“Racism?”
Kelly laughed. “Just a few weeks ago, we were at the Rose Bowl swap meet and some idiot made a rude comment. You’d think it’d be different, L.A., the nineties. I mean, who’s the richest woman in America-Oprah.” She frowned and lines formed around her mouth. “What Darrell and I have is good and I don’t want anything messing it up.”
If you only knew, honey.
“I understand,” said Petra. “Any other opinions you’d like to share? About Lisa’s murder? Lisa, in general?”
“Nope. Now, can you please let me get back to work? We do work around here.”
Why were movie people so defensive about doing honest labor?
“How long have you been working here, Kelly?” Kelly, not Ms. Sposito, because this one would always try to dominate.
The wiper blades opened and shut. “A year.”
“So you worked with Lisa.”
“Not with her, like on the same project. She needed training, so Darrell worked with her. I’ve always been on my own.”
“Lisa was inexperienced?”
Kelly snickered. “She was a rookie. Darrell was always picking up her slack.”
“The whole six months she worked here?”
“No, she learned, she was okay, but to tell the truth-no, forget it, I don’t want to put her down.”
Petra smiled, and Kelly bared her teeth. Petra supposed it was a return smile.
“Okay, I opened my big mouth. I was just going to say editing jobs are hard to come by, you pay dues. Lisa was totally green. I figured she had to have connections.”
“What kind of connections?”
“Don’t know.”
Something else Darrell hadn’t shared with the Lioness. Suddenly, Petra felt sorry for her. “What’d you think of her as a person, Kelly?”
“She did her job, I did mine, we didn’t socialize.”
Petra said, “Did you like her?”
Kelly blinked. “Honestly? She wasn’t my favorite person, because I don’t think she treated people well, but I really don’t want to speak badly about her now.”
“Didn’t treat who well?”
The dark eyes narrowed. “I’m talking in general. She had a sharp mouth, that’s probably what did her in.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was sarcastic. Had a way of saying something without saying it, know what I mean? Looks, tone of voice, the whole body language thing.” She rubbed her hips, bent one leg, ballerina-style, flexing, then straightening. “Lisa thought a lot of herself, okay? And if someone didn’t measure up, she’d be sure to let them know one way or the other. You want my opinion? Maybe Ramsey was trying to get her back and she shut him down. Aren’t those abusers always obsessed?”
Out of the mouths of hostile babes. “They can be,” said Petra, looking as fascinated as she felt.
“So Ramsey could have still been into Lisa in a big way,” said Kelly, “and let’s say they got together and he tried to make it with her but couldn’t get it up or whatever, and she let him know what she thought about that in that Lisa way of hers, and he freaked.”
Petra hid her amazement. The woman had gone from hostile resistance to criminological theory in five minutes-offering a theory that buttressed Petra’s final-date scenario.
“What makes you think Ramsey was impotent?”
“Because Lisa said so-at least she hinted at it. It was about three, four months ago. We were eating lunch-all of us, Darrell, Cara, me, Lisa, and another editor who works here, Laurette Benson, she’s gay. And the topic came up about actors, how they get all the glory and how so many of them have totally warped personalities, are totally screwed up, but the public never knows it because everything they hear is bullshit created by the media and publicists. Anyway, we started talking about how actors become sex icons, bigger than human-like Madonna having that baby and everyone’s treating it like she was the other madonna and this was some kind of sacred birth, right? Like all those idiots still looking for Elvis or thinking Michael Jackson’s gonna stay married. We editors look at these people day after day, scene after scene, through the window of a Moviola. You see enough rough cuts, see how many takes you need to get them to look good and sound smart, you realize how few of them are even talented in the first place. Anyway, we were talking about that and we got into all the sexual fantasies that the public develops about people who probably half the time can’t even cut it in bed. Then Laurette started in about how many actors were gay, even the ones who the public thinks are hetero sex gods, how sexuality and reality are like two completely different planets. And Lisa rolled her eyes and said, ‘You have no idea, guys. You have no fucking clue.’ So we all stare at her and she cracks up and says, ‘Take it from me. You go in thinking you’re eating at the Hard Rock Cafe and it turns out to be the Leaning Tower of Overcooked Pasta.’ Then she laughs even harder, then her face takes on this whole different expression-really bummed, angry-and she just stomps out and goes to the bathroom and stays there for a while. Laurette says, ‘Boy, someone’s shorts got yanked.’ Then Lisa comes back and her nose is red and she’s in a too-good mood, know what I mean?”
“She got high.”
Kelly pointed a finger gun. “You must be a detective.”
“Did she do that a lot?”
“Enough. Not that I paid attention.”
“So the topic of impotence upset her.”
“Wouldn’t it upset you?” said Kelly Sposito. “Life’s tough enough, all the crap you get from men when they’re at their best. Who has time for limp spaghetti?”
It was after five when Petra left the lot, and she wouldn’t have minded a long, hot bath and a good meal prepared by someone else, maybe some torture at the easel. But she still needed to trade notes with Stu, and if he suggested they make their move on Ramsey tonight, she wouldn’t argue.
She called the station. Stu wasn’t back, but Lillian, the civilian receptionist, said, “Some stuff came for you from the coroner, Barbie.”
“Big envelope?”
“Medium big. I put it on your desk.”
“Thanks.”
She ate a tuna sandwich at the Apple Pan, washed it down with a Coke, scanned the paper-nothing on Lisa- drove back to Hollywood as quickly as the traffic would allow. By the time she arrived, the night shift had come on, but most of the D’s were already out serving warrants and looking for bad guys and her desk was clear. Stu still hadn’t checked in.
Inside the brown envelope were preliminary postmortem findings signed by a Dr. Wendell Kobayashi- countersigned as Schoelkopf had promised, by the head coroner, Dr. Ilie Romanescu.
Quick turnaround; usually even preliminaries took a week.
She sat down and read the two typed sheets. Traces of cocaine and alcohol had been found in Lisa Ramsey’s body, enough to intoxicate but not cause stupor. Meaning she’d been easier to take by surprise. No final autopsy report yet, but the docs were able to provide a wound count and cause of death. Twenty-three cuts-close enough to Ilse Eggermann’s twenty-nine. So far, the coroner was guessing that the fatal one had been the very deep abdominal slash Petra had tagged. Point of insertion just above the pubic bone, continuing eight inches upward-a vertical wound that had sliced through intestines and stomach and liver, bisecting the diaphragm, cutting off respiration.
A gutting. Street fighter’s move.
As she drops, he hits her twenty-two more times.
Frenzy or fun. Or both.
Dr. Kobayashi guessed that he’d been standing close to her for that first, lethal lunge. Meaning blood on him, too, and if they lucked out and got an exchange, something he’d left on her. But fiber and fluid analysis would take
