Death of a Pirate King Read online

  He raised his brows at my tone and started scribbling out prescriptions. “Meantime get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids, and continue taking your antibiotics.”

  “Okeydokey.”

  He glanced up. “And cheer up, Adrien.”

  * * * * *

  It had taken some doing, but I had finally persuaded Lisa to agree to riding lessons for my youngest stepsis, Emma. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I drove Em down to Griffith Park and the Paddock Riding Club to watch her go through her paces. The kid was a natural -- even more of a horse nut than I’d been at her age -- which was why I had been determined to win that particular battle with Lisa. Next, I planned on getting Em her own horse, but I knew I’d have to wait for the right psychological opportunity to spring that one. I figured I could start small and suggest a hamster.

  Usually Em and I would ride together after the lessons -- Griffith Park has something like fifty riding trails -- but a little less than one week out of hospital I still didn’t feel up to it. Instead I watched her sailing over her jumps in one of the six sandy arenas -- cute as a button in her riding apparel -- and tried to think about how best to approach Porter Jones’s widow. Significant others are always the first suspects in a murder investigation -- which doesn’t say much for the course of true love.

  Anyway, thinking about how to approach the widow Jones was a lot better than thinking -- brooding -- about the fact that all the things I had believed about Jake Riordan were pretty much a lie. And now that I thought back, I wasn’t sure why I’d believed he’d given up his S/M activities while he’d been seeing me. He had never specifically said so; I guess I had just assumed it. Because I wanted it to be so.

  If I was honest, Jake continuing his S/M activities wasn’t even the part that gnawed my guts. It was the idea that he’d been seeing Paul Kane steadily during that time -- because I really had flattered myself that I was his first genuine relationship with another man. He’d said so. But whatever he called his encounters with old English Leather, five years was a relationship to my mind.

  So, yes, it bothered me. And it bothered me that it bothered me because…Jesus Christ, it was over. It was two years over. I was involved with someone else myself, so why the hell was I standing there with the smell of manure and horse in my nostrils and my stomach in knots over something that didn’t matter anymore.

  It made murder seem like a cheerful change of subject.

  According to Paul Kane, the only person at the party with motive to kill Porter Jones was his much younger and soon to be ex-wife, actress Ally Beaton-Jones. If Paul’s intelligence was correct, Porter had been planning to divorce Ally, and he’d had a PI following her.

  “Let me guess,” I’d said. “There’s a prenup?”

  “Common sense in this day and age,” Paul had replied.

  And maybe it was. I’d never reached the stage of negotiations in my affaires de coeur, as my old friend Claude would have put it.

  “Adrien, watch me!”

  I looked up out of my thoughts, catching Emma’s grin as she cantered toward the next jump. I gave her a thumbs-up and wondered if Lisa and Bill Dauten had drawn up a prenup, and what the odds were of my getting Em in any possible settlement.

  Not that my mother’s second marriage looked shaky. Far from it. Which just went to prove how little I understood about these things. I thought of Guy and my thoughts shied as though faced with their own unexpected triple bar.

  As fond of Guy as I was, I wasn’t ready to make any commitments -- and hearing from Paul Kane that he and Jake had been carrying on the whole time I’d been seeing Jake didn’t do much to improve my attitude. Why was it such a shock? After all, I’d known Jake was seeing Kate Keegan during that time -- engaging in unprotected sex that resulted in a pregnancy -- and I’d been able to deal with it. I’d even accepted it on one level. It was a little late to be angry now. Posttraumatic Sex Syndrome?

  And why the hell was I once again thinking about this? Once more -- with feeling -- I redirected my thoughts.

  My own impression of Ally and Porter was vague at best. If I’d realized he was going to get himself bumped off, I’d have paid closer attention. He had seemed too old for her -- and way too obsessed with deep-sea fishing. She had seemed very…blonde.

  Blonde or not, I couldn’t see why she’d have to resort to murder. Granted, I was no judge, but she seemed like a girl who wouldn’t have a lot of trouble landing another meal ticket -- assuming her acting skills weren’t breadwinner caliber.

  Maybe Porter had told her one too many deep-sea fishing stories. In that case, she had my sympathy. There had been a moment or two at luncheon when I wouldn’t have regretted seeing Porter impaled on a swordfish’s bill and disappearing into the sunset à la Captain Ahab in the last act of Moby Dick.

  Anyway, it wasn’t like I had any theories, so Ally Beaton-Jones was as good a place to start as any. I just couldn’t imagine her willingly opening up to me -- even if she hadn’t knocked her old man off -- regardless of how sensitive and tactful Paul thought I was.

  “Look, Adrien!” cried Emma.

  I looked and smiled. Her cheeks were pink, her blue eyes sparkled, the dark ponytail bobbed perkily beneath her safety helmet as she cantered past, the gelding’s hooves thudding rhythmically on the sand. I never saw myself as the paternal type, but even I had to admit I was pretty damned fond of Emma.

  “Heels down,” I ordered.

  She giggled.

  Paul had promised to phone Ally and set up my visit. That was fine as far as it went. I wondered if there was some way of my finding out the name of the PI that Jones had hired.

  Jake probably knew. Jake was a methodical and relentless investigator. By now he’d be deeply immersed in Porter Jones’s public and private lives, sifting and sorting through the kinds of things most of us would prefer to have buried with us. But cops can’t afford to be tactful -- not in the ordinary course of things. In a homicide investigation every minute counts; most murders are solved within forty-eight hours. Of course, that’s because most murders are committed by morons.

  Yeah, if Porter Jones had really hired a PI, Jake probably knew all about it. But there was no way I could ask him. I wasn’t going anywhere near Jake. Of course, I could always ask Paul Kane to talk to Jake, but -- funny thing -- I didn’t like that idea any better than the idea of me talking to Jake.

  In fact, I liked it less.

  Chapter Five

  The Joneses were keeping up with everyone else in Bel Air.

  The house sat at the end of a long, hedge-lined drive behind tall and ornate gates reminiscent of those guarding Paramount Studios. It looked like a small-scale replica of the Palace of Fontainebleau -- and probably cost more. Just one of any number of the lushly landscaped multimillion-dollar mansions dotting the winding hillside of Chalon Road in the Platinum Triangle of Los Angeles’s Westside.

  A maid with a German accent opened the door to me, and I was escorted upstairs to an enormous bedroom suite. It looked like it had been decorated for Barbara Cartland -- or Emma. I’ve never seen so many shades of pink in one room. The grieving widow greeted me in her red satin slip. By greeting, I mean she spotted me and said, “I don’t have time to talk to you.”

  “Would you prefer that I come back later?”

  “I’d prefer you not to come back at all.” She held up two black dresses on hangers. “Which do you think?”

  Did I look like Mr. Blackwell? “The one on the right,” I said, which is what I always say on the rare occasions a lady asks for my sartorial guidance.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, and tossed both dresses over the winged back of a rose-colored Queen Anne chair. Then, propping her hands on her hips, she stared at me.

  I estimated her age as a little younger than mine. She was very tanned and very blonde. I’d assumed because her hair was such a brassy color that she -- unlike my stepsisters -- dyed it, but the startling absence of eyelashes and eyebrows indicated otherwise.
r />   “I just have a couple of questions. I won’t take long,” I assured her. The flimsy slip and bedroom setting pretty much guaranteed that. Nothing against Ally, who was built like a Valkyrie, because I wouldn’t have been happy interviewing any half-naked stranger in his chamber.

  “Hmph,” she said with a little toss of her head. I didn’t know women really did that. Hmph! Just like a cartoon character. Like Betty Rubble when Barney was more of a bonehead than usual. She turned away, rifling through one of those tall jewelry boxes that could have doubled for a walk-in closet, and muttered, “This is the dumbest plan. I don’t know what Paul is thinking.”

  I was with her on that one. I said, “I guess he’s hoping to circumvent a lot of unpleasantness with the police by having people talk to me.” Yeah, hand me my monocle and top hat because I can babble this stuff on cue.

  While she pawed through the crown jewels, I took a look around the bedroom. Either she’d had every trace of Porter removed or she was sleeping single. There wasn’t so much as a stray slipper or tie pin. Nor was Porter featured in any of the numerous gold-framed photographs.

  Of course, some married people did sleep separately. Or she might have gotten rid of all the painful reminders.

  “Well, I don’t see how talking to you is going to save me any unpleasantness with the police. I’ve already had to talk to them once, and I’m sure I’ll have to talk to them again,” Ally said. Which just goes to prove that a woman may be foolish enough to receive you in her boudoir wearing nothing but her slip, and yet not be a total idiot.

  So I changed the subject. “How are you holding up? I never got a chance to tell you how sorry I was about Porter.”

  She raised her head and gave me a wide-eyed stare. “Can you fasten this for me?”

  Where were the sleaze horns when I needed them?

  She sauntered over to me and turned her back, indicating that I should fasten the necklace around her throat. I obliged. For all the obvious care and pampering that had been bestowed on Ally, there was something sort of coarse about her, but I couldn’t pin it down. Her neck was a little on the thick side. She smelled of Chanel, which my mother occasionally wears, but somehow Ally made it smell cheap. Her back to me, she said, “I know what Paul thinks. Everyone thinks I didn’t love Porter, that I just married him for the money, but Porter and I --” She shrugged.

  As avowals of lasting love go, I’ve sat through more professional presentations.

  But I said, “No outsider can understand a relationship between two people.” Hell, sometimes even the people in the relationship couldn’t understand it.

  “That’s right,” she said, turning to me in surprise. “People on the outside never understand. They always want to give you advice or tell you off or…something.”

  I said, “Maybe everyone hadn’t heard the divorce was off.”

  “What divorce?” Her expression changed. “I know where you heard that,” she spat. “That’s totally Paul. I don’t know why, but he has always had it in for me. Maybe he had a thing for Porter.”

  I tried to picture that, but the picture wouldn’t come -- thankfully.

  She went on, “Yes, Porter and I did discuss divorce, and we realized we loved each other too much to do anything so silly.”

  “That’s got to be a comfort to you now,” I said. “I can imagine how painful it would be to have someone you care for die with a lot of unresolved --”

  “Yes!” she exclaimed. “That is exactly right!” She gave me an approving lashless gaze. “See, gay guys always understand these things!”

  “We’re born with that understanding gene,” I said. “Do you and Porter have kids?”

  She swallowed hard at the idea. “No.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Four years.”

  “Was it your first marriage?”

  She smiled at this bit of whimsy. “It was my first real marriage.” She shot me a speculative glance. “You know, if I had to pick someone who I thought might have wanted Porter out of the way -- which I wouldn’t do because that would be totally crass -- I’d suggest you talk to Al January.”

  “You’re kidding.” If I’d had a monocle it would have popped right out at that point.

  She shook her head. “Paul didn’t tell you that, did he? No. Because he likes Al. And because he needs Al for this movie. Al’s like his Bosley.”

  “His what?” I had a sudden vision of Jill, Kelly, and Sabrina gathered around the loudspeaker to receive orders from Charlie.

  “Oh, you know. His biographer. Al’s like his personal screenwriter. Paul’s happy to throw me to the wolves, but he doesn’t want anyone looking too closely at Al January.”

  I deciphered this as best I could. “What would there be to see if someone looked closely?”

  Ally got a mulish expression. “Well, for one thing, Porter and Al have never been that close even though they were all part of that whole Langley Hawthorne clique, and for another thing they’ve all been arguing a lot recently. Porter and Al were arguing at the party. Plenty of people heard them, including Paul.”

  “I don’t remember that,” I said.

  “I don’t think you were there yet. You arrived pretty late.” She smiled. “I noticed you right away.” She gave me an approving look. “I like quiet, polite men. And men who wear Hugo Boss. I was hoping you weren’t gay. Or that you were only half-gay. Like Paul.”

  “Uh…sorry,” I said. “It’s pretty much full-time now. The pay’s not great, but the perks…”

  She squealed with laughter. “I scared you!” Then she turned grave and dignified. “You know, I am a widow.”

  “I know,” I said. And God help the unsuspecting Southland with Ally on the loose once more. I thought Kane had it right: Mrs. Jones wasn’t all that broken up over her older husband’s death. That didn’t mean she’d knocked him off, though. Frankly, the poisoned cocktail seemed a little complicated for Ally. I figured she was more the type to run him over with the Jaguar or clunk him with a marble finial and toss him into the pool out back. “Do you have any idea what your husband and Al January were arguing about?”

  She had moved over to the dressing table where she proceeded to put mascara on, tilting her head at an unnatural angle and ogling herself open-mouthed in the three mirrors. Framed there in gilt, she reminded me of a split-image Picasso.

  “No.” She formed the word carefully, still combing her lashes out. “Business, I suppose.”

  “Was business bad enough to kill?”

  She shrugged another plump shoulder. “I never listened to Porter when he got going.”

  Ah. At last. The secret to a successful marriage.

  “January tried to save Porter,” I pointed out. “He was the one who administered CPR.”

  “You’ll notice he didn’t save Porter, though,” she pointed right back.

  “From the little the police have said, I don’t think anyone could have saved him. It sounds like he got a massive dose of whatever killed him.”

  “Heart medication,” she said.

  “Did Porter have a heart condition?”

  She pumped the mascara wand in the tube. “Nope.”

  “Do you?”

  I smiled in answer to her indignant look. “See, I do,” I said.

  “Oh.” She unbent a fraction. “Really?”

  I said, “Can you think of anyone else who might have had a reason to get your husband out of the way?”

  She blinked, creating an effect reminiscent of Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. “Fuck!” She grabbed tissues and began dabbing away the black dots. When she had wiped away the smears, she recapped the mascara, and placed it neatly back on the tray of cosmetics. “No,” she said flatly, and it took me a second to remember exactly what I had asked her.

  “Did Porter have any enemies? Or any problems with anyone besides Al January?”

  She shook her head, staring down at the collection of cosmetics.

  “Was this a second mar
riage for Porter? Does he have an ex? Or maybe kids by another marriage?”

  She brightened. “Yes. He was married to Marla Vicenza. But they didn’t have any children.” She slanted me a look. “Porter was sterile.”

  Too much information. See, this is why I really wasn’t cut out for the amateur sleuth gig. I really didn’t want to know that much about my fellow man.

  “How did Porter get on with his first wife?”

  “Fine.” She shrugged. “Listen, if Marla was going to kill Porter she’d have done it twenty years ago.” She waved a makeup brush at me and little specks of powder flew through the air. “Now is that it? Because I have to get dressed.”

  I noted that she had decided I needed to leave once she was putting her clothes on. I said, “Yeah, that’s it. Is it okay if I call you if I have any other questions?”

  She sighed. “I guess. I just want to make sure you understand that Porter and I were very happy. Our marriage had never been stronger.”

  “Sure. And thank you for talking to me so openly,” I told her.

  “I just want this all to go away,” she said, and while I sympathized, I could have told her from personal experience that murder took a long time to go away.

  I found my own way downstairs through all the marble and tile and priceless art. I’d rarely seen a place that looked less lived-in, unless it was the Palace of Fontainebleau. Casa Jones had the chill feel of an after-hours museum. Maybe it was the décor or maybe it was just the domestic vibe.

  Not that I was convinced Ally was a murderess. I thought she had been telling the truth right up until the end of our interview. And she might still have been telling the truth when I asked her about other people with a motive for wanting Porter out of the way, but she had definitely got cagey. Of course everyone got cagey in a murder investigation -- including me.

  She didn’t have any qualms about putting Al January under the bus, so it wasn’t like she was resisting the idea that Porter had been murdered. She seemed to have accepted that. So who had she suddenly realized had a motive for murder -- and why did it bother her?