Murder Take Two (34 page)

“Who was driving?”

Stephanie hesitated.

Susan let her struggle with it.

“I'm sure he just didn't realize how—” She let that trail off, not even believing it herself. “Anyway, when he saw me, he jumped on the brakes, they screamed, and the car fishtailed all over the place.”

“Who was it?”

“Kevin,” she said after another struggle. “Then he kind of got control and drove off and I came home.”

Stephanie sighed. “I figured maybe I'd just stay home next time.”

After she let Stephanie go, Susan sent White out to bring in Kevin Murphy.

*   *   *

In the interview room, Kevin slouched in a plastic chair, hands in his pockets. He smelled faintly of horses, having been picked up at the Lockett stables where he'd just finished making his movie debut. He'd pulled on a tank top, tight enough to outline the muscles in his chest. Not nervous, not scared and maintaining his parody of politeness, he looked at her with faint mockery.

“What happened to your eye?” She leaned against the wall, one knee bent.

With fingertips, he touched the fading bruise by his left eye. “I ran into a door.”

“Again? First a nosebleed, now a black eye. Clumsy.”

“Yes, ma'am, I certainly am.”

“On the night Sheri Lloyd was murdered, you were driving your father's car. Tell me again what you did.”

“I got off work and went home to shower. Later I started out to see a friend, and then decided not to.”

“When you got home from work, you had an argument with your father.” She made it a statement, not a question. “He struck you. You took his car. You weren't going to see a friend. Where were you going?”

He raked hair from his eyes. “Just driving.”

“With your father's permission?”

Amusement flickered in his eyes. “Not exactly.”

She sat down across from him. He drew back and hung an elbow over the chair.

She leaned forward. “He hit you, you got angry and drove away in his car. Weren't you afraid he'd report it stolen? Your emotions were so intense you nearly killed a girl on a bicycle.”

“I never got near her.”

Due to his young and extraordinary reflexes. “What were you trying to do?”

“See how fast I could take the curve.”

“The girl says you weren't trying to make the curve, you were coming head-on.”

“She's mistaken.”

The kid had been going to kill himself. Susan was at a loss about what to do.

She looked at him. “He would have wept,” she said softly. “And everybody would have believed him.”

She waited, then went back to it. “You drove around, picked up Raina Yancy and her dog, got blood on the steering wheel and the gearshift.” Osey'd also found blood on the door handle and the driver's seat. The shirt Kevin had worn was splattered down the front and there'd been blood on Raina's white skirt—even though it had been washed—as well as on Kevin's handkerchief. It was all his blood. At least, it was all the same type as his. It wasn't Raina Yancy's type and it wasn't Sheri Lloyd's.

He looked at her, no squirming, no blustering. A bright young man with looks, artistic talent, athletic ability.

“You're free to go,” she said.

He stood, pushed the chair back up to the table, and walked out.

There might have been time for him to follow Sheri Lloyd to her room and stab her, then go home, get smacked around by his father, and drive off. Except. Except. Why? Sheri might have been snooty to him; she was snooty to everybody she felt beneath her.

And the stuntwoman? A mistake, an attempt at Laura Edwards. Why would he want to kill Ms. Edwards? Well now, let's see here. Perhaps Laura Edwards killed the stuntwoman and Kevin killed Sheri Lloyd. And the stalker stalked.

Sure.

Sitting at her desk, she let her mind drift, coaxing thoughts from the murk on the bottom to float up. She wasn't one fact closer to a solution. One person dead, perhaps by mistaken identity. Another stabbed. Nothing mistaken about that. A stalker who confessed to both deaths. She shuffled papers until she found the autopsy report on Ms. Lloyd. Except for being dead, she was in great shape. Heart and lungs perfect. Kidneys and liver perfect. No diseased tissues anywhere. No traces of drugs beyond a small amount of alcohol in the stomach. The phone rang.

“Yes, Hazel?”

“The mayor is on the line.”

“Tell him I'm not in. I'm not available, unless it's important. In which case I'll be at home watching movies.”

“Excuse me?”

“Keep it to yourself.”

At the video rental place, Susan picked up
When the Rose Blooms
and
Family Style
and
My Sister's Friend,
the movies Raina Yancy had watched on Wednesday. Popcorn? Sure. What's a movie without popcorn. She threw in a box of microwavable popcorn and two Hersheys with almonds.

At home, Perissa, rapidly becoming more cat than kitten, greeted her with loud complaints of neglect and hunger.

“No way,” Susan said. “It's not even two o'clock.”

She zapped the popcorn, stacked pillows on the couch, slid in
Family Style
starring Laura Edwards and Nick Logan, and settled the bowl on her stomach. Katie/Laura goes home for parents' anniversary. Runs into old boyfriend Greg/Nick. Lots of unfinished family business, snappy dialogue, and touching moments of reality, happy ending.

Where the Rose Blooms,
a thriller, also starred Laura Edwards and Nick Logan. Julie/Laura, your normal everyday fabulous beauty, gets threatening messages via her computer. Fast-paced with heart-stopping moments and car chases. Julia/Laura does have long blond hair and somebody does try to stab her. Could this have been the basis for Raina's comment about the woman stabbed?

The third movie had Ms. Edwards but not Nick Logan. Heartwarming with social significance and tear-jerking scenes. Just as it came to an end, the kitten leaped on her stomach, knocking over the bowl and sending popcorn flying. Susan yelled, the cat got frightened, the remote got lost, and popcorn got all over the carpet.

On hands and knees, Susan gathered kernels and flung them in the bowl. Perissa, thinking this great fun, scooped them out and batted them across the floor.

“That's it, cat. You're an orphan.”

The credits were rolling before Susan rescued the remote from under the couch. She watched the names scroll by and told the cat. “Oh, my. Art director.”

Perissa approached her sideways, back arched.

“Just kidding,” Susan said.

29

Justin Wesley Kiddering the Third. The only person Susan knew down there in Los Angeles living shoulder to shoulder, or maybe acre to acre, with the rich and famous. It had been over ten years since they'd spoken, and in fact, it was entirely possible he wouldn't want to talk with her now.

His father, Justin Wesley Kiddering the Second, was the owner of everything that made money, shipping, land, fishing, stocks. His mother, in pearls and silk blouses, always had her picture in the paper on behalf of every charitable organization worth its name.

The Kidderings lived several blocks up in class, status, and size of residence from Susan's family. He was a rich kid whose father gave him everything the wealthy are entitled to by birthright. Susan was the one who had first started calling him Just Kidding. They were buddies from the time they were eleven. He was tall, blond, and square-jawed, as befitted the heir to the throne.

In high school English class, she wrote his papers. Kiddering the Second wanted him to go to Brown, but he held out for UC Berkeley to be with her.

He went to law school because she did and he didn't have any burning desire to study something else. It wasn't as though he had to earn a living. They studied together, shared notes, and divided topics for research. They hung out in coffee shops that stayed open late, impressing each other with their intelligence, their grasp of humankind, and their free-thinking ability to get to the heart of the problem.

The Big Plan was to open a law firm together and take on causes, raise banners for the underdog and downtrodden. Even at their most committed, she thought they were only playing a fantasy. Shortly before graduation, they had a fight. She told him she was chucking it all to be a cop. A shouting fight followed; he stomped off. She felt he was secretly relieved; he wasn't cut out to take care of the poor. That was the last time she saw him. She signed on with the San Francisco police force and he took his law degree down to southern California and made his name recognized in the entertainment industry.

It was 7:30 here, that meant 5:30 in California. Possibly still in his office. She couldn't believe how shaky her hand was when she picked up the phone. Information gave her an office listing. That number gave her a secretary with a British accent who said Mr. Kiddering was not available, she would be pleased to take a message.

“I'm a police officer investigating a homicide. Tell him I'd greatly appreciate a few moments of his time.”

“That's a new approach,” she said in her bored, high-toned voice. “I'll pass your message to him.”

Even after all these years, Susan recognized his voice with no trouble. “This is Susan Wren,” she said.

“Yes?” His voice was cool, approaching Siberian borders. She didn't know if it was because he didn't recognize her or because he did. Oh, hell, why did she use that name? Of course, he didn't recognize it.

Nervously, she cleared her throat. “Susan Donovan.”

There was dead silence on the other end of the line. Maybe he didn't want to talk to her, maybe he was still angry.

“The thud you heard,” he said, “was my mouth dropping. This is the time for some devastatingly clever remark, but damned if I can think of one. Damned if I can think, actually. How long has it been?”

“Ten years.”

“Didn't I stomp out saying something embarrassing like you'll regret this?”

“Something like that.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Jesus. Susan. Could you call back tomorrow? Give me time to work up some great lines?”

“Same old Just. Too much class to ask right out, What the hell do you want? You think I called for something deplorable like Mel Gibson's autograph.”

He laughed. “You would never be so mundane.”

There was another silence.

“To get this conversation rolling, fill me in on the last ten years.” He sounded so Hollywood, she would have laughed, except she was afraid it might sound too high-pitched. “Aw, come on,” he urged. “To make it easier, pretend like you're giving me a pitch for a new sitcom.”

“Well, the night after graduation—”

“Not scene by scene. Just give me the story line.”

“I thought you should see motivation to get the essence—”

“Nobody in the Industry talks about essence. We deal strictly in T and A or violence. You got married?”

“You connect violence with marriage?”

“Ex-wife number one did. But not till we got into the divorce.”

“How many wives have there been?”

“Only two. The second was very civilized about the divorce.”

“Children?”

“Let me think. Yeah. Two, I believe, the first time and one the next time. Does that make three? With a little more thought I could give you their ages. It gets confusing because the ex-wives came with their own. When you jumble them together, you have a hard time remembering which ones are which. You said you were married.”

“Yes.”

“He died?” Just asked softly.

“How did you know?”

“I still know you. You froze when I asked about marriage. I'm sorry.”

“Thank you. Actually, I called for a reason.”

He gave a theatrical sigh. “Not just to talk over old times? Are you still one of those”—he lowered his voice and spoke like a broadcaster—“men and women in law enforcement.”

“I'm the chief of police.”

“No shit? Congratulations. That's terrific. Not San Francisco, or I would have heard.”

“Hampstead, Kansas.”

“Where?”

She laughed, then told him about
Lethal Promise
being filmed in Hampstead. “I called for information: fact, fiction, conjecture, and gossip. Do you know the director Hayden Fifer?”

“Everybody knows who he is, of course.”

“Of course.”

He laughed. “Was that a nasty crack?”

“No. Well, maybe a small one.” It was difficult talking with a long-ago lover and she suddenly had more sympathy for Parkhurst. You fell right back into the old patterns and then you remembered. What a mess. She shouldn't have called. “Do you know anything about this movie?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I was involved at the beginning on behalf of some of the moneylenders. Big budget film that keeps getting more and more over the huge budget it started with. A not-very-original script. A thriller–love story about a beautiful sophisticated woman who came from farming stock. Her father, the farmer who has some poetic affinity for the wonderfulness of the land and growing things on it, is killed. Woman finds out an evil agribusiness is destroying local flora and fauna by whatever destroys these things—unsafe and unlawful pesticides probably. Evil agribusiness types have to kill her too. She goes to local law enforcement who say she's nuts. Except for one guy who doesn't really believe her, but falls in love with her. She gets hunted down, chased, shot at, a gratuitous car chase or two. Somewhere she realizes the land, or maybe it's the prairie—I forget—is a sacred trust and must be preserved. The bad guys are about to win. The local cop risks life, limb, and career to save her. End on a romancy shot which suggests happily ever after.”

“Romantic walks through the wheat fields?”

“It's probably in there somewhere. I only hit the high spots. Or maybe it's horseback rides through the meadows.”