Part 6 (2/2)
”I don't know,” she admitted. ”I didn't wait around to find out. I ran out of there as fast as I could and took the back stairs down to the gardens.” Her blue-eyed gaze locked onto mine.
”But I swear he was alive when I left, Maggie, honest!”
”I know,” I said quickly. ”But we've got to figure out what happened next. How long were you in his room?”
”I don't know . . . maybe forty-five minutes or an hour. Why?”
I bit my lip, thinking. ”Lark, you came home sometime around midnight. What did you do after you left the Seabreeze?”
”I walked along the boardwalk for a long while. I think I lost track of time. I was so upset, and you know how I like to walk to clear my head.” She pulled in a breath that fluttered on the edge of tears. ”But Detective Martino doesn't believe a word of this. He thinks I killed Guru Sanjay! The only reason he hasn't charged me yet is he doesn't have enough evidence to make the charges stick. But he's keeping his eye on me and I know he'll be back. He made it pretty clear I'm his number-one suspect.”
”We have to think this through, Lark,” I said, my a.n.a.lytical side finally kicking in. If I was going to help Lark, I had to push my emotions aside and focus on the details of the case. ”Do you know how Detective Martino connected you to the crime in the first place? Why did he zero in on you as a suspect? How did he even know you visited the guru last night?”
I wondered how much Martino had told her when he'd interrogated her, and I figured he was keeping the main details of the investigation to himself. Still, he might have given her a hint of what sort of case they were building against her. I had the horrible, sickening feeling that Lark was right. She was their prime suspect. Their only suspect.
”It was the bottle of Calming Essence,” she said, surprising me. ”That's what did it.” A mirthless smile crept across her face. ”As they say, 'No good deed goes unpunished.' If I hadn't brought it with me, none of this would have happened.”
”What in the world are you talking about?” I was flummoxed.
”You know, the gift I brought Guru Sanjay. I put it down on his dresser when I first walked into his hotel room, and then I just forgot about it. When he attacked me, all I wanted to do was get out of there fast!”
”The Calming Essence!” I said, light dawning. ”It had one of those handmade labels on it, didn't it?”
Lark nodded miserably. She does beautiful calligraphy work on handmade paper and attaches a tag to each gift bottle. With her name and address and an inspirational quote.
Bingo.
What a terrific bit of luck for Martino. He didn't have to be Adrian Monk to track her down with a clue like that staring him in the face!
”Tell me what happened down at the police station. Did you ask for a lawyer?”
She shook her head. ”No, nothing like that,” she said quickly.
”Did that detective--Martino--offer to get one for you?”
”Oh, yes, that's the first thing they told me. That I could have a lawyer and that I was free to leave anytime I wanted. Of course, they said since I hadn't done anything wrong or committed a crime, I wouldn't be needing a lawyer.”
Hmm. Clever move. Nice bit of forensic psychology at work here. I knew Martino was smart enough not to jeopardize his case by denying Lark her rights, but he wasn't going out of his way to protect her interests, either. ”So they interrogated you for a while and then let you go?”
Lark nodded, stifling a yawn. ”It seemed like hours. I told them exactly what happened, and at first they seemed to believe me.” She shook her head. ”Then another detective came in and asked me a couple of times if I'd been really angry with Guru Sanjay for coming on to me.”
”And you said--”
”I admitted that I'd been really angry and disappointed. But I certainly didn't kill him. Why would I?”
Why, indeed? I needed to know what Martino's next move was going to be. Had he accepted Lark's explanation, or was Big Jim Wilc.o.x right? Were they really focusing on Lark exclusively? It certainly looked that way.
And what about Miriam Dobosh and Olivia? Did Martino even know about their connection with the guru and what his death might mean to them? Why was he focusing on Lark and ignoring some other hot leads? And what was the cause of death? Had that been determined? It sounded like the cops knew that Guru Sanjay was the victim of foul play, but they were still hazy on the details. Or they weren't ready to show their hand just yet.
At midnight, I decided to turn in, leaving Lark and Pugsley curled up together, watching Sense and Sensibility. Ideas were flying inside my brain, but I put on a CD of Soothing Ocean Waves, snuggled under the comforter, and tried to make my mind go blank.
Tomorrow was another day, and I had a good idea where to pick up my investigation.
Chapter 9.
The next morning I called a reporter friend, Nick Harrison, from the Cypress Grove Gazetteand invited him to lunch. Nick, who is in his early twenties, covers arts and entertainment for the paper, and I'd heard he was planning a big piece on Guru Sanjay for the Sunday supplement. He's a good-looking guy, tall and athletic looking, with a boyish smile and dirty-blond hair worn on the longish side. Today he was wearing what I call Cypress Grove Casual, a snowy white golf s.h.i.+rt and pressed khakis with Reeboks.
Nick and I have sat through a couple of local press-club dinners together, and I figured meeting him for pasta would be the quickest way to get some background information on Guru Sanjay. Nick's laid-back, a nice complement to my type-A personality, and there's enough of an age difference that he thinks of me as an older sister, not potential date material.
We met at Gino's, a tiny Italian restaurant close to the station. Gino's is so much like the Italian bistro in Billy Joel's song it's almost a cliche, with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and photos of long-dead Italian opera singers lining the walls. The only thing missing is a Chianti bottle on each table, with multicolored strands of candle wax dripping down the sides. The food at Gino's is first-rate, the prices reasonable, and the service fast, so it's popular with the business crowd. After settling ourselves into one of the red leather booths and making an agonizing choice between vodka penne and fettuccine Alfredo, we got right down to business.
”Guru Sanjay was quite a piece of work,” Nick said, reaching for his icy mug of draft beer. ”I'm just getting into the story, and no one has anything good to say about him. Of course I'm saving the corporate people for later in the week; right now I'm concentrating on his personal life. The guy sounds really loathsome. I don't know how he attracted such a big following.”
”Tell me about it,” I agreed. ”I had to sit through two hours on the air with him, remember?” I sipped my mango iced tea and tried not to look enviously at Nick's frosty gla.s.s of beer. I would have joined him, but I had a show to do that afternoon.
”So what was your take on him?”
”Well, at first I couldn't see how he managed to become a New Age superstar. I guess I just didn't get his appeal. But somehow, once he was live on the air, he changed. He was like a different person. He was magnetic, almost mesmerizing. I can see how people want to believe in him, and how they're taken in by his message.”
”Sucked in, you mean,” Nick said wryly.
”Yeah, definitely sucked in. The phones were ringing off the hook. It's hard to explain; the guy has charisma. I hate to admit it, but he does. He's almost like a religious figure, a cult figure.”
”I think he tells people what they want to hear,” Nick said. ”Maybe he plays on their vulnerabilities, their insecuri ties.”
”That he does,” I agreed.
”I think I'm going to use a lot of quotes from his ex-wife in the opening of the piece,” he went on, his brown eyes soft and reflective. ”Or maybe highlight them in a sidebar. The problem is, her quotes are going to be pretty inflammatory, so I'll have to edit out the expletives.” He patted a thick file next to him on the table. ”In fact, I better run some of the material by the managing editor before I turn in my article. I don't want Sanjay Gingii, Limited, to hit us with a defamation suit--I've heard they have a crack legal team on retainer.”
”Wow, is it that bad?” I was so excited I nearly forgot my fettuccine. So the guru had an angry ex-wife, and she was ready to tell all. Was there anything here that could further my own investigation?
”Worse than you think. h.e.l.l hath no fury like a woman scorned, you know.”
”Are you telling me Sanjay left her for someone else?”
Nick nodded. ”He got involved with another woman, and the timing couldn't have been worse. He cheated on Lenore right after she made him famous. She's the one who created the whole Guru Sanjay persona, you know--the seminars, the tapes, the talks. Before he met her, he was nothing.”
The story was getting better and better. ”So he wasn't always a guru? How does someone get to be a guru, anyway?” I mused. ”I've always been puzzled about that. I wonder if it's like being a psychic or a ghost whisperer. There's no qualifying test--if you say you're one, that's it. You're in.”
The corners of Nick's mouth quirked, and I noticed a couple of girls at the next table giving him the once-over. He really did have an adorable smile, complete with dimple. ”Well, the first thing you do is latch on to someone in the motivational field who has a national audience, along with Ivy League academic credentials and some big commercial appeal. Someone with a platform. Someone like Lenore Cooper, Sanjay's ex-wife.”
”Lenore Cooper? Why does that name sound familiar?”
”Lenore is a psychotherapist, and she was the one with the big career when she first met Sanjay. And he wasn't calling himself Sanjay Gingii back then. His name was Lenny Vitter, and he spent his time selling used cars and writing bad checks back in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”
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