“I’ve had five years to think about—”
She broke off because Booth Stallings came into the living room, followed by Artie Wu. After a quick glance around, Wu asked,
“Durant’s not back yet?”
“Not yet,” Overby said.
“He still at Ione Gamble’s?”
“Far as I know.”
Wu went to the phone, picked it up, looked at Overby and said,
“What’s her number?”
Overby took a three-by-five-inch card from his shirt pocket and ran a forefinger down a list of a dozen or so neatly pointed names. When he came to Ione Gamble’s, he read it off. Without repeating the number, Wu dialed it.
Ione Gamble rolled over, picked up the bedside telephone on the fourth ring and said, “Yes?”
“This is Artie Wu. Is Quincy Durant still there?”
“I’ll see,” she said, covered the mouthpiece with a palm, looked to her left and said, “Artie Wu.”
“Right,” Durant said, rose naked from the bed, went around it, took the phone from Gamble and sat down on the bed, his back to her. She ran a gentle forefinger over the thirty-six crisscrossed scars on his back, wondering how and where he had got them and decided to ask him someday.
Instead of saying hello into the phone, Durant said, “I was just leaving.
“Good,” Wu said. “We have some news.”
“So do I.”
“Then perhaps you might share it with us.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Durant said, hung up the phone, turned to Gamble and kissed her. When the long kiss ended, she said,
“Thanks for all the comfort and solace.”
“Is that what it was?”
“That’s sometimes what sex is between friends.”
“Between good friends anyway.”
Her smile turned into a grin. “I’d say we were pretty good friends by now.”
Thirty-two
At the 26-foot-long, 459-year-old oak refectory table where the late Billy Rice’s guests had once dined, the five current residents of his beach house were gathered around $81.56 worth of Mandarin-style, MSG-free Chinese food that Booth Stallings had ordered from The China Den, a Malibu restaurant-carryout that years ago, according to Overby, had been called The China Diner.
Artie Wu, who had never cared for Chinese food, was the first to finish. He pushed his plate away, lit a cigar and began a report on his and Booth Stallings’s visit to Oxnard. When he described how the black Chevrolet Caprice sedan had tried to run over him and Stallings, Georgia Blue and Durant stopped eating.
And after Wu said, “Booth and I then found Hughes and Pauline Goodison shot dead in their motel bathroom,” Overby, who was enormously fond of Chinese food, put down his chopsticks. Only Booth Stallings continued to eat, using a spoon to scoop up the last of his shrimp with lobster sauce.
Wu answered the quick hard questions that followed and then told of the trip he and Stallings had made to The You Store, where they found nothing. There were more questions, which Wu patiently answered, before he looked around the table and asked, “Okay. Who’s next?”
“Me, I think,” Overby said and gave a nearly verbatim account of his phone call from Oil Drum, whose disguised voice had offered to sell him a videotape of Ione Gamble confessing to the murder of Billy Rice.
After Overby finished, Wu asked, “Your friend Oil Drum said he’d call back tomorrow morning?”
“Eight sharp.”
Durant turned to Wu and said, “What time did you and Booth find the Goodisons?”
“Around four-fifteen, wasn’t it, Booth?”
“Probably a minute or two earlier.”
“Maybe at four-thirteen exactly?” Durant said.
“Maybe,” Stallings said. “Why?”
“Because I’m looking for something extraordinary or peculiar and I’m not finding it. Exactly one hour earlier, at three-thirteen, is when Ione Gamble got a call from Hughes Goodison, offering to sell her
almost exactly the same stuff that Otherguy’s new phone pal, Oil Drum, now wants to sell him.”
“Then you heard the conversation between Gamble and Goodison?”
Wu said.
“On her extension.”
