“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hissed.
“Don’t I? I think I do. What kind of money does it take to get one’s sister to commit a murder just so the other sister can get a promotion, and her lover a bump up to boot?”
The sweat on Mullen’s lip looked like blisters now, and I had the urge to suggest he find a handkerchief and wipe it away. I kept quiet, though, not sure if he was about to break or nudge that .22 back in my direction.
“It wasn’t like that,” he finally said, a tremor in his voice. “Felix was terrible. You have no idea.”
“So, it wasn’t that he was giving Ginny all the plum assignments, all the screen credits you thought you deserved?”
“Oh, he was giving them to her, all right. But only because he thought he was sleeping with her. The man was married with kids, and even then he could have had any woman in this department he wanted, but he went after Ginny even though she told him she wasn’t interested. He didn’t give her a choice. It was do what he said and get the rewards, or refuse and get the door. What could she do?”
“Quit,” I said. “Get a lawyer.”
He shook his head. “And never work in this town again? No. She gave in, and she says it only got worse, his demands…” Disgust clouded his expression. “He wanted her to do things that…well…they weren’t right.”
I thought of the assassins and their predilections. The world was full of people with kinks, and the ones who were the most shocked by the truth of it were usually just as depraved, or worse.
“So, she got her sister to take her place. And Felix never knew the difference.”
Mullen nodded. “Isn’t that a kick in the head? He was such a monster that he didn’t even notice when they switched on him.”
“Why the hotel instead of Ginny’s place? Was that part of the plan from the start?”
“There was no plan, Strait. Don’t you get it? Ginny got into this fix and didn’t see any way out. She at least had the foresight to insist on the hotel because she didn’t want the neighbors to talk. When she realized there was only one way out of this mess, she was glad no one had seen Felix at her place before…before that night.”
I nodded. “All right. I’ll buy that. But I can’t buy that there wasn’t a plan. You didn’t hire me to tail Ginny without knowing she was going to need an alibi. And you had to have some idea of what she’d need an alibi for.” I leaned forward on the moving box, ignoring the gun as well as I could. “Maybe there was no plan at the start, but you can’t tell me that when Minnie had Felix go to Ginny’s house on Friday instead of the Califia, she didn’t have that bullet in mind for him? Where’d she get the gun, anyway?”
He looked a little uncomfortable at this and chewed his lip for a second before he let the rest out. “Ginny’s first thought was blackmail, but Felix was careful. He never let anything slip, never left evidence behind. If she’d accused him of anything, it wouldn’t have gone anywhere. She got desperate and knew the only way out was to get rid of him. Getting the promotion…all of that was beside the point. She brought Minnie in to cover her tracks, like you said. Then…she had me get the gun. At the same pawnshop where I got this one. It was supposed to look like a suicide. Minnie invited him to the house instead of that hotel. She was going to get him drunk.”
“And then shoot him in the head,” I said. “And make it look like he’d done it himself.”
Mullen nodded.
“What went wrong? She panic?”
He shook his head. Then he swallowed hard. His voice quavering, he said, “She offered him a drink. He wouldn’t take it. He came on strong, got rough with her. He wanted to…right there in the kitchen. What kind of person does that?”
Lots, I wanted to say. Instead, I said, “And Minnie had the gun with her.”
Mullen stared at me for a long time, his eyes like drill bits—sharp and cold, merciless and unyielding.
Then I understood.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Minnie didn’t have the gun at all,” I said. “You did.” He gave me no reaction, and I hesitated to say anything else lest those cold eyes should be a sign that more was going on in his mind, a mind that was about to send a signal to the hand holding the gun. Several seconds passed before I found the nerve to ask, “Where were you hiding?”
He let a breath out through his nose, his lips still tight and closed. Then he said, “The front closet. Minnie was going to give me a signal when he was good and soused. She let out a little scream instead.”
“And you came out.”
He nodded. “Felix had her on his lap. He wouldn’t let her up even though she was struggling.”
“And you came up behind him?”
“He never knew what hit him.”
“But you forgot the plan. Shot him in the left side of his head because that’s the side you approached him from and forgot all about him being right-handed.”
He nodded, his eyes far away, reliving the moment. After a few seconds, he said, “The worst part was the blood that got all over Minnie.”
The horror crept into his eyes then, and I could see it wasn’t over the man he’d murdered or the way he’d screwed up the plan. It was Minnie he was upset about, and then I saw the flaw in Carmelita’s theory about Mullen and Ginny Flynn.
“How long have you and Minnie been together?” I asked.
He flinched at this, and I almost ducked away from the gun. It didn’t move though, and when I looked at Mullen’s eyes, I saw something different there now—a sadness I hadn’t observed before, a vulnerability.
“It wasn’t supposed to go that way,” he said. “Ginny brought her out here to trick Felix. There were times when we all three met. And…times when I met with Minnie alone.” He shrugged. “It just happened.” Then he chuckled a little. “It’s kind of funny, you know? Ginny and I get on well enough, but there’s a rivalry here in the writer’s building. I never—and I mean never—thought about her that way, but put her exact double in front of me for five minutes, and I turn into a puppy dog. I’d do anything for her, Strait.”
“Including murder.”
He sat up at this, and then I saw the gun shift back toward me. “It’s my word against yours,” he said. “You understand?”
I nodded. “I do.”
“If I hear you’ve gone to the cops…if they come snooping around or even take me in…if they bother Minnie or Ginny…you’ll regret it. If they arrest me, I’ll make bail. And if I can’t…I’ll have it arranged ahead of time. I’ve got enough money to have you taken out of the game. You and that assistant of yours, both. And no one will miss either one of you.”
“Hey, now, you’re getting personal. That’s not called for, is it?”
“I’m not joking, Strait. You get me?”
“Sure, Mullen,” I said. I kept my voice even while I looked down the mouth of his gun, hoping to sound neutral, almost uncaring about the death he threatened to wield. If anything, I wanted to sound sympathetic to his plight—a man in love caught up in a web he hadn’t woven, a dead man’s perverse whims more to blame for his situation than anything else. “I get you.” I showed him my hands, open in a gesture of surrender. Wanting nothing more than to get off that box and away from Mullen’s emotional instability—along with his .22—I said, “I just wanted to know the truth. It eats at me when there’s a puzzle I can’t solve, see? That’s all. It sounds to me like this guy Madrigal maybe got what he deserved. That’s…between you and him in the end, isn’t it?”
“That’s how I see it. I just don’t want to see Minnie dragged into it. She didn’t do anything, you know?”
Conspiracy to commit murder, I thought. Accessory after the fact. There were probably a few others, but there wasn’t any point in going there.
“I understand,” I said instead. “What do you say you put that thing away and I get out of here? Leave you alone to get your…packing done.”
He stayed silent for several seconds, clearly weighing his op
tions. Then he lowered the gun.
“Get out of here,” he said. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”
I let myself relax a little. “With pleasure. Nothing personal, of course.” I stood and turned toward the door.
But then he stopped me. “Hey!”
I froze, tensed and ready to hear the blast of his gun from behind me.
It didn’t come.
Instead, I turned to see Mullen gesturing with the gun, its tip pointed toward the chair where Carmelita had sat. “Your girl left her purse,” he said.
My eyes followed the gun to Carmelita’s handbag. “Right,” I said. “We wouldn’t want to leave an excuse for me to have to come back for anything.”
A bit hesitantly, I took the fewest steps possible toward the chair. Then I picked up the purse, not sure how one was supposed to handle those things—from the strap or from the bottom? Shrugging, I opted to gather it into my arms like it was a fat puppy that was threatening to squirm out of my grasp if I gave it half a chance. Then I moved toward the door, not wanting to turn my back on Mullen and his gun again.
For a second, I considered asking him about the suicide note. I figured that would be pushing my luck, though. The note had been typed, after all, so one of them—probably Ginny—had prepared it ahead of time and forged Felix’s signature on it. It wouldn’t have been that hard to do.
When I was back in the hallway, I let out a long breath and leaned against the wall for a second. Then I pictured a bullet passing through the plaster, and I started moving toward the exit as quickly as I could.
Back outside, I found Carmelita waiting in the car. I must have looked shaken as I slid into my seat, since she took the purse from me, opened it, and pulled out her cigarette case. Carmelita didn’t smoke—didn’t have the capacity—but keeping cigarettes handy for just such an occasion was one of her affectations. I don’t smoke either, but I accepted the offer regardless, rolling the car’s window down a few inches and blowing smoke into the early afternoon air after getting a flame from her lighter.
“What happened?” she asked after I’d taken a minute to calm down.
I looked at her and forced a smile. “You were right,” I said. “He was playing us, just not quite in the way you had it figured. But it’s going to be tough to prove, not when it’s my word against his.” I knew this to be true despite what I’d said about the cops being able to subpoena various records. There was a chance they could go at Minnie and break her, but not if Mullen got to her first with a good lawyer. Regardless, I had every intention of letting the police know what had just transpired between Mullen and me, his threats notwithstanding. I figured I could handle myself against him, especially if I had the LAPD at my back.
Carmelita’s face had broken into a smile when I’d first started talking, but it fell when I added the bit about proof. She looked suddenly disappointed in me, and at first, I wasn’t sure why. Then she opened her purse again and took out one of Guillermo’s portable phones. It seemed an odd time for her to be trying to make a call, especially without having attached the antenna, but after a moment I realized she wasn’t using the dial. Instead, she was plugging the speaker into a little jack on the back of the unit and playing with tiny toggle switches inside the box.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Just wait,” she said, her tone serious.
Then she flipped one more switch. From the little speaker came the sound of a man’s voice. At first, I thought she’d somehow received a call without the phone ringing. But then I realized I was listening to myself saying, “…does it cost to get one’s sister to commit a murder just so the other sister can get a promotion, and her lover a bump up to boot?”
Then Mullen’s voice came out of the speaker, the tremor in his voice and everything. “It wasn’t like that. Felix was terrible. You have no idea.”
Carmelita pushed a button, and the voices stopped. She looked at me with superiority, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised.
I was ready to start gushing praise over her forward thinking and Guillermo’s ingenuity. But then I realized why she’d snuck the recording device into our meeting with Mullen, why she hadn’t told me about it ahead of time, and why she’d been so willing to leave when Mullen had shooed her out. Leaving her purse behind had been completely uncharacteristic. Of all the women I’d ever known, none had ever walked out of a room, forgetting her purse. I had chalked it up to Carmelita’s lack of humanity, a flaw in her programming. Right down to her opening statements about Mullen’s identity and the day and location of our meeting, it had all been calculated—a move meant to provide insurance in case I tried to stiff her out of her raise.
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t look at me like that. Just because I said it was Mullen’s word against mine doesn’t mean I was going to try rooking you.” Her eyebrow gave no hint at relaxing. “Honest, Carmelita. You did it. You solved the case where I thought there was none. If it wasn’t for you, Mullen and Ginny would have walked, and no one would have known about Minnie at all.”
She nodded, slowly. “So…that means?”
Letting out a long breath, I said, “You get your raise.”
“And a step toward partnership?”
“A step,” I said. “Just one, though. There are going to have to be several more before anything serious happens.”
“How many more?”
“Let me get back to you on that.”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to get complacent and forget about it,” she said.
“Never.”
She nodded at this and then said, “What now?”
Letting out a long breath first, I said, “Now, I guess we get out of here before Mullen decides it’s better to come out here with his gun. We’ll head to the bank and deposit this check before he has a chance to stop payment on it.” I patted my breast pocket and added, “And then, we can head over to Hollywood Division. Guillermo’s going to have to give up that phone, probably until the trial. He going to be okay with that?”
“I expect.”
I nodded and started the car. As we passed the guard shack on the way out the gates, I said, “I don’t know who caught the Madrigal case in the Hollywood Division, but I figure I can play the recording for McNulty.”
“Do you think it will be admissible as evidence?” she asked.
I turned toward her and smiled. “You have been doing your homework, haven’t you?”
She returned the smile. “I’m no slouch, Jed. You should know that by now.”
“I do, Carmelita. I do.” We pulled onto the street, and I said, “I don’t know about admissibility. Part of what I’ll need to do is demonstrate to the cops how that thing works. Even then, it’ll be challenged in the courts if Peale has a good lawyer.”
“So, we’re still sunk?”
“Not necessarily. Not if McNulty can use the recording to squeeze a confession or a guilty plea out of Mullen or Minnie. I expect he’s an artist in the interrogation room. He’ll get the job done. If not, we’ve done all we could to help him out.”
“Can I go with you?” Carmelita asked. “To talk to McNulty?”
“Of course,” I said. “You solved this case, after all. You should be the one to sell it to the detectives.”
She smiled broadly at this and then sank a little further into the passenger seat, a look of ease and contentment on her face.
I drove in silence for a few more minutes, my mind juggling all the facts and memories of the last few days. My thoughts kept coming back to one thing, incongruous and pretty much inconsequential, but unrelenting nevertheless.
As a result, I didn’t hesitate to answer when Carmelita asked, “After we finish in Hollywood, we go back to the office?”
“You do,” I said. “I’ll get you cab.”
“What about you?”
I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “There’s a club I went into the other day when I was looking for info on Frank Attentater. They play their mu
sic on an old record player. I figured they could use some live music instead. I thought I’d go audition.”
She gave me a quizzical look and half-turned in her seat to look behind her. “How are you going to audition without your guitar?” she asked.
I nodded at this and couldn’t help smiling. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’m going to have to be awfully convincing.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“There’s a lot I don’t tell you, Carmelita” I said. The image of Sherise Pike had come into my mind again. With it came the realization that I was ready to let go of Annabelle—not just the Annabelle from this world who had died in my arms but the one from my world as well, the one I’d been trying to get back to with Guillermo’s help. If the Jed who’d swapped places with me had survived the accident that had caused us to cross over, then he’d either reconnected with her or he hadn’t. If not, there was nothing my returning to that world would do to win Annabelle again. And if he had her, then—in a way—I had her, too. It was going to have to be good enough. And if he had died, then there was no way I was going to get back to the world and engineer a reversal of the crossover. Continuing to explore alternate worlds in an attempt to find her—only to have to let her go again when Guillermo’s gadget inevitably called me back to this world—was going to be nothing but torture. It was time to move on, time to let this world become my permanent home.
We were quiet until we arrived at the bank parking lot. I pulled into a space and asked Carmelita if she wanted to go in with me.
“Just a minute,” she said and opened her purse.
I had been around her enough to know that she was going to dig out her compact and powder her already flawless face, one more affectation that helped her keep up the masquerade that she was a human being. Turning my head, I watched her take Guillermo’s phone out of her purse, followed by the cigarettes and her wallet. Before the compact came out, however, she pulled out one more item—the plainly bound book that I had last seen in Elsa’s car and which she had had one of the assassins take from Klaus Lang’s apartment after his murder.
The Double-Time Slide: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 2) Page 26
