Sherlock, head cocked to the side, her red hair corkscrewing out, said, “You mean that’s our problem? A simple lack of sugar? I never thought of it like that.” She grabbed up her fork and cut a big piece of apple pie from Flynn’s slice.
Nick laughed. Dane joined in. It felt good.
Frank Pauley and Belinda Gates actually did live in a glass house, Dane thought, staring up at the monstrosity atop a cliff off Mulholland Drive. It was filled with lights, and if someone was wandering around inside naked, people five miles away could enjoy the view.
Five cops and one civilian trooped up to the gigantic double wooden doors. Flynn knocked.
A woman answered the door wearing a French maid’s outfit, replete with stiletto heels and stockings with seams up the back. She had a sexy little white cap on her head. The only thing was, she had to be at least fifty and a good twenty pounds overweight, her dark hair sprinkled with gray and cut butch.
Everyone managed to keep it together, even when she asked them to follow her into the living room.
“Sir, you have visitors. I believe they’re all police officers.” Then she nodded, perfectly serious, to each of them in turn and glided out on those three-inch black heels.
Once the door closed behind her, Delion said to Frank Pauley, “Nice house.”
“Thanks. My second wife was an architect. She designed it and it was built to her specifications. Since my third wife and Belinda both really liked it, I haven’t made any changes.” He cleared his throat. “The only thing is, Belinda picks the staff and doesn’t like anyone to be younger than fifty, and so we have FiFi Ann, who really is a very nice person, frighteningly efficient, and something of an exhibitionist.”
“FiFi Ann?” Sherlock said, an eyebrow up a good inch.
“She decided that was the name she wanted. She’s a former actress. She, ah, picked out her French maid’s outfit herself, said she wanted to adjust her image. Now, why are you all here at nine o’clock at night?”
“We would like to speak to Belinda,” Sherlock said. “Is she here?”
“Certainly. Her partying days are over unless she’s on my arm.” Pauley walked to the phone, punched a couple of buttons, and called, “Cops in the living room. Come save me.”
“Cute,” Flynn said.
Belinda came in not five minutes later, wearing black leggings and a sweatshirt, no sneakers. Her face was shiny with sweat, her hair plastered to her head. She was wiping her face with a towel.
“Hi, Agent Sherlock, Agent Savich. Frank, you don’t need help from them. They’ve got a little kid who’s adorable. Who are these other folks?”
Introductions were made. As usual, Dane included Nick, making her seem to be just another Federal agent.
“Are you here to arrest Frank?” Belinda said.
Flynn reached for the handcuffs in his back pocket, pulled them out, and waved them toward Pauley. “You want me to take him to the floor, ma’am? We officers of the law like to be obliging.”
Belinda laughed, continued to wipe sweat off herself. She suddenly pulled off her sweatshirt. Underneath it she was wearing only a little workout bra.
The men in the room nearly expired on the spot. Nick laughed. “That was very well done. I’ll bet you Detective Flynn has already forgotten the handcuffs.”
Belinda just smiled. “Frank, why don’t you get us all a soda?”
When everyone was seated on the stark white leather chairs, love seats, and huge long sofa, facing a fireplace Nick couldn’t ever imagine using in LA, Sherlock said, “Belinda, please tell us why you met Weldon DeLoach two and a half weeks ago at the Gameland Bowling Alley, why you were dressed like a man, and where you went.”
Frank Pauley jumped to his feet and walked fast to a huge set of floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Actually, since the entire living room that faced out toward the ocean was glass, he had no place else to go.
Belinda drank down her soda and said after a moment, “Isn’t it strange how easily you can get tripped up?”
“Yeah, but that’s how we make our living,” Delion said. “What were you doing meeting Weldon DeLoach? Why were you dressed like the perfect description of our murderer?”
Frank whirled around. “I knew it, I just knew it. Weldon is crazy about you, wants to make you a star and-”
Four wives, Nick thought, getting a glimmer of reality in the glass house.
Belinda smiled toward her husband, who looked ready to break into small pieces he was standing so rigid. She didn’t seem at all perturbed. “Actually, sweetie, he’s not. Weldon isn’t my type, you are. Now, Weldon and I had arranged to meet that night, at the bowling alley, and I was to pick him up. We went to La Pomme in Westwood, sat at a booth and brainstormed story ideas. He wanted my role in
Sherlock said, “Weldon wanted to change your role to a man’s? This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, Belinda.”
“He was thinking about another idea, a woman who was a spy and had the international community believing she was a man. He wanted to see if I was a good enough actress to fool people into believing I was a man. Nothing more than that. I think I did well. Nobody gave me a second look. Weldon laughed and laughed, he was so tickled. You know, Frank, how he acts when he’s excited.”
“How did you carry it off?” Sherlock said. “You’re beautiful and you’ve got lots of hair.”
“Well, you see, I used to do makeup back in the bad old days, and I’m really good at it. That disguise wasn’t much of a challenge.”
Nick felt her heart crash to the floor. It sounded so reasonable the way Belinda, the actress, told it, even the wretched disguise. Thing was, Nick believed her.
“She’s a hell of an actress,” Flynn said to the group as he walked to his car in the large circular driveway. “We can’t forget that. God, she’s gorgeous, isn’t she?”
TWENTY-TWO
Nicola arrived home with a bad headache after a two-hour, very contentious staff meeting at the university. At least she no longer felt like she’d been starved and kicked around. It had been three days since the food poisoning. A week since she’d begun to see everything in a different light.
She dropped her mail on the small table in her entrance hall, went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of diet tonic water, and got three aspirins from the medicine cabinet.
When at last she sorted through her mail, she found a single letter without a return address. Her name was written in bold cursive. The handwriting looked vaguely familiar.
Nicola picked up her two-hundred-year-old Chinese dragon letter opener that John had given her for Christmas and slit the envelope open. She pulled out three sheets of closely written pages. She read:
Me who? Nicola skipped to the last page of the letter and read the clean-cut, crisp signature:
