“And somehow she left it out in the gallery patio.” I did not add, in the rain.
“I guess. That’s where Lew said he found it. Why?”
“I’ve been getting some hang-up calls. I’m just trying to track down who might have my unlisted numbers.”
“Do you think she…?”
“If it’s her, then there’s no problem, sweetie.” I changed the subject to the hanging ceremony the following week. He wanted pizza to be served at the reception because to Sly pizza represented haute cuisine. We talked for a minute about which toppings we should order, and then we said good night.
“Are you actually that calm, Maggie?” Jean-Paul asked, holding me against him.
“No. I’m scared half out of my wits. But you’re a father-what would you say to your son in a circumstance like this?”
The backyard lights popped on. I ventured to look over the bottom sill of a window and saw Early manhandling someone down the stone stairway, heading toward my back patio. Jean-Paul was on his feet and off at a run, with me close on his heels.
Early and Jean-Paul wrestled the captive onto a chaise longue in a covered area of the patio, out of the drizzle. As he struggled, they bound him to the frame of the heavy iron chair with gaffer’s tape-duct tape-a primary tool of Early’s trade.
Frankie Weidermeyer, AKA Franz von Wilde, looked up at me and spat, missing his mark by ten feet.
“Bitch,” was the first intelligible word he uttered in a spitty stream that seemed to be equal parts rage and humiliation. Early gave the chaise a shake.
“Settle down, kid. Your ride is on the way.”
Frankie turned his head away and grew quiet, though he trembled as if he were deeply chilled.
As he secured Frankie’s ankles, Early showed me the Luger wedged under the belt of his jeans at his back.
“Maggie, will you go put this somewhere out of reach? This little shithole is a scrapper; I’d hate for him to break loose and get his hands on it.”
“Is that his?” I asked, pointing to the gun.
“None other.”
Thinking about fingerprints, I slipped the sleeve of my sweater over my hand and retrieved the gun from his belt.
“Where’s your gun, Early?” I asked.
“What gun? I saw the kid moving around up on the fire road, so I circled around behind him, got him in a forearm choke hold and squeezed till he let loose of his cannon. The idiot obviously never had commando training.”
“Semper fi, Early,” I said. “Good job.”
I reclaimed Mike’s Beretta from Jean-Paul and carried both guns inside. I put the Luger inside a kitchen cupboard, nestled among water glasses, and took the Beretta back to its drawer in Mike’s study. As I walked back outside to wait with Jean-Paul and Early, I checked my watch; four minutes had elapsed since I called Roger.
A chopper rose over the top of my mountain and hovered over the house, its NightSun spot washing the patio with wavery silver light. Out front, Duke set up a fuss, snorting, bumping against his rails, running in tight circles until he had his two companions het up as well.
As a Sheriff’s Department SWAT team surged down both sides of the house and converged toward us, Early, Jean-Paul and I formed a crescent behind Frankie Weidermeyer, the three of us as immobile as statues with hands raised in supplication to the heavens. Frankie wept.
Chapter 23
“This is where you live?”
Thornbury seemed uncomfortable as his eyes scanned the floodlit mountainside down to the house, as if something wasn’t sitting quite right with him.
“Anything wrong with that, Detective?” I asked.
“No.” He shook his head, seemed to shake off something else, too. “It’s great up here. Those your horses out front?”
“Two of them.”
“It’s just…” He looked back up toward the mountain. “I never knew this was here. This area, I mean.”
“That isn’t what you started to say, is it?”
“No.” He flashed a quick, self-deprecating smile. “It’s what we were talking about before, jumping to conclusions too soon. When I thought you were just a temp worker, if I ever thought about where you lived, I thought maybe a little apartment in the Valley. Then when I found out you were in television and lived up here and you were hanging out with some foreign diplomat, I expected iron gates and swimming pools and gold-plated crappers.”
“Sorry to disappoint you; it’s just a house in a canyon.”
“No, I’m the sorry one.”
“Where do you live, Detective?”
“I live in a canyon, too. The stucco canyons out east in Diamond Bar.”
“Quite a commute,” I said.
“It is that.” He didn’t sound happy about it.
Two hours earlier, Roger had hooked up Frankie and taken him down the freeway to the Sheriff’s substation in Lost Hills for safekeeping until Thornbury and Weber had a chance to talk to him. After that, the young man would be transported to LA County’s Central Jail south of downtown where he would wait for arraignment. We were just waiting for the scientific team to finish up inside.
Thornbury kept his eyes on the mountain, but turned his chin a few degrees my way.
“The kid says he’s going to charge you and your friends with kidnapping, unlawful detainer, and assault.”
“I wish him luck with that,” I said. “The laundry list of charges against him starts with attempted murder and moves on to felony assholery and impersonating an artist, just for starters.”
Thornbury dropped his head and chuckled in spite of himself. After a moment, he asked, “Can you see the kid for killing Holloway?”
“I don’t know enough about him to answer that.”
Jean-Paul came outside with my overnight bag slung over his shoulder. Weber followed.
“Maggie, are you ready?” Jean-Paul asked, slipping his arm through mine. “Everyone is gone and the front is all locked up.”
“Detective,” I said to Thornbury. “Any reason for us to stick around?”
He glanced at Weber, got a head shake as response.
“No. Go ahead-we know where to reach you. We’ll follow you down.”
Before we got into Jean-Paul’s Mercedes we gave Duke and company some carrots and scratched their forelocks. They seemed awfully proud of themselves, but for what I had no clue.
Jean-Paul lived in the French consul general’s official residence, an early-twentieth-century Tudoresque house in the middle of a block of similarly gracious, large old houses in the Hancock Park neighborhood west of downtown Los Angeles. The English consul lived down the street.
A young Mexican couple, Yolanda and her husband Teo, lived in an apartment over the garage and took care of the yard, the house, and Jean-Paul. The young man, from time to time, doubled as Jean-Paul’s driver, and his wife prepared his meals when he ate at home, unless there was an official event. For those occasions, a private chef and serving staff were brought in. Yolanda and Teo were pleasant, efficient and unobtrusive.
The arrangement had worked very well for Jean-Paul until December when his son, Dominic, went back to France to study for his college exams. I knew he felt lonely living alone, another reason to be cautious about getting involved with him too quickly.
“Hello, Miss MacGowen.” Yolanda opened the door for us; she had heard the car. “How nice to see you again.”
Teo said a quiet “Good evening,” as he took my bag from Jean-Paul and waited for instructions.
“To my room, please, Teo.”
I caught a faint blush coloring Yolanda’s cheeks, though the cheerful expression on her face did not change, as Teo headed up to the master bedroom.
“I have a soufflé in the oven, Mr. Bernard.” We never got back to our dinner. “It will be ready for you in about ten minutes. Would you prefer the dining room or the small parlor?”