MD03 - Criminal Intent Page 9

  Her eyes turn down. “No.” She parries my questions when I try to probe.

  “We may want to ask you a few more questions,” I say.

  She hands me business card that says simply Eve. There’s a post office box, a phone number and an e-mail address. She motions us toward a door at the end of the hallway. I can hear loud voices inside. The shouting is followed by guffaws. Eve opens the door and a bearded man with an expanding gut walks out of the room. Dominic Petrillo looks older and more disheveled in person than in his photos. He’s early sixties, about my height, with a full head of dyed black hair, a scraggy beard and a deeply lined leathery face. His small eyes are hidden behind tiny wire-rimmed spectacles. He kisses Eve on the cheek and says goodbye. He looks at Rosie and me and frowns. He doesn’t say a word as he brushes past us.

  “Mr. Petrillo,” I say. “I’m Michael Daley. We’re representing Angelina Chavez.”

  He gives me an icy glare and says, “I know who you are. I have to get back to my hotel.”

  “Can we speak to you for just for a moment?”

  “I’m late. Call me at the office.” He barrels toward the stairway. Rosie follows him.

  I turn around and look at Eve, who puts a finger to her lips and motions me into the room. “Please, Mr. Daley—I mean Mike.” She escorts me into the office. Then she excuses herself and closes the door behind her.

  Little Richard’s office has an unobstructed view of the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog is starting to roll in, but I can see the Marin Headlands and the top of Mount Tam. At the moment, I would rather be up there with Grace.

  “Come in Michael,” he says in a raspy, high-pitched voice. His tone is businesslike, almost cheerful. He’s a young man, probably mid-thirties, with slicked back hair and expanding jowls. He looks like his father. He’s sitting in a tall, ergonomically correct leather chair behind a desk made of a Plexiglas slab resting on a stainless steel base. A speaker phone, a laptop and a black coffee cup with a logo of Richard MacArthur Films are sitting on his otherwise spotless desk.

  He accepts my condolences with perfunctory thanks. “I’m pressed for time,” he says. “I’m trying to finalize the arrangements for my father’s memorial. Of course we still have to deal with the release of the movie.”

  Of course. The door opens and Eve comes in. He points toward his coffee cup. She nods. She leaves the room and returns less than a minute later with a carafe. She fills his cup. He doesn’t thank her. For that matter, he doesn’t even acknowledge that she was there. Without a word, she turns and walks out the door.

  Young MacArthur tugs at his black silk shirt. “She’s very conscientious,” he says.

  I’m sure. “She’s your assistant?” I ask.

  “Yes. She’s also an actress. We think she has great potential. Her mother is Caucasian and her father is Filipino. That’s why she looks so, uh, interesting.”

  “Where did you find her?” I ask.

  “The Mission District. We gave her a role in the new film. She has many qualities.”

  I presume this means that she’s very good at taking shorthand. A copy of Friday’s Daily Variety and an old photo of MacArthur and his father sit on one corner of the credenza. Next to it is a picture of Little Richard in the driver’s seat of a vintage Ferrari. I remember reading that he likes to refurbish cars. Conspicuously absent are signs of a spouse or children. The walls are filled with posters from his father’s movies and pictures of classic autos.

  I start slowly. “Kind of sparse furnishings,” I observe.

  “I don’t like to let anything detract from the view,” he says, without looking at me. “I try to keep all of my stuff out of sight.”

  His stuff would also include Eve, I presume. I say, “I didn’t realize you were meeting with Dominic Petrillo.”

  He turns his gaze from the windows and eyes me suspiciously. “We have a movie coming out on Friday.”

  “Are you still planning to release it on time?”

  “Yes. And we’re trying to get final approval of the studio project.”

  “I’ve read a lot about it.”

  He slumps back into his chair. “It is a monumental pain to get approvals to build anything in this town.” He tries for a conciliatory tone. “Now I have this mess on my hands.”

  I decide to try the high road. “I’m terribly sorry about what happened, Richard.”

  He regains his composure. “You and me both,” he replies. “Biggest fucked-up mess I’ve ever seen.”

  When I was a priest, I heard many people try to describe their feelings after the death of a parent. This is the first time I’ve ever heard the term fucked-up mess used in this context.

  There’s a knock on the door. Eve lets Rosie in. I ask her if she talked to Petrillo.

  “He said he’d meet with us tomorrow.” She faces MacArthur and says, “Angelina asked us to find out about the arrangements for the funeral.”

  “You could have called,” he says.

  “We wanted to talk to you in person.”

  “You know Angelina and I haven’t always gotten along.”

  As far as I can tell, they haven’t ever gotten along. Rosie asks again about the funeral.

  MacArthur pulls a cell phone out of his pocket. I didn’t hear it ring. It must have been on vibrate mode. He turns away from me. “Yeah,” I hear him say. Then he adds, “Right.” Then his neck starts to turn red and he says, “No way. Tell them to go fuck themselves. Tell them we have a deal.” His voice gets louder with each passing insult. He spends another five minutes berating the poor soul who had the audacity to question him. Then he snaps the phone closed and says to me, “I work with a bunch of fucking idiots.”

  Nice guy. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me if he does, in fact, work with a bunch of fucking idiots.

  “What were we talking about?” he asks.

  “The funeral.”

  “Yeah.” He pauses. “There isn’t going to be one.”

  No funeral? Big Dick MacArthur is going to his final reward without a final extravaganza? A tribute? “I take it this was your father’s wish?” Rosie asks.

  “Yes.” He gives me a sheepish grin. “He had something a bit more elaborate in mind.”

  This is beginning to sound more like it. I ask him what that might be.

  “He’s going to be blown up.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  I realize my mouth wide open.

  “You see,” he continues, “the Northern California Neptune Society offers a unique service. First, they cremate the body.”

  Sounds pretty conventional.

  “Then they take your ashes out on a boat called the Naiad. Then they shoot your ashes up in fireworks. That’s how they’re scattered.”

  I look right into his tiny eyes to see if there’s any chance that he might be kidding.

  “I’m not making this up,” he insists.

  I glance at Rosie. How are we going to explain this to Angel?

  “It’s in his will,” he adds. “He read about it and loved the idea. I just talked to his lawyer. All the arrangements were made a long time ago.” He gives me the name of a reputable probate attorney whom I’ve met. I can vouch for the fact that he has no sense of humor. If he says Big Dick is going to be blown up, then by God, he’s going to be blown up.

  “Who are the beneficiaries of the will?” I ask.

  “That’s confidential.”

  “Richard,” Rosie says, “it will become a matter of public record when the will is submitted to probate. We’re going to find out.”

  He gives her a cold stare. Then he confirms what Pete told us. Angel gets the house and the car. She and Little Richard split the rest of it, including the stock in MacArthur Films, except he gets to keep the keys to MacArthur Cellars. It looks like he’s about to become a gentleman vintner. “Of course,” he says, “we plan to contest the will. We think it is entirely inappropriate that Angelina would receive anything under in the circum
stances.”

  “How’s that?” I ask.

  “She killed him.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I’d put money on it.”

  We volley back and forth on the subject of Big Dick’s death for a few moments. Then Rosie says, “When is the memorial ceremony going to take place?”

  “We’re hoping they’ll release the body tomorrow. We’re shooting for Tuesday,” he says, not intending to make a pun.

  “Angelina would like to be there,” I say.

  He stops cold. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  His face starts to turn bright red. “The marriage was a sham. She just married him to get into his movies. No way I’m gonna let her come.”

  “If she wanted to get into his movies, why would she have killed him?”

  He drums his fingers on his Plexiglas slab. “Because her performance was a disaster. My father pointed it out to her last night. He wasn’t subtle about it.”

  “It makes no sense,” Rosie says.

  “It’s free publicity,” he argues. “The tabloids will be all over this.”

  “You’re suggesting she killed her husband as a publicity stunt?” Rosie says.

  “You got it.”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  Little Richard folds his arms like an angry eight year-old and says, “She’s not welcome at my father’s memorial.”

  “She was his wife,” Rosie says. “She has every right to be there.”

  I notice little beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “It’s disrespectful.” He wags a chubby finger in my face. “She was never part of the family.”

  Now he’s starting to sound like Al Pacino in Godfather II. “Richard,” I say, “where were you last night?”

  “Are you accusing me of something?”

  Rosie interjects, “No. We’re just trying to figure out what happened.”

  “I’ve already talked to the cops.”

  “Maybe you can tell us what you told them.”

  “I was at the same place Angelina was—the screening.”

  “Who else was there?”

  He rattles off the names of Daniel Crown and Cheryl Springer, Dominic Petrillo, Carl Ellis and Martin Kent. “It was a VIP event,” he says.

  “What time did you leave?”

  “Around two.”

  I ask him if anybody was still there.”

  “Ellis and Petrillo left at one-forty-five. They went back to the Ritz in Petrillo’s limo.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Crown and Springer left a few minutes before I did. Marty was still around.”

  “You didn’t hear anything or see anything unusual?”

  “Your client was high as a kite. In her case, that wasn’t unusual.”

  I ignore the dig. “Where did you go?”

  “I walked home to get my car. Then I drove up to the winery.”

  “It was two o’clock in the morning.”

  “I was supposed to be at a charity auction this morning.”

  “Can anybody corroborate your whereabouts?”

  “Danny Crown and Cheryl Springer can. So can Petrillo and Ellis. You can talk to Marty Kent.”

  “He’s missing.”

  He becomes silent for a moment. “So I understand.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No idea.”

  “Did anybody go with you to the winery?”

  There is a slight hesitation before he says, “No.”

  “And you drove back by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was the last time you saw Angelina?”

  “Around one. I thought she went to bed.” He pauses for effect and adds, “I guess not.”

  At least this corresponds with Angel’s time line. “You didn’t see her after that?”

  “No.”

  “Was Marty Kent upset?”

  This elicits a rapid nod. “Yeah. He was worried about the movie. And he thought the China Basin project was a bad deal for us.”

  # # #

  I ask Rosie what she thought of MacArthur’s son as we’re driving downtown a little later.

  “It’s about what I expected,” she says. “I have a very finely-tuned asshole sensor. It was blaring the entire time.” She gets a faraway look in her eyes. “There’s something else that seems curious to me. He said he drove up to Napa by himself.”

  “So?”

  “When I called the winery, a woman answered the phone. I may be mistaken, but it sounded a lot like Eve.”

  # # #

  Angel is incredulous. “They’re going to shoot Dick’s ashes up in a Roman candle?”

  Rosie and I are with Angel in her cell at seven o’clock Saturday evening. Rosie just finished explaining the arrangements for the memorial. “I checked with the probate attorney,” I say. “He said that the fireworks were written into Dick’s will.”

  “Richard never told you about his final wishes?” Rosie asks.

  Angel looks at the ceiling. There is desperation in her eyes. “He’s making this up, right?” she says. “He’s playing some sort of sick joke. There must be something we can do.”

  “Realistically, honey,” Rosie says, “there isn’t much.” We can spend the next few days trying to stop the memorial or we can use our time more productively trying to gather evidence.

  “Fine,” Angel says. “Let them cremate Dick. Let them shoot him up in fireworks. But I want to be there. I’m his wife. I have every right.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” Rosie says.

  “What about bail?”

  Rosie explains that there will be an arraignment at two o’clock Monday. Angel will plead not guilty and we’ll ask the judge for bail. “The district attorney will oppose it,” Rosie says.

  “So when do I get out of here?”

  “I’m not sure, honey. The judge is a former prosecutor. The DA is going to argue that you tried to run.” She tells her that there’s little chance she’ll set bail if the DA proceeds with a charge of first degree murder.

  Angel struggles with her composure. The tears flow freely as she slumps into the heavy wooden chair. “No one believes me, Aunt Rosie.”

  “You have to trust us, Angel,” Rosie says.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  Rosie changes the subject. “What can you tell me about a woman named Eve?”

  Angel tenses. “What would you like to know?”

  “For starters, what’s her real name?”

  “Evelyn LaCuesta. We went to the same high school and we did a couple of modeling jobs together. She wants to be an actress.”

  “What is she doing now?”

  “She’s Richard’s assistant. Which means she does whatever he says.”

  “Does that include sleeping with him?”

  “Probably, but nobody is supposed to know about it. He’s getting divorced again, and it’s gotten acrimonious. He’s trying to show that his wife was cheating on him. He doesn’t want anybody to know he was cheating on her.”

  It’s an old story. I ask, “Do you trust her?”

  She answers immediately. “No, she’s very ambitious. She’ll do anything to land a part in a major film.”

  “Even lie about a murder?”

  She doesn’t hesitate before she responds, “Absolutely.”

  Rosie and I glance at each other. “Angel,” Rosie says in a soft tone, “we understand you may stand to inherit a large sum of money from your husband.”

  She shrugs, but her eyes never leave Rosie’s. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You never read his will?”

  She becomes indignant. “I didn’t marry Dick for his money. I signed a prenuptial agreement to prove it. I loved him.”

  Rosie takes her hand and says, “Honey, it turns out that you may be entitled to a lot of money under the will that you wouldn’t have been entitled to under the prenup.”

  “So?”

 
“The prosecutors are going to emphasize the fact that Dick’s death at this time will result in your receiving a large windfall—much more than you would have received under the prenup if you had gotten divorced.”