by Bill Moody
“We had a nice girl talk. I worked my way around to the dinner with Grant Robbins.”
“I won’t even ask how you managed to bring that up.”
“They did have an early dinner with Robbins the night Fuller was killed, some Italian place in the Valley. But Robbins made some excuse about something he forgot and left early.”
I turn to look at Andie. “When did he come back?”
“He didn’t.”
***
Back at the hotel, Andie fires up her laptop and starts searching for stories about Fuller’s murder. I go out on the balcony to think things over again. A lot now depends on what, if anything, Andie finds, and what time the dinner was, what time Robbins left the restaurant, and most importantly, the time of Fuller’s death. That’s probably something Coop could coax out of Charlie Farrell, as well as if there were any fingerprints in the trailer other than Fuller’s.
As I’m thinking about all this, my phone rings. It’s Grant Robbins.
“Evan, how’s it going?”
“Fine. Andie and I had lunch with Ryan at Melanie in Malibu.”
“Oh? Some special occasion?”
“No, not really. Just nice to get away from the movie I guess, and Melanie was anxious to see Andie again. They’ve gotten pretty friendly.”
“Of course, I forgot.” He seems relieved at my explanation, and quickly changes the subject. “I just spoke with Skip Porter. He says everything is coming along fine with the music. He’s pretty impressed with you.”
“He’s been a great help with the technical things. I wouldn’t be able to finish without Skip’s help.”
“That’s good to hear. We’re shooting some scenes later tonight. If all goes well Sandy Simmons says we should have a full rough cut by early next week. Skip sent over a CD of what you’ve done so far, and he’s very pleased.”
“That’s even better to hear.”
“Ever seen a film without music? It’s pretty amazing the impact the music has. You’ll see when you sit down with Sandy and go through the whole film.”
“I’m really looking forward to that.”
“I know you are. Okay, then, just thought I’d check in with you. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. Oh there is one thing. Melanie was raving about the restaurant you took them to the other night. She said the food was great. I thought Andie and I might try it. She couldn’t remember the name, just that it was in the Valley somewhere.” The words are barely out of my mouth when I think this could backfire if Robbins mentions it to Melanie.
“Mario’s Pasta House. Best Italian in the West Valley. It’s in Woodland Hills, just off Ventura.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“Let me know if you decide to go. I have a little pull with the manager.”
“I’m sure you do.”
I hang up and go back inside. Andie is still hard at it.
“Nothing yet, but it’s all over the internet. I checked CNN and MSNBC clips. Nobody mentions the camera strap so far.”
“Well, keep at it.”
“All night if I have to.”
I put in a call to Coop. It goes to voice mail but he calls back in fifteen minutes. “What’s on your mind?”
“We had lunch in Malibu with Ryan and Melanie.”
“Is she still beautiful as ever?”
“You had to ask?”
“You could have invited me.”
“Not for this one. Ryan did a little confessing. I’ll tell you about it over dinner. Can you get away?”
“I can’t wait. I have some interesting tidbits from Charlie Farrell, too. Where?”
“Mario’s Pasta House in Woodland Hills. You know it?”
“I’ll find it. Why there?”
“That’s where Ryan and Melanie and Robbins had dinner.”
“See you in an hour.”
I tell Andie to order room service if she gets hungry, but she’s in the zone and barely looks up from her computer.
***
I beat Coop to Mario’s by ten minutes. I get a booth, menus, water, and order a Scotch rocks. It’s one of those places that doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the interior is warm and homey. Even at this early hour it’s fairly crowded. Waiters buzz about with large plates of pasta on trays, and everybody seems happy.
Halfway through my drink, I spot Coop and wave. He comes over and slides into the booth and looks around. “How un-L.A.,” he says. “Not even valet parking. Little downscale for a movie star and a producer.”
A waiter comes over and hovers impatiently as Coop scans the menu. “Can I interest you gentlemen in a nice bottle of house red?”
“Just coffee for me,” Coop says.
“I’ll stick with this,” I say, holding up my glass. “I’m not eating.”
Coop smiles. “I am. Small Caesar salad and sausage and peppers over angel hair.”
“Very good.”
“Oh, one other thing. Could you send the manager to our table?”
The waiter hesitates for just a moment. “Of course,” he rushes off.
“Might as well get this over first,” Coop says. He sips his water and looks around. “Popular place.”
“Here we go.” A short stocky man with graying hair, wearing an expensive-looking sports jacket approaches our booth and gives us a well-practiced smile.
“I trust everything is okay?” He looks from me to Coop, his hands clasped in front of him. “Anthony Torino at your service.”
“Just fine,” Coop says. “I just need a word with you. Say, I like your jacket. Is that Armani? Why don’t you sit down for a minute.”
Torino almost smirks. “Hardly. It’s a knockoff. I hope you’re not the fashion police.” He makes a show of buttoning the jacket.
Coop takes out his badge. “No, we’re the real police. Lieutenant Cooper, Santa Monica Division. I’m hoping you can help me out.”
Coop slides around to make room. Torino’s expression quickly changes. He glances over his shoulder and sits down, eyeing Coop warily. “I hope there’s nothing wrong.”
“No, nothing to worry about, just routine. Do you know Ryan Stiles and Grant Robbins?”
“Yes, of course. Mr. Robbins is one of our regular customers. Why?”
“They had dinner here the other night, with a tall stunning blonde.”
Torino smiles. “Yes, the lovely Miss Hammond.” His eyes flick to me then back to Coop.
“I bet you attended to them personally.”
“Yes, I did. As I always do. Mr. Robbins is an old friend.”
“Do you remember what time their reservation was for?”
“I believe it was seven o’clock. I could check to make sure.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Coop says. “While you’re at it, any chance you have a record of their visit, who paid, a credit card slip, maybe?”
“Yes, certainly, just give me a minute.” He gets up and scurries off just as Coop’s salad and a small plate of bread sticks arrives.
“I like it when people are cooperative.” He starts on the salad.
Five minutes later, Torino returns with a stack of credit card slips. He sits down and flips through them quickly, then pulls one out and hands it to Coop, who glances at it quickly, then lays it on the table next to his plate.
“I’ll need to take this with me. Thanks so much. That’s all I need.”
Torino gets up, a little puzzled. “Please enjoy your dinner. If you need anything else, please let me know.”
Coop continues with his salad and slides the slip across to me. It’s for a Visa card with a date and time stamp showing 8:20 pm in the amount of $138.72. Coop doesn’t even look up.
“He didn’t stay long, did he?” Coop takes the last bite of salad and pushes his plate away. “Charlie Farrell says the Medical Examiner estimates time of death sometime between nine and midnight, give or take.”
“Plenty
of time for Robbins to take care of things. Fuller’s trailer is not far from here.”
“I did note that. When we leave here, we can drive over and see how long it takes.”
While Coop wolfs down the sausage and pasta, I give him a shortened version of Ryan’s confession to me. He listens, nods at the appropriate places, then pushes his plate aside, pats his stomach, and signals a waiter for more coffee.
“How’s Andie doing on the internet search?”
“She’s working on it now. She hadn’t found anything when I left.”
“If she does, with this credit card slip, Robbins will have some explaining to do.”
“I’ve been thinking. Even with this, it just seems too pat, too easy.”
“Don’t complain. Sometimes that’s how it works. There are plenty of tough ones.”
As we leave the restaurant, I spot Torino on the phone at the reservations desk. When he see us he gives a little wave, then turns away and cups his hand over the mouthpiece.
“I wonder who he’s talking to,” Coop says.
“Probably some big Hollywood player.”
Coop drops me off at the hotel after we drive from Mario’s to Jerry Fuller’s trailer. It takes all of seventeen minutes.
“So what’s next?”
“I’m going to take another run at Charlie Farrell, and see if he’ll let me have another look in Fuller’s trailer. Want to join me?”
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ll know when I find it.”
I get out of the car. “I’ll let you know if Andie finds anything.”
“Do that,” Coop says. He smiles.
“What?”
“I was just thinking. It’ll be kind of strange if my employer is arrested for murder.”
“Even stranger if you make the arrest.”
“No, that’ll be Charlie Farrell’s collar.”
I go up to my room. There’s a tray with a plate and the remnants of a hamburger and fries on the floor by the door. Inside, I find Andie sprawled on the bed in her robe, watching China Town. I slip off my shoes and stretch out alongside her.
She yawns and curls up against me. “How was Mario’s?”
“Very Italian. Robbins’ reservation was for seven, and the time stamp on the credit card slip was eight twenty. It takes seventeen minutes to drive from Mario’s to Fuller’s trailer park. We timed it. Time of death was between nine and midnight according to the Medical Examiner.”
“So Robbins is looking better all the time.”
“Yeah, but like I told Coop, it just seems all too perfect, too pat. Robbins is a lawyer, a smart guy, a major Hollywood player. Unless there’s something else about him we don’t know, I’m just not sure.”
Andie sits up and throws one leg over me and straddles my waist. “Maybe we should look into Robbins’ background, see if there’s something that would explain a motive.” Her robe has fallen open a bit. I reach up and pull it closed. “I need to concentrate. Find anything?”
“In a word, no. I’ve been through every story and there’s no mention of a camera strap, much less a brand name.”
I’m not that surprised. I can’t remember a single news story or television report about a murder with that kind of detail. They never say the victim was shot with a Glock 9 mm or stabbed with a Shinzu knife. Later maybe, if the victim was famous, or a long magazine article is done months or years after the death.
“We could check local TV news but I don’t think there’s anything,” Andie says. “The window on this is closing fast. Fuller was not famous. The interest is already waning. Another week and it’ll be, ‘who was Jerry Fuller?’”
“I think you’re right. I’m tired of thinking about it.”
“Good. You’ve still got some music to compose.” She leans down and lightly kisses me. “All through concentrating?” She sits up and pulls her robe open.
“I am now.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Monday morning, I drop Andie at Burbank Airport. “I’ll try to do a little digging on Grant Robbins,” she says, getting out of the car. She drags her carry-on bag around to the driver’s side, and leans in to kiss me. “Good luck on the music. I don’t know how you do it with all this other stuff going on.” She studies me for a moment as people rush past the car. “Even more, I don’t know why you’re doing it.”
I don’t have an answer for that, and Andie doesn’t expect one. She turns, waves once, and then slips into the terminal.
I head out of the airport, back to the Ventura Freeway and on to Skip Porter’s. He had called earlier to confirm we were going to spend most of the day looking at new film. Traffic is still heavy so I have a lot of time to think as I remember Andie’s comment. It is getting increasingly difficult to shift gears from a murder investigation that clearly might involve the very people I’m working for, and composing music and learning the ins and out of scoring a film. I’ve all but eliminated Ryan Stiles from the mix, but Grant Robbins is another story.
I can’t reconcile his money, position, and status with a premeditated murder of someone I doubt he even knew. What could have been his motive? If it was to protect Ryan and the progress of the film, then he had to know about Jerry Fuller, and the only way he could know was if Ryan told him the whole story.
I have to remind myself that Ryan’s the actor, not Robbins. In his office, when I’d got Ryan to admit he’d hired Fuller to check on me, Robbins had been genuinely surprised and angry at Ryan for doing it. Ryan’s confession on the beach also seemed genuine. I knew him well enough to know the pain on his face as he unburdened himself was real, so that left Robbins who, maybe even more than Ryan, needed the film to go well. He had to answer to those investors who’d put up millions, and I’d bet Robbins had some of his own money in this project. Is that enough motive? That’s one I don’t have to answer. People had killed for far less.
But my mind keeps going back to Robbins’ remark about the Nikon camera strap. Where had that come from? That’s what I had to find out. If not Robbins, then who else? Melanie? No way. Somebody I hadn’t thought of at all?
I’m still lost in thought when the car behind me honks. The heavy traffic is finally breaking up. I pull ahead and exit at the next off-ramp and wind my way to Skip Porter’s. I park in the driveway and light a cigarette, trying to get focused on music, not Grant Robbins or Jerry Fuller’s murder, but it only lasts for as long as it takes me to walk into Skip’s house.
“Hey,” he says. “Ready to go to work?”
“Very. Let’s get to it.”
“We’ll have a visitor later. Grant Robbins called. He’s coming by to see how it’s going.”
Perfect, I think as we start to work by going over the list of music cues. Some are brief motifs that last only a few seconds, some are more complete and last a few minutes, depending on the length of the scene. Skip plays them all and we watch as they match the on-screen action.
“Looks and sounds good to me,” Skip says. “Got something in mind for the closing credits?”
I’d thought about that a lot. These days, nearly every movie ends with a complete song, while all the credits from the star to the catering truck driver scrolls by slowly on a black screen. I thought I had the perfect way to close out Murder in Blue.
“I’m thinking of a Chet Baker recording of ‘My Foolish Heart.’ Kind of fits with the story.”
Skip grins. “Yeah, that would be perfect.” He scrolls through a music database and pulls up several versions of the song. “Got a preference for year?”
“Yes, a later recording, something in his later years.”
Skip nods, punches in the title, and downloads the track and then hits the “play” button. Chet Baker’s airy tone fills the speakers and we both listen in silence to the emotional version that still gives me chills. I don’t have to wonder about the choice. I just add it to the cue sheet.
“We’ll have to get
permissions, of course, but that shouldn’t be a problem with this budget,” Skip says. He saves the track and adds it to the master recording when my phone rings. I don’t recognize the number. “Hello.”
“Evan? It’s Melanie. I’m so glad I caught you.”
“What is it? Something wrong?”
“I’m not sure. Grant mentioned that you asked me about Mario’s, you know, the restaurant where Ryan and I had dinner with him.”
“Yeah. Melanie I didn’t mean to put you in the middle of this.”
“I didn’t know what he meant at first. I tried to cover but I don’t think I was very convincing.”
“It’s all right, Melanie. Don’t worry about it.”
She pauses. “That was the night Jerry Fuller was killed. Are you checking on Grant? Did he—”
“No, Melanie. It’s just routine. I’m kind of helping out my friend Danny Cooper to establish where everyone was that night. Did Ryan talk to you about it?”
“No, I mean, very little. He said he knew Fuller, but he didn’t say much. Do the police suspect Ryan?”
“No, not at all. I’m sure Ryan had nothing to do with it. He was with you, right?”
“Well, yeah. We stayed around after Grant left.”
“When Grant left, what did he say?”
“He got a phone call and went outside to take it. When he came back, he apologized, said something had come up and he had to go.”
“That was all?”
“Yes. God, Evan, is Grant a suspect?”
“I really don’t know.”
“I’m scared, Evan.”
“Don’t be. I’m sure Ryan had nothing to do with it. On an investigation like this the police routinely check out anybody the victim might have known, that’s all.”
I know she’s not convinced. “Okay, but would you do me a favor? Let me know if you find out anything I should know about.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“All right. Well thanks. I should go. Ryan will be back soon. Goodbye.”
“Bye, Melanie.” I close my eyes and sigh, then notice Skip has taken off the phones and is looking at me.
“You okay, man?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” We both look up then as the doorbell rings.
