Deirdre relaxed a notch. In this celebrity-obsessed town, how hard could it be to fly under the radar? She smoothed her dress, hoisted up the sagging panty hose, affected a slightly turtle-necked slouch, and started walking toward where Sy was perched at the edge of a raised bed of pink and purple petunias, so bright that they looked artificial. People leaving the building glanced at her, but none looked twice. The hairnet made her head itchy, but she resisted the urge to scratch.
As she got closer, Sy’s gaze passed over her without a flicker of recognition. It wasn’t until she was three feet away that he registered her crutch, looked her full in the face, and sprang to his feet. He eyed her up and down, then looked around. “Brava,” he said in a stage whisper.
“I had help.”
“I imagine you did.” He picked up his briefcase and cast an anxious glance in the direction of the news team. “Come on. Let’s not press our luck. There is a side entrance.”
Sy led Deirdre around to the side of the building where cruisers were angle parked and a sign pointing up a narrow flight of stairs said BEVERLY HILLS POLICE DEPARTMENT. He followed Deirdre up the steps and held open one of the double doors at the top.
Deirdre passed into a cool, dark interior. An outer waiting area was lined with benches—a tired-looking woman rocking a baby in a stroller sat on one of them—and smelled of burnt coffee, stale candy, and pine cleaner. Beyond another set of glass-paned double doors, uniformed police officers milled about. When an officer pushed the door open and exited, the sound of phones ringing and loud voices pulsed out.
“Does the detective know we’re coming?” Deirdre asked.
“I thought we would surprise him. When you talk to him, please remember, do not offer information. Do not speculate. Just answer his questions. This is important. Do you understand me?”
“I do. Don’t offer. Don’t speculate. Can I change first?”
“Go.”
Deirdre ducked into the ladies’ room. She ripped off the hairnet and shook out her hair. Gave her scalp a good scratch. Relief! Then she changed back into her pants and T-shirt and stuffed the baggy tights and the dress and vinyl handbag into her messenger bag. She scrubbed her face using the gloppy, bubble-gum-colored soap from the dispenser. Patted her face dry with a brown paper towel that left a residue of wet cardboard smell.
When she emerged, Sy was no longer in the lobby. He was on the other side of the glass door in the midst of what looked like a heated discussion with a visibly exasperated Detective Martinez.
Chapter 18
Deirdre pushed through the door to the police department in time to hear Martinez reaming out Sy. “If you people are going to start playing games—”
“No one is playing games with you. She is right here,” Sy said, spotting Deirdre and motioning her over. “See? Ready and willing to answer your questions.”
A vein was pounding in Martinez’s forehead. He gave a tense nod in Deirdre’s direction and checked his watch, then turned and led her and Sy through a busy room filled with desks, down a corridor, and through a door into a small office. The interior was Spartan—just a desk, a phone, and a half-dead ficus that Deirdre found herself wanting desperately to water. A dust-coated window overlooked a eucalyptus tree behind the building.
Martinez sat at the desk and motioned for Deirdre and Sy to sit on the other side. A half-full mug of coffee sat on the desk, white ceramic with a splash of red, the motto HOMICIDE: OUR DAY BEGINS WHEN SOMEONE ELSE’S ENDS. A second mug, filled with pens and pencils, had SUPER DADDY on it.
Martinez took out a pad and made a few initial notations. Then he leaned back in his chair and just stared at Deirdre for what seemed like forever. Taking her measure or, more likely, trying to freak her out. “You won’t mind if I record this,” he said, taking a cassette recorder from the desk drawer. “Then I won’t have to worry about getting everything down in my notes.”
“Not a problem,” Sy said. “Right, Deirdre?”
Following his lead, Deirdre nodded. Martinez snapped in a fresh cassette, turned it on, and set the recorder on the desk between them. He recorded a little preamble—time, date, and who was present. Then played it and went back to recording.
“Miss Unger, thank you very much for coming in. I’ll get right to the point. I need to clarify your whereabouts late Friday night and into Saturday morning.”
“I’ve already told you, I was in the art gallery. Xeno Art. Until late. Then I went home.”
“I know.” Martinez gave her a tired smile. “Like I said, just to clarify and get the details correct. So you closed the gallery? When was that?”
“We’re open until eight. Then I closed up. But I stayed later, prepping a new exhibit.”
“Alone?”
“With the artist’s assistant.”
“Do you have this artist’s assistant’s name? Can we contact him—”
“Her. Shoshanna.”
“Shoshanna . . . what?”
“I don’t know her last name. But I can get her contact information for you.” The assistant had been young. Brunette. With hair that hung down to her waist and a lot of makeup. Aspiring actress had been Deirdre’s first thought. The artist had arranged for her to come help, since he was in Israel. He said she’d be at the gallery at eight but she hadn’t gotten there until after ten, complaining about heavy traffic. Two hours of heavy traffic well past rush hour? It sounded lame, but Deirdre hadn’t bothered to call her on it.
“Please do. And you were at the gallery with this Shoshanna until—?”
“After midnight.” It was so late by the time they’d finished up that she’d been afraid her car would get ticketed for overnight parking. Too bad it hadn’t.
“What about casual passersby? They’d have seen that the lights were on inside and the two of you in there hanging paintings. Maybe someone stopped in?”
“It was an installation. Not paintings.” Shoes, actually. Avram Sigismund had shipped them hundreds of old shoes—looked like a Salvation Army resale store’s entire stock of shoes that had been thrown in the mud and driven over a few times—along with some graffiti-covered canvas backdrops delivered to the gallery in crates. Shoshanna had a schematic that showed where the shoes, each of which was numbered, were to be placed—some on the floor, others climbing the walls, still others hanging from the ceiling. When all the shoes were in their appointed places, Deirdre hadn’t been all that impressed. On top of that the gallery reeked of feet, something that the assistant called “texture” and insisted was an essential part of the concept. “And no,” Deirdre added, “no one stopped in, and I doubt if anyone going past would have realized that we were there. We covered the windows.”
“You covered the windows.” Hearing Martinez repeat her in a deadpan, Deirdre realized how bizarre this sounded.
“The artist was quite definite.” Paranoid, even. “He didn’t want anyone to see his work until the show opened.”
“Did that seem unusual to you?”
“I could understand it, really, especially with an installation of that nature.”
“So this artist. What’s his name?”
“Avram Sigismund.” Deirdre spelled it for Martinez.
“He’s well known?”
“He’s Israeli. Up and coming.” Deirdre avoided Martinez’s gaze. In fact, she’d never worked with Avi (as he asked them to call him) before. Never even heard of him until just a week and a half ago when they’d agreed to clear their front gallery space and show his work. She could tell herself that it was Stefan who’d pressured her to break their long-standing policy and accept payment to mount a show, but that wouldn’t have been fair. The gallery was struggling and they needed to pay their rent. It seemed like a gift when, out of the blue, Avi contacted Stefan with a proposal. He was desperate for gallery space for just two weeks to accommodate a curator from a major American museum who wanted to see his work firsthand. His work was represented by the prestigious (even she’d heard of it) Rosenfeld Gallery in Tel Aviv, but he’d never been shown in the United States. Stefan had gotten the strong sense that the museum interested in acquiring his work was the MOCA in L.A.