Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) (31 page)

“Hera, you’re an idiot,” I muttered to myself. I grabbed her phone and held it away.

“Hey!” she said.

“What are you doing?” asked the redhead.

“I’m willing to wager actual folding money that the call history will show you rang Roger Sabo... Must be right after you’d talked Gary into going away for the weekend. You told Roger I’d be there alone on Friday night. Only he showed up early, on Thursday, before the two of you had left and you had to let him onto Gary’s property.”
 

“Give me my goddamn phone!” she said, her voice rising in pitch. Bingo.
 

“I only met you Wednesday,” I said. “Thursday you’d already figured out how to get rid of me. That is fast work. What did Sabo promise you, Randi? Because he’s in police custody now.”
 

She grabbed the phone out of my hand and immediately entered her passcode—easy to memorize, stupid to show me—and started hitting buttons.

“You know that call records are logged by the mobile companies?” I asked mildly. “You can’t erase them. Aiding and abetting is not going to be good for your career.”

I pulled out my own phone and called Gary. “Turns out your new girlfriend is the one who let the psycho onto your property. I don’t feel particularly safe with her around. Perhaps it’s best if Stevie and I moved on.”

“Good God,” he said.
 

Randi’s phone rang a few seconds later. She glanced at it and answered it quickly. She wandered away from the other girls, and within seconds she was messing up her carefully coiffed hair and reacting very badly to whatever her caller was saying. Seconds later she was glaring at me as she put the phone away.

I nodded at her and smiled. As I walked back to Stevie, I told myself that if she’d had anything to do with Courtney’s murder, I was doing Gary a favor anyhow.

Stevie poked me in the side. I followed her gaze to the front door.
 

Detectives Samuel Gruen and John Vilar had entered and were standing along the back wall, taking their time to focus on each person who was there. Gruen noticed me immediately, of course. He didn’t return my smile. I probably wasn’t his favorite person at the moment. Or maybe ever.

I lifted my hand to wave at him. He turned his back on me to talk to Vilar. I’d tell Vilar about Randi’s call to Sabo.

Stevie tugged on the sleeve of my dress. “It’s time to take our seats,” she said, and we headed in.

*
 
*
 
*

The first two-thirds of the service was quite beautiful.
 

Stevie and I sat about seven rows back from the front. Gruen and Vilar, I noticed, stayed at the back.
 

Pastor Janek spoke for a while about Courtney’s life: she went to high school, she had big dreams, she came to Hollywood and had a tough time of it, she returned to her family, and then she decided to return to Los Angeles, a little older and wiser and surer of why she was here. She had some problems, but she was already returning to the community. She had attended church the previous Sunday and had signed up to volunteer at the preschool two days a week.

Greg Hitchcock went up and said a few words about how wonderful it had been to know Courtney, what a great help she’d been at the Financial Counseling Center. I could tell he meant to talk about her as though she were the cute high schooler who’d come in to tidy up the office once in a while, but some of the words he used—darling, sweet, loving, attentive—combined to give an overall impression that he liked her in a whole different kind of way.

People always give away their secrets in what they say.

Micah went up to the podium and spoke. He droned on at some length about what Courtney had been like while they were making
Girls Becoming Stars
. He told an embarrassing anecdote about how she’d fawned over some guy thinking he was a movie producer. Then he exhorted us all to watch the reunion show “for Courtney.”

It’s never too early to work the promotion for your TV show, I guess.

In a surprise twist, Randi went up to speak. She talked about how close she and Courtney had been, how they’d both been nice church-going girls blah blah blah. It was all completely sincere and yet totally Hollywood fake at the same time. Randi was a survivor, with Sir Gareth Macfadyen at her side or not. She had a long and storied career ahead of her in Hollywood.

Then she looked at me. “Drusilla, you were close to Courtney. Would you like to say a few words?”
 

I made a note to avoid getting someone who didn’t like me dumped right before a funeral service. Payback’s a bitch.
 

Lots of the people present turned around to look at me.

I looked at Stevie. “What do I do?”

She gave me a tiny smile. “Do you know anything about Courtney other people don’t?”

Thanks for the lack of help on that, sweetie, I thought. I patted her hand and then walked to the front of the room.
 

As I walked the thirty feet to the podium, I wondered if I should try to be funny. Or sentimental. If there’s one time you have free reign to be sentimental or even outright maudlin, a funeral service is it. Or I could try to go against the grain and talk about what a pain in the ass she’d been in the short time I’d known her.

Something other people don’t know about Courtney.
 

Normally I’m good at making stuff up on the fly, but I was out of words. My fingertips slid along the oak base of the podium. The papers there were probably what Pastor Janek had read from during his statement. I tapped them for a bit and wondered what my sister had meant by what she said.

The hundred or so people present were all staring at me, wondering who I was. Greg Hitchcock had his arms crossed and he was glaring at me. Like I was going to say anything about his proclivities here and now—despite the vast majority of the behavior my parents taught me, they did teach me better than that.

Randi’s mouth was screwed up in a wry smirk, like she was waiting for me to make a terrible mistake
 

She wasn’t at all worried about what I might say. Interesting.

Micah also had his arms folded, his hands practically at his shoulders, giving himself a tight embrace. Maybe he was worried I was going to have another chat with him.
 

Detective Gruen’s gaze was directly on me, arms folded across his chest. Detective Vilar, next to him, had his hands in his pockets, watching the parishioners.

“I didn’t know Courtney very well.” That wasn’t a great start. The second sentence didn’t simply flow out from the first one. “I only met her during the last week of her life. My biggest connection with her is quite strange, actually. I was with her when she was murdered—”

And that was all I needed to say. Stevie had been absolutely right. I did know something other people didn’t.

The shooter had seen me, clearly lighted inside the motel room. I had had trouble seeing the shooter. I couldn’t tell for certain whether it was a man or a woman. Men tend to have bigger upper bodies that narrow to the hips. Women tend to be fuller below the waist or curvier all over. But there are always the ones, both male and female, who have slighter bodies, with less variation between the upper and lower bodies.
 

The shooter had a slender body, straight up and down.

Everything that had happened in Courtney’s motel room had happened so fast. It was serendipity I had noticed anyone outside the window at all.

The shooter had most definitely noticed me. There was no way he couldn’t have.
 

He must have assumed I could see him as well. And then every time we talked after Courtney’s murder I hadn’t said anything.

Had Stevie figured that out? Or was this what she’d call divine intervention? I wondered.

Because the revelation that I was the only witness to Courtney’s murder was a huge surprise to everyone in the church. Except, of course, the only person in the church who knew I’d been there. Because I’d been clearly visible through the window.

Greg Hitchcock lurched forward.
 

Randi’s smirk faded away.

Micah’s eyes widened.

Alison put her hand over her mouth and hugged her daughter just a little tighter.

Even the detectives at the back of the room moved, startled that I would reveal that in public.
 

Jonathan Ricciardi, though, barely reacted.

*
 
*
 
*

I finished with some kind of summary -- I probably babbled incoherently, although a childhood spent giving impromptu displays of precocious cheek at your parents’ cocktail parties does provide some training—and immediately returned to Stevie, who put her hand over mine. My sister leaned in. “What did you see?” Stevie asked.

“Something I didn’t want to,” I told her. “People have facets. You were right. How did you know?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t. But I thought maybe you might.”
 

Pastor Janek hurriedly finished up and asked us all to join him for refreshments in the parlor. Everyone left the assembly room politely, although with heads together and a rising murmur. Stevie and I tucked our ankles beneath our seats and let others in the pew pass by us. A couple of people stopped to console me—or ask for gossip, same thing—but I shook my head and refused to speak with them.

When it seemed as though everyone else had left, I finally exited the pew, Stevie behind me.
 

Detective Gruen blocked my path. “Tell me what you remembered from that night.”

“Don’t you have a job to do, Detective?”
 

He stalked past me, not giving me a second thought. We were never going to meet up for that second drink.
Tant pis
. Just as well, really. It wasn’t like I needed a boyfriend at this point in my life anyhow. I was having a hard enough time holding on to my fake boyfriend.

Was there alcohol at the reception? I wondered.
 

Stevie and I walked out into the foyer, which was now opened onto the side room, forming the reception area. Everyone noticed when we joined the party, either by staring at us and whispering or by pointedly not looking in our direction.
 

Jonathan and Alison were standing by the table with the platter of freshly cut fruit. Alison carried Hailey and the little girl had her arm slung around her mother’s shoulders. Jonathan kept glancing over at me, perhaps wondering what I was going to do. Or say. Alison definitely knew he’d done it. I wondered if they’d talked about it openly, or if it was one of those things married couples accept as given.
 

Greg Hitchcock walked over to Jonathan, who was getting more upset every step I took toward them. Hitchcock reached out to touch Hailey on the back of her head, even as Alison hugged the baby to her tighter.
 

Courtney told Micah she wanted to change her story: the young mother in Oklahoma. She was going to need to produce the baby to prove it, of course. And then Sabo expected they were going to leave and go play happy families somewhere.
 

The afternoon that I met Hitchcock, Courtney had stopped by the preschool, which she’d done all that week. She’d mentioned Hailey directly to Jonathan. Then Hitchcock left with Courtney to drive her back to her motel. Did Jonathan worry that Hitchcock was going to try to help Courtney take Hailey back? After all, Hitchcock had a fairly large club to wield over Jonathan—the financial house of cards Jonathan had signed off on. Plus, Hitchcock thought he was the baby’s father. While he clearly didn’t want to acknowledge paternity, some men just get a kick out of thinking that the kid is theirs to do with as they please.

Was Jonathan hoping to find both of them in that motel room? Take both of them out, end all of his problems at once?

“What are you going to do?” Stevie said. “What will you say?”
 

I shook my head. “What is there to say? Where is the proof? I’m exactly as certain of who did it as I was ten minutes ago.”

A woman standing next to me said, “You know who killed Courtney?”
 

The conversation near us cut off abruptly. Jonathan and Hitchcock, standing as far away as they were, simply stopped talking and looked at us. This was, after all, exactly what everyone expected from me after my little performance in the church.

I shook my head. “No, absolutely not. I don’t know who killed her.”

Probably no one else heard Gruen’s snort of disagreement over the murmuring of the crowd.
 

I looked at Jonathan. He waited for me to say something. He’d been waiting for it since the day I showed up at his doorstep, thinking I was going to point the finger at him.

Instead, I pointed at the meeting room we’d all just left. “You need help cleaning up in there?”

After a second’s hesitation, he nodded. We walked together, quietly, back in.
 

Gruen was going to know what to do with that, even if he didn’t know how to prove it.

We started picking up the leaflets, which most people had left there. A couple of tissues.
 

“You want to talk about it?” I said.

“What Greg was doing...I knew where it was going to lead. I was trying to leave.”

“Where what was going to lead? The women at the financial center?”

Jonathan straightened a few of the chairs at the side of the room. “With the women. With the meth business. He got involved with the drugs to get the money to pay the women. I didn’t even realize what was going on at first.” He tried to laugh, but it didn’t work. “I thought we were doing really well in the middle of a recession. Took me a while to figure it out.”
 

“You’re the accountant. It’s your job to figure it out.”

“A lot of people kept working good jobs in the middle of a recession. We kept working. And we helped people at the counseling office, we did.”
 

“Except for the ones Hitchcock asked to be nice to him.”

“I didn’t know he was doing it. I knew he saw other women. But...not like that. And the center was my idea.”