Diagnosis Murder 3 - The Shooting Script (12 page)

"Three hundred thousand dollars' worth?"

"You keep talking like I did something wrong," Stryker said. "I conducted an investigation and uncovered information that was of value. I'm exchanging it for something of equal or greater value. That's business."

"If this was all so innocent, why were you wearing the Halloween costume?"

"I'm known as a master of disguise," he said.

"You aren't known at all, Zanley."

"Not outside the trade, so to speak. To the criminal element, and the general public, I'm invisible. It's why I'm so good. So obviously, I didn't want her to know who I was," Stryker said. "I felt if she knew my identity, it might compromise my future investigations."

"There won't be any future investigations," Steve said. "Your license is being shredded, ergo, you're out of business."

"C'mon, Lieutenant, let's be reasonable," Stryker said. "You see me lawyering up? No. Why's that? Because I want to be cooperative with my colleagues in law enforcement. You tell me what I need to do to keep this amicable between us and I'll do it."

"You can start by giving me a full, signed statement repeating everything you told me today. Then I want all the material you gathered during your investigation for Cleve. Videos, photos, reports, invoices, the works," Steve said. "Then, maybe, we'll talk again about your license."

Steve got up and walked out.

"Hey," Stryker called after him, "What about these handcuffs?"

Steve closed the door, pretending not to hear him, and went into the observation room, where Mark was watching the private eye stew.

"What do you think?" Steve asked.

"It explains how he got Lacey's private number and how he knew she had that sweatshirt."

"Do you believe Cleve hired him?"

Mark nodded. "I also believe Lacey knew she was being watched and used it to her advantage. Proving it is going to be another matter."

"Ready to talk to her?" Steve asked.

"Not as ready as she is to talk to us," Mark said, frowning. "Lacey is still directing this show. We're simply actors in her movie, following a script she wrote a long time ago."

"At least now we know it," Steve said, opening the door and leading Mark into the squad room, where Lacey was sitting at his desk, pretending not to notice the sideways stares she was getting from starstruck detectives.

Steve took a seat at his desk and made a show of going over her signed statement. Mark pulled a chair over and sat next to Lacey.

"Why didn't you tell us you had an alibi?" Mark asked. "It would have saved us all a lot of trouble."

"I wasn't interested in your trouble or mine," Lacey said. "My concern was sparing Titus a lot of unnecessary embarrassment and attention."

"Titus?" Steve asked. "I take it he's the boy toy in the motel."

Lacey gave Steve a cold look. "It's that kind of attitude that kept me from telling the truth. I wanted to keep his name out of this. He shouldn't have to lose his privacy, and become the butt of jokes, because he made the mistake of loving me."

Steve winced. "That's worse than the dialogue in one of your movies—not that anyone actually cares what's being said."

"Titus Carville," Lacey said.

"Who started cheating on whom first?" Mark asked. "You or Cleve?"

"We were separated, Dr. Sloan," Lacey said. "But we still had needs."

Steve looked at her skeptically. "Your husband didn't tell Nick Stryker you were separated."

"Who's he?" she asked.

'The guy who tried to shake you down today," Steve said. "He's a private eye your husband hired to find out if you were cheating on him with some boy toy with a ridiculous name like Brock or Thor or Titus."

"I told you, we were keeping our separation a secret until the movie came out," she said. "It's probably the same reason he didn't tell this so-called private eye."

"So why did Cleve care who you were sleeping with?"

"I don't know," Lacey said.

"We're going to have to talk to Titus," Steve said. "I'll need his address and phone number."

He passed her a paper and pencil. While she wrote out the information, she said, "Do you really have to involve Titus in all this, or are you just doing it out of prurient interest?"

"My prurient interests were satisfied by that tape," Steve said.

Mark knew his son was being purposely offensive to spark a revealing reaction from Lacey. But she wasn't taking the bait.

"If that's what you get off on, I've shown more and done more in my movies. I'm sure the camera work and lighting are better, too." She rose from her seat. "I trust you'll make sure I don't see that tape on TV tonight or the Internet tomorrow?"

"You won't see this one," Steve said, patting his breast pocket. "But I don't know how many copies Stryker made. And let's face it, Lacey, the man is pissed off after what you did to him today. There's no telling what he might do to get back at you and make a little money."

"You could stop him," she said.

Steve shrugged.

Lacey gave Steve a long look. "I can see you're going to make this difficult."

"As difficult as I can," Steve said.

"Even though that tape proves I'm innocent," she said.

"Does it?" he replied.

"It's a good thing you have that restaurant, Detective," she said. "At least you'll still have one job when this is over. Now where can I find my bag of spare change?"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"What they had wasn't a marriage," Titus Carville said, dabbing the sweat off his face with a towel. "It was a business relationship masquerading as love. It was never really love. What we have,
that's
true love."

Titus was shirtless and sweaty. He'd been working out with his weight set in the living room of his Venice bungalow when Mark and Steve arrived. Even though Lacey had called ahead to warn him they were coming, he apparently didn't see any reason to interrupt his workout and get dressed.

"Oh yeah, that's what people go to the Slumberland Motel for," Steve said. "True love."

"You don't think Lacey and Cleve ever loved each other?" Mark asked Titus.

"I think they loved what they could do for each other. I think they loved the success they were having," Titus said. "But that was as far as the love went."

"Is that what she told you?" Mark said.

"She didn't have to," Titus said. "Anybody could see it if they spent any real time with them."

"And you spent real time with them?" Steve asked, throwing a casual glance over at his father. With that look, Steve conveyed a message. He'd keep asking questions and occupying Titus' attention, freeing Mark to roam around largely unobserved, gathering whatever clues he could.

"Cleve hired me as her personal trainer," Titus said, tossing the town aside and moving to his treadmill. "then my job naturally evolved into being her personal assistant, too."

"Naturally," Steve said.

"I saw how they talked, how they looked at each other, how they touched. I could see there was no love between them," Titus said. "It was obvious."

"But not to Lacey."

Titus turned on the treadmill, set the program, and started running.

"She came to realize it through my little acts of devotion," Titus said, a comment that gave Steve an unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach. This guy was sounding more and more like a stalker with every word.

Mark felt the same uneasiness, only much more acutely. At the moment Titus made that comment, Mark stepped into what he thought, at first, was a teenage boy's bedroom. A teenage boy with a healthy, adolescent interest in scantily clad women. But all the posters and pictures on the wall were of just one scantily clad woman: Lacey McClure. There were filing cabinets, stacks of DVDs and videos of Lacey's movies, pile of scripts, and desktop computer with a large monitor with bikini-clad Lacey McClure as a screen saver.

"I made sure she got her Glacier Peak water, her 600-thread-count sheets, her special vitamins, her ChapStick—whatever she needed or wanted, before she knew she needed or wanted it," Titus said, as the treadmill slowly sped up. "I managed her needs because I cared about her needs. Not as a job, as a calling, the way it should be when you're in love."

Mark tapped the space bar on the computer. The screen saver blinked off and the "Official Lacey McClure Home Page" appeared, framed within a window of a website administration program. Titus apparently was her webmaster, as well.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Steve said, moving in front of the treadmill. "But you sound like one of those obsessed, lunatic stalkers, the kind of whackos who camp out side a star's house hoping to get a glimpse of them, or, failing that, steal a whiff of their garbage."

Mark smiled when he heard that. Steve often said what others only thought, and it frequently got him in trouble. But it was also a good technique for unnerving witnesses and suspects.

"I won't take offense at that," Titus said, "because it's a very thin line between devotion to someone you love and obsession. I've seen her stalkers. I've talked to them. And, in a few cases, I've had to hurt them."

"So you're also her personal bodyguard?"

"I'm everything to her I can be," Titus said, beginning to breathe hard now, the treadmill simulating a steep hill. "I run her website, answer her fan mail, and coordinate her personal appearances."

"Like the one she made at the Slumberland Motel?" Steve asked.

"That's a cheap shot," Titus said.

"It's a cheap motel," Steve said.

Titus' bedroom was spare, but neat, lit with pinpoint halogen lights, his clothes crisply folded on open shelves, almost as decoration. The bed minimalist, merely a mattress on a box spring, no headboard, runners, or footboard. Mark untucked a corner of the bed and ran the edge of the top sheet between his fingers.

"The paparazzi watch the big, five-star hotels, waiting to see stars. They don't wait outside places like the Slumberland," Titus said. "Lacey wanted to keep her marital problems quiet until her new movie was out for a while; that's why we were there."

"You could have gone to her house," Steve said.

"There are paparazzi camped outside there, too," Titus said.

"What's the big deal?" Steve asked. "You're her personal trainer and personal assistant, wouldn't you be expected to come and go?"

"She also has a cook, a housekeeper, a gardener... Where do you think the rags get all their information? We were being discreet."

"Not discreet enough," Steve said.

Mark stepped into the hallway and opened the linen closet. There were some towels, an extra blanket, and two extra sets of sheets. He felt those, too.

"How long have you and Lacey been lovers?" Steve asked.

"A few weeks. But we didn't consummate our love until she and Cleve were separated, if that's what you're asking," Titus said, struggling up the imaginary hill his treadmill was simulating. "This isn't a sleazy affair. Lacey is as devoted to me as I am to her."

"Is she fetching your water now and counting the threads in your sheets?"

"She wants me to take over as her manager and producer. She knows I won't betray her the way Cleve did. I'm doing this for love, not money."

"Uh-huh," Steve said. "So let me see if I've got this straight. Cleve was only in it for the bucks. And Lacey, she got swept up in her own success and went along for the ride. What you and Lacey have, that's true love. You take care of everything for her out of genuine devotion."

"Is that so hard to understand?" Titus asked.

"No, I think I understand," Steve said. "You insinuated yourself into Lacey's life and seduced her. Now, with Cleve dead, you get his woman and his job. Sounds to me like a motive for murder."

Titus was huffing now, hands on the rails of his treadmill. "I suppose it's a good thing I have an alibi."

"Same one as Lacey's, as a matter of fact," Steve said, as his father returned to the living room. "Funny how that worked out. Whose idea was it to go to the Slumberland Motel that day?"

"Mine," Titus said. "I think it's kitschy."

"That's one word for it," Steve said. "Who picked the time?"

"The production coordinator of her movie," Titus said. "Lacey's a slave to the production schedule. We get together whenever Lacey can spare the time."

"Did you know you were being watched by a private eye?" Mark asked.

Titus turned, a bit startled. Apparently he'd forgotten Mark was even in the house.

"Of course not," Titus said. "The whole idea was to avoid being seen."

"I suppose so," Mark nodded. "Did Lacey know her husband was having an affair, too?"

"I don't know," Titus said. "I doubt she would have cared, anyway."

Mark stepped beside the treadmill and looked at the console's elaborate graphic display of Titus' recent ascent.

"Look like you've reached the top of a pretty steep mountain here," Mark observed.

"It was a hard, fast climb," Titus said.

"Well, now that you're there, I'd be careful if I were you," Mark said with a friendly smile. "You don't want to fall off a cliff."

They were leaving Titus Carville's house and walking back to the car when Steve asked Mark if he'd found any thing interesting in his search.

"It's what I didn't find that was interesting," Mark said. "He had ordinary sheets on the bed, nothing approaching 600 threads. The sheets in his linen closet weren't any fancier."

"I guess she never slept at his place," Steve said. "Or they never used the bed."

"Makes me wonder," Mark said. "How many threads do you suppose the sheets at the Slumberland Motel have?"

"However many they have on a piece of canvas," Steve said, walking around to the driver's side of the car and un locking the door.

"I'm asking myself why someone so sensitive would let her bare skin touch those sheets."

"True love conquers all?" Steve said, then saw the skeptical look on his father's face. "Okay, maybe Titus brought some sheets with him."

"If he did," Mark said, opening his car door. "Where are they now?"

"He's either got them hermetically sealed and is keeping them as sacred heirlooms," Steve said, getting into the car, "or he's selling them on eBay."