Page 13 of The Perfect People

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Jessie said, finally intervening. “We know you’re doing the best you can, and we’ll make do. Do you have officers keeping the witnesses separated?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “They’re being held in rooms throughout the house in groups of two and three. We’ve cordoned off a small office and Mallory’s meditation room for interrogations just in case you wanted to split them up to get to more people faster.”

“What do you think?” Jessie asked Susannah, knowing that she’d like the idea of expediting the processandwanting her to acknowledge that it came from the sergeant she’d just been needling.

“I think that’s a good plan,” she conceded reluctantly, and after Jessie glared at her, added, “Thanks for coming up with that, Sergeant Breem.”

“Not a problem,” he replied genially. “Why don’t you two pick your preferred spaces and get set up? We’ll bring folks in based on who is most awake and hope that by the time you’re done with them, the laggards will have come around.”

Jessie offered Susannah the office, mostly because she thought it would be good for witnesses being questioned by the detective to have a desk as a physical barrier between themselves and her when things got intense, as they inevitably would. The library was really just a converted walk-in closet that had book-covered shelves, with just enough room for two smallish, plush chairs and a side table with a lamp.

She was assigned a young officer named Jaquez, whose job was to stand by the door just in case any witnesses got difficult. The first of them was a young woman named Marta who lived down the Strand about a mile south in Hermosa Beach. She was in her early twenties, super-tan, with dyed blonde hair. Dangerously skinny, she was still wearing the tiny bikini that highlighted her skeletal figure.

“So you didn’t know the woman who owned the house and threw the party—Shasta Mallory?” Jessie asked, after getting her basic information.

“I didn’t even know itwasa woman,” Marta said, in a voice that was either naturally raspy or blown out from partying. “I just heard that it was kicking from some friends and showed up.”

“Do you remember when?”

“I think it was around midnight,” she said without much conviction. “We were raging pretty hard here for a few hours, then it got kind of hazy. I didn’t feel like walking all the way back to my place and needed to crash. I wanted to ask for permission but didn’t even know who to go to, so me and my friend Trista found this ratty couch in the garage and just zonked out. We got woken up by the cops this morning and told not to go anywhere. I’ve been waiting ever since.”

***

The rest of the interviews weren’t much more informative.

Over the next hour and a half, Jessie interviewed five more people. None of them had been formally invited to the party. Three of them had heard of Shasta but only one guy actually knew what she looked like. He said that he never actually saw her at the party but that he didn’t get there until close to 1 a.m. when he was already wasted and wasn’t in the headspace to be looking for the hostess to thank her for her hospitality.

When Breem brought in the seventh person, a middle-aged woman with unkempt gray hair, crinkly skin, and some serious body odor, he leaned over and whispered, “This is Mary Mary. She’s one of our neighborhood alcoholics. She’s been awake for about fifteen minutes now.”

“Mary,” Jessie said, her eyes watering, “why don’t we have this conversation on the patio?”

“It’s Mary Mary!” the woman slurred.

“Okay,” Jessie said.

As Jaquez guided the woman outside, Jessie leaned over to Breem.

“How’s Susannah doing?”

“She’s talking to her last witness right now,” he said. “I get the impression that none of them have been the holy grail of information. Have you fared any better?”

“No,” Jessie said. “But maybe Mary Mary here will change all that. Anything special I need to know about her?”

He shrugged.

“Real name is Mary Morrison but she insists on being called Mary Mary. Divorced. Hugely wealthy. Took to drinking heavily after the breakup about fifteen years ago. Has slowly deteriorated ever since. Has never committed any crimes other than public intoxication. But she doesn’tdoanything objectionable when she’s drunk, so we don’t arrest her. She just gets loaded at local bars and walks home to her incredibly nice house, where she lives alone. In this case, I guess she got loaded here and passed out last night.”

Jessie nodded and joined Mary Mary on the front patio. The woman, who was wearing cargo shorts, an untucked button-down shirt, and flip-flops, was splayed out on a patio chair with her eyes closed, soaking up the sun. Jessie sat down across from her.

“Do you know why I wanted to talk to you, Mary Mary?”

“You’re trying to find out who killed that surly shrew, Shasta Mallory.”

“Basically,” Jessie conceded. “Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”

Mary Mary opened her eyes and squinted sharply at Jessie.

“I’d hazard a guess that it was that guy who was choking her on the dance floor last night,” she replied casually, as if she was mentioning that it might get cloudy later this afternoon.

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