“Good. Then do a direct cross-reference—Michael Bell and anyone else connected to this case. I wonder if he had a bigger agenda than just his wife. Find out anything you can, surfer boy. All we need for now is enough to justify holding him once LAPD gets him into custody.

“Jeanne, listen, please. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I say figure it out later and get a cruiser over to Michael Bell’s house. Now. And, Jeanne.”

“What?”

“Don’t go over there by yourself. I’m pretty sure that Bell is our killer.”

Chapter 116

Chapter 116

SUDDENLY THE WHOLE CASE was on fire again.

About ten miles from the hospital, I pulled over at the first gas station I saw, an ancient Texaco with a flying A over the roof. A Ford F-150 pulled in after me, but the only other building in sight was a darkened sugarhouse in a field directly across the road. I could see a couple of Holsteins grazing in the field.

I called Karl Page again from another pay phone. I needed to hear what he’d found out about Michael Bell.

At this late hour, catching a flight out of Burlington seemed unlikely; I wanted to stay updated all the same, and was concerned for Page and Jeanne Galletta. Who knew what Bell was up to in L.A.

“What have you got so far?” I asked him.

“Amazing what you find when you look in the right place,” he said. “Before she died, Marti Lowenstein-Bell had just sold her own show to HBO. She was hotter than a fifty-dollar pistol. On the other hand, Michael Bell’s last three solo projects went nowhere. His only big successes had been with her, and it looked like she was checking out. She was divorcing him, Alex. They hadn’t yet filed, but a friend of hers knew it was coming.”

“What did you say to me once? Cha-ching?”

“Yeah, and the hits keep coming. LAPD checked Bell’s alibis all right, but they all revolved around his being seen at work, or occasionally at home. Alex, the alibis aren’t going to hold up. And listen to this, Arnold Griner seriously trashed more than one of Bell’s movies when he wrote for Variety. Griner actually called him ‘Michael Bomb’ in one column, that kind of thing. Of course, in Griner’s case it might be justifiable homicide. Antonia Schifman? She backed out of a project that Bell was financing himself last year. Apparently after she gave him a verbal promise, which seems to mean next to nothing out here. The whole thing fell apart, and he lost a half million in development.”

I could hear the adrenaline in Page’s voice. He was like a greyhound at the gate. “I’ll bet anything there’s more,” he said. “Bell’s career was headed down the crapper, and he was going to bring everyone down with him.”