Let There Be Suspects (21 page)

Each of the four walls were a different color. One was metallic gold, one black, the third was my signature shocking pink, and the fourth was a bold lime green. Tonight three men in artist smocks and berets were hard at work on the black one, painting what looked like a psychedelic rendering of a city dump. Huge chandeliers lit the room with ropes of crystal dangling just ten feet from the floor. Areas for dancing were marked with colored lights, like airport runways. Lots of partyers had come in for a landing.

“The minute a mural is finished, they paint over it and start another one,” Rand said. Actually Rand had to shout. Shouting was going to be the order of the night because what passed for music was throbbing in the background like King Kong’s heartbeat.

“Exactly what are we listening to?” I shouted.

“Techno,” Lucy shouted back.

The sound was purely electronic. This was music our computer could write by itself—and might the next time I’m at the keyboard checking e-mail or getting directions. I’m afraid to tell Ed our computer is possessed, since he prides himself on logic.

I waved my hand in front of Lucy’s face to get her attention. “Somebody swiped the melody.”

“You really need to get out more.” Lucy steered me away from the center bar. “For Deena’s sake. You won’t be able to have a conversation with her in a couple of years. You won’t know the language.”

“There are a couple of rooms off to the side,” Rand said. “Maybe they’ll let us in. Let’s go.”

We were turned away from the first one, which had its own bouncer and guest list. Inside I glimpsed fire engine red walls and a video of Cincinnati’s professional baseball team, probably during a winning streak.

The next room was less exclusive, and there were a couple of empty tables. The walls and ceiling looked like a tiger turned inside out, stripes everywhere. This was the Bengal room. No surprise there. Kas Novy might hail from Europe, but he understands that if the state of Ohio had umbilical cords, they would be connected to its home teams.

To mix the metaphor and appeal to the broadest possible audience, each tabletop was a photo of a different man who, judging from the baggy attire, was either a rapper or seriously into Weight Watchers. We took the table closest to the door. The guy staring up at us was doing something with his hands that looked like a bad case of tendinitis in the making. I could sit, but I couldn’t bend my legs. I aimed my feet at Lucy, who had gotten me into this predicament. She would have to sit sideways or straddle my stilettos all evening.

A young woman wearing a tiger tail and ears, a sleek black leotard, and gold stockings told us we were welcome, but to stay there we’d have to cough up a hundred dollars for a bottle of champagne, fifty more if we wanted a bottle of hard liquor. She was a perky blonde who could whip her tiger tail from side to side with muscles most of us never think of honing.

After growling for emphasis, she gave us the good news. “It usually costs more. Tonight’s a bargain. We won’t be nearly as crowded on account of people saving up for New Year’s Eve.”

Rand grabbed her tail the next time it passed close to him and held it to his cheek. “Oh, I want one of these!”

She ruffled his hair, pried her tail out of his clenched fingers, and went for the champagne.

“This had better bring results!” I hissed the last word. It was quieter in here, but I was in no danger of giving away secrets. We still had to lean into the middle of our table to hear each other.

“Honey, get with the program. This is called fun!” Rand’s eyes were glowing with excitement.

“Don’t ever marry a minister,” Lucy advised him.

I leaned farther forward, and we looked like a Bengals’ huddle, minus a few linemen. “Let’s talk about why we’re here. Before the music gets any louder and Toni the Tigress comes back with our champagne.”

Rand’s eyebrows leaped. “Oh, the things I found out!”

“You’re the man.” Lucy winked at him.

“I figured we had questions on two fronts, right? After you dispensed with that assistant thing?” He looked to me for corroboration.

At the station after greeting each other like long-lost friends, I’d given him a brief summary of my talk with Mabyn. So she had been dispensed with, along with Carol Ann, at least temporarily.

“What fronts?” I asked him now.

“Ginger and Kas. And Ginger and Cliff Grable.”

“That’s it in a nutshell, Sherlock.”

“Oh, I am so glad I got it right!”

“You
are
the man.” I patted his arm.

“Here’s what I know about Ginger and Kas. I wrote it down for you, so I wouldn’t forget.”

He pulled out a WKLM notepad and flipped to the first page—Rand has yet to master the art of Christmas receipt scribbles. “Ginger and Kas Novy were pretty much inseparable for more than a year. She met him when he came to town to look for a location for a club, and she was with him when he opened this place. They lived together in a penthouse condo looking over the river.”

He looked up and grinned. “How am I doing so far?”

“You rock. Go on.”

“Then things went sour. I couldn’t find out what or why exactly, but it sounds like maybe one of them had a roving eye? I talked to two people heavily into the scene, and neither could tell me for sure. The rumor was vague and I’m just filling in the gaps from my imagination. But Kas moved out, and they weren’t seen together after that.” He looked up and his eyebrows kept dancing. “Except once.”

The tigress came back with our bottle and three glasses. For a hundred dollars you don’t get Dom Perignon at Technotes, but it wasn’t the worst champagne I’ve ever had. She popped, poured, and stuck the bottle in a galvanized bucket of ice, asked if we wanted to see the menu and left it for us, just in case.

“Go back to ‘once.’” I said. “That last time they were seen together?”

“That’s where it gets so good!” Rand lifted his glass in a toast. We clinked.

“Okay,” he said after a couple of sips. “That last time they were seen together? In court! She got a restraining order. Seems one afternoon she caught old Kas in the condo tossing her stuff into the hall.
After
she had changed the locks, by the
way.
They had a fight and he slapped her hard enough to leave a handprint. Nobody saw him do it, and Kas came up with an alibi, so they couldn’t charge him with assault. But the judge issued the restraining order.”

I wondered if Ginger had chosen Cliff because he was such a gentle soul. Had she simply had her fill of glamorous alpha males and settled for somebody she could push around?

“So, that answers that,” Lucy said. “If he was trying to get her out of it, Kas must have owned the condo.”

I wasn’t so sure. “Not necessarily. Maybe he loaned Ginger the money for a down payment, or at least some of it. Maybe that’s why he didn’t try to go through legal proceedings to evict her, because it was more of an informal arrangement.”

“Does a businessman who opens a place like this one make informal arrangements?”

Rand answered. “Maybe he does, if his interest rate is say, over the top?”

“You mean like a loan shark?” Lucy asked.

“Nobody really knows where Kas Novy got the money to open this place. He managed a club in L.A., and he had a lot of connections and probably some investors. But managing clubs doesn’t get you what you need to front this kind of an operation.”

So Novy might be a legitimate businessman who let love blind him, giving Ginger money for the condo and expecting years of bliss in return. Or maybe he loaned her the money and called in the loan when they broke up, possibly at some absurd interest rate. Or possibly the loan was above-board but he was a man with no patience who didn’t want to wait for the wheels of the legal system to turn. Maybe he’d just been trying to make a point.

“Whatever it is, it sounds like a motive for murder,” I said. “If he was angry enough to toss her stuff out of the condo and attack her.”

“We only have Ginger’s word on that.” Lucy topped off our champagne. “Sip it slowly.”

“So here’s the second part.” Rand traced the items on his list with his finger. “Ginger and Cliff Grable.”

I held up my hand. “Wait a minute. Let me set this up in my head. Was Ginger working at the station while she was with Kas?”

“Oh no. She had the accident, left the station, then she met Kas and later they moved into the condo. She got some kind of insurance settlement after the accident, so that explains where some of her income came from, that and any money she got up front on her cookbook. She started working on the book while she recovered.”

I wished I had known about Kas when I cornered Carol Ann Riley, but most likely Carol Ann’s association with Ginger had ended while Ginger and Kas were still lovey-dovey.

“Okay. Now, Ginger and Cliff,” I said. “On the telephone you mentioned something about his first wife committing suicide?”

“It was kind of a big deal, that’s the only reason I know. She was on some kind of antidepressant, and afterwards Cliff sued the drug manufacturer and maybe even her doctor. He claimed the antidepressant made her kill herself. There were some studies the manufacturer hadn’t been completely up front about, that kind of thing. The story was in the papers for weeks because the manufacturer has offices here, and the first round of legal stuff happened in local courts. If the lawsuit went anywhere, though, I never heard. They stopped covering it after awhile. I don’t know if Grable had any kind of case, but I think he was trying to call attention to the problem. That sort of thing.”

“So then, in the throes of grief, he met Ginger. Maybe while he was here giving testimony or something.” Now I felt even sorrier for poor Cliff.

“Here’s what I know. You’re right, Ginger met Grable when he was here for one of the hearings, and she latched onto him right after she got the restraining order on Novy.”

“How soon after his first wife’s death?” Lucy asked Rand.

“I don’t know. A while. At least a couple of years, since it takes time for something like that lawsuit to get moving. I still remembered who he was when I heard he and Ginger were together, but it wasn’t like his name was in the paper every day at that point.”

“There’s probably something on the Internet about the lawsuit. I’ll look it up when we get back.” Lucy could say this. Her computer isn’t haunted.

“Do I hear you right?” I asked. “You think Ginger latched onto Cliff just to get away from Kas? Or do you think she latched on because she needed money to pay Kas off?”

Rand sat back with a smile. “Don’t you just love the way one question opens up a bunch more?”

No, at the moment I just wanted easy answers. Something on the order of: Kas wanted Ginger to pay him what she owed for the condo. He drove to Emerald Springs on Christmas Eve, confronted her, then killed her when she told him she’d run out of checks.

On arrival I had noted that Lucy and I were almost a decade older than most of the clientele. Apparently this is a hot spot for twenty-somethings. Now a guy in his midtwenties came over to the table and asked Lucy to dance. She glanced at me, and I nodded.

On the way out to the main floor she leaned over and said. “I’m going to see if Baby Snookums or his drinking buddies know where Kas Novy is tonight.”

She left me alone with Rand, so I used the time well. “You said Ginger got an insurance settlement? Is there a way to find out how much she got?”

“Our floor manager thinks it was pretty much a token. Apparently both drivers were at fault, only Ginger was less so, if you know what I mean? The roads were slick, she was going too fast for weather conditions, but the other guy slid through a stop sign. She didn’t have much of a case, so she took what the other guy’s insurance company offered because she didn’t want to go to court and lose everything.”

“I’m putting two and two together here. First, I doubt Ginger’s publisher paid a whole lot up front for her cookbook. Second, she only got a small insurance settlement. But she moves into a luxury condo, lives the high life here at the club. I know for a fact there was no family money to squander. So either she was living off Kas Novy’s largesse, or she was doing something to make money under the table.”

“Ooh, like what?” Rand’s eyes were shining.

Unfortunately I could think of a lot of possibilities, not a one of them pretty. “When I talked to Mabyn she told me that some people think Technotes has gone downhill. Some people aren’t as comfortable here as they were, that there have been prostitutes in the vicinity, rumors of illegal gambling. Have you heard anything like that?”

“I really love being here with you. But this isn’t the kind of club where I usually hang out, if you catch my drift?” The eyebrows did a mini-stampede. “So I don’t hear every little thing.”

No, although I’d seen guys dancing together in the other room, I was pretty sure Rand hung out in places where that was more the norm. As if to present evidence, a huge bald guy wearing black leather pants and a purple muscle shirt came over and tapped Rand on the shoulder. Rand turned around, gasped, and stood, and they gave each other a back-pounding hug.

Rand turned to me when it was over. “Aggie, you gotta meet Bruiser.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I held out my hand.

“Bruce to you,” He shook with care, as if he knew what those sausage fingers could do if he wasn’t paying attention.

“Come on,” Bruiser motioned toward the music. “Let’s catch up.”

Rand petitioned me with his eyes. I had no problem sitting alone. I had a lot to figure out while my partners in solving crime had their fun. I waved him off.

I swirled the champagne that was left in my glass and considered everything I’d learned so far and everything I still needed to.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

My head jerked up, and I saw the bouncer or doorman or whatever title he went by. I hadn’t realized I had company. “Me?”