Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 16

Chapter 16 The Morning After

The next morning they were quiet with each other. When Lauren was ready she zipped up her overnight bag and went out into the hallway, closing the door to her hotel room behind her. She turned and saw Carmen sitting on an upholstered bench by the elevator bank, with her overnight bag, ready to go. "Been waiting long?"

"No, just got here."

"Want breakfast?" Lauren pushed the elevator down button as Carmen stood up.

"That's your call, whatever you want. But I DO need my morning coffee."

"Me, too."

"They have that coffee shop on the ground floor," Carmen said as they got into the elevator. "We can get coffee and something to go."

"That's fine with me," Lauren said. "It's called the Farmacy Café."

But when they went in and looked at the menu, Carmen changed her mind. "Let's eat here," she said. "I gotta try that steak-and-egg burrito. It's not something I want to eat in your car."

"The egg white frittata has my name all over it," Lauren said.

They ate at one of the tiny tables out by the sidewalk in front of the café and the hotel.

"Anxious to get home, or just anxious to get out of Bakersfield?" Lauren asked.

"Both. I have no great feelings for the city one way or the other, but I can tell you this, I sure don't like Highway 99 heading up to the Central Valley."

"The crime scene."

"Yeah."

"I guess there's cops who will tell you that you get used to it. Scene of the crime, evidence, gory crime scene photos, stomach-turning autopsy reports. I'm not one of those cops."

"No. But Collins is."

"Yes, I suppose."

"You seemed to get along with him well. I was worried he'd have an attitude because we're women and from LA. Among other things he probably might not approve of if he knew about them."

"The secret is he and I are both county sheriff's department detectives. I'm LASD, not LAPD, so he doesn't associate me with LA the city, or Hollywood, or LaLaLand, or whatever he might want to call it. He may not realize West Hollywood is a highly gay, tiny little municipality located smack dab in the middle of the city. He's Kern County, I'm LA County, that's all he knows, so I get a pass. And he thinks the same about you. You're a county cop trainee, as far as he knows. He approves of that."

"I don't think he approves of Max being trans. It threw him for a loop."

Lauren wiped her mouth with her napkin. "Max being trans threw your entire group for a loop. You maybe most of all."

Carmen sipped her coffee. "Maybe. I still think for me it was that I just plain didn't like Max even when he was Moira. I didn't care that he was hyper butch. I think it was cultural, and, well, personal. Max had this big chip on his shoulder because he was a small-town hick from the sticks, and he fell in with a bunch of mostly upscale lipstick lesbians, not only sophisticated big city girls, but LA and Hollywood types at that. Two or three of them full-fledged divas. It didn't matter he was surrounded by lesbians, and if he had any expectations that he'd find a warm, safe, welcoming reception in the bosom of a bunch of loving, supportive dykes, he was wrong about that. He got off on the wrong foot with me in the first ten minutes he was in town, and he got off on the wrong foot with everybody else the second night in town when we all took him and Jenny out to dinner. He insulted us and then left to go sulk and didn't come home all night."

"Then it just got worse. He was a slob around the house. It may have started out as Jenny and Tim's place, and then Jenny and Shane's place, but it became Shane's and MY place. It was Max who was making a mess of my home, Max was an uninvited guest, invading my space and fouling up MY nest that I'd worked hard to create. Max's gender crisis had nothing to do with any of it."

Lauren sipped her coffee and looked over the brim of her cup at her. "You've been waiting a long time to get that off your chest."

They were half an hour down the road before anyone said anything.

"I have a question," Carmen finally said.

Lauren looked over. Because it was an unmarked county police cruiser, there was no way Lauren would be allowed to let Carmen drive, although she had offered to take turns. "Shoot," Lauren said.

"Do most homicide investigations go like this? I had the idea, maybe from TV and movies, and so maybe it's bullshit. But I had the idea that you started off with a whole bunch of suspects, and narrowed them down to one, the person who actually did it. But our investigation seems to be going the opposite way. We started off with only one suspect, Alice, who confessed, and then Shane as the real primary suspect. And the more we look into it, the more we turn up new suspects. Niki, for sure, and/or one of her posse. Maybe the guys at the studio. Maybe Tina. Maybe Max. And there's always Rollo Thomassi, our unsub. It's getting more complicated, not less. Everything's bass ackwards."

"Yes, you're entirely correct. That's how it's going. Does that discourage you in some way?"

"No. It's just not what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"Shit, I don't know. Not this."

They drove for twenty minutes in silence.

"Lauren?" Carmen asked.

Lauren looked over and could see the wheels turning inside Carmen's brain.

"Yes, Detective Morales?"

"Where is Max's laptop?"

Now the wheels were turning in Lauren's brain, too.

"You know, Detective Morales, that is one damn good question. Call Collins and ask him."

She did, talked to him, said thanks and hung up. "He says he doesn't know anything about any laptop. They never found one. But now he's thinking about it, too."

"Call Max's work. The name and phone number are in the folder."

Carmen searched through the manila folder until she found it. "Melvin K. Hildebrand, Fast Fix Golden State Computers." She dialed it on her cell.

"May I speak to Mr. Hildebrand, please? Thanks." When he came on the line, Carmen said, "Mr. Hildebrand, this is Detective Lauren Hancock, LA Sheriff's Office. Yes, we talked a few days ago, about Max Sweeney. I've got a question that I think I know the answer to, but I have to ask it anyway, just to make sure. Do you know if Max had a laptop of any kind, and if so, is there any chance he left it at your shop, or in some way you might know what may have become of it? Uh-huh... uh huh ... yes, that's pretty much what we suspected. Okay, thanks for your time." She hung up.

"Impersonating a police officer is a felony," Lauren said.

"So is claiming to be Detective Morales from the LASD. I figured I had a choice of which lie to tell."

"He doesn't know anything about any laptop."

"Nope. He said Max had no need of a personal one at work, since they had all the computer stuff anybody would ever need. He said he guessed Max had a computer of some sort at home, but he didn't know anything about it. He said after Max died the only personal items they found at work were a coffee cup that said Yellowstone Park and a few protein bars."

"Okay, humor me. Is there any chance in the world that Max didn't own a computer, and probably a laptop?"

"Somewhere around zero point zero zero zero chance," Carmen said. "Max was an IT guy. I know for a fact he owned a laptop back when he lived with Jenny and Shane and me. He e-mailed and surfed the Internet and did everything all the rest of us do. And being Max and being difficult, he didn't like Apple or Windows, he messed around with something called Ubuntu, one of those open source systems, and he was always messing with it. So where is it?"

"Exactly, my dear Watson," Lauren said. "Dead body by the side of the road, but no cellphone. Room at a boarding house, but no laptop or cellphone there."

"Theoretically they could be in his car, but there is no car. But I don't think that's the answer."

"No. The killer took them. So let's think about that for a moment."

They rode for a mile.

"Okay, I'm done thinking," Carmen said. "What have you got?"

"Simplest explanation: A simple burglary of Max's apartment."

"No freaking way."

"Correct answer. No freaking way. You don't force somebody to drink booze and take pills and set up a fake suicide and then run them down at 3 in the morning, all just to cover up a cellphone jacking. And it wasn't the landlord, because the first he knew Max was dead was when the detectives came to search the apartment. So what else have you got, Grasshopper?"

"Why do you take the laptop? Because there's something in it. Something that might help police identify you, if it was found and examined."

"Right. And what would that be?"

Carmen thought. "Well, first, e-mails. To and from the killer, only Max didn't know the recipient was going to kill him."

"And the cellphone?"

"Easy. Max and the killer talked on the phone. Probably to set up the meeting that night. Plus who knows what earlier phone calls."

"Max and the killer have a history of communication, and the cellphone and laptop documented it. So they had to be eliminated, too, along with Max himself," Lauren said. "Now, take the next step."

Carmen thought. "Since we don't have the phone, we get the phone records."

"Good. That takes a warrant. I'll take care of it when we get back. Next?"

"There was more in his laptop than just who he e-mailed. First, there's the content of the e-mails. And there's other stuff."

"Correct. But what's your evidence for that theory? Because that's all it is."

"I know. But I just think there has to be more. Max's murder -- it's not some simple carjacking or robbery, or even some kind of kill-the-trannies hate crime thing. There's more. There's something else."

"I agree, although like you, without evidence, just a feeling. But?"

"But? There's a but? Okay, there's a but. Let me think about it."

They rode for two miles.

"Okay, I need a hint, my honorable sensei."

"Besides all the gender business, what else separated Max from all the rest of you? The one other thing that makes him/her different?"

Carmen worked on it. "It's not where we came from, not background. Jenny's from the same region, Illinois, Shane's from Texas, I'm from the barrio, Tina's from Arizona, Bette's bi-racial, Kit is black, Alice is Irish Catholic/Polish, Helena's filthy rich. Shit, we're like a World War II movie, the perfectly distributed cross-section of America. All we need is a Brooklyn Jew and a bunch of penises. We don't even have orientation in common."

"No. But you do have something."

"Give me a hint."

"Watergate."

"Watergate?"

"Come on, you're a movie buff. And we already went over this."

"Follow the money."

"Bingo."

"Max had no money."

"Double bingo."

"Ahh, I see. I have two incomes, I'm comfortable. Shane's fallen into a money-making machine, and she had some inheritance from Harvey. Alice always made good money, she was comfortable. Tina and Bette made very good money, and Helena goes without saying. Kit has The Planet. Niki's a movie star, that goes without saying. Max was the only one struggling with income, and it seems clear she was one small paycheck away from poverty. None of the rest of us were."

"Correct again, Grasshopper. Engage pursuit mode."

"Pursuit mode? Jesus. Okay, follow the money. Max had none, except his small paycheck. He got nothing whatsoever from Jenny's probate and estate. Yet somewhere along the way he found enough money to get his top surgery. I don't know off the top of my head what that costs, but it's gotta be five or ten thousand, minimum."

"Do you know anything about black market top surgery? Max was doing black market testosterone shots for his transition, according to the testimony in all the paperwork I've found. And you said so."

"Yes, he was," Carmen said. "It being black market was one of the things I once argued with him about. It was much less about the legality than it was about the safety aspect, that he was basically self-medicating and didn't know shit about what he was doing. And Jenny was helping and enabling, and that was just the blind leading the blind. Then regarding the money, we held a fundraiser for his top surgery, and he went batshit crazy because we didn't raise enough. That was when Shane threatened to cut his tits off if he hurt Jenny."

"How much did you raise?"

"I don't know, exactly. Jenny told me around thirty-five, thirty-seven hundred. But it wasn't enough, by a long shot, so he didn't get it done, and there was no way to give it back."

"So how did Max find enough money to get it done in the last year or so?"

Carmen thought, but it didn't take her long. "Oh, fuck."

"Yes?"

"The baby."

"Yep."

"He sold it on the black market. And used the money for his top surgery."

"We can't prove that right now, but give me a few days. Keep going."

"The baby died. Possibly because Max had the testosterone treatments, then stopped them, but never should have gotten pregnant or carried the baby to term."

"Argumentative, but I'll accept it. Keep going."

"The adoptive parents are pissed. They discover Max's medical history. The baby's autopsy turns up something. The parents feel cheated. They want their money back."

"And?"

"And all this is in e-mails on Max's laptop. The letters from the parents. Maybe there's lawyers involved. Stuff about the birth. Stuff about the black market adoption. Maybe threats. We don't know who the black market parents are. If they are black market, maybe there's a reason they couldn't go to police or use the courts."

"And?"

"And our list of suspects keeps growing and growing. We may have to hire some more new, completely untrained and inexperienced lesbians to handle the workload."

"Do they have to be lesbians?"

"No, not necessarily. Bi would be okay, and even a little butch, but not too butch."

"Glad we got that straightened out."

"I'm a detail-oriented gal."

"And a list-maker, according to Shane."

"Yes, that's high on my list of virtues and talents. Where were we?"

"Max's missing laptop and Rollo Thomassi, who took it."

"It's been destroyed, along with Max's car and cell phone. We're never going to see them again."

"Yes. And then, no."

They rode in silence for a while.

"You know, we have a lot of phone calls we can make. I've got Bluetooth, we can put them on speaker. It's almost 10 a.m., everyone will be awake except Shane. We can call her last."

"Okay, make me a list. I'll dial, you drive."

"Marybeth. Tina or Bette in New York. I'd really like to talk to Alice up at Humboldt, and we'll need to go up there and actually see her, talk in person. There's too much to discuss with her over the phone, and to do that I'll need to talk to the warden's office, and her lawyer. But we can give her a short summary of what we've learned. The funeral home that handled Max, to get his sister's contact information in Illinois."

"What can she tell us?" Carmen asked.

"Probably not much. But when she came out here she may not have been told Max was murdered, not killed accidentally. I don't think Collins may have known, and he was leaving town on vacation. So we need to tell her, and once she's had a chance to digest it, she may remember something that helps. Or not, but we need to ask."

"Okay."

"Then Helena and Kit. Then Shane."

Carmen didn't say anything.

"What's wrong?" Lauren asked.

"The single biggest thing Jenny and Max's murders have in common is Shane. But I can't make the puzzle pieces fit."

"That's because they don't. Okay, so let's just say Shane pushed Jenny off the deck and then rolled her into the pool, and then, as you suggested once, went into some extreme denial mode. Fine. But then a year later for some reason locates Max in fucking Bakersfield, drives out here, forces her to drink most of a bottle of vodka and swallow some oxy, then runs her down, takes her Subaru out into the boonies somewhere, abandons it in an arroyo or some avocado orchard or a junkyard, done it so well no one has found it since, makes her way back to Gaytown, and nobody the wiser. That about right?"

"Uhhh, okay, it was a bad idea," Carmen said.

"Beg to disagree," Lauren said. "It was a bat-shit crazy idea. A lunatic idea. Oh, the first half wasn't too, too, awful bad, but the second part? One more idea like that and I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask for your resignation from the Nancy Drew Girl Detectives League."

"So I'm on probation?"

"Double secret probation," Lauren said.

"You're a tough boss," Carmen said. "Tough but fair."

"Have I happened to mention that I'm a very, very thorough investigator?" Lauren asked. "I am, you know."

"Uh, okay," Carmen said, knowing this was going someplace.

"You know what due diligence is?"

"Sure. It's when you investigate all the details, even the little ones that you already know, or think you know, or think will be useless, because that's in the job description. Check A, B, C, D and E, even if you now C, D and E are nothing."

"Right. I'm pretty good at due diligence."

"I never doubted it for a moment, Sherlock Hancock. You want to clue me where this is going?"

"Back to Follow the Money," Lauren said. "Remember? We're getting court orders to look at Jenny and Niki's bank accounts. Other people, too."

"Yes? And?"

"I did my due diligence on Shane, got a look at her bank records, income, expenditures, stock portfolio, yadda yadda, the whole financial picture."

"And?"

"And like she told me, she's a forty percent partner in Shane's Sugar Shack, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sweet Things Enterprises, Incorporated."

And then Carmen knew where this was going. She smiled to herself.

"Sweet Things Enterprises, as I think you may already know, is a limited liability corporation, being Shane's business partnership with Chase. And it is one of the various subsidiaries of Chase-La Jolla Holding Group, Inc., which is Chase's business empire, not just the Sugar Shacks, but all his other stuff not connected to Shane. He's got real estate, beauty salons, a couple of gyms, a health spa, and so on."

"He's a very talented guy," Carmen said.

"Yep. And seems to be pretty honest, too. No major law suits, no scandals, no observable hanky-panky."

"Glad to hear it."

"I took a look at Sweet Things Enterprises," Lauren said. "Shane told me a couple weeks ago she and Chase were sixty-forty partners, Chase being the sixty and her the forty. She said she put in her settlement money from the arson fire at Wax, and money she'd inherited from Harvey. I'm sure she was telling me the truth as she believed it. But the fact is, she's partly wrong. Shane's Sugar Shack is sixty-forty, but Sweet Things Enterprises isn't. It includes Shane and Chase, but Chase has one other investor. It's really a fifty-forty-ten partnership."

"I'm fascinated beyond measure," Carmen said, looking out the window, coy and bored at the same time. "That secret partner sounds ominous. I mean, maybe you should investigate who they are. They could be the Russian mob, or, like, a Mexican cartel or something."

"My first thought was some bad-ass Mexicans, too, so I got a copy of the financial filings and start-up corporate papers just last night, by e-mail, and read them this morning before we left the hotel," Lauren said. "That's how I learned there was a ten percent partner in Sweet Things but not Sugar Shacks. It's something called SPC1 Investment Group."

"How about that."

"S, P, C, One. Investment Group. S, P, C, One."

"An investment group," Carmen said. "Sounds like a bunch of doctors and dentists and chiropractors Chase knows. Probably gay doctors and dentists and lawyers investing their money."

"Funny thing, the casual observer might come to that conclusion."

"But not you."

"No, not me. S, P, C, One. Spicy One. The Spicy One. The Spicy One Investment Group. To me it sounds like it's where Spicy One, whatever he, she or it happens to be, invests his or her or its or their money. Or some of it, anyway."