by Gini Koch
She shrugged. “My place? I wasn’t joking earlier—I truly don’t want to be alone tonight. Finding poor Dawn like that...” She shuddered.
I reached over and took her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
She smiled. “I knew you were the man I needed the moment I laid eyes on you.” She squeezed my hand, then stood up. “Powder room time. Miss me while I’m gone.”
“Constantly.” I watched her sashay off and considered that I might be the luckiest man in the world.
For lack of anything else to do while waiting, I pulled out my phone. One message, from Sherlock. Whenever you see this, call me.
Well, I’d seen it now, and Irene was in the restroom, so there was never going to be a better time. I called as requested.
“Watson, are you still with The Woman?”
“Yes, she’s in the powder room. We’ve just finished dessert.”
“Good. I’m glad you’ve eaten. And that she’s not there with you at the moment. When she returns, just say that you don’t want a subscription to the Times and hang up.”
“Will do. What’s going on?”
“The body of Frank Lawson was found about an hour ago on the Paramount lot. The uneven number of trash bins out there has been bothering me all day. Then I remembered that we’d seen that can off alone when we were tracking Pfeiffer, and had Lee’s people investigate. The bin was originally near our soundstage and was moved.”
“And no one noticed?”
“I presume it was moved at night, though Frank was killed during the daytime. Frank’s estimated time of death is in the same general timeframe that Cliff disappeared.”
“How was he killed?”
“Stabbed.” She sounded slightly smug.
“You know where he was killed, don’t you?”
“I do. In the writers’ room.”
“There was no evidence of foul play.”
“There was if you consider that the only things in the room that could collect blood effectively were missing.”
“They used the whiteboard erasers to remove the evidence?”
“Yes, they were found with his body. I had Lee’s team go over the room. There’s indication of blood cleanup in several places, including on the conference table near the stack of scripts that had been moved.”
“So, they realized blood had gotten onto the pages and went back to get anything that was stained?”
“That’s the prevailing theory. And the word ‘they’ is correct—there’s more than one person involved in this.”
“Involved in what, other than murder, is the question.”
“I believe I have the answer. I just need one more piece of information.”
Irene was returning. “Do you need me to come home tonight?”
“No. But I need you to get the information. You’re the only one who can.”
Irene was at the table. “I’m sorry, I don’t want a subscription to the Times,” I said in an annoyed tone. Then I hung up as instructed. “Sorry about that. Telemarketers call at the most ridiculous times.”
She smiled. “They do. Shall we go?”
“The bill hasn’t come yet. I’ll hit the powder room and hopefully they’ll bring it by the time I’m back.”
So saying, I headed for the men’s room. Once inside I went to a stall and sent Sherlock a text. But the phone looked fuzzy all of a sudden. And, as the phone dropped out of my hands and I fell to the floor, I realized exactly how Irene could have cloned Sherlock’s key—the same way she’d drugged my coffee. Using distraction.
By kissing me.
I WOKE UP sitting up. In a car, as far as I could tell. My head felt fuzzy and my mouth was dry, but I was alive and that was something.
As my head cleared I was able to take in more of my surroundings. There were people talking, nearby but not right next to me. Men, and a woman.
Doing my best not to move in any noticeable way, I opened my eyes a crack. I was in the passenger’s seat of Sherlock’s car. Not a surprise, but I had a feeling that I’d be dead in Sherlock’s car soon enough.
“It’s not here,” one of the men said.
“It should be,” the woman replied. She sounded angry and a little afraid. She also sounded like Irene, not that this was a great surprise.
As the feeling returned to my body I forced my mind to work. They were searching for something they expected in the trunk. The only logical thought was that they expected to find whatever it was amongst the papers that Pfeiffer had put in there. I’d removed only one thing—the bound set of pages. Assuming that was what they were looking for, I wanted to keep them from searching the car’s interior.
Of course, my hands were tied, in front of me, as were my feet. I wasn’t going anywhere. Though I wasn’t gagged, which was nice in a way and dangerous in another: if I could speak, I could learn, but I could also give things away.
I wondered where my phone was. At best, on the floor of the bathroom at Mr. Chow. More likely in Irene’s possession.
It was dark, wherever we were, and I didn’t hear the sound of traffic. This didn’t tell me much, other than that no one was going to chance upon us and rescue me.
“Look, it doesn’t matter, does it?” This man’s voice was familiar. I’d heard it before, I just wasn’t sure where.
“I’ve done what you asked,” Irene said. “Now tell me—is Cliff alive, and if so, where is he?”
“He’s fine,” the man said. “And you’ll find out where he is once we get what we need.”
“Avery and I got Andy to steal everything you asked us to and then some. We’ve done all you wanted.”
“Let us go, give us Cliff, and we’ll stay quiet,” another man said. This voice I recognized as Avery’s. He sounded frightened. I shared the sentiment.
“I told you I’d make you a star and you the head of a company,” the first man said. “And it’s happening right before your eyes, and all you two can do is complain.”
“That remains to be seen,” Irene said. “I’m complaining because you’ve left a swath of dead bodies across the southland. And how is it that you can run and skim a huge nonprofit for years, but none of you were ever smart enough to read the scripts, even when you were supposedly writing them? And I’m really complaining that you can’t keep it in your pants, George. You’ve tried to have sex with every woman on the set, even the ones old enough to be your mother. It won’t take long for someone to mention that you probably tried to do the same with Dawn and she refused. That’s motive, and you don’t actually have an alibi for her time of death.”
“Neither do you,” George said with a laugh. “Hey, Cliff was told what would happen. He didn’t believe us. He does now. And again, it doesn’t matter. They have Andy in custody. He’ll take the fall—he has no alibi, he was there, sneaking on the set stealing shit. So he got caught and killed people to hide it. They want a killer, they have their best bet in their hands. He’ll go down for it.”
“How many ‘its’ do you think they can pin on him?” Irene asked. “By my count you’ve killed Dawn, Frank, and Collin, and I’m still not convinced that Cliff is alive, either.”
“He is, but we are going to kill your new boyfriend,” George said. “He’s disposable.”
“You can’t,” she said flatly. “If you kill him, then you make the police look at this in a whole different way. May I remind you that Andy is in police custody? He can’t have killed someone who died after he was arrested.”
There was a long silence, during which time I tested my bonds, which were solid, and considered how stupid George and whoever the other men with him were, which seemed to be quite a lot.
“You’re not pinning it on me, either,” Avery said. “Or on Irene.”
“We could just kill them both,” another man said.
“We have other problems,” the first one countered. “You slipped up in front of the caterer, Freddy; who else realized you weren’t the real Collin?”
“No one,” Freddy replied. �
��I told you, Odie, it was the only time.”
“Cliff was already suspicious,” George said. “That’s why we had to have Freddy suggest bringing on the ‘outside expert.’”
“I know what to do, Avery,” Odie said. He didn’t sound southern, so I had a feeling this was a nickname. Based on Irene’s nonprofit comments, I figured this was Oscar Odessa, the head of the Odessa Foundation. He was in the right age range and, if I squinted, could have been one of the taller men from Toohey’s picture, aged a few years.
“That’ll be a first,” Avery snapped.
“Stop panicking. Bros before hos, man. And Irene, I have the fix. We’ll just beat the shit out of him, turn his brain into mush. He was drunk when you left the restaurant, you were carjacked, he tried to stop them, they beat him up, you were able to run away to get help. I know you can sell that.”
“I can.” She didn’t sound enthused, for which I was somewhat grateful. “But that still leaves us with the most incriminating script in the world floating around somewhere.”
“You’re not incriminated in it,” a different man said. “So stop freaking out.”
“I’m not freaking out, Lester,” she snapped. “Or should I keep on calling you Mister Super Writer?”
“Jesus, Irene, calm down,” Odie said, firmly. “I’ll handle it. Like I always do.”
“Bros before hos,” George said.
“Yeah, tell that to Collin,” Irene said.
“Hey, she came on to me,” George said.
“If you call drinking a roofie you slipped her ‘coming on,’” Freddy said with a snigger.
“And that’s why all of you gang raped her and killed her? She was asking for it?” Irene sounded angry again.
“He deserved it,” Odie said flatly. “It’s his fault that Digger died.”
“It was a car accident,” Avery said quietly. “It wasn’t done on purpose. And I had nothing to do with Talia’s death, Irene, you have to believe me.” I thought about the picture some more. The people at the edges, the ones who weren’t framed by the camera—one of them was a shorter man. And Avery had been on campus at the same time George had. Meaning Avery was also a frat brother.
“Yeah? Then, after Digger’s dead—what, three months—Collin and Digger’s girl are an item?” Lester sounded angry. “He killed Digger to get her. He had to lose her in a way that hurt.”
It was official—I wanted to kill every one of them. The positive of this is that I was making better headway with the ropes, and realized I’d gotten too angry to care that I was scraping my skin off. The negative was that whoever had tied these really knew what they were doing.
“‘Gang raped by some gangbangers’ flew for the police,” Odie said. “They never dig too hard when it’s not someone important.” He laughed. “We’ll do a charity event to support the families of those you’ve lost, Irene, don’t worry. The Gala for Everything will come through for you.”
“Besides,” George said in a honeyed tone, “I heard they’re rewriting the show. You’re going to be the star now, Irene, just like you wanted. I’m getting a better role, too. It’ll all work out.”
Lights went on all around us. “Actually,” Sherlock said, “it’s only going to work out for the police.”
I WAS UNTIED and out of the car, and, after tending to the slight wounds on my wrists, Sherlock was perusing the script I’d accidentally hidden. It was dawn, although light still blazed from police cars surrounding us.
We were at Forest Lawn cemetery, which explained why I hadn’t heard anything. On the whole, it seemed an appropriate meeting spot to discuss murders. I had to give it to whoever was pulling all the strings—they had an interesting sense of humor.
“Well done, Watson,” she said as Straude and Saunders read the prisoners their rights.
“I have no idea what I did, other than notice that, pull it out, and then promptly forget about it.”
Irene came over to us. “I’m so sorry,” she said to me. “I had to drug you, or else they’d have... hurt you.”
“Excuse me, but why aren’t you under arrest?”
Sherlock sighed. “Because she was helping us, Watson. The entire time.”
“She was? And you knew that?”
“The moment I saw the jewelry she described in Andy Pfeiffer’s backpack today, I knew she was trying to give us clues. So I looked at everything we knew from a different point of view.”
“So you’re a hero,” I said to Irene.
Sherlock snorted softly. “Going to the police straight away would have saved at least two lives, possibly three.”
“Collin was already dead before I found out,” Irene said, without a lot of defensiveness in her tone. “I’d met him before, a few years ago. I knew the man pretending to be Collin was a phony.”
“Collin wasn’t killed until a few days ago. So, you could have saved him. If you’d bothered.” Sherlock didn’t sound as angry as I’d have expected. She also didn’t sound surprised.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I asked.
Irene shrugged and didn’t reply.
“Because blackmailing people is very effective,” Sherlock answered. “Why do you think a star of her standing was invited to, let alone photographed at, the Gala for Everything? She used her knowledge to further herself within this group. She just didn’t realize the lengths the ‘bros’ were willing to go to to protect themselves.”
“Look, I wanted to move up, and getting the help of prominent people is the fastest way up. That’s not a crime.”
“Hiding the fact that you knew someone was being held against his will and impersonated is, however,” Sherlock said. “As is collusion, though the case is very clear on you being under duress. It’s foggier for Avery. Of course, you’re not implicated in this script, and neither is he. So that’s a good thing.”
I took a good look around. Avery was in handcuffs, though he wasn’t being put with the others. All the men were from Toohey’s picture, though one of the tall ones was missing. Presumed this was the late and, in this circle, terribly lamented Digger.
“How did you find us?” I asked Sherlock now.
She snorted softly again. “You were never out of my sight, Watson. Not from the moment you left Toohey’s apartment complex.”
“You followed me?”
“In an unmarked police car, yes. Lee was kind enough to let me drive.”
“I never saw you.”
“You were far too busy being happy, Watson.” She looked very sad for a moment, but in the next her expression went back to what I was used to—amused disdain tinged with compassion. “And I’d expected it. I barely had to try to hide us, you were having such a good time.”
“Your car does bring that out.” I chose not to mention that I’d been happy to be going out with Irene, and to both women’s credit, neither one of them pointed it out, either.
“Yes, I suppose it does. I removed the script while you were dining, just in case. It was something for me and Lee to do while we waited for The Woman to drug you.”
Straude came over. “Time for you to come with us, Miss Adler.”
She nodded, then leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I’m sorry, John,” she whispered. “I do like you. But I also have a standard of living I’m aspiring to reach.”
As Straude led her away, she looked back over her shoulder and gave me her slow smile. Even after everything, it still got me.
Then she made eye contact with Sherlock. “By the way—James says hello, and that he knew you’d figure it out.”
I felt Sherlock stiffen next to me, but she didn’t react otherwise. I waited until Irene was in the car and being driven away before I asked. “Who is James?”
“Someone I’ll tell you about another time, Watson. Though, apparently, sooner rather than later.” She heaved a sigh. “In the meantime, do you have any other questions about this case?”
“So many I may forget them all. What do the scripts have to do with anything?”
“Collin had no idea that his friends had raped and murdered his girlfriend. While talking to George about the fact that they’d be working on the same show, George let something slip and Collin, being the smartest of this group, realized what was going on. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, so he had to be shut up.”
“Why the elaborate ruse, then?”
“Because George wanted to be sure Glitterazzi went on. He’s tied quite tightly into Andenson—that unexpected cost, which left them floating all their employees, was due to them having to pay hush money to Amanda, Anna, and Julianna for George’s unwanted advances. George needed to stick with the only place that would hire him, and protect him to boot; he needed this show to go on.”
“Why didn’t those women come forward?”
“They were paid off?” Sherlock shook her head at my glaring naiveté. “They, like George, needed Glitterazzi. And they were paid to be quiet.”
“Why didn’t he try it with Irene?”
Sherlock rolled her eyes. “Because The Woman was already blackmailing Oscar Odessa to do what she wanted. She was Oscar’s girl, as it were, and off-limits to George. As hard as that is to believe.”
“He’s afraid of Oscar. I could tell. They all are, even Avery. Even Irene.”
“Yes. There’s more to Oscar Odessa than meets the eye.”
“A connection to this ‘James’ that Irene mentioned?”
“And just when I think you’ve lost the ability to reason logically. Yes, that seems likely. He’ll bear watching.”
“He’ll be going away for life.”
“Sadly, probably not. He comes from money and he’ll get the best lawyers. For himself, anyway. The others? I expect that whole ‘bros before hos’ nonsense to fade away under ‘self-preservation before friendship.’”
“I still don’t understand how you pieced it together,” I said as Straude joined us. “I listened to them and I have no clear idea of why they killed who they did, let alone what the hell has happened to Cliff.”
“Ah, well, Cliff Camden was found at Lester Tibble’s house,” Straude said. “Per Sherlock’s information. Alive and reasonably well.”
