murder.”

  David seemed to redden, but maybe that was just the warmth of the autumn day. He had never been prone to regrets, let alone blushing over them.

  “It was just the initial shock,” he said. “I don’t really think that.”

  “Believe it or not, I don’t care. But you should know the cops consider you every bit as much a suspect as me.”

  “Me?”

  His genuine astoundment (yes, it’s a word) was almost cute.

  “Of course you,” I replied. “The romantic partner is always the number-one suspect. You know that. You read mysteries. You used to.”

  He’d used to read my mysteries, as a matter of fact. Hard to believe there had been a time I’d valued his
opinion.

  Here’s a strange thing. When I’d spoken to David on the phone, all my defenses had been in place. Seeing him unexpectedly like this, live and in color, shook me. My heart rate had ratcheted up unpleasantly, and the palms of my hands were suddenly cold and damp. The phone conversation had been about the past. This meeting was very much in the present—and, unsettlingly, it felt like I was seeing David for the first time.

  He was a handsome guy.

  Not as handsome as J.X., but then he was a completely different physical type. J.X. was good-looking in a careless, naturally gorgeous kind of way. He looked as hot in jeans and a motorcycle jacket as he did in one of his black Carlo Pignatelli suits—or as he did stark staring naked. The staring being done by yours truly.

  David’s brand of good looks was more…calculating corporate executive. In fairness, I hadn’t always thought so. There was a time when I’d thought he was distinguished and dashing and, yep, handsome as all get out. And get out he had. Eventually.

  Anyway, he was a couple of years older than me, but he worked a lot harder at holding back the tide, and it had paid off. He got the kind of haircuts that required an actual budget, and he had gone in for skin treatments in the days when only GQ discussed such frivolities.

  Unlike J.X., when David didn’t shave he looked like a bum on a bender. He was shaved today and, despite the casual wear, as groomed as if he was headed for the office.

  When he didn’t reply, I put my hands on my hips and jutted my chin pugnaciously. “Anyway, what are you doing here?”

  To my surprise, his face worked. He got control at once, though. “I had to come. I have to know if it’s…”

  Dicky.

  I felt an unexpected pang. Had David really cared for Dicky? I’d figured by now they’d be at each other’s throats. Easier on my pride to think that, of course. But also, I’d had long experience with David’s peccadillos. They were a lot like lightning strikes. Sudden, intense, and over quickly. Nothing left to do but sweep up the charred and blackened bits of broken hearts.

  With unwilling sympathy, I said, “Okay, but hanging around the crime scene isn’t going to solve anything. It’s not like the cops are going to hold a press conference here. And they’re sure as hell not going to report to you.”

  “They told me they’d keep me posted. I figured I’d make it easy on them.”

  That drew a not very kind laugh from me. “We’ll be in touch does not mean we’ll keep you posted.”

  He said stubbornly, “I have a right to know.”

  “Maybe. And when the cops are good and ready, I’m sure they’ll bring you up-to-date. In the meantime, don’t you have a company to run?”

  He retorted, “Don’t you have a book to write? Why are you here?”

  “I’m trying to keep the couple who bought the house from suing me.”

  David looked startled. “They think… They can’t think…”

  Really? Because he had thought it.

  “They claim to think. I think they’re probably overstating their abilities. Anyway.” I stopped in the face of his sudden silence. I felt unexpectedly uncomfortable beneath the intensity of his gaze.

  “You…look good,” he said slowly, as if only noticing, as if it was a surprise. “Really good.”

  I did not want to hear this. Not any variation of it. I said briskly, “It’s the Botox.”

  He laughed, but in fact, I had been getting Botox for my migraines. The injections helped, and since I was already there… Now the frown line between my eyes was a thing of the past, as were the previously perennial knots in my eyebrows, and the beauty of modern Botox treatments was, I could still scowl all I liked, which I was currently doing.

  I said, “For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that body is—was—Dicky.”

  David was momentarily distracted. “Then where is he?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. But I didn’t kill him. I don’t think you killed him. So, chances are high it’s not him.”

  “But then who is it?”

  “J.X. thinks a former neighbor probably tossed a pesky corpse into the construction site when no one was looking.”

  We both glanced uneasily around the tidy suburban street.

  “That seems a stretch. They’d need a key to the back gate. Plus, you were always at the house. Even if they dumped the body in the middle of the night, that would be taking a hell of a chance.”

  “True.” I hadn’t debated the theory with J.X. because I wanted him to be right.

  In afterthought, David added, “J.X.? Who’s J.X.?”

  “J.X. Moriarity. My…well, my fiancé.” That was a slight exaggeration. We weren’t formally engaged.

  David’s jaw dropped. I had never seen him look quite so…flabbergasted. I assumed it was at the idea I had managed to snag another poor fish, but I should have remembered his tiresome love of thrillers.

  “J.X. Moriarity? The J.X. Moriarity? The author of the Dirk Van de Meer books?”

  “The same.”

  “Where would you meet— Oh.” His face changed. “When you solved that murder at the author retreat in Northern California. I remember reading he was there too.”

  On the one hand, I was sort of flattered that David had followed my exploits enough to know even that much about my life post-him. I knew zero about anything that had befallen him—and I hoped there had been plenty of befallens—since we’d parted ways. On the other hand, it was typical of him to assume the only way I’d have the opportunity to get to know someone like J.X. was if we were trapped in an isolated mountain resort, being stalked by a killer, and with no way of escape.

  I saw a chance for payback that I had thought long gone—and I grabbed it.

  “No, I’ve known him for years,” I replied, and I even drummed up a spiteful little smile. “I met him the weekend before you and I tied the knot. In fact, we had quite the fling, he and I.”

  That gaping, gulping, landed-fish look of extreme astonishment was not exactly complimentary, but the hurt expression that followed was balm for my still tender ego. Yeah, the wounds David had inflicted had scarred over, but the scar tissue was pretty thin, and I was small enough and petty enough in spirit to enjoy my moment of triumph.

  “You… I s-see,” David said with the little stammer he only got when he was really flustered. “I had no idea.”

  “Well, no, how would you?” I was still smiling with a hard, bright cheerfulness I didn’t actually feel.

  “You never said a word. You used to make fun of his books.” He repeated, “I had no idea.”

  That’s the problem with revenge. It cuts both ways. However much he had it coming, I didn’t like feeling I’d slammed David over the head with a blunt instrument. My revelation affected him more than I’d expected. I’d been thinking tit for tat. In execution, it felt more like I’d brought a bazooka to a knife fight.

  I said briskly, “It was just a fling.”

  “It never occurred to me you weren’t…” He sounded almost dazed.

  Faithful? Loyal? Honorable? Too dumb to know what he was up to?

  Ugh. And it was bullshit anyway. I had been faithful to him. The, er, transgression with J.X. had occurred during the very brief window when we had officially broken up.

  “I was hurt after finding you in bed with Marc— Anyway, ancient history. I don’t want to drag all this up now. My point was J.X. thinks someone took advantage of my home-improvement efforts to get rid of a problem. If he’s right, DNA tests will prove that the body is not Dicky’s and that this unfortunate incident has nothing to do with either of us.”

  “Yes. Of course.” David nodded—and kept nodding—like someone trying to hide the fact he had no idea what page we were on. “But then where is Dicky?”

  Oh. That old thing again.

  “I repeat. I don’t know.”

  “He didn’t change his mind. I know he didn’t.”

  I sighed. “Okay. Well, stuff happens to people, and maybe something happen
ed to him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe he had an accident.”

  “But we would know that. We would have been informed.”

  Would we? Perhaps. As Dicky’s employer, perhaps I would have been informed. But perhaps not. Wouldn’t it have depended on what identification he was carrying at the time? I didn’t know if David would have been informed, because their relationship had been both fairly new and clandestine. Again, it would likely come back to what ID Dicky was carrying when whatever had happened to him happened. Assuming anything had happened to him.

  Unlike David, I wasn’t so sure Dicky wouldn’t have changed his mind. I had changed my mind.

  “Yeah, well. Time will tell. I’m sure the cops are going to keep us apprised, whether we like it or not, so…” I gave him a brisk see-you-around-campus nod and took a couple of steps toward my car.

  David stepped after me, which sort of defeated the purpose. I tried for a smile, hoping to convey the appropriate synthesis of keep your chin up and see ya!

  “Christopher…” he began in a hesitating kind of voice.

  Oh, for God’s sake!

  “Was there anything else?” I asked crisply. I even glanced at my watch.

  But David managed a whole sales team. It took more than restless shuffling and glancing at archaic timepieces to convince him to abandon his prey. “Would you want to…”

  I stopped inching and stared at him warily. “What?”

  “Go have a drink somewhere?”

  “No.”

  “I just…feel like we should talk.”

  “No. About what?”

  “About this.” He waved at the house and the crime-scene technicians bustling to and fro like ants following a trail of breadcrumbs. Which is kind of what they were.

  “What is there to talk about? I didn’t kill Dicky. You didn’t kill Dicky. What is there left to say?”

  “Seriously? We haven’t spoken since—”

  “You walked out? Sure we have. We spoke Friday night.”

  He looked pained. “There are things I’ve needed to say to you, felt you deserved to hear.”

  “Oh, believe me, I know. I felt the same way for a long time. But letting go of all that has been very good for my, er, karma.”