Sole Witness (3 page)

“No. Sorry.”

Carver rolled her chair backward
and stood up. “That’s okay. I’ll go get some. Oh—Chief is waving like a madman.
I’ll find out what he wants.”

Davis nodded and tried to
concentrate on the ever-growing mounds of paperwork. There was so much to do,
so many cases open at once. Because Isla Concha was a small town, the police
force was ridiculously light, leaving them all with too much on their plates.

He’d finished sorting through one
towering stack and had been about to dive into the next when Carver wobbled
back, a strange expression in her eyes.

“What is it?” he asked warily.

“We’ve got a live one. Or,
rather, a dead one.”

“Ours?” Nice. He couldn’t even
make it through his current mountain of paperwork.

Carver nodded and leaned one hip
against his desk.

“Big?” he asked.

“Huge. This is going to be high
profile.” The orange lozenge clicked between her teeth.

Davis sighed. “Who is it?”

Carver watched him expectantly.
“Tommy Turner.”

“Who?” He rummaged through his
notes.

She snorted. “Could you be any
less cool, Hamilton? Tommy Turner. T2, of the T2 Crew.”

Davis blinked. “The rapper?”

“Yeah. He took a couple bullets.
EMT called it at the scene.”

A dead rap star. Nice. That’s all
he needed. “Any witnesses?”

“One. You’re going to love
this—well, if you’ve ever heard of her.”

A strange feeling prickled across
his back. “Who?”

“Lori–”

“Summers,” he finished. There was
no reason at all for her name to be the first to his mind—except that her face
often plagued his dreams.

Twin dimples puckered Carver’s
cheeks. “You
have
heard of pop culture after all.”

Heard of her? Lord. Davis didn’t
have to unfold the tattered magazine page in order to envision her face, her body,
the timbre of her voice, the scent of her skin…

But all he said aloud was,
“Yeah.”

“I seen her in T2’s video, which
sucked by the way, but Chief says she’s also an ‘action swimsuit model.’ What
the hell does that mean?”

“It means she was primarily known
for doing daredevil water sports in diamond-studded g-strings.”

“Was? What happened?”

Davis gritted his teeth. What
did
happen? “I don’t know,” he answered, maintaining a neutral tone of voice. “For
a while there, if you saw a spiky-haired model on a beach, it was probably
Lori. She’s been photographed swimming, snorkeling, wake-boarding, sunbathing,
and surfing killer waves—all in equally killer bikinis.”

“Man. How do I get a job like
that?”

“You have that kid first. The
Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition has yet to do a centerfold with pregnant
cops.”

Carver let out a bark of
laughter. “Prejudiced jerks. Well, if I don’t come back after maternity leave,
you’ll know where to find me.”

Davis pushed himself back from
his desk and stood up. “For now, let’s check out our crime scene.”

By the time they pulled up to the
studio it was nearly eight o’clock. Flashing lights and gawking onlookers lined
the block.

No parking lot. Perp had to use a
meter. No way he could get clearance for running prints on the thousands of
quarters crammed into the machines.

Davis helped Carver under the
yellow crime tape. The studio was a big stucco-on-concrete-blocks building. No
windows—probably for soundproofing purposes. Two doors, one in front and a fire
exit in back. Davis slipped on his gloves and boot-socks and held open the door
for Carver.

Techs crawled the room, taking
samples of God-knew-what. There were always fibers and fluids and any number of
flecks and specks and crumbs of identification.

That was the first rule drilled
into a cop’s head. Every time somebody enters a scene, they bring something in.
Every time someone exits a scene, they take something out. Not just the
investigating officers, but also the perp. Whoever he was.

Davis walked over to the medical
examiner kneeling by the body. “What do you have?”

“He’s been dead from two to three
hours. The 911 call came through about two hours ago and we were on the scene
within fifteen minutes.”

“Witness call from the studio?”
Davis flipped open his pocket notebook.

“No, I think cell phone. From her
car.”

“So she didn’t come inside.
Didn’t see all… this.” Something like relief warmed Davis’s cold fingers.
Civilians shouldn’t have to see all the crap that cops saw. Especially
civilians like Lori Summers.

“Who knows? She can use her cell
phone after whacking someone just as easy. Our star witness might have a little
explaining to do,” Carver said with a sardonic smile. “Ain’t that how it always
goes? Good thing she’s coming over first thing in the morning to give her
statement.”

He frowned.

No way was Lori Summers involved
in this. Right?

“Hamilton. Did you hear that?
Wake up.” Carver snapped her fingers in his face. “The band members got sent
home early because Tommy was expecting a ‘hookup’.”

The M.E. looked up. “That jibes with the wounds.”

“What do you mean?” Davis asked.

“Cause of death is a bullet to
the brain. Another entered his groin.”

“That one wasn’t to kill,” Carver
interrupted, wrapping her arms around her belly. “It was personal. You think
this was a breakup gone bad? Maybe Miss Summers has more explaining to do than
we thought.”

Davis shook his head.

When Lori had disappeared and
later reemerged as the mouth-watering half-naked supermodel, he’d curled his
lip and forced himself to admit that maybe his parents had been right about her
all along.

But even if she’d turned bimbo…
could she have turned killer?

*          *          *

The luminescent dashboard clock
glowed 11:45. The day was finally over. Thank God. Lori couldn’t wait to get
home and—oh. Kimber. She was not going to take the lack of autograph well at
all. Crap. All Lori wanted was some peace and some privacy, but if she didn’t
bring Kimber home some kind of offering, high drama would rattle the walls.

Head pounding, she stopped at the
first grocery store she passed, headed straight for the frozen foods section,
snatched a pint of Karmel Sutra from the freezer and strode to the
self-checkout lane. Ben & Jerry’s cured just about anything.

She beeped the ice cream and set
it in a bag, then opened her purse. One dollar. Great. She fished her Isla
Concha debit card from her wallet and swiped it through the machine.

The display flashed, “Card
unreadable. Please try again.”

Seven tries later, Lori was about
to cry with frustration. Positive the Karmel Sutra was turning into Karmel
Soggy, she picked up the bag of dew-covered ice cream and stomped into a line
with a live person.

If a customer showing up with her
grocery item pre-bagged bemused the cashier, he made no comment. When the debit
card didn’t swipe for him either, he simply typed the digits into the register,
handed Lori her receipt, and sang out, “Have a nice evening!”

Too late for that.

Lori lugged the ice cream out to
her Mustang. For once, even her car’s vivid pinkness failed to restore her good
humor. What she needed was a nice, long bubble bath.

That thought firmly in mind, Lori
headed straight home and parked her car on the side of the street.

The house was old, but she’d bought it before she’d
made it big, and it was home. No basement, but then few in Florida had
basements. Small, but she was single and didn’t need much space.

Until Kimber moved in.

Now, what was once comfy seemed crowded. But being Kimber’s
best friend meant she had to suck it up sometimes, because that’s what friends
do. Lori slipped her key in the lock and sighed when the door swung open
without turning the key or the handle. Bad enough Kimber never locked anything,
now she couldn’t even close the door all the way?

Lori stepped into her once-pristine living room. The
hardwood floors were littered with Kimberley’s clothes and the black leather
couch lurked under a pound of cat hair.

As she had every day since Kimber’s cat moved in, Lori
sneezed.

Where was the little monster?

Chucking her purse onto a stack of magazines—the
cleanest place in her post-Kimberly living room—Lori’s heels clicked across the
wood as she walked into the kitchen. She tossed the now-soupy ice cream into
the freezer.

Where was Kimber?

She’d better not have left the house with the front
door cracked open. Best friend or no, some basic logic had to prevail.

With visions of bubble baths dancing in her head,
Lori closed the (open!) sliding glass door leading to the patio and headed down
the hall to her room. Kimber lay atop her bed and the cat stretched across
Lori’s pillow.

“What are you doing in here, Kimber?”

Kimber looked up, her round face surrounded by a
tangled mass of hair. “Watching TV.”

Thank you, Captain Obvious. “There’s a TV in the
living room.”

“I know, but this one’s got a VCR. I wanted to tape
something.”

“The TV in the living room has Tivo.”

Kimber shrugged and returned her eyes to the screen.
“I totally don’t get Tivo.”

Lori stared at the layer of fur covering every
surface of her room. “What’s your cat doing in here?”

“Watching TV with me. What’s your problem, Lori?”

“You know I’m allergic to cats! You promised to keep
him out of my room.”

“Oh yeah. Sorry.”

Sometimes, Lori could imagine why it didn’t work out
with Kimber’s boyfriend. She was a great friend—fun, funny, upbeat, honest to a
fault. But man, was she a rotten roommate.

Deciding not to take a bath for fear she’d drown
herself, Lori turned and headed for her office. Maybe it was a good thing
Kimber had overtaken the bedroom. If she had been in here on the futon, Lori
wouldn’t have been able to do any career planning.

Taking a dog-eared entrepreneurial how-to book from
the shelf, Lori crossed over to her desk. She flipped to chapter seven—logos
and slogans.

What would be a good name for the talent agency?
Summers’ Models? No, that was stupid. Models by Summers?  No, that sounded like
cologne. Models Etc? But there was no et cetera. Just models. Boy this was
hard.

Lori turned on her computer. Before she had time to
do more than log in, Kimber appeared in the doorway, clad in oversized flannel
pajamas and cuddling her cat.

“Come watch TV with me, Lori. Afternoon soaps are
on. I’ll put Mr. Giggles outside.”

Mr. Giggles. Yeah, that cat was a laugh a minute.

“All right. Don’t forget to shut the door.”

Kimber rolled her eyes. “I won’t. Besides, he goes
out the sliding glass door.”

“Don’t forget to shut that one, too.”

“What are you, my mom? How’s he supposed to get back
in if the door’s shut?”

For a moment, Lori indulged herself in the brief
fantasy that Mr. Giggles
wouldn’t
get back in.

“I’ll be right there.”

Kimber padded off.

Pages fluttered in the open book as the air
conditioning kicked on, and Lori sighed. Her future would wait for another day.
She stood and walked to her room. Sitting on the edge of the dander-covered
bed, she hunted for the remote control. No luck.

Kimber returned sans cat, but with the remote in her
hand. Sneaky girl. Lori opened her mouth to make a comment when the commercial
cut to a newsbreak and the announcer’s voice filled the room.

“The T2 Crew is no more. Earlier this evening, Tommy
Turner of the T2 Crew was gunned down in his studio. He was working on his new
album, to be released in four months. Here, live, is–”

With a loud gasp, Kimber clapped her hands to her
chest in horror. She turned wide eyes to Lori and breathed, “Too bad you didn’t
get my CDs signed. They’d be worth a fortune now.”

Lori gawked at her. “For Pete’s sake, Kimber. How
morbid. I can’t even wrap my head around the idea that he’s dead, and you’re
thinking about making money off it?”

“I’m just saying. How much money do you think it
would get on eBay? Signed the night he died. Think about it. Mega bucks.”
Kimber flopped onto the bed, propped up by pillows.

“I don’t want to think about it. I wish I wasn’t
there.”

“It’s not like you saw it or anything. Don’t make it
out like a big deal.”

Lori fought for calm. “It is a big deal. He’s dead.”

“I know he’s dead! Nobody cares more than me. I love
him.”