I have never known her as anything but Judy. At least six feet tall and resembling the Washington Monument, she had the personality of sandstone and the affect of someone who is currently in a coma.
She was the perfect bodyguard, and had saved my life more than once. Angie had called the agency from which we’d hired her before and requested Judy specifically. Luckily she wasn’t keeping anyone else from getting killed just at the moment, so I had hired her again and this time had the firm paying for her services, over Patrick’s objections because he loves to pay for everything I need, which isn’t as terrific as it sounds.
I had hoped never to see Judy again, but then I hadn’t put get kidnapped on my bucket list either. Now, my priorities rearranged, having her in the room with me while I sat down with Penny Kanter, Robert Reeves’s assistant (possibly executive assistant, because I don’t care about those titles but Angie would know), on her own, which was clearly making Penny nervous. Not having Reeves there for her to constantly monitor appeared to be a very nerve-racking situation for her.
Judy stood by the door, back straight, shoulders proud, face as impassive as a figure at Madame Tussaud’s. That is the wonder that is Judy.
After we’d settled in for our conference, I felt it was important to state the objectives and get right to the important issues so I could release Penny and let her go lick Reeves’s boots or something. (It should be noted that even working for Patrick, Angie is never in any way subservient. She is Angie and that is a force of nature. Luckily Patrick loves that about her.)
‘What I’m trying to establish is where everyone who might be a witness was when the accident happened,’ I began. I had decided that calling the murder an accident might have made some of my witnesses more comfortable, and you want them relaxed so you get unguarded answers. Unfortunately, I was getting the impression that being relaxed wasn’t in Penny’s skill set. ‘So tell me where you were that day.’
The opposite of good happened: Penny tensed up more. ‘Am I considered a suspect?’ she asked.
‘I can’t see why you would be.’ And I couldn’t. For one thing, I’m not in charge of who’s a suspect. I just needed to create reasonable doubt that my client did it. ‘I’m gathering information and you were there, so you might know some things that could be of help. For example, were you with Mr Reeves the whole day?’
‘Yes.’ Immediate, like a doctor had hit her Reeves-response-knee with a rubber hammer. ‘Wait. No. I left the set for an hour after the police said I could leave.’
‘After the incident that killed James Drake,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘I was there the whole morning until that.’ She gave no sign of distress or a painful memory. She was Robert Reeves’s assistant and the guy who had died wasn’t her concern. The focus was a little terrifying.
‘What were your duties that morning? When your boss is directing a movie and he’s on the set, what are you required to do?’ I actually had a decent idea of what the answer was, but this was a test of what kind of witness I could expect Penny to be.
‘For that particular day I had to coordinate his meeting with the stunt coordinator, the stunt performer and the camera operator as well as the cinematographer,’ she said without consulting notes of any kind. ‘But the usual things were also part of my work, making sure his bills were paid, managing appointments with the ex-wives and visits with his children. Also there was a meeting with his manager that didn’t occur because the police questioning took longer than we might have expected.’
‘Longer than you might have expected?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘You were expecting police questioning that day?’ It seemed an odd breakthrough in the trial, and not one that was going to make my job easier. ‘You knew James Drake was going to die?’
Penny looked confused, then shocked, then worried. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I meant it took longer after the … incident occurred than I might have anticipated. Either way, Mr Reeves did not make the meeting with his manager that day.’
I think better on my feet, and without thinking about it I got up and started to pace around my office. I don’t have a very large office so I ended up pacing in a fairly tight circle around my desk. Penny’s expression indicated that she was afraid to be in the same room with someone this deranged. I didn’t care. I looked at Judy, who was not pacing. Or moving. Or anything. Occasionally she blinked but I think it was a source of great embarrassment to her.
‘Do you have a list of the personnel who were present in Griffith Park that morning?’ I asked. I already had the studio records but it would be interesting to see if Penny’s – and I was sure she’d have some – matched up. Mostly I wanted to see if they agreed on the whereabouts of the guy who wanted me to live in his house with him.
‘No, I don’t keep those,’ Penny answered. ‘You’d have to check with the studio’s records.’
That seemed uncharacteristic but there was no point in pushing it. I decided that another way to loosen Penny up as a witness was to ask about herself. ‘How did you come to work for Mr Reeves?’ That seemed easy enough.
Penny did appear to relax a bit. She still had a look in her eyes that evoked Bambi standing out in the middle lane of the 405 at night, but her shoulders got less taut and her face overall indicated she was on more comfortable ground. She didn’t smile, but I wouldn’t have asked her to violate her religious beliefs.
‘I came out here like everyone else, from Nashua, New Hampshire,’ she began. I didn’t want to point out that not everyone came from Nashua, New Hampshire, because that seemed just a touch mean. But in my own head I stored that one away. ‘I had a degree in film and video and figured I could take the movie business by storm.’
‘You wanted to be a director?’ Everyone in Southern California wanted to be a director except the directors, who wanted to be something closer to a deity as far as I could tell.
‘No, I wanted to be a special effects artist.’ Penny’s answers were always not what I expected them to be, which was why I was glad to be having this conference. She was the last person you’d want to get on the stand and wing it. ‘I had a background in computer technology and imagery and I figured I would be working on the next superhero extravaganza within days of getting my apartment in Burbank.’
I leaned on the edge of my desk because pacing hadn’t gotten me anywhere, literally. ‘But the jobs weren’t so easy to find.’
Clearly Penny was reliving her struggles because she looked off into the middle distance and sighed. ‘No.’ I’m not sure but I think Penny liked to say ‘no’ to me. ‘But I had gotten to know someone who worked on effects on a freelance basis, and he knew that Mr Reeves needed an assistant. Luckily I had a minor in business administration and I’m very detail oriented. I met Mr Reeves and he offered me the job that day.’
‘Is he a good boss?’ I said. Character matters in criminal cases, and for that matter in civil cases. Anytime a jury or judge is going to pass judgment on a client you want them to like the client. Or at least not hate him. Hate is bad.
‘He pays very well,’ Penny said. I waited but that was it.
‘I mean, you hear stories about people in the industry mistreating their employees, berating them, throwing things,’ I explained. ‘Does Mr Reeves ever do stuff like that?’
‘Oh, never.’ Eyes so wide they could be a studio apartment in Manhattan. That was when I started to realize Penny had been lying. Perhaps for the whole interview.
There was no point. ‘Thanks for coming in,’ I said.
Penny, used to taking orders without question, got up, nodded in my direction and walked out of the office past Judy, who stood by vigilantly. I suppressed the urge to tickle her just to see if I could get a response.
Instead I nodded in Penny’s direction as she raced for the elevator in relief. ‘She’s hilarious,’ I said.
‘Yes ma’am,’ Judy said.