“Neither will I,” she said.
Krista was standing on one of the toilet seats, reaching up through a ceiling panel. Her hand reappeared with a plastic envelope full of white powder. Libby quickly crossed the tiled floor and grabbed it from her. “I’ll take that.”
“No! I need it to get me started for this next number!” Krista tried to claw the envelope out of Libby’s hand, but Libby ripped it open and poured the
cocaine into the toilet.
“I’m just doing what you hired me for, Krista. Is there any more hidden up there?”
“No!”
Libby climbed up beside her to take a look. She pulled two more plastic envelopes from where Krista was reaching for them and emptied the contents down the toilet. “I’m not kidding, Krista, and it’s time you realized it. You can have your agent fire me, but you can’t con me into not doing my job. You hired a bodyguard and that’s what you’ve got.”
Krista returned to the recording studio, pouting and unhappy. Her first attempt at the song was again off-key, but she took a few minutes’ break and did better the second time. Shawn Gibbs applauded on the third try and told her they’d use that one. She nodded nervously and said, “That’s it. We’ll have to do the rest tomorrow.”
Zap Richards unplugged his guitar and came over to her. “You all right, Krista?”
“I’ll make it.” She gave him a halfhearted smile.
He dug around in his pocket and produced a hand-rolled cigarette. “This is all I’ve got on me.”
Libby stepped between them and Krista said, “Put it away, Zap. I don’t want it.”
“This is some watchdog you hired for yourself.”
“I’ve been called worse,” Libby said.
They had a late lunch with Shawn Gibbs and Matt Milton. Gibbs was either pleased at the way the session had gone or he was putting a good face on it for Krista’s benefit. He talked about his plans for the album and Matt tried to sell him on merchandising ideas connected with the upcoming concert tour. By the time they left the restaurant, the afternoon had pretty much ended and Krista had to go to her dressmaker’s for a fitting.
Afterward, they headed back to the apartment. “We’ll eat in tonight,” Krista said. “Something light.”
“Is this a fairly typical day?”
“Sometimes it’s a little more exciting. There are a couple of parties this weekend. But I’m afraid next week you’re going to have to sit through five days of dance class. I’m adding some dance numbers to my show.”
“How long do you think you’ll need me?”
“Maybe through the concert tour. If I can stay clean that long I should be okay.” She hesitated and then added, “You did good work today, Libby. On that third number I was sure I needed a snort, but when you wouldn’t let me have it I managed without it, didn’t I?”
“You sure did.”
Libby played with the cat for a while before they ate, but Krista’s habit of allowing it to roam at will over chairs and tabletops turned her off. She had to race to finish her coffee before Tabby licked up his share. But the real challenge of the evening began with the return of Sonny Ritz, still wearing his leather jacket, shortly after ten o’clock. It seemed obvious to Libby that he intended to spend the night with Krista, and she didn’t know how she could prevent a drug exchange from taking place without sharing the bed with them.
“This is your nursemaid, eh?” Sonny asked, looking Libby up and down with a smirk. “Do I have to wrestle her for you?”
“You’re welcome to if you think you can,” Libby said.
He made a grab for her and Libby sidestepped, catching his arm and twisting it behind him until he dropped to his knees. When she let him up, the color had drained from his face.
Krista loved it. “Sonny,” she said, “you’ve finally met your match.”
Sonny seemed not about to quit that easily, but the intercom buzzed and the doorman announced that Shawn Gibbs was on his way up to see Krista. “What does he want this time of the night?” she complained. She turned to Sonny. “You’d better go. I’ll call you in a few days.”
“What is this, the brushoff?”
“Just go, Sonny. I’ll call you, I promise.”
He left just as Shawn Gibbs reached the door. Libby noticed they didn’t speak.
“Is he still hanging around?” Gibbs asked Krista. “I thought you got rid of him.”
Libby was checking out the area of the room Sonny had occupied, making certain he hadn’t left any little envelopes for Krista.
“Sorry to come by so late,” Gibbs said, “but something’s come up at the studio.”
“What’s that?”
“Somebody stole the master tape of the three songs we recorded this morning.”
“What?”
“At least I think it’s been stolen. It could have been misfiled—I’m going to tear the place apart in the morning. But I wanted you to know we may have to do the whole thing over again.”
Krista took the news in good humor. “It’s not even in the stores yet and my public is clamoring for it. You’ll make a mint on this one, Shawn.”
“I’m glad you can take it so lightly. How about a drink to settle my nerves?”
“Be my guest,” Krista said.
He poured three shots of bourbon and passed one to Libby without asking if she wanted it. After a sip, she left the rest on the table unfinished. She was a Scotch drinker, when she drank at all. “So was the studio broken into?” Krista wanted to know.
“No sign of it.” Shawn Gibbs was nervous, sitting at the kitchen table with them for a time and then pacing back and forth. “I suspect an inside job, but I can’t figure out who would have done it. If they wanted to steal the tape, why not wait until tomorrow when we were planning to finish it?”
“Maybe Libby here can find it for you.”
Libby held up her hands. “Protection, not detection, that’s my business. Just because I was with the police people always think I can solve crimes. Have you reported the theft to the police?”
“Not yet,” Shawn said. “I thought I’d wait until morning when I can make a more careful search.”
He finished his drink and declined a second, saying he had to go. Krista saw him out and he promised to phone in the morning if the tape reappeared before her recording session at ten.
When they went to bed around midnight, Libby insisted on leaving the door between her room and Krista’s open. She had trained herself to be a light sleeper when she was on a case and she knew any unusual movements by Krista would awaken her.
The telephone in Krista’s bedroom rang somewhere toward dawn. The first bits of daylight were beginning to show through the closed blinds as Libby opened her eyes and listened. She heard Krista’s voice, briefly, and then silence. She hadn’t been able to make out her words, and decided it wasn’t important until some minutes later, almost asleep again, she heard the apartment door close. The clock read 6:55.
She jumped out of bed and hurried barefoot into Krista’s room. The bed was rumpled and empty. With a growing sense of panic, Libby checked the rest of the apartment and then the outer hall. Krista was gone and Libby had no idea where. She saw little point in phoning Matt Milton to report it. She was sitting on her bed, thinking about what to do, when Krista’s telephone rang again. She glanced instinctively at the clock and saw that it was 7:22. Running to answer the phone, she prayed it was Krista.
It wasn’t.
“Is this the residence of Krista Steele?” a male voice asked. He was reading the name off something and Libby knew at once it was a police officer.
“Yes. What is it?”
“Are you a relative, ma’am?”
“No. I work for Miss Steele,” Libby replied.
“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news, ma’am. There’s been an automobile accident. Could you tell me how to reach the next of kin?”
“Next of—?”
“I’m awfully sorry, ma’am. Miss Steele was kill
ed instantly.”
Libby found her old friend, Sergeant O’Bannion, in his office when she reached police headquarters less than an hour later. He glanced up and gave her a grin. “A bit early for you, isn’t it?” He was a large man with a big face that was more often gloomy than smiling.
“There was a fatal car accident an hour or so ago, O’Bannion. Krista Steele, the singer, was killed. Do you have a report on it yet?”
“An hour ago? I doubt it. The investigating officers are probably still at the scene.”
He got up to check a pile of forms on one of the other squad-room desks and she followed him.
“The officer said it happened on Dakota Street, near Windsor. The car hit a tree.”
“Nothing here yet,” he started to say, and then stopped. “What time did you say?”
“A little after seven.”
“There’s a report here of a fatal on Dakota Street, one car, driver killed, time about six-forty-five.”
“That would have been too early,” Libby said. “I was at her apartment and she didn’t leave until at least ten minutes after that. It would have taken her another ten minutes to get her car and drive to Dakota Street.”
“What’s your connection with this, Libby?”
“She was a client.”
“You were protecting her from a death threat?”
Libby shook her head. “She was on drugs and her agent convinced her to hire a bodyguard to keep her away from them.”
“Odd sort of assignment. Okay, come along and we’ll look into this.”
They went first to check out the death car, which had been towed to a city lot nearby. There was no doubt it was the white sportscar Libby had ridden in the previous day, though now the interior was scorched and blackened by flames.
“According to the report, the body was burned beyond recognition,” Libby heard O’Bannion say. “They identified her from the license number and the contents of her purse, which was thrown clear.”
“Convenient.”
“What?”
“If the accident happened at 6:45, it was someone else,” Libby insisted.
Quickly she went over the events of the previous day and that morning. “You might have been wrong about the time,” O’Bannion said.
“I was fully awake when I looked at that clock.”
“Then maybe it wasn’t Krista Steele you heard leaving at 6:55. Maybe this guy Ritz came back and spent the night, after all.”
“I’d have heard him. It was Krista who answered the phone and it was Krista who left at 6:55.”
They went back to O’Bannion’s office and read the report of the investigating officers. Both swore the accident happened no later than 6:45. They came upon the burning car while on routine patrol. Some nearby neighbors were already on the scene, awakened by the crash a few minutes earlier.
“Then it wasn’t Krista,” Libby said again.
They had to wait an hour for the preliminary report of the medical examiner. The body was that of a female in her early twenties, about the same height and weight as Krista Steele. Fingerprints were of no use since Krista’s were not on file and the impact of the crash had caused such extensive damage in the area of the mouth that a comparison with Krista’s dental records would be difficult if not impossible.
“I’ll still lay you odds it’s her,” the sergeant said.
“Then how do you explain the time discrepancy?”
“Simple,” he said with a shrug. “The clock you looked at was running fast.”
Returning to Krista’s condominium, Libby used her key to let them in. The white cat, Tabby, had awakened and was purring near the door as if expecting his mistress. Libby ignored him and went immediately to the bedroom she’d been using. “Here it is. Check it for yourself.”
The clock was actually a couple of minutes slow.
“Somebody might have changed it,” O’Bannion said rather lamely.
“If someone were going to change it, wouldn’t they have changed it the other way, to discredit my story?”
O’Bannion sat down on the unmade bed. The cat jumped up beside him and the policeman stroked him absently under the chin. “You’ve got a point there,” he admitted. “Let’s check the downstairs garage.”
The attendant didn’t come on duty until eight o’clock and, as Libby had observed the previous day, even then security was not very tight. No one had been there to see Krista or her car leave. Though the garage door opened only from the inside, it wasn’t impossible to suppose that someone had entered the garage through a fire door and stolen the car sometime before six-thirty.
“Why?” O’Bannion asked. “You think she’s trying to pull an insurance fraud?”
“That’s what I intend to find out,” Libby said. “Whoever’s behind this, they had to arrange for that crash. And somebody died in that car. Somebody was murdered in that car.”
Matt Milton took the news of Krista’s apparent death very hard. Even after Libby told him she had reason to believe the body was not Krista’s the agent remained close to tears. “It’s her all right,” he said. “I always figured she’d end up this way. The drugs and—” He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. “God knows I did my best to help her.”
“Mr. Milton, I have to ask you this and I hope you’ll forgive me. Could this whole thing be some sort of publicity stunt on Krista’s part, to promote her new album?”
He stared at Libby as if she was out of her mind. “Publicity stunt! Why would she have allowed me to hire you if she was planning something like that?”
“To have a witness on the scene. After the funeral she could reappear, claiming it was a hitchhiker who died in the car and she wandered off after the crash with temporary amnesia.”
“You’re saying she’d cause someone’s death for a publicity stunt,” Milton said. “Krista would never do anything like that.”
“Did you know the master tape from yesterday’s session was stolen from Shawn Gibbs’ studio last night?”
“Really? Who would do a thing like that?”
“Perhaps someone who knew it would be her last recording. I suppose that would give it some extra value.”
“Now you’re saying she’s dead. Make up your mind, Miss Knowles.”
But Libby couldn’t make up her mind. She felt certain Krista hadn’t died in the fiery crash, but that conclusion only opened a whole new barrel of questions. O’Bannion had promised to keep her informed of the police investigation, but when she left Milton’s office and tried phoning him. He was out.
She drove to the recording studio, where the gloom was even thicker than at Milton’s office. Zap Richards met her just inside the door, looking naked and alone without his guitar. “One of the cops says you don’t think she’s dead. Is that true?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Libby admitted. “But I’m certainly not convinced she’s dead.”
She went on down the hall to Shawn Gibbs’ office. The door was open. “I was hoping you’d come by,” he said, looking up from his desk.
“How’s it going?”
“The place has been a madhouse. We’ve had two television crews and I don’t know how many reporters here.”
“Anything new on the missing tape?”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you. We found it. Zap was helping me search this morning, before we heard about Krista, and he found it in among some blank tapes.”
“Could it have gotten there by accident?”
“I suppose so,” he admitted, “but it’s unlikely.”
“What do you think happened to Krista?” Libby asked. “I can’t imagine.”
She met O’Bannion for a drink at a bar across from headquarters. She occasionally liked to go there because it had been a hangout while she was on the force, but tonight it brought back unexpectedly painful memories of the man she’d loved—who’d died in a single-car accident. She’d always wondered if it was suicide, and now she found herself asking the same question about Krista. Maybe
she had decided she couldn’t go on living without drugs.
But there had been the phone call that had lured her out before seven.
Someone had made that call.
“Case got you down?” O’Bannion asked, reading her silence.
“I can’t get a grip on it,” she admitted. “A tape is stolen and then reappears. Krista might be dead but maybe she isn’t.”
“The papers sure think she’s dead. There are bigger headlines than she ever got alive.”
“Anything more from the autopsy?”
“Yeah, but you’re not going to like it. The body showed traces of heroin.”
“Krista Steele wasn’t on heroin!”
“Who knows what she was on, Libby?”
She played with her glass in silence for a moment, then asked, “Could the accident have been faked?”
“Sure. She could have been beaten to death and her teeth messed up earlier, then the killer could have spilled gasoline around the inside of the car, tied down the accelerator and the steering wheel, and aimed it at the tree. The fire would have burned any string or rope that was used.”
“And if the body isn’t Krista’s, whose is it?”
“From the approximate age and traces of heroin, along with the fact that we have no new missing-person report, it could be some prostitute or drifter, chosen because she was about the same size and age.”
“Then you’re willing to accept that as a possibility?”
O’Bannion thought about it. “I’ve been a cop long enough to know that the most likely explanation is usually the true one, Libby. Your idea is pretty far-fetched. Bring me some more evidence and I’ll listen.”
“If the body is that of some prostitute or even a runaway, maybe her fingerprints are on file even if Krista’s aren’t.”
“That’s an idea,” he admitted. “I’ll see how badly the fingers were burned.”
After leaving O’Bannion at the bar, Libby went back to Krista’s apartment to gather up her things. The place still looked the same, even to the empty glasses on the table from the previous night, but Libby didn’t stop to wash them. She was on her way out the door when the whole thing came to her in a flash.
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