There was that song again. It seemed to be playing over and over. I got it! The guy didn’t want french-fried potatoes or red, ripe tomatoes … just frim-fram sauce with the ausen fay and chafafah on the side.
Holy hell! Would it never cease?
Without opening my eyes, I reached out a hand and grabbed the cellphone from the bedside table.
“Yeh?” was all I could manage.
“Billy?” Cassandra asked.
I opened my eyes to the guesthouse bedroom. It was bright with morning sun. I was in bed, all tucked in. I saw the clothes I’d been wearing hanging neatly on the back of the open closet door.
“Billy?” she asked again.
“Ah. I’m gonna have to call you back.” I clicked the phone shut on whatever she was saying.
I swung out of bed, hungover but not hungover enough to forget a couple of things that had happened just before the lights went out. Gibby lying dead in the surf. And … my hand went to my throat … someone choking me.
But my throat didn’t feel raw or even a little damaged. And never mind my still being alive, why had the strangler carried me back to the guesthouse and put me to bed?
I staggered to the window. Not much beach activity. The surf had flowed in. And caught something! There was definitely something out there in the shallow water.
Gibby!
I stumbled down the stairs, each step like a knife being shoved into my skull. I fumbled the door open and ran out across the sand.
The closer I got to Gibby, the less it looked like him. Finally, I realized it wasn’t even a man. It was a huge piece of driftwood. I ran up and down the beach for a while, but the closest thing I could find to the dead comedian was the hunk of wood.
Could I have been so wasted the night before that I fantasized the whole thing?
Breathing heavily, head ready to burst, and full of sudden self-doubt, I plodded back to the guesthouse. I almost made it.
“Mr. Blessing!”
“Good morning, Ms. St. Laurent,” I said. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m not feeling …”
I stopped because she was gawking at me, jaw dropped. “What in the world?” she said.
With her were two sour-faced young women I assumed were prospective buyers. It was hard to see them fitting in with neighbors like Stew or the party-thrower Halliday. They were wearing torn tees, grungy jeans, battered Doc Martens, and more embedded metal than was dug out of Legs Diamond. I knew them. Marty and Circe Wynott, a pair of performance artists known as Split and Splat. They’d been on Wake Up, America! plugging their album, Splisterhood.
They were staring at me, too. Registering more disgust than surprise. “Ew,” they said in harmony.
“This is not Saint Tropez,” Amelia St. Laurent said haughtily.
I realized at that precise moment I was wearing only my boxers. And they were a little askew. “Sorry, ladies,” I said, straightening my shorts. “It’s been a pleasure, but I must be getting back to the guesthouse. It’s much too breezy out here.”
Brueghel sounded as if he regretted having given me his cellular number. “Let me get this straight. You think you saw some guy kill Gibby Lewis last night out at your place? What’s there to think about? You either saw it or you didn’t.”
“It wasn’t at my place,” I said. “I mean, it was near my place. Fact is, I wasn’t exactly sober …”
“It’s Saturday, Blessing.” He lowered his voice. “I promised the kid I’d spend the day with him. Don’t yank my chain, huh?”
“It’s just … the killer was choking me, detective. It was so real I can still feel it. But there’s no sign of it having happened. No rawness. No bruising.”
“You don’t always get that with a choke hold,” he said. “What else do you remember?”
“Nothing. Until I woke up in bed.”
“You think what, that the killer put you to bed? Fuck you, Blessing.” He added, away from the phone, “Forget you heard that, son. Go watch SpongeBob while I finish up on the phone.
“What do you want from me, Blessing? You can probably find the nearest AA meeting in the phone book.”
“Gibby’s not answering his phone,” I said. “I thought maybe you could try and locate him. Make sure he’s okay.”
He hesitated. “Yeah. I can do that. Uh, you sure you actually saw Jimmy Fitzpatrick night before last?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said. “I had a little too much to drink last night, but I’m not an alcoholic.”
“Fitzpatrick didn’t happen to mention the flight he was taking?”
“No. I think he said he was taking the next available.”
“He was booked on an Aer Lingus at nine-fifty-one yesterday morning. It would have been tight if he planned on picking up his buddy’s remains. But he didn’t do that, and he missed the flight.”
“Maybe changed his mind?”
“Maybe. But we found his rental Hummer in long-term parking at LAX. And that’s the only airline ticket we’ve come up with. So here’s my problem, on my daddy day with my boy. I’m trying to solve the murder of the original host of your goddamn TV show. I’ve got the bandleader from that show apparently missing. And now you call to tell me you think the new host of the show has been murdered.”
“I can still feel that choke hold,” I said.
“Damn it. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Should I—”
“Don’t do a fucking thi—oh … SpongeBob isn’t on? Okay, I’ll be right there, son.” Then, readdressing me, “An hour.”
He arrived with Campbell. He was wearing denim pants and a gray T-shirt with the faded full-figure image of Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry Callahan on the chest and the caption “Make My Day” on the back. She was wearing spandex workout gear. Both wore black LAPD caps and guns on their hips.
I was looking a little less official in a tomato-red Izod shirt, khaki golfing shorts, and flip-flops.
Beach activity had picked up. There were walkers, swimmers, surfers, kids playing and building sand sculptures. A windsurfer was being blown at a fast clip along the gently ruffled water. Too far out to be sure, but I thought it was Stew.
My neighbors were curious and not exactly pleased to see us as I led the detectives to where the driftwood still rested in the surf.
“You sure it was here?” Campbell asked.
“In this general area,” I said.
We were standing in front of a multimillion-dollar two-story, where what looked like three generations of a family, maybe twenty of them, from grandparents to toddlers, were seated at a long table on a redwood deck, having an elaborate brunch and trying to pretend we didn’t exist.
“Not exactly murderer’s row,” Campbell said.
“If there was evidence of a crime, the tide’s washed it away,” Brueghel grumbled. “And, oh, yeah, Blessing, did you happen to know there was a big blowout here last night? Forty, fifty cars in and out. Security has some of them listed but probably missed a few. Take quite a while to make sure somebody didn’t slip in with the partygoers.”
Especially with the gate being understaffed, I thought but did not mention. It would only make Brueghel even more sour.
We traipsed back to the guesthouse, where we trailed sand over the floor.
The detectives poked about.
Returning from the upstairs bedroom, Brueghel asked, “When you think you found Gibby Lewis’s body, did you have to step in the surf?”
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. “I think … Yes! I’m sure. My shoes should be—”
“They’re bone-dry, not a trace of sand,” he said. An accusation. “Get some sleep, Blessing. We’ll let this one slide. Everybody has a rough night every now and then, right, Mizzy?”
“No. Not everybody,” she said.
They departed, convinced I’d wasted their time with a drunken fantasy.
I went upstairs to convince myself. I picked up the shoes. They were as dry as a desert wind. But they seemed a little stiffer than I’d remembered. Like they would be if treated to a fast dry near a fireplace or even in an oven. Not exactly the shiny clue I was hoping for. But something.
Why would the killer have gone to the trouble of drying my shoes and all the rest? I immediately concocted a totally paranoid scenario. He’d realized I smelled like a winery and took the chance I’d been so drunk I wouldn’t remember or wouldn’t believe what I’d seen. And even if I did believe it and tried to tell someone, that person would take me for an inebriated asshole.
Until it became clear that Gibby was among the missing. Then what? Maybe I’d be blamed for the murder?
That whole concept fell apart the moment I realized how much simpler it would have been just to keep choking me. The killer had to get rid of one body—probably out in the ocean. Why not two?
I put the shoes back.
The shirt I’d been wearing last night was draped over a hanger.
If my head wasn’t throbbing, I would have slapped it. I’d forgotten to show the detectives the warning note that had been left on the Lexus. It was something real and maybe even worth their drive out.
I removed the sheet from my shirt pocket. I unfolded it and experienced a sinking WTF sensation.
The paper was blank.
I’d been as sober as an Amish picnic when I found it under the car’s windshield wiper. Vida had seen it. So had Brutus. He’d even seen the guy who left it.
I got out the phone, then stopped.
I really didn’t want to talk to Vida. Nor did I want Brutus back as my guardian angel, though that was probably foolish pride disabling my usual caution. I wasn’t afraid. The killer had had the perfect opportunity to put me away, if that’s what he’d wanted. Instead, he’d opted for a lot of bother.
It didn’t occur to me that his decision might be subject to change.