The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (10 page)

No light inside. I stuck my head in. There was nothing. No sound, no movement. I reached inside for the light switch, snatched my hand back. “Sean.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Give me one of your gloves.”

He handed over the left one. I pulled it on. It was snug. Designed for a hand smaller than mine.

Again I went for the light. Found it, toggled it upward. It controlled a floor lamp by the desk.

What I saw didn’t surprise me. But it still startled me. No matter how many dead bodies I encounter, each one brings a new variety of shock.

Dennis Lennox lay on the Oriental rug. He wore khaki pants, a dark green Izod shirt, a pair of deck shoes. Several feet away, his Golden Globe lay on its side. There was blood on it. Not a lot. Not enough to explain the kind of damage that Dennis’s face had suffered. There was just enough of his features left to tell it was him. The rest was a mass of blood and flesh and bone and other body parts I couldn’t identify.

I stepped closer. Then back again. There was an awful lot of blood around. In the age of AIDS, I didn’t want to go near the blood of someone who slept with as many women as Dennis evidently did.

Then what I was seeing truly registered.

I hadn’t tossed my cookies in several years. I guess I was due.

“So much,” I said,“for not messing up the crime scene.” I was dizzy and I tasted bile. I’d managed not to get any puke on the body or the Golden Globe. Just all over the rug.

“Phew,” Sean McKay said. He’d backed out of the room. I joined him in the hall. We met Samantha halfway back to the front door and turned her around. I sent the two of them to gather the others back where Lu lay. There were enough people to tend her. I could spare a moment for myself.

I found a bathroom. I used my still-gloved hand on the light switch and the faucets, washed out my mouth, put water on my face. When I was done I went up front. Everyone was huddled just inside. Lu was awake and leaning against the wall, attended by Sean,Trixie, and Snoogums. “Ronnie?”

“Yes?”

“When you called 911—”

“Police are coming too.”

“Thanks. Everyone know what we found?”

A round of nods. Sean looked up at me. “I told them. I hope that was okay.”

“It was fine.” I looked at Lu. Her eyes were open and something was going on there.

Things were momentarily calm. An opportunity to take inventory of what I knew. The trail of blood. The Golden Globe. That was Lu. Whoever offed Dennis clobbered her with the award. That much seemed clear.

Another thing: she knew Dennis was in the den. Had she seen him there? I’d had to turn on the light before I spotted his carcass. Did that mean the light was on when she went in? Then who turned it off ? Lu? Highly unlikely. The killer? Possible, I supposed. Or maybe Lu didn’t have to see Dennis to know he was lying there. Some connection they’d built up through living in the same house for however long.

I stepped away, far enough to watch them all. “Everyone. Please give me your attention.”

Four pairs of eyes came my way. Lu’s stayed where they were.

“Which of you killed Dennis?”

A round of protest. Everyone asserted their innocence. Samantha rolled her eyes. No one did anything that made them look guilty.

“We were all out there with you,” Sean McKay said.

“Any one of you could have been inside, gone out the back or something, run to your car, and come back.”

“Please,” Sean said. “That kind of thing only happens on
Murder, She Wrote
. Next thing, you’re going to gather us all in the drawing room and reveal what actually happened.”

I heard a siren outside. “It was worth a shot,” I said. The siren came closer. Then there were door slams and running feet and two young men in uniforms. One dropped down next to Lu and opened his kit while the other herded the rest of us outside. Two minutes later the first police car showed up.

After that, things went pretty much as they had every other time I’d uncovered a violent death. Lots of cops, a bunch of techs, a couple of men in jackets and ties to order everyone else around.

Fifteen minutes after the paramedics showed up they carried Lu out, stuck her in the ambulance, sped off. Someone asked the uniformed officer guarding us whether she would be all right. She didn’t know, the officer said, and the way she said it made me think she didn’t much care.

Sometime after that they began questioning us, one at a time. They did all the women first, then Sean, then me. They brought me to a game room where I sat randomly moving marbles around a Chinese checkers board. If it was me in charge, I wouldn’t have let me touch the marbles. Maybe they’d already dusted them for prints.

I answered all the standard questions. In your own words, Mr. Portugal, what happened here tonight? What was your relationship with the deceased? Do you know anyone who would have had a reason to want him dead? Is there anything else that you can tell us that might help with our investigation? I answered everything as truthfully as I could. Though they didn’t need my help to figure out that everyone on the scene with the possible exception of Lu had a reason to want Dennis Lennox dead.

Mike showed up while they were talking to me. I saw him go by. He looked tired and small.

They finished with me and sent me back to the holding area. By this time it was past one-thirty. I asked to call Gina. They didn’t want to let me, but I made a pest of myself, and they relented. I told her where I was and what was going on and said I’d be home as soon as I could. She was concerned, but underneath that, she was still pissed. I asked her to go next door and let Theta know Ronnie was fine.

At a quarter to three they let us go. I asked if I could see Mike. They wouldn’t let me.

Ronnie got home a little before me. As I pulled up she was unlocking her front door. I was sure she saw and heard me. She didn’t wait around for me. By the time I got out of the truck her door was shut.

Gina was asleep on the more comfortable of the sofas. The TV was on, its sound down low. It was tuned to an infomercial, some cream that would make you look twenty years younger.

I went in the bathroom, shut the door, took a long hot shower. When I came out I turned off the TV, woke Gina, led her to the bedroom. Said I’d tell her everything in the morning. I poured her into bed. Went to join her.

“I still want you on the couch,” she said.

I awoke a little after seven and turned on theTV. The Channel 6 morning show found the Dennis Lennox “slaying” made to order. But with all the babbling, there were but two pieces of information that were new to me. The first was that Lu, last name Tom, was critical but stable. The other was that Dennis’s mess of a face was caused by the exit of a high-caliber bullet. He’d been shot from behind. The high-caliber part was the news. I’d figured out the rest.

Gina wandered in just when they were saying the scene was soaked in blood. “Oh, please,” she said.

“It was. Worse than you can imagine. Made me sick. I threw up.”

That was where she was supposed to say, “Oh, babe, I’m sorry.” No such luck. Just a look of disgust.

I watched them blather on, anchors Jim and Tabitha, ace field reporters Claudia Acuna and Terry Takamura, pundit Peter Saint Fontaine with a hard-hitting commentary on violence and movie ratings and video games. Entertainment reporter Timmy Gold came on with a report about Dennis’s short but prolific career. There were clips from all his shows, including
The Galahad Sisters
. Ronnie and Stephanie Urbano were discussing some guy’s buns. Ronnie thought they were tens. Stephanie had seen better.

There was a bit about Ronnie getting fired from the show “under mysterious circumstances” and a reminder that she was one of the people on the scene. “So there are questions to be answered about that,”Timmy Gold said, before turning things back to Jim and Tabitha.

They finally moved on to the next story—the upcoming Mars landings—and I shut off the sound. The doorbell rang. Theta. I ushered her in and asked how Ronnie was. She pointed to the TV. “You saw a minute ago?”

“About the questions to be answered?”

“Uh-huh. Makes it sound like Ronnie had something to do with it.”

“How is she?”

“As good as you could expect. Still mad at you. We’re out of coffee. Can I get a cup?”

“Coming up,” Gina said.

The bell dinged again. I went for the door. Mike Lennox stood outside.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said. “Come on in.”

If he’d gotten any sleep, it wasn’t much. He was pale, almost ghostly. Under his eyes were flabby patches of skin. His hair stuck up at odd angles. He had on the same clothes he’d been wearing the night before. “You got any tea?” he said.

“I’ll make some.”

His nose twitched. “Don’t go to any trouble. I’ll have some of that coffee.”

“It’s no trouble,” Gina said. She opened the cupboard where we kept the teabags, shut it, went for the tea starter kit, opened it, began sorting through the contents.

Mike sat at the table across from Theta. She gathered who he was. “I’m sorry about your son,” she said. Then she got up, went around the table, knelt, put an arm around him. “It’s okay.” They stayed like that while Gina announced the coffee was ready and poured some for Theta and for herself.

Mike patted the hand Theta had on his shoulder. “You’re very nice, whoever you are.”

Theta got up and went into the kitchen. I took her seat. Gina brought in two mugs and placed them in front of Mike and me. He took a sip and almost smiled. “Yunnan,” he said.

Gina nodded, went back to what she was doing. Mike looked at me. “Who do you think did it?”

“I haven’t the foggiest. I really don’t.”

“Probably wasn’t anyone there last night, huh?”

“You mean, that was waiting outside with Ronnie and me? I doubt it. But I don’t know.”

“Could’ve been a lot of people.”

“Mike, I—”

“Hey, kid’s dead, we don’t have to gild his lily. Kid was a real shit. I raised a real shit.”

“No, I—”

“I was a lousy dad. Spent too much time loaded, never had time for—”

“Stop it!”

We both turned toward the kitchen. Theta stood there, spatula in hand, a red Bristol Farms apron wrapped around her. “If your son was a shit,” she said, “he would’ve been one no matter what you did. You got plenty to feel bad about. You don’t need to go inventing more. Okay?”

“Okay,” he murmured.

“Good.” She returned to her skillet.

Everyone gobbled their food, like we were in a hurry to be done with it so we could go our separate ways. But when we were finished we all sat around staring at each other. No one wanted to go out and face the big wide rotten world. Finally Mike stood and began clearing the table. He got all the dishes, loaded the dishwasher, washed the stuff that wouldn’t fit. The rest of us continued to gape at one another.

When he was done with the dishes Mike found the Comet and began to clean the sink. He scrubbed it way more than it needed. Way more than Gina or I had ever scrubbed. I was about to get up to stop him when he put down the sponge and began spraying rinse water. Then he turned from the sink, looking for some other chore to keep at least a little of his mind occupied. That was when I went after him. I led him out of the kitchen and out the front door.

We walked up to Culver Boulevard and began a circumnavigation of Sony Studios, not saying much, just putting one foot in front of the other. Somewhere along the way Mike produced a cigarette, and somewhere beyond that he threw the butt into the gutter. We were almost all the way around when he stopped, stared, said, “Wasn’t there a Trader Joe’s here?”

“Moved. Down the block, to that new downtown development.”

“Everything changes.”

“Eventually, yeah, everything does.”

“Everything changes, and everyone dies.”

“Sooner or later.”

He crossed the street, I followed, he peered into the front window of the former market, looking for all the world like we was willing the store to reappear. Maybe if it did, time would reverse itself. Dennis would still be alive.

My thoughts, of course, not his. I was projecting them on him. That alternate reality crap again.

“I feel like Job, you know?” He was still staring into the dark interior. When he finally turned back to me he said, “I’m on antidepressants, did you know that?”

“No.”

“Been on them since the first time I came back from China. Zoloft.”

All I knew about Zoloft was the commercials with the little oval entities. “I didn’t know people stayed on them for so long.”

“Some people, yeah, they do. It’s got its upsides and its downsides.”

“Side effects?”

“Not what I meant, but, yeah, those too. Like, it makes it harder to come.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Sometimes I can’t at all. When you’re a kid, you see a bra strap and your pants are wet. Then you end up so it takes you all night. What a life.”

“We should probably—”

“But the side effects, those I can deal with. But you know what else about Zoloft?”

“What else?”

“It takes the edge off.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s kind of like … okay, life’s got its ups and downs.” He was drawing a wave in the air, a big one reaching from above his head to his knees. “But once the pills get a hold on you, it’s like this.”The wave was smaller now, from his neck down to his hips. “You lose the lows, sure. But you lose the highs too. Sometimes I miss those highs. I’ve been smoking a lot more dope, trying to find the highs.”

“Does it work?”

“Not really. But see, the highs aren’t all of it. Sometimes I miss the lows too.”

“Like now?”

“Yeah, like now. I want to really feel what I ought to be feeling with my son dead, and I just don’t. I mean, yeah, I feel terrible, and nothing else matters right now, not even Donna. But I don’t really
feel
it. You know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

He took another look inside the dead market, turned to me. “Shit, man, I shouldn’t be dragging you down with this.”

“What friends are for. Speaking of which … that Thanksgiving invitation to my father’s still stands.”
Nice segue, Portugal
.