"Carol White," Nicky said, "spelled just like it sounds."
"Okay. I'll call you tomorrow if I get anything."
They separated and Shane prowled around. He was really having a good time now. He had a second scotch on the rocks, spent some time talking to Catherine Zeta-Jones, and then later, Alexa was back at his side.
"Hi. Where'd you go off to?" Shane asked.
"Just meeting the other bridesmaids and looking at pictures of the dresses Nora ordered for us. I can't believe they're getting married in ten days."
"Right, right… I was just saying the same thing to Catherine Zeta-Jones," Shane said, a smile twitching the corner of his mouth.
"Get outta town… Where?"
Shane pointed to the beautiful actress, who was wearing capri pants and a crop-top. She caught Shane's eye as he pointed her out to Alexa and waved at him.
"Down, girl," Alexa growled, then her expression changed. Now it was her no-nonsense look, the one she wore downtown at Parker Center.
"I've gotta go. We got a one eighty-seven out in Sunland that the CRASH unit is worried about. They want me to roll on it." She held up her cell phone. "Just got the call."
"Really? Who died?"
"They think it's Kevin Cordell, but the D. B. took so much lead that they're gonna have to do the I. D. with dentistry."
"Sometimes good old street justice works," Shane said, thinking it was about time somebody put Kevin Cordell on the ark. Kevin's street name was Stone, and he'd been a Crip O. G. for over twenty-five years. Stone ran the Front Street Crips, who pretty much controlled the major drug action throughout South Central L. A. Except for a nickel jolt at Soledad for accessory to second-degree murder, up to now he'd largely escaped justice.
"If it's really Stone, it could create a power vacuum and we could end up with Crips and Bloods shooting each other and anybody else who gets in the way," Alexa said.
"You need the car… I can drive you."
"No. Nora will be really upset if we both leave early. The Sheriff's Department is doing us a favor and sending a unit over from the substation here. They'll taxi me over the hill."
"You really think they need the head of the entire Detective Services Group standing at a crime scene, looking down at the vic while a bunch of lab techs roll the body?"
"Hey, they're my detectives. I go whenever I'm asked. Besides, I'm only the acting head of DSG, so I try harder. I'm just holding that post till the chief appoints a captain to the job."
"Honey, Filosiani isn't going to replace you. You're acting head only because you're still a lieutenant and, technically, they can't put a lou in that slot. But I can read that guy-you got the job." He grinned. "You is da man, woman."
"Well, de man-woman gotta take her sorry ass to work."
"I'll stick around here for another hour until they do the steak fry, then drive over the hill and pick you up. You got an address?"
She handed him a slip of paper, then kissed him on the lips. "Only one more thing before I leave…"
"Say good-bye to Nora?"
"No, that's done. I gotta run this bitch in the pedal-pushers off my guy."
"Come on… she's happily married."
"Maybe, but in Hollywood, marriage is an eight-letter condition with the half-life of a chocolate-chip cookie."
Alexa moved off, stopped next to Catherine Zeta-Jones and said something to her. The two stood there for another moment before the actress threw back her head and roared with laughter.
Alexa turned and smiled at Shane, then went out the front door to the entry hall to wait for the sheriff's car. That would have been all that was noteworthy, except for one last thing that happened just before he left the party.
He said good-bye to Nora and was heading up from the beach, when he decided to cut through the pool house to save the longer walk around the side of the estate. He went in the beach entrance and was immediately greeted by a heavy cloud of cigar smoke and male laughter coming from the front room. Shane walked down the hallway toward the sound, listening to Farrell's voice. He was telling some kind of story when Shane reached the back of the main room.
The pool house was large-about the size of Shane's entire house in Venice. It had windows on the west that overlooked the ocean. The windows on the other side fronted Farrell's Olympic-size pool. Nora had decorated the pool house in a quasi-African theme: lots of bamboo, grass rugs, and native art. There were ten or twelve men in the room with Farrell, all smoking Cuban Cohibas. Nobody was paying any attention to Shane.
"So, Farrell, you get Kenny to draw you up a prenup like I advised?" one of the guests asked.
Farrell lit the man's cigar with a large gold lighter. "Listen, that kinda shit's good for you guys who can't take care of business, but I don't need no stinking prenup." He did that last part like the Mexican bandit in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
"Everybody needs a prenup. Ask Johnny Carson or Burt Reynolds. It's the law west of Sunset," the man persisted.
"Not me." Farrell seemed a little loaded. "Didn't need one with my last two wives. When I got tired of those ladies, they both got some bad shellfish and died of food poisoning." There was some nervous laughter, not much but some. Then Farrell swung his eyes around the room until his gaze ended up on Shane.
It's hard to explain to a civilian how a cop's hunches work, because they live in some intellectual and emotional no-man's-land somewhere between a guess and a feeling. In the end, they're not really hunches at all. They're based on keen instinct mixed with physical and emotional observations. In this case, the physical part was in Farrell Champion's dark eyes when they found Shane in the back of the room. They hardened momentarily. Even from twenty feet away Shane could see it: a tightening of the skin around the sockets, a shadow on the cornea that came and went so quickly it would have been easy to miss if you weren't trained to spot it. Suddenly the look was gone and the smiling Farrell was back.
"Hey, Shane, that was just a bad joke. Don't get the handcuffs out."
"No sweat." Shane smiled. "Why pay for a divorce if you can knock 'em off with bad shrimp?"
Farrell laughed. "Exactly."
Now Shane was feeling awkward, sort of on the spot, as everyone in the room had turned to stare at him. "Thanks for the great time. Thanks for having us."
"You bet. Good you could come."
As Shane left, he could feel Farrell's eyes on him, tracking his exit across the pool deck and into the house.
The valet delivered the dusty Acura. Shane pulled out of the Colony wondering what he should do about Farrell's bad joke.
Hey, Shane, don't go over the falls in a barrel here, he lectured himself. It was just a joke. But he had seen the look in Farrell's eyes, the shadow. He'd caught a partial glimpse into Farrell Champion's soul.
It could have been embarrassment at making a morbid joke, but something told Shane that there really were two women in Farrell's past who'd died of food poisoning.
It was a terrible dilemma because if he did anything to screw up this wedding, he had a hunch his beautiful wife would kill him.