Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 25

"No. He doesn't give a shit about who she's sleeping with. He doesn't care about her at all. He's out for the money. And that first time, it was Helena he took the bite out of, not me. Breaking up Shane and me was just collateral damage. When Shane accidentally caught him leaving the Whistler hotel, that was just a bad break."

"Bad for you guys. Nothing for him."

"Whatever. But the point was, he expected to be gone and Shane and I would get married a few hours later, without knowing what he'd done. Shane and I knew nothing about the present he told Helena he wanted to give us. It would have been Helena who realized something was wrong when Gabe wasn't at the reception afterward and didn't give us the ten thousand Helena got for him. She might not even have noticed he wasn't in the tent. She would have realized after we were married, at the reception, that something was wrong but would she have raised the alarm? Not that he gave a good goddam."

"Is there a chance that Helena would have shut up about the money? Never mentioned it?"

Carmen thought about it. "She might have realized she'd been scammed, and been too embarrassed to say anything. But either way she'd have never stopped our wedding. Hell, she's the one who financed it."

"Would he have known that?"

"Maybe, if Shane had mentioned it in passing. But he'd have known there was lots of money being spent, what with Helena and Peggy there, and limousines and ski stuff and all. A shark like that, he'd have smelled the money. A flounder could have. Anyway, I don't think ten grand meant all that much to Helena. The genius of it, if you want to use that word, is that Gabe picked a low enough figure that Helena wouldn't be too concerned about it. In a way, the blackmail amounts for Jenny and Niki weren't all that high, either. I mean, if he'd asked for a million bucks in a lump sum they might have just said fuck you. But ten grand, that didn't seem too bad to them, until it started piling up. The amount was manageable, and so were the logistics. And think about it: Ten grand, again. He likes ten grand. It's a pattern."

"That's pretty interesting. And then Gabe really would have made a clean getaway. He scams ten thousand from Helena, she's embarrassed and says nothing because to her ten grand is pocket change. And neither you guys and nor anybody else ever finds out about it."

"Right. It might have worked out that way," Carmen said. "But Shane saw him, and then found out from Carla what Gabe had done. It wasn't Helena who blew the whistle on him, it was Carla."

Lauren thought about it for a minute, her brows knitted together. "So what do we tell Shane? Do we propose this theory to her? What do we say? It just occurred to us that maybe your father extorted a hundred thousand bucks from Niki and your lover, then killed her?"

"I want to think about this a lot more," Carmen said.

"Me, too," Lauren said. "And while I'm thinking, I want to know why Gabe killed Jenny. Extortionists and blackmailers don't normally kill their victims, they just bleed them as dry as they can then go away."

"Getting rid of the witness?"

"Okay ... but why kill Jenny but not Niki? Shouldn't it be both or neither?"

"Let's think about that. Jenny was notoriously contrary, and she'd spill the beans in a heartbeat. But Niki's whole private life was hiding nasty secrets, whereas Jenny wanted everybody to out themselves. Like her theory about Bette fucking her gallery co-owner. And anyway, who'd believe a hot mess like Niki who had been in rehab half a dozen times? A paparazzi magnet? How much of what Niki says would you believe?"

"There's two other things to think about," Carmen said.

"Hey, you're getting good at this," Lauren said. "Maybe you missed your calling."

"Carmen Morales, lesbo travel guide slash smokin' hot DJ slash private eye? I don't think so."

"Maybe not. So what's the two things?"

"First, did Jenny know who the person was who was blackmailing her? If it was Gabe, did she know? If we're right, I'm inclined to think she did know who it was, and she knew Gabe, from the wedding fiasco. She'd met him. And when he came back and took Shea away from Shane, she'd have known about that, too.

"Second, we know Niki was hiding in the bushes," Carmen said. "Do you think she saw the murder? And lied to us this afternoon?"

"She's still alive, so if she did see Gabe kill Jenny, Gabe is unaware of it, or he'd have killed her, too, by now. It would have been easy enough to get access to her."

"True. But if she saw it, why would she keep quiet about it? I mean, none of us think she's brain surgeon material, but still? Her lawyer thinks she's told us the truth, more or less. You see Gabe murder Jenny and you just hang around in the bushes and get picked up by the cops an hour later and say nothing? Then go through the grilling we all just gave her, and still say nothing?"

"Nope, doesn't work. It's the hanging around after witnessing a murder part, and not being seen by the killer, either. Doesn't fly."

"Still, she was there, within an hour of the murder."

"Yes, absolutely."

"Suppose instead of just witnessing the murder she commissioned it? And watched it?"

"No, same objection," Lauren said. "Hanging around afterward, and being caught by the police during the search of the neighborhood. No, can't buy it." Lauren said.

"So where does that leaves us?"

"In need of sleep. Tomorrow I think we should go over Niki's testimony with a fine-tooth comb. If we find something, good. If not, we move on."

"Will the transcript be ready?"

"Marybeth said she'd give it her best shot."

"Okay, the. Guess I'll see you in the morning," Carmen said.

"Yep. Good night, what's left of it."

"Yes, good night."

"Car?"

"Yes?"

"Gabe McCutcheon. That was a brilliant piece of thinking."

"Oh. Thanks."

"Get some sleep."

"Copy that. Ten-four. Rodger dodger."

"You're just trying to turn me on, aren't you?"

Carmen laughed, and hung up the phone.

***

Marybeth had moved heaven and earth to get the transcript of Niki's interrogation typed up overnight, and three copies of it were waiting on the table in the conference room when Carmen and Lauren got there. Shane had texted them she was going to be late, maybe very late, because a problem had cropped up at one of the Sugar Shacks, and Chase needed her. Carmen and Lauren didn't mind; going over a transcript wasn't the kind of thing Shane was good at, anyway. If they found something that needed Shane's input they could always just ask her.

Fueled with coffee and breakfast burritos, they went over Niki's testimony, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, line by line, word by word. It took all morning, they found nothing they didn't expect, and when they finished they went to lunch.

"Where's Marybeth been all morning?" Carmen asked after they'd ordered Cobb salads and iced teas.

"Budget meeting."

"What do you think she'll say when we tell her our theory?"

"She'll say, go get the bastard."

"Really?"

"No doubt about it."

"Cool."

Their food came and they ate silently. It seemed that way, anyway.

"I can hear you, you know," Lauren said.

"What? Am I eating too loudly?"

"No. I can hear you thinking. You get this look on your face, and your brain gives off this humming sound."

"Oh. Sorry I'm disturbing your lunch."

"You're not disturbing it. I'm just patiently waiting for you to finishing processing."

"God, I hope I'm not as slow as Shane. She takes forever."

"True, And at least she gets there, sooner or later. You're a lot faster, though."

"Good to know."

"So spill it."

Carmen sighed, pushing the remains of the lettuce around in her salad bowl. "Remember when we all talked about what the killer thought about Niki and the investigation, and whether he thought she may have told Marybeth about the blackmail. And what he must have thought when he read or saw on TV that Alice confessed. Whether he thought he was safe or not, and if he staked out the observatory or the Hollywood Bowl to see if any CSI types came out to look around."

"And no one did. Yes, what about it?"

"Suppose he didn't have to do too much supposing and worrying about Niki and who told what to the police. Suppose he knew almost exactly what was going on inside the investigation?"

"How would he--" Lauren stopped. "You're saying he had a source. Inside the investigation. Are you suggesting inside the Sheriff's Department?"

"No, not at all. But inside the group. A source among the suspects."

This didn't take Lauren long at all. "You're suggesting Max."

"Yes."

"That's the connection between the two murders we could never figure out. Max didn't kill Jenny, but in some way he had a connection to it. Maybe Max didn't know the murder was even going to occur, because like we theorized, it was spontaneous and unplanned. But think about this: The blackmailer knew Jenny and Niki were running all over town and having sex here, there and everywhere. How would he know that? Maybe because he had Jenny under surveillance--"

"Which we now know he did."

"Yes. But how would he know to do that? What gave him the idea to set up in the empty house behind Jenny and Shane's? Who even knew the house was empty?"

"Well, most of the group did, Max included, I suppose."

"Right. How would an outsider blackmailer know Jenny and Niki had made the Subaru sex tape? That was knowledge only inside the group and among the studio people, but we think they tried their damnedest to keep it quiet. And they did. That's what I think, anyway. But who also knew Jenny had been taped before? Who knew about back in the day when Mark was taping everybody in the house, Shane and whoever she was fucking, me and Jenny, parties we had, even casual get-togethers and stuff. Private conversations."

"Max knew all about that. He was even in some of those tapes himself, not having sex, but just talking or being in a room when Mark was filming. And then when Jenny blew the whistle on Mark after we came back from the cruise, and we got all the tapes from Mark and burned them, Max, would have known about all that. It was an open secret. Alice knew, Kit knew, Bette and Tina knew, because we all talked about it at The Planet."

"So Max is sitting there with knowledge of Mark's videos, a few of which are sex tapes. He learns about the Subaru sex tape, because that was known to the group, too. And he would have known Jenny was blackmailed or extorted or whatever you call it by Adele, who got her fired and kicked off the studio lot. He would have known Jenny and Niki were screwing their brains out all over town."

"That's true, but we all knew all of that. Shane, Bette and Tina, Alice, Kit, Helena, even I knew it up in San Francisco and a thousand miles out to sea."

"Yes. But most of you didn't have motive to do anything with that knowledge. Max did. At the end he hated Jenny for breaking up his relationship with Tom. And Jenny and Max's prior relationship had been rocky, off and on, right?"

"Yes. Just about right from the start."

"You guys all put on a fundraiser for him to pay for his top surgery, but there wasn't enough to cover it, and he went into a rage with Jenny over it, right? And Jenny gave back to him all the crap he gave her. Do I have that right?"

"Yes. It was probably the testosterone he was taking. He was like a mad man."

"Yes, but the chemistry doesn't matter. It's the grudge. Max was surrounded by these fairly wealthy women, and still they couldn't raise enough for his top surgery."

"Well, we weren't all 'wealthy,' as you put it. I wasn't, Shane wasn't, Alice got by okay, but she wasn't rich. But yes, Helena was. And Bette and Tina made good money."

"Sure. And then, later, Jenny came into some big money herself, but Max got no benefit from it."

"No reason he should," Carmen said.

"No, I agree, but from Max's point of view, it was just one more thing to hold a secret grudge about. All these upscale women, and Max just scrapping by. And how can I put this next part delicately? Max knew all about Jenny's fondness for light bondage. Maybe he'd done some of it to Jenny when he was fucking her back when he was a she. Max had walked in on Jenny and Claude going at it up in Whistler on the day or your wedding, right? Claude had her tied to the bedstead, both of them in black bustiers, and Claude diddling Jenny with a riding crop."

Carmen closed her eyes. "Yes, Max knew. He told everybody he could find, everybody except me, because I was busy getting dressed."

"How'd you find out?"

"Oh, a couple months later, Alice told me. And Tina mentioned it one time, too. I think it was after both Claude and Marina met each other at Jenny's house, after Marina came back from her stay in the mental hospital in Italy. Claude and Marina got it on, Jenny told me."

"Do you think Jenny taped the thing with Claude up in Whistler?

"If she did, I never heard about it, and nobody ever mentioned it. But who knows? Anything's possible."

"Okay, I have another question even more delicate than the last one. I'm sorry, but I have to ask it."

"I know where you're gonna go."

Lauren nodded. "Are there any tapes out there of you having sex with anybody? Jenny, Shane, anybody else?"

"No, no videos. Jenny never taped us. That was something she got into later. And certainly not Shane, she really didn't like being taped or even photographed normally, let alone while fucking. That's one of the few things Shane doesn't like about sex. She hates bondage and she hates videos of herself. Just about anything else is okay, but not those two. She did the one-time modeling gig, but hated it."

"Okay. The reason I ask, I'm just concerned about some day in the future after we catch the killer and there's a trial, Marybeth and I and the prosecutor would want to make sure the defense didn't have any surprises."

"I understand."

"You have this look on your face. There's something you're not telling me."

"I did save one of Mark's videos, but nobody knows about it. And it wasn't me having sex. It was just Shane and me talking, in the kitchen. It's not relevant to anything, and nobody knows I have it."

Lauren let that sink in for a minute. "I'm guessing you take it out once in a while, look at it again."

The famous "Love Confession" conversation. No way Carmen was going to tell Lauren about it. She shrugged. "It's not relevant to anything."

"Okay," Lauren said. "Let's get back to Max. Here's a question you know the answer to. What was Max's skill set? What kinds of things was he good at?"

"Oh, fuck," Carmen said quietly. "Computers. Anything to do with computers."

"Right. And Jenny was, too, right? She put together the 'Goodbye, Tina and Bette' video they were watching at the party."

"Sure. Jenny knew about film editing and all that. She was going to edit Lez Girls. And she knew other computer stuff, of course."

"And Max did, too. Remember Niki saying Jenny was more worried about the blackmailer putting up a web site of Jenny and Niki videos, rather than just e-mailing them out piecemeal, or whatever. It means Jenny was worried about someone with the skill set to build a website and put those videos out on it. How many people in the group can do that? Can you? You have a website for your DJ stuff."

"That's true, I do. But I hired a graphics specialist to do most of the design stuff on my site. I can upload and download stuff, that kind of thing."

"But mostly you do music, you make music tapes and mixes and play lists."

"Yes, that's true. But I know enough to do some amateurish stuff. I could build a website, but I'm not very good at it."

"Compare yourself to Max."

"I'm a four, he's a nine. Was a nine. Maybe higher. What are you?"

"Four or five. What level do you think you need to build a web site?"

"Not much. Maybe four."

"That's what I think, too. And most porn sites aren't noted for their wonderful graphics," Lauren said. "But you could do it if you had to. You're smart and you could easily teach yourself what you needed to learn if you had to."

"Yes, that's true."

"The good news is, you aren't a suspect. So let's move on. Bette and Tina?"

"I guess they're about like me. Tina, of course, can do all sorts of film editing stuff, even though that's different from building a website. Probably the same with Bette. All the museums and art galleries she's always worked for had websites. Of course, she had people who did that kind of work for her. But yes, she knows how."

"Alice?"

"Oh, my god, yes, sure. Alice has been writing and editing for years. She has pretty good general computer skills. Like Bette, Tina or me, she should build one if she wanted to."

"Kit?"

"Mmm. No, probably not a full-blown web site. She can do all the usual stuff, e-mails and downloading and all that. The Planet has always had a site, but Kit didn't do it herself. Once in a while she'd mention it, that her web guy did this or that to it, and did we like it. I'd say that Kit doesn't presently know that much about web sites, mostly due to lack of interest. That's just not anything she's interested in. She's a two or three."

"Helena?"

"Pretty much same thing. She can do all the usual stuff everybody nowadays can do. But anything fancy or technical, she'd just hire an expert, if she didn't already have one on staff. And when she owned the movie studio there was an entire department chock full of highly skilled web people. She'd just have to snap her fingers, say 'Do it,' and it'd get done. At heart, she's a true, blue Peabody. Whenever possible, Helena doesn't do things, she hires people to do the things. She's a two who can hire a ten with the snap of her fingers."

"Yes. But would she go to any of them for help building a porno web site for blackmail purposes? I doubt it."

"No, she wouldn't."

"Anyway, it's one thing to go find a web expert, there's half a million of them with enough of a skills in California. Any teenager can do it. And finding someone older than 16 who could build a porn site is easy, too. All you have to do is go out to the valley to the porn industry. There's probably ten thousand people out their building and maintaining porn sites. The infrastructure for the industry out there is mind-boggling, and it's all out there, humming along and popping up thousands of porn videos every day. And guess who knows about porn companies in the valley?"

"Niki. Well, not Niki so much herself, but whoever that person was in her posse who gave her instructions on how to send the stolen negatives out to a porn mill and make it look like Tina did it. So if Niki doesn't have porn site expertise, someone in her posse does."

"That narrows the list of suspects down considerably," Carmen said, "to maybe eight or ten million people in the lower half of the state. It even includes every male in the state who is fourteen and older. Anybody who's a three or four or higher."

"Yep. Even a few precocious eleven- and twelve-year-olds. But here's what may be really interesting. It probably doesn't include our killer."

"Oh? Why not?"

"Because now we're working on the idea he needed Max to build the porn web site for him. Our killer is a two or maybe a three, tops. We're starting to build an entire theory for the one thing we don't have any idea about, which is why Max was killed, and what his prior involvement might have been. If the killer is truly an outsider, which is what we believe, he wouldn't have known any of the key pieces of information. Jenny's sexual proclivities, the fact that she and everybody had once been videotaped by Mark. That Jenny had actually taped herself fucking Niki at the Subaru event, and maybe other times, too. And that Jenny and Niki were having sex all over town. An outsider wouldn't have known that, but anyone in the group would. So, how does an outsider come by useful knowledge known only to the small group of you, plus maybe a few girlfriends who happened to be on the periphery, like Phyllis, Tasha, Jamie, that lawyer everybody was using, Dylan, Mollie, like that."