by Al Roker
Lars and Manny were on duty at the gate. I’d met them earlier, heading out for my walk to the car rental agency. At that hour their khaki uniforms had looked neat and pressed. Now, like the guards themselves, they’d lost some of their starch.
Lars was in his forties, with a long, flat face that resembled the character actor who’d played the Frankenstein-like father in The Munsters, Fred Gwynne. Watery blue eyes, mouth turned down at the edges, gray hair, judging by what I could see of it under his peak cap. Manny, whose name was Manuel, I assumed, was in his twenties, Mexican American, slightly overweight but muscled. He was there for the heavy lifting.
Neither man carried a gun, a good thing, probably, because when Manny first caught sight of me that afternoon, I’d had three strikes against me. I was a black man he didn’t know traveling by foot inside his gated community. Fortunately, Lars had recognized me before Manny even had the chance to slide his nightstick from his belt.
But Manny and I seemed to be on good terms now. “Sweet wheels,” he said, waving me through.
Security floodlights were brightening the area in front of Villa Delfina, illuminating two unfamiliar vehicles parked in the driveway, a pea-green Hummer that was about the ugliest SUV I’d ever seen and a dark blue Camry Hybrid. I anchored the Lexus between them, its proper gas-guzzling position.
I put the top up and used the little gizmo to close the gate. I struggled out of the car, plucked the grocery bags from the passenger seat, and took the walkway beside the villa, heading for the guesthouse. I was almost there when I saw Fitz galumphing past the pool in my direction.
“Yo, Billy,” he called out.
I watched, bemused, as he approached. “Glad to see you, cobber,” he said, breathing hard for such a short dash. “Please tell me it was you left the slidin’ door open.”
“I’m pretty sure I closed it, Fitz. In any case, I left before you did.”
“Shite! I was hopin’ you’d come back.”
I shook my head. “What’s up?”
“We, ah … somebody mighta been in the house.”
“A break-in?”
“Well … yeah. I guess you’d call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
“A break-in. I mean, it looks like that. The back door was open when we got here a few minutes ago. Only they didn’t really break any lock or anything.”
“Then how’d they get in?” I asked, the groceries starting to get heavier.
“Ah … maybe the door was unlocked,” he said. “I ain’t used to settin’ alarms.”
The sound of glass breaking inside the villa drew his attention. “Des is goin’ fuckin’ ballistic. I better get back.”
“I’ll catch up with you as soon as I put this stuff away,” I said.
It took me only a few minutes to unlock the guesthouse, shove the perishables in the fridge, and glance around to make sure my valuables, such as they were, had been undisturbed. When I arrived at the villa, I found a visitor in the living room with a cigarette in her mouth, a dust brush in her right hand, and a dustpan in her left. In the pan were the pieces of what looked like a china cat. The woman turned toward me, cocked her head to keep the smoke from drifting up into her eyes, and said around the cigarette, “Welcome to the happiest place on earth. Oh, wait. That’s Disneyland.”
“This is fecking unacceptable, you brainless sot,” Des shouted from somewhere up above.
“The second-happiest place on earth,” the smoking woman said.
She was in her forties, light brown hair professionally styled and highlighted by streaks of blond and gray. A strong jaw, straight nose. Full lips colored a frosted pink. Big prescription glasses in black curved aviator-style frames with DG in prominent letters on the temples. Green eyes. Green blouse, more or less covering full breasts. White silk slacks covering long legs. Pink-tipped toes tucked into black sandals with thick platform soles.
She looked vaguely familiar.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m Billy—”
“Blessing. Yes. I know. Excuse me a minute.” She moved to a table, got rid of the dust implements, and plucked the cigarette from her lips with her left hand. She extended her right and said, “I’m April Edding. Parker and Bowen Public Relations. We’re handling PR and publicity for O’Day at Night.”
We shook hands. I gestured toward the broken cat and said, “It looks like you may have your work cut out for you.”
“Oh, this,” she said. “A minor show of pique. Hardly in the same class as tossing one of L.A.’s better-known chefs into a swimming pool.”
“Touché.”
“I was there,” she said. “At Stew’s.”
“Yes. I believe I saw you. I’m sorry we didn’t meet.”
“Well, you seemed a bit occupied with Roger,” she said. “Speaking professionally, if you must do something like that again, please continue to do it in front of paparazzi. It’s publicity gold. Actually, I know the lady who handles Roger’s PR. Regina Simons. I bet we could work out a smashing event in which you and he just happen to meet up again. Fan the media flames a little?”
“Try something like that,” I said, smiling sweetly, “and I just might toss you into a swimming pool.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t cause a ripple, publicity-wise.”
A thud almost rattled the overhead rafters.
“I’d better see what’s going on up there,” I said.
“We ladies love you action heroes,” she said as I headed toward the stairs.
The guys were in a large room with windows that looked out at the beach and ocean. Judging by the various musical instruments resting in cases on the bed and on a chair near a mirrored closet, it was Fitz’s bedroom.
The musician was zipping up an overnight bag.
Des was draped across the only other chair, his right hand wrapped around a bottle of what looked like schnapps resting on his flat stomach.
“What was the noise?” I asked.
“Billy, me lad,” Des said, sounding surprisingly mellow. “Me faithful friend Fitz was just givin’ me a display of his strength by slamming his luggage onto the floor.”
Fitz sheepishly lifted a huge metal footlocker from the hardwood floor and placed it into the closet as effortlessly as if it were a bag of goose down. He saw the gouge it had left in the hardwood and rubbed the rubber sole of his Nike over it. He seemed disappointed that it hadn’t disappeared.
“Don’t worry about it, boyo,” Des said. “Gives the place character. The important thing is nobody has messed with the lock.”
He looked at me. “It appears our concerns were for naught. Nothing seems to be missing.”
“Good to hear,” I said.
“You meet April?”
I nodded.
He straightened and stood with his liqueur. “The three of us are heading out to dinner. April says the place we’re going, Frush, is the current hot place to eat. Come on along.”
I recalled that Frush was one of Roger’s restaurants. “Thanks, but I think I’ll just fix something light and catch up on my z’s.”
“You can get all the sleep you need when you’re dead,” Des said.
I could have mentioned that that was precisely why I wasn’t going to Frush. Instead, I asked what he thought of April.
“She seems to know what she’s doing. She was a big help in findin’ the locations where we filmed today.”
“She’s workin’ on a 60 Minutes segment for Des,” Fitz added as we headed downstairs.
“Wouldn’t that just piss Letterman off?” Des said with a grin.
Searching for a word that described their mood, I settled on “semi-relieved.” Only minutes ago, Fitz had been fully stressed and Des was breaking crockery and yelling. I wondered what was in that footlocker. Something the burglar had not found, if indeed there’d been a burglar.
“Everything safe and secure?” April asked, when we joined her.
“Best as we can tell,” Des said.
“M
aybe the wind blew the door open,” Fitz said.
I looked at the sliding door, seriously doubting a breeze off the ocean could move a sixty-pound sliding tempered-glass-and-steel door sideways.
Fitz tensed suddenly and said, “The bloody game room!”
“Well, go check,” Des told him, and Fitz ran off in that direction.
The comedian’s interest turned to the subject of drinks before they left for dinner. April’s request for white wine prompted a mild rant from our host about Southern Californians’ preference for wine over hard booze that sounded suspiciously like a stand-up routine he’d used before.
When he hit his punch line—“so when I’m drinking something, I want it to be the product of clean, healthy barley, not grapes that’ve been stomped on by some Eye-talian broad with dirty feet”—I excused myself and moved away from their chatter to put in a call to Cassandra.
She answered on the third ring. “Snoozing on the job?” I asked.
“How well you know me, Billy,” she said. “Actually, I was not expecting a call this late. I’d assumed you were losing interest in your little food stand. It’s such a minor part of the expanding coast-to-coast Blessing empire.”
“I’ve been a little busy here,” I said, though I didn’t feel an apology was necessary. “How’d my little food stand do tonight?”
She gave me a quick summary of the evening’s business, which was very good news, then went on to complain about a waiter who’d arrived for work with a head cold. “I sent the idiot home immediately. They’ve all been warned. Everybody’s so damned health-conscious these days. One loud sneeze from a food handler and this place is as empty as a bowling alley.”
“There’s got to be a better simile,” I said. “Bowling is a popular sport.”
“Okay, you come up with one.”
“As empty as … a country-western concert at the Apollo?”
“Too strained,” she said. “And too stereotypical. If that’s all you’ve got …”
I was in the midst of concocting the perfect empty-room simile, involving the mind of a publicity-hungry reality-show reject, when I caught a whiff of something coming from the kitchen.
I sniffed again.
“My God, Billy, don’t tell me you’re coming down with something,” Cassandra asked.
“No,” I said, distracted now. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I was vaguely aware of the stream of profanities indicating that Cassandra was not ready to ring off, but by then I was snapping my phone shut.
“Anybody smell anything?” I asked the others.
“Yes,” April said. “Something’s cooking.”
“I’m guessing none of you is prepping hors d’oeuvres?” I said.
Not waiting for the answer, I pushed past the kitchen door.
The cooking odor was strong now. Meat, I thought, or possibly fowl. There was also an acrid smell mixed in. Something burning. All of this was emanating from the electric range, where a digital readout indicated that the broiler temperature was 400 degrees, with twenty-seven minutes left before the cooking was complete.
I grabbed a kitchen mitt and opened the broiler. Sizzling noises and some smoke, along with a full dose of the unpleasant fragrance.
April was standing behind me as I pulled out the sliding tray.
“My God,” she said. “Is that what I think it is?”
There wasn’t much doubt. If you’ve seen one ugly gray rat simmering in its own juices, its fur singed and smoking, you’ve seen ’em all. Someone had decided to broil the rat, surrounded by potatoes and carrots and sprinkled with parsley. They’d even placed a cherry tomato in the critter’s mouth.
Chapter
TWELVE
“What the hell!” Des had evidently just entered the kitchen.
“Well, Billy,” April asked, “is this the way one cooks rat?”
“I’m not exactly an Iron Chef when it comes to preparing rodents,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure that when they cook them in Vietnam and Thailand, they clean out the intestines, then deep-fry them. Whoever did this wasn’t planning dinner, they were sending a message.”
“What feckin’ message might that be, Billy?” Des asked, as if daring me to reply.
I shrugged. “Could be anything from ‘A rat for a rat’ to ‘Nothin’ says lovin’ like roast rat in the oven.’ ”
“Fitz, git yer bloody arse in here,” Des yelled.
The big man entered with a worried look. “Somebody’s been in the game room.”
“Stop eyeballin’ me, you bloody wanker,” Des yelled, “and tell me if ya see anything warped in here.”
Fitz looked from Des to April, then to me. I pointed at the rat.
“Sweet mother of God! A feckin’ rat?” His head turned in Des’s direction fast enough to cause whiplash. “What do you—”
“I’m bolting,” Des said, heading for the door. “I don’t stay in places where anybody can just stroll in and light up a ratter in my stove.”
“Hold on a second,” I said.
When he didn’t, I rushed after him. “I’m pretty sure the message was meant for me,” I said.
He halted and turned. “Okay, Billy, you got my attention.”
I sensed rather than saw the others following us into the room. “As April will tell you, a fellow chef named Roger Charbonnet went a little postal at the party last night and came after me.”
“Charbonnet is a well-known hothead,” April added. “Billy cooled him off by tossing him into the swimming pool.”
Des raised an eyebrow. “Well, Billy. A regular Jackie Feckin’ Chan, are we?”
“All I did was duck.”
“What set the bloke off?”
“A feud from way back,” I said. “I’d hoped it was forgotten, but apparently not.”
“Apparently,” Des repeated. “And he’s that big a nutter he’d bust into a house and cook up a rat?”
Twenty-three years ago he murdered his girlfriend, I thought. What I said was, “Yeah, Des, I think he’s that big a nutter.”
“Amazin’. This really is header heaven out here.”
“How’d he get past the security guys?” Fitz asked.
“He could have been put on the guest list by Stew Gentry’s daughter,” I said. “He’s been seeing her.”
“Gentry’s daughter?” Des asked.
“Yes. She lives with Stew,” I said. “Des, this guy Charbonnet is my problem. I’ll head to a hotel in the morning and make sure he gets word he chased me off. He won’t be bothering you again.”
Des strolled to the bar, poured a couple of inches of Jameson into a tumbler, and shot it. “Fact is, Billy, I was gonna tell Max that this crib wasn’t what I wanted. It’s too damn far from the studio. And my Irish hide takes to the sun like a fish takes to the desert. Next to me, David Caruso looks like bloody George Hamilton. I’d already decided to move inland, to Brentwood or Beverly Hills. This beach-blanket bullshit isn’t for me.”
“Could be a pricey mistake,” April said.
“Not mine. It’s the production company’s responsibility.” Des took another bite of Jameson, then turned to Fitz. “Pack up, bucko, we’re boltin’.” To April, he added, “Find us a fine hotel, will you, luv? Two suites. Tout de suite.”
“What’s the rush, Des?” I asked. “Sleep on it. Tomorrow, I’ll take care of the problem.”
“I’m not waitin’ around to see if the nutter left us something a little more lethal than the rodent dinner. You worry about yourself, old lad. If you think you can keep the bogeyman at bay, the villa’s all yours for the rest of the month. I know Max is on the hook for at least that. I’d rather think a pal was gettin’ some use out of it.”
“I feel terrible—”
“Hey. Get it straight, Billy. I wasn’t gonna stick around here anyway. And it wasn’t you cooked the rat.” He grinned. “If it had been, the damned thing might be worth a taste. All I ask is you keep this episode on the down-low. This is not the kind of publ
icity I’m lookin’ for. You clear on that, April? This rat thing never happened, right?”
“I’m not a novice at this, Des,” she said.
“In fact, not to put too fine a point to it, let’s make it one of your priorities to keep my off-camera activities out of the bloody tabs.”
“As much as I love you,” she said, “a lot of those cats are already out of the bag. Your East Coast PR reps have done an excellent job of getting you press for the show. And a lot of that, like the piece in GQ that just dropped, focuses on your ‘dark Irish moods’ and ‘fondness for single-malt and married supermodels.’ So … I’ll do what I can. But if you want to keep your private life private, you’ll have to monk up. There are too many paparazzi, professional and amateur, for you to think you can even cop a quick feel in public without it showing up on TMZ in high-def.”
“Point made,” Des said. “But keep my name off the hotel rez, okay?”
“How about … Daniel Knight Lewis,” she said.
He smiled. “That’s brilliant, darlin’.”
With that, he rushed off to put the whip to his packing mule, Fitz.
April brought out her phone but paused before making the reservations. “Billy, how sure are you it was Roger Charbonnet who broke in here?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then since it’s your rat, do you think you could dispose of it?”
I nodded, but I felt a little odd about it, as if I was getting rid of evidence. Of course, the “crime” didn’t seem all that serious.
You’d think, by now, I would know better.
Chapter
THIRTEEN
“Sorry to bother you, Stew,” I said when he’d unlocked the rear door to his house. He was wearing a tan warm-up outfit and Ugg slide-ins, and I guessed he’d had his nightly workout and was hoping to settle down in front of the TV. Or in his case, with a book in his hand.
“What’s up, Billy? You’re frowning like a man who’s been staring too long at the sun. Come on in.”
