The Morning Show Murders (1) (11 page)

"The new executive producer? Yeah. Met her right before coming here."

"Well, I'm not sure it's such a bad idea, you taking a few days off," Gretchen said. "It's definitely not a permanent situation. Daddy wouldn't let me fire you, even if I wanted to. And I don't want to ... unless you keep me here wasting my time."

"I guess I was worried that you were believing all the crap in the news about me being the prime suspect. ..."

"Oh, Christ, Billy, there are a hundred things going on in my head right now. And as hard as it must be for you to believe, you're not even in the first ninety-nine." She wavered and leaned against her desk for support.

I crossed the room to her and put my arm around her. "Take it easy, Gretch. Mustn't let 'em see you sweat."

I moved her to the couch and semi-forced her onto it. "It's all getting to me, Billy. Ever since Dad turned the news division and the cable networks over to me after Bud died, I've been barely able to keep my head above water." Bud was her late brother, Lieutenant Commander Vernon Di Voss Jr. He'd been killed five years before in Baghdad when his vehicle rolled over a land mine.

"Now Rudy's lawyers tell me he made me the executrix of his estate. So along with having to shout at
Nightline
and
60 Minutes
for trying to break our exclusive first shot at the ex-Mossad guy, and dealing with our programming idiots and, in general, running two fucking television networks, I'm making the arrangements for Rudy's funeral service at Saint Pat's, of all places, and the burial,
and
his estate sale."

"You don't have to do all this yourself, Gretch. You've got a full
staff out there. And you can put Rudy's lawyers to work. They're taking their cut of the estate anyway. Make 'em earn it."

"I know you're right, Billy. But things never seem to get done unless I do them myself. God, I woke up this morning worrying about who I should hire to auction off Rudy's furnishings."

"He had a lot of his old shows on DVD," I said. "If they're going to be on sale, I'd like to pick up a few."

"Why would you want them?" she asked.

"Mementos."

"You men are so strange. Actually, those DVDs are here. We needed to sample some of Rudy's early TV work on our send-off this morning, so I got permission from the NYPD to remove them from his condo. They should still be in editing. I'll probably donate them to the Museum of Television and Radio. Take what you want."

Her eyes were suddenly damp.

Then she broke down, and, for the second time in two days, my lapels were collecting tears of grief for Rudy Gallagher.

Or so I thought.

After a few seconds, Gretch pulled away from me and stood. "He was a son of a bitch," she said, snapping a Kleenex angrily from a box on her desk. "Did you know he was screwing around on me?"

"What makes you think that?" I said, not wanting to lie to her.

She circled her desk, opened a drawer, and plucked from it a small black phone book. "This retro piece of macho bullshit."

She threw it at me. "I'm sure you've seen them before," she said.

"Since BlackBerrys, not so much." I flipped through the pages. There were no names, just initials, followed by several sets of numbers--phone numbers and ratings for "beauty," "breasts," "butts," and "bedroom."

"This book could be from years ago," I told Gretchen. "Long before you two met."

"Rudy listed his 'conquests' on a first-come basis, if you'll excuse the expression. You'll note that GDV is not the final entry. There are dozens more."

"There's this in his favor," I said. "He gave you straight tens."

"Not funny, Billy." She grabbed the black book from my fingers.

"I'm surprised the police let you have that," I said.

She made no response, merely put the book back in her desk drawer.

"The police did see it, right?" I asked.

"I can't speak for their efficiency. It arrived here with Rudy's DVD collection. I assume they've seen it and considered it unimportant to their investigation."

"A bachelor's little black book? C'mon, Gretchen. How could this not be important? You need to show it to them."

"If I make a big thing about it with the police, some sleazy individual will find a way to steal it or copy it, and in the blink of an eye it will wind up on every gossip website in the world. I'll just hang on to it, if you don't mind. In fact, I'm thinking of burning the damn thing."

"You're joking, right? The cops are convinced I killed Rudy," I said. "That black book might put just a tiny doubt in their minds."

"How can you be so sure they haven't looked through it?"

"Because it's the kind of thing they love to dig into. And I know it didn't come with the DVDs."

"Really? Suddenly you're the Mentalist? Then how did it get here?"

We had finally arrived at the real point of my visit.

"My guess is you took it from Rudy's apartment the night he died."

Gretchen paled. "That's ridiculous, Billy. I was nowhere near ... How desperate do you have to be to make a statement like that?"

"How did you know his last dinner was coq au vin?" I asked.

"How? That detective. Solomon. He told me when he called with the news of Rudy's death."

I shook my head. "Solomon came to the Bistro almost immediately after he'd talked with you. When he and I got into a discussion of Rudy's last meal, he'd never heard of coq au vin. It was just chicken and gravy to him. Then, only minutes later, during our phone conversation you identified the dish by name."

"I guess I assumed--"

"What? That since it was from the Bistro, it had to be coq au vin? Why not Chicken Florentine or Pompadour or Fricassee?"

"That's ridiculous."

"You were seen at his place, Gretch. Right around the time of the murder."

"Oh, God." She backed against the desk, using it to give her the
strength to continue standing. "Billy, he was already dead when I got there, I swear."

"What the hell were you doing there?"

"Behaving like a fool. A jealous fool. It had been over a week since we'd spent any time together. That night, I insisted. He told me he had a business meeting. Said it was something he had to do for my father and then it was dinner and bed. He'd call me the next day."

"What was he doing for the commander?"

"I phoned Dad to ask. He said he didn't know what Rudy was talking about. The last task he'd entrusted to him was a fait accompli. And a very unsatisfactory one, he said.

"I wanted to get to the bottom of this, so I called Rudy back. This time I got his voice mail. I sat around simmering, dialing him every so often and growing more and more infuriated. Finally I drove over there."

"How'd you get past the doorman and the lobby camera?" I asked.

"There's a thing Rudy did. If he was expecting someone he didn't want the doorman or anyone else to see, he'd leave the alley door unbolted."

"And you discovered this how?"

She hesitated, then said, "Once upon a time, I was his back-door romance. If you recall, Rudy was still engaged to that British bitch Samantha Prentice when he and I started up."

Recall? Hell, that was back when I harbored the foolish notion that Gretchen and I were still a couple. I didn't linger on that. "So the night he died, you found the rear door open?"

"Yes. I cut through the walkway beside the building, entered through the unlocked door, and went up the service stairs to his condo. I knew he kept an extra key under the carpet at the far end of the hall. But I didn't need it. His door was ajar.

"I went in, expecting to find him in bed with some tramp. Instead he was ... God, it was horrible! His face twisted and grotesque. He'd relieved himself and that smell, with the vomit ..."

"But you were able to find the black book and take it."

"I went to call the police. The black book was on the table beside the phone. I looked through it and ..."

"And you realized how bad it might look for the fiancee of a sleep-around guy to be in his apartment with his dead body."

"I'm not that cold and calculating, Billy. I didn't dream he'd been murdered. I assumed he'd had a heart attack. Rudy was beyond anything I could do for him. I didn't see any reason not to remove the black book and save him from seeming like the letch that he was. I took it and left the way I'd come in."

"Let me get this straight," I said. "You're standing there with the carpet ripped up and the books pulled off the shelves and the place an unholy mess, and you think he's had a heart attack?"

"What are you talking about? There were no books on the floor, no torn carpet. With the exception of the space where Rudy died, the apartment was as neat as always."

"The detectives told me it was a mess," I said.

"A mess they made," Gretchen said firmly.

"Maybe," I said. I had a pretty good idea who'd made the mess, but I was having trouble working out the chronology. Rudy was poisoned by a person or persons unknown. Gretchen arrived and the place had not been searched. But by the next day, when the housekeeper found Rudy's corpse and the cops got there, the place had been ransacked, probably by Clove Boy. Ergo, Clove Boy had not killed Rudy? Or maybe he had and then was sent back to find the secret thing. The black book, maybe?

"I suppose you think I should tell the police the truth," Gretchen said.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner
, I thought. What I said was "It's your decision."

"I don't want to," she said. "But what if the person who saw me tells the police?"

"I sorta fudged on that," I said. "You weren't seen in the building, just in the neighborhood. If the cops don't know that by now, they probably never will."

She seemed relieved for about five seconds, then tensed and said, "Unless you tell them."

"Did you kill him, Gretch?"

"No. Of course not."

"Then what's to tell?" I said.

I moved around her desk, opened the drawer, and took out the little black book. "I'm going to hang on to this," I said.

"W-why?"

"I wouldn't want it burned," I said. "If the DA and the police have
their way and I wind up defending my life, it'll be something we can throw at the jury to confuse them."

"I don't believe it will come to that, Billy, but if it does, I'll be in your corner."

"Good to know," I said, slipping the book into my pocket.

When I arrived at the Bistro, my new BFFs from the media were snarling and snapping at me like a pack of rabid dogs and I had Milk-Bones in my pockets. In their midst, I spied a reluctant Worldwide Broadcasting cameraman in khaki who actually was a friend. Phil Bruno was one of the guys you wanted on your team--smart, inventive, even-tempered, who always knew precisely how to get the best shot.

I waved him in, prompting even louder howls from the rest of the pack.

"Sorry about this, Billy," Phil said as I led him through the restaurant in its second day of commercial inactivity. "I wanted to call you to tell you I'd been assigned to get footage for tonight's evening news, but the new honchette, Trina, said no calls. She believes in the confrontational approach, even when it comes to friends and coworkers."

"Don't worry about it," I said. "Shoot whatever interiors you need. But do me a favor: Keep what's about to take place out of the frame."

My reference was to Solomon and Butker, who were heading our way from the rear of the building.

"It wasn't your rat poison that was used on Gallagher," Solomon said, ignoring Phil.

"Then why are you people still here?"

"We're back to square one, Blessing," the detective said, with a grin that wrinkled his face, hiding some of the black scar. "This time we're looking for ... What is it, Butker?"

"Benzethonium chloride," his bored partner replied. "A detergent used to clean cooking equipment, among other things. Very toxic."

"My guess is: If we use it, it'll be right in the open with the other detergents," I said.

"Nothing's ever that simple," Solomon said. "Your help says they only use standard stuff. But if they did use the benzo-whatever on your ovens, then I guess you wouldn't have used it on your pal Gallagher. Anyway, it's gonna take us all day at least, pokin' around. So many hidey-holes. And you never know, we might just turn up something else that'll hook you up to the murder."

With a sinking feeling, I realized I had Rudy's little black book in my pocket. That's all the connection Solomon would need. Keeping a poker face, I asked, "I don't suppose you left one of your officers here last night?"

"No. Why?"

"A guy with a cop suit was seen on the premises."

"Seen by who?"

"Me."

"What bullshit story are you leading up to, Blessing? This 'policeman' tell you he killed Gallagher? Something like that?"

"No," I said.

"Then what
was
he doing here? Fill me in. I love stories."

I knew it would be a mistake to bring up the incident to Solomon. Telling him why the fake cop had dropped by would be futile. Or worse. Either he wouldn't believe me or, if he did, he'd assume I really had taken something from Gallagher's apartment and initiate an even more detailed search. He might even find the little black book I had in my pocket. And that would be a Go Directly to Jail card.

"You're too clever for me, Detective," I said. "Forget I mentioned it."

Solomon stared at me. "Now you're starting to piss me off. Was there somebody here impersonating one of my men or not?"

"Maybe it was just a bad dream."

"Well, if you change your mind again, I'll be around, seeing if the benzo-whatever turns up."

"I suppose this means the restaurant will be dark another night."

"Afraid so, chef," Solomon said.

"Some of the food will be going bad. I can't refreeze it."

"Butker and I and the other officers would be happy to help you out with that. I saw some mighty fine porterhouse back there, all thawed and nice and bloody."

"Bon appetit," I said, heading for my office with Phil Bruno.

"You really have a break-in here last night?" Phil asked me.