Dial Emmy For Murder Part 31

"Anybody else? Actors?" He put his hand down an empty vase.

"Not yet."

He pulled his hand out of the vase. "How did the kitchen look to you?" he asked.

"How do you mean?"

"Lived in?"

"Pretty much," I said. "Leftovers in the fridge, frozen dinners in the freezer and a marked-up calendar."

"Marked up?"

"Dates circled."

"Any notes? Appointments?"

"Not on the pages I looked at, but I only checked this month and last."

"No doctor appointments?"

"No, why?"

"Lots of medication in the master bathroom," he said.

"The only bathroom," I pointed out.

"Well, there were prescription bottles in there with Henri's name on them."

"And the doctor's name?"

"Different doctor on every bottle."

"That's odd."

"Not if he was working some kind of scam to get drugs," Jakes said. "You go to a doctor and give him symptoms, but symptoms you know fit your phony ailment so that you know what meds he's going to prescribe."

"And you can't do that with the same doctor twice?"

"Not without raising a red flag."

"So Henri was selling drugs? Prescription drugs?"

Jakes shrugged. "Either that or he just liked them. He ever seem high when he was at work?"

"No . . . not that I can remember."

"Maybe he got high at home, then."

I was still leafing through the book, and when I got to the Rs, something jumped out at me.

"Bingo."

"Whaddya got?"

I put my finger on the name and said, "Nate Russell."

Chapter 56.

Jakes came over and sat next to me. We both stared at Nate's name in the dead man's address book. Then we looked at each other.

"Any others?" he asked.

"Wait."

I had been looking through the book page by page. Now I turned to specific pages that corresponded with the names of all the dead men.

"Here's Jackson Masters," I said. "I missed it. It's under J, not M."

"Any others?"

"No," I said, "Just those two."

"Nate's father said he was gay."

"But Jackson . . ."

"I know," Jakes said. "He was supposedly a stud."

"He could still have been a stud," I said. "Just . . ."

"For the other team."

"Or both."

Jakes sat back, and so did I.

"Well," he said, "it's a connection. He knew Jackson because he worked with him on your soap."

"Right."

"But Nate Russell didn't work on a soap," Jakes said. "He auditioned but never got a part. So how would Henri know him?"

"I just had a thought," I said.

"Do I want to hear it?"

"If you're here with me," I asked, "who's looking for Nate Russell?"

"There are other cops working on this, Alex," Jakes said. "We've got an alarm on him, and I've got somebody watching his mother's house."

"Your captain never changed her mind about bringing her in?"

"No-I only would have been able to charge her with obstruction. Let's keep our eye on the ball right here, Alex."

"Sorry," I said. "I was just wondering."

"This connects Henri to Nate," he said, tapping the book.

"Maybe they went to the same bars," I offered. "Maybe Henri was doing hair on the side."

"Yeah, maybe . . ."

He continued to search the living room, but another thought came to me. How did we know the killer didn't find what he was looking for after he killed Henri?

I decided not to ask.

I finished with the book and closed it. The only thing it told us was that Henri knew Nate. We also knew Henri knew Jackson Masters. What we didn't know was if Nate knew Jackson.

I watched Jakes kick at fallen seat cushions and look behind drapes. I watched him skirt a leather ottoman that had been kicked over on its side. In fact, he did it several times.

"Okay," he said finally. "I'm done. Let's take that book with us. We're just going to have to find Nate Russell and sweat him."

"And his mother?"

"Yeah, her, too."

He started over to me and tripped over the fallen ottoman.

"d.a.m.n!"

"Wait a minute," I said.

I got up from the sofa and walked to the ottoman. It was brown leather, and was not part of a set. It had been bought separately from the rest of the furniture in the room.

"I've seen this style before," I said, bending over and righting it. "It should have-Yes, there it is." A small leather loop stuck out. We hadn't seen it before because the ottoman had been lying on top of it. I put my finger through the loop and pulled. The side of the ottoman fell open, revealing two drawers.

"Let me guess," Jakes said. "Pottery Barn?"

"Probably QVC," I said. "Let's just hope the killer didn't see it."

I opened the top drawer and it was empty.

"d.a.m.n," Jakes said.

I closed it and opened the second drawer. "What's your police word for bingo?" I asked.

"Bingo," he said.

I reached into the drawer and came out with a large leather-bound sc.r.a.pbook.

"Open it," he said.

"Don't you want to?"

"You found it," he said. "I would've missed it if you hadn't been here, Alex. You do the honors."

I opened it.

Chapter 57.

It could have been naked photos of the men he'd slept with. It could have been a sc.r.a.pbook of his favorite baseball teams. It could even have been a collection of his favorite cartoon strips. Or it could have been a stamp collection. But it wasn't.

"A sc.r.a.pbook of newspaper articles," Jakes said, looking over my shoulder.

It started with pieces about certain TV shows. The clippings were from different papers, including Variety . New shows holding auditions, old shows looking for new blood. A red X had been marked through some.

"Jakes, this isn't Henri's. This looks like a guy keeping clippings of his failures."

"Keep turning pages," Jakes said. "Let's find out who this belongs to. It's a sure bet that whoever was keeping this book was here looking for it and killed Henri."

I started turning pages quickly until Jakes said, "Whoa, whoa, slow down. Look." He pointed. "Notes in the margin."

The handwriting was cramped. I turned the book sideways so we could read them. One word leaped out at us.

"Mom?" I said.

"Not only 'Mom,' " Jakes said, pointing to the line that said, Mom did this!

"This is Nate Russell's sc.r.a.pbook," I said. "How did Henri get it?"

"That's a good question," he said. "Come on, let's go."

"Where?"

"Someplace quiet where we can go through this book, inch by inch," he said.