Celebrity in Death

11

Since Asner’s office was situated over a pierogi place in a pockmarked brick building that squatted between a dingy tattoo parlor and a particularly seedy-looking bar, they added a flight of stairs to the walk.

“Pierogies. Even smelling pierogies can offset weight loss. It’s a medical phenomenon.”

“Hold your breath,” Eve advised as they started the climb.

As the building squatted between bar and parlor, Asner’s office squatted between a law office Eve figured specialized in repping sleaze-balls and a bail bondsman who no doubt shared clients.

Eve opened the door into a claustrophobic reception area with barely enough room to hold the desk manned by a bored, busty blonde who sat painting her nails murderous red.

Clichés became clichés, Eve deduced, because they were rooted in fact.

“Good afternoon.” The blonde spoke in squeaky Brooklynese as she straightened at the desk. “How can we assist you today?”

Eve took out her badge. “We need to speak to Mr. Asner.”

“I’m sorry. Mr. Asner is not in the office presently.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m sorry. I’m unable to give you that information.”

“Did you see this?” Eve tapped her badge.

“Uh-huh.” Cooperatively the blonde nodded, widened her eyes. “If you tell me the nature of your business I can tell Mr. Asner on his return.”

“When is he expected back?”

“I’m sorry. I’m unable to give you that information.”

“Listen, sister. We’re the police, get that? And we’re here on police business. We need your boss’s whereabouts.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t keep reading that same line.”

“But it’s true.” The blonde waved her red-tipped fingers in the air. “I can’t tell you, ’cause I don’t know. He said how he had some outside business, and I should hold the fort.”

“Can you contact him?”

“I tried, ’cause Bobbie came by and said why don’t we go out for a drink, but I can’t go out for a drink if I’m holding the fort. So I tried to tag him to ask when I could stop holding it, but I went right to v-mail.”

“Is this usual?”

“Well … it depends. Sometimes A’s outside business involves, um, wagering. When it does he maybe doesn’t answer his ’link for a while.”

“Do you know where he wagers?”

“Different places. They move around.”

“I bet. Do you have a name?”

“Uh-huh.”

Eve waited a beat. Then two. “What would your name be?”

“It’s Barberella Maxine Dubrowsky. But everybody calls me Barbie.”

“Really? Okay, Barbie, let’s try this. Do you have a client who resembles my partner here?”

Barbie caught her bottom lip between her teeth—a method, Eve assumed, of concentration. “Um, no, I don’t think.”

“One named K.T. Harris?”

Now the lashes fluttered, a reflex of anxiety. “Am I supposed to tell you?”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Okay. No, at least I don’t remember that name. There’s an actress who has that name. She used to go with Matthew Zank. He’s totally cute. I saw her in this vid about corporations and crime or something. I didn’t get it. But she looked good, plus it had Declan O’Malley in it, and he’s—”

“Totally cute,” Eve finished.

“Uh-huh.”

“How about a client named Delia Peabody?”

“Oh sure. She came in to see A about a week ago. Something like that. She was in with A for a long time, like maybe an hour, and he was really excited when she left. But …” She glanced over her shoulder, dropped her baby-doll voice to a whisper. “I thought she was kind of a beyotch—you know?”

“Is that so?”

“She, like, ordered me around. Like—” Barbie snapped her fingers, then frowned down at her nails. “Shoot. I smudged them. I’m really polite with clients, but I wanted to tell her, Listen, you, just ’cause you’re rich doesn’t mean you can snap your fingers at me and look at me like I’m dirt.”

“Why did you think she was rich?”

“She had on these mag-o-mag shoes. I’ve seen them in Styling, and they cost huge. And she wore this swank dress. Some redhead comes in here in a swank dress and mag-o-mag shoes, I know she’s rich. But that doesn’t mean she can boss me around and tell me to go out and get her a decent cup of coffee—cream no sugar—for which she didn’t even pay me. It’s not like I get an expense account working here, and that coffee cost me ten. A made it good a couple days ago, but she shouldn’t have done like that. Right?”

“Right. Do you know why she hired A?”

“I wrote up the file. It’s okay to tell you? We’re confidential.”

“I’m the police,” Eve reminded her.

“Yeah, I guess. Well, I wrote up a domestic surveillance file, and the contract for it. We do lots of those ’cause people really cheat, and that’s just not right. A said to leave the amount blank.”

“Is that usual?”

“No way, but I just work here. He said to leave it blank, then he didn’t give me a copy for my files. He said not to worry about it, but I do the billing and the books. I’m good with numbers. Numbers and people.” She smiled, poked out her impressive breasts. “They’re my strengths.”

“Did she come back?”

“No, she only came in the one time. Fine with me. I don’t like people talking down to me. But A’s been in a really good mood since. Except, I guess this morning. He came in and barely said hello, and he locked himself back in his office. He was okay when he left, though. He gave me a wink. Not that we’re like that, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t get like that with the boss. You’ve got to keep that out of the office, right? Or you don’t get respected.”

“That’s smart, Barbie.”

“Anyway, I haven’t seen Ms. I’m-Too-Good-to-Pee-Body since the one time. Is she in trouble? I wouldn’t care, except because of A.”

“You could say she had some trouble. When A comes back, or you’re able to contact him, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell him I need to talk to him.” Eve dug out a card.

“I sure will. I don’t think I’m going to hold the fort much longer, though. We don’t have any appointments in the book anyway. So I’ll leave him a message if I go before he gets back.”

“Thanks. You’ve been very helpful.”

She beamed. “That’s good. I like to help.”

After they left the office, Peabody shoved her hands in her pockets. “These nicknames are pissing me off.”

“But you’re not I’m-Too-Good-to-Pee-Body. Harris is.”

“It’s my damn name. And now I have to pee. It’s like my bladder has to prove something.”

“Pee at the bank. Consider it a deposit.”

They found another recording in the safe box, more cash, and two dated, handwritten receipts from A. A. Asner for fifty thousand each.

They bagged and labeled, and transported everything back to Central.

“Get the cash logged in and secured,” Eve told Peabody. “I’m going to take the recorders up to Feeney for a quick anal. Write it up. When I’ve finished with the recordings, I’ll swing by the studio, check out the vic’s trailer before I head home.”

“You don’t want me with?”

“Figuring her, she’s too paranoid to have much of anything in her trailer. But we’ve got to look, so I’ll take care of it. Get it written up, copy Whitney. And you can send the file to Mira, get me some time with her tomorrow.”

“Okay. Dallas? I’ve been thinking. There’s no murder weapon. We have motive all over the place, and the same for opportunity. Because this is a tight-knit group, when you think about it. They’ve been spending hours together every day for months—and they’re all in the same business—the same world.”

“No argument.”

“Well, I don’t know if any one of them would tell us if they actually saw someone slip out of the theater. I don’t know if any one of them would tell us if they actually knew which one of them killed Harris.”

“Probably not. Or not yet.”

“I don’t see how we’re going to pin this one, or prove it unless the killer decides to come in and confess.”

“Maybe we’ll arrange just that. For now we take the steps, work the case. And don’t put that you think we’re screwed in the report.”

But she had a point, Eve thought as she headed up to EDD. They had a victim no one liked, one who’d threatened or manipulated or pissed off everyone who’d been on scene at the murder.

Three cops, she thought in annoyance, a shrink, and a former criminal now expert consultant, civilian, right there at the time and the place, and they couldn’t appreciably narrow the list of suspects.

It was as embarrassing as it was infuriating.

She walked into the color and sound of EDD. And movement, she thought when she spotted McNab doing a kind of prancing pace around the room. He weaved or sidestepped when one of his fellow e-geeks strutted or boogied in his path.

Like a strange, disjointed dance, Eve thought, where even the chair-sitters bopped, swiveled, or tapped to some constant internal beat.

She stepped in front of McNab, poked him to get his attention.

“Hey.” He flicked off his earpiece. “Got those financials for you.”

“Two withdrawals of fifty large, each within the last ten days.”

“Well, hell. You spoil the fun.”

“We tracked her PI. Anything else interesting?”

“As a matter of fact. Come, have a seat in the parlor.”

He led the way to his cube, recently decorated, Eve noted, with a poster of a monkey in a tutu riding an airboard with a PPC in one hand, a sandwich in the other while its earpiece flashed green. A smaller monkey rode in a pack on her back.

It was titled MULTITASKING MAMA.

“So, I figured I hit the gold with the 50K withdrawals, but I ran through the rest anyway. She’s got auto-payments on her place in New LA, standard autos for standard home expenses, the usual blah stuff. Fees to her agent, her manager. She doesn’t spend a lot considering what she pulls in. Mostly it goes to face and body treatments, wardrobe.”

He swiped through what Eve supposed he considered the usual blah stuff.

“Then I find this nice chunk charged up to I Spy, so I dig down, and it’s the shop here, in Times Square. Follow that up. She bought two spy cams a couple weeks ago. Microminis, with audio, motion, and sound activation, remotes, timers—the works. I got the clerk who sold them to her, and he remembered her. Except he described her as a redhead—a ‘pushy, hard-ass redhead,’ to use his words.”

“Fits. She was a redhead when she hired the PI, and when she rented a safe box at a downtown bank. That must’ve been her go-to disguise. Two cams. Interesting. And interesting timing. That’s good work, McNab.”

“All kudos accepted. One more deal. She also put a hefty deposit down on a high-end, high-class villa—for a two-week stay starting December twenty-third. Olympus Resorts, and she booked a private shuttle—two passengers. She had to give the names. Hers, and Matthew Zank.”

“And again interesting. Send the data to my home unit. I’ll take a look when I get there. Is Feeney in his office?”

“Last I saw him.”

She headed over. The captain of the ship of noise and eye-blasting colors sat hunched at his desk in rumpled shirtsleeves. Silver threaded through his minor explosion of ginger hair. His face sagged like an old, comfortable hammock and looked as lived-in as the rumpled shirt.

As he worked his screen, he reached for one of the candied nuts in the lopsided bowl on his desk.

She gave his open door a one-knuckle rap. “Got a minute?”

“I’m working on a goddamn budget. You can have an hour.”

“I finished mine.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

She smiled, shut the door. And Feeney’s droopy eyes sharpened like arrows.

“You got doughnuts? I don’t smell doughnuts.”

“Because I don’t have any doughnuts.”

“Then why’d you shut the door?”

“I need you to analyze something.”

“I did your anal. The purse recording. It’s clean. Straight through, no edits, no splices.”

“Good. But this is another one. And it’s sensitive.” She helped herself to a couple nuts, studied the crooked orange, green, and blue bowl. “Mrs. Feeney make this?”

“Nah. She can do better than that now. Mostly. My granddaughter made it for me. Now the kid wants a frigging pottery wheel and a kiln for Christmas. Who can think about Christmas this early?”

Apparently Harris had.

“Do you ever take off,” Eve wondered, “go away, like a vacation, for Christmas?”

“Why the hell would we do that? It’s Christmas.”

“Yeah. Okay, so my vic hired a PI to plant a cam in her former bedmate’s and his current bedmate’s loft. I’ve got two recordings, one she kept in a lockbox in a safe in her hotel suite, one she kept in a safe box at a bank.”

“What did she catch them at? Screwing Dobermans? Plotting a terrorist attack?”

“I can’t say as I haven’t viewed them yet, but I expect she caught them doing what people do in bedrooms.”

“Has to be more than that to lock two copies in separate locations.”

“Well, I have to watch it and see. And I want to know if either of the recordings is the original. Can you tell?”

“Yeah.” He turned to his comp, called up a program, fiddled a moment. “Let’s have ’em.”

Eve took them out, unsealed each, noted down the time, the location, her name, Feeney’s. He cued them into his machine. “Run them simultaneous, split screen. The program will pop out any anomalies, determine generation of the recording.”

He ordered the run.

The screen flickered on with identical scenes as Marlo walked into the bedroom of the loft.

“That’s the actress, right? I heard she looked just like you. I don’t see it.”

“It’s closer when she’s made up for it.”

Offscreen, Matthew called out, asking if she wanted some wine.

“I wouldn’t say no.” She walked to a long dresser with a soft silver gleam, opened a drawer. She tossed what looked like a T-shirt and drawstring pants on the bed, then pulled the sweater she wore over her head.

Eyes closed, she stood a moment in her bra and cargo pants, rolling her shoulders.

Matthew walked in with two glasses of wine—and smiled.

“I like your outfit.”

She smiled back. “I got banged around some in the fight scene today.”

“You rocked it.”

“And I’m feeling every bit of it.” She took the wine, sipped, let out a pleased sigh. “But that’s a start. I’m going to get comfortable, then try to stretch some of the aches out.”

“I can help you with that.” He set his wine aside, put his hands on her shoulders, made her groan when he rubbed.

“You’ve got some bruises, babe.”

“Tell me about it. I can’t imagine how many Dallas had after doing it for real. We should finish it tomorrow, if I can walk. Did you hear K.T. got all over Nadine and Roundtree? She wanted Peabody written into the scene.”

“I heard something about it. Don’t think about her. You’re tensing up just thinking about her. She’s not worth it.”

“I know, I know. She doesn’t care about the production. She just wants more screen time. She screamed at Preston today. I could hear her all the way in Wardrobe. She threatened to have him fired because she didn’t like the angles he used in the bullpen B roll he directed.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake.”

“And she made Lindy from Craft Services cry, something about the pasta. I swear, she gets meaner and crazier every day.”

“A few more weeks, we’ll be wrapped, and she’ll be out of our lives.”

“Until the rounds of publicity and promotion, the media tours, the premieres. Even the thought of … No. I’m stopping. Why am I thinking about that lunatic when my guy’s giving me a shoulder rub?”

He bent his head, kissed her between the shoulder blades. “Just relax.”

“I will. I am. In fact.” She turned around, reaching behind to set her glass beside his. “I have so many aches, so many places that need a good rub.”

“Poor baby.”

She laughed as she caught his hands to draw him to the bed. Then gave him a little nudge to send him down on his back. “I really think skin-to-skin’s the only answer,” she continued as she reached around, unhooked her bra.

“Anything I can do.”

“I’ve got some ideas on that.” She tossed the bra, unbuttoned her pants.

As she slid naked onto him, Eve felt the heat spread over the back of her neck. She had to fight an urge to shift her feet.

What had she been thinking, bringing this to Feeney? Viewing it with him. Maybe it was stupid, but she knew damn well he was as mortified and miserable as she was.

If they’d been watching bloody murder—axes hacking, blood spurting, blasters burning into flesh, neither of them would have blinked. But a naked woman, a half-naked man—okay, shit, altogether naked now—enjoying some playful sex?

Torture.

“Okay.” The sound of Feeney’s throat clearing was explosive. “End run,” he ordered. “That’s enough for the anal. No edits or compromises on either.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke, which made her profoundly grateful. “And both are second-generation copies.”

“Neither is the original?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.” Very carefully he resealed them for her.

“Asner.” Embarrassment faded away as she considered the probabilities. “The PI. Keeping the original, maybe to try a little squeeze of his own. Or maybe he just likes to watch.”

“You can watch a copy.”

“Yeah. He kept the original, and if he sold it, he could bill it that way.” She’d still have to search K.T.’s trailer, but she leaned heavy toward the PI. “Sell it to some gossip channel, or do a little double-dipping with the players. I need to have a conversation with A. A. Asner.” She gathered up the recordings. “Thanks, Feeney.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Cheeks still mortification pink, he hunched back over his work.

As she headed down to her office to gather what she wanted to take home, she pulled out her ’link to try Asner’s office.

Barbie’s squeaky voice informed her the offices were closed, gave her the hours of operation, and invited her to leave a detailed message.

“This is Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD. I need to speak with Mr. Asner as soon as possible. I have some routine questions regarding an active investigation.”

She left it at that. Asner had at least a hundred thousand, and might be tempted to rabbit if she pushed too hard.

Considering the time, how long the trip to the studio, the search might take—especially now that she intended to search Matthew’s trailer as well—she tried Roarke next.

“Lieutenant.” His face came on-screen. “What nice timing. I’ve just finished a meeting.”

“You had a meeting. What a shock.” She frowned at the background noise, the blurred view behind his pretty face. “Are you at transpo? Do you have to go somewhere?”

“No. I had to come back from somewhere. Cleveland, actually.”

“Okay. Listen, I’ve got to go back to the studio, do a search of the vic’s trailer and some other stuff. I’m going to be late.”

“You’re going to be late? What a shock.”

“I should’ve seen that coming.”

“I’ll meet you. There’s an errand I could take care of downtown. I’ll meet you at the studio—Harris’s trailer, you said. When we’re done, we’ll have some dinner with a river view.”

“Sounds like a plan. Nothing fancy, okay?”

“Pizza and beer.”

“Are you trying to seduce me?”

He laughed. “Always. I’ll see you shortly.”

She loaded up what she wanted, swung back into the bullpen. “Neither recording’s the original,” she told Peabody. “Asner is still AWOL as far as I know. We’ll try him at home first thing in the morning. Unless you hear otherwise, just meet me there.”

“LT,” Sanchez called out when she turned to leave. “It was the girlfriend—the two dead bangers.”

“Right.”

“Former boyfriend who doesn’t want to be former pulls a knife on the current boyfriend, and sticks him pretty good before current can get his own sticker out. Current’s losing a lot of blood while ex is putting holes in him, and doesn’t have much left to put holes in the ex. The girlfriend picked up the pipe and whaled on the ex. She says she was trying to stop him from killing current—too late for that, but it holds up pretty well. Maybe she wailed harder and longer than might be strictly on the line, but current’s lying there dead or dying.”

“Are you charging her?”

“The thing is, we talked to some people, and they confirm the ex was hassling them, threatening them, started other fights. And he knocked her around pretty good, too, which is what makes him her ex. Maybe we get Man One, maybe Man Two. The PA made some noises, but isn’t enthusiastic about it. Carmichael and me don’t see the point in it.”

“See if Carmichael can talk her into going into one of the victim programs, then spring her if the PA’s good with it.” “Thanks, LT, that’s the way we wanted it to work.” Sometimes, Eve thought, as she sprinted to catch the elevator to the garage, things worked the way you wanted them to work.

She badged her way through security at the studio, and informed them to clear through her expert consultant, civilian, on his arrival.

She went straight back to the small city of trailers.

Lined up close, she noted. Not much privacy here. They looked the same from outside, she thought, except for the names on the doors.

She followed the guard’s directions until she came to Harris’s and the sealed door. Between the woman playing Nadine and the guy playing Feeney. Not, she noted, beside Matthew’s or Marlo’s or Julian’s. She bet that gave Harris something else to bitch about.

She unsealed the door, stepped in.

Sitting or living area, she mused, with brightly colored sofas, an oversized swivel-style leather chair. A table held a bowl of fruit, not as fresh as it had been. In the small kitchen area, the Friggie was fully stocked—water, wine, soft drinks, a selection of cheeses, berries in a clear, unopened container. A bottle of vodka in the freezer.

To get the feel of the place, she started back toward the sleeping area, glanced in the bathroom. Flowers, again not as fresh as they had been, on the counter, and a low-sided box holding soaps, shampoo, lotions.

While the bedroom wasn’t spacious, it held a bed, neatly made, a fancy side chair, a wall screen. The closet was outfitted with rods and drawers.

She started there. She found another bottle of vodka—opened and half empty—in a drawer, and a small bag of zoner tucked into the toe of a boot.

She’d nearly finished the bedroom when she heard the trailer door open. Laying a hand lightly on her weapon, she stepped out—and Roarke came in.

Jesus, would she ever get over how gorgeous he was?

He smiled at her—only more gorgeous—and closed the distance to kiss her.

“Hi,” she said. “How was Cleveland?”

“Windy. And what are we looking for in the late, largely unlamented K.T. Harris’s trailer?”

“Nothing I think we’ll find, but I’ve got to look. I’m about finished in the back. I’ll fill you in.”

He skimmed a fingertip down the dent in her chin. “One of my favorite times of day.”

“You’re in a good mood,” she observed as they walked back.

“I am. It was a productive day.”

“You didn’t buy Cleveland, did you?”

“Just a small piece.” He lifted his eyebrows at the vodka bottle, the bag of zoner, and the box of herbals Eve suspected was laced with the illegal. “Are we having a party?”

“It’s looking like the late and largely unlamented spent a lot of time at least partially drunk or stoned. And she’d been busy the last couple weeks.”

While she finished the room, she caught him up to date, moved to the bathroom, found the tranqs—another prescription, a different doctor.

“She sounds like a sad woman, one who found it more natural to make enemies than friends.”

“And because of that I have a houseful of suspects she’d alienated, upset, pissed off, or threatened.”

“I hate to ask, as he seemed a likable sort, but with her booking the transportation and vacation for both of them, could Matthew have been working with her to scam Marlo somehow? Get close to her, arrange for this blackmail, and then add the actual payoff in later.”

“It’s a thought, and I’ve had it.” But she shook her head. “It’s not gelling well. Why the actual PI and payment? All they had to do was convince Marlo there’d been a PI, a break-in, a plant. Matthew could have planted the camera and saved them a bundle.”

“True enough.”

“I’m going to take a dip in his financials anyway, see if there’s anything hinky. I tagged him, asked for permission to look through his trailer. He gave me the go.” She shrugged. “There’s nothing here.” Eve shoved at her hair. “She wouldn’t risk it. The drugs, the drink, the illegals, they’re only here because she needed them.”

He walked out with her, waiting while she sealed the door. “My money says she planted the cameras she bought in Times Square in Matthew’s trailer, then trashed it when she heard or saw something between him and Marlo.”

“I figure, yeah. It’s the old ‘hell’s got nothing on a woman dumped.’”

“Or words to that effect,” Roarke decided.

“So, I’ve got his go-ahead, and can look through. If I’m right and we find them, I’m free to see what’s on them.”

She led the way down the alley between trailers, turned, and walked to Matthew’s.

While the layout in his was the same as K.T.’s, the feel was entirely different.

Here was casual, lived-in, a little messy. Instead of a bowl of fruit, the table held a music pod and a basket of PowerBars, candy bars, gum. There was a bottle of wine in his Friggie, but it stacked heavily toward fizzies and soft drinks. His freezer held a trio of frozen dessert bars.

Roarke found the first camera fixed to the top of the window trim in under two minutes.

“The other will be in the bedroom,” Eve told him. “You might as well go get it while I finish in here. No point in not looking through his stuff since he gave permission.”

They walked out again in less than a half hour. “No illegals, no drugs except standard blockers, one bottle of wine, no sex toys, and enough snack food for a grade-school class.”

She looked around again. “He and Marlo wouldn’t have snuck in here for a quickie. Too many people wandering around, too much too close. Maybe she thought they would, or maybe she just wanted to spy on him, ended up seeing them do a little kissy-face, or do the kissy-face talk.”

“You have such a way with words,” Roarke observed, and slid an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s hear some kissy-face talk.”

“I’d have to be drunk first.”

“Too true.”

“Either way you work K.T. and the cameras, it’s sick. She was sick and sad.”

“She makes you angry, and she makes you sad.” He hooked an arm around her waist now, pressed his lips to her temple. “Let’s go get that beer and pizza, take a little time away from this.”

“Yeah.” She hooked her arm around him in turn. “Let’s do that.”