Dead and Not So Buried Read online

  Dead And Not

  So Buried

  By

  James L. Conway

  Also by James L. Conway

  Sexy Babe

  In Cold Blonde

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2012 by James L. Conway

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISNB: 978-9885499-4-4

  For more information check out:

  http://www.jameslconway.com

  FOR REBECCA

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  The Beginning

  Dead And Not So Buried

  Another Day, Another Couple Million

  Number One On The Call Sheet

  Who Hates You, Baby?

  Puzzle Pieces

  The Plot Thickens

  Beam Me Up

  Shadow Boxing

  View From The Top

  Free Fall

  You Have The Right To Remain Stupid

  Party Time

  Wake Up Call

  Heaven Sent

  Guilty Pleasures

  I’m Going To Magic Land

  Abracadabra

  Abracadabra Already

  Puppy Chow

  He’s Back

  A Tisket A Task Force

  Ten-Percenters Are A Dime A Dozen

  Déjà Vu

  Back To Now

  Plan? Plan? I Don’t Need No Stinking Plan

  Breadcrumbs Upon The Water

  Elementary, My Dear Hillary

  The Stuff Frozen Dreams Are Made Of

  A Promise Is A Promise And Must Be Kept

  The Road Too Often Traveled

  Another Country Heard From

  The Best Laid Plans

  Nick And Nora

  It’s Showtime, Folks

  Midnight In The Garden Of Anguish And Guilt

  ‘Til Death Do Us Part

  Nice Work If You Can Get It

  Meet John Doe

  Getting To Know You

  Plan B

  Dead And Not Yet Buried

  Fade In

  Demons And Dragons

  Afternoon Delights

  Deadman’s Curve On The Road Of Life

  The Price Of Fame

  Hurray For Hollywood

  The Beginning Of The End

  The Middle Of The End

  The End Of The End

  Sexy Babe Preview

  One

  In Cold Blonde Preview

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Prologue

  Lightning ripped the sky like a knife through flesh.

  Okay, that’s a little much. Fact is, there was no lightning. Hell, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But kidnapping is a heinous crime, heinous enough for a little atmosphere. So even if there was no lightning, there should have been.

  The Kidnapper broke in through the rear gate. A crowbar snapped the rusted chain. His size eleven boots left a clear path across the dew-sodden grass, past the flowers, through the statues, to her chamber.

  His victim couldn’t hear the scratching and scraping as he broke into her sanctuary. Couldn’t see him as he entered her cold, white room. Never felt him sweep her into his arms.

  The Kidnapper shuddered. She looked terrible, much worse than expected. Her white gown was streaked with dirt and mildew. That shock of blond hair was reduced to just a few sparse, wispy patches. And her face was a mess. At least she didn’t smell.

  She fit easily inside the oversized burlap bag. He pulled the cord. Outside once more, he scanned the grounds with his sharp green eyes. Nothing. He cocked an ear. Just a solitary siren destroying someone’s peace a few miles away.

  He placed the ransom note in the doorway then tossed the bag over his shoulder and retraced his steps toward the rear gate. Except for stealing Marvel comic books from Harmon’s Drug Store when he was a kid and doing a little coke when he first got to Hollywood, this was the first time he’d ever broken the law. He’d expected the anxiety buzz, but the hard-on was a complete surprise.

  His car was parked a block away. The top was down on his black SL 550. He placed her carefully on the back seat. He didn’t bother buckling her in, though; after all, his victim had been dead for almost forty years.

  He slipped behind the wheel of the convertible. Once he got the ransom he’d pay off the leasing company. He was getting sick of their repo threats. Everybody’s repo threats.

  The car purred to life. The kidnapper smiled as he put the car into gear and drove away from the cemetery. Unbelievable. He’d actually pulled it off. He’d kidnapped one of Hollywood’s greatest icons. And now everyone would have to pay.

  The Beginning

  I was in my office when the call came. Sitting at my desk admiring the front cover of a paperback novel. My paperback novel. Rear Entry, by Gideon Kincaid. That’s me. Ex L.A. cop turned private detective turned novelist. The Joe Wambaugh of the PI set.

  I should be so lucky. The book had only been out for two weeks. Too soon to tell if anyone would buy it. Dreams of fancy cars and private planes were on hold as I continued to earn a living poking through other peoples’ lives.

  Hillary came in from the outer office. “I’m sorry, Gideon,” she said, her features twisted in compassion.

  My own features were twisted in confusion. “Sorry about what?”

  “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it.” Hillary’s my secretary, a smart twenty-five-year-old with all the good stuff—blond hair, blue eyes, great body. But there’s a sweetness to Hillary, an endearing naivety that makes me look upon her as a little sister. All my thoughts about Hillary are pure. Well, almost all of them.

  “I’ll be happy to talk about it,” I said. “If I had any idea what we were talking about.”

  “Death.”

  “If you’re asking me to take a stand, I’m definitely against it.” I’ve known Hillary since she was ten years old. Her father, Jerry, was my partner for a couple of years when I was driving a black and white out of the West Valley Division. A couple of years ago she showed up looking for a job. I’d just lost my secretary, and Hillary needed the job, so I said sure.

  She didn’t just want to be a secretary, she told me, she wanted to be a PI like me. I told her I’d show her the ropes but never really got around to it. Truth is, she’s so good in the office I’d hate to lose her.

  “Okay,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d want to talk about it. But it won’t do you any good to, like, keep all that grief inside. It’ll fester and feed on itself. Eat away at your insides until your soul dies and you become one of the walking dead. A spiritless zombie going through life like a blind man in a garden.”

  She did that from time to time—rattled on in New Age nonsense. Something to do with her being a native Californian.

  “Anyway,” she said. “Alex Snyder’s on line two.”

  “Alex Snyder?”

  “From the mortuary ...” She said it like only an idiot wouldn’t know what she was talking about.

  “Of course, the mortuary ...” I said, as if I knew what the hell she was talking about. It’s never a good idea to let your secretary think you’re an idiot. I picked up the phone. “Gideon Kincaid.”

  “This is Alex Snyder, from Westside Cemetery. I wonder if we could meet.”

  “Look, if this is some kind of sales call, I—”

  “No, Mr. Kincaid. This is business. Important business. Please, I need to see you right away.”

  Somebody must’ve stolen a headstone, I thought. Or maybe his teenage daughter had run away. It didn’t really matter. He needed help, and that’s
what I did for a living. “All right, Mr. Snyder. I’m on my way.”

  My office is in Sherman Oaks, in a strip mall on Ventura Boulevard. Above a pet store called The Bunny Hop. My romantic soul felt I should have an office in one of the funky old buildings on Hollywood

  Boulevard—much more Chandleresque. But I get the creeps in Hollywood. Frankly it scares the shit out of me. Not the weirdos, the gangs, or the homeless. But the decay. If society can let the Boulevard of Dreams turn into an urban nightmare, what chance does the rest of the city have?

  Westside Cemetery is in Brentwood, about twenty minutes from Sherman Oaks, so I used the time in my car to catch up on my literary career.

  “Bad news.”

  “Sales are slow?”

  “Slow would be good. They’re nonexistent. The publisher’s decided the title is the problem. Rear Entry sounds like a sex manual for gay men.”

  I was talking to my agent, Elliot. He’s got a boutique agency for writers on their way up. Or down. I wasn’t sure which category I belonged in.

  “Elliot, the title was their idea.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes.”

  “Let them make mistakes with Grisham’s next book.”

  “Almost nobody writes a bestseller their first time up. Not even Grisham.”

  “It took me three years to write Rear Entry, and now you’re saying I have to write another book?”

  “You told me you wrote for the pure joy of it.”

  “I was lying.”

  “I warned you writing was a tough way to get rich.”

  “I thought you were lying.”

  “Never fear, Bubele. It’s not over until the buyer for Barnes and Noble sings. If they give us a doorway display, hell, who knows ...”

  “Anything I can do to help? Interviews? Book signings?”

  “Reality check, Gidman. You’re nobody. James Patterson does interviews because he’s famous. People will watch a show to see him. Ratings go up, he sells more books. It’s a help you/help me kind of simpatico. Stephen King does a book signing because he’s famous. People come to a bookstore just to see him. More people in the store mean sales go up. We’ve got that help you/help me thing going again.”

  “But they got famous writing books.”

  “Correctamundo, but they wrote bestsellers. Writing bestsellers made them famous. And fame is the ultimate passkey. Before you can hit the interview/book signing trail, Rear Entry needs to become a bestseller.”

  “But how will it become a bestseller if I can’t do any interviews or book signings?”

  “Welcome to Catch 22 Land—chicken and the egg and all that.”

  “So that’s it? There’s nothing I can do?”

  “You could get famous first. Break a big murder case. Solve a million dollar diamond heist. Marry Lindsey Lohan. You need something to single you out, something to make people sit up and take notice.”

  Yeah, right, I thought. Who’s going to notice a two bit PI? “All right, Elliot,” I said. “Thanks for the advice.”

  “Wait, I’ve got one more piece of bread to throw upon the waters.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t give up your day job.”

  Dead And Not So Buried

  There’s something very soothing about cemeteries—all that grass, the flowers, the fountains, the birds. It’s a shame they’re wasted on the dead.

  The Westside Cemetery is in the heart of Brentwood. It’s small—only about two acre —but some of Hollywood’s biggest stars are buried there. I was shown into Alex Snyder’s office by his secretary, a middle-aged woman who oozed warmth and compassion. Alex Snyder also oozed warmth and compassion. He was the kindly grandfather type—late sixties, thick gray hair, natty moustache, reassuringly plump. He smiled as I entered, shook my hand. “Mr. Kincaid, a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Please, call me Gideon.”

  “Gideon,” he said, smiling.

  “Will there be anything else?” the secretary asked.

  “No, Bernice, thank you.”

  She closed the door. Snyder pulled a .45 Smith and Wesson out of his desk and shoved it in my face. “Where is she?”

  “Get that gun out of my face before I make you eat it,” I said. It’s tough to talk tough with a gun an inch from your nose, but I didn’t think he’d really pull the trigger.

  He pulled the trigger. The bullet blew a hole in the wall a micro millimeter from my left ear. There was a scream from outside the door then a fearful Bernice asked, “Alex, are you okay?”

  “Just dandy, Bernice,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. To me he said, “The next one is between your eyes. Now, where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “Christine.”

  “Christine who?”

  His eyes nearly bored holes in mine before he said, “You don’t know, do you?”

  “No.”

  A little more cornea drilling, then: “I believe you.” He lowered the gun, backed away and sagged into his desk chair. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kincaid. I hate violence, but this kidnapping’s got me a little crazy.”

  “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

  “I got a call this morning at five-fifteen. One of the gardeners found Christine Cole’s crypt open and her body missing.”

  Holy shit. “Christine Cole?” Christine Cole was one of the biggest movie stars of the sixties. A model turned actress, she vaulted to fame the year after Marilyn Monroe died and took her place as Hollywood’s “it” girl. A sultry blonde with a killer body, Christine oozed sex. And she used it. To the gossip columnists’ delight, Christine unabashedly slept her way through the rich and famous. And she battled some personal demons with drugs and alcohol. But Christine also had talent, and she made a string of hit movies. Four, to be exact, and only four. Because, on a foggy April morning, a drunk Christine lost control of her silver Jaguar XKE on the Pacific Coast Highway and plunged to her death. She was thirty-three years old.

  Her death had shocked the world. And, like that of Bogart and Monroe, Christine’s fame had only increased since her passing. Her image was on everything from tee shirts and coffee mugs to perfume and push-up bras. A true Hollywood icon.

  Someone had robbed her grave. Stolen her corpse.

  Who steals a corpse?

  I said, “There can’t be much of her left after forty years. Just bones, right?”

  “Bones. The gown she was buried in. And some jewelry. She was buried wearing a bracelet, necklace and diamond ring.”

  “Valuable?”

  “On another body, no. But these were on Christine Cole.”

  “How much is the kidnapper asking?”

  “Two million dollars.”

  It suddenly hit me. “Wait a minute … why’d you think I knew where the body was?”

  “Your business card was attached to the ransom note.”

  “What?”

  “The kidnapper says you have to deliver the money.” He handed me the note. The words looked like they were cut out of a variety of magazine articles.

  IF YOU WANT TO SEE CHRISTINE AGAIN, HAVE GIDEON BRING $2,000,000 IN USED $100 BILLS TO THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF HOLLYWOOD AND VINE AT 3 P.M. TODAY, OR I’LL SELL THE BODY, BONE BY BONE.

  My business card was paper-clipped to the top of the page. In the six years I’d been a PI, I must’ve given out hundreds of business cards. Was this guy an ex-client? Someone I’d interviewed? Someone who’d picked up my card from a desk? No way of knowing. “I’ll be happy to deliver this ransom free of charge.” I wanted to find out who this son of a bitch was.

  “I appreciate that, but I’ll pay for your time—as long as you promise me you won’t do anything to jeopardize the safe return of Ms. Cole’s remains.”

  In other words, don’t let it get too personal. “I won’t.”

  Something was nagging at the back of my brain. There was a familiar aspect about all this, but I couldn’t get it to bubble to the surface. “I’d like to see her crypt.”

  “
The funeral itself was small, only thirty-five guests. But outside the gates stood hundreds of reporters, photographers, police officers and fans.”

  We were standing in front of the open crypt. The marble facing had been pried off, the bronze casket slid open. The only thing inside was the dried remains of a few roses.

  “I played the organ,” Alex Snyder said. “You know what they requested? ‘Yesterday.’ Christine loved the Beatles.”

  A set of footprints in the still-wet grass led to a rear gate. The chain had been broken, snapped by a crowbar, from the looks of it. Probably used the same crowbar on the crypt. “I could talk to a few neighbors,” I said. “See if anyone saw anything last night.”

  “Absolutely not! Don’t talk to the neighbors. Or the police. Anyone. We’ll be ruined if the tabloids find out we lost Christine Cole’s body. I just want to pay the money and get her back.”

  “You realize the kidnapper might take the money and not return the body.”

  “I’ll take that chance. Will you help me?”

  I fingered the ransom note and my business card. “I don’t think I have a choice.”

  Another Day, Another

  Couple Million

  At two forty-five I got off the 101 at Vine and started south. In my trunk was a large black duffle bag filled with two million bucks in cash. I didn’t know what the kidnapper had planned for me, but I did know he—or she—was smart. I’d checked the ransom note and my business card for fingerprints. Nothing on the card, nothing on the notepaper or the magazine letters. But I didn’t expect to find prints in obvious places. Any idiot would know to wear gloves when assembling a ransom note. But fingerprints are sometimes left in not so obvious places—embedded in the adhesive tape or on the back of cut-out letters. No such luck. Our kidnapper had been careful.

  On the four corners of Hollywood and Vine there’s a tattoo parlor, a pizza place, a rundown office building and a cut-rate drug store. Kind of underwhelming for Moviedom’s most famous address. I found a spot on Vine just south of Hollywood and parked.