“Not really,” I said.
“On the contrary,” Monk said. “We discovered another motive for Stipe’s murder.”
“We did?” I said.
“Conrad Stipe’s consulting producer salary and his profits from the show,” Monk said. “If we follow the money, it could lead us to the killer.”
I guess I didn’t do such a bad job of questioning them after all.
“You think someone made it look like a fan killed Stipe to distract us from the real motive?” Stottlemeyer asked. “That would certainly explain why Stipe was shot in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, and in full view of security cameras.”
“Or the killer was a drug-crazed freak,” Monk said.
“It sounds to me like we should have a talk with Arianna Stipe,” Stottlemeyer said. “And her divorce lawyer, Howard Egger.”
“Do you need me for that?” Disher asked.
Stottlemeyer gave him a look. “You have a pressing engagement somewhere else?”
“There are some leads I’d like to follow on the Lorber desecration before the trail gets cold,” Disher said. “It’s been my experience that the first two days are critical in cases like these.”
“You’ve never had a case like this,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I’m talking about the experience I’m having now,” Disher said. “I can feel the chill.”
“You’re feeling my cold, stony gaze,” Stottlemeyer said. “What have you got so far?”
Disher eagerly whipped out his notebook and flipped through several pages to refresh himself.
“The key card that the shooter used to enter and exit the Burgerville headquarters was registered to Brandon Lorber, who was issued only two cards, one for himself and one for his wife, Veronica,” Disher said. “She says that she still has hers and that her husband reported his key card missing two weeks ago. He was issued a new one by Archie Applebaum, their security guy, right away.”
“Did you find Lorber’s new key card?” Monk asked.
“It was on his desk, beside the financial documents he was reading when he died. Our forensic accountant is taking a look at those documents now.”
“Why?” Stottlemeyer said.
“Maybe there’s a clue in the figures that could lead us to a motive and whoever shot Lorber,” Disher said. “We have to find him before he strikes again.”
“Before he shoots someone else who is already dead,” Stottlemeyer said.
“That’s only how it appears,” Disher said.
“Lorber was definitely dead before he was shot,” Stottlemeyer said. “The medical examiner confirmed it.”
“Maybe the shooter thought Lorber was sleeping and didn’t want to wake him before killing him,” Disher said.
“That’s your theory?” the captain asked.
“It’s one of several that we’re working on.”
“We?” Stottlemeyer said.
“Last month a consumer group announced that Burgerville secretly used beef extract to add flavor to their French fries,” Disher said. “The revelations infuriated the thousands of vegetarians who have been gobbling up the fries for years.”
“You think he was shot by a homicidal vegan?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“They get pretty riled up when they eat flesh,” Disher said.
“But if he was already dead,” Monk said, “why bother shooting him at all? And why with the cold precision of a professional assassin?”
“To show that you can’t escape their wrath,” Disher said. “Even if you’re dead.”
“Are those your only suspects?” Stottlemeyer said.
“Last year, a guy bought coffee at the drive-thru window at a Burgerville in Pleasanton and spilled it on his crotch,” Disher said. “He sued the company, claiming the scalding liquid neutered him. He lost and vowed to get even.”
“Uh-huh,” Stottlemeyer said. “So you’re looking for either a deranged vegan or a vengeful eunuch.”
“We have other theories,” Disher said. “But I think it would be premature to go into them until I’ve had a chance to follow up on some other leads.”
“Fine, you go do that,” Stottlemeyer said. “We’ll just muddle along here without you.”
“Thank you, sir. If you get in a bind, or just want to run stuff by me, you can find me at the SDU command center.”
“You mean your desk,” Stottlemeyer said.
“That was before,” Disher said. “Now it’s a command center.”
Disher hurried away. Stottlemeyer sighed and waved a waitress over to the table.
“What’s a guy got to do to get some nuts in this bar?” he said.
Monk and I took the stairs to Arianna Stipe’s fourth-floor suite. Stottlemeyer took the elevator and got there ahead of us to handle all the introductions.
When we walked in, Howard Egger, the former Mrs. Stipe’s lawyer, had his back to us and was making some drinks at the wet bar.
Arianna stood in the center of the room with her hands on her hips and faced the captain in her Juicy Couture T-shirt, Free City hooded sweat-jacket, and True Religion jeans. Her casual outfit was more expensive than most wedding dresses. The clothes were also intended to be worn by women a good thirty years younger and thirty pounds thinner than she was.
“I don’t know what I can possibly do to help,” she said with a slight lisp. “I was in flight to San Francisco from LA when Conrad was killed.”
I could understand why she was lisping. It must have been a real struggle for her to speak. Her lips looked like they’d been removed from the world’s largest salmon and implanted on her face, which had apparently been peeled by an industrial laser, pulled taut over the top of her skull, and paralyzed into marble firmness with enough botulinum toxin to wipe out a city.
Her eyebrows had been tweezed away and replaced with arched tattoos that gave her a permanent expression of someone who sat on something very, very cold. Her straightened teeth were capped an unnatural, gleaming white that seemed to capture and reflect all the light in the room. Her breasts were as large, round, and hard-looking as NBA regulation basketballs. Perhaps they were.
I guessed her age to be about sixty, though it was hard to tell. The inside-out aliens on
Beyond Earth
looked more human than she did.
I tried hard not to scream.
“Most people don’t usually start a conversation with me by offering an alibi,” Stottlemeyer said. “Guilty conscience?”
“I like to get right to the point,” she said.
“So do I.” Howard turned around, carrying a drink for himself and one for Arianna. “Do you regard my client as a suspect?”
He was younger than his client by a decade, trim and tailored, wearing a crisp pin-striped double-breasted suit and a black patch over his left eye. He could have stepped right out of a glossy magazine advertisement for Jack Daniel’s.
Monk ducked behind Stottlemeyer like a frightened child.
“Your client doesn’t seem very heartbroken by her husband’s murder,” Stottlemeyer said, glancing over his shoulder at Monk.
“Ex-husband,” Arianna corrected and sipped daintily at her drink.
“They are legally divorced,” Howard added.
“But you were married for some time,” Stottlemeyer said, sidestepping away from Monk, who followed him.
“I was a devoted and loving wife for thirty years, through good times and bad, through his adultery, drinking, chronic unemployment, and countless other embarrassments and betrayals. The last few years were especially hard when all we were living on was the proceeds from his
Beyond Earth
convention appearances. I finally had enough. I had my needs.”
She stopped sipping so daintily and drank half the contents of her glass.
“So why did you come here?” I asked.
“To kill him,” she said.
“She means that figuratively, of course,” Howard said.
Stottlemeyer took another step to one side, but Monk shadowed him again. Annoyed, the captain turned to look at Monk, who shielded his eyes with his hand.
“There’s an entire hotel room here, Monk. Do you really have to stand right behind me?”
“Yes,” Monk said.
“Do you mind telling me why?”
Monk gestured to the lawyer. “He’s wearing a patch over one eye.”
“I lost my eye in a car accident,” Howard said.
“You should go and look for it,” Monk said. “Right now. Don’t come back without it.”
“I’m afraid it’s long gone, Mr. Monk,” the lawyer said. “The accident happened twenty years ago.”
Stottlemeyer faced Arianna, and Monk ducked back behind him again.
“Why did you want to kill your ex-husband?” Stottlemeyer asked. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”
“Two weeks after our divorce was final I opened up the
Hollywood Reporter
and there was a big article announcing that UBS Network had signed a multimilliondollar deal to bring
Beyond Earth
back as a new TV series,” she said. “Conrad never mentioned that anybody was interested in reviving the show while we were dividing our assets and negotiating our divorce settlement. He waited to close the deal until our divorce was final so he could cheat me out of my fair share of the windfall.”
“He perpetrated a fraud,” Howard said. “We came here to apprise him of that fact and attempt to reach an amicable financial settlement.”
“And failing that?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“We’d sue his scrawny ass into oblivion. For the last twenty years, his career was in the sewer. Nobody in the business returned his calls. All he had was
Beyond Earth
and those fans who thought he was some kind of god,” Arianna said. “I knew he was sleeping with Earthies at those conventions. I put up with it because it was the only thing keeping him going, the only way he could maintain his self-respect. But I’ve got self-respect too and it reached the point where I had to walk away from the marriage to keep it.”
The point probably came when she realized that no amount of plastic surgery would make her as attractive to her husband as an adoring Earthie. And, of course, the more she went under the knife, the more conventions he had to attend to pay for it all, and the more Earthies he’d bed down.
It was a sad story that was written all over her body.
“I’ll tell you this,” she said. “I didn’t put up with Conrad for all those years to get screwed when the galactic gravy train finally docked at our space station.”
Arianna finished her drink and held out her empty glass to Howard for a refill. He dutifully took the glass from her and went to the wet bar.