Page 16 of The Perfect Accomplice

“If you were doing your job properly, you would be looking at people in her circle in that Hollywood Hills neighborhood. They’re a nasty lot, all plotting and backbiting. I told her many a time that she should move. Have you even looked into possible connections between Erin and the other victim, the wife of that Hollywood movie man?” She said that last sentence with complete disdain.

“That’s our next stop,” Jessie informed her.

“May I suggest you go there now rather than spend your time harassing an elderly woman.”

“You may suggest whatever you like,” Jessie replied, her tone saccharine sweet. “But before we do that, I do have one question. And I hope that at your advanced age—56, I believe—you’ll be able to handle it. Where were you last night between 6 p.m. and midnight?”

Podemski smiled back at her, and this time it felt genuine. She seemed to admire how Jessie not only didn’t back down but gave as good as she got.

“So this is the alibi portion of our chat?” she wondered.

“It is,” Jessie told her.

"Very well. Last night, I was at the annual Pasadena Women's Society Holiday Gala. I'm on the board of the Society and made a short speech. The event began at eight and ended around 11 p.m. I showed up early to prep, probably around 6:45. I left immediately after the concluding comments and returned here. I was in bed before midnight. There are about two hundred people who can confirm my presence. I'll give you the entire list of attendees if you like so they can confirm to you that I was there and not. . . off killing Erin."

For the first time since their arrival, Jessie heard a slight hitch in the woman’s voice, as if the reality of her daughter’s passing had finally hit her in a deeper way than she’d allowed up to that point.

“That would be very helpful,” Jessie said, standing up and handing over a card with Jamil’s info. “This is our head of research. Please send the list to him and he’ll follow up.”

“I’ll do it right away,” Podemski said, standing up and taking the card. “Now unless you have additional questions that cast aspersions on my general parenting or love for my daughter, I’ll ask you to get the hell off my property so I can mourn in peace.”

Jessie and Ryan started down the porch steps without another word to the woman. When they were far enough away that he thought he couldn’t be heard, Ryan muttered “so I guess it’s back to Hollywood to look into Sydney Ashe’s murder.”

“Unless you think we should cuff Elaine and drag her into the station?” Jessie whispered back. She didn’t say it, but she was annoyed that Ryan had sent them down a path that made the entire interview a confrontation from nearly the start.

“Hey,” he said, noting her tone, “you pushed just as hard as I did.”

“You didn’t leave me much choice,” she replied.

He looked like he wanted to respond but the sound of Elain Podemski slamming the front door behind them made him reconsider and they made the rest of the walk back to the car in silence.

CHAPTER NINE

Kat knew she should let it go, but she just couldn’t.

Otherwise, why would she be at the hospital again?

She should have been basking in the satisfaction of getting $3000 for less than six total hours of work. After all, the Craig Hartley case had gone about as well as she could have hoped. When she provided audio evidence of his affair to the man’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, along with video showing his prostitute mistress arriving at and leaving the motel earlier this morning, Claire Hartley had written her a check on the spot.

And yet, Kat couldn’t seem to take the win. As she sat in the waiting room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, preparing to be escorted back to the nurses’ station—which was as far as she was allowed to go these days—she considered how much things had changed recently.

She had been here over forty times in the two months that Ash Pierce was in a coma, and another five times in the two weeks since she woke up. They'd never actually spoken, of course.

Neither the police nor the prosecutors would allow that. In fact, had the higher ups in either the LAPD or the district attorneys' office known that nurses and uniformed officers had been allowing her to visit Pierce on a near-daily basis when she was comatose, they would have lost it. Luckily, no one had spilled those beans.

The staff had taken pity on Kat, sympathetic to the fact that Pierce had tortured her and, on two separate occasions, nearly killed her. Perhaps they'd figured that because Kat had used CPR to save Pierce after that second failed murder attempt, she was not a threat to the assassin. But now that Pierce was awake, that assumption seemed naïve, and they wouldn't even let her within sight of the woman. In fact, Kat knew she was lucky to even be allowed on the same floor.

One of the friendliest nurses in the secure wing of the ICU, a blonde twenty-something named Jenny, came into the waiting room and motioned for Kat to follow her. She didn’t say anything until they were alone, walking down the hallway to the unit.

“How are things going today?” Kat asked.

“Big doings here,” Jenny said caustically. “There was a court-appointed psychiatrist brought in to interview her. This is the third one since she woke up. The doctors for the prosecutor and defense have already come by. I’m sure this one will come to a definitive conclusion that will satisfy everyone.”

“You’re not filling me with confidence, Jenny,” Kat said as they pushed through the doors and rounded the corner to the nurses’ station.

"Look, what can I say," the nurse replied with a shrug. "Pierce maintains that she has no recollection of anything that happened to her since her time in the military. She claims not to know who you are, who Hannah Dorsey is, or who Jessie Hunt is. And she certainly hasn't admitted knowing what's her name, the crazy girl who hired her to kill you and Hannah last summer."

“Zoe Malone,” Kat replied, referring to the disturbed young woman who had tried to poison hundreds of people at a crowded movie theater before getting caught by Jessie and subsequently hiring Pierce to get payback against her loved ones.

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