The Big Fix

by Linda Grimes

  To keep Frannie from setting up outside the condo as a self-appointed bodyguard, I promised we’d go to dinner, just the two of us, as soon as I was up to resuming my commitment to the movie. When she still hadn’t seemed inclined to leave, I gave her a mission: to redecorate my Fifth Wheel trailer. Knowing from my file on Jack that Angelica had been the one to decorate it originally, I told Frannie I’d never be able to bear going into it again—the reminder would be too painful.

  Frannie was ecstatic. Admitted she never thought it suited my true personality anyway, swore she’d turn it into a completely different place as soon as humanly possible, so I’d be able to come back to the set without fear.

  If Jack had a problem with that, so be it. I had a problem with being shot at.

  Billy winked at me after he ushered her back into the car, so I knew I’d be seeing him later. As soon as they were gone I’d tried calling Jack, who of course didn’t answer. Damn it. I’d thought he’d know it was me if he saw the call was from his own cell phone, but it looked like he was taking my admonition not to answer the phone for anyone way too seriously.

  Either that or he wasn’t there. Which got me thinking in a whole other unpleasant direction.

  * * *

  I was still waiting for Billy (currently stuck running redecorating errands with Frannie, according to the text he’d sent) when Jack finally called, a good five hours from the time of the shooting. Time enough to drive back to Vegas, if one were inclined to believe he was somehow involved. But why would he do something like that? It didn’t make any sense.

  He claimed he’d been afraid to answer my calls at first, after seeing the news of the attempt on “his” life (it was splashed all over television almost immediately, with lots of aerial footage of panicked A-list celebrities, via those handy choppers). Apologies poured out of him for putting me in that kind of danger, that if he’d known something like that would happen … yadda yadda BS yadda. Frankly, his smooth tongue was starting to wear thin.

  “Hold on, Jack. The police aren’t sure the attempt was on your life. For all we know, someone was aiming at your father-in-law. Or even the urn itself.”

  “Why would anyone shoot an urn full of ashes?” Jack said.

  “You got me,” I said. “But why not Joe? Maybe someone is out to get the Conrad family.”

  There was a pause, filled with breathing. “Yeah … yeah, I suppose you’re right. They do have a lot of enemies. Corporate ones, I mean. But surely no one would go this far.”

  “Listen, Jack, Joe said something odd to me before the service. ‘You lose, you son of a bitch.’ What did he mean by that?” I wished I could be looking him in the eye as he answered—reading somebody is so much harder over the phone.

  “You must’ve misheard. There’s no reason for him to have said that.”

  Had his voice sounded tighter? More stressed? Difficult to say.

  “No, I’m certain I heard him right. He enunciated each word very clearly,” I said. “Jack? Are you there?” The breathing began again. I was starting to worry he might have asthma. “Does this have anything to do with why you wanted me to follow the Conrads?”

  “No. I don’t know what the fuck he meant by that. Listen, has anyone checked on Lily-Ann? I hate to bring it up, but she probably hates her father worse than anybody.”

  “She’s wearing a tracking anklet, Jack”—had he not known that?—“so she’s the one person we can be sure wasn’t the shooter today.”

  “Those things aren’t infallible. They can be tampered with.”

  “Right. I’ll check on it,” I said. As soon as I finished up our conversation, I texted Billy, telling him not to worry if I wasn’t there when he got back.

  * * *

  The winding cement path leading to the front door of Nigel Overholt’s large house in the Hollywood Hills was so artfully landscaped that one hardly noticed its primary purpose was wheelchair access. Abundant flowers, decorative grasses, and multitiered shrubbery had made the necessarily long walk to get up the hill a pleasant one.

  I’d told Jack everything I’d said to the police at the funeral home, so he wouldn’t appear to contradict himself if asked the same questions again. Said he’d better start answering his home line again, in case it was them, and to expect his cell phone by special messenger sometime that evening.

  Now it was time for a little chat with Lily-Ann. I wanted to meet her face-to-face and decide for myself if I thought she was capable of murder.

  She turned out to be a pleasant surprise. When she wasn’t screaming at TV cameras she came across as a genuinely nice person. Her long brown hair was pulled back from her heart-shaped face, making her look even more waifish in those big black-framed glasses. A long T-shirt, a short denim vest, and a chunky necklace confirmed her dedication to hipster fashion. The only thing out of place was the tracking anklet—it’s tough to hide one of those under leggings.

  Nigel had left us, for the moment, in what was one of several tastefully decorated rooms on the first floor of his magnificent Laurel Canyon home. The big picture window offered a spectacular view of the iconic Hollywood sign, not something I was expecting, considering his accident. When he’d noticed where I was looking, he’d shrugged and said it was a good reminder of the difference between a calculated risk and pure stupidity. Seemed like a healthy attitude about mistakes to me. Once again, I was impressed with the man.

  Lily-Ann and I were seated on a tan camelback sofa, waiting for Nigel to return with refreshments.

  “I hear I have you to thank for my bail,” Lily-Ann said. “I’m a little cloudy on the why, though.”

  “Not me, exactly. A friend of mine.” At least, I hoped Mark still considered himself my friend. “As for why … well, I’m a sucker for a good cause, I guess. You and I have that in common. I admire your work for animals.”

  She cocked her head. There were still questions in her eyes, but I could tell she wasn’t going to question the gift. “Thank you. And thank your friend for me, too. I’d do it personally, but”—she glanced at her ankle—“I’m a little tied up here.”

  A sense of humor—good. Lily-Ann and I were going to get along fine. “No thanks are necessary,” I said.

  “No? Well, pardon my bluntness, but if you’re not here to feast on my gratitude, why did you come?”

  Yeah, I liked her.

  “As long as we’re being blunt,” I said, “I’m here to find out if there’s any way possible you could be the one who shot your sister’s urn.”

  Her eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed as her mouth twisted into a smirk. She shook her ankle. “Um, gee, I hate to disappoint you, but as I said…”

  “Ms. Conrad—”

  “Call me Lily.”

  “Lily. I phrased that badly. What I mean is, I’m here to rule you out in the attempt on either Jackson’s or your father’s life, whichever it was.”

  “Is that what that goddamned fucking asshole is claiming now?” Lily’s voice inched toward her post-arrest TV level. “That not only did I kill my sister, but I somehow managed to slip my leash and try to kill him or my father, too? He’s such a dick. Trust me, if I’d been there with a gun, I would have shot him.”

  Nigel rolled in with a drinks tray connected to the side of his chair. “Did I miss something? Do share.”

  “Don’t worry, Nige. I’m not divulging case strategy. I was merely confirming Jack’s status as celebrity asshole of the year for Ciel.”

  Nigel shrugged and handed us each a glass of electric yellow liquid over ice.

  “Jack’s personality is neither here nor there. He has an alibi, and I’ve yet to come across a trace of evidence that he may have hired a killer. And now, with this incident at the funeral, it appears even less likely he could have been responsible for Angelica’s murder. It looks like we’ll have to rethink our strategy.”

  “Tell me something, Lily,” I said, not bothering to explain Jack’s earlier claims that she couldn’t have killed her sister, beca
use now who knew if he’d even been sincere? He’d certainly shifted the blame back to her fast enough in our last phone conversation. “If Jack didn’t have an alibi, would you think he killed your sister? Would he be capable of that?”

  She huffed an unamused laugh. “In a heartbeat. In fact, the only thing that might make me doubt he’s involved is that I don’t think he’d hire someone else to do it—I’m sure he’d have wanted that pleasure for himself.”

  “Pleasure?” I said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Lily said. “Jack is charming when he wants to be. But when he doesn’t…” She shrugged. “He can be cold. Cruel. When I broke it off with him, he kicked one of my foster dogs across the room, just because it was trying to get between us. To protect me. And the look on Jack’s face when that little mutt yelped in pain—it was sick. Twisted. I was so stupid about him.”

  Nigel interrupted. “Let me take a moment here to remind Ciel that this is all off the record.”

  “Don’t worry—I’m not about spill any beans you don’t want spilled. I’m only trying to compile the complete picture in my head, so I’ll know if … the information … I have will prove useful for you.”

  I could sense his ears perking. “Why not tell me what you know? That would be the simplest way to find out,” he said.

  “Afraid there’s nothing simple about it, Nigel. But first—Lily, why should I believe you had no wish to harm your sister? Even setting aside your affair with her husband”—she had the decency to look ashamed—“Angelica was in lockstep with your parents, helping run the company whose practices go against everything you believe in so passionately.”

  There was a lot to admire about Lily—her compassion for animals, and her courage in standing up for her beliefs at great cost to herself, financially at least. But being disinherited had to rankle. The question was, did she resent her sister’s choosing to remain loyal to their parents enough to kill her?

  Lily looked at Nigel before answering my question. Guess she found the okay in his eyes, because she continued. “It’s true my sister and I don’t—didn’t—agree on much with regard to the family business, but she did have a certain amount of sympathy for what our parents called my foolish regard for food animals. Only, she maintained she’d be able to do more to ensure their humane treatment in the long run by playing the good daughter, and eventually inheriting, than I could hope to accomplish with my ‘basically useless’ demonstrations.”

  I nodded and took a sip of my drink. Bleah.

  Lily sipped hers, too, and made a face. “Seriously, Nigel? Not even a shot of vodka to make this more palatable? And I’m not just talking about your crappy healthy water either.”

  “Sorry. Vitamin ‘V’ is not on the menu here,” he said, drinking his with seeming enjoyment. No accounting for taste.

  Lily gave me a what’re-we-gonna-do shrug and went on, sounding calm, though her trembling hands told me another story. “The prosecutor is trying to twist Angelica’s toeing of the parental line into some big rift between us. He’s claiming that’s my motive for killing her, which couldn’t be further from the truth. As much as I enjoy shooting my mouth off on the picket line, I’m fully aware that Angelica’s plan was more practical. See, I thought we could have it both ways—I could have the pleasure of gumming up the works of my parents’ chicken-killing empire now, while knowing Angelica would stick it to them posthumously, once she gained control. But I never once considered they might outlive her.”

  “Okay, I might buy that, but I can see where a jury could find it difficult to swallow. Even if your affair with Jackson doesn’t become public knowledge, you have motive,” I said. “You were also at the house in Vegas the night Angelica was killed—that’s opportunity. Did you know where they kept their guns?”

  She nodded. “My prints were even inside the gun closet—Angelica and I used to go to the range together, back when impressing Jack was important to her. How’s that for suck-tastic luck?”

  “And there you have means,” Nigel said.

  Despite that, I didn’t believe she’d done it. Of course, it helped now that I knew she’d been within sight of either Nigel or his aide all morning—they’d been watching television coverage of the funeral. There was no way she could have been the one to fire that shot, even if she had figured out a way to disable her anklet.

  “They haven’t found the murder weapon yet,” I said. “That has to be some help.”

  Nigel looked at me sharply. “That’s not general knowledge.”

  “Oh?” I said. He hadn’t asked a question, so I didn’t rush in to explain how I knew.

  “It doesn’t matter, though,” he continued. “They’re going on the assumption that Lily was able to get rid of it somehow, maybe by handing it off to one of her fellow warriors against animal cruelty.”

  “Which is totally unjustified!” she said, the crusading light flashing in her eyes. “Those fascist assholes have no right to go after my friends.”

  “Be that as it may, they are. It’s not an unexpected tactic, and not an avenue they can afford to ignore. They’re pressuring us by pressuring them, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”

  “But they’re digging into things that aren’t remotely connected to the case, things in their personal lives. It’s not right,” Lily-Ann said.

  “No, but it’s legal,” Nigel said, keeping his cool. He reminded me so much of Thomas.

  “Yeah, and I don’t know how much longer I can take it. Fuck it all. Maybe I should take the plea deal,” she said, her bravado deserting her.

  “You can’t do that!” I said.

  Nigel looked as if he’d heard it before. “Unless you’re telling me you killed your sister, and you want me to shop around for the best place for you to serve out a life sentence, I suggest you stop talking like that.”

  She rose and crossed to the window, looking as if she’d like nothing better than to open it and run. “Why should I? Hell, maybe I did do it. Maybe I snapped and went all Rambo on my own sister.”

  Her outburst washed over Nigel like raindrops on a duck, but I was worried by the look I’d seen in her eye. She might be holding it together with her combo of righteous indignation and a smart mouth, but she was scared. And possibly close to breaking.

  I went to stand next to her, careful not to crowd her. “Listen,” I said softly, “if it helps any, I believe you didn’t kill your sister.”

  She whirled on me. “Who the hell are you to say that? You don’t know me. You didn’t know my sister, and you don’t know my fucking family! If you did, you’d know Conrads are capable of anything.”

  Okay. Not one to react well to someone being “nice” to her. Yeah, a jury would just love her. But her outburst did trigger an idea.

  “Even your mother?” I asked. When Lily stared at me blankly, I added, “She wasn’t at the funeral. Does she know one end of a gun from another?”

  Lily looked appalled at the thought. “Well, yes—she and my father used to take us skeet shooting all the time when we were kids—but there’s no way … she couldn’t … you’re not implying she killed Angelica, are you? Even a Conrad wouldn’t…” She looked at Nigel, whose eyes lit at the new possibility.

  “I admit, it doesn’t seem likely, but if she doesn’t have a credible alibi for the time of Angelica’s death we could use it to plant reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury,” he said.

  “No,” Lily said, voice low, face set. “You don’t know her. She can be a bitch, but she’s not a murderer.”

  “Okay,” I said, impatient with her refusal to consider an avenue that might help her own cause. “You’re right. I don’t know her, or if she had any reason to want your sister dead. But I do know your brother-in-law. And I know for a fact it is at least possible that he’s the fucking asshole who shot Angelica. Him, personally.”

  “What?” Lily said, stunned.

  Nigel looked at me steadily. “I think you better explain that, Ciel.”

  Oops. Probably
shouldn’t have gone quite that far. But if it kept Lily from making a premature—and really ill-advised—confession, so be it. I took a breath. “I will. But first, why was Angelica divorcing Jackson? It wasn’t just his cheating, was it?”

  Lily twisted her mouth into a wry smile. “No. She was very understanding of the cheating, as long as he was discreet. She once told me screwing starlets and fans was like masturbation for him—distasteful, but understandable in a man who oozed as much testosterone as he did. She used to joke that at least it kept the sheets at home clean.”

  Ouch. Yeah, sounds like a man with size issues, I thought. Always trying to prove his virility. “But she didn’t feel that way when it was you, did she?” I said.

  Lily’s face registered a flash of naked pain. “No. She didn’t. That was when she brought out every piece of ammo she’d saved up over the years. She didn’t just want to divorce him. She wanted to destroy him. All because of my stupidity.” Lily took a deep breath. “He knew she could do it, too. There was something in her file that scared the hell out of him.”

  “Did she tell you what it was?” I asked.

  “She never said—she was mad at me, too, remember. But from the way Jack acted after he found out what she had on him, I know it was something big.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might have kept that file?” I asked. If I could get my hands on it …

  “If I had to guess, it’s hidden somewhere in Jack’s home office. That’s where she used to hide his birthday presents. She said it was the last place he’d think to look. I know she kept the file on a thumb drive—she showed me that much—so she could have slipped it anywhere.”

  “Okay, let’s forget about Jack’s alibi for a minute,” I said. “That file sounds like a damn good motive for murder for him.”

  Nigel nodded. “Yes, he has motive. You can even make an argument for means, since he does own quite a few guns of the caliber in question, and is proficient with them. But the opportunity … that one’s hard to argue, seeing as how dozens of witnesses were working with him—in another state—at the time of the murder.”