Girls' undergarments bloomed like lacy, pastel mushrooms on the furniture and floor. There was a dusting of white powder on most of the tabletops.
' 'Scuse the mess,' Dunbar mumbled as he led me upstairs to the large master suite.
The bedroom looked like a bomb had gone off in a men's store.
I followed him over to a table littered with a ton of debris. He swept it off onto the floor with his hand and there, serving as an elaborate base for a glass-topped coffee table, was a. 50 caliber, water-cooled, antique Browning Model 1809 machine gun from World War I. It was sitting on a low tripod stand.
'Does it even work?' I asked.
It looked like an art piece, a decorative table base for gun freaks or Rambo fans. It was undoubtedly welded in place and missing the firing pin. I was starting to fantasize about smacking this little chump.
'I don't know,' he whined. 'How should I know? Can I go now?'
'Do you know Scott Berman?' I asked.
'The producer?'
'No, the butterfly collector.'
I was losing it.
'I think my dad knows him. He's been here at parties and stuff. I don't pay much attention to shit like that. I got my own life.'
'What do you pay attention to?'
'The color of Lindsay's or Paris's undies or the lack thereof.' He giggled. Then he touched the bum marks on his T-shirt. 'Man, that taze was brutal. My nipples are still stinging.'
'Detective Scully, is it really necessary to do this tonight?' Stender Sheedy Jr. interjected.
'Yes it is.' I turned to Dunbar. 'When was the last time you went to your house on Skyline Drive?'
'I don't go up there. I told you, it's a fucking investment. It's in my trust.'
'The Dorothy White Foundation?'
'Yes.'
'Who is Dorothy White?'
'My mother. It's her maiden name. They named my dumbass trust after her for some fucked-up reason nobody can ever quite explain.' 'And you never go up to 3151 Skyline?'
'It's an investment,' he almost shrieked. 'I don't fuck with that shit. I have people who do that for me.' He was becoming very agitated.
Then, apropos of absolutely nothing, he said, 'It's fucking Christmas, dude. You know, Christmas?'
'How much cocaine do you do?'
'I'm taking the fifth on that one, buddy,' he sneered angrily.
Now Stender Sheedy, sensing my displeasure and his client's jeopardy, stepped forward. 'Brooks wants to cooperate, Detective, it's just hard when he has fifty guests.'
I turned to Brooks. 'Where were you between ten and ten fifteen tonight?'
'He was here,' Stender said.
'Yeah,' Brooks agreed. 'I was right here, asshole.'
'The party started at nine thirty,' Stender said. 'He's got fifty witnesses. He doesn't know anything.'
Which had to be the understatement of this entire holiday season.
'Okay. Here's the deal, Mr. Sheedy. You have your client in my office tomorrow morning at nine A. M. Have him cleaned up and sober. Otherwise, I'm going to issue a warrant for his arrest as a material witness.'
I already knew that this stoned pudgeball wasn't involved in my triple murder, but I had some more questions that I needed to ask him on background. As it was, he was so loaded I'd have to do all of this again anyway, because a statement taken while a witness is under the influence of a powerful drug wouldn't hold up in court. I took out two business cards and handed one to Brooks, the other to Sheedy.
'Where do they make these up, Kinko's?' Brooks said, frowning at the department-issued card.
'I'll find my partner and get out of here,' I told Sheedy. 'Have him there on time tomorrow.'
'He'll be there,' Stender promised.
I walked back to the main house and was just heading into the living room when I saw the girl in the green sequined mini come out of the powder room.
'Excuse me, miss. Did my friend just give you his business card?'
'Huh?'
It was a sharp crowd.
'My friend, the handsome African-American in the rust-colored suit. I think he gave you the wrong card. We just got new ones.'
She pawed into her purse, her expressive brow furrowed in concentration. She dug through bags of powder, pills, and beauty aids before finding the card and pulling it out.
I looked at it. An expensive gold-embossed number, definitely not from Kinko's. Nifty little picture of a golf flag in the top right corner. Underneath it said:
HOLE IN ONE PRODUCTIONS
SUMNER HITCHENS
PRODUCER AND CEO
Chapter 9
I told Sumner what I'd learned from Brooks and Stender Sheedy in the carriage house as we headed across town to meet with Alexa. Once I was finished, I also gave him a good sanding down over his professional demeanor and investigative methods.
'You were down there passing out your little production company cards to a room full of coked-up agents and D-girls while you were supposed to be working this case with me. I'm trying to be patient, but this shit's gotta stop or I'm gonna make a serious move on you.'
'I was on the job, Scully. There's more than one way to prepare Courgettes Provencale.'
'Please stop with the cooking metaphors.'
'I was in the zone, brother. While you're up in the carriage house with Lord Fauntleroy, I had those freaks in my crosshairs working ground zero, collecting facts.'
'If you got something, lets hear it,' I said, wondering if maybe I'd jumped too fast.
'I always get something, my man,' he shot back.
'Make it great, my man!'
'Brooks Dunbar is broke,' Hitchens began. 'What our moonlighting sergeant from Ameritech told us is true. His trust is all locked up. As a result he's a thief. He waits 'til his friends are stoned or passed out then steals credit cards out of their wallets and runs up huge tabs. I learned from one guy that some Russian oligarch's kid got hit for almost two hundred grand on his black AmEx a month ago.
'When his victims start hiring bent noses and talking about his kneecaps, young Brooks takes them to expensive Melrose stores like Louis Vuitton, Fred Segal, and especially this place called Cruel Hearts which is right down from the Ivy. It specializes in expensive S and M leather and jewelry. He got his mother to set him up accounts at these places. To keep his friends from killing him, he buys time by letting them charge expensive stuff on his mother's accounts there. His mother, by the way, is Dorothy White. They named Brooks's trust in her maiden name.' I had that last part, but little else.
'Among other things, this kid also owns Eagle's Nest Productions,' Hitch continued.
'You shitting me? Wasn't that a huge privately owned TV studio back in the eighties? They used to have half a dozen shows on the air. I haven't heard anything about them for almost twenty years. It explains, I guess, why Stender Sheedy is his lawyer.'
'Under Brooks Dunbar's astute guidance, Eagle's Nest now only makes the occasional Paris Hilton Look, Pa, No Bra video. The last one didn't make back its production costs so Stender probably doesn't have to work too hard on that account.
'His art-dealing business consists mostly of stealing a few of his dad s paintings out of the guesthouse so his
