“I’m nearly positive.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw a cigarette butt outside the prison the day we went there. It had pink lipstick on it, but it was the wrong time of day for any of the female employees to have had a break, so I remembered it.”
“A cigarette butt. That’s why we are here.”
Imogen looked at him sharply, but he wasn’t making fun of her. She tasted more amusement than doubt.
He said, “That would explain her access to Martina Kidd.”
“Among other things.”
“Okay. Let me see if I can guess what you have in mind. You go up alone and confront Dirk. Meantime I just sort of loiter around down here in case someone decides they need a little late-night air and accidentally leans too far out a window.”
“Exactly.” It was not a long drop from the window to the snow-covered grass outside. Imogen knew, she’d done it once herself.
Dirk opened the door only after she’d been knocking for about a minute. He was wearing what seemed to be an air force uniform complete with cap, but his shirt was undone and his shoes were missing. He looked like he’d had a few.
His first reaction was surprise, but it did not last long. “Imogen Page. Did seeing me the other day make you realize what a mistake you made when you ran off?”
“Oh yes,” Imogen agreed. She found she was having trouble keeping a straight face. She had been furious ever since Benton had shown her the tabloid in Somerville, but somehow seeing Dirk standing there, wearing some kind of costume, drained her fury. She said, “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
Dirk looked over his shoulder and back at her. He shrugged. “Sure.”
“That is hardly a warm welcome,” Imogen chastised him.
“It’s just that—”
She slithered past him and went straight to the bedroom. “It’s awfully cold to have the window open, don’t you think?” she said, shutting it.
Dirk was frowning. “Far be it from me to say you are unwelcome here, Imogen, but after our last encounter—”
“Yes, I noticed your warm welcome the other day, Dirk. Or should I just call you ‘a prison official who prefers to remain anonymous’?”
Dirk’s expression changed. “Why are you here?”
“I have a few questions for you. And your girlfriend.”
“I’m not answering any of your questions. I don’t want anything to do with you. Do you know how much trouble you caused me? How hard it was to explain the bruises you gave me last time to my wife?”
“You couldn’t just tell her it was because you were trying to have nonconsensual intercourse with someone and she had to fight to get away?”
“Nonconsensual? You wanted it, Imogen. You had lunch with me. You came back here with me.”
“I took your lunch invitation because I was too shaken up by my meeting with Martina Kidd to drive myself to the airport. Afterward you told me we were going someplace where we could not be overheard to discuss Martina’s security.”
“You’re not an idiot. You knew what was going on. You didn’t really want to talk.”
“No, you didn’t want to talk.” But even the memory of that afternoon, of the moment when Dirk disappeared to “get some papers” only to reappear wearing nothing but a velvet smoking jacket, a Mad Hatter hat, and silk boxers with Eat Me embroidered on the crotch, the moment when he’d said, I thought we could take a trip to Wonderland together, and she had cracked up and learned all too clearly that he was dead serious, now seemed only farcical and maybe a little sad. And reminded Imogen yet again of what a fool she was around men. She said, “I’m sorry to hear you had such a hard time explaining your injuries from that day to your wife, because I’m afraid it will be much harder for you to explain why you’ve been fired.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your disciplinary board hearing. Selling prisoner access in exchange for sex.”
“You and I never had sex.”
“I wasn’t talking about me, Dirk.”
“Then I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Imogen stooped to pick up a lizard-skin bag dyed hot pink. She took a billfold from inside it and read, “ ‘Leslie Lite, investigative reporter, Global Weekly News, Incorporated.’ That is what I am talking about.”
Squeals erupted from behind them and Benton appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. His arms were wrapped around a very pretty blonde with slightly smudged pink lipstick.
“That is my purse, those are my possessions, and what you are doing is illegal,” the blonde announced as she struggled, and her objections carried extra weight because she was wearing a Wonder Woman costume. Right down to the small gold crown, matching bracelets, and red vinyl boots. It looked good on her, Imogen noticed, despite the pink lipstick. Dirk’s tastes had definitely improved since he tried to get her into bed.
Whatever animosity Imogen had felt toward Leslie Lite vanished the moment she saw her outfit. Now all she wanted was her information.
“I apologize for bursting in on you and Dirk like this, Leslie,” Imogen said sincerely. “But we need to talk to you. I can arrest you if I have to, but I would rather not.”
“You can’t arrest me. You don’t have a warrant,” Leslie said, more Wonder Woman by the second.
“I do, actually.” Imogen pulled paper from her coat and waved it in front of Leslie and Dirk. “So you have a choice. You can voluntarily tell us everything and hand over the cassettes and notes you made from your interviews with Loverboy and Martina Kidd. Or we can handcuff you.”
“Do you think the cuffs will fit over her bullet-deflecting bracelets?” Benton asked.
Leslie turned to glare at Benton, but he ignored her and said to Imogen, “What do you want me to do with her?”
“I think you can let her hands go. For now.”
Leslie’s first act of freedom was to stomp over to Dirk and kick him in the shin with her shiny red boots. “You did this,” she hissed at him. “You told her where to find me. You’ve been talking about her all night. I should have known that you would call her and tell her about me to try to worm your way back into—”
Dirk was emphatically denying it, but it wasn’t doing any good.
Imogen interrupted. “Leslie, work with us. You’ve already gotten your two exclusive interviews. It’s the coup of the century, your career is made. Now help us. Help us stop this madman.”
Despite using her most persuasive arguments, including the fact that Leslie wouldn’t last a minute in jail in her Wonder Woman outfit, it still took Imogen ten minutes to get the woman to agree to hand over everything. Even then, Imogen was not convinced they had it all.
Back in their rental car, the heater hissing out a combination of hot air and boiling drops of water, Benton looked at her and said, “What would you have done if she asked to see the warrant, Special Agent Page?”
He sounded angry. Imogen tried to look innocent. “Shown it to her.”
“I’m sure she would have found the Danny’s Pizza take-out menu very compelling reading. Dammit, Imogen, the fashion police had more legal grounds to make an arrest in there tonight than we did.”
“Why are you pissed at me? It worked, didn’t it? They had— I’m sorry, did you say the fashion police?” She frowned, rewinding the conversation in her head. “You did. You said—”
And their eyes met and she cracked up and then neither of them could speak because they were both laughing too hard.
Leslie Lite pushed Dirk out of the way to look down at the parking lot as she tugged on her Lycra running pants. “Aren’t they gone yet?” she said impatiently, touching up her pink lipstick. “I want to get out of here. What are they doing anyway? The windows are all steamed up.”
“I can only guess,” Dirk said, thinking of the spacious dimensions of a town car’s backseat, and his voice held more envy than malice.
CHAPTER 43
An hour later, eyes glued on the different scars that covered
the table in Benton’s Motel 8 room, they were no longer laughing.
Norm Rocks!
Marco & Sonia
2 good
+ 2 be
4 gotten
They had listened to Leslie Lite’s interview with Loverboy first. Neither of them recognized the voice, which did not surprise them, because they expected a criminal as clever as Loverboy would disguise it. The tape had been accurately transcribed in the paper, apart from the mentions of “confused noises.” The noises, on the tape, were not confused. They were screams.
Imogen and Benton did not look at each other afterward and did not speak.
Imogen set the screams apart in her mind—they might have been anything; he might have been making them up; they sounded so real; they were probably fake—and concentrated on what she tasted in Loverboy’s voice. He was cocky and confident. And young-sounding. She felt she had definitely been on the right track when she thought he needed attention. He was playing, playing a game.
Playing house. With his pretend family.
But where the hell was his house?
Imogen looked at Benton. “I need to listen to the tape again. Do you want—”
Without a word, he got up and went through the door that connected to her room, shutting it behind him. She replayed the tape, listening closely not to the words or the screams, but to the noises behind them. She thought that once or twice she heard something that sounded like machinery. And two other times something that sounded like an airplane.
She was hanging up her phone when Benton came back in. She tried not to look at him too closely. The hair near his ears and around his hairline was wet and he smelled faintly of soap. “I used one of your towels,” he said, and his voice sounded normal. “You can take one of mine instead if you want. Or use a piece of sandpaper. It’s about the same consistency.”
Imogen nodded, her finger tracing the graffiti on the table.
2 good
+2 be
4 gotten
She knew what she had to do. It was wrong to just not talk about the screams, to pretend they weren’t there, but she did not know how to start. She said, “Benton, I—”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to. Who were you on the phone with?”
“Bugsy. A guy who manages a gas station called the FBI number in Vegas to report a taxi parked behind his place, been there a few days. We’re following it up.”
“Do you think it’s what Loverboy used to transport Rosalind?”
“Who knows? A taxi would certainly blend in at a hotel. But it’s a long shot, could be completely unrelated. In the meantime, I asked him to work something out so that we can borrow the Metro audio lab when we get back to analyze the tape. There are noises in the background that we could use to figure out where he was calling from.”
“If that is Rosalind on the tape, we would know where he’s holding her.”
Imogen hated and was grateful for how controlled he was. “Exactly. They are also tracing the number Martina gave Leslie for Loverboy, but I’d be surprised if it led them anywhere more interesting than the bottom of a drainage ditch.” She got up and paced around. “At Dirk’s I felt sorry for her, but now, having heard that, I am furious. If she had come to us with that tape Sunday night when it was made, or better yet with the phone number whenever she first got it, we could have traced the call or at least followed it up and maybe found him. She willfully put a woman’s life at greater risk and hampered an investigation. I asked Bugsy to look into how many ways we can prosecute her.”
“Do you really hate journalists or are you just trying to displace your frustration and sense of impotence without screaming at me because you don’t think I can handle it?”
She stopped pacing and stood looking out the window at nothing, rubbing her arms with her palms. Finally she said, “Both.”
“You are right. I couldn’t handle it. Thank you.”
She did not face him, just nodded.
“Do you believe her story?” Benton asked her back. “About getting the messages from inside his bread? Why not just have her go there and talk to him?”
“What fun would that have been? Dirk Best’s greatest problem is that he is a man with a lot of imagination trapped in a very boring job. All his affairs are a way to make believe he’s got an exciting life. The thing with the bread fits perfectly.” She moved to the table. “I guess we should listen to Leslie’s interview with Martina Kidd. Her reluctance to hand it over makes me very curious.”
“It makes me queasy,” Benton said.
Imogen sat down and emptied the disintegrating paper cup of coffee in front of her. She made a face. “I think it’s your coffee that is making you queasy. Did you ask them for the dregs of the pot?”
“Yesterday’s pot. I like my coffee well done. It reminds me of college. When I worked at Robby T’s, coffee wasn’t any good unless it was at least a day old.” He sighed, sat down next to her, and said, “Enough stalling. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Benton slipped the tape into the boom box he had “rented” from the motel manager and hit PLAY.
CHAPTER 44
Leslie’s voice crackled on the bad speakers, saying, “Interview with Martina Kidd, the Connoisseur, by Leslie Lite. Good morning, Professor Kidd.”
“Good morning, my dear. Thank you for coming. Call me Mother.”
“Thank you for taking the time to talk to me, Mother. You have heard the Loverboy tape. What do you think?”
“I think Loverboy is a very talented boy. He knows what he wants. And the FBI is going to have a hard time catching him.”
“Is it true that you two have a relationship?”
“What a question. Pretty and smart. Truth is how you see it, dear.”
“How do you know Loverboy?”
“Those who can’t do, teach.”
“Do you mean that you are telling him what to do?”
“And what not to do. With a bright boy like him, that is even more important. His self-control is so flimsy. Left to his own devices he’d— Well, I can’t go into it.”
“How do you and Loverboy communicate?”
“I’m afraid our communication is a trade secret, my dear. Is there a special gentleman in your life, Leslie? You can tell me.”
“Professor Kidd, I would like to stay focused on Loverboy.”
“Mother, dear. Of course. I’m sorry. It’s just that I get so few visitors of your caliber. Charming young women. Have you met Imogen Page?”
“The FBI agent? No. But that is one of my questions. If you were conducting the investigation, what would you do?”
“I would do whatever Imogen Page is doing. She and I see eye to eye on most things.”
“Would you give her any advice?”
“Yes, but she wouldn’t take it.” The sound of two chuckles. Benton looked over at Imogen and saw her roll her eyes.
Martina’s voice went on. “I would try to find out how he transported Rosalind Carnow’s body from the Bellagio. I think she will find that interesting.”
“How do you know so much about Loverboy?”
“I know a great deal about a great many things, my dear. Your perfume, for example. It’s Calvin Klein’s Obsession, isn’t it?”
“Yes. That is remarkable.”
“It’s nothing. You know, the knockoffs of that scent are particularly good. You could try them and save yourself some money.”
“Thank you.” A pause.
Imogen said, “Martina’s working on her. I bet Leslie has to look at her notes to remember her next question.”
And sure enough, Benton heard the sound of paper being flipped. Then Leslie said, “Are you the mastermind behind these crimes, Prof—Mother?”
“Oh, dear, what a phrase. Mastermind. Are you master of your mind, Leslie? Are any of us?”
“I guess—I don’t know. Tell me, how did you get that number you gave me? The number to call Loverboy?”
“I wish I could, Leslie
.”
“It would mean a lot to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I understand.”
“You understand?” Imogen said to the tape, sitting forward. Then bringing her hand to her mouth and saying, “Oh no. I have a feeling I know why Leslie didn’t want us to hear this.”
Benton asked, “Why?”
Imogen said, “Listen. It will be soon.”
More back and forth chitchat, and then Martina said, “You have beautiful hair, Leslie.”
There was a silence, in which the recorder picked up the sound of Leslie shifting in her chair.
Leslie said, “Thank you.”
Martina’s voice: “Have you ever considered wearing it up? It would be gorgeous pinned up in a chignon.”
“No, I—” Leslie cleared her throat. “How do you know Loverboy, Mother?”
“How does anyone know anyone? I propose a trade, Leslie of the Lovely Hair. I will answer your question if you would be kind enough to give a message to Imogen Page for me.”
“I told you, I don’t know Imogen Page.”
“You will.”
“What message?”
“Do you use Clairol color on your hair? Or L’Oréal?”
“I don’t see how that can possibly—”
“Humor me, dear child. What harm can it possibly do? Tell me, do you color your hair at home? Over the sink? Or in the bathtub?”
A tight, nervous chuckle. “In the sink, usually.”
“It must be messy.”
“Well, not so bad once you are used to it.”
Benton looked over at Imogen and saw she had her head in her hands. “What?” he started to ask, but she just pointed at the tape player.
Martina said, “What were we talking about?”
“You were asking me to take a message to Imogen Page.”
“That is right.” A pause. “I wonder if I dare.”
“What?”
“Dare to ask you—could I touch your hair? Would you deign to humor a lonely old lady that much?”
“You want to touch my hair?”
“Oh, I knew it was too much to ask.”
“No, of course.”
“It’s so beautiful.”
Bad Girl and Loverboy Page 60
