“Come in, Mary, I promise I won’t bite,” the old woman said.
Mary recognized the face in the picture with the one now in front of her. In the comedy club, it had been dark and smoky. Now, in the unforgiving light, Marie Stevens actually looked better. Beneath the wrinkles and yellowed skin and eyes that spoke of a road filled with nasty crashes, were the bones of a very beautiful woman. Mary could see why her uncle and his cronies would have liked to have her around.
Mary slipped her hand inside her coat and it came out with the.45 resting in its grip.
“The lack of trust is hurtful, dear,” the old woman said. “Very hurtful.”
The place was just as uncared for inside as out. There was trash scattered here and there, as well as empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and fast food wrappers.
The only place that seemed cared for was a dining room table with a computer humming quietly away, its bright screen the only source of light other than the sun through the windows.
“Nice little place you got here,” Mary said. “Love what you’ve done with it.”
“It’s as if Brent Cooper had appeared in the guise of a lovely young woman,” Marie Stevens said.
“I assume you bought it with Harvey Mitchell’s money?”
Marie Stevens sat down at her computer and swung her chair around to face Mary.
Mary sat down in the chair opposite her and put her.45 on the table between them.
“What kind of woman do you think I am?” the old lady said.
“In order to answer that I would have to know what they did to you way back when, in this house.”
“What makes you think they did something to me?” The old woman smiled, the teeth were her own, straight and yellowed from cigarettes.
“Why else would Mitchell pay you blackmail, hire another p.i. to try to keep tabs on me and kill me?” Mary said. “And why else would Whitney Braggs try to kill me and everyone else? Obviously, you had them all by the balls.”
The old woman sighed. She turned and looked out toward the windows, out at the gently rolling Pacific.
“They raped me,” she said, still turned away from Mary. “Both literally and comedically.”
“Comedically?” Mary said.
She nodded. “They supplied the booze, the drugs, the sex, and I supplied the one-liners, the skits, the acts, and they took it all.” The old woman’s voice was thick and raspy. She waved a wrinkled hand in the air. Mary could smell the woman’s perfume.
“They took it all and made great careers out of it,” Marie Stevens said. “And then when I wore out, they had me tossed into an institution while they all got rich off my work.”
The sound of a car speeding by on PCH reached Mary’s ears.
“So that’s where you were all these years?” Mary said. “An institution?”
The old woman nodded. “Under a different name,” she said. “I got out awhile back and began exacting my revenge. I had quite a long time to plan it. Give or take a lifetime.”
“Some people take up gardening,” Mary said.
“Some people needed to die,” the old woman countered.
Mary sighed. “So who actually killed Brent?”
“Braggs,” the old woman said. “He did the dirty work. I was the brains. But Braggs is psychotic. I kept you alive because I knew in the end, I would need you to take him out. I didn’t think I could do it.”
Mary nodded. She was angry. Angry about the whole thing. That this woman had murdered her uncle. That her uncle had played a part in destroying this woman’s life for some money that didn’t last, and jokes that had long since been forgotten.
“But you shouldn’t have hard feelings toward Braggs,” Marie Stevens said. “I had him shoot that McAllister jerk to keep you alive. Just before Braggs shot Harvey, the asshole.”
“That was very nice of Braggs,” Mary said. “I think I’ll send him a pick-me-up bouquet from FTD.”
The old woman looked at Mary. “Whatever Braggs was doing at Alice’s house, that was his own plan. I guess to tie up loose ends on his part.”
Mary felt blood trickle down her leg. There were now two Marie Stevenses in front of her.
“I’m done,” the old lady said.
“Done?”
“I’ve done what I needed to do. I want to go back now. Call your boyfriend. Jake. That’s his name?”
“Go back where?”
“To the hospital,” Marie Stevens said. “I don’t like it out here. Besides, with this,” she said, and pointed at her laptop. “I can send my stuff out. Leno used one of my jokes a couple weeks ago. Under a false name, of course.”
Mary put away the.45. She felt funny, almost sleepy. Her foot was soaked in blood and now it felt cold.
“I want to hear it,” she said.
“Hear what?” Marie Stevens said.
“The joke.”
Chapter Seventy-Six
Jake and the Shark arrived minutes later with a whole contingent of LAPD’s finest. They entered the room with guns drawn.
“Hate to interrupt you two,” the Shark said. “But one of you is under arrest for murder.”
“I didn’t know reptiles could become homicide detectives,” Marie Stevens said, and looked Davies up and down. “Or is this some kind of diversity mandate?”
Mary, still feeling lightheaded and like she was going to pass out at any moment said, “Yeah, she has to sit out in the sun to raise her body temperature.”
Davies took out a pair of handcuffs.
“Don’t worry,” Mary said to Marie Stevens. “Those are for Jake. They have his and hers.”
“He went from you to her?” Marie said. “And I thought my judgment was questionable.”
“That’s enough,” Jake said. “Come on in guys.” A team of paramedics came through the door and Jake directed them to Mary. He followed them over and held Mary’s hand as the paramedics began to set up the stretcher and examine her leg.
The Shark put Marie in handcuffs.
“Bet you’d love a conjugal visit,” the old lady said to Davies. “Well, forget it, even if I get 20 years, I wouldn’t be that desperate.”
Davies shoved her toward the door where two uniforms escorted the lady to a patrol car. Davies turned to Jake, saw him holding Mary’s hand, and turned and followed the old lady out into the sunshine.
Jake smiled at Mary as the paramedics lifted her onto the stretcher. He still held her hand and stroked her hair.
“That old lady’s kinda funny,” he said. “For a murderer.”
In response, Mary passed out.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
“This is downright painful,” Mary said, taking a long pull of her beer.
“Brutal,” Alice said.
They were seated at a table inside the Funny Factory, a small and sparsely attended comedy club in Santa Monica. Uncle Kurt Cooper was on stage.
“I think he’s funny,” Jake said.
Mary and Alice both looked at Jake.
“That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard tonight,” Alice said.
Jake quickly changed the subject. “So they shipped Marie Stevens back to the mental institution today. Unfit for trial.”
Mary idly wondered if letting Marie Stevens live had been the right thing to do. She could have taken her out at the house in Malibu. Instead, she had called Jake while she was en route, shot and bleeding.
“Those guys didn’t just take her material,” Mary said. “They took her soul and her sanity.”