by M. Z. Kelly
Her painted brows arched higher. “I suppose you have a point.” She folded her arms and shook her head. “I guess I just don’t want to believe they would all steal from us.”
“What was your relationship with Marisha like?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Marisha was closer to my sisters. I guess you could say we’ve always been cordial, but not really friends.”
Lady came over to us and showed us her phone. “I just got a tt…text from Marr…risha. She cancelled our ll…luncheon. I’m going to call the bb…bitch and give her a piece of my mind.”
“I’d prefer that you wait until we have a chance to talk to her,” I said. “Do you have any idea where she is?”
“The text said ss…something about a bb…business meeting in Beverly Hills.”
Darby had overheard the conversation and walked over. “I’ll bet she’s meeting with Swenson, and they’re trying to cover their tracks.”
I looked back at Lady. “We’re going to try and track Marisha down. Do me a favor and keep what we talked about confidential until we can talk to her.”
Paris came over after also overhearing the conversation. “Where is the fucking bitch? I’m going to find her and kill her.”
FOURTEEN
Darby, Mel, and I left Nirvana and met up with Leo and Buck on the street in front of the estate. We decided that we needed to find Marisha Dole before Lady told her what we knew or Paris tried to make good on her promise.
“According to what Selfie and Molly told us,” I said, “Mark Swenson lives in Beverly Hills. I think we need to go over there and see if Marisha is with him.”
“I don’t think she would be stupid enough to go to Swenson’s house,” Darby said. “They’re probably holed up together somewhere else, trying to decide how to cover their tracks.”
After an argument, Darby reluctantly agreed to go with us to Swenson’s estate. As we drove, Mel was clearly frustrated by a situation that she saw as spinning out of control. “We need to keep a low profile and go easy on Swenson until we have all the facts. He’s one of the chief’s biggest supporters.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “Mr. Swenson, along with Marisha Dole, is likely complicit in the embezzlement of millions of dollars from the Prince family. If we’re going to get all the facts, keeping a low profile isn’t going to be an option.”
Darby surprised me by taking my side. “Swenson’s dirty and we’re going to prove it.” He glanced back at his former partner. “You need to let us do our jobs.”
Peters huffed out a breath. “All I’m asking is that we try to be discrete and gather all the facts before word gets out to the press on this.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence. When we got to Swenson’s estate, we were surprised that the massive gates to the property were open. We stopped in the circular driveway behind another car, with Leo and Buck pulling up behind us.
“I just ran the plates,” Leo said, referencing the car in the driveway. “It belongs to Dole.”
“Let’s stay alert,” I said as we approached the residence, wishing I had Bernie with me.
The lawyer’s home was one of those modern boxy affairs with lots of steel and glass. It sat on one of the highest points in Trousdale, an exclusive neighborhood in Beverly Hills, surrounded by lots of mature trees. The landscaping was probably the only thing that Swenson had kept from the original development of the property.
We rang the bell several times, not getting a response. We were about to return to our cars and talk about getting a warrant when we heard a shot ring out from inside the residence. Weapons came out everywhere as we moved back to the entrance, where we found the front door locked.
“Stand back,” Buck said.
He used his gun to break a glass pane next to the door. Seconds later he had the door open and we entered, announcing ourselves. There was no response, but there was a faint odor of gunpowder in the air.
Peters stayed back as the rest of us broke into teams to clear the house. Darby and I were upstairs when we found Mark Swenson in an office. He was slumped over his desk with a bullet in his head.
Darby checked for a pulse, then said what I already knew. “Lights out. Let’s tell the others.”
Leo, Buck, and Mel joined us upstairs after clearing the rest of the house. After a cursory search of the lawyer’s office, something seemed off to me. “It looks like his desk has been cleared off and there’s no computer,” I said. “Dole must have taken it.”
No sooner had I said the words than we heard a car starting. I looked out a window and saw Dole’s car leaving the driveway. “She’s running.”
We scrambled down the staircase as Buck called dispatch to put out a BOLO on Dole’s car. Moments later we were moving down the street, with Leo and Buck driving in the opposite direction, trying to spot Dole’s car.
Peters apparently wasn’t happy that I was speeding. “Slow down. This is an exclusive area. We don’t want to alert anyone to what’s happening.”
I didn’t bother looking at her as I said, “Do me a favor and shut up.”
We were leaving the Beverly Hills city limits when we spotted Dole’s car on Wilshire Boulevard. She was travelling at a high rate of speed, weaving in and out of traffic.
“She knows we’re onto her,” Darby said. “I’ll call it in.”
Peters was making huffing sounds as Darby alerted dispatch to notify the black and white units in the area. We continued to follow her as she sped through the surface streets. A couple of minutes later, I said, “I think she’s headed for the freeway, and I think we have company.”
“It’s the fucking press,” Darby said, channeling our lieutenant. “They must have picked up on the radio call. Their copters are circling overhead.”
“This is a disaster,” Mel whined from the back seat. “It’s the last thing Chief East would want.”
While Peters was worried about public relations, the rest of us were worried about Marisha Dole killing someone. Leo and Buck had pulled in behind us as we tried to follow Dole’s car while it zigzagged in and out of heavy traffic. She finally hit the freeway, where a couple of CHP cruisers took over, leading the convoy of black and white and unmarked vehicles following her.
We were passing the Troubadour, where everyone from Elton John to Coldplay had performed over the years, when Darby, referencing Dole’s car, said to me, “Have you been able to see inside the vehicle?”
I shook my head. “The windows are tinted.”
“I’ve got a feeling this isn’t going to end well.”
Peters spoke up from the back seat after checking her phone. “All the local TV channels are carrying this. Let’s try to defuse things if she runs out of gas or stops. The last thing we want is a shooting on live TV.”
I pulled out my service revolver and imagined capping off two rounds to Peters’ head. While I was entertaining the fantasy, Darby said, “This is all on Dole. She’s got to make a decision how this ends.”
The cavalcade of police vehicles followed as Dole turned on Doheny to Sunset. We passed more iconic Hollywood landmarks, including the Laugh Factory and the Chateau Marmont, where John Belushi had died. Our suspect then turned onto Cahuenga Drive.
“Where do you think she’s headed?” Peters asked from the back seat.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I’m not sure she does, either.”
Up ahead, we saw her cross the 405 Freeway onto Holly Drive. We were now on a narrow section of rural roadway that twisted up into the hills.
“Let’s get ready,” Darby said as the copters circled overhead. “She’s going to run out of real estate before too long.”
The twisting road was familiar to me from a past case I’d worked. I had a sudden, terrible thought about how things might end. My voice pitched high as I gave voice to my concerns. “The Hollywood Reservoir is…” I saw her car accelerate and then fly off the road up ahead. “She’s going into the water.”
The small armada of vehicles
pulled over and stopped at the guardrail where the road ended and the water began. We got out and saw Dole’s car going under. From where we stood, it was impossible to get down the embankment to help. By the time the emergency vehicles had responded, her car was completely under water, and there was no sign of Dole.
“This is a freaking disaster,” Mel Peters said, as the sun began to set and a half dozen helicopters continued to circle above the reservoir.
Darby gave his former partner a lopsided grin. “Look on the bright side. We might have just saved the chief and the city from having to prosecute Marisha Dole for a double homicide.”
Peters responded by rattling off a string of obscenities, apparently not sharing his glee.
It was almost dark by the time Brie Henner arrived, and the search and rescue squads had attached a line to Dole’s car. A winch slowly pulled the vehicle out of the water as the steady drone of overhead helicopters caught all the action. One of LAPD’s helicopters, which the department referred to as ‘airships’, had a spotlight trained on the car as it was finally dragged up onto an embankment. We stood back as the fire department got one of the doors open and water flooded from the interior. A light illuminated the body of a woman who was still buckled into the driver’s seat.
Darby trained his own flashlight on the body and said, “What the hell?”
I went over to his side with Leo and Buck. “What’s going on?”
Darby glanced at me, then back at the body. “I’m not sure who she is. All I know is this isn’t Marisha Dole.”
I looked over, taking in the woman’s features. She had gray hair that was matted across her face, but I remembered that she usually wore it swept back from her prominent forehead. In life, I recalled that she had beautiful eyes and had seemed genuinely stunned by the death of her boss when I’d talked to her.
I told the others what I now realized. “It’s Bert Prince’s personal assistant, Danika Kirkland.”
FIFTEEN
I got home to the Mission Bell around nine after searching the contents of Danika Kirkland’s vehicle and processing the murder scene at Mark Swenson’s house. We found the gun used to murder Swenson in Marisha Dole’s vehicle that Kirkland was driving, but there was no sign of Dole, and nothing in the way of paperwork or a computer that had been taken from his office. To make matters worse, there was nothing in Swenson’s home office that appeared to link him to Bert Prince’s embezzlement from his wife and daughters.
We continued to have a lot more questions than answers, and, with the death of Swenson and Kirkland, the press was running non-stop coverage of the murders on both the local and national networks. My day had ended with Mel Peters having a meltdown, and a profanity laced rant from Lieutenant Edna, who said he wanted everyone to meet at the station first thing in the morning to sort things out.
I was headed for my room at the hotel when I was intercepted by Natalie and Mo. They were standing in the doorway to the hotel’s ballroom, where I saw that a large group of people were gathered.
“We’re having us a spontaneous staycation goodbye party,” Natalie said. “You need to join us.”
I yawned. “Sorry, but I’m beat. You’ve probably seen from the news that I’ve had a long day.”
“We saw the whole crazy car chase and splashdown in the reservoir,” Mo said, brushing purple wig hair out of her eyes. “So that crazy assistant to Bert the squirt really murdered his attorney?”
I saw no reason to deny what the press already was reporting. “It looks like that’s the case.”
“You need to find Marisha Dole,” Natalie said. “You ask me, she’s the queen bee in the honeypot behind Bert’s dirty dealin’s.”
I was about to respond when I heard Nana’s voice behind me. “Kate, you’re my homie now. I just heard from Griselda Lugosi. She’s working up a curse for Wilhelmina that will make her uglier than a dead warthog with herpes.”
I saw that Nana had her posse, aka gaggle of gigolos, behind her. Our elderly friend had been taking a sexual rejuvenation drug, and lately had made a habit of seldom going anywhere without the motley crew, who, in my opinion, were nothing but a bunch of gold-digging sycophants.
I was now having second thoughts about helping her. “Maybe you should think about going a little easier on Claude’s mother.”
Nana’s familiar scowl returned. “Why would I do that? She’s trying to steal my fortune.”
A man whose features were all too familiar to me poked his head around Nana and said, “And if the curse doesn’t work, Mean Gene and me will kick her butt from here to Transylvania.”
Nana did a fist bump with her lawyer, Hermes Krump. Her legal eagle, or maybe I should say beagle, was around thirty, about five-six, with curly brown hair and no chin. While he didn’t exactly look like a beagle, he did have that earnest, over-excited look that dogs get when they want someone to pet them. I had a thought that if Krump had a tail, it would be constantly wagging.
When I’d first met Nana’s lawyer, he was wearing a cheap green suit. Tonight, he’d tried to up his game, maybe borrowing his outfit from one of the gigolos. Nana’s lawyer had on skin tight leather pants and a shirt made out of the same material, with no sleeves. To make matters worse, he alternately flexed one puny bicep, then the other, in an effort to show off his “guns.” In Krump’s case, the guns were not only unloaded, they were extremely small caliber.
I put a hand over my mouth, trying to suppress my laughter, but failed. I let out a couple of muffled chuckles, remembering that Krump had fainted and wet his pants while representing us in our eviction proceedings. Maybe my exhaustion had induced delirium.
Despite his recently found bluster and overconfidence, Mo regarded Krump and said to Nana, “You better keep some of your Depends on hand, in case your lawyer wets himself again.”
Nana’s legal beagle turned red, maybe out of anger or because of the leather tourniquet. “I’ve gotten past those issues and I don’t appreciate you bringing up my medical problems.”
As Krump went on about his legal pedigree, Natalie whispered to me, “You ask me, we got lucky last time. I don’t think the bloke could beat a traffic ticket in front of a dead judge. If the curse doesn’t work, Nana just might be livin’ next to us at the mobile home park.”
I felt a desperate need for an antidepressant as my friends pulled me into the ballroom under protest. I spent the next half hour with Nana, her merry band of gigolos, and her leather bound lawyer.
I was on the verge of screaming and slitting my wrists by the time I went over to Natalie and Mo and told them about my suicidal thoughts. They took pity on me and we all left the party, but Natalie insisted on the three of us having a nightcap.
I relented only because I knew that my friends would hold me down and pour alcohol down my throat if I didn’t agree. Natalie had the server bring over another one of her signature drinks, something she called a Bumble.
“The drink was a favorite in one of me old neighborhoods where I grew up as a kid,” Natalie explained. “People bumbled ‘round, ‘specially after havin’ a couple of pints.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, sniffing the drink.
Mo hoisted her own Bumble. “Bottoms up.”
I took a sip of the drink and found it was good, but a little heavy on the alcohol.
Mo set her glass down and regarded me. “So why do you think that Kirkland woman whacked the lawyer?”
I was exhausted and my defenses were down, so I gave her my thoughts. “Not sure, but maybe she was trying to cover up what her boss did. It could even be that she had some involvement in the embezzlement scheme.”
“But then why kill the lawyer?” Natalie said. “On second thought, since he was a lawyer he probably got what he had comin’.”
Natalie knew I hated lawyers. “I’m not sure why he was killed,” I said. “Maybe Swenson was involved and she didn’t want him talking.” My earlier conversation with Carlyle Waggoner then came to mind, what he said about the Princ
es having a lot of baggage. I mentioned what the producer had said, then asked, “Since you both worked security at Nirvana, what’s your take on what was going on there?”
Mo chugged the rest of her Bumble, set the glass down, and signaled the server for another. “Not sure, but I think Waggoner’s onto somethin’. You ask me, it’s a house full of secrets, and one of those secrets probably got Bert killed.”
Natalie agreed. “The place feels like it’s a house of cards, ‘bout to cave in all at once.”
“Hey, I been meaning to tell you,” Mo said to me. “I ran into Charlie at the store earlier today. He looks like a lost dog.”
“That’s because he’s getting married to pay off his gambling debts to a guy named Harley Boykin.” I took a moment and filled them in on my discussion with Charlie.
“Boykin’s a nasty SOB,” Mo said. “If I owed him money, I might think ‘bout marrying Jessica too, just to save my own sorry ass.”
“Desperate times, desperate measures,” Natalie agreed. She slammed down the rest of her Bumble. Her eyes brightened. “I just had me a bulb pop.”
“A what?”
“A bright idea. What if we make a plea through that hope4adope website to save Charlie’s ass?”
“Hope for a what?”
“It’s a website that specializes in helping desperate people who do stupid stuff. You post a story ‘bout the idiotic trouble you got yourself into and hope somebody is dumb enough to take pity on you and help you out.”
Mo shrugged. “Marrying Jessica is ‘bout as dumb as it gets. Why don’t we give it a try?”
“It sounds ridiculous, but go ahead,” I said. I then finished the last of my Bumble and felt a tingling sensation in my mouth. “What was in the drink you gave me?” I asked Natalie. “My mouth feels funny.”
She chuckled. “It’s just essence of wasp. Causes some people to lose control of their tongue for a few days. You should be fine by the weekend.”
