Killer Commute (28 page)

“You really think it will help you with any of this?”

“No, but it solves one mystery in a life overrun with them.”

“Now come the violins, Charlie? I watched you working that impressive crowd at the Celebrity Pit just now.” He followed her up to her office at the FFUCWB of P, determined she wouldn't slip away.

“So what's happening, Larry?”

“So far it looks like your gamble paid off. Even got an offer sight-unseen from Allied Sharks.”

“Did you tell them what the floor is?”

“Yeah, sputter, sputter, you gotta be crazy. That's why I hate agents, especially pushy broads. Monroe's just a goddamned writer for chrissake, sputter, sputter, hang up, bang.” Larry leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed behind his head. “How sweet it is. Looks like our other scenario is about to shoot.” He nodded at Dalrymple.

“You know the script.”

“Right. Break a leg.”

“Charlie.” David Dalrymple followed her into her office and closed the door behind him, which elicited a guffaw or two from her secretary. “I strongly suggest you—”

“You smell something?”

“What?”

“I smell cigarette smoke. I even know where it's coming from.” Charlie pushed A. E. Mous's
Dead Men Don't Need Jell-O
poster aside. This was the other scenario. The hole behind the poster now was almost the size of the poster.

“This is Daniel Congdon's office. He doesn't smoke. You want to stick your head in here and take a sniff?” Charlie watched David Dalrymple not move. “You don't have to, do you?”

“Charlie, trust me—”

“Why? I thought Feds who still smoke were only on the Fox Channel or in vintage films.”

But it was down in the parking barn where things really came to a head. “No, let's take my car. Your secretary can bring yours.”

“I need my car and Larry needs his. He has a life, you know.”

“I insist. We need to talk.”

“You can ride with me if you want. Find someone to bring you back into town—rent a car in Long Beach. Call a Fed.”

“Charlie, I strongly suggest—”

“That's right, ex-Lieutenant Dalrymple. Because suggest is all you can do. Unless you've decided to work for a new organization, but I think you're too old for the Feds. And I have not yet been charged with Jeremy's murder and can't be ordered to stay at home in Long Beach.”

“Your attorney—”

“—is very famous but human, and would probably love to see this case go to trial. I would if I were an attorney. If you want to talk with me, ride with me. Otherwise, I'll see you in Long Beach and we can talk there. Remember, I don't have to do this. Don't you just hate pushy women?”

But she was glad when he relented. Charlie intended to exceed the speed limit mightily and she could use some help when she reached Belmont Shore.

CHAPTER 37

“W
HY ARE YOU
coming back to Long Beach voluntarily if you're so sure there's no law that says you have to or that the LBPD or Attorney Seligman have any right to ask it of such an important personage?” David Dalrymple asked wryly as Charlie pulled onto the 10. He hadn't admitted she was right in her assessment of his power to order her around just now, but he hadn't denied it, either.

“Because I'm a pushy broad. Because I'm tired of being expected to show blind obedience, allow others to make decisions for me that will affect them only a short time but could affect my entire life, and my daughter's, forever. You don't just hand your fate over to somebody because they tell you to. But I'm rushing back to Long Beach right now mostly because I'm very uneasy about Betty Beesom.”

“You turn your fate over to someone else every time you let a broker make an investment decision for you. Or a banker. Or a doctor or a plumber or—”

“Yes, but I am willingly paying them for a service, not being coerced into confessing to a crime I didn't commit, and poor Betty—”

“You should be more concerned for your own well being, Charlie, than your neighbor's. You are in a lot of trouble.”

“And she is eighty-three and defenseless. And, other than the murderer, I think I'm the only one who knows what's going on.”

“If you have any information you think the police don't have, tell them right away before you get in deeper trouble.”

“Not until I can prove it, so that information can't be used against me.”

“Leave that to the experts. Crime solving is not your specialty.”

“But manipulating people and information is. I know how it works. Now you know why I'm speeding back to Long Beach and I still don't know why there's all that stale cigarette smoke in Daniel Congdon's office and a master rat hole in the wall of mine.”

“Explain to me first why you think the authorities will use information against you if you are not guilty of anything. Charlie, you're just not being rational.”

Charlie explained that the fact she knew the report in the
P-T
that Jeremy Fiedler was killed by a gunshot was misinformation only proved to Amuller that she was the murderer. “Hairy the cat, and the Trailblazer, didn't smell like gun smoke.”

“He could have been shot elsewhere and put into the car after.”

“You know, I hadn't thought of that.”

“See? Pushy broads don't know everything.”

A gurgling and then a hot feeling in one ear. “Oh, shit.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Charlie pressed Betty's number on her cellular and felt even worse when she got no answer.

“Charlie, I would like to serve, unofficially, as a mediator here. What do you say?”

I say I will not let this hearing thing get to me now. I will not. I will not. I just can't—“So what's with the hole in my office wall and the cigarette smoke?”

“Unofficially, there was some surveillance of your office and the agency.”

“Jeremy's murder isn't half as exciting as how he disappeared electronically, huh? What did they expect to surveil if I was on vacation? They already had my files.” Could he see her sweating?

“Most investigations strive to leave no stone unturned and this Daniel Congdon, the silent partner with an office, is a suspicious character.”

“You're telling me. I've never laid eyes on him.” And you're really not telling me anything I hadn't already guessed or even suggested to you, mediator.

“Now, what do you have for me?”

“Remember when we lunched at the Pit and you encouraged me to trust my special senses to learn about Jeremy, even maybe contact him? Well, I did. There were several of us there who tried, and he had a different message for everybody. Told me to watch out for the four-oh-five.”

“That makes sense.” Dalrymple put a hand out to the dashboard as she came up too fast on a gasoline tanker, pumping her brakes to warn the SUV behind her and flashing for a lane change. Hell, Charlie could do this while drying her hair.

She told him of everybody's warnings but Mrs. Beesom's. She didn't mention the old lady's presence at the silly pseudoseance in her breakfast nook. “And our cat really came unglued.”

“Animals are very sensitive to supernatural phenomena.”

Yeah, and to murder and smoky hundred-dollar bills, too.

By the time they reached Inglewood, she'd tried Betty again and again with no results. No gurgling in her head now, but there was still the odd heat. Within minutes her cellular played its stupid little tune—sort of like a muted Big Ben on Prozac.

It was a breathless Keegan. The parole board was about to spring him—he'd be home soon. He sounded joyous.

“That's the best news I've had in years. I just hope you can handle the press, pal. The buzz has been jumpstarted. This is going to be big.”

When they hung up, he was crying—happy crying. Her cheeks weren't exactly dry.

“And Charlie, you have to admit Detective Amuller attended the memorial service and followed up those leads, It's not as if he doesn't listen to you,” the ex-cop said out of context. “He mentioned something about a house with a car like Mr. Fiedler's you and your friends had apparently staked out.”

“That's why I'm in such a hurry. I hope Libby went to the diner this afternoon. And, David, I hope you're armed.”

*   *   *

When the Toyota pulled into the compound, David Dalrymple was busy explaining that Jeremy's ability to obliterate his identity and still function in society and pursue the pursuit of happiness without paying taxes and leaving no “footprints” was a threat to everyone. This was such a national hazard that all stops had to be pulled. Extreme measures were justified. (Like blowing smoke through a hole in her wall.) Criminals could get hold of this method and ravage and pillage. Foreign spies and terrorists could disappear into the streets without trace.

Charlie thought that's what it was they did already, but she didn't say so. She was too worried about Betty and her own ears. Betty's old Olds sat in its proper place. Libby's Jeep Wrangler didn't—one good thing, anyway.

“Well, it seems I spent the better part of the afternoon on a long commute for nothing,” Dalrymple told her.

“Probably told you more than you told me.”

“Charlie, you need professional help here.” He followed her to Betty's patio.

A seagull stood on Jeremy's picnic table scarfing up fish scraps off a newspaper. Betty must have had fish for lunch, “Hey, I got a renowned lawyer who tells me to stay home and do nothing.”

“And that's sound advice.”

“I'll let you know when I get the bill.” But “sound” advice was suddenly of even less use to Charlie. The sharp pain in one ear was so sudden she might have been shot, but the hearing was gone from both ears. They stood at Betty's door, Charlie ready to pound on it. But her hands had volunteered to cover her ears instead. One of them came away bloodied.

Dalrymple was talking at her in a real panic mode, but when he saw the blood on her hand he lost it, pushed her to the ground facedown, and sprawled on top of her.

Charlie'd had a bleeding ulcer, fallen over cliffs, been injured in an explosion. She'd survived Mitch Hilsten in rut, a teenaged daughter, a menopausal mother, and a true raft of flirtatious Hollywood geezers—but this little escapade broke a rib. She felt it happen—and she'd thought her ear hurt.

“I can't hear you, but get off me,” she couldn't hear herself say. “You broke something in my middle. You're killing me. I wasn't shot. My ear's bleeding—because of the explosion, I think. Please.”

Charlie hurt so, she forgot to worry about Betty until her moderator rolled off her so she could turn over, and there was Mrs. Beesom standing above her, wringing her hands and crying behind her eyeglasses.

“Betty, I'm so glad you're all right. I was worried, tried to call. You've got to get out of here. Go over to Art and Wilma's. Anywhere, fast.”

But Betty Beesom wasn't paying any attention to Charlie. Maybe Betty couldn't hear Charlie's voice, either.

“David, I really do need you now. There's no time to lose. You did bring a gun, right?”

He didn't even help her up. By the time Charlie got to her knees and, clutching her rib cage, finally to her feet, Dalrymple had his hands in the air with no gun in sight. He and Betty were looking over Charlie's shoulder.

She turned to face Jeremy Fiedler. He
bad
brought a gun.

CHAPTER 38

CHARLIE
SAT ON
the floor of Mrs. Beesom's dining room/living room with her knees under her chin, her wrists taped together around those knees and, mercifully, up against Betty's soft recliner. She could lean into it and take the misery off her smashed rib when she breathed. Whenever she relaxed her back posture, the rib stabbed something that must be a vital organ because it took her breath away for lots of seconds. Charlie knew very little about her internal organs—other than her troublesome stomach, which was often shown to her in colorful drawings attached to examining room walls by helpful doctors. Mostly, she didn't want to know, you know?

Ex-Lieutenant Dalrymple, in much the same condition as she, leaned against a wall. He didn't have a broken rib but both his wrists and ankles were taped together. Betty, looking frail and scary, slumped without restraint in a cute little Swiss Chalet–type love seat on gliders. A woman whose name might be Gladys, in white anklets and Keds and a gathered shirtwaist you'd have trouble finding anywhere but on a black-and-white episode of
Lassie
on the Nick, was untethered, too. But she was one upset lady. And the man who was sometimes Jeremy Fiedler—now deceased—stood against a backdrop of Jesus on black velvet.

“Where's the Ferrari, Jeremy?” Charlie didn't hear herself say, but felt the vibrations in her throat. Everyone but Jesus looked at her when she spoke this time.

Charlie would never say she was getting accustomed to her unpredictable handicap, but things were a little different now. She might have lost her hearing, but she'd be willing to bet she was the only person in the room who saw the whole picture. Betty thought she did, but she was mistaken.

Everyone but the woman in the anklets talked back to Charlie, but they didn't speak directly to her or exaggerate their lip movements. Jeremy gestured wildly at her and then at Betty. Unfortunately, so did the gun. Guns have little holes at the end that speak for themselves when you're eyeing them.

Somehow this little hole spoke for the man behind it who moved his lips incomprehensibly. It told her to get to her feet. With a totally pulverized rib, this wasn't as easy as it looked, but the little hole seemed to grow in proportion like there was a howitzer—whatever that was—motioning her upright.

There she stood on her feet and the Jeremy, behind the howitzer, mouthed terrifying threats he didn't know she couldn't hear but did a circular motion with his finger pointing down that intimated he wanted her to turn around. She did. The metal nudge in her back strongly insinuated she move forward. She did that, too, hoping if she and Jeremy and the gun made it out of the room, ex-Lieutenant Dalrymple might find a manly way to save the day and Betty Beesom.