“Do it,” she said, heading for the door leading to the living room. “Scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon, toast, and orange juice.”
It’s no coincidence that I know the deli’s telephone number by heart. As soon as the bedroom door closed behind Jasmine, I picked up the bedside phone and dialed. I ordered breakfast. I even broke down enough to ask them to bring a P.I. along with the food.
I left the bedroom and went into the living room, where I found Jasmine curled up on the window seat looking down at the steady rain falling on Puget Sound.
“It’s really dreary out there,” she said.
“It’s not so bad. If you asked most people who live here, they’d tell you they love the sun, but they don’t mind the rain. If they did, they’d leave.”
I walked over and sat down on the window seat beside her. Something was wrong. She seemed distant, remote. The casual teasing air was gone. She took a sip of coffee without looking up at me. “How come you carry a gun?” she asked quietly.
Looking at the dining-room table and chairs, I saw my shoulder holster still hanging on the chair, exactly where I’d left it when I went to bed. When I thought I was going to bed by myself.
The jig was up. Jasmine Day had me dead to rights.
“I’m a police officer,” I said.
“Not a friend of Dan Osgood’s.”
“No. I’m with Homicide. I was there investigating a case.”
“A murder?”
I nodded, but she wasn’t looking at me. “One of the local stagehands. He died early in the morning after he finished working on the set.”
“After the load-in?”
“I guess that’s what you call it. You didn’t know anything about it? Nobody told you?”
She looked up at me then and gave a small shrug. “I’m the star. Ed tries to protect me, tries to keep those kinds of things away from me so I won’t get upset. But how did you end up with the comps? With those particular comps,” she added.
“I talked to Dan Osgood earlier in the day. He knew I planned to come to the performance to talk to people. He offered me the tickets. Said it would make it easier to come and go as I pleased.”
“And how did you get to my dressing room?”
“I went backstage during intermission, but I couldn’t talk to anyone. They were all busy, working on that band shell thing. I wandered over to your dressing room planning to ask you a question or two…”
“And I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”
I nodded. “I was about to hand you my card when you said what you did about going to dinner.”
“You don’t understand. I always go to dinner after the show with whoever has those seats. It’s been that way the whole tour.”
“But why?”
“Why? Because the people are usually friends of Ed Waverly’s, that’s why. Because I owe him. Because when nobody else would give me a break, when nobody else was willing to back the new me, Ed Waverly said yes. He got Westcoast to take me on. I’d go to dinner with the devil himself if Ed Waverly asked me to.”
I reached out and let my hand rest on her knee. “Couldn’t we pretend that my having the tickets was Ed Waverly’s idea all along?”
She sat looking down at my hand for a long moment and I thought it was going to be all right. Then she picked up my hand and removed it from her leg.
“I don’t think so,” she said, getting up. “You lied to me. I’m going to get my hair. You’d better go ahead and call me that cab.”
She stalked across the living room and down the hall.
“But, Jasmine…” I began. She didn’t answer me, didn’t even pause. “Easy come, easy go,” I said to myself as I watched her walk away.
About that time the phone rang. It was the delivery boy from the deli, calling from downstairs, asking to be let in through the security door so he could bring breakfast upstairs. I had barely put the phone down when another call came through. I recognized Watty Watkins’s voice. He’s the day-shift sergeant with Homicide.
“Sorry to bother you so early, Beau,” he said, “but I thought we should let you know we just had a call from the medical examiner. He says Jonathan Thomas died of a massive cocaine overdose. The doc who did the autopsy is screaming for us to arrest the nurse.”
“Leave Tom Riley out of this,” I said.
“Look, Beau, this is a whole new ball game. I’ve assigned a team of detectives. You’re working one case; they’re working the other. They’ve sealed off the house, and the crime-scene team is on its way over.”
“I’m telling you, Tom Riley had nothing to do with it.”