Some other day, Justine would have enjoyed the house tour of the first-class chef’s kitchen, the loggia and pool, the screening room, the master bedroom that looked like a set from a James Bond film and was equipped with more high-def, high-tech gizmos than the Situation Room at the White House.
Justine expected a tidy closet in the master suite, but this one was a mess. Expensive clothes were hung haphazardly and draped over hooks. Heaps of shoes were under the racks, all types, in no particular order.
While Rick stood in the bedroom doorway, Justine used gloved hands to pick through the shoes. She was looking for a rubberlike sole that could match the three inches of usable shoe print Sci had found next to the tire tread.
Justine paused, trying to sort the shoes in her mind before diving in, and then she saw what she was looking for, a pair of ASICS GEL-Kayanos, the current trend in men’s conspicuous casual footwear.
She plucked the left shoe off the heap and turned it over. She called to Rick, and when he came to the closet, she showed him the bottom of the shoe.
“The good thing about transfer is it works both ways. The shoe makes an impression on the soil. And the soil-see it?”
“I see a dark crumb of something.”
“I see a happy day for Dr. Sci.”
Justine sealed the shoe in an evidence bag, starting as she saw that the housekeeper was now standing behind Rick at the entrance to the closet.
“You get me in trouble,” she said.
“No, no,” said Rick, using his very patient, even fatherly voice. “You don’t tell anyone that we were here. This is a top-secret investigation, covered by the California Seal of Silence. Understand?”
They were leaving North Bentley Avenue when Justine’s phone rang. It was Nora.
“You have something?” Justine asked. She put Nora on speaker for Rick’s benefit.
“We’ve got the Porsche at six stoplights from two to two-thirty this morning, traveling from Bel Air to Topanga Canyon. He was driving fast and leaning over the wheel, so we got close-ups of his mug.”
“This is good, Nora. And I think we have a cherry on top for you.”
CHAPTER 96
I was dressed in my best, had on the nice aftershave Justine had given me, and was driving the Lambo at a pretty good clip from the office toward Beverly Hills. Justine was sitting beside me and urging me to go faster.
She was edgy, and she was talking to me like I was hired by the hour.
I got onto the 110. Although it was largely ignored, the posted speed limit was fifty-five. I nudged the accelerator until I was going a shade over sixty, and still Justine was applying the whip.
“If we get pulled over,” she said, “don’t worry. I’ve got a friend in the LAPD.”
“I’m the one who’s out on bail, Justine. Bail can be revoked. Let’s not push my luck, all right?”
Justine said, “Uh-huh,” looked at her watch, then stared through the windshield. I knew she wasn’t seeing anything on the freeway. She was inside her head, thinking back, projecting forward.
“Justine. Hello. It’s me. Jack. I’m right here.”
“I’m running it all through my mind again,” she said, her voice heavy with exasperation.
“Okay.”
“Danny could have finished the film, but he’s so messed up, it would have been a joke. It would have been panned. And a bomb at the box office meant certain bankruptcy.”
“Piper’s death killed the film.”
“Yeah. Who would’ve guessed that could be a good thing?”
I left Justine to her thoughts, dwelling on other fights we’d had, how I hated them, how much I wanted things to be all right with us. Christ, I missed her. I wished she missed me.
After a one-minute mile on the freeway I got off and took a route through the streets of Beverly Hills that saved us a couple of minutes, finally taking a right onto North Crescent Drive, which brought us to the entrance of the famous pink-stucco, five-star Beverly Hills Hotel.
As I handed my keys to the valet, Justine called to Nora Cronin, who was getting out of her own car. Unmarked police cars pulled up to the hotel entrance, and I heard Nora telling the valets to leave the cop cars right where they were.
There was a poster on an easel near the front door; a life-sized photo of Piper Winnick, draped in black crepe, the dates of her birth and death beneath her young and angelically beautiful face.
Justine and Nora spoke briefly under the porte cochere, then Justine broke away from Nora and said to me, “We’re late, Jack. But not too late.”
I gave her the crook of my arm and together we walked up the red carpet that ran between pairs of square columns and up three steps. Still on the carpet, we entered the dazzling hotel.
CHAPTER 97
Justine tried to see everything at once as she entered the Crystal Ballroom.
It was a sumptuous place, a grande dame of a room; round, pale, decorated in an art deco style, looking much as it had when the hotel was built in 1931.
Justine did a visual check of the exits, the walls of silk-draped windows, the tall French doors leading out to the Crystal Garden. And she checked out the tables under the magnificent chandelier.
There were celebrities at every place: movie stars both young and old, fashion designers, and talk show hosts. Piper’s parents were near the stage, and Danny’s people were at a table in the center of the room. Larry Schuster was there, and Alan Barstow, as well as Danny’s entourage and their dates and wives.
If she and Nora didn’t screw this up, Danny Whitman could be out of jail tonight.
Across the room was a large stage, the wall behind it forming a backdrop for a Piper Winnick slide show. Still shots from Piper’s films and endearing candid photos from her childhood flashed by. Four-foot-tall vases of white roses flanked the stage, and there were candles everywhere.
Mervin Koulos stood behind the podium at center stage.
He looked impressive today: a six-foot-tall, perfectly groomed Hollywood producer of a shattered picture with an untraditional, non-Hollywood ending.
One of his stars was dead. The other star was in jail. And he’d figured that this disaster would be his salvation.
Justine walked along the left-hand wall toward the steps to the stage. Nora Cronin advanced on the stage from the other side of the room.
Meanwhile, Merv Koulos was telling a story about Piper, and he was having a hard time getting his words out.
He said, “I’ll never forget when Piper was cast in the role of Gia in Shades of Green. She said to me, ‘Merv, it’s been a lifelong dream of mine to work with Danny Whitman.’
“Lifelong dream,” he choked, his voice cracking. “Imagine that. She was just sixteen.”
Justine and Nora had both reached the stage, but Koulos saw only Justine, who had walked right up to the podium and touched his arm.
Koulos started. He looked bewildered.
He put his hand over the microphone and said, “Dr. Smith. What is this?”
Justine said, “Merv, I want you to say this into the mic. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been called away. It’s an emergency.’”
Koulos kept his hand over the mic and whispered, “Whatever the hell you think you’re doing, it can wait. If you didn’t notice, I’m giving a eulogy.”
“Merv. Look to your left. See that woman in the blue blazer, waggling her fingers at you? That’s Lieutenant
