Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 08

Chapter 8 Motive

It was after 2 p.m. when Carmen and Lauren got back to the conference room. They'd called Shane and told her they were leaving 14th Street, and did Shane want to join them for lunch someplace? She did not, since she was in a meeting with Chase in his limo somewhere out in the valley. Shane said she'd meet them in the conference room about 2 p.m. Carmen and Lauren stopped at Pink's for hot dogs; Carmen had the Guadalajara (no bacon) and Lauren had the Chicago Polish, mild. They split the regular fries.

"One time on a dare I came here with two other woman cops," Lauren said. "The dare was, could I eat the entire double pastrami Swiss cheese burger."

"How'd you do?"

"Well, the thing is, you should never dare a cop to do something. So yeah, I finished it, but it was a struggle, and I didn't eat for three days afterward. But oh, my God it was good. I was useless until end-of-shift, of course."

Shane was sitting at the conference table going through a sheaf of reports and financial statements Chase had given her to review. Lauren excused herself for a minute to go check messages.

"How'd the field trip go?" Shane asked.

"Okay. It was... uh, not fun, I guess. But Lauren saw what she needed to see. Have you been back there?"

"No. I couldn't. I went back just to get my stuff, but I couldn't go next door to Bette and Tina's."

"The woman who lives there now seems to like it. Their backyard seems about the same. The couple who live in our old place have let all my plants go to hell. Remember my roses? They replaced them with cactus."

"I hate to confess, but that probably started with Jenny and me. I went out and watered them and stuff, but I was never as good with flowers like you were. I probably don't have to tell you how Jenny was when it came to gardening."

"No."

Lauren came in and went directly to the white board, where she picked up an eraser, cleaned the board, and then wrote with a marker, "MOTIVE."

"Ready to get to work?" she asked.

"10-4," Carmen said, which made them laugh.

Lauren wrote on the board:

Shane:

Max:

Bette:

Tina:

Alice:

Kit:

Helena:

Niki:

Adele:

Tasha:

Studio/Aaron K/William H:

Unsubs:

"Unsubs?" Shane asked.

"Unknown subjects. Cop jargon. Just a catch-all for people we don't know about yet."

"Oh. Okay."

"Who are Aaron K and William H?" Carmen asked.

"Aaron Kornbluth, the head of the studio. William Halsey is a big shot investor Jenny roped into the deal. We may need to look into it for more details that may lead to motive. But we can probably assume he lost money because of the fiasco. So maybe revenge. We'll have to look at it."

"Right," Carmen said. "Go ahead."

Then Lauren started filling in the spaces:

Shane: J hid Molly letter, sabotages reconciliation

Max: J mistreat, cause bf breakup, jilted for Claude

Bette: J moral blackmail over Kelly incident

Tina: Thought J stole negs, cost studio, sabotaged movie

Alice: Says J stole movie treatment, got $1/2mil

Kit: Knew J blackmailing sister, believed Bette innocent

Helena: J divulged Dylan test, sabotaged reconciliation

Niki: J used/abused/humiliated

Adele: Usurped J as director. Mental?

Tasha:?

Studio/Aaron K/William H: Believed J stole negs, cost millions plus O costs

Unsubs:?

"What are O costs?" Shane asked.

"What they call opportunity costs. If the movie had been shown, the studio might have made millions."

"Or lost millions if it flopped," Carmen said. "Maybe Niki did them a big favor, from what I've heard."

"Well, maybe," Lauren said, "but I think we have to assume the studio was pissed." She consulted her notepad and then wrote on the board:

Paraphrases

Alice: Schecter is so fucking dead

Helena: [to Shane] I'm going to fucking kill your girlfriend

Niki: Jenny Schecter is a liar and user. You not going get away with this. You are dead meat, Schecter

Tina: Fucking Jenny, I'm going to fucking kill you

Max: I hate her. Hate these hormones, hate these tits and hips and hate Jenny Schecter

Bette: My family and life worked hard to rebuild for them means everything to me and there is nothing that I wouldn't do to preserve or protect them. All care about is that you [J] know I will not abide anyone who threatens my family

"Can anybody think of any other overt threats to kill Jenny?"

Shane and Carmen looked at each other, then shook their heads. "That's a pretty scary list," Carmen said. "Dead meat. I'm going to kill you."

"Yes, but we all say this kind of stuff all the time. Ninety-nine percent of the time it's just talk."

"One percent it isn't," Shane murmured.

"One percent it isn't," Lauren agreed. "But you two know all these women a lot better than I do. I know they're your long-time friends, but I'm relying on you to give me a good read on these kinds of statements. Who says stuff like this all the time and doesn't mean it? Who's the truth-teller, who's the drama queen? I know the first one you're going to say is Alice, but she's the one in jail."

"I don't know Niki at all," Carmen said, "but everything I've read and heard about her screams drama queen."

"Totally," Shane said.

"Would Niki kill Jenny?"

"No. She'd get one of her posse to do it," Shane said.

"Seriously?"

Shane shrugged. "It was kind of a joke. But who the fuck knows? This is Hollywood. Stuff no one would believe goes on all the time."

"Amen, sister," Lauren said. She drew a dotted line circle around Niki's name. "Not saying yes, but not saying no. What about Helena?"

"Helena would say I'm going to kill you, but she wouldn't do it," Carmen said.

"No, I agree," Shane said. "Not Helena."

"We haven't talked about Dylan," Carmen said. "I don't know her, and I don't see any motive. Just bringing up her name."

"I don't see it," Shane said. "It was Jenny who tipped Dylan off to the test, which pissed Helena off. But Dylan had no motive."

"Well, she lost a fantastically rich girlfriend. That's a motive. Okay, back to the list. Not Tina," Carmen said.

"Nope," Shane agreed.

There was silence.

"Max?" Lauren prodded.

"I have a problem with Max," Carmen said. "We had bad chemistry, right from the start. I just didn't like him, for lots of reasons. The way he treated Jenny, for starters. And Max has a temper. When he was going through his hormone treatments and doing the fundraising for his top surgery he was a fucking, raging, testosterone lunatic. Some I saw with my own eyes, some Jenny told me about. They were always fighting and bickering. Even after I moved to San Francisco, I'd hear stuff. Jenny would tell me stuff, or other people would. But see, I don't want my dislike of Max to color my perceptions. But if you asked me, and factoring all that stuff in, I'd say yes, Max was certainly capable at snapping, and suddenly pushing Jenny off the landing. And no, I don't think he's smart enough to have planned it, it wouldn't have been premeditated."

"Would he have then rolled her into the pool?" Lauren asked.

"Yes," Carmen said. "He would. And he'd be cold as ice afterward. No remorse."

"Shane?" Lauren asked.

Shane sighed. "I hate to, but I agree. Max has a temper. He can fly off the handle. And Carmen's right. When he was doing the hormone shots and transitioning, he was a lunatic."

Lauren drew a circle around Max's name. "So we like Max for it. What about Bette?"

Nobody said anything. "Come on, guys."

"I love Bette," Carmen said. "She's tough, and she's smart, and she'd do anything to protect Angelica, and her family, and her relationship with Tina. And God knows, she's been angry at things from time to time, but I can't say she has a fiery temper. She doesn't internalize, like Shane does, but neither does she blow up, explode. You see smoke coming out her ears when she's pissed. But I don't see her spontaneously pushing Jenny. If Bette really did want to kill Jenny, she'd carefully plot it out over weeks or months. She'd have an alibi. Nobody would ever catch her."

Lauren looked at Shane, who nodded. "That's about right," she said.

"What about accidentally? Not intending to kill her, but pushing. And maybe Jenny started it, got in Bette's face and Bette simply pushed back. She's bigger and stronger."

"In that case," Carmen said, "Bette would have walked up to the media room and told the others, 'Well, I just killed the bitch,' sat down and burst into tears. But she didn't do that. And anyway, she wouldn't have walked down the steps and rolled Jenny into the pool. The unintentional pushing or shoving, yes. The pool part, no."

Shane nodded.

Lauren drew a dotted line circle around Bette's name. "Not saying yes, but not saying no. Next, Adele. Shane, you knew her."

"Devious. Evil. About as two-faced as you can get. But I don't see the motive. She got what she wanted, Jenny's job. Got her fired off the lot. Why would she kill Jenny?"

"Like everybody else, she probably thought Jenny stole her movie. Her big breakout debut as director. Savior of the project. All that plotting and scheming and backstabbing, down the drain. After the smoke cleared, Aaron quietly demoted her to assistant producer or something."

"That was after Jenny was killed," Shane said. "And I'm sure there was a payoff. Terminating her contract, whatever terms it had, might have been out of the question, plus the yelling and screaming, all the drama and publicity. I know Jenny's contract had all sorts of clauses and stuff. I'm guessing Adele's would have, too. If Aaron knows his shit, he can find a way to keep her on salary but off in a corner where she can't do much harm."

"Did Adele have an alibi for that night?" Carmen asked. "Oh, shit. Don't tell me. We don't know."

"Bingo," Lauren said. "Nobody asked, because blah blah blah, don't make me say it again."

Carmen and Shane laughed.

"Doesn't it strain credibility, though, to think that not one but two people were lurking in the bushes behind Bette and Tina's house?" Carmen asked.

"Or our house, same thing, I guess," Shane said. "But yes. Unless Niki and Adele were there together."

"Why would Niki and Adele team up?" Carmen asked.

"Common enemy? But before we dismiss it too fast, let's think about it for a minute," Lauren said. "The police on the scene found Niki. But could there have been the two of them, and somehow Adele got away, or left sooner, or whatever?"

"How thoroughly did your guys search the neighborhood?" Carmen asked. "And how did Niki get there? Did she drive? Did you find her car? Or did she come with Adele, who drove away leaving Niki there to face the cops?"

"Good questions. I'll have to ask Marybeth. I would assume that they did a fairly good job, because they did find Niki. And after that they'd have looked around even more. But that's just a guess on my part. I think they looked around, but we'll need confirmation. I'll work on it." She moved to a second whiteboard and wrote TO-DO LIST. Then she wrote:

1)Adele contract

2)Adele alibi

3)Neighborhood search?

4)How Niki got there. Car?

"Anything else? No?" She moved to a clear space on the board and wrote the words "Follow the MONEY."

"The root of all evil" Lauren said. "What do we know?" She started writing:

1)J [stolen from Alice?] treatment worth 1/2mil, so J had 1/2mil?

2)J was paid for book deal -- how much?

3)J was paid for screen rights -- how much?

4)J salary as movie director; piece of action?

5)J estate went to? -- how much? May need warrant

6)J bank account 6-12 months, will need warrant

7)Studio losses? Need warrant?

Then she went back to the To-Do List and wrote:

4)Warrant, J bank account/statements

5)Warrant, J estate/probate

"Anybody know who handled Jenny's estate?" Lauren asked.

"I do," Shane said. "It was my lawyer, Bernie McFadden. Jenny's mom called me two or three days after ... after we found Jenny, and asked me if I knew who handled the estate. I told her I put Jenny in touch with his office two or three years ago, when Jenny started getting some major income from her book and stuff. They did a will for her, I know that, because I inherited the camera equipment and stuff that Jenny bought for me when she got me that photography studio."

"What happened to it? The studio."

"It was leased," Shane said. "So was some of the equipment. Jenny was paying for it, and some of the other equipment she bought outright, and gave to me. But technically it was still in her name, because she was the purchaser, and we had nobody's word on who it belonged to except mine, so she put it in her will. That's what Bernie told me, anyway. Most everything she owned was liquidated and went to her mom, that's what Bernie said. He did the work on it, or his office did. I don't know what the total amount came to, though. It wasn't my business. I assume her mom got it."

"In really, really round figures, a real wild-ass guess, how much do you think we're talking about?"

Shane thought. "I don't know. Couple hundred thousand, maybe. Maybe even half a million, that's what the treatment was that Alice was pissed about. Whenever she got a major check, like for royalties or something, she'd jump up and down and do a dance and carry on, but I never actually saw the amounts. You can ask Carmen, I'm just not that interested in money. Maybe it's one of my character flaws."

"It's one of your virtues," Carmen said.

"Oh. Well. Thanks," Shane said quietly.

"All right," Lauren said, "we're talking about substantial amounts of money coming in—"

"And going out," Carmen said. "For a while she was spending it like a sailor on shore leave."

"Yeah, that's true," Shane said.

"I understand. But it's still a pile of money, and you really don't need all that much before people will start killing for it. We'll just have to find out how much was coming in and how much going out. It needs to be checked. Let me just put this idea out there: Did Jenny's parents know how much money Jenny had? Do we need to look at them? Maybe the stepfather, at least?"

"I honestly don't think so," Carmen said. "One time I asked her when she came up to San Francisco, what are you going to do with all your money, buy a new house for your mom and Warren? And she about spit out her drink. 'Fuck, no,' she says. 'I hardly tell them anything about what I'm doing or how much money I'm making. Warren can go fuck himself. I'll take care of my mom, but no way I'm buying anything he gets a share in.' He was her step-father, you know, and they never got along. My guess is, they were pretty clueless."

"I agree," Shane said. "I sometimes heard Jenny talk on the phone to her mom, which was like, maybe twice a year, Christmas and her mom's birthday—"

"And her mom would call on Jenny's birthday," Carmen said.

"Right. So three times a year. And it was always pretty brief and Jenny never said much. One thing is for certain, she never bragged, at least not to her mom."

"Okay, we cross them off the suspect list. Everybody agreed?"

"Yes," Carmen said.

"Yes," Shane said.

Lauren moved to her third whiteboard and wrote INTERVIEWS. "These are people we need to talk to," she said, writing:

Bette/Tina together and apart

Max

Helena

Kit

Adele

Niki

Aaron/William[apart]

Alice?

McFadden

Kelly

Bank/Accountant?

Marybeth/Cops on Scene

She turned to Shane and Carmen. "Do we need to talk to Tasha? I don't know if you guys kept in touch with her, but she's a beat cop now. Doing good, from what I hear."

"I don't think we truly need to see if she knows anything," Carmen said, "but I think maybe we owe her an explanation of what we're doing about Alice. I think she's entitled to know. She and Alice were a thing, for a while. And she may have some insights."

"You know Tasha?" Shane asked Carmen.

"Oh, sure, she and Alice came on a cruise. And they visited me up in San Francisco. We went up to Napa, wine-tasting, together. It was fun. I like her."

Shane just nodded. Not for the first time, she marveled at how well and how often Carmen had kept in touch with the group following the Whistler disaster. It seemed like Carmen knew what everybody was doing better than Shane did. No, not "seemed like." DID know better.

"Why did you put Kelly's name up there?" Carmen asked.

"No good reason I can explain," Lauren said, "except call it cop instinct. It's bothered me from the beginning that business about whether Bette was cheating on Tina, and did something with Kelly, and that Jenny was blackmailing Bette about it. We've heard from Kit, Tina and Bette about it, but we haven't heard Kelly's side of it. I just want to clear it up, if possible. And anyway, blackmail is a crime. It's not as big as murder, but it is still something. I'd like to know if there really was a blackmail that would actually be criminal, or whether everybody's using the word as a figure of speech. Nobody has ever said anything about the blackmail being a money thing."

"Okay," Carmen said. "Why a question mark after Alice's name?"

"Just being thorough," Lauren said. "Most of what she said first time around were lies, so we do need to get her truthful version, for a change. We're re-interviewing everybody, right? She's one of them, that's all. Shane's the only one of us who's actually talked to her, when she went up there—"

"I've talked to her," Carmen said.

"You have?" Shane said, astonished. "You never told me."

"You never asked, and it's none of your business. I've talked to her on the phone half a dozen times, I visited her once when I was home, and I've sent her stuff. Clothes and cigarettes and stuff."

"I had no idea," Shane said.

"You weren't supposed to," Carmen said. "It's like separation of church and state. Like I told you, these are every bit my friends just as much as they are yours, even if you knew them first or longer. But we all have this understanding, nobody tells Shane what Carmen's up to, and nobody tattletales to Carmen what Shane's doing." Which wasn't exactly a lie, because over the years Jenny and especially Alice both leaked information like sieves, but the flow was one-way only. Carmen couldn't tell Shane that part. The Whistler fiasco, though, was still off-limits to everyone.

"Okay. I'm brain-dead," Shane said. "Can we knock off for the day?"

"We can," Lauren said, "but I told Duffy I'd check in with her before the end of the day. You guys don't have to, but I'd like it if you came along, checked in, showed your faces."

Carmen and Shane looked at each other. "Okay by me," Carmen said. Shane shrugged but made no move to leave.

Lauren dialed her cell phone. "It's me. You available for an update? Right." Lauren hung up. "Caught a break. She's free right now."

* * *

"Well, well, if it isn't Charlie's Angels," Marybeth Duffy said as they walked into her office and Lauren closed the door. "Which one of you is the smart one?"

Shane held up her hand. "Not me. I'm the dumb one," she said.

"I'm the fashionista," Carmen said.

"I thought you were the one with the great tits," Shane said.

"That, too, but I'm also the fashionista," Carmen said, and then pointed at Lauren. "She's the smart one, and she even went to the police academy like the Angels did."

"Charlie's Angels went to the police academy?" Shane asked.

"The original ones did," Lauren said. "I'm not sure about the new ones."

"I always liked the ones with Cheryl Ladd," Carmen said. "I so wanted to do Cheryl Ladd."

"I'd like to do Lucy Liu," Shane said.

"Oh, me, too," Lauren said.

"Maybe you could both do her," Carmen suggested.

Shane and Lauren looked at each other, and then turned to Duffy.

"Works for me," Shane said.

"Yeah, sure, why not," Lauren said.