The Tell-Tale Con (21 page)

If he hadn't been diving to try to get me down, he would no doubt have been killed.  Good thing chivalry wasn't dead, or Harrison would have been.  “You have to go to the hospital!  And the police.  She would have shot you in the head if she could have!” 

The glaze over his eyes was clearing, and it was obvious he was becoming progressively more aware of what was going on.  “Get in the car.  We have to get out of here in case she comes back,” I said.

I helped him stand, and he headed for the driver's seat, panic finally abating slightly.  “No way.  Friends don't let friends drive with head wounds.”

I held out my hand.  Grimly, he laid his keys in my palm, and I helped him get into the passenger seat, aware that bushy haired She-Jagger might be back any second.  I put the car into drive and tore out of the spot like the entire church was on fire.  Checking every direction, I jetted out into traffic.  “Let me take you to the hospital and then the police station.”

He grimaced.  “Do you think they're going to believe me?  I'm the prime suspect, and five minutes later, oh look, someone tried to kill me.  How odd.”

Well, when he put it that way, it did sound slightly unlikely.  “Well, you have to tell them.  She is not playing.  She tried to murder you, Harrison.  Flat out.  That wasn't an attempt to scare you or get your attention.  She tried to shoot you in the head!”

He flinched.  “Don't shout.  I'll go to the cops.  But I don't want you to take me.  It will make things worse.  They'll start to think you're in on it.”

“But what about the hospital?  And you can't take yourself,” I protested. 

“I'll take a shower and have Ana take me.  No worries.”

That didn't exactly lower my level of worry.  The woman I'd seen wasn't Ana.  There was no way.  No one could disguise themselves that well.  But that didn't mean she hadn't been hired by Ana.  Or wasn't Ana's friend, or mother, or brother's ex-girlfriend, or old college roommate.  I still didn't trust Ana, and I was very uncomfortable with the idea of Harrison putting himself at her mercy when he was already hurt and at a disadvantage. 

But I couldn't share those fears with him.  So I could trust that he knew what he was doing and let him do it, throw a fit until he took me, or find some way to follow him.  I considered it all the way back to the house, driving like a lunatic as my way of trying to prevent us from being followed.  I had no idea if it worked or not, but I was too freaked to drive normally anyway. 

As I pulled up to the curb I decided he was a big boy.  It wasn't my job to protect him, and he likely wouldn't appreciate it if he knew I wanted to.  I would trust that he knew his friends better than I did and let him do this his way.  “So you're going to tell them right?” 

I couldn't emphasize this enough.  There was a time to keep your pie hole shut and a time to involve the police.  And I drew that line at getting shot in the head.

“Yes,
Mom
.  I'm going to tell them.  I'll call you later.” 

 

 

Rules of the Scam #44

Be ready to be anything or anybody when the situation demands it…

 

I spent the next two hours pacing, desperately waiting for him to call me back and give me the 411 on how the cops were treating both Nate's murder and Harrison's attack.  I paced the house, organized my mother's files, and helped out Mr. Wong for a few minutes. 

He was silent while I helped him fix the stuck lint trap on a dryer.  But the silence ended when I started helping him load the soap dispenser. 

“You like this boy across the street?  I see you with him every day.”

I sighed.  At least Mr. Wong wasn't going to try to convince me of Harrison's net worth and what I might do with it.  “He's just a friend, Mr. Wong.”

“You need more friends.” 

By now I was used to being told what I needed by Mr. Wong, so I shrugged and added another box to the slot.  We were silent again, but I knew it was only because he was making a mental list of things he needed to tell me I should be doing.  He drew in a big breath and pulled his shoulders back, ready to launch in with verve. 

The door opened, and the heavy New Mexico winds banged it against the wall.  Harrison would have made a dramatic picture standing in the door, if not for the fact that he flinched when the door hit.  Then the cinematic moment was over, and he shook off the moisture of an uncommon rainstorm.  He was still wearing white, probably out of respect for his mourning family, but a different outfit now.  A white v-necked sweater and white cords.  Which made sense on account of his bleeding all over the other one. 

He looked tired, smudges of black under each eye, and very, very pale.  I wasn't sure if it was stress and fatigue, blood loss or just being washed out by his clothing.  Regardless, he was cutting a tragic figure, standing pale and wet in the doorway.  It didn't matter though.  I was so thrilled that anyone was here to cut Mr. Wong off before he got started, that I'd have been happy to see a leather-clad biker, a crab fisherman, a taxi driver, Peter Gray, my mom, anyone.  Well, maybe not Gray.  But anyone else. 

I crossed the room and asked the most pertinent question first.  “How's your head?”

His mouth twisted wryly, and he lowered his hood revealing a small shaved area on the side of his head.  “Seven stitches.”

“When will you go to the police?”

His right eyebrow raised.  “I've already been.”

“How'd you have time for the emergency room and the cops?”  Did even the emergency room bow to his will? 

“Oh, I didn't go to the emergency room.  I told Ana I fell.  She took me to the set doctor.  He couldn't, like, put on a cast, but he can certainly do some stitches.  He knew as soon as he looked at it that it wasn't from falling though.  He said he had a legal obligation to call the cops.  I said go ahead, I was headed there anyway.”

Once again I'd forgotten that life was totally different when you were loaded and the son of a famous dude.  “Well, what did the police say?”

He scowled.  “First, they wouldn't talk to me, though they asked me to come.  They said I'm a minor, so a parent had to be there.  They could have told me that before.  They're trying to jack me around.  But Dad left for LA after the funeral, and Mom's gone with the rest of the family to India.”

“So what did they do?”  I wasn't surprised they'd elected to make him wait and sweat it out.  Intimidation techniques were a favorite for cops the world over. 

“They called Kanako, though I'm not sure she's legally able to represent me the way they were suggesting.  By the time she finally showed up, they were pretty annoyed that they couldn't find a parent and that they wanted to talk to me.  If it doesn't hold up under scrutiny they'll be pissed though.”

“Well, they didn't seem to mind that you were alone when they were interrogating you in front of the church.”

“Well, that wasn't
official
.”  He made air quotes with his fingers.  “So they could prod me all they wanted.  I think that's why Hopkins was so pissed that I wouldn't talk to them.”

I figured that Hopkins was Bad Cop.  Good Cop hadn't seemed all that annoyed.  Mostly bored.  Sometimes slightly amused.  “So what happened?”

“I told them about the car accident and the gun shot.  First thing.” 

I could tell by the pinched sides of his mouth that it hadn't gone all that well.  “They didn't believe you.”

“Not even a little bit.  I mean they had to believe the accident.  There were tons of witnesses and a police report.  The set doctor called them and told them it was obvious to him that I'd received a gunshot wound to the side of my head.  But they said it was all very convenient, wasn't it?  That the car was the day after Nate died, and the gunshot was right after they questioned me.”

“So who do they think did those things?”

He shrugged.  “I don't know.  That's what Kanako asked, actually.  If they thought I'd shot myself.”

He seemed surprised, still, that she'd come to his defense that way.  Then again, maybe we were giving her too much credit, and she'd genuinely been asking for the available ways Harrison might have screwed up.  “So what did they say to that?”

“They said they didn't know who did it, but that they believed it was a setup.  They questioned me again about that morning.  I told them all of it again.  Then they asked me about the bank.”

I stiffened.  I glanced back at Mr. Wong, afraid he was listening to every word.  But he seemed intensely disinterested in us, cursing at a dryer in Chinese.  “You didn't tell them anything, did you?”

“I may not be as skilled as you at lying, Talia.  But I'm not stupid.  Of course I didn't tell them anything.  I played dumb.”

I glanced around again to be sure, but Mr. Wong was definitely not interested.  “So if the police don't believe you, what do we do now?  I mean, they don't actually suspect you, do they?”

His mouth pinched.  “I really think they do.  They dutifully took a report, but they thought I was full of crap.  So all my efforts didn't matter.”

“We have to find out who killed Nate.” 

He threw up a hand.  “I thought that's what we were already trying to do, and so far it isn't helping.”

“Then we need to try harder.  And we need to consider uncomfortable things, even questioning people you know and like, like Mark and Ana.”

“Mark and Ana wouldn't try to kill me.  It's impossible,” he protested.

I begged to differ on that one.  But now wasn't the time.  At least I'd broached the subject of Ana being questioned at all. 

“Well, maybe they know something they don't realize they know.  It's clear to me that Nate was killed because someone wanted to get to you.  You are the catalyst here.  We can't let this go any further.”

“Fine.  Let's step up our game.  This weekend we talk to everyone left on the list, and to everyone on Dad's staff.” 

“Okay, I'm with you.  What's the plan?”

He shrugged, glancing out the window.  “I'll meet you outside at seven.  We'll start with the farthest people geographically, and then work our way in.”

It sounded sensible, but I was pretty sure that he was looking for another way to avoid going to see the people on his father's staff.

 

At seven in the morning, we met silently at the curb in front of The Library like we'd been doing it every day for years.  Though it had only been one week, frankly, it was starting to feel like that. 

We were seeing a number of people today, and there wasn't any chance one ruse would work for all of them.  So I'd packed a bag to help me follow rule number forty-four.  Be ready to be anything or anybody.  I'd shoved it full of outfits for every occasion and personality type I might need.  I'd borrowed props from my mother, too.  Makeup, jewelry, all sorts of little things that made a persona so real to the mark.  

For awhile we were silent as I plied myself with caffeine and he drove out to the highway.  We jumped onto I-25 heading north, so I figured we were on our way to Santa Fe.  It wasn't a shock since a lot of stars and other people associated with the movie business lived there.  Even before New Mexico became a hot spot for movie making. 

Once my caffeine infusion was finished, I asked, “Where are we going?”

“There's someone living in Santa Fe, the woman Gregory mentioned, the shut in.  There's also a man in Las Vegas.  New Mexico, I mean.  Not exactly the same as the last Las Vegas we went to.”

Sixty-five miles outside of Santa Fe, I learned that was an understatement.  Las Vegas, New Mexico was a little town.  A sign said the population was around fifteen thousand, split through the middle by a river.  “That's the Gallinas River,” Harrison pointed out.  “I learned that in New Mexico history class.  Wow, I've never once repeated anything from that class before.”

We passed a huge, gorgeous old hotel, three stories tall and made of brick, with the large name, “Plaza Hotel” at the top.  The entire town seemed to have a distinctly Victorian bent.  We pulled to a stop in front of a robin's egg blue two-story Victorian with a white picket fence.  Not exactly what I'd been expecting.

I asked Harrison to pull up about a block and park so that I could prepare.  “So who is this person?”

“His name is Stuart Pibbs.” 

I couldn't hold back a giggle.  He glanced at me, and I shrugged.  “Mr. Pibbs is a funny name.  Sue me.”

He smiled slightly, putting the car in park.  This morning, he'd let his hair cover the stitches, and if he had a bandage over them, I couldn't see it.  At least we didn't look like a couple of ruffians.  I hadn't yet decided what I was going to look like for Mr. Pibbs. 

“Tell me about this guy.” 

“There was a big dustup a few years ago.  He gave a large amount of money to a project with the promise that he would be an executive producer with say in the casting.  But when the time came Dad wouldn't let him.  Which I suppose wouldn't have mattered except the only reason he'd given the money was to get his daughter a part.  She wanted to be an actress.” 

“Hmm.  Underhanded, but hardly murder-worthy.”

Harrison cocked his head.  “Who knows what's murder-worthy if you're crazy.” 

I pointed at him.  “Good call with that one.  What do you know about this guy?  What does he like?  Better yet, what is his daughter like?”

Harrison checked his appearance critically in the mirror and then sighed.  “He's kind of old fashioned.  I mean, he's old.  Like sixties at least.  He likes girls who wear dresses and people who go to church on Sunday.  That kind of crap.  His daughter looked like the girl on the Wendy's sign, the last time I saw her.”