Page 15 of The Perfect People

“Richard Vance,” she said. “But everybody calls him Richie Boy.”

Jessie turned to Breem, who had a knowing look on his face.

“Thanks, Linda. Why don’t you hang here for a minute?” she said, before motioning for Susannah and the police sergeant to join her in a secluded corner of the courtyard.

“Have you heard of this guy?” she asked him.

“I have,” he said. “We brought him in a few times for being drunk and disorderly. He was even charged with assault for going after a guy in a bar down in Redondo Beach last year, but he beat the rap. I knew he was a lothario but I didn’t realize it was a vocational type of thing.”

“I guess we need to find out if his work involved Shasta Mallory and if he can account for his whereabouts last night,” Susannah said.

“The best person to ask the first question is probably her assistant, Paisley,” Jessie said. “Any chance she’s still here?”

“Funny thing,” Breem said, “after being so anxious to get out of here, she ended up crashing hard on that bed in the guest room.”

“I guess it was all the stress,” Jessie said.

“Let me check on her status,” Breem said, pulling out his radio. “Timms, is Paisley Sorrento still asleep in the upstairs guest room?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Timms answered, “for over an hour now.”

Breem looked at Jessie and Susannah questioningly, waiting for instructions.

They gave them in unison.

“Wake her up.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“She’s dead, Paisley,” Susannah said with her typically direct bedside manner, “it’s not like she can fire you for violating her confidentiality.”

Jessie stood next to the detective who was hovering over the bed where Paisley Sorrento was still lying down, shaking off the cobwebs from her mid-afternoon nap. The young woman had protested that revealing anything about her boss’s personal life would be a violation of the nondisclosure agreement she signed when she was hired.

“Listen,” Jessie said gently, sitting down on the bed in the hopes of changing the combative dynamic her partner was in the process of creating, “we get it. Shasta might not have been the nicest person in the world, but she gave you a job and a shot and you don’t want to reveal her secrets just hours after she died, right?”

Paisley nodded as she sat up in the bed, taking a sip of water from the bottle on the bedside table. Jessie could feel Susannah’s irritation at the delay without even looking at her but proceeded as if she was unaware of it.

“That’s a completely understandable reaction,” she confided, “and a very human one. But in this situation, it’s the wrong instinct. That agreement isn’t legally relevant anymore. Think about it, Paisley. It was designed to protect Shasta’s reputation, but she’s not here anymore. There’s no reputation to protect. Like Detective Valentine said, she can’t fire you. She’s not going to sue you. On the contrary, holding back could actually do her harm. We’re trying to find her killer. Don’t you think that if you had information that could help us find out who choked the life out of her, she’d want you to give it to us, even if it cast her in an unflattering light? It’s not like people in the music industry thought she was pure as the driven snow, am I right?”

She had watched Paisley’s reservations fade as she spoke to the point that by the time she finished, she knew the woman would help. She was glad because, while they could have compelled her assistance, it just would have taken longer and been more unpleasant. This way they could get the answers they needed fast and from someone who wasn’t holding vital details back.

“What do you need to know?” she asked.

Jessie looked up at Susannah, who looked like a racehorse at the starting gate, raring to go.

“What was the nature of Shasta’s relationship with Richard Vance?” the detective asked.

Paisley sighed and blew a strand of red hair out of her eyes, before leaning back against the headboard of the bed.

“He went by Richie,” she said. “Shasta told me she met him at some beach festival concert thing earlier this summer, like sometime after Memorial Day. There was some Fleetwood Mac cover band playing and they bonded over that. They ended up hooking up back here that night. And again the next night.”

“She told you all of this?” Jessie asked, surprised.

“She told me pretty much everything,” Paisley said. “Because of the nondisclosure agreement, she knew I wouldn’t repeat it, and because she was such a workaholic, she didn’t really have any close friends to speak of, so who else was she going to confide in?”

“Okay,” Jessie told her, “go on.”

“Anyway, next thing I know, he’s shacking up with her and I’m supposed to pick up his dry cleaning and make tanning appointments for him,” Paisley said, shaking her head at the memory. “Shasta started taking him to events, like album release parties and private artist performances and stuff. She was really smitten.”

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