City Of Mirrors: A Diana Poole Thriller Part 13

"Do you have an alibi?"

"What lonely woman has an alibi for ... when was she killed? Twelve or one or two in the morning?"

"Why are you so lonely?"

"Why are you?"

We grinned wryly at one another, then laughed. Female humor. My iPhone rang. I took it out of my purse and looked at the caller ID. It was Celia.

"Hi," I answered in a guarded voice.

"I'm sorry, Diana, I was so mean to you and... . Oh, G.o.d, my entire life is falling apart. Can you meet me at the Bel Air house?"

"Why?"

"The pool man found a dead body there."

"Oh, G.o.d." My permanent chill woke up.

"They want me to see if I can identify it. I didn't know who to turn to. I can't involve Robert. He's so distraught over this Jenny Parson thing. I don't have anybody. I'm just now realizing how empty my life really is. I have no right to ask, but I need your support. I'm almost at the house now. I have to go." She disconnected.

"What is it?" Beth asked.

"An emergency." I looked out the window. We were pa.s.sing the old Troubadour, where many famous folk singers got their start. Now scraggly young men stood outside the club, guitars slung over their backs, hoping something from the past would rub off and give them a future.

I didn't want to help Celia. I wanted to go home and nurse my own wounds. Hold my own hand. I sighed. "Can you take me to Bel Air instead?"

"Where in Bel Air?"

"On Stone Canyon. I'll show you."

She didn't ask me what the emergency was; in fact she didn't talk at all after I gave her the name of the street. And I didn't believe her sudden muteness was due to her Mai Tai wearing off.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

I was back on Stone Canyon Road again. The gates to Bella Casa were opened and the street was filled with black-and-whites, fire trucks, and ambulances. The men and women who manned the emergency vehicles were preparing to leave.

Beth stopped the car near the curb. "My G.o.d, what's going on?"

"They found a body."

She stared at me. "What's it have to do with you?" she asked.

"Nothing. I'm here to help a friend."

She peered at the ivy-covered wall and the two entrance gates now with yellow crime-scene tape draped across them as if it were familiar to her.

"Do you know this place?"

"No. Who's your friend?"

"Celia Dario. The house is empty and for sale. She has the listing."

"Zaitlin's mistress?"

"Small world, isn't?"

"No. Just a cruel one."

"Thanks, Beth." I got out of her car.

She waved, threw the Porsche into drive, made a U-turn, and sped off.

I strode officiously up to the patrolman who guarded one of the gates. "I'm Diana Poole, I'm here to see Celia Dario." Then taking a big chance, hoping she was on this case, I added, "Detective Spangler knows me."

He mumbled something into a walkie-talkie, then said, "You can go in."

He released the yellow tape as if he were an usher letting me into the reserved section at a screening. I started up the drive. Patrol officers leaned against their cruisers. The ME vans waited with their back doors hanging open. No one bothered me.

There was too much activity by the front door so I veered off onto a brick path that led behind the house. Heading to the indoor swimming pool, I stopped dead. A few feet away a uniformed officer stood with his back to me, legs apart, staring out at the dusky unruly garden. It took a few moments for me to realize he was taking a p.i.s.s on a Bird of Paradise plant. Taking advantage of his reverie, I dashed to the swimming pool door and went inside.

I hurried around the pool. Opening the louvered doors, I stepped into the gallery and followed it into the dining room. In the middle of the room was an antique crystal chandelier that had once hung over a long table where I used to eat alone. I ducked under it and paused, listening to voices coming from the kitchen.

"You looking for another dead body?"

I whirled around. "h.e.l.lo, Detective."

Detective Dusty Spangler sat on a folding chair next to a built-in marble-top buffet. Wearing her gray slacks, navy blue jacket, and a pink b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt, she didn't bother to look up from the forms she was filling out. "Homicide always comes down to more paperwork." Scribbling her name at the end of the page with a flourish, she got to her feet, put the forms on the buffet, then reached into her jacket pocket and took out a Snickers bar. "Want one?"

"No, thanks."

"You look like you could use something to eat. But then everybody looks that way to me." She patted her belly. "Take it. I have another."

I unwrapped the Snickers while she found the other one in her jacket pocket and did the same. We stood eating the candy, a.s.sessing each other. She was right, I did need it.

Finally I asked, "Why do you make me feel guilty?"

She popped the last bite into her mouth. Still chewing, she answered, "Maybe because you used my name to sneak into a murder scene."

"I came to see my friend Celia."

"She's in the living room."

"Thanks." I started to go there.

"One sec."

Reluctantly, I turned around.

"I saw you on TV this morning, leaving your house. You were getting into a big Mercedes-Benz limo." She raised her blond, defiantly un-plucked eyebrows. "Parson's big Mercedes-Benz limo."

"He wanted to know about his daughter's death."

"Where was he? On his yacht? My partner and I just got back from visiting him at his house in Montecito."

I nodded.

"Come with me," Spangler said in her flat Kansas voice.

She walked me through the familiar kitchen. The place I would sneak down to in the middle of the night with one of my mother's sleeping pills, which I had stolen from her, growing sticky in my hand. I'd make hot chocolate laced with Irish whiskey, then down the pill with the delicious drink. I couldn't sleep then either. Now uniformed officers, beefy arms folded across their chests, leaned against the tile counters, talking shop while appraising me.

Spangler opened the back door and we were in the side yard. Lights had been set up to fight the growing darkness. A cold California dampness was settling in.

"Excuse us here." She guided me around the forensic technicians in their protective clothing. "Step where I step," she ordered.

We stopped near a collapsed outdoor umbrella leaning against a stucco wall overgrown with ivy. Slumped against the same wall was a man's body, his long legs extended in front of him on the gra.s.s. He was clad in black jeans and a navy blue T-s.h.i.+rt. The hood of his gray-sweat zip-up covered most of his sandy-colored hair. "You know him?"

The candy bar welled up into my throat. I swallowed it back down. "No, I don't."

He was young with the kind of good looks a kid could rely on to just get by. But now his skin was as gray as his hoodie, a dark stain spread across his chest, and his amber eyes stared blankly down his splayed legs to his boots.

"He's Zackary Logan. Dead about three hours. Shot in the chest. Name ring a bell?"

"I said I didn't know him."

"I'm asking if you've heard of his name." She moved closer, her belly pushed at me, forcing me to take a step back. "Maybe you even mentioned the name to Parson?"

"No and no." But I thought of the kid in Jenny's garage caught on the security camera with his hood pulled down over his face. "You think Parson had something to do with this? But he's in Santa Barbara. When did he have the time?"

"He only needs to make a phone call." She took a brown leather notepad from her jacket pocket. It had the same embossed insignia on the cover as the one Heath had read his notes from on the yacht. She noticed me staring at it.

"A gift."

"What's the CIU stand for?" I asked, even though I already knew.

"Criminal Investigation Unit for the Army. Couldn't wait to get out of it. The rank and file hate you. Feel you're spying on them. But when I got home, the experience put me on the fast track to become a detective."

"Were you in Iraq?"

"Afghanistan."

"Then you must know Leo Heath."

She actually blushed, and it made her look ten years younger. "Runs a security firm. Good guy. He gave me this."

So she was his source, I thought, as she looked over her notes.

"You know a P. J. Binder?" she asked.

"No."

"Pool man. He discovered the body. He says he knew your mother."

"A lot of people think they knew her."

"He cleaned the pool when the two of you lived here. He remembers her."

"I was fifteen, sixteen then. Are you saying he still cleans the pool at this house?"

"For about forty years. Celia Stone says the current owners rely on him, as did the past ones, and many of the neighbors in the area. Highly recommended."

"The 'mislaid man,'" I said, remembering.

"What?"

"That's what my mother called him. He's a Vietnam vet."

"Trust him?"

"I never met him. He'd come around four in the morning to clean the pool. She'd go talk with him. That's all I really know."

"Four in the morning. That's early."

"I guess he couldn't sleep."

"Why did she call him the mislaid man?"

"I never asked her. I wasn't that interested in what she did back then. May I see Celia now?"

She appraised me as if I were an exotic bird. "Novices usually can't handle viewing dead bodies. You did very well. In fact, you even kept your Snickers down."

"Did you give me the candy bar as some kind of test?"

"No. You looked hurt and hungry. You can go see your friend now. Wait a minute." She turned to a female cop. "Take her to the living room. She can see Celia Dario." She smiled at me. "Don't want you wandering off contaminating any evidence."

The policewoman returned me to the dining room and watched as I opened the double doors onto the living room. Her profile to me, Celia sat on an old purple velvet sofa that ran parallel to the empty fireplace. There was no other furniture. A five-tiered, wrought-iron chandelier hung from the dark wood-beamed ceiling, shedding a patch of dim filigreed light over the sitting area and leaving the rest of the vast room in shadows. I closed the doors behind me.

"Celia." My voice echoed off the thick white stucco walls. My heels tapped on the walnut wood planks.

"Oh, Diana you came." She rose, extending her arms toward me. We hugged, then sat down on the sofa, each at one end. An awkward coolness settled between us. Wearing jeans and a sweater, she looked shaken. Her bruise had lightened, yellowing her cheek.