Perfect Sax Page 8

  The young woman who was lying in all that blood was half on her side, half on her stomach, one arm stretched up over her head, like she had been swimming and was caught midstroke. She was wearing slim black slacks and what had once been a pure-white lace camisole. The red of the rosebud pinned to one strap was drowned in the red of three open wounds.

  I could see the side of her face clearly. Sara Jackson’s green eyes were half open. Her skin seemed sickly white beneath the disheveled strands of her long red hair. Her freckles stood out in relief.

  “You know her?” Baronowski was at the doorway, looking at my face, gauging my reaction. His voice was still soft. Maybe he was trying to be sensitive. My house. A huge blood-soaked mess. Maybe he was trying to soothe me into confessing something. He suspected me of being involved in this. He was watching to see if I was faking, lying, deceiving.

  “She worked for me.” For some reason, I was startled to hear my own voice. It sounded almost normal. How could anything about me be normal after seeing this? I knew the police were wondering why I was pausing. Every one of my actions and reactions was being measured. If I hesitated, would they think I was reacting to the traumatic sight of my bedroom awash in blood and murder, or would they suppose I was taking some time to come up with a plausible lie? I rushed on. “Her name is Sara Jackson. She sometimes works as a server at the parties we cater. She was working on the Woodburn School dinner downtown. I just saw her. I mean, the last time I saw her it was around midnight. She asked to borrow my car, which I lent her. She said she’d bring it back here before morning.”

  When I mentioned the Woodburn, Baronowski and his partner, Hilts, exchanged looks.

  “Can you account for your time between midnight and now, Ms. Bean?” asked Baronowski, flipping open a small spiral-topped notepad.

  “I…” I looked at the room, the dead woman, my trembling hands. “I had a little trouble getting home from the Woodburn, actually. It’s a long story. I was sort of stranded downtown, but I ended up having breakfast at the Pantry on Figueroa with a friend. His name is Wyatt. Dexter Wyatt. He may still be downstairs. Anyway, he brought me home.”

  Honnett had been standing close to me as I took in the scene. Now he put his arm around my shoulders, a move that was far from lost on the other police detectives. But I needed space. I shrugged it off. There was a dead woman in my bed. The police thought I was connected to her death. I didn’t need to melt into anyone’s arms. I needed to think.

  “The Chill of Death”

  We stood in the little bedroom, which was really getting claustrophobic, what with three men and myself and Sara Jackson’s lifeless body. The morgue guys were running behind, I had been told. It was barely 4 A.M. The phone on the bedside table rang loudly.

  “You expecting anyone to call?” Detective Baronowski asked, making me suddenly feel guilty about the phone.

  “No,” I replied. It rang a second time, and I felt I was somehow being viewed with even more suspicion. “But then I wasn’t expecting any of this.” I didn’t have to gesture at the body in the bed. “Should I answer it?” I asked, confused, as it rang out again. “Or I could leave it. My machine picks up after four rings.”

  “Why not take it?” asked Baronowski quietly. “We’re done fingerprinting in here.”

  I reached out for the phone, disturbed that I had to walk a step closer to the bed to reach it, a step closer to Sara Jackson’s corpse. I was keenly aware of being observed.

  “Hello.”

  “Madeline?” It was Holly’s voice, very screechy and breathless. And before I could reply, I heard her continue to shout, but she wasn’t talking to me anymore. “Oh my God, Wes! She’s okay. I got her. She’s home!” And then back to me: “Maddie! We heard on the news you were dead. And then we both kind of fell apart. But then we just heard on the news you were not dead.”

  “They already have that I’m not dead on the news?” I asked, realizing the news reporters down in the street must have talked to Dex or something.

  “Maddie. Did you hear me? Wes and I thought you had been shot. We heard about it on the radio when we got home to Wes’s house. And we have been just falling apart.”

  “Not that we believed it,” I heard Wes say in the background, trying to manage Holly’s end of the phone conversation.

  “And hell, Mad,” Holly said, “at first, Wes just kept calling the police, but all they would do was take messages. No one would call us back. They said it was too soon. And then, when we heard you were not dead, you didn’t answer your cell phone. I’ve been calling your cell every five minutes until I thought I’d go insane. And we just can’t believe you’re, well, like, okay. I mean, really okay and not dead!” She was melting down. I could hear the tears. It might be the first time, too. Holly believed in the song “Big Girls Don’t Cry.”

  I looked up and saw that Honnett, Baronowski, and the other detective were actively listening. And waiting.

  “It’s my friends. Wesley and Holly. They thought I was dead. And…and you can imagine their reaction now. I love them so much. They are just so…”

  Honnett gave me a look. Yes, I knew he had felt it, too. He had panicked and I knew it. And that was something I would surely have to think over when I had the time. Even now, I could tell he was beginning to feel a twinge of jealousy over my relationship with Hol and Wes. Like he was a little left out. Like maybe now my real friends would show up and I’d turn him out.

  “Well, that’s pretty fucked up,” said Hilts, who as a rule hadn’t said much all night.

  I had to know what the cops were thinking. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The damn TV reporters.”

  Baronowski looked at Honnett for a second and spoke directly to him. “You gonna look after her? Maybe it’s not a good idea for her to stay alone tonight, you know.”

  “What’s this all about?” I insisted. “Lieutenant Honnett is not a close friend of mine anymore. So this is not his problem, okay?”

  Baronowski turned back to me, assessing me anew. “I guess I didn’t realize how the situation stood. My apologies. See, the thing is, Madeline, we do not know squat about what happened here, do we? Some girl was killed. Now it is possible that she was followed here. Maybe she was killed by someone that knew her. That’s one scenario, and believe me, we will look into that carefully. But it is also possible the gunman was some random bad guy looking to break into this house that maybe startled her as she was returning your car. She might have been a witness to a lousy break-in who got into the wrong guy’s way. Right?”

  I nodded.

  “Or maybe you yourself, Madeline, have an enemy. After all, this is your house and your bed.”

  I looked down at the bed reflexively. I had to get out of this room. Why were we all standing there? The harder I puzzled and demanded rational thought, the dizzier and more detached I felt. Enemies? I hadn’t any enemies. It was ridiculous. But then so was the entire night. So was this awful, awful death. I began shaking a little. If I couldn’t begin to figure any of it out, all I could think to do was to force myself to stay conscious. I tried again to focus on Detective Baronowski’s soft voice and to concentrate on what he was saying.

  “You and the victim both have red hair. You’re both young and attractive. This whole thing could have been a case of mistaken identity, and your life may very well have been saved by a mistake, have you thought of that?”

  I shook my head, passive. This was too much now. I looked very little like Sara Jackson. True, we were of a similar build and size. But the way we were put together was different. She had a thinner, athletic look. I have a lot of curves. My hair was more strawberry blond, and thick and super curly, while Sara had that lovely fine, straight hair, and it was much more red than blond. No one who knew me could confuse the two of us. But I was shaken by the thought just the same.

  “And if that is the right scenario,” he continued, sounding even kinder, “it might have been better if those newspeople could have just shut the
hell up so the world hadn’t learned you are officially ‘not dead’ so soon.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Oh,” I could hear Holly’s voice faintly say from the receiver of the phone, which was still gripped in my dangling hand.

  “Now I’m not saying that’s the case. I don’t want to spook you any more than you are already spooked.”

  I nodded my head, probably looking like the poster child for “spooked.” At that, Baronowski’s partner, Hilts, laughed out loud. I noticed Honnett, standing back in the corner, looking like he’d like to punch the guy. He’d clearly been agitated all night and needed an outlet. Let a guy laugh at me, even, and Honnett was ready to knock him down. Baronowski noticed it, too.

  “Look,” he said, “I apologize if I misinterpreted your friendship with Detective Honnett. He’s not officially on this case, as I think you know. He asked to come in on the basis of having worked with you in the past, so we may have assumed too much.”

  I looked at Baronowski steadily, not having the heart to meet Honnett’s eyes. Here Honnett had rushed over to my house, presuming like all get-out that I had been murdered in my bed, telling his associates on the force that he and I had been close. Hell, he’d been so stricken he hadn’t even been able to bring himself to identify my dead body. And these cops had respected him for it. And now here I was, acting like we were barely acquaintances. I could almost believe that I was, indeed, a horrible, ungrateful bitch if I didn’t also remember that Chuck Honnett had been my lover for several months before he ever bothered to tell me he hadn’t actually gotten all the way divorced from his last wife.

  “Mad!” It was Holly, yelling at me through the receiver. I put the phone back up to my ear.

  “Sorry, Hol. I’m here with Honnett and a few detectives.”

  “Wes says we’ll come right over to get you. You’re staying with him, he says.”

  “Thanks,” I told her, and I almost burst into tears as the pent-up tension of the night seemed to explode at just the thought of escape and comfort and friends. “But I have my car here.” I hadn’t seen it parked down in the cul-de-sac when I had arrived with Dexter Wyatt, but Sara must have left it down the street.

  “Oh. Okay, you sure?” Holly asked.

  “I’ll drive you over to Wes’s,” Honnett said, his deep voice sounding awfully warm and protective.

  “Or maybe Honnett will drive me,” I told Holly.

  “O-kay,” she drawled, with significance.

  “Yo!” We turned and the cop who had been manning the outside stairs came to the door of the room. “This joker downstairs, Wyatt, won’t leave until he finds out if the lady here needs a ride anywhere. He is a huge pain in the ass, and I’d like to tell him to take a hike, but he insists he’s driving her around.”

  “Dex?” I asked, having lost track of the guy who was detained outside for so long.

  “Right,” the young uniformed cop said, his eyes now fastened on the body of the dead woman in the bed. “And the coroner’s van is out front. They’re here for the body.”

  Just the way fate does things, I guess. Only four hours earlier, I couldn’t get a ride if my life depended on it. Just now, I had four offers of transportation, not to mention a chance to hitch a lift with the coroner’s wagon.

  “You stay put,” I told Holly firmly. “I’ll get to Wes’s by five.”

  “Sure thing,” she said, sounding more and more like the bubbly Holly and less and less like the shrieking fiend who might have just lost her best friend. “Wes said to tell you he’s baking you something special and he doesn’t even want to hear about you saying you have no appetite. He just doesn’t care.”

  I smiled and said good-bye. And then it hit me.

  Four rides. Had there been such a surfeit of transportation around midnight and had I come directly home, as I had originally planned, what might have actually occurred this evening? Would all be calm? Would all be well? Would Sara Jackson still be alive?

  Would I?

  “Little Things You Used to Do”

  Before I left the house, I made photocopies of the personnel file we had on Sara Jackson and handed it to Detective Baronowski, as he had requested. And following his instructions, I made a quick survey of the house. I did not find anything obvious missing. Honnett had stayed in the background. He had offered to wait for me outside, and by his tone, I knew I’d have to spend some time talking it out with the guy before I could leave. I owed him that, I supposed. And I had to admit I was still amazed he had gotten emotional over me. Of course, it had taken me getting murdered for him to do so.

  The police let me pack a bag and take all my essentials from the bathroom since they had finished examining the upstairs section of my house long before I had arrived. I caught sight of myself in the bathroom’s full-length mirror as I scooped up my makeup and stopped to take stock: Clear skin. Fairly straight nose. Full lips. Overdressed. I had to change out of this gown. I pulled it off in one quick movement and dropped it in a wicker basket.

  Nice enough body, I thought, looking in the mirror critically. Well, first let me qualify that. No one is allowed to like his or her body in L.A.—it’s like a secret sick law that keeps us going to gyms and shunning carbohydrates—but I’m not an actress or model and I guess my standards are a little more realistic. I figured until gravity did its dirty work, I couldn’t complain. Having a real bosom was a novelty in this town. I remembered, suddenly, a time I’d spent in this very room with Honnett. The steam from the shower had fogged this full-length mirror, but not so foggy that I couldn’t still see us together as we explored a new use for the old claw-foot bathtub.

  I knew this was a dangerous way to be thinking since I had to face the man in just a few minutes. I kicked off my high-heeled sandals. I was longing for a shower, but simply didn’t have the time or the stomach for it right there, right then. As I heard the men from the coroner’s office bump down the narrow staircase, carrying Sara Jackson out of the house, I stood in the center of the bathroom and shivered. I dressed quickly in a pair of old jeans with a black top and flats. Since it had gotten chilly overnight, I tied a gray cashmere sweater around my shoulders for warmth and went down to see Honnett.

  He was waiting outside by the front door, where I found him eyeing Dexter Wyatt. Again, I had forgotten Dex was still around and I felt pretty guilty for letting him hang out all this time.

  I put my suitcase down. “Dexter, did you meet Lieutenant Chuck Honnett?” It wasn’t the timeliest introduction, since the two men had been standing around together for some time. But that’s me, Miss Manners. I had these party habits so firmly embedded I would probably still be introducing folks when I got to heaven. Or wherever.

  “Sort of,” Dex said. “What the hell happened in there? The coroner came out with a body bag. Who the hell was it?”

  “A college girl who worked for me,” I said. “She borrowed my car tonight and—”

  “Can we stop reporting the news for a minute,” Honnett interrupted, “and just tell your friend here to shove off now.

  He’s on the verge of getting arrested for interfering with an investigation.” Honnett never used to get hostile. I think this whole scene was getting to him, too.

  Dex, for his part, didn’t seem too exercised by Honnett’s attitude. He just kept his laid-back charm going, no matter how many bodies might have to be loaded and taken off to the morgue before we could have a moment to chat.

  “Maddie, can you ditch the cops now?” Dex asked, meaning not just the detectives still upstairs in the house, but also the one hulking around my front door. Not exactly diplomatic, but to the point.

  “They said I could leave,” I answered. “I gave them the number where I could be reached. I’m going to stay at my friend Wesley’s house for a while. Maybe for a long while.”

  Honnett just leaned against the wall, waiting for me to finish with Dex, but clearly not enjoying that I had a guy hanging around, interested.

  “Good,” Dex said, and s
miled. “I’ll take you over there. It’s like my job, you know?”

  I smiled back at him.

  “Not that I mind,” Dex said, “but you don’t seem an easy girl to get home. You’re a challenge. I like that.”

  “I aim to drive men crazy,” I said, not bothering to check Honnett’s reaction. “But the thing is, I’ll have to take a rain check on that. I need to have my car with me at Wes’s. You understand.”

  “Okay.” Dex kept his voice kind of gravelly low. It must have been driving Honnett nuts trying to hear. “So you won’t let me rescue you again?”

  “Once a night is certainly enough,” I said. “But I do appreciate it. Oh, and could you do me a favor? Could you tell Zenya I think I left my purse in her car?”

  Dexter agreed, and then left, taking the number at Wesley’s house and saying he would call me, maybe bring my bag by tomorrow. I thanked him again, he glowered at Honnett, and he was out of there.

  Honnett and I were finally alone. “We really need to talk, Maddie. We’ve needed to talk for a long time, but you weren’t that interested in hearing from me.”

  “I found the key to my Jeep that Sara left on the kitchen counter. It’s probably parked up the street.”

  He sighed. “I’ll walk with you.”

  Just as we turned toward the stairs, Detective Hilts stuck his head out the front door and stopped us. “Hey,” he said, calling to me. “Wait up. We’re going to need to impound that vehicle of yours. The one the vic was driving.”

  “Can you please refer to Sara by her name?” I asked, weary almost beyond words.

  “Sure. Anyway, no one touches that truck until we get our lab boys to take it in and give it the works. So I’m going to need the key.”

  I walked back up the steps and handed Hilts the damned key, giving him the plate number and where he might find it parked.