Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 96

I was dressed in my best, had on the nice aftershave Justine had given me, and was driving the Lambo at a pretty good clip from the office toward Beverly Hills. Justine was sitting beside me and urging me to go faster.

She was edgy, and she was talking to me like I was hired by the hour.

I got onto the 110. Although it was largely ignored, the posted speed limit was fifty-five. I nudged the accelerator until I was going a shade over sixty, and still Justine was applying the whip.

“If we get pulled over,” she said, “don’t worry. I’ve got a friend in the LAPD.”

“I’m the one who’s out on bail, Justine. Bail can be revoked. Let’s not push my luck, all right?”

Justine said, “Uh-huh,” looked at her watch, then stared through the windshield. I knew she wasn’t seeing anything on the freeway. She was inside her head, thinking back, projecting forward.

“Justine. Hello. It’s me. Jack. I’m right here.”

“I’m running it all through my mind again,” she said, her voice heavy with exasperation.

“Okay.”

“Danny could have finished the film, but he’s so messed up, it would have been a joke. It would have been panned. And a bomb at the box office meant certain bankruptcy.”

“Piper’s death killed the film.”

“Yeah. Who would’ve guessed that could be a good thing?”

I left Justine to her thoughts, dwelling on other fights we’d had, how I hated them, how much I wanted things to be all right with us. Christ, I missed her. I wished she missed me.

After a one-minute mile on the freeway I got off and took a route through the streets of Beverly Hills that saved us a couple of minutes, finally taking a right onto North Crescent Drive, which brought us to the entrance of the famous pink-stucco, five-star Beverly Hills Hotel.

As I handed my keys to the valet, Justine called to Nora Cronin, who was getting out of her own car. Unmarked police cars pulled up to the hotel entrance, and I heard Nora telling the valets to leave the cop cars right where they were.

There was a poster on an easel near the front door; a life-sized photo of Piper Winnick, draped in black crepe, the dates of her birth and death beneath her young and angelically beautiful face.

Justine and Nora spoke briefly under the porte cochere, then Justine broke away from Nora and said to me, “We’re late, Jack. But not too late.”

I gave her the crook of my arm and together we walked up the red carpet that ran between pairs of square columns and up three steps. Still on the carpet, we entered the dazzling hotel.