“Yeah, fine. The alarm was my fault. I was letting my cat in and forgot I’d already armed the system. It scared the bejesus out of poor Bunny, so I’m out here looking for her, I’ve got to get her in. Coyotes, you know? They’ve been bad this year.” He looked at their clothing. “You’re not cop-cops, you’re detectives.”
“Yes.”
“Cool. Are you on a sting or something?”
“Just following up on some things in the neighborhood.”
“Like a robbery ring? Drugs? Human trafficking?”
“We really can’t say,” Crawford put in, a touch of amusement in his voice.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I know. I ask a lot of questions, I’m a filmmaker, I get ideas everywhere. You never know what goes on behind closed doors, right?”
“No, you never do. Mr. Hesse, does Consuela Ortiz live here?”
“She’s the housekeeper. God, she didn’t do anything wrong, did she?”
“We’d just like to speak with her. Is she here now?”
“No, she went to visit family. In Ensenada, I think.”
“When did she leave?”
“I don’t really know, I’ve been busy working on a film. She asked me a couple days ago if she could have some time off and I told her yes.”
“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Hesse. I hope you find Bunny.”
“I will, I have to. She means everything to me.”
* * *
Scaling the fence wasn’t any easier on the way out, and once they were in the car, Crawford started complaining bitterly about a pulled muscle. “Goddammit, it’s my adductor again.”
“Again? What did you do to it the first time?”
“Waterskiing. I thought I’d be cool and drop off, skim right up to the dock. Instead, I did the Chinese splits and got a Lake Arrowhead enema.”
“Ouch.”
“There are no words. Do we have a cold pack?”
“There might be one in the kit. You want me to check?”
“Yeah. And grab me some ibuprofen. If there’s anything stronger, bring that.”
Nolan smirked as she rummaged through the medical kit in the trunk. Men were such babies. A cold or a pulled muscle and they were in bed for a month, whining like croupy infants. What she couldn’t figure out is why, when they got shot or stabbed, they were damn near profiles in courage. Maybe she should spare Corinne and shoot Al in the leg.
She tossed him a cold pack and a bottle of baby aspirin.
“Baby aspirin? Are you kidding me?”
“Look at the bright side, you won’t stroke out on the way to intensive care for your pulled muscle.”
“Laugh all you want, but I have thorns in my ass, too. Rats nest in bougainvillea, I could have bubonic plague in my system right now.”
“You’re on your own with that one.”
“Why are you wearing that weird, scrunchy face?”
“Just thinking.”
“God help us.”
Nolan draped her arms over the steering wheel and looked up at the fence. There was a lot of missing bougainvillea where they’d gone over; she didn’t doubt Crawford had thorns in his ass, she’d gotten nipped herself. She wondered if the Hesses would sue the department for vandalism. In her experience, rich people got indignant over really petty things and were litigious about it. Probably because they could afford lawyers. “The house alarm is set. The place is locked up for the night, including the gate. We go moseying up the driveway, and Mr. Inquisitive never asked us how we got in.”
“He knew how we got in, it was the only way.”
“That would be worth a mention, wouldn’t it? Like, ‘Hey, how come you two detectives climbed my fence in the middle of the night? Kind of overkill for responding to a false alarm, don’t you think?’”
“You’d better hope he doesn’t ask that question. We’re on pretty thin ice here.”
“That doesn’t raise a red flag for you?”
“Sure it does, but he’s young. Kids his age, their brains haven’t fully developed yet. And he’s been drinking, we’re lucky the fumes coming off him didn’t ignite. Combine the two and you’ve got nothing but meat with eyes.”
Nolan made a U-turn and headed back toward Sunset Boulevard. She slowed when her phone rang, then slammed on the brakes when she saw the caller ID.
“Jesus, take it easy, Mags, I’m not buckled in yet…”
“This is coming from Yukiko Easton’s phone.” She put it on speaker. “Detective Nolan.”
“This is Sam Easton we’re at Hans Hesse’s house in Beverly Hills his son has an automatic rifle he killed Yuki and Ryan he’s going to kill us…”
Nolan flinched at a whimper in the background, then heard Melody Traeger’s voice: “Oh my God, Sam…”
The line went dead.
Chapter Seventy
MELODY’S FACE WAS GHASTLY WHITE, HER eyes foggy and unfocused. She looked shocky. “He killed Ryan and Yuki?”
“It’s going to be okay, Mel, the cops will be here soon.”
“Sirens,” she mumbled. “They’ll chase Rolf inside and I didn’t lock the garage door behind him, Sam. Goddammit, I forgot to lock the door. That’s the way he went out, that’s the way he’ll come back in.”
Sam was positive Rolf would be able to get into his own house when he wanted to; he would have control of the security system through his phone. But he might not have his phone, so every locked door might be a temporary blockade until the police arrived. “Show me where.”
“I don’t remember, I was lost.” Her voice was climbing up the panic scale.
Sam picked her up again. Her skin felt clammy against his. “The front façade of the house was visible when we drove up and there was no garage, so it must be in back.” He started jogging in the general direction. “Concentrate, Mel. Tell me if something looks familiar.”
“Everything was a blur,” she said, her voice bouncing along with his gait. “But I went through swinging doors into a kitchen. A small kitchen, like a maid’s kitchen. There’s a hallway to the left of it. That’s where I found the garage.”
A pair of swinging doors in a vast maze. But a maid’s kitchen would be in the back by the garage, so he was heading in the right direction. “Do you remember anything else? Artwork, furniture, something you noticed?”
“There was a room with a piano.”
The Conservatory. Sam stopped when he came to a literal fork in the road. Three hallways shot off in different directions. Door number one? Door number two? Door number three? “Do you remember this?”
“No, but I’m left-handed, so I would have gone left.”
Sam started jogging again, and Melody stiffened in his arms. “There! The room with the piano! From here, I went straight ahead.”
The swinging doors became visible in the gloom, and he followed Melody’s directions down a tight hall and into a vestibule.
“This is it, Sam!”
They both froze when they heard a door slam shut just beyond where they stood. Rolf was in the garage, coming inside. No time, no time at all. Sam could hide in the shadows and shoot him when he came in, but he didn’t want to do it in front of Melody, couldn’t do it in front of her. That left one option.