Killer Commute (13 page)

One poster for the film
Shadowscapes,
another for
Phantom of the Alpine Tunnel,
with Hilsten's mug all over it. The poster of A. E. Mous's mystery novel,
Dead Men Don't Need Jell-O,
had a history all its own. At one time the previous office manager had drilled a hole behind it to record Charlie's office conversations when the police were investigating the death of the office receptionist. It was just a cheap paper poster, unframed, meant for bookstore windows. A. E., like most published authors, had never advanced beyond the lower rungs of the midlist and didn't warrant cardboard. But he was one of her very first authors. In fact, as far as she knew, it was the only time a publisher had even bothered to produce a poster for him.

She imagined now that A. E.'s poster moved as if in an air current.

“Can't she at least write us a note about how she's feeling or something?” Luella Ridgeway's voice from the cubicle now. “This silence is freaking me out, Larry.”

“Probably not as much as it is her,” Larry said matter-of-factly. “Look, right now she's a package of conflicting emotions—panic, sadness, anger, resentment, disbelief, denial. You know how much she loves her job and her kid. Libby will be off to college after next year. What will she do without either her career or her kid? Give her time, Lue. You know Charlie won't accept this until it's proven to be a lasting condition—not even then, probably.”

Charlie's eyes teared over at that. And the
Dead Men Don't Need Jell-O
poster positively waved in the breeze that wasn't in the room. She blinked her contacts back into place. What if she had the laser surgery for myopia done and it made her blind? What if she lost her sight and hearing, too? Might as well jump off a bridge. But she wouldn't be able to find one.

“You know, for a guy, you are incredibly sensitive.” Luella's voice softened.

“Goes with the territory. Us queens are like that.”

“Why do all the sensitive guys have to be gay?” Luella's voice hardened.

“You're stereotyping again, Lue. Lots of gays are true jerks, trust me.”

Charlie was halfway out of her chair when Howard Highsmith weighed in. He was the newest recruit. Charlie could only wonder where Richard found these guys. If Dorian Black was like used-car salesmen at their worst, Howard was like a clown who never washed off his happy face. She swore now she could hear the smile in his voice. He probably wore it in the bathroom, would carry it to a watery grave in an airliner crash.

“So, old Charlie's lost her edge, poor kid.” This was followed by a deep, cheerful laugh. “She's a tough one, and in a funk now. But she'll come through, old Charlie will.”

Old Charlie had a serious desire to kick his smile in.

“Seniority wise, I'm in line for this office,” Dorian Black said. “The agency's too small for its own literary agent anyway. TNT's only got two and they're five times bigger than we are.” His voice was either receding down the hall or the sound of blood pounding in Charlie's ears was muffling it.

Chill, Charlie. Blood pressure might bring back the smothering quiet. Shut down the world for good.

There had once been a hole behind A. E.'s poster—was there one there again, and was it air from Daniel Congdon's office blowing the poster?

Was the silent partner in the business back in town? Finally using his office? Surely her colleagues would be talking about that instead of her, right?

“Oh, Larry, I feel so bad for Charlie. How's she really doing? She seems so stoney.”

“She's doing fine, Jonathan, but nice of you to ask.”

Like almost every known substance, gelatin, according to the author, had once been touted as an aphrodisiac. Charlie didn't doubt it. Newspapers are ever looking for medical news—
Studies show that
 … Charlie'd always wondered how many of them reporters made up.

The poster of the book jacket was red on a black background—one of the cheapest ways to make a jacket. A bowl tipped on its side, spilling out a blood-red glob with a hand falling out of it on one side and a leg sticking out the other.

“Tell her I'll pray for her, Larry, like I always pray for you.”

Jonathan Gunn had found Jesus and knew that Larry could find help in God to become heterosexual. Larry had found Stewart Claypool—probably the best thing that had ever happened to him. Jonathan had also informed Charlie that Jesus forgave her for having Libby out of wedlock and that all she need do is marry a good Christian man to give her life and Libby's some balance.

How anyone with religion could work in the exciting but squalid mire that is Hollywood Charlie couldn't fathom. When she'd asked Jonathan about this, he'd reminded her of the Christian mission to work among the heathen in the world's least civilized places.

“Thank you, Jonathan. We both certainly need it.” Everyone in the office was very careful with this dude. The Taliban and Kenneth Starr had made all zealots suspect, and unfortunately many innocent people who weren't zealots, too.

“Maybe this is God's way of giving Charlie a chance to stay at home and raise her child.” Jonathan Gunn specialized in circus performers, stuntmen, soap opera actresses, and talent in religious programing.

Charlie slid the red and black poster for
Dead Men Don't Need Jell-O
aside. There was a hole again. A smaller one this time. An eyehole. With an eye in it.

CHAPTER 18

CHARLIE
KEPT UP
her deceit until Larry drove them to a late lunch at Mamas' before taking her home. They both needed some serious chicken soup after the day they'd had. Charlie was in such a state of shock she just blurted out her order the minute Mama asked for it.

“So, when did you start hearing again?” They sat at the counter, which was understood protocol when the lunch rush was over and the place mostly empty and Mama's feet were tired.

“So, why didn't anyone tell me Daniel Congdon had come home? I mean I can't believe Tracy Dewitt wasn't chirping her head off about her big-deal uncle being in residence to promote his niece's importance. Even if I couldn't hear it.”

Larry leaned over her, his caramel hair falling across his forehead, his prominent cheekbones shadowing the face below. “I asked you first. Didn't I, Mama?”

“God, kids drive me nuts. You are both getting big bowls of soup, and crusty fresh-baked bread. I don't wanna hear no sass. And you, doll”—she pointed her order pad at Charlie—“are getting a big glass of milk with it. You come late to the table, you get what we got. So, immature hunk, whaddaya want to drink? And we'll discuss dessert when we see how you behave. Got it?”

There were two mamas, lesbian, neither yet forty-five, both Jews from Manhattan with a flair for cooking and mothering. North Hollywood was a haven for gays, many dying, when these two opened a small cafe named Mom & Pop's to dish out what comfort they could for the misery AIDS had inflicted here. But a bakery with the same name and within thirty miles had brought suits, so eventually this place became Mamas'. This mama had even introduced Charlie's ulcer to the soothing effects of a soft poached egg over milk toast with salt and pepper. Charlie, a renowned rebel in her youth, always ate what this mama ordered. The other mama waved a soup ladle at them from the kitchen through the oblong opening above the back counter.

These two missionaries served food and comfort without preaching, their only agenda compassion. You didn't have to believe in any ideology. You just had to avoid starving. Nothing was wasted here. Volunteers carefully packaged anything left over in the kitchen and took it to those too sick to go out and to their caregivers. The homeless got their share as well as clothing from the café's semiannual clothing drive. These gals talked tough and melted your heart.

“I realized I was hearing when Richard whispered that everything would be okay when I first saw him at the office. It comes and goes without warning. Scares the hell out of me. Your turn.”

“So you really didn't hear what the doctor had to say, but you did hear what your thoughtful colleagues are thinking now?”

“Right, but why didn't I hear anything about the return of the mysterious silent partner? You could have warned me, Larry.”

“Congdon hasn't returned that I know of. Who told you he did? Oh, that's what you were up to when I came to get you for lunch. Peeking behind that poster—I thought you'd lost your mind as well as your hearing.”

“Larry, there was somebody looking back. There's a little hole behind that poster, and it had an eye in it.”

“Why? All you'd see is the back of the poster.”

It was dumb, but Mamas' chicken soup with fat noodles, heavy on the salt and herbs with chicken hunks and real fat blobs floating on the broth really did make you feel better—not just Charlie, but everybody said so. Maybe it was just that you were afraid it would piss off the Mamas if it didn't.

Charlie was almost blissful when she crawled into Larry's Bronco with the doggy jar Mama insisted she take home and finish off for dinner. “You don't look good, girl,” Mama said.

“I brought my jammies, boss. Can I sleep on your couch tonight?” Larry asked as they took the ramp off the 10 and onto the 405.

“Anytime, but are you sure you want to be around for the next pyrotechnics?”

Miles on down the freeway he spoke again. “I don't know how you stand this every day.”

“I get a lot of work done, but you should see my car—my second office—without you there to organize it. There was somebody in Congdon's office, I tell you.”

“I haven't heard anything, but they do get people in to dust it up a couple times a year. I tend to notice anyone coming down the hall that doesn't stop at our door, though.”

The Congdon & Morse Agency was located on a corner of the building, with Charlie's office and Larry's cubical between Congdon's office at the end of the hall along the front of the building and Richard Morse's on the corner. Richard had windows on two sides. The rest of the agents had smaller offices along the side of the building and lousy views. Tweety had a central niche on the inside wall of Howard's office and no window. Ruby sat in the lobby itself, which was an inside room. So anyone walking past Larry's cubical could only be going to Daniel Congdon's locked door.

“Unless the cops hope to spy on you from there somehow.”

“What cops? Beverly Hills?”

“They're cooperating with Long Beach.”

“Amuller?”

“You hadn't noticed they'd been through your desk and files? Made copies of your computer files, too.”

“They what?” Charlie took deep breaths hoping to slow the angry blood inside her head and forestall any hearing loss thinking of dropping in on her.

“Why?”

“They're looking for Fiedler's murderer, Charlie. I sure hope they haven't decided you're it and set out to prove it instead of investigating the murder, if you know what I mean.”

Charlie did know. No witnesses, no leads. No traceable family, friends, or enemies of the deceased. Two people behind locked and electrified gates with the victim. One, an eighty-three-year-old frail woman. The other, Charlie Greene, whose unfortunate and widely recorded record showed an unlikely involvement with dead people. Unsolved murders made for unpopular cops—hell, they solve them weekly on television, don't they?

“But they can't think I'd set off explosions in my own little fortress.”

“Not unless you had evidence to hide, evidence of committing a murder or a compelling motive to do so. Who had better access for planting bombs?”

“You don't honestly think I would endanger my daughter, my neighors like that? Or that I'd kill Jeremy?”

“No, I don't. But overworked, underpaid law-enforcement officers see you as a way to wrap a case—they'll look for the most likely suspect first, and maybe precious evidence that could convict an unknown person and free you of suspicion will disappear with time or be overlooked in their haste. The murder cases that are not solved right away stand a good chance of not being solved at all. If you fit a profile they think positive, they'll go after you at the expense of further time-consuming investigation.”

“Where'd you come up with all this?”

“Keegan Monroe sent in a full screenplay—typed, not on disk. Charlie, it's devastating—which means wonderful. Amuller didn't find it because I hid it.”

“Keegan? I thought he was trying to write another novel.” Charlie's most successful client was in Folsom Prison and had decided to use his excess of spare time to write a novel. He'd been attempting that feat apparently since birth, but made himself—and helped make Charlie and Congdon & Morse—a real living writing screenplays. In fact one of his most successful was written in Folsom during an attack of the dreaded writers' block. Most of Charlie's screenwriters wanted to write novels to have some control over their work and her novelists wanted to write screenplays to earn some money, neither side wanting to listen to the truth about the other's reality, all artful endeavors relying more heavily upon dreams. Charlie would be out of business if it were otherwise. Which didn't mean she was a murderer or deserved to be suspected as one.

“So, boss, I have decided to come to your house and help you investigate. I read a lot of mysteries, treatments and book proposals, scripts and stuff. Stew and I watch videos of movies in bed, which are mostly mysteries anyway. I can help you if you let me, and am going to try on this one even if you don't. That Amuller scares me. He's out to get you, Charlie.”

CHAPTER 19

RUDY FERRIS
WAS
on the TV when Larry and Charlie walked into her house. Libby, Doug Esterhazie, and Lori Schantz sprawled across the furniture in various catatonic poses. Tuxedo sprawled across Doug.