Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) (17 page)

Villiers was trying to sell me on how happy he was with my stepfather’s involvement. Obviously he expected I was going to report back. Which I would.

“We’re having a fundraiser.”

“You just said you’ve got money from the bank.”

“Which we use to advertise the nonprofit and get more funding.”

I nodded. “Takes money to make money.”

“Exactly. We also want involvement from the community for the community. Even if they are in completely different sections of the city. So, we have a private fundraiser planned for this weekend to schmooze potential board members and donators. Everything’s lined up and ready to go, and...”

I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t go on, it dawned on me that he was waiting for me to guess. To see if I was as clever as Roberto had advertised, perhaps?
 

He would already have the venue for the party lined up. The catering. The guest list, obviously.
 

“The entertainment backed out,” I said.
 

Villiers nodded. “Yup. Exactly.” He picked a brochure off his desk and handed it to me. Slickly laid out, four colors, on heavy card stock. From the photos, this was an invitation to the party. On one page was a photo of a sweaty, smiling young woman standing with a microphone in her hand, her multicolored hair flying out in many directions behind her.

“This is her?” I ran my finger over the caption beneath the picture. E-R-I-C-A R-

“We’re supposed to have Erica Rose. Do you know her?”
 

I shook my head.
 

“Up-and-coming tween pop star. She’s in a sitcom called
The Kids Are Dancing
on Nickelodeon. She’s had a Top Hundred single.”

“I don’t listen to the radio.”

Villiers leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, and gazed at me for a moment. He had very thick black lashes. “You can’t read,” he said.

His assessment was so fast and surprising I blinked. “What?”

“Right where your finger is, under your finger, there’s a caption. It says, Erica Rose, star of KidTV’s hit
Yellow and Green
.”

I looked down at the words under Erica Rose’s picture.
 

“You can’t read,” the doctor said. “You were running your fingers over the letters.”

Well, the man was right, after all. “Is that important?”

“Makes it difficult to get things done in our modern world.”

“Are we here to talk about your problems or mine, Doctor?”

“Have you seen anyone about this?”

I laughed. I hadn’t discussed this problem with anyone in years. “Some of the best doctors in the world. Most of them thought I was faking. So did half of my teachers. They said I just didn’t want to study.”

“Is that true?”

“Studying is a lot harder if it takes you an hour to read a page. So, yes, true.” I smiled. “I found other ways to occupy my time.”

He didn’t find that at all sexy or intriguing. “Interesting.” He stared at me like I was a case study for the taking.

Maybe I was. Perhaps Roberto had set this meeting up deliberately, wanting me to meet someone who specialized in the psychological effects of my particular little problem. Did Villiers really have something he needed me to work on, or was this meeting about me?

I don’t like being someone’s case study. Tends to end badly for all involved.

“If we’re here to discuss me, we’re done, Doctor.”

He clapped his hands together. “Okay. Erica Rose, all of a sudden, is not returning my phone calls. Roberto wants you to fix this.”

“How old is she?”
 

“Sixteen.”

Terrible age. Sixteen-year-olds make awful life choices. “Sounds to me like she’s a stuck-up brat who doesn’t understand the importance of sticking to agreements.”
 

Villiers handed me a piece of paper with a name and a phone number on it. “Her phone number. Could you talk to her and find out what the problem really is?”
 

“When is this party?”

“Saturday.”

I folded up the paper and tucked it in my pocket. “I’ll talk to her and get back to you ASAP.”

“Would you like to talk to someone about this issue?” Villiers asked.

“I’ll consult my schedule,” I said. “Most days I’m busy.”

ALL NIGHT LONG I dreamed of watching Courtney die over and over while the cops stood around and didn’t pay attention. Roger Sabo and I sat on the bed in the motel room together, and he kept taking cannabis cigarettes from one of the nearby cops and passing them to me, saying, “You see how it is.”
 

My mouth felt cottony when I woke up, and I reminded myself to cut down on dream-smoking. I couldn’t figure out why Courtney’s death was affecting me so much. After all, I’d seen people die, up close and violently, starting with the man I killed, followed by the man I had let die (he was there to kill me, so I wasn’t motivated to save him from a long plunge into a frozen lake), followed by my first husband, David, who’d been killed in cold blood right in front of me. Since then there had been... I began counting on my fingers and when I raised my left hand for the second go-round I stopped counting.
 

Time to go find Stevie and get her to make everything all better. My body felt recovered enough that I could dress in something slightly dressier than the sweats and t-shirt combo I’d been wearing non-stop for a few days, so I put on the blouse with three-quarter sleeves (hid most of the bruise on one arm) and my linen Capris. I changed the belt from the stiff leather thing to the spongier fabric one though, in a concession to my stomach muscles.

The guest house was empty. I walked outside and found the garden was deserted. Stevie must have gone over with Gary’s medication.
 

The back door to Gary’s house was unlocked, as always. I poked my head inside and yelled, “Anybody home?”
 

“In here!” yelled a female voice.

A female voice that was decidedly not Stevie’s.

Gary and Randi were in the breakfast nook, which was a large and airy room off the kitchen that jutted out into the garden. Three walls made of glass, with stained glass running around the top of the panes. Gary sat facing out to the garden, looking deep in thought about something, wearing his big old dark blue bathrobe. Randi sat on the chair next to his, her dainty feet with their fancy pedicures in his lap and one hand draped on his shoulder. She wore a satin zebra-striped robe and kept whispering things at him. The clear glass teapot was on the table, next to a plate holding the last few slices of Stevie’s most recent baking adventure.

I put the smile on my face first. It’s the easiest way to put yourself in a good mood—put a smile on, and your brain interprets this as meaning you must be happy. Function follows form. You say fewer mean and cutting things that way. At least, that’s the theory, and I love theories of behavior.

“Good morning!” I said as brightly as I could manage. “Aren’t you two just the picture of a leisurely morning repast.”

“Would you care for a cuppa?” Gary asked. One of his hands idly stroked Randi’s foot and played with her toes.
 

“Tea? No, thanks. Just popping by to see how things were going.”

Randi rested her head on Gary’s shoulder. “Just fine.”

Gary seemed on the happy side of placid, which was good. If he was happy, then everything was great and I should just get over this sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach that I’d made a huge mistake letting this hook-up happen. “Are you due on set today?” I asked him.

“No, thank God.”

Randi leaned over and put her hand over his.
 

“Have you seen Stevie?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. She told me to tell you she’ll be in the library.”

“Did she stop in here to talk to you?” My oblique way of asking about his medications in front of a virtual stranger.

He gazed at me a moment before nodding.

I patted him on the arm. “You get started with the day, darling. Wear something comfortable. It’s going to be hot.”
 

“It’s Los Angeles, it’s always hot. That’s why we live here.”

I kissed him on the cheek. “The kind of hot where you can’t even move. You should go for a swim.”
 

“Oh,” Randi said. “That sounds great. Is your pool heated?”

I could tell by the look on Gary’s face that he was baffled by Randi inviting herself along for his swim.
 

He looked at me. “Do we still have guest suits in the cabana?” he asked me.

I guess he had had himself a very good time with Randi last night. Well, that was fine. For the moment. The second Randi made Gary unhappy she would be out of our lives so fast everyone’s heads would spin. “Should have,” I said.

She stood up. “Well, let’s swim.”

I stood in her way. “Gary, go ahead and start getting your laps in. Just need a few moments with Randi.”
 

We sat back down at the table. I snagged Gary’s plate of cake and dragged it over.

“Courtney and Roger,” I said.

“So where do you sleep when he has other women here?”

“And lastly Greg Hitchcock,” I said. “Anything you know about Greg would be much appreciated.”

“None of your stuff is in his bedroom.”

“We don’t like to mix our things. Also, it’s none of your business. I talked to Greg the other day. He acted like he didn’t know who Roger Sabo was, but then it turns out he really, really does.”

“Does he ever,” Randi said. “You wanted to know why both of them were paying Courtney off, right?”

I nodded.

She shook her head and let a gleeful grin cross her mouth. “I don’t know.” She sat back. “I honestly have no idea.”

Son of a bitch.

I counted backward from seven hundred and forty-three by twos, to calm myself down and avoid wiping that smile off her face the hard way. When I got to seven hundred and seventeen, I said, “Tell me everything you do know then. How do you know they were paying her off?”
 

“She told me. She had it good back in Oklahoma. You can get a big place with California money. You know how much a two-bedroom apartment costs there? And there’s only one little bitty thing wrong with it.”

“It’s in Oklahoma,” I said.

“You got it. God, I wish she’d just stayed there.”

“Why?”

Randi rolled her eyes. I didn’t know people literally did that, but there she was, giving me the well-known sign that meant
Duh
. “She was annoying. Did you ever meet her? Everything was always about her.”

“Narcissists often find that a difficult trait in others.”

She laughed and nodded. “I know, right? Anyhow, everything out of her mouth was about her, her career, her money, her family.”

“Did you see her in the week since she came back to Los Angeles?”

She nodded. “She was with Roger. God, he’s so creepy. All they could talk about was the reunion special and how they were going to be the focus of it. I was like, Roger, you ain’t no girl.”

This woman had to know something I could use to pressure Sabo. Perhaps she didn’t know anything about everyone’s favorite drug dealer. Maybe she knew something about Hitchcock. “You know about Greg, though, right? You worked for him. How did you end up there?”

“You don’t know anything about it, do you?”

“We had a deal, Randi. Roger Sabo tried to kill me the other day. He probably killed Courtney. All I want to know is why. Maybe you know something that can help me. Why did you go work in a financial counseling office? You don’t seem like the financial counseling type.”
 

She laughed.
 

Which surprised me. I’d been expecting her to take that as an insult. But she laughed.

“No one there’s trained to be a financial counselor.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very effective way to run that office.”

She made a noise. “Look. They’d get people from the church to volunteer and work with people. Do you know who goes into places like that? People who need help. Any kind of help. Money help. Greg’s a good guy. He helped them.” She grinned.

Something about that grin told me she was remembering something, so I asked, “Did he help you?”

She laughed. “No, not like those people. It was great working for Greg. He was...nice.”

“How was he nice?”

“He’d loan me money. Never asked for it back.”

No one who’s smart about their finances loans money without asking for it back. Unless it’s not really a loan.
 

“Did you have to sleep with Hitchcock a lot?” I asked.

She made a raspberry noise again. “Come on. Hardly involved sleeping. It was no big deal. Plus, whenever I needed a pick-me-up he had one.”

Okay, that was interesting. “Hitchcock keeps drugs around?”

“Don’t look like that. He doesn’t use. Sometimes people just need something to get through their day, you know? He’d have stuff.”

I opened my mouth to ask, “Where did he get it?” when the obvious answer occurred to me. “Did you ever buy from Roger directly?”

“I avoided the fuck out of Roger as much as I could. He’s a creep. Courtney was all over him and I said, ‘Trust me, he’s all yours, hon.’”

Hitchcock was running a semi-functional financial counseling group, paying his young office workers for sex, and keeping drugs around, maybe even right in the office. I wondered what I could get out of Randi if I really pressed her on some issues.
 

“Why isn’t Hitchcock paying you off the way he’s paying Courtney?”

Randi smiled at me. “Who says he’s not?”

Talk about holding out on me. “Is he?”

“I’ve told you everything I’m going to tell you. Okay? We’re even now.”
 

“Randi. Darling. Honey. Tell me what’s going on, or, trust me, you’re not going swimming today.”

She stood up and stared at me. “None of your things are in Gary’s closet. You don’t have anything he wants. I do. That’s how it works.
Darling. Honey
.” Then she waved toward the pool area, toward someone I couldn’t see. “This is a nice house. Gary said I could make myself at home. So I’ll see you around, Drusie.”