Murder by Numbers (16 page)

“All right.” Vasquez picked up a phone and waved them from his desk. But Liza could still hear the detective as he lowered his voice behind her to speak to Buck. “You know it's gonna turn out to be a sloppy housekeeper.”

Liza wondered where Vasquez had found the escorts that accompanied them. Police academy graduates? They looked more like a pair of high school kids in costume as cops for Halloween. Heck, they might even have been pulled from the junior high crowd of trick-or-treaters.

The tall, thin, fair one reminded her of Ichabod Crane. Liza wondered how he could move with the amount of equipment dangling from his belt. As if to provide more contrast, his partner was a short, stocky Latina. At least she had a no-nonsense look that reassured Liza.

Patrolman Ichabod surprised her by demanding the key when they arrived at Derrick's house—Jenny's house now, Liza corrected herself.

Her eyes went wide as the pair of officers took out their guns as they opened the door. Pistols and flashlights at the ready, the police went in.

“Santa Barbara Police!” Ichabod might look like a stork, but apparently he had the voice of a bull when he needed it.

Liza glanced over at Buck. “Hell, I'm ready to surrender, and I'm on their side,” she muttered.

“Shhh,” he replied. Liza noticed he'd dropped back a little, darting looks toward both sides of the house. He also had a hand under his jacket.

“The back of the house is a straight drop down over that cliff.” Buck's voice was barely a whisper. “If anyone
is
in there, they either have to come out past the cops, or out the sides. In other words, right by us. Pays to be careful.”

Moments later, Ichabod's bull voice called out, “Clear.”

Buck stepped to the door. “That's our cue to come in.”

As the lights went on, Liza glanced around. She wasn't sure what she expected—maybe one of Derrick's manly, comfortable armchairs on its side, or the stuffing pulled out of the couch.

But the airy rooms she saw looked pretty much as she remembered them from her first visit—and a couple of subsequent ones with Jenny.

“Are you sure—?” she began, but Jenny shook her head, pointing at the grandfather clock off to one side. “Uncle D. had that clock dead center on the wall. It's not now.”

And why would a sloppy housekeeper bother to clean behind a large, heavy clock?
Liza wondered. Jenny's suspicions were beginning to sound quite plausible.

They went through the house, and in each room, Jenny kept pointing out items—often little things—that were wrong.

The police officers were eager—this was probably a big chance for them to show their stuff to their boss—but they began to look disappointed.

Buck fell back to talk to Liza. “You know,” he said in a low voice, “the killers went through here. So did the SBPD. They'd have to do the whole crime scene thing.”

“But we tidied up after that,” Liza said. “Jenny and I spent days—”

She suddenly broke off, heading for Derrick's former study. A good day and a half of her life had passed in there while she'd worked to restore order to Derrick's trashed library.

Okay, the effort hadn't been quite as altruistic as it sounded. Jenny had promised to give her the books when her uncle's estate was settled.

She faced the ranked volumes arranged on handmade shelves built into the wall. “Somebody screwed with these,” Liza announced. “When I started in here, the books were every which way, some even jammed in backward. I wanted to bring it back to the way—the way Derrick had them. Cryptography along here, alphabetically by author, sudoku down by the desk—”

She stopped and pointed to a book. “That's out of place. And there's dust along here, when I had squared everything with the edge.”

She turned to Buck. “This isn't messy cleaning.”

He nodded. “I think it was a very careful, but very unprofessional, black-bag job.”

“Black-bag job?” Liza turned to Buck Foreman in bafflement.

He looked at her. “You did publicity for
Spycraft
, and you have no idea what a black-bag job is?”

“What is it?” Jenny asked.

“Illegal entry, usually to get information or photographs. The FBI did it as a counterespionage thing.” The corner of Buck's mouth twitched. “And other law enforcement organizations have dabbled in it for other reasons.”

Liza looked around the room. “And you think somebody did something like that here?”

Buck nodded. “Someone went through a lot of stuff in this house…and tried pretty hard to make sure no one noticed.” He turned to the police officers. “I think we can tell Detective Vasquez that there's something to Jenny's report.”

Liza could hear the doubting tone in the detective's voice even though she didn't have her ear to the receiver. This time, she was happy to leave the arguing to Buck.

“Detective Vasquez.” Buck was obviously exercising considerable tact to say just those two words and not a whole lot of the others going through his head. “Your criminalists had to take lots of pictures of the crime scene, right? And the only people who were here afterward were just Liz and Jenny. You don't think two women would go through a major rearrangement of the place just by themselves, do you?”

He listened for a moment. “So your wife did how much, and how much did you end up doing?” Buck stifled a sigh. “Could you get hold of the general shots and bring them here? Yes, now.”

About half an hour later, Vasquez arrived, his face doing its patented thundercloud impersonation. “I brought the pictures. Now what amazing things are you going to show me?”

“Have you got a shot of the living room with the grandfather clock?” Jenny asked.

The detective followed her, sorting through his collection of pictures. “Here,” he said.

“And…here,” Jenny replied.

Vasquez looked from the clock she stood beside to the photo in his hand and back again, a different kind of frown appearing on his features. “Step away,” he ordered, looking at the picture again. “It's moved.”

“It's been moved,” Jenny insisted from the chair she'd just sat down in.

“Why would anyone move a big mother like that and then put it back?” Vasquez wanted to know.

“Probably someone who wanted to look at the back after poking around all the insides,” Buck suggested.

“We think it was a black-bag job,” Liza added.

That got her a skeptical look from the detective. “And what were they after? A collector's-item copy of the last
Spycraft
script? Derrick Robbins's autograph?”

“We don't know,” Liza admitted. “But this is definitely not your ordinary break-in. There's a lot of valuable stuff around here.”

“Like that clock,” Vasquez sarcastically rapped his knuckles on the large wood frame. “Hard to fit in my car, much less carry out the door.”

“There's expensive stuff that's smaller—a lot more portable,” Liza argued back. “While we were waiting for you, Jenny and I went over the house. Silverware, artwork, electronics—they're all here.”

She shot Vasquez a look. “If the break-in was the work of your friendly neighborhood junkie, he must have been pretty much out of his mind to overlook all that—not to mention remarkably neat. So who else could it be if it's not a black-bag job? Some perv? If so, he was looking in some pretty odd places for underwear to fondle.”

“Well, it definitely wasn't our people,” Vasquez insisted.

“I'm not saying it was,” Liza said. “In fact, I don't think it was anybody official. The question is, who done it, what were they looking for…” She paused. “And was it connected to the death of Oliver Chissel?”

Now everyone was staring at her.

“I heard this Chissel guy got killed up in your hometown,” Vasquez said. “Far, far, away from here. What, did you get some secret message saying that killing ties in with whatever happened here?”

“No, but there are a number of things in common between what happened here and what happened there. I found both bodies.”

“Don't remind me,” Vasquez said.

“There are other ties. Derrick worked on putting the film together before his death. I've got friends tangled up in that case—including Jenny,” Liza replied. She looked at the girl. “You wouldn't even have known Chissel except for what happened to your uncle.”

“I guess you're right,” Jenny said. “Uncle D.'s plan was to produce
Counterfeit
on his own and then get a distribution deal. That way he could avoid interference from a studio—” Her voice got sour. “Like what Olbrich has been doing to the production now. Uncle D. said he wanted to fly under the radar as much as possible until he could premiere us at Sun-dance or someplace like that.”

“That was shooting high, maybe.” Liza frowned in thought. “But he had a solid production team and a good script.”

She turned to Jenny again. “Where did your uncle make these plans—where did he run Counterfeit Productions?”

Jenny stared. “Why—from right here.” She pointed down the hallway. “From his study, actually.”

Liza smiled as they followed the girl to Derrick's plush sanctum. “Yeah, I run my business from home, too.” She winced, mentally comparing this glorious space with the corner of the living room where she'd set up her computer. Liza still had a desk up in her bedroom, but that's where she'd done homework as a kid. She wasn't about to use it for either of her adult professions—publicity or sudoku.

Jenny pointed to a quartet of file cabinets set under a wooden working surface. “The one on the far right is correspondence. The one to the left of it is full of Uncle D.'s business papers. The other two were full of stuff for
Counterfeit
.”

“Were?” Buck Foreman prompted.

Walking to the leftmost cabinet, Jenny pulled out the top drawer. It was empty. She did the same with the other three drawers. None had any contents.

“This used to be home base for
Counterfeit
,” she said. “But when Mirage Productions wanted to come in and take over the film, our lawyer—well, Uncle D.'s lawyer, I guess—asked for all the papers.”

Jenny carefully closed the cabinets, as if she were still concerned about disturbing her uncle.

Maybe being in here, where he spent so much time, makes Jenny feel she's stirring up his ghost.
Liza stifled a sneeze.
Not to mention some dust.

“Hey, Jenny,” she asked, “When was the last time you were up here?”

“The last time you were with me,” the girl answered promptly. “I've still got my place down in L.A. and enough to live on, and of course I've been all over the place with the filming.” She shook her head. “It just didn't seem right to move in here. I mean, it's not like the place is mine, after all.”

Liza and Buck both whipped round. “It's not?”

“Not in the way you're thinking.” Jenny tried to explain herself. “I inherit everything, but there's still a lot of legal mumbo jumbo before it's all official. And even then—this is Uncle D.'s place.”

Frowning, Buck pointed to the third file cabinet. “Is your lawyer's address in there?” he asked.

“Sure.” Jenny knelt and pulled out the bottom drawer, which was stuffed with an array of papers. She ran a finger along the tabs and finally extracted a fairly bulky file folder. “It's in here, along with his phone number. Do you think you need it?”

“I think,” Buck said, “we're going to pay a visit to this gentleman bright and early tomorrow—” He broke off, looking at his watch. “Today. And now, I don't want him to have any idea we're coming.”

“Yeah,” Vasquez said. “Surprise is always the best tactic with lawyers.” He squared the set of crime scene photos he still held. “I guess we're done here. Do you intend to spend the night, Ms. Robbins?”

Jenny stared. “I don't
think
so,” she replied.

“Well, I'll ask patrol to beef up our presence in the area,” the detective said. “But I think you'd better bring in some private security to keep an eye on the place.” He gestured around. “As you say, there's a lot of valuable stuff here. And if there's nobody in the house—”

“I can recommend some people, if you like,” Buck told Jenny. “And if we're not staying here, we'd better find a place to rest our heads.”

With the three police officers in the lead, they headed out of the house. Buck leaned over to Liza as they waited for Jenny to lock up. “Why did you want to know how long it had been since Jenny was here?” he asked quietly.

“I'm not sure,” Liza admitted. What she didn't tell Buck was that she had experienced the same surge of assurance when she was first teasing out the logical chain that solved a tough sudoku. There was definitely a long way to go, but Liza felt a certainty she hadn't before.

If only you knew what that meant
, the critical voice in the back of her head pointed out.

They caught a little flack, three adults turning up at a hotel after midnight with only one small shoulder bag as luggage. But Liza's corporate card got them separate rooms.

Besides, the recollection of the desk clerk's mere disapproval shrank to nothing in comparison to Michelle Markson's reaction when Liza finally called her. Liza found herself competing with throbbing dance music instead of laughter—apparently, the party had moved to a club somewhere.

The change of scene hadn't done much to jolly up Michelle, however. “I've been waiting forever!” she said sharply.

Yeah, probably on the edge of your seat down there in Club Eardrum
, Liza thought.

“You know this business stands or falls on information,” Michelle went on.

And Markson Associates was always the firstest with the mostest. Of course Michelle was annoyed at what she saw as her partner holding out on her.

“We got Jenny, she's sleeping in the room next to me here in Santa Barbara,” Liza reported.

“How quickly can you get her back to work?” Michelle asked, mindful of the wrath of the studio executives. And the bad press that followed it.

“We want to come down to L.A. tomorrow to see Jenny's lawyer,” Liza began.

“Her lawyer? Are there legal troubles?”

Liza could only admire the way Michelle could lower her voice while making it sharper at the same time.

“Not in the way you mean. But did you know that Derrick Robbins's estate still hasn't been settled?”

“No.” Michelle's voice was back to normal—just slower, as she considered what Liza had just said. “No, I didn't know that at all.”

“I think there might be something interesting to learn if I poke around and see why it's taking so long.”

“Hmm. Your hunches have a habit of proving out.” Michelle abruptly shifted gears. “All right, but I want Jenny back on set by the afternoon. One of the people here has been talking about his private plane. I'll arrange something—” Michelle paused. “I don't suppose Virginville has an airport?”

“Maiden's Bay,” Liza automatically corrected. “The nearest airfield is Killamook…or Manzanita.”

Suddenly, she felt a renewal of her interest in where Oliver Chissel had been keeping his corporate jet. Might be interesting to check that out, too.

“I'll speak to you in the morning about any arrangements.”

And that was that. Liza yawned and turned to the bed.

The next thing she knew, the room phone was ringing and sunlight was coming through a chink in the heavy drapes.

“This is your wake-up call.” Buck Foreman sounded as if he'd been up and out for a run already. Liza tried to focus her eyes. Eight hours of sleep—just barely.

“Breakfast in half an hour, then we're out of here,” Buck warned.

Liza and Jenny shared the supplies in Liza's bag and managed to beat Buck's deadline by a good minute.

“Could I get the car keys you were using?” Buck tactfully asked Jenny when she had finished her orange juice. “I made arrangements to get the rental back up to Maiden's Bay. Michael needs his wheels. We'll take my car to visit our legal friends.”

 

The firm of Colberg & Gaskell wasn't one of those flashy, Century City practices. Their officers were in a fairly low-rise, staid, old building in a staid, older part of town.

So meeting Joshua “Call me Josh” Colberg was a bit of a surprise. Shaking hands with the effusive attorney, Liza found herself thinking of him as a Gary Schilling gone bad. Like Gary, Josh had thinning hair (aggressively combed over in his case) and round, unformed features—the kind of face made for a collar and tie. Seeing the lawyer in ultra-modish Hollywood casual attire was like watching Ron Howard trying to play Brad Pitt.