Kill the Messenger

by Tami Hoag

  “Celeb criminals are hot again, Parker. It’s retro reality TV. All the rage.”

  “What’s next? The return of David Lee Roth and the hair bands?”

  “The world’s going to hell on a sled. Where are you?”

  “Between the guy selling bootleg DVDs of Cole’s television series and the Channel 4 news van. Where are you?”

  “On the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

  “Meet me by the espresso guy.”

  “You’re buying.”

  “Have you ever picked up a tab in your life?”

  “Nope.”

  Parker paid for a double tall espresso for himself and a grande triple caramel macchiato with extra whipped cream for Kelly.

  “You have the metabolism of a gnat,” Parker observed.

  “Yeah, it’s great. What are you doing down here?”

  “Talking to you,” he said, but his gaze scanned the crowd, his radar up for any sign of Kyle or Roddick. He tipped his head away from the madness. “Take a walk with me. You won’t miss anything, will you?”

  She waved a hand at the courthouse and rolled her eyes. “Cole’s inside, trying to look bereaved for the jury pool. Scintillating, I’m sure. He gets to show his full emotional range, from A to B.”

  They walked a short distance down the street, away from the carnival, turning to watch from a distance.

  “You look a little rough around the edges, Kev,” Kelly said.

  “It’s been a hell of a day so far.”

  “And the day ain’t over yet,” she said. “Have you had to face your friends from RHD?”

  “I won’t give them the satisfaction,” Parker said, his gaze still scanning. He was in full-on hunting mode now, mind racing, pulse racing, blood pressure rising. He couldn’t make himself stand still. Slowly shifting weight from one leg to the other was his pressure valve, spending a little steam to keep him from blowing up.

  “I’m not a gracious loser,” he said. “I took everything I had on the case and walked. They’ve probably got an APB out on me even as we speak.”

  “So who knocked you around?” Kelly asked.

  “Huh?”

  “My keen investigative skills tell me someone wasn’t playing nice on the playground.” She leaned down and plucked at his pants leg where he’d landed on his knee in Davis’s garage. A grease stain and a small three-corner tear marked the spot. Both legs were beige with dust over the expensive brown-with-blue-pinstripe fabric.

  Parker’s eyes widened as if he were seeing himself for the first time. “Aww, son of a . . . I’m suing this creep Davis when I catch him. This is Canali!”

  “Well, how stupid are you? Why would you wear a designer suit to a dogfight?”

  “I’m a detective. When am I ever in a fight?” Parker said, more bent out of shape than the piece of tailpipe Davis had used to beat on him.

  “Well, today, apparently.”

  “Besides, my clothes are my disguise. No one thinks I’m a cop. I dress too well to be a cop.”

  “Can you write your suits off on your taxes, then?”

  “My business manager says no.”

  “That sucks.” Kelly shrugged. “Everything has a trade-off. So what happened?”

  “Eddie Davis caught me poking around his place. I took the opportunity to arrest him. Then he took the opportunity to try to kill me. He’s at large. Every cop in the city is looking for him now. Do you know anything interesting about him yet?”

  “In the minute and a half since you asked me to vet the guy?”

  “Here’s what I know so far,” Parker said. “He’s a low-end petty criminal with delusions of grandeur. Until recently, he had a low-end defense attorney by the name of Lenny Lowell.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  Parker did another quick scan, only his eyes moving. A stocky guy in a wrinkled shirt and tie stood a little too near, lighting a cigarette. Parker went over to him and flashed his ID.

  “Hey, pal, take a walk,” he said.

  The guy gave him attitude. “I’m having a cigarette here. Mind your own business.”

  Parker got in his face. “No. That’s not how this works, ace. You mind your business over there,” he said, jabbing a finger in the direction of the courthouse.

  Kelly wedged herself in front of him and tried to move him back a step. “Kevin . . .” She glanced over her shoulder at the smoker. “Sorry. He started the patch last week.”

  Parker turned away from her and walked down the block another fifteen yards. Kelly scurried to catch up.

  “This is just a thought,” she said, “but you could maybe take the testosterone down a notch.”

  Parker ignored her. “My friend who overheard my name in that conversation between Giradello and Kyle was at a fund-raiser for the DA. The prominent guest of the evening was Norman Crowne.”

  Kelly’s brow furrowed as she tried to tie the pieces together. “A low-end lawyer like Lowell . . . a cheap thug like Davis . . . Those guys are less than ants in the world of someone like Norman Crowne.”

  “I think Lowell and Davis were blackmailing someone,” Parker said. “I’m guessing Eddie got tired of sharing. So how does a goon like Eddie Davis, a known knee-buster, come up with someone to blackmail?”

  “Sixty-two percent of relationships begin in the workplace,” she quipped. Then realization dawned. “Oh, my God. You think someone hired Davis to kill Tricia Cole.”

  “And that someone couldn’t be Rob Cole,” Parker said. “Even he wouldn’t be stupid enough to be in the house when the cops came. He would have been out establishing an alibi.”

  Kelly tried to digest the idea. Parker started to pace, his own thought processes racing. Black cars were lined up at the curb with drivers at the wheel, and LAPD motorcycle cops were sitting on their bikes in front and behind, at regular intervals. Livery for the big heads that would be coming out of the courthouse soon. Three limos, a couple of Town Cars, a triple-black Cadillac Escalade with black-tinted windows.

  Parker took in the details almost absently, just to keep his brain focused on something innocuous so he could breathe and rein in his energy for a moment. He paced back and forth past the same three cars a couple of times, then stopped abruptly. He wasn’t even sure why, at first. Then slowly he turned back to walk past the last of the cars again.

  “What is it?” Kelly asked, joining him.

  On the lower right corner of the back window was a small purple circular sticker with a gold insignia and a row of black numerals. A parking sticker for a corporate lot. The scene came up in his memory: He was walking toward the black Lincoln Town Car, doing what he had been doing just now, taking in small details, filing them neatly away in his brain, but keeping his mind focused on the subject of most importance: Eddie Davis. He remembered the electric blue of the sky, the green of the grass, the black car, the license plate, the small parking sticker on the lower corner of the back window. It was no bigger than a quarter.

  Parker’s breathing was shallow and quick, and he felt a strange light-headedness as he lowered his gaze to the rear plate.

  CROWNE 5.

  40

  Parker’s first thought was a selfish one: My career is over.

  “Eddie Davis is driving around in a black Lincoln Town Car,” he said quietly.

  “You’re out of your mind, Kevin,” Kelly said. “There’s no way a hit man is riding around in a Crowne Enterprises vehicle.”

  Parker was already dialing his cell phone. As he spoke to the person on the other end of the line, he realized he was trembling. He had to press the phone against his ear to hold it steady. He imagined he heard a clock ticking as he waited for the information he’d requested.

  Kelly was shaking her head, muttering to herself, “I can’t get my brain wrapped around any of this. How does it work?”

  “Crowne Enterprises has reported two black Lincoln Town Cars stolen in the past eighteen months,” Parker said, sticking his phone back in his pocket.

  “So
Davis stole one.”

  Parker gave her a look. “Eddie Davis is walking along the street one night, decides he wants to steal a ride, and the car he rips off just happens to be a Town Car owned by Crowne Enterprises. What are the odds of that?”

  Kelly frowned. “Well, if you put it that way . . .”

  “You’ve been on this story since day one,” Parker said. “If you had to pick a suspect other than Rob Cole, who would it be?”

  She thought about it for a moment as she took her turn to glance around for spies. “Well, there’s darling Caroline, who discovered her mother’s body. Her relationship with Rob was certainly not father-daughter. They palled around like they were schoolmates. Of course, Robbie arrested development at about seventeen, so it probably seemed normal to him.

  “And then there’s Phillip, Tricia’s brother. I suppose living in the shadow of St. Tricia had to get old. She was the apple of their father’s eye, and Phillip . . . has always just sort of been there in the background.

  “He had dinner with Tricia at Patina the night she was killed. A roomful of people saw them there, apparently having a serious discussion. He says she talked about divorcing Cole, that she was going to call a lawyer the following week. She hadn’t spoken to anyone else about it, so we’ve only got Phillip’s say-so.”

  She paused and looked away and made a face as if she was trying to decide whether or not to share something with him.

  “You might as well tell me,” Parker said. “I know there’s something more in that brain of yours. I don’t want to have to resort to torture.”

  “What kind of torture?” she asked, with a sultry look.

  “The bad kind.”

  She sighed and said, “Okay. I heard a whisper once, back at the start of this mess, that Tricia had accused Phillip of skimming off one of the charities.”

  “Who told you?”

  “It was a cousin of a woman whose husband’s sister’s uncle-in-law’s housekeeper’s daughter used to work at the Crowne Trust office. One of those deals. I dug on that story like a badger, but I never could substantiate it. Phillip has an alibi for the time of the murder, but if he hired it out . . .”

  “He could have paid Davis with a Town Car,” Parker speculated. “Then had to account for the missing fleet car and claimed it must have been stolen.”

  “But you’re forgetting something here, Kev,” Andi said.

  “Which is what?”

  “Rob Cole did it. He was there, in the house, passed-out drunk, when Tricia’s body was discovered. He has no alibi. He’s well-known for having an ugly temper. If Tricia wanted rid of him, then he would certainly have motive to want to be rid of her.”

  The first limo in line started its engine and rolled slowly forward, one of the motorcycle cops positioned in front of it, lights flashing.

  “They must be coming out,” Kelly said.

  She started back toward the courthouse at a fast walk, which quickly broke into a trot. Parker went after her, his kneecap throbbing as he started to jog.

  The media area was buzzing with a swarm of activity and excitement. Light stands moving, cables dragging, directions being shouted in English, Spanish, and Japanese.

  Cole ironically had a big cult following in Japan, despite the fact that footage of a drunken Rob Cole cursing people of different ethnic persuasions—including the Japanese—while being escorted from a West Hollywood club aired regularly on news programs the world over.

  Andi darted between and around people, her size an asset until she reached the last few impenetrable rows—the on-air talent for the networks and the local news stations. Parker followed her, holding up his ID and speaking in a serious, authoritative LAPD voice, telling people to step aside. He found Kelly because her head suddenly popped up between a pair of broad-shouldered men, then disappeared again. She was hopping up and down, trying to get a view of the courthouse main entrance.

  She turned to Parker. “Bend over.”

  “What?”

  “Bend over! I want to get up on your shoulders.”

  “What if I don’t want you there?”

  “Stop being such a baby, Parker. Hurry up.”

  He hoisted her up just before the doors opened and the first of the procession emerged: Norman Crowne and his entourage of attorneys and assistants and bodyguards.

  Crowne had appeared regularly at the courthouse during the myriad pretrial hearings. Even while the voir dire was ongoing, and no one from his party was allowed into the courtroom, Norman Crowne had come to the courthouse as a show of support for his beloved daughter.

  Parker had seen him in television interviews—a dignified, quiet man whose grief was almost palpable. It was a wrenching experience to watch him as he answered questions and spoke about Tricia. None of the emotion was forced or staged or disingenuous. It was raw, and he was clearly a very private man, uncomfortable trying to keep a too-small cloak of pride pulled over the worst of wounds.

  It simply wasn’t possible to imagine him having any connection to someone like Eddie Davis or needing to pay blackmail to a sleaze like Lenny Lowell.

  On his arm: the granddaughter, Caroline, in a prim little suit with a jacket tailored to minimize the roundness of her figure. Parker knew enough about human psychology to know the idea of Caroline falling for her stepfather was not as far-fetched as it may have seemed on its face.

  Caroline’s biological father, by all accounts an abusive bastard, had bowed out of her life early on, leaving her with a void where a parent should have been, and a screwed-up idea of what made a good relationship. Then during Caroline’s adolescence, when girls are struggling with hormones and budding ideas of their own sexuality, Rob Cole had come riding in to save poor Tricia from her loneliness.

  He had looked past the mousiness, the awkwardly shy personality, straight to the billions of dollars behind her. But he had been a convincing Prince Charming, and everyone had loved him for it. Life was a fairy tale.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine that Caroline had bought into that fairy tale herself, or that she had developed a serious crush on her stepdaddy. He had been, after all, a heartthrob at the time.

  Psychologists claim girls are always in competition with their mothers for the attentions of dear old Dad. And when dear old dad turned out to be a weak, narcissistic, amoral, borderline personality, there was a recipe for trouble.

  A couple of steps behind Caroline and her grandfather walked Norman Crowne’s son, Phillip. The runt of the litter. Where the old man was considered slight of build, the son had more of a scrawny quality, thin and pale with thin, pale hair.

  He was a VP of Crowne Enterprises, in charge of counting paper clips, or something to that effect. Norman was still the man in command, the man with his name in the papers. Perhaps that was why Phillip was so pale—he had spent his entire life standing in his father’s shadow.

  Tricia Crowne’s brother had expressed more anger than pure grief at his sister’s murder. He was the one who spoke of revenge more than justice. The idea that Tricia had been murdered morally offended him. The idea that Rob Cole had killed her offended him even more. Seeing Cole for what he was, Phillip Crowne had never warmed up to Cole as Tricia’s husband. He loathed Cole the defendant.

  It was difficult to imagine any of the Crownes even knowing of a person like Eddie Davis.

  Parker watched the pack of them descend the steps. Two uniformed sheriff’s deputies preceded them to the waiting car.

  Mr. Crowne has no comment at this time.

  My grandfather is very tired.

  My father and the rest of us consider the judge’s ruling this morning to be a triumph for justice.

  They weren’t all in the limo before the crowd’s attention swung back to the courthouse. The Crownes and their opinions and emotions were instantly old news. Rob Cole and his cadre had emerged.

  Cole’s attorney: Martin Gorman, a big guy with red hair and a kind of Popeye-like expression. He towered over his client, keeping a hand on Cole’
s shoulder as if to guide or protect him.

  Gorman’s second chair, Janet Brown, was short, pudgy, with mouselike looks. A certain eerie resemblance to the victim. And, as such, a strategic member of Gorman’s team. If a woman like Janet Brown could believe in Rob Cole, defend him against charges that he had brutally murdered his wife, could he really be a bad man?

  For the right price, Janet Brown would have posed as advocate to Caligula.

  And then there was Rob Cole himself. A handsome grin with a whole lot of nothing behind it.

  Cole was the kind of guy Parker took one look at and thought: What an asshole. Diane wasn’t the only person who saw it. Parker recognized it instantly. He just didn’t quite let on to Diane, because he found her animosity for the man both entertaining and intriguing. But Parker knew the animal. He had been Rob Cole once, only younger and much better-looking.

  The difference was, a cute thirty-something jerk could still get a pass for arrogance. There was time for him to evolve into something better. A fifty-something jerk had passed the expiration date for change. Rob Cole would still be wearing fifties bowling shirts when he was seventy-five, and bragging to everyone at the rest home that that was his trademark and his public still loved it. The biggest recurring role of his career: starring as Rob Cole.

  Cole played that part every day of his life. Every day was a three-act opera, and he was Camille. He had put on his good-man-wrongly-accused persona for the media. Noble and stoic. The tight-lipped, serious expression, head held high. The salt-and-pepper hair cut military-short. The wraparound ultra-black shades, cool but understated.

  Most people didn’t want to search for a deeper level when they looked at the Rob Coles of the world. The facade was a showstopper, and that was as far as they went. The blessing and the curse of being a pretty face. The look was all people wanted to believe in, and because they didn’t really care if there was anything behind it, the face began to believe there wasn’t anything there to care about either. Good thing Rob had the face, or he wouldn’t have anything.