Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) (11 page)

My sister’s fingers remained firmly attached to the purse and its contents.
 

I lifted my hand, palm out, and swore solemnly that the ten dollars would remain exactly where it was until such time as Courtney decided how to spend it. Only then did Stevie hand it over.
 

It was definitely a cute little purse. The keyring had three keys on it: two house keys and a car key. The driver’s license was from California, not Oklahoma, and it showed her big bright blue eyes and the big bright hair. The motel key was one of those electronic cards with no identifying information on it. The purse had nothing unusual or hidden in it.
 

I handed everything back to Stevie and called Courtney.

Courtney picked up on the first ring.

“Where are you?” I asked.
 

“You really pulled a fast one today,” Courtney said. “I’m going to amend my affidavit to say that you’re causing problems for me. You are
harassing
me.”
 

No way had she come up with that idea on her own. Who had given it to her? Roger, or her good friend Mr. Hitchcock?

“Courtney!” I said sharply.

“Drusilla, you have nothing to say to me that I care one iota about.”

“I have your keyring and your wallet. If you ever want to drive your car again, you’re going to meet me.”

“Oh, goshdarnit. Really?”

“I really, really have them, and if you really, really want them back, we’re going to have to meet. And we are going to discuss that affidavit of yours again, only for realsies this time.”

My sister was glaring at me over the roof of the car.

Only then did I realize I had slipped into using her Oklahoma accent. Again. For Zeus’s sake, when we lived in Texas I didn’t have this much trouble avoiding taking on extra accents.
 

Oh, I told myself, the happiness I’d feel when this woman was out of my life.

Turns out I was wrong about that, too.

*
 
*
 
*

Courtney wasn’t at the construction office in Tarzana. She was in the motel she was staying at. Only she was at a new place. Even in Los Angeles, if you have one incident where somebody assaults somebody else and the cops have to intervene, you’re probably not going to be especially popular with your motel’s management. She had moved to a small motel in North Hollywood that made Mason’s look like the Ritz-Carlton. North Hollywood, despite the name, was not near Hollywood. Hollywood was in the Los Angeles basin. North Hollywood was over the ridge in the San Fernando Valley. It wasn’t one of the prettier areas of Los Angeles. The sooner I was out of there, the better.

The Motornight Motel didn’t have bushes out front that could serve as either a hiding place or decoration. It was downright scary looking. The driveway to the front of the hotel had cracked asphalt, with weeds pushing through. The soda machine was for an off-brand, with some logo I didn’t recognize. The front doors of the motel rooms faced the cement-block wall of the building next door. The back of the motel faced a narrow side road that would have been called an alley in a proper city. All the windows had grates on them.

I called Stevie. “This is either a hooker hangout or an addict breeding ground.”
 

“Please be careful,” my sister said.
 

“I don’t see anyone around,” I said. “Not even another car in the car park.”
 

“How did she get there if she doesn’t have the keys to her car?” Stevie asked.

Good point.
 

I was not going to limit my options by parking in the one-lane wedge between the motel and the building next door. I parked on the giant six-lane boulevard nearby. Then I took a long walk around the block the motel sat on, noticing who was around. I didn’t see Courtney’s hatchback, and I didn’t see anyone sitting in a car who resembled Roger Sabo. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t there. He could very well be waiting for me inside the room—after all, I had no idea what kind of car he drove.

The windows on the back of the motel were large and had an AC unit wedged into each one. The security grate was next to it, but there was a gap between the two. One room’s window had its shades open and it was easy to peer in and see some details of the room: one single overhead light fixture, a mirror mounted on the wall (no frame), and the occupant.
 

Courtney had the curtain open. Seriously? In this neighborhood? In this motel?
 

I could have walked straight up to her window and knocked on it, but instead I walked back to the narrow front entrance, continuing to look out for Roger Sabo. All the rooms of the motel were painted a darling shade of faded orange. I knocked on the door with the number Courtney had given me, and then stood on the side of the door that would open, so that anyone inside would be facing toward the opposite corner. If Courtney wasn’t the person opening the door, I wanted a few seconds of warning.

She looked around for a second before seeing me there. “Well, come on in then.”

“Who else is here, Courtney?”
 

“No one.”
 

“I want you to open the door all the way and show me that there’s no one else in there.”
 

“Who would be here?”

“Your friend Roger.”

“He owes me better than this.”

“You talked to him earlier today.”
 

She gaped at me for a moment, her mouth hanging open with this weird twisty curve to it. “We had a fight. Which is why I’m here.”
 

A lucky guess. Make enough of them, and people only remember the times you were right. “You forget. I’m psychic. Who else is here?”

She didn’t seem to see the contradiction between me being psychic and not knowing who else was there. “Nobody. Come on in.”
 

I followed her in. I checked the bathroom, including pulling the shower curtain back. I checked the closet, which had Courtney’s suitcase and a small rectangular bag with a fat and happy cartoon bear on it. Both the bathroom and the closet were empty of Roger, though, which was all I needed. The main room was tiny and dirty. Everything was an even worse shade of orange than the door, even the things that hadn’t started that way, such as the carpeting, the curtains, and the bathroom floor. The bed was one I wouldn’t have sat on, let alone slept in. And she was the one with the curtains open.

Not too far away was a giant, noisy, smelly boulevard. Right outside was a sidewalk anyone could pass by on. Why on Earth did Courtney keep the curtains open, when people walking by a cheap motel would have a direct view of her room? There’s simply no telling with some people.

On the bureau was a small plastic sandwich bag with some yellowish powder in it. High odds that was meth. I wasn’t surprised to see Courtney used it. One thing Anne had told me was that meth was extremely popular with actresses and models, because one of the best known side effects of the drug was that the user lost interest in eating. In a business where staying skinny was the primary measure of a woman’s value, a drug that could help with that was the Holy Grail, no matter the side effects.

She saw where I was looking. “You want some?”

“Absolutely not.” I didn’t even want to be in the room with it.
 

The noise of a motorcycle revving in the parking lot shook the room’s window.
 

“Let’s get this over with.”

“Where’s my purse and keys?” she demanded.

I’d forgotten them in the car. Talk first, then I’d go get them. “Why do you even want to be involved in Roger’s lawsuit anyhow?” I asked.

The motorcycle whined, then stopped, then became louder again.
 

“You’d better be a sound sleeper, or you’re not going to get any sleep tonight,” I said.
 

“Aren’t you sweet to be thinking of my needs?”

“Thinking of mine, actually. Could you close the curtains?”
 

She grunted at me and turned to pull the curtains closed.
 

The motorcycle stopped outside Courtney’s window.

Its rider was all in black: black leather pants, a black leather jacket with chrome zippers, and a black helmet, its black face visor in the down position. Which seemed odd, given that it was dusk. Who rode around with the visor down at night?

For that matter, who rode their cycle on a sidewalk?

The motorcyclist raised his hand.
 

It took me a moment to realize the hand had a gun in it. And it was aimed right in the gap between the security grate and the AC unit.

“Down!” I yelled. I hit the floor as the window exploded. I rolled over and wedged myself up against the side of the bed and kept my eyes shut to avoid flying glass.
 

If I counted right, the gun fired five times.

Somewhere between the crown of my head and the window I heard Courtney land with a thump on the carpeting. She made a gurgling noise.
 

From my position on the side of the bed, all I could see was Courtney’s hair. I reached through and picked up the corner of the bedspread. She was lying on the carpet, her face turned away from me. The back of her head was a bloody, twisted mess.

“Courtney?” I said.
 

She didn’t respond.
 

“Courtney!”
 

Nothing. No movement. No more noises.
 

No more gunshots, either, so that was a positive note.

A series of rapid blows on the door to the motel room yanked my attention away from Courtney to the door behind me. I could see the In Case Of Fire instructions shake in their little plastic holder on the door. “Who’s in there?” yelled the man’s voice.
 

I couldn’t tell who it was. Maybe had a Hispanic accent, but I couldn’t concentrate on the sound long enough to figure it out.
 

Through the window I heard someone shouting and the screech of tires on asphalt. And in the room the AC unit was making a loud sputtering noise.
 

The door into the room bowed under the blows from outside.
 

Courtney still wasn’t making a sound. From the looks of what was left of her head, she wouldn’t be, ever again.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed 911. Through the open motel window, I could hear sirens off in the distance, but in this part of Los Angeles they might simply be background noise.

The 911 system put me on hold.
 

Holy Hera. I really needed them to answer, now.
 

The only way out of the room was through that door, where someone was wailing on it something fierce. Might be someone to help. Might be someone to finish the job. Or maybe I could go the other way, through the broken window, but right now I didn’t feel like risking it.

The hammering on the door intensified. The In Case Of Fire announcement kept pulsing in response to the blows. The white plastic Do Not Disturb sign kept flapping up and down, keeping time. From my position behind the bed I stared at the stupid, meaningless icon printed at the bottom of it, a drawing of a cat wearing a top hat while snoozing on top of a motel. I knew I would have to tell them where I was and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember. Somewhere in North Hollywood, in a horrible, dirty little motel. I did not want to die in a terrible motel.
 

“Nine one one,” said the operator.
 

“There’s been a shooting.” I added extra waver to my voice to indicate anxiety. My past experience with violence sometimes renders me a little too calm in these situations.
 

“What’s your location?”
 

I looked at the cat wearing a top hat.

“The Motornight Motel,” I said. “Something like that. It’s on Lankershim. I think. I can’t even remember.”

“Are you somewhere safe?”

“No, dammit, someone has been shooting at me! And someone’s trying to break in to this room! And I think someone’s dead.”

Through the window a crowd of people had started gathering. Maybe they were pointing at Courtney. I didn’t want to know.
 

“Which room are you in?”

“It’ll be obvious.”
 

“Is anyone hurt?”

“Someone got shot. She’s bleeding.”

“Can you get somewhere safe?”

The bathroom looked like the safest bet. Yet another door to get through, smaller, easier to defend. On the other hand, I’d be cornered if anyone came looking for me with a vengeance or a handgun. None of this boded well for the quality of my life expectancy at the moment.

 
“Yes,” I said.
 

“Stay there until the police arrive.”

I went into the bathroom, which was tiny and ancient. There was a simple sink counter, with no shelves underneath it. Two plastic cups for drinking. A toilet. A pair of thin bath towels. The shower was a small plastic corner unit, separated from the rest of the room with a plastic shower curtain.

A curtain that ran around a metal rod.

I yanked the shower curtain off the rod, tugging as hard as I could to loosen where the rod was bolted into the wall. My arms ached with every pull. The bolts moved, which said something about the age of the plaster on the walls. When the shower curtain was free, I jabbed the metal rings into the top edge of the crappy, low-rent bathroom mirror and opened the bathroom door long enough to drape part of it across the jamb. Then I closed the door again and spread the plastic curtain across the doorway. Anybody coming through that door was going to be confused for a moment by running into a sheet of plastic.
 

After that was secure, I grabbed the curtain rod and hung from it with my full weight, my shoulders aching and my bruised stomach muscles vibrating under the strain, feeling as though they were peeling apart, strand by strand. The rod bowed slightly but didn’t bend or yank out of the wall.

“C’mon, dammit,” I muttered. I would allow myself to cry after I had completely failed.