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Julia decided there wasn’t time to interview Helen, and had Mason drive her home before giving her an hour or two to feed Phil and run a few personal errands. She’d insisted on Mason returning for dinner and further instructions, and as the young woman headed back up the hill, she realized that she was bad-tempered, low blood sugared and emotionally hungover from all the peopling she’d had to do. She was deeply displeased to be hailed as she passed through the hall. Sighing, she went into the office and saw Julia had company.

“Casper, this is Mason.” Julia waved her hand in an all-encompassing gesture. “Right?”

He nodded. “Oh yes, I totally see it.” Casper was at least eighty and looked like a cartoon turtle in a hat. He rose and bowed low to Mason, an abasement that wasn’t really necessary as he barely reached her sternum standing on his tippy-toes.

“See what?” Mason raised one eyebrow and looked over at Will, who was sitting quietly with a pad on his knee. He grinned at her.

“Your natural charm and surfeit of ‘fuck you’ energy,” replied Casper. “Julia had a lot of good things to say about you, and that is a rare enough event that I absolutely had to meet you.” He beamed up at her. “I understand you’ve been running around all day. You’re probably overtired and hungry right now.”

Julia looked at Mason. “Go to the kitchen and grab something to eat. But hurry. Casper was about to tell us who killed Tony.”

“I think it was you.” The turtle sat back down and folded his hands like napkins in his lap. “I think this whole investigative lawyer thing is simply a very long plan to kill Tony and take over the studio.”

Mason closed the door on Julia and Will’s laughter.

“Casper?” Claudia nodded. “One of Julia’s oldest friends. Since before jail, before Jonathan even, I think. They came up together, helped each other out. He was the entertainment editor for the LA Times , back in the day, and then at Variety . There isn’t much that gets past him, even these days.” She was making Mason a sandwich, with the efficient movements and flashing implements of a short-order cook. Couldn’t have been more than two minutes before a grilled cheese hit the plate. “He lived in one of the guesthouses for a while in the nineties, too. Once you’ve lived here, the door never really closes.” She put the sandwich on a tray along with a plate of small yellow cakes, a classic silver moka coffeepot of espresso and a half-pint of…

Mason stared. “Are those Twinkies? And is that scotch?”

Claudia snorted. “They’re like Twinkies, but I make them from scratch. They’re Casper’s favorite. And yes, that’s scotch, to go in his coffee. Is that OK?” She frowned at Mason. “Casper is a creature of habit, but I can tell him we’re out.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m good.” She looked over at Ben Sharp, who was sitting by the kitchen fireplace, reading a book. “Hi there—did you go see Becky today?”

The young man nodded. “She was better than I expected.” He smiled. “She said a pushy girl came and yelled at her. I assume that was you?”

Mason nodded. “Julia’s going to help her. When does she get out?”

“Tomorrow morning.” He smiled, somewhat confusedly. “Julia Mann is letting us stay here, totally for free.”

Mason made a face. “Well, she’s not likely to charge you, is she? It’s not a hotel.”

“No, but it’s very nice of her.”

Mason picked up the tray and turned to go back to the office. “I know. She’s a weird one. A combination of mother hen and some kind of prehistoric murder bird with giant claws.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that,” said Claudia. “?‘Weird’ is one of those words she doesn’t like. She’d much rather you called her a bitch.”

“Well, that also fits.” Mason headed out. She was painfully aware that the bottle of scotch was inches from her hand. She was bent out of shape, tired and hungry, but she put a lot of faith in the grilled cheese. Hopefully, Casper would drink fast.

She put the tray down, took her sandwich to a distant corner of the sofa and settled down. Then she got up to get a pad and pen. Then she went back to the kitchen to get herself a cold Coke. Then she returned and sat down again.

Julia regarded her quizzically. “You good, Mason?”

Mason nodded, her mouth full of sandwich. Come on, blood sugar.

Casper opened the scotch and poured it into the espresso. The crunching sound of the cap twisting free and open made the hair on the back of Mason’s neck stand up. She chewed her sandwich and looked at her shoes. Casper poured half the bottle into his coffee and added some heavy cream. The smell of the Irish coffee drifted across the room, molecules of whiskey hitting Mason’s nose like tiny elbows.

Casper lifted one of the Twinkies and took a bite. He sighed and clicked his heels together three times.

“There’s no place like home…”

Then he swallowed, smiled and turned to face Julia. His little black eyes glinted like a sparrow evaluating the earliness of the worm.

“So, if you didn’t kill Tony, who did?”

She shrugged. “Beats me, Casper.” Mason noticed she still looked relaxed, but her eyes were as sharp as her friend’s. “Not that I need an excuse to see you, but that’s why I called. What am I missing?”

“I doubt you’re missing much, but let’s review. Are we thinking about who could have, or who wanted to?”

“Either is fine. Just tell me your thoughts.”

The old man curled up, looking even more like a turtle, but also like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland . “Substantiated, or not?”

“Jesus, quit the caveats, won’t you? Spill it.”

Casper leaned forward and helped himself to another pseudo-Twinkie. After a moment of blissful chewing, he leaned back on the sofa and gazed at the ceiling. “Starting way back. There was the Jack Simon and David Paul thing: David almost getting Jack thrown off The Codex set and blackballing him around town. I mean, actors are temperamental at the best of times, but those two really got into it.”

Julia frowned. “Really? That’s the second time Jack’s name has come up this week. Will, didn’t you have something about that?”

Will flipped back through his notes. “Yes, bank records show that Tony was paying Jack Simon a moderate sum of money every month, ever since The Codex . We’re looking into it.”

Julia made a face. “Well, I can’t imagine Jack or David actually care about what happened thirty-plus years ago, although I’d like to know what the money is all about.”

“Jack might care. David certainly doesn’t; he might not even remember. I do know he got married in 1972 and divorced in 1973, and when he met his ex-wife five years later he didn’t remember her at all.”

“He’d forgotten her name?” Mason was eating her sandwich and still smelling the scotch. Three years of continuous sobriety and counting.

“He’d forgotten her existence . He didn’t even know he’d been married; he only discovered it when he asked his accountant why he was paying Jessica Paul three grand a month, and the guy told him she was his ex-wife, and he was paying her so she wouldn’t tell the press that he hadn’t been able to get an erection the entire time they were married.” Casper chuckled. “Cheap at the price, considering his image.”

Mason shook her head. “So what happened with him and Jack Simon?” She turned to Julia. “This was during filming of The Codex , right?”

Casper nodded. “They got into it over some girl on set, and David wanted Jack fired, and would have succeeded if Tony hadn’t stepped in to protect him. Tony and Jack had always been thick as thieves, had known each other long before either became successful. As it was, Jack never really worked again, in large part because the David camp started a whispering campaign that he was an unreliable diva.”

“Which he wasn’t.” Julia was clearly not buying this argument. “Move on, Casper. This is all ancient history, and I can’t see how either of these men would wish Tony harm.”

The journalist took a long swallow of his coffee and settled more deeply into the sofa. “You forget, Julia, wars are fought over ancient history.” She snorted at him. “Let’s think. Tony got into a legal dispute with Paramount in the eighties, and a dozen people lost their jobs. What about that?”

Julia shook her head. “No. Executives are venal and shallow, but they can’t be bothered to kill people. They might hire someone to kill someone, but they wouldn’t do it themselves. Besides, getting fired from one studio and hired by another is simply a warm-up exercise in this town.”

“How do we know this wasn’t a hired killer?” Mason was trying to keep up, but she kept writing down suspects and then having to cross them off.

Julia said, “The dumped gun. Too sloppy. Too obvious. Professionals bring their own kit and take it with them.”

“And why kill Tony here?” Mason continued. “Why not at the studio or at his own house?”

“Maybe they were after Julia the whole time,” said Casper. “Maybe you were the intended victim and they just got Tony by accident.”

Julia snorted. “Then why am I still here? I was hammered; it wouldn’t have been that hard to shoot me. They could have walked up and pressed the bullet in with their fingers.”

Casper giggled, and finished the first cup of coffee. He poured a second and went to add in the rest of the scotch when he noticed Mason watching him. “Sorry, did you want some?”

She shook her head. “I’m good, thanks.” She could feel the food starting to work, her mood slowly stabilizing. She knew exactly how much scotch was in the bottle and how it would feel on her tongue, but she could handle it.

“There was talk that Tony borrowed money from organized crime to start the studio. Maybe there’s something there?” He paused, made a face. “Mind you, everybody did, and Tony got along fine with everyone, regardless of their background. He didn’t make that many enemies, which is surprising for someone with so much power.” He continued eating the second Twinkie. “How about his first wife?”

“Delia? Delia’s alive and well and living in Arizona.”

“No, his first wife.”

Julia frowned at him. “Casper, you’re losing it. Delia was Tony’s first wife. I was at their wedding.”

Casper laughed. “Sure, the first wife he publicly married. But he was married way earlier than that, darling; married and divorced and all hushed up.”

Mason and Julia waited, but the old man just smiled a pussycat smile at them. Julia snapped first. “Casper, for fuck’s sake, spit it out.”

With great glee, Casper leaned forward. “And here’s me thinking there was nothing you didn’t know, Julia. For three months in 1976, Tony was married to Maggie Galliano.”