The Man Who Couldn't Miss Page 16

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “So where was it going? Say you brought Steve and Eydie out to the Eastwood shoot in Death Valley. Were you planning to stay there with them for the entire six weeks?”

  “Greg wanted me to.”

  “There are no secrets on a location shoot. You know that. If you and Greg were bunking together everyone would have found out.”

  Steve and Eydie came sprinting back up the beach to us and flopped down next to Eugene on the wet sand, panting.

  “We had a serious conversation about that,” he said, patting the wet dogs.

  “And . . . ?”

  “He still wanted me to come. Told me that he couldn’t stand to be away from me for that long.” Tears began to stream down Eugene’s face. “I told him, I said, ‘Greg, Dini will find out. The whole world will. You’ll ruin your career.’ He told me he d-didn’t care because we were soul mates and were meant to be together.”

  “You’re sure that Dini didn’t know?”

  “Hoagy, I’m not sure of anything,” he confessed, climbing slowly back up onto his feet. We started walking our way back toward the house. The dogs ran back into the surf, barking gleefully.

  “A Connecticut State Police homicide investigator named Tedone is going to interview you. I’d advise you to be candid with him. If he senses that you’re withholding anything he’ll latch on and won’t let go.”

  “Are you telling me I need a lawyer?”

  “Can you account for your whereabouts last evening?”

  “I was in the apartment on Riverside Drive. The doorman can vouch for me. I went downstairs to sign for a script from a messenger service at around eight. The limo driver was supposed to pick it up on his way out to Sherbourne to get Greg and Dini. It was the latest draft of Dini’s film. I hear she’s dropped out.”

  “She has.”

  “That’s too bad. It’s a good script. And Jonathan Demme’s a master. It would have been great for her to have a chance to work with him. Do you think anyone but Demme could have gotten that performance out of Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs?”

  “That whole Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lecter thing wasn’t too shabby either,” I said, because it seemed to comfort Eugene to talk about work.

  “I hear you. Scariest performance ever.”

  As we walked along the water’s edge I noticed Merilee striding briskly toward us from the house. She had a strange, frightened look on her face.

  “What is it?” I asked her when she reached us.

  “Lieutenant Tedone just phoned,” she said to me, her voice cracking. “It’s Sabrina Meyer. She was just found in her room at the Sherbourne Inn with a needle in her arm. A heroin overdose, he thinks. She’s dead, Hoagy. That gifted, beautiful girl is dead.”

  Chapter Eight

  Sabrina Meyer, Hack-Hack-Hackensack native and highly promising young graduate of the Yale School of Drama, was stretched out on top of the bed in her second-floor room of the Sherbourne Inn with her head propped up against a couple of pillows. She was wearing the same linen dress she’d had on when we’d been chatting in the rose garden a couple of hours earlier, though her sandals were off now and she was sporting a fresh accessory in the crease of her left forearm—a disposable syringe that was stuck in a vein there. She’d tied off with a leather belt. The state’s jowly chief M.E. was hovering over her in his scrubs and murmuring instructions at his powerfully built young deaner. Tedone stood there watching them and looking extremely miserable.

  “I’m here at Lieutenant Tedone’s request,” I said to the uniformed Connecticut state trooper who was blocking the doorway.

  Tedone turned at the sound of my voice. “You squeamish?”

  “Not generally.”

  “Then come on in.”

  The trooper stepped aside and I went on in, my stomach muscles tightening. The smell of vomit was overpowering even though the windows were wide open. A coagulating stream of it ran from the side of Sabrina’s mouth and down her lovely, swan-like neck before it puddled in the indentation above her collarbone, drenching her golden ringlets. Her unseeing dark eyes were wide open, their pupils contracted to tiny pin dots.

  Lulu, who does happen to be squeamish, did one lap around the room, her nose to the rug, before she went back out into the hallway to wait for me.

  “Reads heroin O.D. all of the way,” Tedone said to me grimly. “Her lips are already starting to develop a bluish tinge, see? Choked on her own vomit.”

  “Better her own than someone else’s.”

  “Was that supposed to be some kind of a joke?”

  “Forgive me, Lieutenant. I’m just trying to hold on to what’s left of my sanity.”

  “Damned shame. Such a pretty girl. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if this turns out to be some of that ‘Tango and Cash’ that was floating around last year. Nasty, nasty stuff—smack laced with fentanyl, a surgical tranquilizer that’s something like fifty times stronger than heroin. Addicts were dropping like flies from it all over New York City before it made its way out here by way of Bridgeport, where it killed dozens more before we finally got it off of the street. But you never get all of it.”

  I said nothing. Just stood there thinking about how beautiful and alive Sabrina had been two hours ago, how full of talent and dreams.

  “It got its name from that piece-of-shit Stallone movie,” he added.

  “You say that as if there’s any other kind of Stallone movie.”

  He looked at me in amazement. “Are you trying to tell me you didn’t love Rocky? Everybody loves Rocky.”

  “I’m not everybody. And do we really need to have a conversation about Sly Stallone right now?”

  Tedone narrowed his eyes at me. “Let’s step out into the hallway. I don’t like the way you look.”

  “How do I look?”

  “Shook up.”

  “Really? I can’t imagine why.”

  We went out into the wide, carpeted second-floor hallway with its Victorian urns and potted plants. Tall front windows looked out over the village green and the famous Sherbourne Playhouse.

  “Chambermaid found her,” Tedone informed me quietly. “She’d asked for some fresh towels earlier today. When the girl brought them up and knocked there was no answer, so she used her passkey, went in and there she was.” He thumbed his jaw thoughtfully. “There’s no sign of a struggle. No bruising around her upper arms or throat. Bedcovers aren’t rumpled. Room’s neat as a pin. It plays accidental overdose. Unless, that is, it wasn’t accidental.”

  “Are you suggesting she committed suicide, Lieutenant?”

  “I have to consider all of the possibilities.”

  Lulu was busy sniffing the hallway rug outside of the door to Sabrina’s room. She’d gotten a whiff of something. Followed it toward the third-floor stairs, then slowly up the stairs, snuffling and snorting all of the way. At the top of the stairs she made a right turn and I lost sight of her for a while. Then I heard her start barking.

  “Good girl, Lulu. You can come back now.”

  She came slowly back down the stairs kerplunk-kerplunk on her short legs, returned to me and sat on my foot, gazing up at me adoringly. “You’re right, I owe you another anchovy,” I promised her.

  “What was that all about?” Tedone demanded.

  “Basset hounds were originally bred to scent rabbits, did you know that? The only scent hound that’s superior to a basset is a bloodhound.”

  He shook his head at me, bewildered. “They have rabbits in here?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Then why are we talking about rabbits?”

  “I’m still thinking about it.”

  “About what?”

  “If Stallone has ever made a movie that I liked. I suppose Nighthawks wasn’t awful.”

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “No offense, Hoagy, but you’re starting to get on my nerves.”

  “What, just now? It usually happens much faster. I have no idea wh
y. I try to be helpful and cooperative. Maybe I should start bringing doughnuts to the crime scene. Do you think that would help?”

  Tedone glowered at me in baleful silence.

  “No one saw anybody come in or out of her room?”

  “Not a soul. Nobody heard any raised voices coming out of there either. Why, do you have reason to believe someone was in the room with her?” On my silence Tedone tried a different approach. “How well did you know her?”

  “Well enough to know she had a problem with heroin. She told me she’d been clean for fifteen months, but you and I both know that a drug problem never goes away. Ever.”

  “That sounds an awful lot like the voice of experience.”

  “Only because it is.”

  “You think she brought the stuff with her from New York City?”

  “How would I know? Did you search her bags?”

  He nodded. “We didn’t find anything. And the M.E. didn’t find any other needle marks on her arms. He can’t do a thorough search of her body until he gets her back to the morgue, but he did check the usual nooks and crannies, like in between her toes. She looks clean.” He thumbed his jaw. “Any chance she was having an affair with Greg Farber?”

  “Do you mean was she so despondent over his death that she freaked out and shot up for the first time in more than a year? Is that what you mean?”

  “There’s no need to get testy with me,” Tedone fired back.

  “You’re right. Forgive me. It’s a plausible scenario, except for two things. One, she wasn’t having an affair with Greg. Two, I had a lengthy chat with her downstairs in the rose garden before I went to Point O’Woods and she wasn’t the least bit upset. Just eager to get home to New York. She was hoping that the two of us could get together there sometime. Even gave me her phone number.”

  He raised a thick black eyebrow at me. “You mean she hit on you?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it that, but she was definitely trolling.”

  “Trolling? I don’t know what that is.”

  “You’ve never heard of trolling?”

  “What I’m saying—”

  “It’s a bit like hitting on someone but more goal oriented. She thought that I might prove to be a useful contact.”

  “Because of your connection to Merilee Nash?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So it wasn’t about the two of you having sex?”

  “No, it was definitely about the two of us having sex. But it’s primarily transactional. That’s show business, Lieutenant. All relationships are transactional in one way or another.”

  Tedone tilted his head at me curiously, crossing his arms before him. “Refresh my memory, will you? Where was she when Farber was getting himself murdered in his dressing room?”

  “Sabrina didn’t appear in act one. She watched it seated on a folding chair in the wings in full makeup and costume. She did tell me that she started downstairs during the intermission to try out some red lipstick, but that the ladies’ dressing room was such a mob scene that she abandoned the idea and came right back up.” I paused, recalling the way her eyes had flickered at me. “But she seemed evasive when she told me about it. As if she were holding out on me.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because she thought it would be smarter to keep her mouth shut. Obviously, she was mistaken.”

  “Are you telling me you think she was murdered?”

  “No, I don’t think she was murdered. I know she was. Sabrina must have seen Greg’s killer. The killer knew it and had to take care of her. So he, or she, visited Sabrina in her room this afternoon and persuaded her to shoot up.”

  “How do you ‘persuade’ someone to shoot up?”

  “Easy. By holding a loaded handgun to their head.”

  “Yeah, that would work pretty good,” Tedone conceded. He looked down at Lulu, then back up at me. “You sound awful damned sure about this.”

  “Like I told you, I was with her in the rose garden before I went out to Point O’Woods. She was focused, together and clean. She wasn’t shooting smack. And while we’re on the subject of smack, is Romero still on ice?”

  Tedone nodded. “No way he could have pulled this. Mind you, by tomorrow afternoon he’ll be back out on the street. Those lowlifes always manage to scrounge bail. My sergeant’s convinced that Romero is somehow the key to this whole case. Me, I don’t see it. What do you think?”

  “I think that every time I turn around, I run into him—or a headless rooster. By the way, you’ll want to talk to Eugene Inagaki, who was Greg’s personal assistant. He’s out at the beach house with Dini. Drove out today from New York with their dogs.”

  “And why will I want to do that?”

  “Because Eugene was Greg’s lover. I’m certain he’s the one who gave Greg the AIDs virus, which Greg then passed on to Dini.”

  Carmine Tedone stared at me with his mouth open for a long moment before he said, “Did she know that her husband’s lover was another man?”

  “Eugene says she didn’t. And she certainly gave no indication that she did. Me, I don’t know. I didn’t think it was my business to ask, what with her being a grieving widow and all. That’s your job.”

  “What about Dini’s mother, Glenda?”

  “As . . . ?”

  “As Farber’s killer. If Farber gave her daughter the AIDS virus because he was two-timing her with his gay assistant, that sure sounds like a motive to me.”

  I considered this for a moment. Wondered if Dini had shared the results of her blood test with Glenda before the curtain went up. Wondered if it could have been Glenda who’d killed Greg. She’d been alone in the corridor outside of the ladies’ room when Dini was in there throwing up. Marty was in the men’s room dealing with his own issues. Greg was all by himself in their dressing room. For a precious few seconds no one had eyes on Glenda. She definitely could have rushed in there and bashed him in the head with that brick. A few seconds were all she’d have needed.

  “Plus Glenda’s a retired nurse,” Tedone added. “That puts her in play if Sabrina’s overdose was no accident.” His face dropped. “Wait, what am I saying? Glenda was at the beach house when Sabrina’s O.D. went down.”

  “Actually, she wasn’t, as a matter of fact. Glenda didn’t get there until a few seconds before I did. Told me she’d been running errands in Guilfoyle.”

  “You’re saying she could have murdered Sabrina and beaten you to Point O’Woods from here?”

  “Conceivably. I wasn’t in any hurry. And the guard at the kiosk had to call the house before he’d let me in. She’s been living there for two weeks and would have slipped right on through.”

  “So the old lady’s unaccounted for and therefore a suspect.”

  “Glenda’s also fierce when it comes to protecting her daughter. Fierce, period. If it was she whom Sabrina spotted coming out of the men’s dressing room then I’d totally buy her making sure Sabrina wouldn’t live to tell about it.” I paused, mulling it over. “Mimi Whitfield was down there during intermission, too, don’t forget.”

  “Did she have a grudge against Farber?”

  “Of a sort. She and Greg had a wild affair back in the Gerald Ford years. She was madly in love with him. Greg, not Gerald Ford—as far as I know.”

  “Was it mutual?”

  “She told me it wasn’t. That for Greg it was strictly a fling. But he did get Mimi pregnant.”

  Tedone’s eyes widened. “Did she have the baby?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did he pay for the abortion?”

  “They went Dutch.”

  “How many years ago was this?”

  “Fifteen, maybe.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Ancient history.”

  “There is no such thing when it comes to love, Lieutenant. Especially if there was a baby involved.”

  He stood there scowling at me. “Kindly explain something to me, will you? How are you finding all of this stuff out? I’
m starting to feel like you’re the one who’s running the case and I’m the one who’s taking notes and making coffee runs. I guess he wasn’t kidding.”

  “Who wasn’t kidding?”

  “Friend of mine on the job in New York City. Extremely sharp homicide detective. Very.”

  “‘Very’ as in he’s extremely sharp or ‘Very’ as in his name is Romaine Very?”

  “That’s his name. Romaine Very.”

  “What a small, strange world we inhabit. He happens to be a friend of mine, too. Well, not exactly a friend. But our paths have crossed several times.”

  “That’s what Ro said. He phoned me first thing this morning when the story broke. Wanted to be sure to give me some advice about you.”

  “Which was . . . ?”

  “He said you’re an annoying pain in the keester—to which I said tell me something I don’t already know—but that your mind works in ways that ours don’t. And by ‘ours’ he meant professionally trained investigators who actually know what we’re doing. But he told me to do whatever you suggest, no matter how nutso it sounds, because you have freakish insights into human behavior. He figures you must have been exposed to a massive dose of radiation as a child. Some kind of cold war medical experiment or something.”

  “Very said that?”

  “He did.”

  “Lulu contributes quite a bit, you know.”

  “Whatever. All I know is this case seemed pretty straightforward to me twenty minutes ago and now I’m so mixed up that I’m getting my first migraine headache in eleven years. So have you got any advice for me?”

  “Take a couple of aspirin and stretch out for a few minutes with a damp washcloth over your eyes. The symptoms should pass pretty quickly.”

  “I meant about this case,” he said between gritted teeth.

  “Lieutenant, are you asking me what I would do if I were you?”

  He sighed irritably. “I guess I am.”

  “Well, okay. But you won’t like it.”

  “Now there’s a huge surprise. What would you do?”

  “You’re serious about this?”

  “Totally serious. Lay it on me.”

  So I laid it on him.