The Big Sheep Read online

  “Whoops,” said Keane. “Our transponder seems to have malfunctioned. How will the LAPD ever find us?”

  “Oh God,” I moaned. “You hacked the transponder? Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ll be in if they catch you?”

  “The amount of trouble I’ll be in is inversely proportional to the odds I’ll get caught.”

  “That’s not as reassuring as you probably think it is,” I said. It wouldn’t take the LAPD long to pinpoint our last known location and scramble up a couple of cruisers to find us. We needed to beat them, and quick. But Keane continued his slow bank to the right, around the back of the building, watching the limo pull up to the door. Red and blue lights flashed on the horizon.

  “Keane,” I said.

  “I see them,” he said. “We’ll have to circle back.”

  A driver got out of the limo and opened the rear door facing the entrance to the studio.

  “Looks like he expects someone pretty soon,” I said. “We’re going to lose him if we circle back.”

  “Good point,” he said. “I’m going to need a spotter.”

  I nodded. I didn’t like the idea, but on the plus side at least I wouldn’t be in the car when Keane got pulled over.

  Keane banked sharply to the right and then straightened out over the alley that ran alongside the studio building. He deployed the flaps, and the car’s wings rotated just over a quarter turn, using the jet thrust to brake while slowing our descent. The wheels folded out of the undercarriage a breath before we hit. Then the wings flattened out, and the extensions folded up, making the car more maneuverable on the ground. Keane hit the thrust again, and we rocketed down the alley, now on wheels. He braked hard as we approached the street, and I threw my door open. “Good luck!” I yelled, and slammed the door shut. The car squealed around the corner to the right, merging between an SUV and a Porsche.

  While Keane did his best to blend in with traffic, I raced on foot around the front of the building toward the guard station. When I was fifty feet or so away, I slowed to a walk. I was already sweaty from running around the DiZzy Girl set, and it hadn’t cooled down any in the meantime. The air was muggy and still.

  I got to the guard station and kept walking. Three police cruisers roared overhead. Hopefully Keane had gotten far enough away that they wouldn’t spot him and match the description of his car to the vehicle whose transponder had suddenly stopped functioning nearby.

  I spotted a bus stop on the other side of the street about half a block down from the guard station, so I walked to it and sat, doing my best to look inconspicuous. A few minutes later I saw the limo pulling away from the gate. It turned my direction.

  “Got ’em,” I said into my comm. “Heading southwest on Olympic.” I sure hoped that was Priya’s limo, or this was a lot of risk and running around for nothing. I also hoped the car stayed on the ground. It was an aircar, but it couldn’t legally take off in this neighborhood. If they were only going a short distance, the driver probably would remain street side rather than drive out of his way to a takeoff point.

  “Roger that,” said Keane. “Can’t risk going airborne right now, so it’s going to take a minute to get to you. Try to keep them in sight.”

  “Yeah,” I said as the limo passed the bus stop. I got up and started jogging on the sidewalk, following after the limo. It turned right again at the next intersection, and I cut through an alley to try to keep up. “Going right on Westwood,” I said.

  “Roger,” said Keane. “ETA three minutes.”

  “Three minutes? You realize I’m on foot here, Keane?”

  “Can’t be helped,” said Keane. “Try not to lose them.”

  Cursing, I sprinted down the alley and made a left. I came out on Westwood and glanced left, then right. Spotted the limo half a block down, and ran after it. I was losing ground. Traffic was amazingly light for the middle of the day, and the limo seemed to be getting one green light after another. Where was LA traffic when you needed it? I thought of hailing a cab, but I was worried that by the time I flagged one down and got in, I’d have lost the limo.

  Finally a light turned red, and I saw the limo coasting to a stop a hundred yards or so ahead. I put on a burst of speed, thinking I might actually catch up to them before the light changed. But then I heard the bark of a siren behind me and realized I was being tailed by a police cruiser. I cursed again and darted down a side street. Nothing like a grown man running at top speed in street clothes to pique the attention of the LAPD.

  The cruiser’s siren blared, and the car shot down the street after me. Traffic was on my side here. A light ahead was red, and the cars were just creeping along. The cruiser was an aircar, but it didn’t have room to safely get airborne here. I darted across the street, barely managing to avoid being hit, and ran down another alley. By the time the cop had cleared the traffic, I’d come out at the other end and turned back toward Westwood. Panting like a dog in heat, I stopped at the corner of Westwood and scanned for the limo again. For a moment I was sure I’d lost it, which was almost a relief under the circumstances, but then I spotted it stopped at another light a couple of blocks down. I groaned and took off running.

  “Can’t … keep … up…” I said, gasping into my comm. Keane didn’t respond.

  I followed for several more blocks, barely keeping the car in view. The limo made a right on Wilshire and disappeared around the corner.

  “Lost … it…” I said, continuing to gasp, and slowed to a walk. Keane still didn’t respond. “Keane,” I said after a moment. “Hear me?”

  “Palomar Hotel,” said Keane. “Get here as soon as you can.”

  I cursed and hailed a cab. The Palomar was less than a mile away, but there was no way in hell I was walking the rest of the way.

  “Palomar,” I grunted at the driver, and he obliged. Five minutes later the cab pulled in front of the hotel. I was drenched with sweat and still shaking with adrenaline. I paid the cabbie and got out.

  “You were supposed to pick me up,” I growled at Keane, who was standing beside his car in the loading area of the hotel. “That’s how this works.”

  Keane shrugged. “Figured Priya would be headed for a hotel. I got on Wilshire and followed the limo here.”

  As I watched, a limo pulled away from the curb. I was pretty sure it was the one I had been running after. “It’s getting away,” I said to Keane.

  “She already got out,” said Keane. “I’m not that interested in the limo per se.”

  “You saw her? Priya?”

  “Either Priya or someone who looked an awful lot like her.”

  “Why didn’t you stop her?”

  “I tried. She acted like she didn’t recognize me. Also, her bodyguard doesn’t seem to like people yelling at her from across the parking lot. I decided that, in this case, discretion is the better part of valor.”

  “Damn it, Keane. That’s why you have me around. If you had picked me up, I could have stopped them.”

  “If I had picked you up, I’d have missed them entirely.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But … hold on, what did her bodyguard look like?”

  “Stocky Aryan type,” Keane said.

  “Hmm,” I replied. Apparently, Priya had another bodyguard besides Roy. “So now what?”

  “We send her a message,” said Keane. “Come on.” He handed the keys to his car to an attendant and walked to the door of the hotel. I followed as he strode across the lobby to the concierge desk. He grabbed a pen and paper, scribbled something on it I couldn’t make out, folded it in half, wrote Priya Mistry on it, and then handed it to the young woman behind the desk, along with a hundred new-dollar note. “A message for one of your guests,” he said with a smile. The woman nodded, took the note, and walked away.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” said Keane. I didn’t argue.

  On the way to the hotel bar, Keane stopped in at the gift shop and bought a Dodgers T-shirt. He handed it to me. “Here,” he said. “My way of apol
ogizing for not picking you up.”

  “I hate the Dodgers,” I said. “I’m a Cubs fan.”

  “Oh,” he said. “They don’t seem to have any of those. Their selection is rather limited.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

  “Okay, tell me what you want and I’ll order. You go change.”

  “Change?”

  “You smell like a city bus,” he said. “Go put on the T-shirt.”

  “You’re paying,” I said, grabbing the shirt. “Get me a turkey sandwich.” I went to the bathroom and stripped off my shirt. Keane was right; I was getting pretty ripe. I washed my torso as best I could in the sink, dried off with paper towels, and put on the accursed Dodgers shirt. At least it was clean. I went to the bar and found Keane scarfing down a turkey sandwich.

  “What’s this?” I asked, looking at my plate.

  “Ham sandwich,” he said. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “I said turkey.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I guess I got our orders switched. Just eat it, you big baby.”

  I was hungry enough that I didn’t particularly care what was on the sandwich. I was just popping the last bite into my mouth when a black-haired woman in a jogging outfit and a baseball cap appeared at our table. Even with the oversized sunglasses, there was no mistaking her.

  “Priya,” I said.

  For a moment she didn’t say anything. She just glared at me. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out the scrap of paper with her name on it. She unfolded it and put it on the table. “What the hell is this supposed to mean?” she said. The note read:

  Meet me in the bar.

  Noogus:)

  PS I’m wearing a Dodgers shirt and eating a ham sandwich

  “God damn it, Keane,” I said.

  “Sorry,” said Keane. “I needed a Noogus.”

  Priya looked at Keane and then back at me. “How do you know about that?” she demanded. “I never told anybody.”

  “You told me,” I said. “Two days ago, in my office.”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said faintly. Then she said it three more times, more like she was trying to ward off some unspeakable evil than simply responding to my statement.

  “Here, why don’t you sit down?” I said, grabbing a chair from the next table.

  She was still shaking her head.

  “Priya,” I said firmly. “My name is Blake Fowler. This is my boss, Erasmus Keane. We’re here to help you. Please, sit down.”

  She did. She tried to hide it, but her hands were shaking. If she remembered meeting us before, she showed no sign of it.

  “You have no memory of us?” asked Keane, staring intently at her.

  Priya shrugged, her lower lip quivering. She looked like she was going to break into tears.

  “Would you like something to drink?” I asked.

  She shook her head, but then said, “Water. Please.” She looked at Keane again. “Are you really Erasmus Keane?” she asked. “The private investigator?”

  Keane nodded. Apparently, even he didn’t have the nerve to correct Priya in her current state. He flagged down a waiter and got Priya a glass of water.

  “I thought about hiring you,” she said, staring into her glass. “But it’s hard to get away. Jamie is probably looking for me right now. I don’t understand.… How did you know?”

  “Jamie,” I said. “Is that one of your bodyguards?”

  “Jamie’s my bodyguard, yes,” she said.

  I put my hand gently on hers. “Priya, we don’t have a lot of time. Mr. Keane and I are trying to get to the bottom of this, but if we’re going to help you, you have to trust us.”

  She looked at me and nodded. I saw desperation in her face.

  “I need you to do something for me, Priya,” I said. “Close your eyes and try to relax. Take deep breaths.”

  She did.

  “Okay, now I want you to think about what you were doing two days ago.”

  “I was on the set for the Prima Facie commercial,” she said, without even taking a second to think. “We wrapped the fifth one today. Seems like all I ever do anymore is commercials.”

  I shot a glance at Keane. He shrugged, apparently as puzzled as I was.

  “Where did you go after the shoot?” I asked.

  “Here. The hotel. The Palomar.”

  “Did you go out at all?”

  “No.”

  “I’m talking about this past Monday. Did you leave your hotel at all after the shoot?”

  “No.”

  “And you went directly to the hotel from the set? You didn’t stop anywhere?”

  “No!” she cried, opening her eyes. “The set, the hotel, the set, the hotel. That’s all I ever do. I’d remember if I went out. What the hell is going on? How did you know about Noogus? What is happening to me?”

  Keane nudged me, and I glanced over to see a stocky blond man with a dour expression on his face enter the bar. Presumably, Priya’s bodyguard, the one she had called Jamie.

  “Listen to me, Priya,” I said. “It’s going to be okay. Mr. Keane and I are on the case. Just act normal, and we’ll update you when we can.”

  She nodded, bewildered. The big blond man put a hand on her shoulder. “Not safe for you to be down here alone,” said Jamie. “Who are these guys?”

  “We’re huge fans,” gushed Keane. “When Ms. Mistry came in for a glass of water, I recognized her immediately. Can’t fool me with a hat and some sunglasses!”

  “Yes,” said Priya distantly. “I just needed to get some water.”

  “There’s bottled water in the room,” said Jamie. His eyes fell to the paper on the table. I doubted he could read Keane’s scribbled handwriting upside down, but I put my hand over the paper.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed. “We were so excited to actually talk to Priya Mistry that we almost forgot to get her autograph! Ms. Mistry, would you mind?”

  Keane produced a pen, and I carefully turned the paper over, refolding it to hide Priya’s name. Priya scrawled, in big round letters:

  Priya Mistry

  “Come on, Priya,” said Jamie. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” said Priya. She scribbled something else at the bottom of the paper. Then Jamie took Priya by the shoulder and escorted her out.

  “I don’t like him nearly as much as All-Grown-Up Noogus,” I said after a moment.

  “Hey?”

  “Never mind. What did she write?”

  Keane showed me the paper. Below Priya’s signature was written:

  12/25/34

  “She got the date wrong,” I mused.

  “Given her mental state, we’re lucky she got her name right,” Keane remarked.

  “I guess every day is Christmas when you’re Priya Mistry,” I said. “Keane, what the hell is going on?”

  “That,” he said, looking at his own comm screen, “is an excellent question. Don’t lose that paper. We need to get to Sherman Oaks.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What’s in Sherman Oaks?”

  “Not what,” said Keane. “Who.”

  “Fine,” I said, growing impatient. “Who is in Sherman Oaks?”

  Keane smiled. “Our sheep thief,” he said. “Hugo Díaz, back from the great beyond.”

  ELEVEN

  While I’d been at the DiZzy Girl set, Keane had been putting pieces together in the Case of the Lost Sheep. Whatever was going on with Priya, it was going to have to wait for a moment. Keane was back on the trail of the sheep, and there was no point in trying to redirect him.

  The key, he said, was Hugo Díaz’s titanium shoulder—or lack thereof. Keane related that the funeral home had no record of a prosthetic shoulder, which was enough to convince him that the body they had cremated wasn’t Díaz’s. That meant someone had produced a corpse that looked enough like Díaz to fool his wife. Keane didn’t seem to have any definitive ideas on who did it or how, but one thing was certain: they couldn’t have stolen the sheep and fa
ked his death without Díaz’s cooperation. And that meant Díaz had known about it in advance.

  “So what?” I asked. “I don’t see how that gets you to a house in Sherman Oaks.”

  “Think about it,” said Keane. “Hugo Díaz is a sexually frustrated middle-aged man desperate to escape his humdrum existence. What do men normally do in such situations?”

  “Buy a Camaro,” I said. “Or…”

  Keane smiled.

  “So he had an affair,” I said. “Probably with someone at work. But who?”

  “You met most of the people he worked with. Any likely candidates spring to mind?”

  One did, in fact. Stephanie Kemp, the plump brunette whom Keane had called “cooperative.” I couldn’t see her falling for Hugo Díaz, though. Unless …

  “He told her,” I said. It was all starting to make sense. “And you knew, didn’t you? When we interviewed her.”

  Keane shook his head. “I only knew something was off with her. She was too helpful. But I didn’t put it together until the funeral home couldn’t find the shoulder.”

  Stephanie’s excessive helpfulness, he explained, was a form of compensation—a combination of guilt about the theft and a sense of thrill of having gotten away with it. Keane was certain Stephanie didn’t have the nerve or clout to be directly involved in the theft, but he suspected she knew the culprit. Stephanie’s position afforded her only the lowest level of access to the lab, so assuming that the thief also worked there, no practical advantage could be obtained by informing her. So the question was: Why would someone spill the beans about a criminal plot to someone who couldn’t possibly help them carry it out? And the answer was the oldest explanation of seemingly inexplicable human behavior there is: to get laid. Ordinarily, Stephanie wouldn’t have given Hugo the time of day, but women like Stephanie (according to Keane) had a thing for bad boys. Stealing a genetically modified sheep from a research lab wasn’t the typical path to bad boy status, but you work with what you have.

  Keane hypothesized that if Hugo Díaz was dumb enough to tell Stephanie Kemp about the sheep plot, then he was presumably dumb enough to keep seeing her after his “death.” When the funeral home couldn’t find the titanium shoulder, Keane had instructed Pavel to watch Stephanie Kemp’s apartment in Glendale, and tail her if she went anywhere after she got home from work. While we were talking to Priya at the hotel bar, Pavel had sent Keane a message telling him he’d followed Stephanie to a house in Sherman Oaks. Pavel had parked on the street and was waiting there now.