Death Takes the Cake Page 12

  The long stretch of motels had nearly ended, and I was about to start criss-crossing side streets, when I spotted what I was looking for. I hit my brakes just in time to turn into the driveway of the “Magic Hour” motel, a collection of one-story pale gray stucco cabins. Parked in front of a door at the far end were both of the Marshalls’ cars.

  I pulled in next to Liddy’s Rover, turned off the motor, and realized that my hands were shaking and my heart was beating fast. To calm myself, I started reciting the names of as many state capitals as I could remember. By the time I’d come up with twenty-three, my heart rate had come down to normal. I unhooked Tuffy and let him hop down onto the pavement. With my curly black friend at my side on his leash, I went to the motel room door and strained to listen.

  I heard music coming from a TV set, and recognized the theme from a daytime talk show. Leaning in closer, I could hear a woman giggling. It sounded like Liddy. Without knowing for sure what I was going to say—that would depend on what I saw inside—I knocked on the motel room door.

  17

  The giggling stopped and the TV show was turned off. A voice I recognized as Bill Marshall’s called, “Yes? Who’s there?”

  “It’s Della.”

  “Della?” Liddy’s voice, full of astonishment.

  “Please let me in.”

  “Just a sec,” she said. I heard rustling, then what sounded like bare feet coming toward the door. It opened a crack—just enough for me see the surprise on Liddy’s face but nothing in the room beyond. “Della! What are you doing here?”

  “I have to talk to Bill.”

  “Now?”

  “It’s important or I wouldn’t have come. I’m sorry, Liddy.” She had no idea how sorry I was.

  “Okay, if you really must.” Liddy scooted around behind the door as she opened it for me. Inside, I saw the reason: Her shoulders were bare, but the rest of her was wrapped in the garish orange and green print bedspread she was clutching around her.

  Across the room, on the far side of the rumpled and spread-less bed, Bill buckled the belt on his pants. He stood bare-chested; his shirt, jacket, and tie, as well as Liddy’s clothes, were draped across the one chair. The room was furnished minimally, with just a king-size bed, a TV set on a stand, that chair, and a small, round table next to the bed. The surface of the table was covered with the remains of a KFC meal, crumpled paper napkins, and coffee containers.

  Bill stared at me with a hybrid expression I’d never seen on his face before: part curiosity, part abject fear.

  Liddy’s husband was lanky and clean-cut, with light brown hair, eyes the color of maple syrup, and a prominent nose that curved slightly to the right. Examined individually, his features didn’t seem to belong on the same face, but the overall effect was attractive. Liddy called him, lovingly, her “irregular weave.”

  Bill had always reminded me of a big, affectionate mixed-breed dog that was so adorable you couldn’t help wanting to adopt it. It pretty much described his personality, too, if the big dog told jokes that would make even a confirmed grump laugh. But he wasn’t making jokes now.

  “Della, why are you here? Bill and I are having a little adventure.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

  “How in the world did you find us?” Liddy asked.

  “Well, I remembered—”

  Liddy didn’t wait for my answer. “Guess who Bill signed in as?” She giggled. “George Bush!” Liddy knelt down to pet Tuffy. “I stayed in my car, so I didn’t get to see the expression on the clerk’s face, but Bill said it was a hoot.”

  I was looking at Bill’s face. He’d scrunched his eyes closed and bowed his head, as though he was expecting to be struck. Unwilling to land that blow, I turned to Liddy.

  “It’s one of my teeth, in the back,” I said, clapping my left hand to my left cheek. “It’s hurting something awful. Bill, can you help me? I wouldn’t have disturbed you if I weren’t desperate.”

  Bill’s eyes snapped opened. He looked as relieved as a condemned man who was about to get that final needle but who’d just been told the governor phoned with a reprieve for him.

  “Sure! Absolutely!” Bill trotted around the bed and grabbed his shirt. “We’ll go to my office and I’ll fix you right up.”

  “Oh, Del, I’m so sorry you’re in pain,” Liddy said. “I’ll come to keep you company. Just give me a minute to get dressed.”

  Bill opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, we heard sharp knocking on the motel room door.

  We three human beings froze in shock, but I glanced down at Tuffy and saw that he was staring at the door with his tail wagging vigorously. I realized he knew whoever was on the other side.

  More knocking. Harder this time.

  “I should have rented a bigger room,” Bill said.

  Liddy laughed, but almost immediately the sound trailed off as she glanced from Bill to me and saw that neither of us were even smiling. For all of her softness, Liddy was a smart woman. “What’s going on?”

  “Open the door, Della. I know you’re in there,” John O’Hara said.

  Liddy recognized his voice. “John? What’s he doing here?” She looked at me. “Did something happen between you two?”

  “No.” I was as puzzled as Liddy.

  Bill took a deep breath. “I don’t think this has anything to do with Della.” Without meeting Liddy’s eyes, he strode to the door and opened it. I was glad to see that John was alone, without noxious Detective Weaver.

  I must have been holding Tuffy loosely, because he yanked the leash out of my hand and bounded across the room to greet his old friend, John.

  John leaned over to give Tuffy a few affectionate strokes. When he straightened again he saw Liddy wrapped in the bedspread and quickly looked away from her.

  Bill asked John, “How did you find me?”

  John closed the door and nodded in my direction. “I tailed Della.”

  I felt my face flush with anger. “That was a terrible thing to do!”

  “Don’t get on your high horse with me,” he said curtly. “I knew you were lying when you said you didn’t know where they were.”

  “That wasn’t a lie. I just remembered something and followed a hunch.”

  “Hello, everybody!” Liddy reached up high and waved her free hand. “Remember me? Am I invisible? What is going on?” Her tone was a demand, not a question.

  Bill scooped Liddy’s clothes from the chair and handed them to her. “Get dressed and go home, sweetheart. I’ll explain everything to you later.” She took the clothes but she didn’t budge.

  As gently as he could phrase it, John told Liddy, “Bill’s right, you should go home. I need to ask him a few questions so he can help me clear up something about a case I’m working.”

  “Case?” Comprehension widened Liddy’s eyes. “You’re working on the murder of that woman—Regina Davis.”

  “Yes.” John looked profoundly uncomfortable.

  “But Bill doesn’t know anything about that.” She turned to her husband. “Pussycat, tell John . . .” Her voice trailed off as she saw the expression of misery on Bill’s face. Liddy’s sudden look of fear was painful for me to see.

  I moved over to stand beside her and touched her arm, but she pulled away.

  “Bill? Why is John here?”

  Staring fixedly at an ugly brown spot on the carpet, Bill said, “I knew her. Reggie Davis.”

  My chest tightened. He called her Reggie, like someone who knew her well, not Regina, the way a mere acquaintance would.

  Liddy’s attention was riveted on her husband. “But you didn’t say anything when I told you about Del being in her contest. You acted as though you’d never heard her name.”

  John cleared his throat and said firmly, “We shouldn’t have this discussion here.”

  Liddy glared at Bill, at John, and at me. Her voice tight with anger, she said, “My husband. My friends. You don’t have a toothache, do you Del?”

  �
��No,” I admitted.

  “Apparently, I’m the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on. How long were you three planning to keep me in the dark?”

  Bill reached for Liddy’s hand, but didn’t look at her as he said to John, “Can we make a deal? If I don’t have to go to your station house, I’ll tell you everything I know about Reggie Davis without ‘lawyering up,’ as they say in the TV cop shows. Honestly, I want to help you, but you’ve got to keep my name out of the news so our boys don’t hear about this.”

  “If I find out you’re involved in her death—”

  “I’m not! I swear it! But if I go to your cop shop the fact that you’re questioning me will get out. Police departments aren’t exactly leakproof.”

  “I can’t guarantee your name might not become public at some point,” John said, “but it won’t come from either Detective Weaver or myself.” He frowned in thought for a moment, then relaxed one centimeter and said, “At least there won’t be any reporters or news vans at your place.”

  John used his cell phone to call Hugh Weaver and relay Bill’s proposal. I didn’t hear Weaver’s end of their brief exchange, but he must have protested at first because John said in a firm tone, “I think we’ll get more out of him this way.” Apparently Weaver capitulated, because John gave his partner the Marshalls’ address and ended the conversation.

  While John was on the phone, Liddy, dressed now, emerged from the bathroom, and marched in between John and Bill. She was my height, which meant the top of her head came up to John’s jutting chin. Liddy squared her shoulders, turned her back on John, and faced her husband. “Did you kill that Reggie woman?”

  “No.” Bill practically shouted the word, then dialed the volume down a notch. “No. I didn’t.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I believe you.”

  But Bill looked so miserable it wasn’t hard to guess that he felt guilty about something. If I could see that, I knew Liddy could, too, but she kept her face a frozen mask.

  John moved a few steps away from Liddy and Bill and shot a glare at me. “Do I have your word you won’t tell D’Martino that we’re talking to Bill?”

  The implication that I would betray my friends made me so mad I would have liked to smack John, but I reminded myself that I’m a lover, not a slugger. In a frosty voice, I replied, “Of course I won’t say anything—and you can save that intimidating scowl for one of your perps. It doesn’t work on me.”

  “Besides, she’s not seeing him anymore,” Liddy said.

  I could have done without her help, but she was speaking to me—or at least speaking about me. That was a start.

  Liddy told John, “I want to be there while you question Bill.”

  Before I could stop myself, I said, “So do I.”

  John let out a growl of exasperation. I was sure he was about to refuse, but Bill stopped him.

  “Please, I want Liddy there,” Bill said. “In fact, I insist. She should hear what I have to tell you. Della, too. She’s part of this thing I got myself into.”

  John didn’t like that; I could tell by the little muscle beneath his right eye that had started twitching. Eileen called it his “time bomb tick.”

  While John didn’t say he would allow Liddy and me to be present during Bill’s interrogation, his silence was de facto agreement. He yanked open the motel room door and, with a jerk of his thumb, motioned the three of us outside.

  “I’ll follow you, Bill,” John said. He made no reference to either Liddy or me.

  Liddy’s face was pale and taut, but as Bill started toward his car she took my hand and gave it a friendly squeeze. Now that we were both in the doghouse with Big John O’Hara, it seemed as though I was back in Liddy’s good graces.

  18

  Leaving the Magic Hour motel, we were a four-car convoy headed toward the Marshalls’ home in Beverly Hills. Bill’s new Cadillac was at the head of our parade, with John’s aging black Lincoln so close behind he could have been cited for tailgating. Liddy followed John, and I trailed the three of them like the tail on a kite. I had expected John to insist on taking Bill to the West Bureau’s West Los Angeles Community Police Station on Butler Avenue for questioning. Silently, I blessed him for granting Bill’s request to tell his story in privacy.

  In spite of the increasingly heavy traffic—many citizens of Los Angeles leave work between three and four in the afternoon—we managed to maintain our convoy without any other car getting in between. It helped that we caught only green lights. I hoped that was a good omen.

  Liddy and Bill Marshall lived in the seven hundred block of Maple Drive, one of the prettiest streets in Beverly Hills, due to the lush rows of mature maple trees that gave the drive its name. The Marshall home was a two-story white colonial that had been built in the 1960s, when houses were still being set back far enough from the sidewalk to allow for a graceful sweep of soft green lawn. Many of the new and lavish “McMansions” utilized almost every inch of their lots, leaving just enough space between structure and property line for a gardener or pool man to squeeze through to the backyard.

  Maple Drive was spotted with parked vehicles of the type used by gardeners and pool men, but it was virtually empty of moving passenger cars when we crossed Santa Monica Boulevard into what is known as “the flats” of Beverly Hills, an area marked by well-kept streets and expensive homes.

  Because the seven hundred block of Maple was so clear of traffic, when our little procession slowed half a block short of our destination I saw that a brown Crown Victoria was parked in Liddy and Bill’s driveway with its rear to the two-car garage and its nose facing the street. Leaning against the driver’s door and smoking a cigarette was Detective Hugh Weaver.

  As soon as he spotted us, Weaver crushed out his cigarette on the Marshalls’ recently resurfaced driveway—I was sure that sight made Liddy flinch—and stepped away from his car. When he did, I noticed that the paint on the driver’s door didn’t quite match the front and rear fenders on that side, as though that door had been mashed in at some point.

  The sudden mental image of someone ramming a police vehicle took me back to the days when I worried about bad guys trying to hurt Mack. It reduced, by a little, my antipathy to Weaver. Maybe his hostility was a result of the risks cops took every day, when even a traffic stop might mean their death. Different men had different styles of coping. Weaver used sarcasm. John turned inward.

  Bill glided to a stop on the street. John, Liddy, and I parked in a line behind him and climbed out of our cars. As soon as I let Tuffy out of his safety harness, he hopped out onto the grassy strip along the sidewalk.

  John introduced Bill and Liddy to Weaver. Weaver responded with a nod and a grunt. “You know Della,” John said.

  “Yeah.” He lifted one eyebrow and cocked his head in a silent question that I took to mean, “What is she doing here?”

  John must have read it the same way. “She’s sitting in, at Dr. Marshall’s request.”

  “Where do you two want to question Bill? We don’t have a dungeon.” Liddy tried to make that sound like a joke, but I heard the sarcastic edge in her voice.

  Weaver must have heard it, too. His lips drew back into the beginning of a snarl.

  Before he could say anything I jumped in. “There’s a breakfast table and chairs in the kitchen. We’ll make a pot of coffee for you. And food.” I aimed a smile at Weaver. “I bet you haven’t had time for lunch, have you, Detective?”

  “Actually . . . no.” I sensed just a millimeter’s worth of softening in his demeanor. That was a start.

  “I haven’t eaten either,” said John.

  Liddy unlocked the front door. “The housekeeper’s off today. We’ll have privacy,” she said.

  Liddy was too nervous to be of any help preparing food, but I didn’t need it. She kept a well-stocked pantry, and I knew where everything was. It didn’t take long to find a fresh loaf of dark pumpernickel bread and condiments. Liddy’s fridge yielded three kinds of cheeses, some leftove
r roast chicken, baked ham, lettuce, tomatoes, and a bowl of grapes—all the ingredients for an instant feast.

  Bill and the detectives took chairs at the table. Liddy withdrew a Milk-Bone from the special canine cookie jar she kept filled for Tuffy’s visits. She gave it to him, and sat next to Bill. They clutched each other’s hands.

  With the Milk-Bone in his mouth, Tuffy settled down next to John’s chair and began to gnaw at it.

  While the coffee was perking, I sliced three tomatoes, cut a ripe avocado that I found on the counter—without slicing my hand again—and mashed that with half a cup of mayo and a tablespoon of Dijon mustard. I slathered the bread with the spread I’d mixed, and built a variety of hearty, man-friendly sandwiches, as opposed to the more delicate, crust-off triangles I’d create for an afternoon tea.

  My kitchen activity took about three minutes, during which time John and Weaver were consulting their notes and Liddy and Bill clung to each other. The only sounds in the room came from my movements, the bubbling of the coffee, and Tuffy’s teeth crunching his treat.

  Even though Liddy and Bill had said they weren’t hungry, I put plates down in front of everyone, but set the platter of sandwiches closer to Weaver and John. I placed a bottle of crushed red pepper flakes next to John, because I knew he liked to sprinkle them on everything except desserts.

  Acting as though he hadn’t eaten for two days, Weaver quickly devoured two ham and cheese sandwiches, a chicken sandwich, and two mugs of hot coffee. For a moment it looked as though he was going to burp, but the urge passed.

  Weaver wiped his mouth with one of the paper napkins I’d set out, squinted at Bill, and said, “So, Dr. Marshall, how long were you and Regina Davis lovers?”

  Liddy gasped and suddenly looked sick.