The Bad Always Die Twice (14 page)

“I heard he has a big—”

“Marshall! Please,” she groaned.

“I know. Not in front of the doggies.”

“No. I mean
I
don’t need those kinds of details while I’m eating lunch.” She leaned back in her chair and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Or any other time, for that matter. What I meant was, have you heard anything about him cheating on Edith?”

“There hasn’t been a peep of it in the papers, or on the set.”

Nikki grinned. Marshall’s shoots were renowned for being fun, because
he
was, and they were also known for their gossip, because he
loved
gossip. “You really think he could be seeing someone on the sly and no one has seen him?”

He shrugged. “Anything is possible.” He leaned closer to her, his tone wistful. “What if they truly are in love, Thompson and this waitress? What did you say her name was?”

“Tiffany.”

He cringed and sat up again. “Oh dear. What an unfortunate name.”

“This from a man born Wilbur Sparrow Feather Jones?”

“Eat your salad. And don’t taunt me. I’m in a good mood today. I have no appearances this weekend and Rob and I are going to play house. If he ever gets home. I worry about him. He works such long hours. He was supposed to be off at seven in the morning, but you know gangs on the streets of L.A. They never sleep.”

Smiling, Nikki dove into her salad. As she ate, she told Marshall about her chat with Tawny/Mary in J.J. Flaherty’s office.

“Oh, my God,” he breathed. The dogs were back under the table again, praying for handouts. “So you thought maybe Thompson—Oh, my God, you know he wouldn’t have killed Rex! He already
had
Edith. Why would he? And if he did, why would he be trying to frame Jessica for it?”

Nikki shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he was afraid his fat meal ticket would run out of punches if Rex came back into their lives. And if he knew about Jessica’s affair with Rex, she’d be an easy target to frame, I suppose.”

“But if he was busy boffing Tiffany from the diner that day, that lets him off the hook, at least for the murder, if not the infidelity.”

“Right.” She sighed, pushing another mouthful of the tasty chopped salad into her mouth.

“But I must say,” Marshall added, “I’m impressed with your investigative skills. Who thought you had it in you? If this real estate agent thing doesn’t work out, you could become a P.I. I’d hire you to get all my dirt firsthand.”

The dogs flew out from under the table, barking wildly, and Nikki looked up to see Rob coming out of the sliding glass doors, onto the patio. “Hey boys.” He stooped to pet one spaniel and then the other.

Rob was dressed for the street in a shirt with the sleeves torn off and a belt buckle the size of Rhode Island. He had a full sleeve of tattoos on one arm and was working on the other. With his long hair pulled back and the bandana around his head and the sunglasses, he looked like a serious bad-ass. Which he was. He was also one of the kindest men Nikki had ever known.

Ollie leaped up to lick Rob’s face and he gently pushed him down. “Enough, already.” He walked up behind Marshall, put his arms around him and kissed his temple. “Hey, baby.”

Marshall closed his eyes and leaned back. “You were supposed to be home hours ago. I was worried.”

“Sorry, I got hung up.” Rob massaged Marshall’s shoulders. “Nik, how are you?”

“Good.” She shrugged. “I guess. Considering this whole mess with Rex and Jessica.”

“Well, I hope you’re still good after I tell you what I heard downtown this morning.”

Chapter 12

“O
h, God. What did you hear?” Marshall turned in his chair to look at Rob. “Jessica’s going to be arrested, isn’t she?” He slapped his hand on the table. “I knew it! She did it.”

“She didn’t do it!” Nikki threw a crouton at him. It bounced off one broad shoulder and into Ollie’s mouth, so then she had to find a treat for Stanley.

“Sit down, lover.” Marshall patted the chair beside him. “I know you’re exhausted. I’ll get you some lunch and a beer, just as soon as you give us the juicy details.”

Rob sank into the cushioned wrought-iron chair and pulled off his bandana, tossing it on the table. “I’m not hungry, but I could definitely use the beer.”

“Not hungry? You better not be eating donuts again. You know how I feel about your cholesterol numbers.”

His words seemed silly, but they came out so sweet. Nikki found it endearing that Marshall fussed over Rob the way he did. There wasn’t much fussing in Nikki and Jeremy’s relationship; they were both too busy and too practical.

Rob turned to Nikki. “This is not official. It’s just cops talking, but chances are, Rex was not killed in Jessica’s apartment.”

“I think they already knew that,” she said cautiously. “No weapon. No blood. Just a dead man wearing small briefs.”

“I still can’t get over that,” Marshall groaned, feeding the dogs bits from his plate again. “Lamé? What was he thinking?”

Nikki and Rob both ignored him. “But that’s good, right?” she said. “That he wasn’t killed there? That takes some of the pressure off Jessica, especially since she had an alibi for Monday.”

“Here’s the problem,” Rob explained, shifting forward in the chair and focusing his intense brown eyes on her. “He wasn’t killed in her bed, but that doesn’t mean Jessica couldn’t have done it. Her alibi is for Monday, working hours. She could have moved the body before she arrived at her meeting. She could have done it in the middle of the night.”

“But why would someone kill someone and then put the body in their own bed? It makes no sense.”

“I’m not saying she did it, Nikki. I’m telling you the thought process Lutz is following. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a clever murderer would try to point the finger at someone else by making it look like he’d been framed, to cover his tracks. The good news is that this new information allows for a greater number of suspects.”

“Meaning someone actually
could
be trying to frame her.”

“It’s very possible. We generally start with the people closest to the decedent and work our way outward. I imagine Edith March will be interviewed if she hasn’t been already. And her boyfriend, of course. After that . . .” He shrugged. “Who knows? It depends on where the investigation leads them after the interviews.”

Thinking over what Rob was saying, Nikki scratched Stanley behind the ears. “No weapon was found in the apartment. What do they think was used to kill him?”

“They don’t know exactly, but it was a long, thin, cylindrical-like instrument.”

“Like an ice pick,” Marshall breathed.

“Like an ice pick,” Rob repeated. “But probably not something quite so dramatic. It went through his eye and directly into his brain.” He pressed his pinkie finger to his eyelid. “There wouldn’t have been much bleeding.”

Marshall looked appalled and thrilled at the same time by the gruesome details. “So how do they know he wasn’t killed in Jessica’s bed?”

“It has something to do with the way the blood and other fluids settled in his body. Apparently, it was obvious at the scene that he’d been moved, but sometimes that can mean the body was just moved from one room to another. There was no blood—or other evidence—elsewhere in the apartment, for that matter, so the detectives have to conclude he might not have been killed there, which means he might have been killed elsewhere. Am I making sense?” he asked.

“Sure,” Nikki said as Ollie pushed Stanley aside to get his own share of the loving. To further press the point, the red-and-white dog propped his front paws on Nikki’s knee. She scratched and stroked as she talked. “It makes complete sense. You eliminate the possibilities as you can, adding possibilities as you need to. How long before there’s an official autopsy report?”

Rob groaned. “It could be weeks. The coroner isn’t going to rush to a conclusion. It’s too big a case to not get it right. He’ll try to get a better idea of what was used to kill Rex, maybe even an impression in the brain tissue.”

“Oh, Christ.” Marshall got up. “Enough gore for me! Anyone need anything? A beer, Nikki? An ice pick?”

Nikki shook her head. For an action star, Marshall was as squeamish as a seven-year-old girl.

“Be right back with that beer, baby.” Marshall squeezed Rob’s shoulder and walked away.

The dogs took off after him.

“Do not feed them!” Nikki called after him. “Just because you take them inside, doesn’t mean I won’t know. They’ll tattle on you later. They always do.” Knowing very well he would ignore her, she looked back at Rob. “Sorry. Go on.”

Rob leaned back in his chair, pulled out the elastic holding his medium brown hair in a ponytail, and let the wind blow through it. “So far, the coroner hasn’t been able to identify the time of death. He’s going to have a hard time doing it.”

“Why?”

He met her gaze. “The body was refrigerated, Nikki. Which adds to the conclusion that he wasn’t killed in the apartment.”

“Refrigerated?” Wow. She wasn’t expecting that.... “How . . .” She stopped and then started again as she wrestled with the image of Rex being squeezed into a standard refrigerator. It would have been a tight fit, to say the least. “How does a person refrigerate a body? Is that really possible?”

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe the things possible that human beings do to each other.”

Nikki folded her hands and rested them on the table. “Why would someone do that?
Refrigerate
a body?” She found it difficult even to say.

“To throw the cops off. It’s going to make it much more difficult for the coroner to determine the time of death because the refrigeration stalls the natural process.”

“The natural process?” she asked, pretty certain she didn’t want to hear the explanation.

“Of decomposition.”

She studied the full sleeve of tattoos on his left arm, an intricate tapestry of vines, tropical leaves and slithering snakes. “Right.”

“It’s also practical,” he continued. “You kill somebody, it’s a good way to store a body until you decide how to dispose of it.”

“It sounds so cold and calculating.”

He raised his eyebrows.

Catching her unintentional pun, she groaned. “You know what I mean. Do you think this murder was planned?”

“It looks that way to me, but I don’t have all the facts.” He hesitated. “Do you know if Jessica knew he was alive? After he was declared dead in the plane crash? Because of course
that’s
the true pool of suspects.”

“She swears she didn’t know.”

Rob threaded his fingers together and stretched his arms, flexing until the snakes slithered. “You believe her?”

She thought before she answered. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, my bets are on the wife.”

“Edith?” Nikki frowned. “If you knew her, you wouldn’t say that. Edith is a good woman. Even Victoria likes her, and you know Mother. She’s suspicious of everyone.”

“That’s because
Mother
is one smart cookie.” He tapped his temple. “She’s one of those people who understands, after years in the business—a business not all that unlike my own—that no one is who they seem to be.”

She sat back in her chair. “What a cynical thing to say, Rob. What about me?” She tapped her collarbone with both hands. “I’m a pretty genuine person. This is me.”

He smiled kindly. “You’ve got your secrets. We both know that. Those secrets are sometimes what define us.” He shrugged. “I’m just saying, we don’t know people as well as we think we do. Ever.”

Nikki wanted to argue the point further, but let it drop. Hours later, though, she was still thinking about what Rob said.

“Jeremy,” Nikki said when he answered his phone. “Do you think you know me?”

“Well, hello yourself,” he said. “Me? My day was fine. How was yours?”

She switched her BlackBerry from one ear to the other and reached into her bag on the car seat beside her. She was suddenly hungry; she hadn’t eaten since the salad with Marshall more than seven hours before. “I’m serious,” she said, digging in her bag in the hopes of finding a granola bar. “Do you think you know me? I mean, you’ve known me practically my whole life. Since we were kids. But do you feel like you
know
me? Do you know what I’m capable of doing? I mean the bad things.”

“No, no more juice,” he said.

“I don’t want juice,” she quipped.

“Not you,” he said louder into the phone. “I’m talking to Katie. No more juice, Katie. I’m turning out the light. Good night, sweetheart.” He made a kissing sound.

Nikki waited. There was nothing to eat in her purse. Not even a mint snatched off the counter at a doctor’s office. Nothing. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s a bad time. It’s bedtime. I should call later.”

“Nope. It’s fine,” he said. “We were just saying our last good nights. She should have been asleep half an hour ago. I’m heading downstairs. I can talk.”

Nikki watched the house. “You might as well leave the hall light on,” she said. “Otherwise, you’ll be back upstairs in five minutes.”

“Where are you?” he asked as the light in the second-story window over the foyer came on again.

She chuckled. “Out front, on the street. I’m not sure the eight-foot fence does much. I can see right into your house. You need to close your front drapes.”

“The fence keeps the tourists and the crazies out, Miss Stalker. Come inside,” he said impatiently.

“No. I’m fine out here. We didn’t have plans tonight. We agreed on the parameters and—”

“Nikki, stop already.”

A second later, she saw the front door open. The white colonial, in Brentwood, was understated—at least in present-day terms of expensive houses in L.A.—but elegant. It was the house Jeremy and his wife had bought just before she got sick. Nikki had always loved the house . . . and hated it.

The front gate slid open.

Nikki started her car and purred up the drive, her Prius in battery/stealth mode. Jeremy waited for her on the front step.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be Miss Stalker,” she said when she reached the door, her bag on her shoulder. She was still wearing the chinos, which she was seriously considering donating to Goodwill.