by Dianne Emley
“Trendi was more than just a distraction,” Vining said. “She’d become a liability for Towne and Pavel and their plan to steal the Le Towne baby. Georgia must have been green with jealousy when Sinclair got pregnant. I’d be interested to know which one of these nuts—Stefan or Georgia—hatched the baby-napping plan. Georgia probably thought she’d get more PR mileage if she actually gave birth. I had a few minutes with Sinclair in the nursery and she told me that she’d enlisted Trendi and our Officer John Chase to help her have her baby in a hospital and not in that disgusting birthing room in the basement of the Le Towne home. Perhaps Trendi was found out and Chase too. Chase sent Sinclair a text message after he quit his job at Le Towne, telling her that everything was still in place. It was probably intercepted. Could Pavel have murdered Chase and his girlfriend Alison?”
“We’re confident that we’ll find evidence linking Pavel to the John Chase and Alison Oliver homicides,” Scarbray said. “Pavel is a calculating sociopath. A cold-blooded assassin who kills people that get in his way.”
“Upstairs, Sinclair told me that Gig is Liliana’s father,” Vining said. “Why would he conspire to kidnap his own baby and give it to the Berryhills?”
“Maybe the Berryhills had something on him beyond sex with underage girls,” Kissick said.
“We’re hopeful that Cheyenne can explain a lot of what’s been going on in Nirvana.” Scarbray said the name sarcastically.
They turned at the sound of a commotion inside the foyer. A woman yelled, “Get him!” followed by a man shouting, “That way!” all accompanied with barking from a small dog.
Two deputy sheriffs, one holding a blanket between both hands and the other with a leash, were chasing Mr. Peepers. After clearing the stairs, the dog darted wildly through the foyer before running outside. Kissick, Vining, and Scarbray jumped back as the enraged cur bolted in their direction, snapping and snarling.
The female deputy threw the blanket over the little dog and the other deputy helped her scoop him up into it.
Vining had pressed her hand against her chest. “I’m amazed that Mr. Peepers could even move that fast.”
Scarbray watched the deputies struggling with their difficult bundle and shook his head. “That dog…”
“So Stefan Pavel is likely responsible for the murders of”—Kissick began counting on his fingers—“Madrigal, Trendi, Chase, and Alison.”
Vining added, “And very probably the drowning death of his first wife, the vitamin heiress. What happened to Fallon Price?”
“That’s the only one we’re not sure about. We’d long suspected that something deadly had happened to Fallon at Berryhill and that she’s buried here,” Scarbray said. “An agent posed as a client and came with his cadaver-sniffing dog. We identified a suspicious area not far from the party cabin in the woods. We have yet to complete our interviews with Cheyenne, but she claims to have information.”
“Did Pavel murder Catherine Engleford?” Vining asked Scarbray.
“He may have. I don’t know what his motive would have been. I hope that Cheyenne can help you close that case.”
“Did you become involved with Mrs. Engleford to learn secrets about the Berryhills, putting her life in danger?”
“No. I never thought she had inside information about the Berryhills. Tink was another wealthy client whom they kept stringing along as long as the money kept coming. Spending time with Tink was a way to move the investigation forward, and I enjoyed her company. The Berryhills were intrigued by King Getty, but they’d seen guys like him before. My relationship with Tink gave me legitimacy with the Berryhills.”
Vining became angry. “If you thought Mrs. Engleford was in danger, you should have warned her.”
“I already told you, I don’t know any reason Tink would have been in danger from Pavel.” Scarbray’s eyes shifted briefly before returning to meet Vining’s.
It was only a split second, but it was enough for Vining to tell that he was lying.
He seemed to sense this and tried to explain further. “Look, an investigator takes some risks—but that’s not what I did with Tink.”
“You know how I’ve pushed the envelope in investigations.” Vining was glad to see that her comment caught him off guard. “You know all about me. You have a stack of articles about me in your apartment. Why?”
Again his eyes darted away for a second. “This is neither the time nor the place for such a discussion.”
“How about this then? My mother was dating Vince Madrigal. I swept her house for bugs and found some. Did you also have her under surveillance and why?”
Georgia Berryhill, her hands still cuffed, was guided by Detective Jeannie Brasfield down the steps of the house. A jacket was thrown over Georgia’s shoulders. Brasfield gestured for one of the unmarked black SUVs to drive forward.
“I truly can’t talk now,” Scarbray said. “I have some pressing matters to attend to.”
“I need answers,” Vining said.
Scarbray was already walking away when he said, “And you’ll get them. I’ll call you.”
Vining frowned at his back.
Kissick said, “He was forthcoming about their investigation. He didn’t need to give us all that information.”
“Maybe he felt that he owed us something.”
“In my experience, that’s not how the FBI works.”
Vining watched Scarbray conferring with officers and agents. She couldn’t hear what he was saying but he was clearly in charge. “He hasn’t told us everything.”
Stefan Pavel, fully dressed, his hands cuffed behind his back, was led across the driveway by Lucretia, the Berryhill acolyte who’d greeted Vining and Kissick at the front desk when they visited Berryhill. An L.A. Sheriff’s Department shield dangled around her neck.
Following Stefan was Gig Towne, also now clothed and in handcuffs, being led by a tall man wearing a black polo shirt with an embroidered FBI shield above the pocket.
Seeing his wife, Stefan Pavel lunged at her. “This is your doing, you foolish bitch. You just had to have a baby.”
“Keep your fat mouth shut, Stefan.” Georgia took a step toward him before being restrained by Brasfield.
“Get moving,” Lucretia said, pushing her supposed former boss ahead of her, making him stumble.
“They’re already turning on each other,” Vining said.
Gig Towne, hearing Vining, turned to look at her and Kissick. He gave them a maniacal grin. Vining couldn’t tell whether it was a joke or real. He stopped and suggestively pumped his hips in their direction. Noting their shock at his vulgarity, he laughed in a way that sounded like the Gig Giggle blended with pure evil.
This time, even Kissick didn’t find him funny.
FORTY-NINE
Vining was in the PPD detective’s conference room watching a DVD of Kissick’s interview with Cheyenne Leon that had taken place at the FBI’s Westwood office. After a while, Vining turned her chair to look out the window and she just listened to their voices.
Cheyenne was composed and spoke from the heart with none of the attitude she’d shown before. “I really liked Tink and I think she liked me. That job as Tink’s personal assistant was the first real job I had ever had. Tink helped me grow professionally and personally. I feel bad for being so snotty with you and Detective Vining after I found Tink’s body, but I was so afraid. Plus, I felt guilty, like maybe it was my fault that Stefan killed her.”
“How did you know that Stefan Pavel had murdered her?” Kissick gently asked.
Cheyenne drew in a long breath. “I didn’t know for sure. I just felt it in my gut. I was helping Tink plan this big party to raise money for Georgia’s Girls and I just couldn’t stand it. I knew what went on there. Good people like Tink were giving their money to Georgia and Stefan so they could take advantage of girls. I told Tink, I said, ‘Stop giving them your time or money. You don’t want to be involved with that place.’ I told her, ‘That’s all I can say, understand?’
“She looked at me and the color went out of her face. She didn’t ask me any questions. She didn’t mention it to me again, but I heard her on the phone telling Stefan that she was through with Georgia’s Girls. She was going to cut them out of her will and she didn’t intend to keep her mouth shut.”
The recording went quiet. Vining turned to see Cheyenne staring down at her hands.
“A couple of days later, Stefan called me. I was in Ventura. Turns out, it was the morning after it happened. Stefan told me I had to return to Pasadena right away. He said he’d stopped by Tink’s and found her floating in the pool. He told me to take Tink’s laptop, her Georgia’s Girls files, and anything having to do with Tink playing around with the occult. He didn’t want anyone to find out about Berryhill’s dirty little secrets.”
Vining knew that all the materials Cheyenne had taken had been found by investigators during the compound bust in a back closet in Pavel’s office. Investigators had also found the evidence they sought that tied Pavel to John Chase and Alison Oliver’s murders. Among Pavel’s papers were maps of Chase’s house and Alison’s courtyard apartment and logs of their, their neighbors’, and Chase’s roommate’s comings and goings. Fibers matching one of Pavel’s sweater vests were found on Alison’s body.
“I took everything except Tink’s sigils,” Cheyenne said. “I went to a gas station by the freeway, and some flunky who worked for Stefan was there to pick the stuff up. I went back to Tink’s. Before I called the police, like Stefan told me to do, I burned Tink’s sigils. Tink and I had studied sigilry. We’d burned others before. These were new. I’m sure she was asking for guidance about Stefan and Georgia. Burning them released their power.”
“Cheyenne, why didn’t you tell us all this before?”
“I was afraid Stefan would kill me. He’d killed Tink, and she was way more important than me. Then when I heard about Trendi, I knew I could never say anything. I’d been afraid for Trendi. I knew Trendi and John Chase were planning to help Sinclair give birth in a hospital. One night, Gig Towne wanted Trendi to party with him and she wouldn’t do it. Trendi told me she’d mouthed off, saying, ‘You’re gonna be sorry. You’ll never see Sinclair and her baby again.’ That was the end of her. When Detective Vining was tough with me at Carmen Vidal’s office, I realized how really wrong it was to let them get away with everything. After I shot at Georgia, I no longer cared if Stefan came after me or not.”
“Cheyenne, what happened to Fallon Price?”
She sucked in air through her teeth. “Gig Towne liked rough sex. Maybe it was the only way the perv could get off. One night, we were partying in the cabin in the woods. It was me, Trendi, Fallon, Gig, and Stefan. Gig was screwing Fallon and he had this cord around her neck, from behind. You know…I saw her go down on the bed. She didn’t look like she was breathing. Trendi and I were screaming. Stefan got us out of there. The next day, Fallon and all her stuff were gone.
“Stefan pulled me and Trendi over and told us that Fallon had drunk too much. He said that she woke up and went to her room. She must have left the compound during the night. Trendi, with her big mouth, was like, ‘Gig strangled her. We saw.’ Stefan denied it. Then he said, ‘Too bad Fallon left because I got both of you great jobs. You’ll need cars, so you’ll be getting brand-new BMWs and new wardrobes and you’ll be earning money.’ And then he said, ‘Of course, if anyone asks about Fallon, you’ll say she got in a fight with you, Cheyenne. You slapped her and she left. All right? Because we wouldn’t want the two of you just disappearing like Fallon.’”
Earlier that day, Vining had heard that sheriffs investigators had found Fallon’s body in a shallow grave in the compound. The hyoid bone in her neck was fractured, indicating that she’d been strangled.
While it had taken Georgia Berryhill and Gig Towne about five minutes after they were arrested to offer to rat out everyone in exchange for a plea bargain, Stefan Pavel had remained as silent and inscrutable as one of the Buddha statues in the Malibu Canyon compound. To Vining, news of his equanimity in the face of the charges against him revealed his heartless, sociopathic core. The only information that Pavel offered was “I did not kill Fallon.” He would say nothing more.
Vining stopped the DVD and sat quietly thinking.
In a brief but furiously busy period of deadly housekeeping, Stefan Pavel had murdered Madrigal, Trendi, Tink, Chase, and Alison, methodically killing as a by-product of doing business and protecting his interests. Vining thought he must have enjoyed the wet work, since he hadn’t hired it out. She’d discussed the cases with a prosecutor friend in the L.A. District Attorney’s Major Crimes Division. With all the first-degree murder charges, conviction on just a couple would guarantee Stefan a spot in a state penitentiary for the rest of his natural life, which might be shortened with a death penalty conviction and a date with the needle.
Gig Towne wouldn’t admit to knowing anything about the murder of Fallon Price. Since it was allegedly committed during a sex crime, Vining’s Deputy D.A. friend told her that, if it could be proven, it was a special circumstances homicide, and what would have been a second-degree murder charge with fifteen years to life could become life without the possibility of parole, or even the death penalty. Much hinged on the credibility of Cheyenne’s testimony. Gig was also charged with Unlawful Sexual Intercourse, or statutory rape.
Gig was silent regarding his role in the kidnapping of his own baby. Prosecutors alleged that when Stefan helped Gig cover up Fallon’s murder, he set the stage to later demand a favor in payment. That obligation would come due several years later when Stefan demanded that Gig hand over his newborn to mollify his baby-lusting wife.
Dr. Janus and the midwife, Paula Lowestoft, were also charged with kidnapping of a child under age fourteen. Sinclair’s testimony would help in the kidnapping case against them and Gig, which brought a sentence of five to eleven years in state prison.
Regarding the kidnapping, Georgia claimed ignorance. She insisted she thought her husband was arranging a black-market adoption, saying, “I would never steal a baby, and most certainly not from my dear friend Sinclair.”
Stefan, again, maintained his silence.
Sinclair, in exchange for her testimony about the kidnapping plot, was facing misdemeanor charges of aggravated trespass and carrying a loaded firearm. She might serve three months, if that, in county jail.
Regarding Cheyenne’s shooting from her car in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel, Carmen Vidal negotiated a deal for her client to be charged only with misdemeanor unlawful discharge of a firearm. She might do six months in county jail.
Cheyenne and Gig both claimed that Georgia Berryhill knew everything that went on behind the scenes at the Berryhill compound, even as Georgia held to her story that she was Stefan’s pawn and as much of a victim as the clients he ripped off and the young women he abused. There was little solid evidence to prove that she knew of any crimes being committed. She would face an assault with a firearm charge for having aimed a loaded gun at Sinclair, but it was a wobbler—meaning it could be charged as either a misdemeanor or a felony—plus she could argue self-defense. Vining doubted she’d spend more than a few months in county jail.
Kissick came into the conference room and interrupted Vining’s reverie, asking, “How about some lunch?”
They went to Green Street, one of their favorite local restaurants.
Vining spoke between bites of her Dianne salad, the restaurant’s signature dish of iceberg lettuce, shredded chicken, toasted almonds, and a sweet dressing. “My prosecutor friend says that, sadly, all the serious charges will slide off Teflon Georgia. She was cagey enough to hide or eliminate evidence of her involvement.”
Kissick was having a Big John’s Meat Loaf sandwich, his favorite Green Street lunch. “Just a wrist-slap for the firearm charge. Amazing if she walks away from this whole thing.”
“She’ll write a book about it,” Vining added. “Make the talk-show circuit and rise from the ashes. Whaddya bet? Get
away with stealing Sinclair’s baby. ’Course, faking a pregnancy isn’t a crime.”
Kissick wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Georgia’s damage-control people are already working overtime to gloss over that entire incident as a PR stunt that went awry. Smart move for Sinclair to have filed for divorce from Gig Towne right away. She needs to distance herself from that nut and fast.”
Vining started to laugh. “I was thinking about your taped interview with Cheyenne when she said that Gig and Stefan would get off on watching each other with those girls. She used to feel like telling them, ‘Why don’t you guys get a room?’ In that little glimpse I had of their orgy, Stefan seemed more interested in what Gig was doing than in the young gal who was blowing him.”
“It was hilarious when Gig denied having sex with Cheyenne,” Kissick said. “She told the prosecutor that Gig can deny it all he wants, but how else would she know that he has a gherkin penis? Now he has to reveal his private parts to prosecutors.”
Vining reached to pick up a gherkin pickle from Kissick’s sandwich plate. She held it up. “As I remember it, I’ll give him a little more than gherkin. Let’s call it a baby dill.”
FIFTY
Patsy Brightly set one of three bags of groceries she was carrying on the ground and unlocked her town house door. She banged it with her hip to push it open, as it had become sticky after the last earthquake. Moving through the doorway, she dropped a bag on the parquet tiles inside, which was accompanied by the sound of shattering glass.
“For crying out loud, Nan,” she said to her daughter, who was sitting at the dinette table. “You scared me within an inch of my life.”
“Sorry, Mom, but you won’t return my phone calls.”
“I’ve been superbusy, honey.” Carrying the other bags into the kitchen, Patsy returned to look inside the one she’d dropped. “Ugh. That was a jar of salsa. It’s all over everything.”
