Parker gave her a look. “Eddie Davis is walking along the street one night, decides he wants to steal a ride, and the car he rips off just happens to be a Town Car owned by Crowne Enterprises. What are the odds of that?”
Kelly frowned. “Well, if you put it that way . . .”
“You’ve been on this story since day one,” Parker said. “If you had to pick a suspect other than Rob Cole, who would it be?”
She thought about it for a moment as she took her turn to glance around for spies. “Well, there’s darling Caroline, who discovered her mother’s body. Her relationship with Rob was certainly not father-daughter. They palled around like they were schoolmates. Of course, Robbie arrested development at about seventeen, so it probably seemed normal to him.
“And then there’s Phillip, Tricia’s brother. I suppose living in the shadow of St. Tricia had to get old. She was the apple of their father’s eye, and Phillip . . . has always just sort of been there in the background.
“He had dinner with Tricia at Patina the night she was killed. A roomful of people saw them there, apparently having a serious discussion. He says she talked about divorcing Cole, that she was going to call a lawyer the following week. She hadn’t spoken to anyone else about it, so we’ve only got Phillip’s say-so.”
She paused and looked away and made a face as if she was trying to decide whether or not to share something with him.
“You might as well tell me,” Parker said. “I know there’s something more in that brain of yours. I don’t want to have to resort to torture.”
“What kind of torture?” she asked, with a sultry look.
“The bad kind.”
She sighed and said, “Okay. I heard a whisper once, back at the start of this mess, that Tricia had accused Phillip of skimming off one of the charities.”
“Who told you?”
“It was a cousin of a woman whose husband’s sister’s uncle-in-law’s housekeeper’s daughter used to work at the Crowne Trust office. One of those deals. I dug on that story like a badger, but I never could substantiate it. Phillip has an alibi for the time of the murder, but if he hired it out . . .”
“He could have paid Davis with a Town Car,” Parker speculated. “Then had to account for the missing fleet car and claimed it must have been stolen.”
“But you’re forgetting something here, Kev,” Andi said.
“Which is what?”
“Rob Cole did it. He was there, in the house, passed-out drunk, when Tricia’s body was discovered. He has no alibi. He’s well-known for having an ugly temper. If Tricia wanted rid of him, then he would certainly have motive to want to be rid of her.”
The first limo in line started its engine and rolled slowly forward, one of the motorcycle cops positioned in front of it, lights flashing.
“They must be coming out,” Kelly said.
She started back toward the courthouse at a fast walk, which quickly broke into a trot. Parker went after her, his kneecap throbbing as he started to jog.
The media area was buzzing with a swarm of activity and excitement. Light stands moving, cables dragging, directions being shouted in English, Spanish, and Japanese.
Cole ironically had a big cult following in Japan, despite the fact that footage of a drunken Rob Cole cursing people of different ethnic persuasions—including the Japanese—while being escorted from a West Hollywood club aired regularly on news programs the world over.
Andi darted between and around people, her size an asset until she reached the last few impenetrable rows—the on-air talent for the networks and the local news stations. Parker followed her, holding up his ID and speaking in a serious, authoritative LAPD voice, telling people to step aside. He found Kelly because her head suddenly popped up between a pair of broad-shouldered men, then disappeared again. She was hopping up and down, trying to get a view of the courthouse main entrance.
She turned to Parker. “Bend over.”
“What?”
“Bend over! I want to get up on your shoulders.”
“What if I don’t want you there?”
“Stop being such a baby, Parker. Hurry up.”
He hoisted her up just before the doors opened and the first of the procession emerged: Norman Crowne and his entourage of attorneys and assistants and bodyguards.
Crowne had appeared regularly at the courthouse during the myriad pretrial hearings. Even while the voir dire was ongoing, and no one from his party was allowed into the courtroom, Norman Crowne had come to the courthouse as a show of support for his beloved daughter.
Parker had seen him in television interviews—a dignified, quiet man whose grief was almost palpable. It was a wrenching experience to watch him as he answered questions and spoke about Tricia. None of the emotion was forced or staged or disingenuous. It was raw, and he was clearly a very private man, uncomfortable trying to keep a too-small cloak of pride pulled over the worst of wounds.
It simply wasn’t possible to imagine him having any connection to someone like Eddie Davis or needing to pay blackmail to a sleaze like Lenny Lowell.
On his arm: the granddaughter, Caroline, in a prim little suit with a jacket tailored to minimize the roundness of her figure. Parker knew enough about human psychology to know the idea of Caroline falling for her stepfather was not as far-fetched as it may have seemed on its face.
Caroline’s biological father, by all accounts an abusive bastard, had bowed out of her life early on, leaving her with a void where a parent should have been, and a screwed-up idea of what made a good relationship. Then during Caroline’s adolescence, when girls are struggling with hormones and budding ideas of their own sexuality, Rob Cole had come riding in to save poor Tricia from her loneliness.
He had looked past the mousiness, the awkwardly shy personality, straight to the billions of dollars behind her. But he had been a convincing Prince Charming, and everyone had loved him for it. Life was a fairy tale.
It wasn’t hard to imagine that Caroline had bought into that fairy tale herself, or that she had developed a serious crush on her stepdaddy. He had been, after all, a heartthrob at the time.
Psychologists claim girls are always in competition with their mothers for the attentions of dear old Dad. And when dear old dad turned out to be a weak, narcissistic, amoral, borderline personality, there was a recipe for trouble.
A couple of steps behind Caroline and her grandfather walked Norman Crowne’s son, Phillip. The runt of the litter. Where the old man was considered slight of build, the son had more of a scrawny quality, thin and pale with thin, pale hair.
He was a VP of Crowne Enterprises, in charge of counting paper clips, or something to that effect. Norman was still the man in command, the man with his name in the papers. Perhaps that was why Phillip was so pale—he had spent his entire life standing in his father’s shadow.
Tricia Crowne’s brother had expressed more anger than pure grief at his sister’s murder. He was the one who spoke of revenge more than justice. The idea that Tricia had been murdered morally offended him. The idea that Rob Cole had killed her offended him even more. Seeing Cole for what he was, Phillip Crowne had never warmed up to Cole as Tricia’s husband. He loathed Cole the defendant.
It was difficult to imagine any of the Crownes even knowing of a person like Eddie Davis.
Parker watched the pack of them descend the steps. Two uniformed sheriff’s deputies preceded them to the waiting car.
They weren’t all in the limo before the crowd’s attention swung back to the courthouse. The Crownes and their opinions and emotions were instantly old news. Rob Cole and his cadre had emerged.
Cole’s attorney: Martin Gorman, a big guy with red hair and a kind of Popeye-like expression. He towered over
