Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun Read online

  "Talbot's success with Marathon makes good PR—silverback-CEO-still-has-what-it-takes kind of rhetoric—but it's Robert Isaacs, the motion picture division's president, who's the real brains behind Marathon's resurrection. He's working barter deals with Hollywood's A-list, getting them everything from desert islands to permanent police protection in exchange for signing with Marathon." Barrett swallowed her pronouns as she tried to talk and eat simultaneously.

  "Not talking about stuff like 'keep the wardrobe.' Isaacs got Lola Landon's kid—straight-F moron—into the best prep school in New England. Built the school a new gymnasium in exchange for one scholarship per year. Guess who gets the scholarship? The cost of the gym was less than the cash Premiere Studios offered Lola for a three-picture deal. She chose Marathon over the cash. Isaacs tapped into the fact that, while Lola's a big star, she's also a mother. Getting the best for her son is what she wanted and what Marathon gave her. It's all about delivering that one thing a person wants more than anything in the world. Talbot was so happy he gave Isaacs a corner office the size of the Hollywood Bowl."

  "And you?"

  "I'm his new executive vice president of talent acquisition worldwide."

  "Congratulations! And what do you do?"

  "Whatever needs doing. I wrangle the big talent and keep them happy. I've delivered a birthday yacht to a mooring in Malibu for a big producer, kept drug charges off the record of a prominent director, smuggled prostitutes into the bungalow of a well-known actor every night of the shoot without his wife's knowledge."

  "So you've taken a job as a studio pimp?" I asked.

  My remark seemed to curb her appetite as she put her fork down, placed her hands against the edge of the table, and pushed herself back slightly in the chair, her gold-embossed cuff links winking at me from under her designer jacket. Barrett had always looked like an ad for a gentlemen's quarterly, but the cuff links looked more expensive than I remembered.

  "You know, if I disappeared tomorrow, no one would notice for days." She spoke cautiously, as if she were working up to something. "I don't have anyone..."

  "Because you have everyone." I realized it was an uncalled-for jab.

  "You're smart, Teague. That's what I've always liked about you." She paused to smile at me.

  "Not smart enough to stay the hell away from you."

  She waved me off, indicating that what she had to say was more important than rehashing old hurts.

  "Suppose you knew that a studio was sending a messenger around to its top producer with, let's say, a kilo of coke and ..."

  "Did that happen?" I asked, and she ignored my question.

  "...no one at the studio reports it, because if the agents, directors, and stars are happy, better deals get made. But if you knew it was happening, would you.. .do anything, say anything?"

  "Depends on if they're going to knock me off," I replied flippantly, trying to chalk this increasingly worrisome conversation up to Barrett's predilection for good plot.

  "Suppose your boss calls you in the middle of the night to—let's just say for discussion's sake—go help out a big superstar, and you get there, and there's a body."

  "A dead body?" I put my fork down and gave Barrett my full attention. It was evident from her tone that this wasn't just for discussion's sake.

  "Almost dead, but you do CPR on the body and you get him breathing."

  Barrett was leaning over the table now, whispering, "And you realize this was a fucking big near miss and that you could just as easily have been on a murder scene."

  "You gotta tell the police right away. Listen to me"—I found myself leaning in—"No job is worth this shit. You've got to report it."

  "I have reported it, to someone I trust on the Marathon board. But now I'm convinced the phone was tapped. These are big players, Teague. You don't think they can muzzle the police? They can muzzle anybody!"

  "Who's involved in this?"

  "You don't want to know that. I don't even know. To know is to be in some real fuckin' danger."

  A dark, muscular Latin man leaning against the wall as if he were waiting for someone suddenly approached our table. His head was strangely shaped, wide and round at the cheeks, narrow and flat at the top with a dark blemish by his left eye.

  "Barrett Silvers?" The thick Latin accent sliced through Barrett's sentence.

  When Barrett nodded, the man locked eyes with her, laid his fist on the table next to her hand, and deposited a one-by-two-inch stone with petroglyphs on it. Barrett apparently recognized the object and began shaking uncontrollably. The man reached over to retrieve the stone, but Barrett quickly covered it with the palm of her hand, knocking over a coffee cup and sending a wave of cappuccino across the layers of pink and white tablecloths. The man grabbed Barrett forcefully by the shirtfront and pulled her up from her seat, giving her a rough kiss on the side of her face. I jumped up from my chair, realizing she was in danger.

  When he let go, Barrett teetered back and forth on her heels for a moment, her face paralyzed in an expression of surprise. I grabbed her by both arms, trying to steady her. Her hand banged awkwardly against my jacket as her mouth opened grotesquely in an attempt to tell me something, but only moans came out. She sagged to the floor like a rag doll, excrement seeping down her pant leg, her eyes frozen open like a carp's in a fish case. The dark man had disappeared, and I felt my insides turning to putty. My hands shaking, I reflexively rolled Barrett onto her side so vomit wouldn't get into her lungs and shouted for someone to call 911, thinking all the while that it was too late to save her. A young male waiter hurried over, knelt down beside her, and began CPR. Despite being grief stricken, I could still appreciate the irony of Barrett Silvers leaving this world with her lips on a man.

  Chapter Two

  The paramedics were there in only minutes. They took Barrett by ambulance to Cedars Sinai a few blocks from the restaurant. I followed in my car.

  Twenty minutes later, still shaken, I scurried through the ER and located a nurse who told me Barrett was alive. If she could be stabilized, they would take her to intensive care. No visitors allowed. I expressed shock that Barrett could even be breathing at this point.

  "Your friend's lucky the paramedics got oxygen on her right away. That's probably what saved her," the nurse said.

  "What could cause something like that?" I asked.

  "An overdose of muscle relaxants, a severe allergic reaction. Could be a lot of things," she said before disappearing in a blur of white.

  A patient's advocate approached me, a young woman trained to deal with the confused and the frightened. She introduced herself, patted me on the arm reassuringly, and said she had Barrett's notebook and would notify her family and the studio. Barrett had been assimilated into the great medical machine, and there was nothing for me to do now but go home.

  Dazed and upset, I stopped by the ladies' room to wash up. What will happen to Barrett? I thought sorrowfully. I could not bear the thought of her being less than the beautiful creature she was, and yet, I could not bear the thought of her dying. I was emotionally and physically tied to Barrett in some strange way I couldn't articulate. Did someone try to kill her? Was it the husband of some woman she 'd slept with? Was it a drug deal gone bad? Was it somehow related to her bizarre activities on behalf of the studio?

  A young, sandy-haired cop intercepted me as I left the ladies' room to ask if I was the woman from Orca's. He introduced himself as Detective Curtis and said the ER nurse had pointed me out. He'd spoken with the waitstaff at Orca's, who'd described what they'd seen. He wanted to know from me if Barrett used drugs of any kind, had she complained of feeling ill, did I know the Latin man, and what if anything had been left on the table. Apparently the one-by-two-inch stone wasn't found on or around Barrett. He scribbled notes as he grilled me. I gave him a solid description of the guy and offered to help a police sketch artist with a drawing. He smiled wryly, saying my attacker would be on Social Security before an artist could get around to sketching
him. They were so backlogged at the LAPD that they'd made the decision to do sketches only in murder cases. I told him that Barrett came within seconds of qualifying.

  We exchanged business cards. I told him I'd be leaving for Tulsa in the morning and would be gone for a week but I could be reached if he needed me. It was a futile gesture, since I knew from Detective Curtis's tone that he wasn't going to follow up on this case unless Barrett Silver's body turned up dead in his bathtub.

  I rummaged through my pants pockets for my car keys as I headed out into the bright sunlight and over to the parking garage. As I reached over to unlock the car door, a man came at me from behind a concrete abutment so quickly I had no time to react. With one body slam, he threw me backward against the cold, gray slab, knocking the breath out of me, and then quickly pulled me forward up against his chest, which was as hard as the concrete pressing up against my back. His breath came in snorting sounds through his nose. He was the man who'd delivered the small stone to the restaurant. He leaned in to get his mouth on my neck, and I thought he was going to try to rape me. I tried to break his hold, but he was skilled at grappling and, with only one hand, he managed to lock up my arms. I was beginning to panic and yanked my knee up to get it between our bodies and put some distance between his head and mine.

  His dark hair, worn in a fifties flattop, smelled of old-fashioned styling balm. His puffy jaw was clamped shut. His eyes were a dark brown, accentuated by a spider tattoo at the left corner. This was the ugly face of death.

  Suddenly two college-aged boys rounded the corner of the parking garage headed for their car. I let out a shrill yell for help. They ran toward me, shouting at the man. With his body strength, he could have incapacitated us all, but maiming three people was apparently a messier day than he'd bargained for. He let go of me and took off. Saved by two adolescents in USC sweatshirts. I would forever be a Trojan fan.

  As I sagged to the ground from fear and exhaustion, the boys lifted me up by my arms, asking if I were all right and wanting to call the police. I told them I'd report it and thanked them profusely for their help. They were reluctant to leave me and watched me drive out of the garage, alive but shaken. My hands still trembling, I fumbled for Detective Curtis's card and dialed my cell phone.

  He answered on the second ring. I told him that I'd been attacked in the hospital parking garage by the same man who'd attacked Barrett at the restaurant. He said they'd get a unit over to the hospital immediately and that I should stay out of the area. I told him I wanted to make sure that no one got to Barrett. He said he'd call hospital security and alert them. I hung up, then, fearful the attacker could already be in the hospital, I called hospital security myself, telling the lead on duty that Barrett Silvers's room needed a guard posted. I called the nurses' station as well to warn them that all visitors needed to be screened.

  Exhausted, I sank back into the seat and ran a frame-by-frame of the day back and forth through my mind, trying to piece together a story that made sense. By the time I was halfway over Coldwater Canyon, I knew the Latin guy wasn't trying to rape me, he was trying to kill me in the same way he'd tried to kill Barrett—with his mouth. There was something in his kiss that was lethal. I needed to tell that to the police. I rang Curtis again, but this time got no answer, so I left the information on his voice mail.

  Back home, still worried over Barrett, I began preparing for my trip, promising the nervous Elmo that two days in a car would ultimately be rewarded by limitless eating for both of us. He sighed, rolling his basset eyes farther back into his head and looking nearly suicidal.

  I collapsed onto a floor cushion for a little zazen meditation. My inability to concentrate and center myself was a clear indication that my encounter in the parking garage at Cedars had shaken me more than I wanted to admit. I'd spent a few years studying self-defense techniques, beginning in college and continuing into my brief and ill-fated stint as a police officer: one year and eight months of murders, suicides, wife beatings, and child abuse before I finally had to admit I couldn't take man's inhumanity to man. Today had brought up a lot of "stuff' for me, centered mostly around the disconcerting truth that in a heartbeat one can go from dining on fine linen to being wrapped in it.

  "Life is short, Elmo. I don't want to die before I find that special person, you know?" From his roachlike position on the kitchen floor, Elmo briefly opened one eye just to be polite.

  By nine p.m. I could no longer put off packing. I yanked a navy blazer and a tan jacket out of the closet and hung them in a dress bag, then threw jeans, socks, shirts, and four pair of Ferragamo flats into a suitcase. I'd already packed Elmo's dog food, dishes, leash, his Flagyl for colitis, Benadryl for allergies, Butazolidin for leg pain, and Ascriptin for arthritis. Elmo was proof positive that anyone who lived with me would ultimately end up on drugs.

  I stood in front of the full-length mirror viewing my five foot seven inch frame and sucked in my stomach. The unflattering light seemed to highlight the laugh lines around what were, even I had to admit, not-bad green eyes. I brushed my punked auburn hair straight up. When gravity takes the body south, brush everything north.

  I made the rounds, checking doors and windows and setting the security alarm system. Fully barricaded, I turned on the ten o'clock news. After the sixth murder story, I punched the Off button on the remote control and lay still in the dark.

  This was when I missed living with someone, this time just before sleep when I wanted to discuss what had happened during the day and what would happen tomorrow. Sort of a nocturnal debriefing in the spoon position. That moment in the night when fears and frailties take over was the reason God created coupling. It was why the passengers on Noah's Ark didn't proceed up the plank single file. God didn't create couples merely for procreation, because mankind can too easily circumvent the Divine plan with petri dishes and test tubes. God created couples for that moment between "news and snooze," that moment when there is comfort in an icy bottom up against a warm belly and the sounds of rhythmic breathing in the night. Elmo must have sensed my sadness at being alone because he curled up in the small of my back, and we both went to sleep.

  An hour later I awakened to one long ring of the fax startling my heart nearly out of my chest. Too tired to even turn on the light, I stumbled into the office, where the machine was printing out its message. The metallic chunk-a-chunk of the fax paper spewing out made an eerie sound in the quiet room as the machine printed out the message, Open your front door.

  I froze. There was something about an anonymous fax that was more terrifying than a burglar. This stalker could slide into my home at any time of the day or night on optic fibers, threaten me, and then hide in a tangle of technology. I looked at the fax again. The remainder of the page was blank, the return fax number obliterated.

  I pressed my back against the cool stucco of the living-room wall and tilted a wooden slat on the bay window shutters just enough to catch a glimpse of the porch steps. No one was standing there. Lowering the shutter again, I tried to get control of my nerves. I fumbled around on the desk for Detective Curtis's card and quickly dialed the number he'd left me. It rang ten times and no one answered. There was always the option of dialing 911, but how could a fax telling me to open my door be construed as an emergency, even by me?

  Oh, hell, I'll have to open my door sometime, I thought. If not now, then in the morning. Is there a bomb, a note, a package I can't see from here?

  "Well, shit!" I whispered to Elmo.

  Slipping open my desk drawer, I pulled out my loaded .38 and peered through the slats one more time. Total serenity outside. Forcing myself to move to the front door, I took a deep breath, then pressed down on the latch suddenly and kicked the door open with the sole of my foot, hearing it reverberate against the wall of the house. Elmo launched himself from behind me, through the front door and into the courtyard, baying wildly.

  As the door swung toward me, something flung itself at me from overhead, batting against my face. I jumped back an
d screamed as two large, dead rats dangling from cords dripped blood onto my doorstep. My scream got Elmo's attention. The sight of the rats swaying in the doorway sent him into another round of barks. He stood still, staring at the grotesquely dead animals. I flipped on all the floodlights around the house to illuminate anyone who might still be prowling around. Seeing no one, I located scissors in the hall table and cut the rats down. One had its mouth taped shut with silver duct tape, the other had its throat slit.

  "Silence or Death. What is this, death threats for dummies?" I asked loudly to steady my nerves. Unable to stomach the sight of the hapless animals, I loaded them into a plastic garbage bag and deposited them in the trash can behind the house. Elmo stayed two steps behind me, for which I was grateful. Locating the bacterial soap in the kitchen sink, I scrubbed up to my elbows, certain Lady Macbeth never washed her hands as thoroughly.

  So Spider Eye must have followed me home from the Cedars parking garage. Yet I remembered checking my rearview mirror, and there was no one following me. This was his way of saying I could end up like Barrett if I talked to the police. The fax and the dead rats were both designed just to scare me, because if he'd wanted to kill me, there's a good chance he could have gotten away with it. The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

  At four in the morning, I called Cedars one more time to check on Barrett. The nurse said she could only tell me that Ms. Silvers was "stabilized." But "stabilized" in what form? Is she vegetable stabilized or back-to-normal-soon stabilized? I said a prayer for her before packing the car behind my locked gates, in case someone was watching for an easy target. Target or not, I had to get to Tulsa for my parents' anniversary.

  My attendance record at family gatherings was appalling, even by my own standards. I drove back to Tulsa often. It was just that none of my trips seemed to coincide with life's important moments. I'd managed to miss my brother's wedding because I was in production, my kid sister's graduation because the roads were impassible and the flights were all booked, and all of my parents' anniversaries because the timing was wrong. Like interstitial programming, I seemed to arrive between episodes. My sister would be out of town, unable to attend this particular soiree, so this trip was my concerted effort to be there when it counted, even if some guy tried to knock me off while I was loading the car.