The Cinderella Killer (11 page)

‘Yes, all right, but I should say I did quite like the guy.'

‘You weren't married to him.'

‘That is undeniably true.'

They raised their glasses and clinked.

‘And, like I said on the phone … condolences or whatever's appropriate to—'

‘And like I said on the phone, no need.'

‘Right. Fine.'

‘So the cops have talked to you, Charles?'

‘You bet. I was actually the one who found the body.'

‘I heard that.'

‘Whether I was the first person to find the body, though, who knows?'

‘Howdja mean?'

‘Well, not having actually witnessed the death, I don't know how many other people might have seen him.'

‘Right, got you.'

‘Mind you, the time frame was fairly short, between Kenny summoning me on the phone and my finding him.'

‘How short?'

‘Twenty minutes, half an hour tops.'

‘OK. You have any thoughts who might have shot the bastard?'

Charles realized again that, beneath all the surface charm and sexiness, Lilith was a woman with an agenda. She had invited him to the Debussy Suite because there was information she wanted from him. Or maybe she wanted to know the extent of his ignorance.

‘I haven't a clue,' he replied. ‘You know a lot more about his background than I do. You know who might have had a grievance against him.'

‘Yes, like me, for instance. If I started listing the grievances I had against Kenny, we could be here all night.' She smiles a deliberately provocative smile. ‘That is assuming we're not here all night anyway.'

Charles didn't know how to respond. Maybe he was meant to come back with some slick movie-dialogue riposte, but it didn't feel right to him. Instead he said, rather formally, ‘I'm working from the assumption that you didn't kill him, Lilith.'

She nodded in mock-approval. ‘Good assumption.'

‘But, as I say, you know a lot more about Kenny than I do. You're more likely to be able to come up with a list of suspects than I am.'

‘Maybe. But I wanted to ask you if he'd been antagonizing anyone in your
Cinderella
company. Any bust-ups there?'

Charles shook his head slowly. ‘No, Kenny seemed to get on with everyone.' He decided not to mention the brief confrontation the star had had with Jasmine del Rio. No need to cast suspicion on an incident that was probably perfectly harmless. Until he had worked out what Lilith wanted from him, he decided to play things cagey.

‘Yup, good old Kenny,' said Lilith. ‘Everybody's buddy. The big star who doesn't act like a big star, the regular guy who nobody gets pissed with. And if he does inadvertently upset someone, then he always sends in Lefty Rubenstein to clear up the mess, smooth things over, pay a little hush money if necessary. Good old Kenny.'

‘Well, I can't think of anyone in the
Cinderella
company who might have wanted to kill him.'

‘You mean rehearsals have been completely harmonious?'

‘That might be overstating it – I'm sure you know enough about working in the theatre to understand that – but the arguments that have come up … Kenny wasn't involved in any of them.'

‘And, knowing how keen showbiz people are on gossip … are there theories around the company about who might have topped him?'

‘Well, the only
Cinderella
cast member I've seen since the murder is of the view that it was a Mafia hit.'

Lilith Greenstone looked genuinely amazed. ‘What the hell would the Mafia have to do with Kenny? Not everyone who's got an Italian surname is a “made man”. They don't all qualify for
The Sopranos
.'

‘Kenny suggested to me that he had substantial gambling debts …'

‘That's certainly true.'

‘And the people trying to reclaim them were not necessarily the most salubrious types.'

‘Go along with that too. But we're still not talking Mafia. Kenny had these fantasies, saw himself as the big star. Bit of a Sinatra complex. He loved promoting the suggestion that he was tied up with the Mafia. Gave him some kind of macho kick.'

‘But not true?'

‘Totally untrue. The kind of thing he'd sound off about when he'd had a few drinks – or the odd line of cocaine – to anyone who'd listen. And Kenny could usually find somebody who'd listen … because of course he was Kenny Polizzi, star of
The Dwight House
. But nothing to do with the Mafia.'

‘Do you mind if I ask you something personal, Lilith?'

The magnificent shoulders shrugged. ‘What's personal?'

‘Why did you marry Kenny?'

‘Ah.'

‘I mean, given that since I've met you you've said nothing about him that wasn't pure vitriol.'

‘Charles, you say you haven't been divorced, but surely you know enough about life to realize that what you feel when you're coming out of a marriage is kind of different from what you feel when you go into it.'

‘Yes, I can see that, but on our brief acquaintance you don't strike me as a woman who has a lot of illusions about life …'

‘We all still have a few illusions, Charles – even the most hardbitten of us. And the image of marriage for a girl like me, brought up as a God-fearing Southerner, kinda looms over one's life. I'd done it twice and screwed up. I hoped the third time I could make it work. And Kenny was that much older, I thought he'd bring me a sense of security. I'm one of those lost girls whose daddy died young.' She was silent for a moment. ‘He died of a heart attack just around the time I was making the awkward transition from child star to adult star. I guess I've been looking for a father figure ever since.'

‘But Kenny doesn't seem natural casting as a father figure. You and him … it still seems unlikely somehow.'

‘Not so unlikely. Even now I can acknowledge the guy had a lot of charisma. And after his hellraising days, he was seriously determined to turn over a new leaf. When we met, he was off the booze, off the drugs, he was genuinely wanting to start over. And I guess I was a part of the redemption process.'

‘And would I be wrong,' Charles asked cautiously, ‘to think that you saw Kenny as something of a project? You could civilize him, you could turn his personality around in a way that his previous wives had failed to?'

‘You're quite shrewd, Charles,' said Lilith, and she patted him on the knee, rather in the way a dog might be congratulated for bringing the stick back. ‘Yup, there was an element of challenge there. I guess I thought I could tame Kenny.' She sighed, then said, ‘There's another thing too, Charles …'

‘Oh?'

‘Kenny was high-profile. Like me. The fact that big names in showbiz keep getting into relationships with each other is not just to keep the celebrity magazines salivating. It's also because you gravitate towards people who understand the system, who know about the pressures of trying to find some privacy in their lives. They know about the bodyguards, the security consultants, the discreet limo companies … all that garbage which may look to the outsider like extravagant pampering, but is actually necessary just to get through life as a celebrity. You hook up with someone who knows about all that shit, there's a lot less time wasted in explanations.'

‘I can see that,' said Charles Paris, whose career had never required the services of bodyguards, security consultants or discreet limo companies, and was never likely to. ‘So how long did the honeymoon with Kenny last?'

‘Until he fell off the wagon. Which he managed to do within three weeks of the wedding.'

‘He'd climbed back on it, though, hadn't he? Mr Squeaky Clean again. Or at least he had until yesterday.' All that got from Lilith was a snort of contempt. ‘Can I ask – were you the cause of him falling off the wagon yesterday evening, Lilith?'

His words angered her. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?'

‘Well, from what you said in the pub, you were planning to have a confrontation with Kenny. Next time I hear from him, he's smashed out of his skull. It seems reasonable to think there might be a connection between the two events.'

‘I didn't give him drink. I wouldn't do that. If Kenny having a drink was a reaction to our conversation, then that's not my fault.'

‘So you did have your confrontation?'

‘You bet we did. Here in this very room. I left a message on his cellphone to call me as soon as he got back to Eastbourne. Left a message for Lefty too. Even when we were married, I often had to go through Lefty to contact Kenny.'

‘Have you heard from him since the news of Kenny's death?'

Lilith shook her head. ‘He's going to be very upset. Lefty's always bitching about Kenny, but the guy's really his
raison d'être
. Take Kenny away and Lefty's like an empty glove puppet.'

‘Do you mind if I ask what you and your husband talked about when he came here?'

‘I don't mind. No secret about it. I told you I was going to talk to him about the divorce. That's exactly what I did.'

‘And was it a … er, civilized discussion?'

Lilith smiled grimly. ‘On my part, yes of course. Kenny, needless to say, was less gracious.'

‘And would you say you reached a conclusion?'

‘I reached a conclusion. I told Kenny my terms.'

‘Did he agree to them?'

‘No, but he'll come round. Or rather,' she corrected herself, ‘he would have come round if he were still alive. As it is …' a vindictive smile played around her perfect lips ‘… things have been simplified considerably.'

‘And when Kenny left you, did he seem upset enough to go back on the booze?'

‘He was pissed with me. Who knows whether that's what caused him to break his pledge. In a way I'd be slightly surprised if it was.'

‘Oh?'

‘That was one of the issues between us. I always said he was too weak to stick to any resolution, that he was just basically a soak and, whatever fine intentions he might express, he'd revert to being a soak. So if he went back on the booze, that'd be kind of a vindication of what I've always been saying.'

‘Hm.' Charles tapped his chin thoughtfully. ‘Then I wonder if it was something that happened after he'd talked to you that caused him to backslide …?'

A shrug. ‘Coulda been.'

‘Kenny didn't say he was going to meet anyone else after he'd left you, did he?'

‘No.'

‘No.' There was a silence. ‘And, Lilith, do you have any theory yourself as to why Kenny might have been killed?'

Another shrug. ‘Being in the wrong place at the wrong time? A mugging turned nasty? Getting mixed up with drug dealers?'

‘Why do you say that? Do you know that Kenny had dealings with drug dealers here in Eastbourne?'

‘No, but I know what happened other times when he fell off the wagon. He hits the vodka first, then suddenly he's got a desperate desire for coke. Once Kenny starts boozing, he's pretty soon on to his drug dealer … or he's on to Lefty to get on to his drug dealer. Here I guess he doesn't have a drug dealer, so here maybe he has to take risks if he's going to have to get his coke. So he finds himself in the company of one of Eastbourne's undesirables and …' Another shrug seemed to encompass everything else that might have happened.

Charles's first thought was that a genteel middle-class town like Eastbourne doesn't have ‘undesirables', but then he realized he was out of date. These days everywhere has drug dealers.

They both seemed to relax. Each had got as much information from the other as they thought was probably available. Lilith refilled their glasses, firmly placed the bottle back in its ice bucket and focused those olive-coloured eyes on Charles's. At the same time her hand landed smoothly on his knee.

‘Now,' she said, ‘are we going to bed?'

Even in the throes of physical passion Lilith Greenstone didn't lose the perfection of her appearance and style. The sex was very good, and she certainly knew exactly what she wanted. So much so that Charles even had the sense of being a little marginalized. It wasn't that he felt that strongly about being in charge in bed, but he did like to feel he had some input into the decision-making process.

FIRST BROKER'S MAN: What do call a policeman who's blonde on top?

SECOND BROKER'S MAN: Of course I know that – it's a fair cop!

A
s Saturday night melted into Sunday morning and Charles Paris walked along the front towards his digs he felt a mixture of reactions. They included a not entirely admirable masculine cockiness. He felt he'd been put through a test by Lilith Greenstone and he had not been found wanting. And it had been a while since he'd actually had any sex, so it was good to know that everything was in working order. There was an unworthy glee too, derived from the fact that he'd just been to bed with someone famous. Though he knew it was pathetic to think like that – he of all people shouldn't be impressed by celebrity – he couldn't help himself.

But there was also a less pleasant sensation, a feeling that the whole exercise had had a clinical quality to it. Lilith was an expert lover and, while not ungenerous, knew exactly how to provide her own satisfaction. Which had left Charles at moments feeling like little more than an animated dildo.

And then there had been a formal quality to the way she had dismissed him. He knew from their earlier conversation that she no longer wanted men who were ‘still there the next morning', so he hadn't been surprised when she called a halt to proceedings, announcing that she'd still got a bit of jet lag and needed to catch up with her sleep. But Lilith's tone had been almost peremptory. There was certainly not even a pretence that anything emotional had been involved in their coupling.