nervous over anything. If she had to stand up and talk in front of a judge, even that TV guy who seems so friendly, she’d be a basket case. Drew Brooks is really dead, isn’t he?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. Then he sighed. “Yes.”
When I’d been upstairs with everyone else, my adrenalin had kicked in and I’d thought only of what
“It was murder, wasn’t it?” I said.
‘Not your problem,” Barry answered. I told him about the blood on the back of Drew’s head. “Also not your problem.”
Barry’s cell phone rang, and he turned and walked away a few steps. He was flipping it shut when he came back.
“I have to step down—again. I can’t be the lead detective if my girlfriend was in the room with the victim.”
“It wasn’t just me. There were lots of people up there. I didn’t touch him.” I pointed vaguely in Adele’s direction. She was still wearing the hat. “Adele’s the one who put him on the floor and tried to do CPR.”
He was shaking his head and probably rolling his eyes behind the sunglasses over the last part. “Yeah, but I’m not dating them, so you’re the only one who counts—or counts me out.”
“But I’m not a suspect or a person of interest. I was just an innocent bystander,” I said as he turned to go.
“We’ll talk about it tonight.”
“Tonight?” I repeated.
Barry had a smug set to his mouth. “I bought some dog toys for Cosmo, and I was going to bring them by.” Before I could make any comment about possibly having plans that interfered, he went back into full-out work mode, gestured to his partner Darren Keltner and pointed toward the car.
I should have figured who’d replace Barry as lead detective. He and Darren were leaning against their car when she pulled up. The first thing I saw was the white blond hair as Detective Heather Gilmore got out of the Crown Vic with her partner Rick Allen. He was no trouble; she was nothing but.
The four detectives had a conversation. Well, Darren and Rick listened while Detective Heather and Barry talked. Barry gestured toward the crowd, probably explaining something. Then Detective Heather looked my way. There was a certain deja vu to all this, but this time there was no way she could try to pin the death on me.
Like I said, Detective Heather and I had issues. Well, one issue. She wanted Barry. Who could miss the way she flicked her hair and touched his arm as they talked? He had always claimed not to be interested. I was curious about why he wasn’t and had asked him about it shortly after we’d started seeing each other again following a brief breakup. She was blond, younger than I was, had a better body and was in the same line of work as he.
“She’s not my type. We had coffee once, twice, ah, a few times,” he’d stammered. “And it didn’t work out.”
I’d gone into shock mode when I realized he’d actually gone out with her. He’d always claimed not to notice she was interested. “What? You went out with her? When? How?”
“Remember when we broke up? I was a free guy then. You kept saying how you thought she had the hots for me, so I thought I’d see what was up.”
“What about Jeffrey?” I’d demanded, trying not to look pouty-faced. He was so protective of Jeffrey, at first not even letting me meet him because we weren’t in some permanent sort of relationship.
“He never met her,” Barry had said as his lips curved into a grin. He knew he’d gotten to me and was enjoying my upset. “It never got that far. She isn’t like you.” He tousled my hair and touched my cheek. “You are my comic relief, the person who shows me a life away from work,” he had said, wrapping me in his arms. “And you’re nice to cuddle with, and,” he added, licking his lips, “there’s always your cooking.”
He was right, there. I never used anything-helper or packaged cake mixes. I was one hundred percent from scratch. And I knew I was a good cook. The extra padding on my hips was a testament to it.
He’d said something about Detective Heather needing a cookbook to boil an egg. I’d wanted to ask how he knew. It sounded way past a cup of coffee to have gotten that kind of information. But I had decided it was better to just leave it be.
“Well, well, look who’s here,” Detective Heather said when she finally walked up to me. Barry and Darren had left, and Rick Allen was talking to some uniforms.
“I was just in the room with Drew Brooks. There were all those people, too.” I waved my hand over the crowd. “I’m not a suspect or a person of interest.”
“That’s for me to decide and you to find out,” she said, taking out her notebook and pen. “I might just as well start questioning you now. Let’s start with the personal stuff, like your age and your weight. I know your name.” She made sure her pen was working. “Aren’t you like fifty-something?”
“Forty-eight,” I corrected.
“And your weight?”
“What do you need that for?”
“For identification purposes,” Detective Heather answered.
“What? So you can tell me apart from all the other Molly Pinks running around Tarzana?”
Begrudgingly, she said maybe she didn’t need that information after all. But she did need to know what I was doing there and what I’d seen. I tried to say I was there like everybody else to see the Hearston Estate items mentioned on the window banner, but she stopped me.
“I saw you and your group here the other day. As I remember there was some kind of problem. Didn’t somebody say something about not getting away with something?” She turned away from me and checked through the crowd until she found Sheila. “She was the one making the threat, wasn’t she?”
“I’m sure she had nothing to do with what happened to Drew Brooks. You should really be much more concerned about that tall bald man with the Harrods shopping bag.” I told her how he’d been in there the other day, and again just now. “And he was sure steamed about something,” I said.
She scribbled in her notebook. “And his name is?”
“Oh, I don’t exactly know,” I said with a shrug.
Then she asked me to point him out.
‘He’s not exactly here,” I said, a little uncomfortable.
“And maybe he doesn’t exactly exist,” she said.
“Of course he does. I’m surprised you didn’t see him the other day. Go ahead and ask my friends. They saw him. They’ll vouch for me.”
Detective Heather didn’t appear convinced. “Your friends would probably say they saw a bald green Martian in the store to back you up.”
“Wow, you think they’re that loyal?” I said, surprised. There was something in Detective Heather’s voice. Was she jealous of my friends, too? “To put your mind at ease, just ask them when I’m not around.”
“How about I just see what they say on their own.” She held her pen poised. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
I told her everything starting with the scream. She listened with an impassive expression as I told her how we’d found Drew and how Adele had tried doing CPR. She asked if I’d give my fingerprints and a hair sample. As soon as I was done, I was escorted to the edge of the parking lot, and the officer waited as I climbed under the tape and walked away. I’d have to catch up with Dinah later.
Kimberely Wang Diaz zoomed up to me since apparently I was the first one let go.
“I remember you,” she said, sounding too enthused. “Aren’t you the one they call the crime scene groupie?”
