Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Sidekick. Purrfect Deseit. Purrfect Ruse [calibre 5.14.0]

“And why is that?” asked Chase, who, like Odelia, was seated on a bean bag and trying to find a comfortable way to sit, which unfortunately was quite impossible. The entire studio was decorated in hobo chic style, with portraits of dead poets adorning the walls, and plenty of symbols for weed. The studio smelled of weed, too—a pervasive smell.

“Darryl was a raver and a DJ. It was what he lived for. And smoking weed and popping pills was part of the deal, unfortunately. He must have been baked out of his mind when he stumbled down that shaft.” She gave Chase a curious look. “You’re sure he was alone?”

“What do you mean?”

“He wasn’t with some girl?”

“You mean…”

“Darryl was something of a playboy, never happy to stick with one girl.”

“You’re saying he was unfaithful to you?” asked Odelia.

Lucy nodded, her fingers twitching as if holding a cigarette. “It was the reason I kicked him out last month.”

“Oh, so you weren’t a couple anymore?”

“No, I caught him cheating on me with some pink-haired teenager. It wouldn’t surprise me if she wasn’t even of age.”

Odelia cut a quick glance to her husband. “Do you happen to remember her name?”

“Um… Suzy something?”

“Suzy Bunyon?”

“Could be. I didn’t pay attention. She wasn’t the only one, by the way. Darryl would find himself a new girl every week. He’d hit on anything with a skirt at the raves he liked to attend. In fact that’s where we met. Only he’d convinced me I was the one, and for a while I believed him. But that didn’t last long.” She glanced up at the ceiling. “About six months or so? And then I discovered he’d been cheating on me all this time, his latest conquest this Suzy person, but there had been others, I’m sure.”

“Is there any reason you can think of why he’d be at a deserted construction site in the middle of the night?” asked Chase.

“Not really. It wasn’t the kind of place where he’d organize one of his raves, if that’s what you mean.”

“Where did he organize his raves?”

“Lately the place to be was the woods just outside Hampton Cove. You probably know where. You head in the direction of Happy Bays and then you turn left just beyond the town sign. We’ve been partying there the last couple of months now. Though mainly Darryl, not me. I have a job, you see. I can’t stay up all night and then expect to be able to work all day. But he was out there every night as far as I know.”

“The woods, huh,” said Chase, jotting down a note.

“Yeah, Darryl was an ace DJ. He knew just how to whip a party into a frenzy. That’s what made him so popular with the girls, I guess. I know it’s what made him popular with me,” she added ruefully. “I figured he was some kind of God when we first met.”

“And why was that?” asked Odelia. “What made him so popular?”

She shrugged. “At a rave the DJ is God. That’s just how it is.”

“So that was his job? Being a DJ at these raves?”

“If you can call it a job. Nobody paid him. In fact Darryl was as poor as a church mouse. Poorer, probably. It was another reason I kicked him out. It took me a while, but then I realized I was dating a loser. It became obvious to me he’d never amount to anything. He had no goals, no ambitions, except to party all night, every night.”

Odelia glanced around, and she caught sight of a nice new mountain bike. “Is that yours?” she asked.

“Nah, that’s Darryl’s. I told him to clear out and take his junk with him, but he hadn’t gotten round to it yet.” She sighed. “That’ll teach me to date a DJ.”

“Do you know of anyone who might have held a grudge against Darryl?” asked Chase.

“A grudge? I thought you said he had an accident.”

“Just one of those things we have to ask,” said the dutiful cop.

“I don’t think he had enemies,” said Lucy with a frown. “I mean, everybody loved him, you know. He was Mister Popular. A loser, and broke, but Mr. Popular all the same.”

“Thanks, Lucy,” said Odelia finally, when no more questions occurred to her or Chase.

“What do you want me to do with his stuff?”

“Can’t you give it to his parents?”

“I never met his parents. I don’t even know who they are.”

“I’ll tell them to get in touch with you,” Chase suggested. “You can arrange for them to come and pick up Daryl’s stuff.”

“I guess that’s all right,” said Lucy as she dragged herself up from her own bean bag and shook Odelia and Chase’s hands. Then she glanced down at Max and Dooley. “Do you always take your cats along with you, Miss Poole?”

“Yeah, they like to follow me around,” said Odelia with a smile.

“Just like Darryl,” said Lucy wistfully. “He liked to follow me around everywhere. Until he met the other girl. I guess he started following her around, and look where it got him.”

Chapter 20

Dooley and I were fortunate enough to be able to follow Odelia and Chase around as they talked to this and that person. Now I know talking to suspects and witnesses and generally conducting what is termed a police investigation isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but it just so happens it’s my cup of tea, and lucky for me it’s Dooley’s cup of tea, too.

I’m not sure why I enjoy it so much, for a large portion of these interviews simply consist of digging into people’s private lives and eliciting all kinds of little-known clues as to their personal existence. So maybe that’s it: I’m simply one of those nosy individuals who like to know everything about other people, and Dooley is exactly the same way. It’s probably why he loves watching those daytime soaps so much. Basically soaps give you a peek into people’s personal lives, even though those people are all larger than life, and their lives a lot more interesting than the lives of regular folks.

At any rate, Odelia’s and Chase’s investigations had taken us to a man named Todd Park, who had been called the head raver by Darryl Farmer’s former girlfriend. In fact Mr. Park was the organizer of those raves that her ex-boyfriend liked to DJ at so much.

I had expected Mr. Park to live in a dump, but in actual fact he lived in a neat little condo in a new development near the beach. From his balcony we even had a very nice view of that same beach, and the ocean, and I noticed the presence of a pair of binoculars on a wrought-iron table indicating that Todd liked to keep an eye out for possible drowning victims—or girls dressed in string bikinis, as the case may be.

Todd wasn’t a young man. In fact I would have put him closer to fifty than forty, but he was probably young at heart, or at least liked to present himself that way. He was dressed in designer jeans, designer T-shirt depicting a stylized weed symbol, and designer sneakers, and with his long ponytail and neatly trimmed beard he looked more like the owner of a Silicon Valley startup than a ‘head raver,’ whatever that was.

“So you knew Darryl well,” said Odelia. We were all seated in the nice salon of Todd’s neat condo, the humans on leather couches and Dooley and me on the hardwood floor.

“Yeah, Darryl was my right-hand man,” said Todd, who looked actually stricken at the news that his friend had died. “He was a great DJ and him and me set up Rave Central together three years ago or something. He thought the kinds of clubs he used to play were charging people through the nose, and wanted to offer a cheaper alternative for people who lived to party—our kind of people. And that’s when Rave Central was born. We organized our parties in empty factories, under bridges, in houses targeted for demolition, cargo boats, and of course out in the woods, when the weather permitted.”