The Shakedown Shuffle: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 3)

by Richard Levesque

  In the distance, I could hear sirens approaching. I unlocked the front door and opened it. Then I went back to the bedroom.

  Leonora was still sitting on the floor, sobbing.

  “They’ll be here in a minute,” I said calmly. “Do you want me to help you up?”

  Maybe it was an offer of kindness on the worst day of her life. Or maybe it was the acting training that kicked into gear again. Either way, she responded to the sound of my voice like it was a key in an ignition, turning off an engine. The tears stopped. She wiped at her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” She cleared her throat. Then she accepted my hand and started to stand.

  Looking down at Jeanie, she began speaking in a tone that was almost flat, lifeless. “She was afraid of burglars. That’s what started it. Those juvenile hooligans they’ve been going on about so much in the papers. I told her she should move in with me. She wouldn’t have to worry there, and I could pass her off as my live-in secretary to anyone who asked.” With a sad shake of her head, she added, “She wouldn’t hear of it, though. Always so protective of me when really it was her who was the fragile one. I can’t tell you how many times she begged me to get rid of that movie. She said it was a liability.” This brought a sad smile to her lips; I suppose she was considering the irony in what she’d just said.

  “She didn’t know there’d been other movies before that one,” I said. “Or that you were a pro when it came to protecting your secrets.”

  For the first time since letting go of my hand, she turned her gaze on me, a hint of surprise in her eyes. “No,” was all she said. Then, looking back at Jeanie, she added, “In the end, she opted for a baseball bat in her front closet rather than accept my offer.”

  “And that’s what started the fight that split you up?”

  She nodded and reached out to stroke Jeanie’s hair.

  “And it was the bat she used last night? When she thought she’d caught the blackmailer?”

  Another nod.

  I wondered if Jeanie had smashed his skull from behind or if Carl Culpepper had seen it coming, recognizing in the last second of his life that he was finally about to have one of his stories knocked out of the park, only not in the way he had hoped.

  If Osvaldo hadn’t been taken, Carmelita would have seen the whole thing. She’d have called me and then the police. I’d have beaten Leonora to the crime scene, and it all would have played out from there. The results would have been the same, though. I realized there’d been nothing that could have been done to save Carl Culpepper or Carson Mulvaney. The man and his alter ego were both doomed from the moment he spotted Leonora coming out of my office, his imagination running wild with plots more fantastic than any real story ever would have been. And the possibility that he could turn it all into a fat payday with a sensational book had kept him on the trail that eventually got him buried in the sad little backyard, a fate more bizarre than anything his pedestrian creativity could have come up with.

  “Did you bury him first?” I asked. “Or take the car to the beach instead?”

  “We buried him,” Leonora said. “It was raining by then. We took turns with the shovel. It was awful. Then we went to the beach. I drove his car, and Jeanie followed in hers. I swore she was going to go off the road a few times. I’m sure she cried the whole way there, and I know she cried the whole way back.” She sighed. “She was so upset. Awake and crying all night, worried that every noise was the police. She kept going on about how he hadn’t had the movie on him, how someone was going to find it and tie him to us. I finally got her to take one of my sleeping pills around dawn. I’ve been watching over her since.”

  “When did you decide to give her the rest?”

  She drew in a deep breath. Then, her voice almost breaking, she said, “Not long ago. She just looked so peaceful once she was finally asleep. It wasn’t easy getting her to swallow the rest in her sleep, but…I knew she’d never be able to get over what happened last night, especially if the truth about the blackmail ever came out. This way is less cruel.”

  “I don’t know. You’d be surprised what some people can get past, learn to live with.”

  Turning to look at me with new purpose in her eyes, she said, “You saw the money in my case. I want you to take it. All of it. No one knows you were here. They don’t need to know about the body in the yard. Not yet.” Bending over, she grabbed the suicide note and the fancy pen from where they’d fallen when the nightstand had toppled in our scuffle. She shoved both into my hand, adding, “And take these, too. They wouldn’t have believed she wrote it anyway. Just…just go.”

  The distant siren had been growing less and less distant, and now from the front of the house and through the open door, I heard it stop. Then a car door closed.

  A new panic entered Leonora’s eyes. “It’s not too late! Get the money and go out the back door. You can slip out before more police arrive. Please!”

  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted at the thought of my bank account suddenly flush with Leonora’s ten grand, but it lasted only a second or two. I’d rather my business fail than see it succeed that way. Plus, I knew I wouldn’t be able to look Peggy in the eye again if I took the money, Guillermo either—probably not even Carmelita.

  So, when I heard a man’s voice call out “Police!” from the front of the house, I answered, “Back here. The door’s open.” Then I watched as Leonora seemed to shrink in front of me, devolving from the confident, powerful woman she’d been and turning into a passive, broken player who’d just acted out the last scene in a lousy screenplay. She dropped to the edge of the bed and pulled back the covers, finding Jeanie’s limp hand and holding it as she sobbed in her grief and regret.

  When the police officer, a young guy probably less than a year out of the academy, came to the bedroom door, I realized I was still holding the fake suicide note and pen. I could have dropped them or handed them over to him as I started explaining, but I closed my fist around them instead and, when I saw his attention was focused on the tableau on the bed, I stuffed them into my inner coat pocket next to the little polymer disc Guillermo had tossed me on Friday night. I’m still not sure what possessed me, but I’ve got a pretty good feeling it was a surge of pity for Leonora. Reprehensible though her actions had been, they’d started from a good enough place—the desire to keep her lover safe—and I supposed that warranted what little help I could give her now.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I stood on the front lawn, keeping my voice quiet as I fed O’Neal all the details I could while in the back of my mind another narrative looped—the bit that Leonora had laid out about me being more machine than man—and wondering if it was true. Was that how I really was? Did that explain my decision to abandon the search for my correct world, and the living version of Annabelle whom I presumed was still living in it, maybe right now wrapped in the arms of the wrong Jed Strait? Did that explain the friendship I’d developed with Carmelita, a literal machine with whom I felt a certain bond? Just how different was I from Osvaldo Marquez in my ability to connect to someone unhuman while keeping most living, breathing people at arm’s length? Sure, there were Guillermo and Peggy and Sherise. But shouldn’t there be more to my life, especially if I was looking at calling this new world home?

  Maybe that explained the way my hand moved instinctively toward my coat pocket at least three times while I talked, and the way each time I resisted the urge to hand over the fake note and the pen it had been written with—resisting the urge to follow instinct and programming. Even if concealing the evidence jammed up O’Neal’s investigation a little and gave Leonora’s lawyers—or the ones that Paragon Pictures would likely put on the case—an advantage over the prosecutors, I still felt like I needed to hold onto that pen, perhaps more out of setting and passing a test for myself than out of any loyalty to Leonora.

  O’Neal took notes dutifully, stopping only to bark at the uniformed officers who w
ere responsible for keeping back the crowd of neighbors, members of the press, and other onlookers who had gathered around the edges of Jeanie’s property. The hardest part of the officers’ job was keeping people’s hands off of Leonora’s shiny red car. O’Neal had posted four of her people around the car, one at each fender, but that didn’t stop the overly interested from running their hands appreciatively over the smooth fenders or reaching in to stroke the white leather of the seats. Until it was otherwise determined, the car was evidence, and O’Neal didn’t want it tampered with.

  “You can shoot them if you have to,” she called out to the cop who’d been assigned the front corner of the car. Several onlookers chuckled at this, but when they caught O’Neal’s fiery glare, the laughter died and the citizens stepped away from the car—at least for the moment.

  She turned back to me and rolled her eyes. “Go on,” she said.

  I shrugged. “That’s about it. Except…you should have someone secure the overnight case in the front room. It’s got ten thousand dollars in a bag inside.”

  O’Neal raised an eyebrow. “You wait till the end of your story to tell me this?” she asked.

  “Sorry. There’s been a lot to process.”

  She let out a frustrated sigh and walked over to one of the female officers standing guard beside the front door of the house. I watched her lean in and whisper; then her subordinate nodded, turned, and went inside. My guess was that O’Neal hadn’t been specific about what was in the case. Otherwise, the other officer would likely have registered surprise on her face at the amount of money she was being asked to watch—that or the policewoman was a hell of a poker player.

  As O’Neal walked back across the lawn to stand beside me, two attendants wheeled a stretcher through the front door. Leonora was strapped to it, a sheet covering her body but her face was clearly visible for all the onlookers and the press to see. She had fainted not long after the police arrived—whether actually or affected I couldn’t tell—so she’d avoided being led away from the house in handcuffs. Cameras started clicking immediately as neighbors and others in the crowd gasped at the sight of the starlet being hauled out in such ignominy.

  “Jail ward of the hospital?” I asked O’Neal as the stretcher went by.

  “For now,” she said. “I doubt she’ll be there long.”

  I nodded. Jeanie had been taken out of the house much earlier, an ambulance having arrived a few minutes after the first police cruiser. “Any word on the other woman?” I asked.

  “Not that I’ve heard yet. You want to be kept informed?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  In the end, I suppose it didn’t matter if I knew whether Jeanie Palmer survived her lover’s attempts to kill her or not. I wasn’t going to get paid now, no matter what happened. But, still, I wanted to know. It wasn’t just curiosity. I wanted to know if I’d ended up saving Jeanie’s life or if that was something else I’d failed at.

  “I’ll let you know,” O’Neal said.

  “Have you told Mrs. Culpepper yet?” I asked.

  “Not yet. We’re going to wait until the digging’s done out back. You’re sure it’s him, though, right?”

  “If it’s not, then there’s a lot more to this story than meets the eye.”

  O’Neal chuckled lightly. “That’s already true of this one, Jed. You certainly know how to get yourself caught up in tangled messes.”

  “It’s a talent,” I said. Then I turned and contemplated the wall of onlookers blocking my egress from the property and my car parked across the street. “Is there anything else you’ll need from me?”

  “Just your availability for an official statement later.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “And probably at trial.”

  “You don’t think she’ll confess?”

  “Actors and millionaires never confess, Jed. It’s a rule or something.”

  I smiled at this and nodded. Then I started working my way through the crowd on the sidewalk.

  A few minutes later, I was parked in front of a drive-in restaurant on Melrose, the gates of Paragon Pictures clearly in sight of the phone booth where I dropped a nickel after giving my order to the carhop—a sixteen-year-old on skates whose wad of gum distorted her cheeks grotesquely.

  Peggy picked up on the first ring. “Jed?” she asked.

  “Are things that slow?” I answered with a chuckle.

  “Well…yes, but that’s not why I answered the phone that way.”

  She sounded agitated. I couldn’t tell if it was alarm, excitement, or something in between.

  “What’s going on?”

  “You said you’d check in.”

  “Things got a little out of control. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. I think.” She let out a breath and said, “Guillermo called to say he heard from the people up in Camarillo. They’ll release Osvaldo into Guillermo’s custody but only if he goes up there and gets him.”

  Thinking about the drive north and how long it would take Guillermo in his rattling old truck, I said, “I’ll call him and tell him I’ll take him up there.”

  “Too late. He told me he was heading out about an hour ago.”

  I shook my head in annoyance and wished I still had the number for one of the portable phones. There would be no sense in trying to call Carmelita at Guillermo’s house, as I was sure she would have sooner died than miss the ride north to retrieve Osvaldo.

  “Maybe he’ll fly,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. You got another call about half an hour ago from Cosmo Beadle.”

  “Beadle?” I echoed. “I thought he was gone for another day.”

  “I don’t know about that. All I know is he called, and he sounded pretty interested in getting hold of you.”

  “He wasn’t just returning my call?”

  “He didn’t say. He left a number, though.”

  I dug my tablet and pencil out of my pocket. “Fire away.”

  After we hung up, I glanced around to make sure my lunch wasn’t on its way out to my car. The carhop looked bored, leaning on a picnic table in front of the diner’s front window, blowing a bubble with her gum and twisting her hair absently. Seeing that she appeared in no rush to run food out to a hungry private detective, I dropped another nickel in the slot and dialed.

  The number Peggy had given me must have been a direct line to Beadle’s office, as the man himself picked up on the third ring. I pictured the ex-actor turned cult leader sitting at his big rococo desk, his bristly mustache waggling almost of its own accord as he studied some document or other that he hoped could support his flimsy claims about the existence of parallel worlds.

  “Beadle,” he said.

  Taken aback a bit at such direct access, I took a moment to collect myself before saying, “Mr. Beadle, this is Jed Strait. I understand you returned my call.”

  “Yes! Mr. Strait, good to hear from you. I…uh…I didn’t think you called me, though.”

  I was not surprised that his staff—or whomever I’d spoken to earlier—had neglected to give him the message. In my dealings with Cosmo Beadle, I’d found him to be a slippery character who surrounded himself with people who were even more slippery, mostly hangers on who hoped for, and usually got, the man’s table scraps and cast-offs. His mansion was filled with a mix of earnest believers in his cultish vision of multiple worlds—of which I had firsthand knowledge—and even more earnest partiers who toed the line and paid lip service to “Uncle” Cosmo’s belief system while enjoying all the freely flowing liquor and licentiousness that the Catalina mansion had to offer. It had doubtless been one of these who’d claimed knowledge of the great man’s whereabouts on the phone earlier, probably having a good laugh at my expense after hanging up.

  “Either way,” I said. “Here we are. Shall I go first, or…?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I called because it looks like Elsa
Schwartz is back in town and she’s been making trouble for some friends of mine.”

  “Oh dear,” Cosmo said. The phrase—and the tone with which it was uttered—straddled mild alarm and affected distress so perfectly that I couldn’t tell if he was sincerely bothered by the news or merely trying to cover himself. “No one hurt, I hope?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Some people scared and pretty seriously inconvenienced, however.”

  “That is unfortunate, Mr. Strait, but I’m afraid I haven’t had any contact with Elsa since before the unfortunate turn in Gold Rush Gulch.”

  “I understand,” I began, but he kept talking over me.

  “And, to be honest, if I did have contact with her, she wouldn’t enjoy it. Not in the least. Not after what she did to my man Edgar.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, recalling my own feelings of guilt at the death of Edgar Ross. “I didn’t expect you to say you’d been in contact with her, but I was hoping you might have some idea of where she might have gone to ground.”

  The line was silent for a moment, and then I heard Beadle say, “No, Mr. Strait. I’m sorry, but I haven’t got anything for you this time. And don’t think I’d hold back if I did, not even after last time. If Elsa Schwartz is still in this country, I want her caught and punished as much as you do, maybe more.”

  This was about what I’d expected, but I had still needed to try. “Thank you,” I said. “Now, what was it you needed from me?”

  “Ah, yes,” Beadle said. “I have an associate in the legal profession, Mr. Strait. She mostly pursues criminal defense.”

  I didn’t like where this was going, but I kept listening anyway. It was easy to imagine many of Beadle’s “associates” needing help in getting out of legal jams, which in no way meant that they deserved to be freed from the morasses their predilections or business dealings got them into.

  “She had a private investigator in her employ who is no longer able to hold up his end of their partnership. This has put her in a bit of a bind, and when the problem came up in conversation, I thought of you. It could be quite a lucrative source of revenue for you, Mr. Strait.”