Part 8 (2/2)
”Sit down, please.” He gestured to a burgundy leather club chair opposite the coffee table.
My anger beat out my fear. ”Look, I'm very sorry for your loss, but you had no right to have me abducted, to scare the h.e.l.l out of me, to drag me up here ...”
He raised a hand up, stopping me.
”I'm meeting two detectives at my house in Montecito in about an hour. They're going to explain what happened to Jenny. I know how the police operate, Ms. Poole. They won't give me the complete picture even if they knew it, which I doubt they do. So I brought you up here to tell me exactly what you saw before I talk with them.”
”There is such a thing as a telephone. You could have called me. Or at least your driver or Heath could've told me where they were taking me.”
”If they told you that it was I you were to meet you'd naturally begin to plan what you were going to say. I've found over the years I gain more information from spontaneous discussions. I haven't slept much, so let's get this over with.” He rubbed his long fingers against his thigh as if trying to ma.s.sage life into it. His navy blue slacks matched his polo s.h.i.+rt. Black velvet slippers with gold embroidered crests added a hint of Old World decadence to his outfit.
A door opened near the dining room table and a young man with teak-colored skin and glistening black hair entered. He wore a white polo s.h.i.+rt and khakis.
”What would you like to drink after your journey?” Parson asked me.
”Nothing.”
”Same here,” Parson said to the young man, then turned to Heath. ”You?”
”No.”
”Please, sir, eat something.”
”I can't, Luis. Leave us.”
Frowning with concern, Luis drifted out, closing the door.
”Do you still wish to stand, Ms. Poole?”
”I wish to be taken back to my house.”
”Not until we talk.”
”He just wants to know what happened to his daughter,” Heath said. ”Make it easy on yourself.”
I relented and sat down, crossing my legs. Parson stroked his goatee, a ghost of a connoisseur's leer playing on his dry lips as he took in my body. Heath s.h.i.+fted his weight.
I focused on the red garden roses exploding from a vase on the coffee table and wondered what kind of power this man had that he was able to force Zaitlin to cancel our meeting, if there really had been one. There was no doubt Parson was a grieving father. But he was also surrounded by armed thugs, and that made him a very dangerous grieving father. I decided to ask a few questions myself.
”How were you able to get Zaitlin to cancel my meeting? Do you control him in some way?”
”I like an intelligent woman. Don't you, Heath?”
”Not always.”
I ignored Heath as Parson leaned forward. ”You might say Jenny was murdered on Zaitlin's watch. He's only trying to accommodate me. And your meeting has been postponed, not canceled.”
”Yet he felt the need to send Heath with me. Why?”
”Heath owns one of Los Angeles' best investigative security firms. He is looking into Jenny's death for Zaitlin. Zaitlin will share any information he learns with me.”
Seemingly unaware he was being talked about, Heath pulled a strand of blond hair from his lapel and flicked it onto the floor. It was mine.
”I thought it might be because of all the heavily armed men you have surrounding you.” Not waiting for an answer, I continued. ”Where is Jenny's mother? Doesn't she want to know what happened to her daughter?”
The deep lines around Parson's mouth twitched. ”You really want to make this difficult, Ms. Poole?”
”After what you've put me through, it's only fair you should answer some of my questions first.”
He let out a heavy sigh. ”My wife, her mother, is at our Montecito home. She's devastated and under sedation. When I married her she was just twenty and I was forty-five. Now she's forty-five. Jenny was our only child. My wife blames me for her death because I let her move to Los Angeles to work.” He paused, considering. ”Are you worried about your friend Ryan Johns?”
I tensed. ”How did you know we were friends?”
”It's what I do. Knowledge of people is important in my business. But I never harm people who owe me money. What's the point? Unless, of course, he's involved in my daughter's death.”
”What is your business?”
”I'm an investor.”
He tapped the crown of his diamond-encrusted Rolex. Even Parson with his self-created, Old World, upper-cla.s.s trappings couldn't resist some major bling. ”It's getting late. There won't be any more questions unless I ask them.” Like a bony pasha, he settled back into the abundant pillows and stretched his long thin arms across the back of the sofa as if to receive grapes or s.e.x or both. ”I'm waiting for my information, Ms. Poole.”
If he had been another kind of father I would have been kinder in my a.s.sessment of Jenny. But I decided for him I would be brutally honest. ”Jenny couldn't remember her lines, so Zaitlin asked me to go over them with her.”
”Are you saying my daughter came to the set unprepared?”
”Yes.”
”That doesn't sound like Jenny.”
”Maybe you don't know much about her. The night before she was murdered ...”
”That would be last Monday?” Heath asked.
”Yes. The day I met you,” I said pointedly, then I turned back to Parson. ”I talked with Jenny in her trailer. She couldn't make it through her scenes without forgetting her lines. She ran off the set. Zaitlin had to call a wrap. Jenny was costing the production time and money.”
He shook his head. ”Jenny would never behave that way.”
”But she did.”
Parson paused. ”What did you two talk about in her trailer?”
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