Hollywood Murder (30 page)

“Oh, God, somebody shoot me.”

I slumped down at my desk the next morning and rubbed by temples. Bernie looked up, gave me a mournful stare, and whined.

“Don’t tell me you went out and celebrated breaking our case?” Leo asked.

“No, I just spent the night with a hog and a big wiener.” His silver brows inched together as he looked at me. “If you don’t ask, I promise not to tell.”

After taking something for my headache, I spent the next hour dealing with the revenge of the Fluffenschnitzel before attending a meeting in Oz’s office. Even though I was feeling better, Selfie noticed my distress. “You okay, Kate?”

I sighed. “Just had a rough night with a Hedgehog and a Fluffenschnitzel.”

“It sounds like you went to the zoo,” Molly said.

I nodded, thinking about Nana and my friends. “You might say that.”

Even Oz realized something was amiss. “If you need a couple of hours off, just let me know.”

“Thanks, but I think I’m better off at work.”

Our lieutenant smiled and looked at Selfie and Molly. “Thanks to your excellent work, it looks like Meagan Pressley will spend the rest of her life in prison.” He tossed a couple of job announcements across the table. He said to Molly, “That’s the flyer for Crime Analyst. I want you to apply.”

“It’s not exactly detective pay, but it will help out,” Selfie said to our secretary.

“Believe me, any raise is a good raise,” Molly said.

“There’s a job announcement there for you, as well,” Oz told our crime analyst. “It’s a promotional flyer to a level three.”

“Awesome.” Selfie looked at her counterpart and they did a fist bump.

“How is Shelia Woods handling things?” Leo asked Oz, thinking about yesterday’s events.

“She made the expected complaint about being left out of your interview with the reverend. But I think she got over it, thanks to Meagan shooting her boyfriend. It should make for good copy on her show.”

“I’m sure Sam Berger is happy he could oblige,” I said.

“We might have something brewing on the Marsh case that just might ensure our promotions,” Molly said.

Our two civilian employees glanced at one another in a way that reminded me of Natalie and Mo when they have a secret. “Let’s hear it.”

Our pretty secretary pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and began. “We went back over the case and relooked at everything that happened from the day the maid was murdered and the kidnapping took place. We also got some additional information this morning that might explain a lot of things.” She looked at Selfie, who took over.

“Two bodies, a male and a female, were found in a densely forested area of Big Bear yesterday. Someone who owns a secluded cabin heard gunshots the night before last. He explored the area and eventually found the bodies. The San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office is still investigating what happened, but they had the medical examiner run the fingerprints of the decedents through AFIS.”

AFIS was the Automated Fingerprint Identification System used by most law enforcement agencies, and maintained by the FBI. It was a repository of millions of prints, both criminal and civil, on subjects throughout the United States. I remembered from a training session that it took about ten minutes to run someone’s prints through the system.

Selfie went on, “The male was identified as Frank Andrew Dyer, age thirty-four. He’s a small time private investigator who lived in Los Angeles. He had a couple of petty theft beefs as a juvenile and a misdemeanor assault about three years ago, nothing else.”

What Molly said next got our full attention. “The prints on the female were a positive match for Allison Marsh’s best friend. Deirdre Cole died in the forest two nights ago with Frank Dyer. It’s also noteworthy there were a couple of recently dug graves nearby.”

Selfie used her remote and we saw a mug shot of Frank Dyer and a file photograph of Deidre Cole, taken when she’d worked for a school district a few years earlier. The identifiers said that Dyer was six feet, one eighty. He had reddish-brown hair.

“The graves were probably meant for Dyer and Cole, but whoever shot them was in a hurry and didn’t bother with the burials,” Selfie said.

My adrenaline was now pumping. I looked at Leo. “There has to be something that further connects Dyer and Cole.”

Before he could answer, Selfie said, “As it turns out, Dyer’s a big player in our case.” My brows lifted as she went on. “Karen Dodd was in his car three years ago when Dyer was arrested on assault charges.” She pushed some arrest reports across the table to us. “According to the officers, he was trying to collect on a debt someone owed him. Dodd said she was dating Dyer and was just along for the ride.”

She and Molly went on for a moment, giving us a few more details from the reports. I barely heard what they said. I was already sifting through the puzzle pieces. We now knew that both Allison Marsh’s sister and her best friend had a connection to Frank Dyer, a small time private investigator. I was still trying to make sense of those connections when Leo asked a question.

“What about this Frank Dyer and Deidre Cole? Were you able to establish any relationship between them?”

Selfie picked up a remote, and in a moment we saw images of a restaurant appear on one of the overhead monitors. “This CCTV footage outside a breastaurant called Justine’s. It’s a couple of blocks from Vincent Marsh’s law office.”

“Breastaurant?” Leo said, looking at me.

“You’re showing your age, big guy.”

Oz filled in the details. “It’s a place where the servers wear skimpy outfits, show some cleavage, and serve a lot of beer and burgers.”

I looked at our sixty-something lieutenant, lifting my brows.

“I read it somewhere.” He looked at Selfie and Molly. “Go on.”

Selfie clicked her remote, and in a moment we saw video of several people entering and leaving the restaurant. Selfie froze the picture and zoomed in on a man and a woman coming out of Justine’s. “If you’ll look closely, you’ll see a couple of familiar faces.”

The picture was fuzzy, but I immediately recognized Vincent Marsh. The woman with him had red hair and it took me a moment, then I knew. “Deidre Cole.”

“Give the lady a teddy bear,” Selfie said. “Allison’s best friend had dyed her hair, but it’s our girl.”

Now, we had a connection between Allison’s husband and her best friend. More pieces of the puzzle were starting to align as they continued.

“There’s one other image that we think you’ll find of interest,” Molly said. She used her remote, and another close-up of a couple leaving the same restaurant appeared. “This shot was taken a couple of weeks after the previous image. Deidre apparently has a fondness for Justine’s. As you can see in this picture, she’s with Mr. Dyer. We did a little digging and learned that Deidre had used Dyer’s PI skills at one time to get the goods on her cheating ex. According to those close to Deidre, she and Dyer then began a relationship for a period of time.”

After Selfie and Molly assured me there were no other details they were holding back, I drew in a breath and released it slowly. The pieces seemed to all be in front of us, but they were still scattered. “Let me see if I can make some sense of what we just learned,” I said.

Bernie came over to Oz and was rewarded with a goody from his bag of treats. “Go for it,” the lieutenant said.

“Allison Marsh and her children were taken from their home in Hancock Park last Sunday. During the kidnapping their maid, Maria Chavez, was butchered. Ransom demands were subsequently made of Allison’s wealthy father, Henry Montreal. While all this was happening, Allison’s husband, Vincent, was shot and killed in the hotel room where he’d been staying.” I looked at Leo. “Possibly by Allison’s best friend, Deidre Cole.”

“You’re thinking Vince Marsh and Deidre Cole were involved?” Leo asked.

“I’m just speculating, but we know they were together at Justine’s at one time. Deidre was a very attractive woman and Vincent Marsh was a player.”

I turned the facts over in my mind again for a moment. Something Natalie’s boyfriend had once said about magic acts suddenly came to mind. Izzy Cluck had told me that every magic trick or illusion hinges on one simple thing: misdirection.

I continued to try and make the pieces fit. “We know that both Deidre Cole and Allison’s sister Karen were also involved with Frank Dyer at one time. While there was a connection between all three subjects, I think a couple of the involved parties weren’t aware of that fact.”

“Now you’re losing me,” Leo said. Oz concurred.

My thoughts became more focused, the Hedgehog hangover now a distant memory. “We know that Karen Dodd had issues with her father. Henry Montreal and his wife Georgette basically disowned her because she was the result of Henry having an affair with his former college sweetheart. Henry is not only extremely wealthy, he’s also the world’s biggest tightwad. It could be that Karen resented her father for both rejecting her and never sharing his wealth.”

“But how does Deidre Cole fit into the picture?” Selfie asked.

“Misdirection.”

She shook her head. “You’re also losing me, Sherlock.”

I played out the scenario for them that had been spinning through my head. “Let’s just suppose for a moment that Allison Marsh also resented her wealthy, controlling father. We know that she and Vince were heavily in debt, which means that Henry wasn’t sharing his fortune with her.

“We also know from the photograph we saw in the Montreals’ home that Allison and her sister Karen apparently reconnected during their college years, something Georgette Montreal clearly disapproved of. It could be that they stayed in touch and eventually came up with a plan to finally get a piece of their father’s fortune that had been denied them. After probably considering lots of options, they finally settled on a kidnapping scheme using two people: Allison’s husband Vince and her best friend, Deidre Cole.”

“I’m getting lost and more lost,” Molly said.

I smiled. “That’s because of the misdirection that was playing out. Suppose that Allison went to her best friend and said she had a plan that would make them both very rich. The plan was simple in the beginning: she and her children would be kidnapped and her father would be forced to pay a ransom. But there were a couple of problems. They needed both someone to play the heavy in the scheme, a pawn who would set the game in motion and wasn’t opposed to using violence, and a fall guy, a player who would eventually go down for the crime.”

“Allison’s husband Vince was the perfect fall guy,” Leo said, playing along.

I nodded. “Using Vince in the scheme worked out perfectly. He was a lying cheater, and Allison wanted nothing more than to get back at him.”

“And the heavy was Dyer,” Selfie said, picking up on the scenario.

“Allison was probably subtly pulling the strings behind the scenes for that piece of the game. Best friends share secrets. She likely knew that Deidre and Frank Dyer had been involved at one time. She also knew from her sister’s past involvement with Dyer that he wasn’t opposed to using violence and manipulation. When her friend eventually came up with the plan to use Dyer in the scheme, Allison probably feigned surprise, but the final piece of the game she’d set in motion was in play. After that, it was just a matter of Deidre using her considerable assets to get Dyer on board, and using him to convince Vince Marsh to go along with the plan.”

“And, all this time,” Leo said. “Allison and her sister were running their own game that Vincent, Deidre, and Frank Dyer were all clueless about.”

“You got it. They were all pawns in a much bigger game. Once the kidnapping had been accomplished, Vince was no longer needed, and either Deidre or Karen murdered him.”

Molly played along, “And once Dyer finally got the ransom money…

“He and Deidre were both expendable. Allison, maybe with the help of Karen, killed them both and took the money. They reasoned that eventually we would realize that Vince had hired Dyer to do the kidnappings to extort money from his father-in-law, and that Deidre would be implicated because of her past relationship with Dyer.”

The room was quiet for a moment. We all heard Bernie snoring in the corner as we mentally sifted through the pieces I’d put in place.

“If this was all misdirection,” Selfie finally said, “Allison not only put herself in jeopardy, but also her children.”

I agreed, adding, “Allison and her sister probably hated their father so much that they were willing to do whatever it took to get back at him. The children were also pawns in their game.”

“That’s about as low as you can get,” Molly said. “So, where does this leave us?”

“With two very rich girls and three dead bodies—make that four if you count the maid.”

“And where do we go from here?” Molly asked.

“Hancock Park.”

Before leaving to interview Allison Marsh, I called Agent Dukes and filled him in on the fingerprint match of the dead bodies found in the mountains. I took a few minutes and went over what I suspected. “It was all orchestrated by Allison and her sister. They got the money and set up Allison’s husband and Deidre Cole for the kidnapping, using Frank Dyer to do the dirty work.”

Dukes wanted to know why the FBI hadn’t been contacted by the local sheriff’s department that found the bodies. I told him probably because neither Dyer nor Cole had been flagged in the system as being suspects in their case. He said he wasn’t convinced my theory was accurate and spent the next half hour trying to poke holes in it.

When I’d finally had enough, I said, “Detective Kingsley and I are headed over to talk to Allison Marsh now. You can have one of your agents meet us there, if you’d like.”

“This is an FBI investigation. I won’t have you…”

He went on as I said, “Hello…I’m sorry…I think the call has been dropped.” I turned off my phone and said to Leo. “Let’s go”

***

Leo and I spent the next two hours with Allison Marsh in the den of her elegant Hancock Park home while her children played in the back yard. We spent the first hour, asking her to go over the details of her kidnapping again. She reluctantly agreed, taking us through everything that had happened again, before I began to focus in on what we’d learned.

“Do you know a man named Frank Dyer?” I asked.

She brushed her blonde hair from her eyes and I got a blank expression. “I don’t think so.” She took a moment, her gaze drifting off. “No, his name doesn’t sound familiar.”

“He was a private detective. Mr. Dyer was found dead in the mountains two nights ago, along with your friend Deidre Cole.”

Allison went into hysterics after she learned that her supposed best friend was dead. It was a good act, but after five minutes it started to wear on me. She was still sobbing about her loss when I said, “You’re not that upset about what happened, are you?”

She brushed away her tears and huffed out a protest. “I’m devastated.”

“Really? That’s interesting, since Deidre Cole was working with Frank Dyer to set up your kidnapping.”

The room was quiet for a moment, my words acting like the aftermath of a gunshot that had blasted through the air. Allison was a pretty girl, but her features twisted up into an ugly grimace. “I won’t sit here and listen to lies.”

“Detective Sexton is telling the truth,” Leo said. “You helped set everything in place.”

She gave nothing up, except for a slight tremor when she wiped away her tears. “This is nonsense.”

“Let me tell you how the nonsense played out,” I said. “You and Deidre came up with the scheme to have you and your children kidnapped for the ransom money, but you needed a heavy, someone who would use the force and violence necessary to put your plan in place. Your friend came up with the thought of using her former boyfriend, Frank Dyer, in the scheme. What Deidre didn’t know is that your sister and Dyer had also been involved at one time.”

“After that, it was just a matter of convincing Dyer he could become a very rich man as a result of the kidnapping,” Leo said. “He convinced your husband to go along with the scheme as a way to finally get a payday out of your father. After Vince agreed, Dyer did the kidnapping and killed the maid to show your father that he meant business. As things progressed, you decided your cheating husband was expendable and you had him murdered.”

“You can fill in the rest,” I said. “Did Deidre murder Vince or was it your sister?”

Allison released a long breath and buried her face in her hands. She remained that way while the room fell silent, except for the seconds on a clock behind her ticking by. When her eyes finally came up and fixed on me, I saw that her expression had changed. She was no longer the beautiful young woman, playing the role of a victim.

Allison’s words came out as a sigh. “It was Deidre.” She took a breath and chuckled. “Even though she thought she was in love with me, she had to sleep with my bastard of a husband to eventually convince him to go along with the kidnapping. She wanted him dead.” She shook her head and laughed again. “It all would have worked, except for…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Except for what?”

“My sister thought the money would help her get over living a life of poverty and having a father who would have nothing to do with her. She realized she’d been wrong.”

I glanced at Leo, back at her. “Where is Karen?”

Allison looked at me. I had a thought that her smile seemed to come from that place where childhood dreams are shattered. “She went to murder our father.”