Having lunch in Hollywood isn’t exactly a problem, unless you’re an easily recognizable figure currently involved in a front-page murder investigation. That rather limits your choice of restaurants. I had no desire to dine in any of the flash places where the paparazzi roam, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to finish a meal in peace in even the less-celebrated venues.
I decided traditional was my best bet and headed to Hollywood Boulevard and Musso & Frank. Neither the grill nor the menu had changed much in twenty-two years. Just the personnel and the prices.
I settled into a dark red leather booth, my back to the rear door, the main entryway, and managed to polish off a pounded steak with country gravy, lyonnaise potatoes, creamed spinach, and two glasses of iced tea, with just one tourist couple stopping at the table to gawk. And that was only until I looked up and winked at them.
Sated, and having nowhere else to go, I arrived at the Worldwide lot twenty minutes early for the afternoon meeting. I sat in the Lexus with the top up and the AC on high, wondering if I should go in or just fly back to Manhattan and pretend the trip had been a dream, like that infamous season of Dallas.
Detectives Brueghel and Campbell made the decision for me.
Their black Crown Vic entered the lot, drove right past me, and slid into a no-parking space about ten vehicles away.
I closed down my AC and engine and met them on their way to the main building.
“What’s up?”
“Damn it, Blessing,” Brueghel said. “Why don’t you ever answer your goddamned phone?”
Thanks to Cassandra’s heads-up, I’d turned the thing off rather than risk inadvertently bugging myself. “Sorry,” I said.
“I been trying to reach you for the last hour,” he said. “No good deed …”
“You have to excuse him, Mr. Blessing,” Detective Campbell said. “Man hates to be wrong.”
“Not wrong,” he snapped. “But even if I am, my wrong doesn’t make you right.”
Detective Campbell giggled at that. She was much more attractive in giddy mode.
“What’s going on?” I asked, as we entered the building.
“My partner had to kick Charbonnet loose,” Detective Campbell said.
“Why?”
“ ’Cause the prick …” His sentence drifted into an undecipherable mumble.
“The prick what?” I asked.
“He didn’t do it,” Brueghel groused, and, ignoring the approaching elevator, pushed through the door leading to the stairs.
Campbell and I followed.
“What happened?” I asked her.
“Couple things. First, we finally got the report on the explosive used. It was a little more sophisticated than a Clorox bomb. Not much, but enough to make the stuff we found at the Brentwood house useless as evidence.”
We were double-timing it up the stairs, Brueghel nearly a level ahead and widening the gap. “There’s more,” Campbell said, not even breathing hard, “but we should wait for Pete to give that out, him being the lead.”
She was grinning.
“You’re getting a big kick out of his discomfort,” I said.
“Pete’s the best partner I’ve ever had, and he’s an excellent detective. Except when he’s got Charbonnet in his sights. I’ve been telling him all along he’s been misreading this one.”
Carmen was not alone in her office. Whisper was seated on a chair to her right. Max and Trey were standing nearby, shaking hands with Brueghel. After an introduction to Detective Campbell, Carmen gave Brueghel the floor.
A scarlet flush was spreading upward from his neck, and his jaws were clenched so tight that little knots protruded from the sides of his face. “There have been …”
He paused, his right hand going to the back of his neck. I was concerned that he might be experiencing a seizure of some kind. But he just made a head roll accompanied by neck pops and launched into his announcement. “As I mentioned on the phone, Ms. Sandoval, Chief Weidemeyer, ah, suggested this heads-up because your network is directly involved in our investigation. We’re doing it in the spirit of mutual cooperation. The chief will be making an official statement to the media in just about two hours. I want to make it clear that this is off the record.”
“Our evening news anchor, Jim McBride, is flying in from D.C. to attend the chief’s briefing,” Carmen replied. “That will be the source of our coverage.”
“I assume that pertains also to Ble—Mr. Blessing’s appearance on The Midnight Show?”
Carmen hesitated, then nodded.
“Fine.” The detective and his partner exchanged glances, and he continued. “We have become aware of certain facts regarding last week’s fatal explosion that have made us reopen the investigation.
“Initially, because the explosive had been ignited on a section of the stage where Mr. Blessing had been scheduled to stand, we had assumed that he, and not Mr. O’Day, had been the intended victim. Our primary investigation … proceeded from that assumption, the result being the arrest of Mr. Roger B. Charbonnet, a suspect who not only had a history of … animosity toward Mr. Blessing but was in possession of materials used in the creation of a bomb.”
Campbell had an unreadable smile on her face.
“This morning, however, we have learned considerably more about the explosive and the device used to trigger it, information that indicated our original assumption had been in error. It appears more likely that Mr. O’Day was the assassin’s target. Consequently, we have released Mr. Charbonnet and refocused our investigation.”
“What’d the techs tell you about the bomb that changed your mind?” Max asked.
Brueghel’s face registered only a hint of annoyance at being interrupted. He was doing his best to maintain his good-cop mode. He got a small spiral notepad from his inside coat pocket, flipped a single page, and read, “It was a ‘cast-loaded composition B burster’ about the size of a couple of cigarette packs.” Closing the notepad and putting it away, he continued, “The materials we found in Mr. Charbonnet’s shed could have created a bomb but are not consistent with this particular one.”
“There’s something I’ve never understood, detective,” Carmen said. “The theater’s stage was built on solid cement. For the bomb to claim Mr. O’Day, it must have been in plain view. But no one remembers seeing anything unusual, not even something as small as a couple of cigarette packs.”
“Right. Well, a tiny piece of plastic, found in the rubble, helps to explain that, ma’am. It was identified as a portion of a wheel, one inch in circumference, from a kid’s toy called a Zapmobile. It’s like a little automobile with a wireless control. We think it had been rigged to hold the explosive. When Mr. O’Day took his final position on the stage that night, the killer sent the Zapmobile in his direction and then used another wireless device to detonate. The whole operation could have been done in less than thirty seconds.”
I remembered the whirring sound I’d heard. And there was something else that seemed relevant. A comment someone had made? Maybe on that night? I couldn’t get a fix on it.
“That’s the main reason we released Mr. Charbonnet,” Brueghel was explaining. “The killer had to be present and could see, without doubt, that Mr. O’Day would be his victim. To our knowledge, Mr. Charbonnet had no motive for killing Mr. O’Day. The focus of our investigation now is to find out who did.”
“We will assist you in any way we can,” Carmen said.
Max turned to Trey. “You’re the expert on Des,” he said. “Maybe you should sit down with the detectives, give ’em whatever you’ve got.”
“Actually, I provided Detective Campbell with my files on Des and all the other members of the cast and crew days ago.”
“Oh?” Max turned to look questioningly at the detective.
“Mr. Halstead has been very cooperative,” Campbell said.
“I’m surprised to hear you were looking into Des’s background before today,” Max said. “How long have you had the information about the bomb?”
“As Detective Brueghel said, we just found out about the bomb today. While our primary focus has been on persons of interest with motive to do harm to Mr. Blessing, it was Mr. O’Day who died in the explosion, and we could hardly ignore the possibility he might have been the intended victim. I’ve been working on that possibility.”
“Come up with anything?” Carmen asked.
“Tons about his career as a performer, beginning with his first paying job on the radio in Dublin. That was in 1997. Before that, not much. Born in Dungannon on January seventh, 1972. Father and mother were both merchants. Now deceased. No siblings. Attended Saint Mary’s University in Belfast but dropped out after a year for some unknown reason. That’s about it.”
“You should talk to Jimmy Fitzpatrick,” I said. “They grew up together.”
“That’s where I got what little information I have,” Campbell said. “I’ve spoken with him a couple of times. He’s pretty vague. Or maybe he’s been stonewalling me. I tried reaching him today, but his phone’s off. What time does he come in?”
“He’s not coming in,” Max said. “He walked out on the show yesterday. After manhandling our star.”
That caught Brueghel’s interest. “He was violent?”
Max turned to Trey. “I’d say so, right?”
“Yeah,” Trey said. “Definitely violent.”
“I want to know more about this.”
Before either Max or Trey could put Fitz even further under the bus, I said, “Fitzpatrick told Max he intended to take Des’s remains home to Ireland for burial,” I said. “Gibby made some pretty insensitive jokes about the body parts and then called Catholics mackerel-snappers, and Fitz slapped him around a little.”
Brueghel nodded and seemed a little less intrigued. He turned to his partner. “They released the body?”
She nodded. “Mr. Fitzpatrick asked me to let him know, and so I did. Yesterday. But as of an hour ago, the remains were still unclaimed.”
“And Fitzpatrick’s not picking up his phone,” Brueghel said. “Anybody here have any contact with him after the … slapping incident?”
“He dropped by my place last night,” I said.
Once again, I was the center of interest.
“And …?” Brueghel asked.
“He’d been drinking and seemed a little … stressed.”
“Jeeze, Blessing, don’t make me drag it out of you. Details, please.”
I was beginning to feel like those mastodons who’d paused to take a sip of water and wound up trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits. Ever since I’d arrived in L.A. I’d been stuck and slowly sinking. Opening up with everything that Fitz had told me would only put me in deeper.
But I realized now he hadn’t been raving. He probably did have a good idea why Des had been killed. Even more disquieting, if he was right about that, who’s to say he wasn’t right about somebody connected with the show being involved in the murder? Or that the somebody had sent a milk-eyed man to stalk him? These were things Brueghel should know.
“Is that it, Blessing? You’re clamming up?”
“No,” I said, and told him the salient parts of my late-night visit.