Murder by Numbers (17 page)

Josh's bright smile dimmed a bit after Buck handed him his card. “Private investigator?” Now his voice started to sound like Alfalfa from the Little Rascals.

“We're looking into certain irregularities in the affairs between Derrick Robbins and Oliver Chissel—both recently deceased.” Even seated across a large desk, Buck somehow managed to loom over the hapless Josh.

“I can't imagine how you think I can help you,” Josh almost whined. “Derrick Robbins was my father's client. Dad set up his will and handled most of his affairs. He and Max Gaskell conducted a general practice, while I handled entertainment law.”

Liza's lips quirked, but she managed to keep from commenting. Translated from Josh-speak, that probably meant that Dad and his partner brought in the meat and potatoes for the firm, while Junior was off chasing rainbows.

“I'm surprised we're not speaking with your father then,” Buck said gravely.

“Well, Dad's not with us anymore. He and Max Gaskell went flying—Max was an enthusiastic pilot—”

This is just what I need to hear right before going up again in a small plane
, Liza thought.

Josh apparently misunderstood the look on her face. “It happened shortly after Derrick Robbins passed away. We had just finished the agreement with Mirage Productions.”

“So you've been handling things since then?” Buck asked.

“Ah—yeah,” Josh responded warily. “Not that there is very much to do.”

“I suppose not,” Buck's voice got grimmer. “Especially if you are dragging your feet over settling Mr. Robbins's estate.”

“That's not the way it is at all,” Josh protested, weakening his case by adding, “exactly.”

“Then how is it—exactly?” Buck demanded.

“Certain executives at Mirage Productions…suggested a…postponement.” Josh looked like a hamster backed into a corner of its cage.

Liza could just imagine—Josh, the would-be player, just about ready to jump through hoops for Mirage and Chissel. The poor boob probably looked up to Chissel as a master of the deal.

“Forgive me.” Josh turned to Jenny, apparently just realizing that his supposed client was also in the room. “I thought—I got the impression—that the Mirage people were afraid you'd be distracted.”

“Not as much as you might think,” Jenny said.

“I bet that's a big relief off your mind,” Liza muttered.

“Besides,” Josh added, taking refuge in his best lawyerly manner, “there's the problem of the assets.”

“And what problem is that?” Buck's voice amazingly managed to mix gentle inquiry and threatening menace.

“When Mr. Robbins set up Counterfeit Productions—my father tried to persuade him not to use that name, by the way—Mr. Robbins liquidated a number of holdings for start-up money. If necessary, he was willing to capitalize the whole production.”

“Breaking the producer's golden rule,” Buck said.

Liza nodded. “OPM.”

“What?” Jenny asked.

“Other People's Money,” Liza explained.

“The cash was being held in a numbered account in the Cayman Islands,” Josh rushed on. “Only Mr. Robbins had the number and the password. He didn't share that information with my father.”

Certainly not with you
, Liza silently added.

“Uncle D. never mentioned any of this stuff to me,” Jenny said.

“So how much do these missing assets come to?” Buck wanted to know.

“Er—ah—” Josh ducked behind his desk, coming up a second later with a file folder. He spread it open on the desk and picked up a sheet of paper.

“In round figures—”

Buck reached over, took the sheet from Josh, and looked at it. His widening eyes betrayed what was behind his poker face as he turned to Jenny. “Remember last night when you were wondering what papers could be left over from your uncle's estate that needed looking into? I think we found them—about three-quarters of a million of them.”

On the trip homeward, the plane was larger, but the ride was bumpier. Liza was somewhat relieved to arrive at the airport and meet the uniformed pilot and copilot waiting for her and Jenny. She had been afraid to find some sky-happy acquaintance of Michelle's who was going to loop-the-loop all the way back to Maiden's Bay.

Instead, Michelle had somehow gotten the use of some sort of corporate jet with executive amenities. Liza and Jenny strapped themselves into swivel chairs in a spacious lounge. Coming over the intercom, the pilot's voice apologized that there was no steward.

“Just as well,” Liza called back. “We're on the Hollywood diet.”

“We are?” Jenny asked. “What's that?”

“That's the loss of appetite you get when dealing with a studio that wants to make you throw up,” Liza replied.

That turned Jenny's mind to what they had just heard. “I can't get over that Colberg guy doing what he said.” She shook her head. “I mean, he was supposed to be Uncle D.'s lawyer.”

I guess you've got a lot to learn about lawyers
, Liza thought. Instead she said, “Josh is your uncle's lawyer's son. The chump was probably wetting himself at a chance to sit at the table with the great Oliver Chissel. Ollie the Chiseler would probably have eaten him for lunch.”

“I don't think so,” Jenny said. “Josh Colberg struck me more like a lightweight snack.”

“An hors d'oeuvre,” Liza suggested with a grin.

That bit of joking was the last lighthearted thing that happened on their ride. Almost as soon as they got to their cruising altitude, the plane began making sudden dips and jumps.

“I'm afraid we're catching some onshore winds,” the pilot's voice crackled over the intercom. “It may get a little turbulent. I'll see if we can get above them. Please keep your seat belts on.”

Whatever the flight crew tried didn't seem to work, though. The rest of the journey felt more like a roller-coaster ride.

Jenny's face looked as white as Liza's knuckles, which were clamped to her chair's armrests. Her mind kept going back to the other story Josh Colberg had told—the one where his father had gone up in the sky with an avid amateur pilot. Was this what they had gone through before taking the big plunge?

Liza shuddered and decided she'd better distract herself from such morbid thoughts. Maybe if she took a shot at trying to untangle all the information about the various crimes, organizing it logically…

It would be pretty ironic if you solved all of this, but crashed and died before you could tell anyone
, that perverse, back-of-the-head voice commented.

Shut up
, Liza told the voice. Then she put her mind to organizing.

The whole situation just seemed to keep growing. There was sabotage on the set, murder and vandalism—or vandalism and murder, given the broken glass found with Oliver Chissel's body. And now there was a big honking wad of missing cash.

Liza frowned. Actually, the cash went astray before all the rest. She remembered something Buck had once said, about all crimes in the end being about money or sex. Considering the way Chissel looked, even before the tide got him, she decided to concentrate on the money angle.

That brought her back to the misplaced chunk of capital Derrick Robbins had raised to bankroll
Counterfeit
. As far as motive went, that was more of a reason to kill Derrick than anyone else. And Derrick had died for altogether different reasons.

Could someone have believed that Chissel had gotten hold of the missing cash? Could they then have tried to force its location out of him? That someone would have to know about the cash in the first place, of course. Derrick hadn't been blabbing around about it. Jenny never even knew her uncle had been raising the money for the film.
He sure didn't mention it to me
, Liza thought. It had taken a personal visit and a little intimidation to get it out of Josh Colberg. And Caymanian bankers had a reputation for being as secretive as their Swiss counterparts. So who might have gotten a whiff of the cash stash?

Derrick had been friendly with Guy Morton, involving him early in planning for
Counterfeit
. Could Derrick have told the actor about his backup financing plan?

Then too, there was that
Masked Justice
episode where Morton's character used the oncoming tide to loosen a prisoner's tongue.

But Guy had shown honest affection—and a strong protective streak—when it came to Jenny Robbins. Why would he go after her inheritance?

Nah. It just didn't fit what she knew of the man.

Unless he's a much better actor than you think
, that annoying voice suggested.

Liza ignored that idea for a more promising one. What if Morton thought he was saving Jenny's money from Chissel? That suspicion could prove pretty bad for Ollie the Chiseler, especially if he didn't actually have his hands on the money.

But would Guy Morton actually leave a person to drown, even if that person didn't tell him what he wanted to hear? That didn't square with Liza's assessment of Guy Morton. Punching someone in the nose—as he'd done with Lloyd Olbrich—that was Morton's style. But to stand cold-bloodedly by while someone died? Liza didn't think so.

So who else might have known about the money? Jenny?

Liza shook her head. The girl's surprise had been too genuine. Liza had been around Jenny at too many unguarded moments to doubt that she'd been completely surprised.

Besides, Jenny was the one who'd pointed out that the house had been searched, leading them to the discovery of the money in the first place. She'd told the cops first thing, despite the fact that she was afraid of dealing with the police. If she were searching for the big bucks, why let the cat out of the bag?

Besides,
when
could Jenny have searched the house? She'd been convalescing, then throwing herself into preparations for the film, and finally spending all this time away on location.

Liza frowned. There was the germ of something there, below the surface.

Another thought intruded. Suppose Jenny knew about the missing money, and so did someone else—someone who had secretly searched the house! They could be in a race to retrieve the fortune!

She shook her head, her stomach flip-flopping as the plane seemed to go in about three directions at once. Maybe this wasn't the time for higher thought, Liza decided. This might just be a time to live in her lizard brain, hoping for survival.

They jounced and shuddered through the air for a while more, then finally encountered calmer atmosphere. Neither passenger had to resort to the barf bags that the pilot had helpfully pointed out. But, for Liza at least, it had been a very close thing.

The pilot came on the intercom again, rather apologetically announcing that they'd be landing at Killamook. “I'm afraid the other field you suggested is unattended, ma'am.”

Yeah
, Liza thought,
that's why I wanted to get a look at it.

Still, the guy up front had a boss to answer to, and he didn't want to risk an aircraft that probably cost a hefty chunk of change on a possibly empty airfield. Liza didn't object, and soon enough they had landed.

Only when they were on the ground—Liza managed to restrain herself from dropping to her knees and kissing it—did she realize they had no ground transport.

Jimmy Perrine came by and gave Liza a jaunty wave. “Looks like you've come up in the world,” he said with a glance at the corporate splendor standing behind her on the runway. “But if you need to make the trip again, I'd be happy to oblige—at the usual rate.”

Liza was almost tempted to ask him what a drive to Maiden's Bay might cost, but she decided to fall back on her cell phone instead. Michael picked up on the second ring and promised to be over there as soon as possible.

Jenny found them a seat out of the breeze, and they composed themselves to wait.

“Michael won't be too long,” Liza assured her friend. “It's not as if he's fighting his way here on the 405,” she mentioned a well-known, almost infamous, L.A. freeway.

Her phone rang, and Buck Foreman answered her hello.

“Our chat with good old Josh this morning made me start thinking about Chissel's money situation,” he said. “So I got on the horn to the guys I had checking into Ollie's financials.”

“From your tone of voice, I think you just found something.” Liza forced herself to relax her grip, reminding herself that she couldn't literally squeeze information out of a phone.

“He was in trouble,” Buck reported. “It's gotten worse lately. The Mirage deal sucked up most of Chissel's available capital. He's been running on fumes so long even his debts have debts. For the last couple of months, he's been juggling like a maniac to keep his financial house of cards from collapsing.”

Buck's tone was almost appreciative. “The guy was good. He was milking company funds for all he was worth—hell, he even finagled his house staff onto the corporate payroll. But sooner or later, it was all going to come out. He needed a decent hit to help unload Mirage onto someone else and get his money back, or he needed an infusion of capital to finance some other scam.”

“If he needed a hit so quickly, why was he extending the shoot on
Counterfeit
instead of pushing to wrap it up ASAP?” Liza paused for a moment, then asked, “Unless the extension was in itself a way to help him get his hands on some capital?”

“I don't think your local mayor could pay him enough to make the guy happy, not even to get him out of town,” Foreman said.

“No, of course not. That wasn't what I was thinking. What if it gave Chissel a shot at gaining access to Derrick Robbins's offshore account?” Liza remembered the notion that had niggled her on the flight north—in between fierce moments fighting nausea and fearing for her life. “Since she's started work on
Counterfeit
, Jenny has had too much on her plate even to get down to Santa Barbara.”

Jenny, who had been listening intently, nodded vigorously and said, “It's been crazy.”

“Keeping her too busy on the set to even breathe left lots of time for Chissel and company to make a leisurely search of the house,” Liza went on. “They didn't want silver or electronics. They didn't even take the jewelry. I think they were trying to find Derrick's Cayman account number and the password.”

“I'm not ready to bet on that yet,” Buck said, “but it was a pretty thorough search, if it went as far as moving that big monster of a grandfather clock,” Buck said. “If Chissel found it, Jenny is screwed out of her uncle's legacy to her. No way to track numbered accounts without the appropriate number to access them.”

But how to get the number?
Liza wondered. The scenario of an avenging Guy Morton sweating information out of a thieving Chissel flashed through Liza's head, only to be blotted out by an even brighter flash.

“I don't think so,” Liza said confidently. “I don't think Chissel found that number when he searched the house. The movie kept dragging on. The sabotage on the set didn't stop.”

“I think you lost me,” Buck told her.

“Chissel would have wrapped the instant he had the money in hand. He might have been looking, but nothing's turned up yet,” Liza said. “Think of the film set…First, they tried slowing down the pace of work. I bet that's why the sabotage started. Then they got rid of the director who was helming the film. They had to, since Terence Hamblyn was getting finished ahead of schedule. So they bring in Lloyd Olbrich, someone guaranteed to start almost from scratch so he can reshape the film in his own image. But Olbrich must know how fragile things are at Mirage. He's been pushing like mad to get filming done. Maybe he had to be slowed down, too. So, more sabotage. And more serious sabotage.”

“You think Chissel was capable of sabotaging his own movie?” Buck demanded.

“Sure. He had a rep as the kind of guy who'd sell his own family for a buck. I think Chissel was a gambler—all these big-money guys are. He was willing to bet on delaying his desperately needed film if it meant a cash payday to keep things going.” Liza paused for a moment. “But I don't think he was doing the sabotage—or the searching. Ollie might be a chiseler, but he wouldn't want to get his hands dirty. He used a tool—and I think that tool was named Peter Hake.”

“Chissel's arm-twister and bagman,” Buck said.

“A guy with all the expertise not only to screw things up around the movie set, but also to break into the Robbins house and find a clue that would enable Chissel to loot Jenny's inheritance before she even knew she had it.” As Liza made her case, the logic seemed stronger and stronger.

“But then Chissel died,” Buck pointed out, “and if I remember what you were saying to me, the sabotage still went on. Didn't you nearly have a floating pier overturn on you the other day, post-Chissel?”