“That’s the man who assaulted Mr. Ingram tonight. Arrest him,” Long demanded.
I could see that the officers recognized John. Puzzled, one of them said, “But this is Lieutenant O’Hara.”
“John?” It was a new voice, but I recognized it. I turned to face John’s partner, LAPD detective Hugh Weaver.
The two partners were striking in their physical contrast: At the age of fifty, John O’Hara was six inches taller than Hugh Weaver, and two years older, but John looked younger. John still had the hardened physique of the football player he’d been in college. Weaver’s body had probably been hard once, but too many burgers with fries, and much too many beers, had turned his beef to lard. I’d never seen Weaver without his clothes-and any circumstance in which that could happen was unimaginable to me-but I was pretty sure that his body would look like the Pillsbury Doughboy’s.
Weaver said, “Hey, John-you didn’t answer your phone. How’d you get here before me?”
“I was here already. And I took tonight off, remember?”
Weaver, careful not to step in Ingram’s blood, leaned over, gave the body a cursory look, straightened again. Indicating the victim, he asked John, “Who’s that?”
“Keith Ingram.”
Long inserted himself between the partners and addressed Weaver. “Are you the detective in charge?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
Long appeared startled, as though he couldn’t believe Weaver hadn’t recognized him. “I’m Eugene Long, owner of this hotel.” I half expected Long to add that his taxes paid Weaver’s salary, but he didn’t.
“The dead man is Keith Ingram, a nationally syndicated food critic and one of the judges at our Celebrity Cook-Off.” Long jabbed his forefinger toward John. “Earlier tonight this man physically attacked Mr. Ingram. I had him removed from the premises, but I think it’s likely that he slipped back into the crowd and committed the murder.”
“You do, huh?” Weaver lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug and curved his lips into a false smile. “Well, since you solved the case, I guess we can all go home.”
Long’s posture stiffened. “I do not appreciate that brand of sarcasm.”
“No? I got some others I can use.”
A flush reddened Long’s cheeks.
I wasn’t fond of Hugh Weaver, but at that moment I could have hugged him for putting the arrogant billionaire in his place.
Weaver ignored Long and focused on John. “Did you ‘assault’ this Ingram guy?”
“I hit him. It was close to an hour ago.”
“Was he injured? Did you knock him down?”
“Ingram got back up pretty quickly,” I said. “And he carried right on with the judging, so I don’t think John hurt him.”
Weaver asked John, “What did you do after the altercation?”
“I left,” John said.
“Where’d you go?”
“For a walk, to cool off. I stayed on the hotel grounds because my wife and daughter are here. I came back inside when I saw cops arriving.”
“You’re going to have to give a formal statement,” Weaver said.
John nodded. “Of course. You’ll have it in the morning.”
Long’s expression was set on sneer. “O’Hara said he went for a walk. That means he doesn’t have an alibi.”
Weaver sneered right back at Long. “You watch too many TV cop shows.” He glanced around and wrinkled his nose in distaste. “What’s that smell?”
“The last whiffs from the smoke bomb and burned food,” I said. “Most of the cooks abandoned their stoves when the chaos started.”
John’s partner had registered my presence with a brief nod when he arrived, but now he focused his attention on me. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m one of the cook-off judges.”
“Did you see who killed Ingram?”
“No. I was watching an actor who was juggling. Then somebody set off a smoke bomb-”
“Save it,” Weaver said. He was looking at the entrance to the ballroom. I followed his gaze and saw the arrival of a man and a woman wearing Windbreakers that identified them as members of the police Scientific Investigation Division. I’d never seen those two before, but I recognized the woman who came in with them: Dr. Sidney Carver, LA’s new medical examiner. Her nod at Weaver was perfunctory, but she smiled warmly at John.
In a wry tone, she said, “This better be worth my missing the NCIS marathon. So, what have you got for me, Big John?”
“He’s not on the job tonight,” Weaver said.
“John O’Hara is a suspect,” Long announced.
Dr. Carver cocked her head and lifted one eyebrow. “This promises to be an interesting case.”
I’d first met her a few months earlier, at the scene of another brutal murder, when I’d had the misfortune to be the person who discovered the victim. Dr. Carver’s pewter gray hair was cut short and shaggy, she wore glasses with outsized red frames, her clothes reeked of cigarette smoke, and her manner with everyone except John was as stinging as peroxide on a fresh cut. It was clear that she liked John, but I’d yet to see her smile at anyone else. I knew John liked her, too, because he told me it was a pleasure to work with a medical examiner that was so good at what she did.
Not long after she was hired, Nicholas had interviewed her for an article in the Chronicle. He told me he’d commented that her gray hair was an anomaly with her younger-looking face, and asked her age. She’d replied that it was none of his “f***ing business,” but if he insisted on printing something, then he could quote her as saying she was “somewhere between fifty and death.” He’d followed that question by asking if she was married, or had a significant other. Nicholas said she’d looked at him as though deciding where to cut and replied, “When I meet a man of the appropriate age, education, and income, it’s usually in my professional capacity.”
Dr. Carver drew on a pair of latex gloves and knelt to examine Ingram’s body as SID techs photographed the scene.
Weaver moved back a few steps. “John, go stand with Shannon and Eileen. Long, take a seat somewhere out of the way. I’ll talk to you in a few minutes.”
Without a word, John did as Weaver instructed.
Long grumbled. He, too, obeyed, but instead of finding a place in the crowd to await his turn for questioning, Long strode to the stage. He picked up the microphone and made that annoying tap-tap-tap noise to be sure it was live.
“Hello, everyone. I’m afraid that this hasn’t turned out to be the event we signed up for. It’s a very sad night with the loss of one of the titans of the world of food criticism, and now we must remain here for a while as the police do their work. To make your waiting time a little easier, I’m going to instruct our staff to bring you all anything you’d like to eat or drink-on the house. Anything our kitchen can make or pour.”
Scattered applause greeted that announcement. Long smiled, but held up his hand for quiet. “That’s not all. Tonight was supposed to bring the charity of our winning star’s choice a check for one hundred thousand dollars. Obviously, the contest can’t be completed, so I’m going to send to the charity chosen by each of our twenty competing celebrities a check for ten thousand dollars-”
Much louder applause interrupted him. Long smiled at that, but after a moment held up his hand to stop it.
“Thank you, but that’s not all. Each of you who came to watch the cook-off donated five hundred dollars to the Healthy Life Fund to be here. Well, to show our appreciation for your patience, we’re going to match every one of those five-hundred-dollar donations with my own personal check to that fund. We’ll work from the guest list, and be sure that each donation will be in your individual names, so remember to deduct the additional five hundred when tax time comes around.” Long’s face assumed a somber expression. “There’s been a tragic death in our midst tonight, but we’re going to make sure some good comes out of it.”
In a wry tone, Roland Gray said, “Did you notice that he’s using the ‘royal we’? ‘We’re going to match’ and ‘we’re going to make sure’ and so forth. My guess is that he’s intending to run for public office in the next few years. Probably for governor.”
“You could be right,” I said.
Roland Gray’s speculation made me think. If Eugene Long did intend to enter politics, I wondered what he thought about the prospect of having Keith Ingram as a son-in-law. I’d learned about Ingram’s bad character easily. Surely Long must know the nature of the man his daughter had fallen for.
After Weaver instructed the uniforms on scene to collect names and contact information from everyone in the ballroom, I watched the SID techs as they processed the area. From where I stood I had a good view, and knew that they hadn’t-or hadn’t yet-found the knife someone had plunged into Keith Ingram’s neck.
Weaver took my arm and steered me around to the end of Roland Gray’s stove until we were as alone as it was possible to be in a room full of formally attired, bejeweled, irritated people muttering their displeasure at not being allowed to leave the ballroom.
“When the brass find out John slugged the victim, he won’t be allowed anywhere near this case. As his partner I’ll likely be thrown off it, too. This may be my only chance to talk to anybody here, so I’ll start with you. Tell me what you saw. Exactly.”
I did, as quickly and as thoroughly as I could, while Weaver took notes. When I got to the part about Yvette Dupree screaming, Weaver said, “This Dupree woman saw the body first? Where is she?”
“Eugene Long’s daughter became hysterical. He asked Yvette to take the girl to his suite.”
“Nobody should’a left here! You know better than that.”
“What could I have done? I don’t have any authority.”
He calmed down. “Oh, yeah. For a minute I forgot you’re just a cop’s wife-widow.”
Hugh Weaver’s tactlessness didn’t bother me; I was used to it. In conversation, he may have been as clumsy as someone trying to dance while wearing snowshoes, but according to John, he was a good detective. Weaver could say any stupid thing he wanted to as long as he was trying to save John. If John were arrested, the emotional trauma might send Shannon into a relapse, and Eileen would be devastated by guilt because of what her ill-fated romance with Keith Ingram had done to her family.
Weaver and I saw that Sidney Carver had finished her preliminary examination of Ingram’s body and was stripping off her latex gloves. That was Weaver’s cue to join her. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was clear that she was leaving.
Weaver came back to me. “The SID techs will be working the area for quite a while yet, but soon the body’s going to be removed to Carver’s office for autopsy. I can’t wait any longer.” Weaver punched a number into his cell. When he reached his captain at the West Bureau Station on Butler Avenue, he reported the unusual situation: that John O’Hara had been in the vicinity of a homicide, and that he’d also had a hostile encounter with the deceased before the murder.
I liked that “hostile encounter” bit. It sounded a lot better than saying John had physically attacked Ingram.
Weaver scowled at whatever his captain was saying. When their brief conversation was over, he snapped his cell shut and nodded unhappily.
“Just like I thought. They’re dispatching another detective to take over the case. But I’m here now, and I’ll keep going until I’m eighty-sixed.”
With me close behind him, Weaver began collecting information from the celebrities in Sector Four, and those attending the gala who had been in our area when the smoke bomb went off. No one saw-or at least no one admitted to seeing-anything helpful.
Weaver had filled a dozen pages in his notebook when I saw another man enter the ballroom. While I didn’t know his name, from his sports jacket, slacks, and the stern expression on his face, I was certain he was a West Bureau detective.
Weaver muttered a curse. “Bad news just walked through the door. That’s Manny Hatch. He hates John’s guts as bad as I hate perverts.”
“Why?”
“A few years ago-remember the murder of that big music guy in Bel Air?”
“Yes. John caught the killer.”
“It started out as Hatch’s case. From the get-go, Hatch figured it was the wife and wasn’t looking at anybody else. John kept digging and found evidence that it was the victim’s stepson. Hatch was embarrassed. Ever since, he’s blamed John for his not getting the promotion he thinks he deserves. With Hatch on the job, John’s chance of getting out of this clean just fell through the hole in the outhouse.”