Eats to Die For! (10 page)

“Thank you, officer.”

After they'd gone I sat down and tried to control the delayed-reaction shaking.

You did okay, kid
, Bogie said, encouragingly.
But where does this leave you?

Where did it leave me? Regina had been my only lead into Louie's disappearance. Could her suspicious death have any connection to it? It didn't seem to scan because Regina didn't even know Louie's real identity and purpose.

Unless she found it out and that's why she got iced
, a tough, gravelly voice told me. It was either Lawrence Tierney or Charles McGraw.

“We don't know for a fact yet that she was iced,” I said to the empty apartment.

About the only thing I did know for certain was that as far as leads went on this case, I had just run into a brick wall. The only option I had left was to go to Louie's apartment and do a more thorough search for a flash drive.

For a brief second I thought about calling Avery Klemmer to ask if there were any police hanging around, but I didn't want him “helping” me in my search. I'd have to take my chances.

After stopping off at the office to check for messages (or signs of further burglary), and finding none of each, I went to the nearest hardware store, which wasn't all that close, and had a duplicate key made for Louie's apartment. I figured Ricky Sandoval would want his back at some point; even if he didn't, a spare never hurt.

Then I headed down to Palms.

It was of course too much to ask that Louie's apartment key also opened the front door of the building. About the time I was ready to admit defeat and buzz Avery, or the manager again, I saw someone coming through the lobby. Taking the key that didn't work, I pretended I was about to unlock the door right when the woman opened it from the inside.

“Oh, thanks,” I said.

“Sure.” She was short, fortyish, and dressed in running sweats. A headband held back her blonde bangs as she darted outside and then turned back, jogging in place.

“I don't think I've seen you here before,” she said.

“Right, well, I'm still in the process of moving in,” I lied.

“I hope you're not one of those who blocks the parking garage with your moving truck.”

“Wouldn't dream of it.”

“Good. Have a nice day.” She then ran down the steps to the sidewalk and disappeared down the street.

“Thanks,” I called after her.

Riding the elevator up to the second floor, I made certain that no one was in the hallway, particularly the cops, before walking down to 216 and stopping at the door.

After one last check each direction in the hall, I grabbed the doorknob and turned it slowly to see if it might possibly be unlocked, which would indicate that the police were here, but inside the apartment.

It was locked.

I carefully inserted the key, unlocked the door, and pushed it open, then stepped inside. The place was pretty much as I had last seen it, maybe straightened up a little bit, but showing no signs of present habitation.

Had I been thinking I would have brought gloves with me, but I hadn't. Carefully making my way into the kitchen, I opened the cabinet below the sink, using a handkerchief, and looked around until I found some rubber cleaning gloves. They were a bit tight and not very comfortable, but I made do.

Switching on the lights, I walked through the entire apartment, first to make absolutely sure that no one was there, either dead or alive (though if someone had been dead, I think my nose would have detected that fact by now), and second, to try an examine every place where a flash drive might logically be kept.

The most obvious place, of course, would be the desk, though I also examined the nightstand drawers and the top of the dresser in the bedroom. I did not relish searching the dresser drawers, knowing I would probably find her most personal items, but it had to be done for the sake of thoroughness. I desperately tried not to imagine what Louie would look like in the sheer, pink bra I found in the top drawer and the matching panties in the second one.

It turned out I didn't have to imagine it, since there was a photo of her in very similar underwear at the bottom of the third drawer. There were a few other photos in there, which I peered at purely to see if they might contain some kind of clue.

Oh, suuure,
Robert Mitchum needled.

Most were nothing but tease shots, the sorts of things that these days end up on people's phones and photo sharing accounts, but the last one I looked at was the one that made me drop all the others.

My mouth fell open as I stared at it.

It wasn't simply that Luisa Sandoval was posing naked in bed.

It wasn't simply that Luisa Sandoval looked pretty incredible naked.

It wasn't simply that another naked figure was cuddled next to her.

It was that the naked person cuddling Louie was Regina Fontaine.

CHAPTER NINE

I put the photos back in the drawer while swallowing my heart and forcing it back into my chest.

It wasn't like I had any claim on Louie, or even any real reason to hope that a relationship might result. It was merely an uncomfortable reminder of my college days when the girl I was most stuck on in my sophomore year and I turned out to have a lot in common: the same taste in women.

Beyond that it was the strong suggestion, if not outright verification, that Louie's disappearance and Regina's death were somehow intrinsically linked.

Upon grim reflection, it made sense: how else would
a journalist be able to infiltrate the corporation she was investigating without the help of someone inside?

Maybe Regina had been Louie's first contact, the one who informed her that there was something unsavory being added to the burger meat. That would mean that Regina's denial of any knowledge about Luisa Sandoval had been nothing more than a ruse, which in turn explained why she had appeared so nervous.

Maybe she thought I had been hired by Burger Heaven to find out what she was passing on to a reporter.

That was a lot of maybes, but in my experience maybes tend to count for quite a bit in lieu of actual facts.

But it wasn't a smoking gun.

I went back into the front room where Louie had her desk and began a more thorough search. There were lots of papers, quite a few notebooks, filled with illegible scrawl, and post-it notes plastered here and there as reminders of things that bore no significance, so far as I could see.

But there was no flash drive.

Something I found in the bottom drawer of her desk that did surprise me was a brochure for the Temple of Theotologics.

Known around town simply as “The Temple,” it was a Hollywood-based pseudo-religion that had been started in the mid 1950s by a former B movie actor named Palmer Hanley.

Sixty years later, what had apparently been started as a self-help system had grown into a major corporation, operating out of a modern-day castle built in the wacky twenties up in the Hollywood hills. The Temple might actually have a basis in religious belief or it may simply have pulled enough legal strings to maintain a tax-exempt status, but regardless of whatever existed at its core, it made money.

Lots and lots of money. Stories abounded that it was nothing more than a cash-cow cult, preying on the weak who had day jobs and could pay for the Temple's classes, stories that were invariably disputed and discredited by the Temple hierarchy and the handful of Hollywood stars who were adherents, such as Vince Cranna, the action film hero.

But what was Louie Sandoval's connection with the Temple? Maybe it was research material for a future story. I hoped that was all, anyway.

But what about the other doll
? Bogie asked me.
The dancer. Maybe she was a member.

Now that made more sense. It even explained the panic that Regina Fontaine had shown when I saw her smoking.

One of the primary boasts made by the Temple is that their process of “Adjusting” (insert registered trademark symbol here), or getting rid of all the bad stuff in one's life, can cure any kind of addiction, problem or obsession. Charges by former members of the Temple that their rehab programs were based on a regimen of mental and physical abuse continued to dog the operation.

If those charges were true, and Regina had indeed been a member of the Temple and was using their program to break her cigarette habit, then her paranoia at being spotted backsliding would indeed be justified.

But this was still nothing more than speculation.

I continued my search through Louie's apartment, opening and rummaging through every drawer in every piece of furniture that had one, but found nothing.

That left me with three possibilities: whoever had ransacked her apartment in the first place had found it and taken it; Louie had hidden it in a place I'd never find; or wherever she was, she had taken the flash drive with her.

Unless she had sent it to someone else or destroyed it.

The only really useful bit of information I had uncovered was the realization that finding pertinent clues in someone's apartment might look easy in the movies, but it wasn't in real life.

I was about to leave when I heard a thump against the wall that Louie's place shared with Avery Klemmer's apartment. That was followed by another thump, like someone was hitting the wall.

Maybe he was taking online dance courses.

Then I heard a muffled cry, some banging, and a crash.

Rushing out into the hallway, I listened against Avery's door. It was now quiet. Maybe I was just being ridiculous; maybe he was rearranging the furniture and something fell and broke. I waited another few seconds before knocking.

“Hi, Avery?” I called through the door. “It's Dave Beauchamp.”

For several more seconds it was completely silent, after which I heard the sound of a lock being turned.

Yet the door remained closed.

Taking the knob, I slowly turned it and then stepped inside. “Avery? Hello. It's Dave Beauchamp.”

There was no answer.

Something's wrong, kid
, Bogie said, needlessly. I could figure out that much on my own.

I was about to call his name again when something hit me squarely on the back of the head and I went down.

The visual metaphor is always an array of shimmering stars, and that's not far off, though for me it was more flashing lights than anything in a particular shape. I kissed the carpet and heard movement behind me, which I prayed would not lead to another hit. It didn't. Once the explosion in my head settled, I rolled over and looked, but it was too late.

The apartment door was wide open and from the end of the hallway I could hear the faint sounds of the elevator door closing. I could try running for the staircase and hope to make it down before the elevator got there, but I knew that would be futile, mostly because I was not yet certain I could get up off the floor. There were no windows in the elevator area for me to look out and see who was running down the sidewalk, either.

Whoever had coshed me in the back of the head was going to get away scot free.

I managed to force myself into a kneeling position and now saw a large collectable bust of Batman, the kind that nerds spend fortunes on in comic book shops, lying on the floor next to me. That must have been what my assailant had used to hit me.

It's too bad the flashing lights weren't accompanied by the word THWAP! If this were a movie or TV show, I could take the bust and have it tested for fingerprints, and a few would actually show up. But even if there were fingerprints on the statue, the chances that they matched those of someone who was already in the system were remote.

Pros don't leave prints and amateurs aren't in the system.

Now the headache was starting. Again, in the realm of the movie or TV detective, getting hit over the head is as much a part of the job as billing for expenses.

But in the real world, it was as miserable as it was rare.

“Avery, are you here?” I called out, fighting nausea. I was hoping he was hiding in a closet. Even more, I was hoping he had not been the one who had tried to dent the back of my skull with Batman.

That was when I smelled it, and my stomach turned cold.

Okay, let's back up: every movie mystery that's ever been made and every murder mystery novel that's ever been written leaves out one important fact regarding a dead body. They stink.

Not just after a few days' worth of decomposition, but immediately, because life and breath are not the only things that leave a person at the moment of death. The bowels and the bladder also release. This unpleasant little fact belies the notion that a body can stay hidden inside a trunk, which is kept in plain sight, until Jimmy Stewart or some other Hollywood sleuth catches on through the nervous reactions of the killer. You might be able to hide a body from view, but you can't do it olfactorily.

And what I was smelling now was not encouraging. Not at all.

I found Avery Klemmer in his bedroom, on the floor, a wet stain on his pants. He was motionless, as befit his status among the dead. A string of cable ties linked one to another cinched his neck, cutting into his flesh.

Something crunched underneath my shoe, and I saw that the ceramic base of a lamp lay on the floor in pieces, which must have been the smashing sound I'd heard.

Why did this have to happen? What did Avery know?

Pulling out my cell phone, I checked the time. It was a little after noon, but eating lunch was the furthest thought from my mind.

If, as I assumed, the bumping and thumping I'd heard coming Louie's apartment minutes earlier had been the sound of Avery Klemmer being killed, the actual time of death might prove to be important.

To fake an alibi if nothing else
, Bogie said. Yeah, to fake an alibi, because while I knew I hadn't killed Avery, convincing the police of that would be a harder sell than claiming I could cure cancer.

What's more, I couldn't help but think that my assailant, Avery's murderer, realized that, which is why he left me alive.