Cracked by Barbra Leslie Page B

told me.”
    Darren looked tired. “I heard Miller say something about Fred maybe having an affair. Maybe he wanted to take the boys and start a new life, and this Fake Danny is his girlfriend. I don’t know,” he finished. It all seemed so implausible. Fred?
    “Why? Why would they kill Ginger? Why not just get a fucking divorce if that was the case?”
    “Money. Fred’s rich. It’s California. Ginger gets half of everything. Would have gotten.” Darren wiped his hands clean of sugar, over and over, obsessively. He shrugged. “I don’t believe it either, in case you’re wondering. But I don’t know.”
    “Oh,” I said. “Oh.” We were quiet for a minute. I felt a wave of nausea, and waited for it to pass before I spoke.
    “But, Danny,” Darren said. “They have Fred’s DNA. In her,” he finished.
    “I know.” I felt sick. “But he was her husband. They must have had sex before she went off to meet her killers. They must have.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “Right, and in the absence of any other suspects…”
    “The police really had no choice but to arrest Fred,” I said. “I think somebody must be framing him. And they kidnapped the kids to get more money or something.”
    “And taking the boys from the house would have been a lot harder than taking them from a setting where they’re all together, and no one knows them,” Darren continued. “This place is always crawling with people.”
    “I noticed,” I said. Other than Rosen and Marta, there was Driver Derek, and a gardener was buzzing around out back.
    Something else was bothering me. Too many pieces didn’t make sense yet, but there was something bigger that was just out of my reach. Crack brain. Too many integral synapses which no longer fired.
    “And the fake suicide note to you, they figure—”
    “Yeah,” I interrupted. “I already thought of that. Anyone knowing them would know that Ginger loved her family. And if anybody did research on us, I would be the easiest target to be involved in something messy. Maybe they’d think I had something to do with it, put them off the scene for a bit. Or something,” I finished.
    Darren stood and stretched. He really did look done in. “Probably, Beanpole. Likely. But still, it doesn’t make total sense.”
    “No,” I agreed. “I mean, not to be too, you know… self-aggrandizing…”
    “Self-aggrandizing,” Darren said. “Good one.”
    “Thank you.” Thank God for cocaine and food. I marvelled that I could sound almost normal. Inside, I was howling in pain. “Anyway, really, aside from being a fuck-up and all, why me? I mean, you’re a musician. You’re – I mean, you were – close to Ginger. Musicians get up to all sorts of shit.”
    Darren shrugged. “Have you fucked anybody over recently?”
    “Other than myself?”
    “Obviously.” Darren did a couple of jumping jacks, one of his staying awake tactics.
    I thought. “No. Not other than a couple of pissant drug dealers to whom I owe pocket change.”
    “Pocket change?” Detective Miller was standing in the doorway, probably having stood outside listening to our whole conversation.
    “Arrest me,” I said, pouring myself more coffee. “You must have known I was an addict.”
    “How much money do you owe?” Miller wanted to know. He grabbed the last churro. Bastard.
    “Couple grand?” I said. I wasn’t sure. “About fifteen hundred to one guy, a few hundred to another. Nothing major.”
    “That’s relative,” Miller said.
    “It would cost more than that to plan this sort of shit, let alone carry it out,” I said. “Jesus. My guys are scumbag drug dealers, not evil criminal masterminds. This isn’t Pablo Escobar we’re talking about here.”
    Miller grabbed a little notebook out of his inside suit pocket and slid it, along with a pen, across the counter to me. “Their names, numbers, and anything else you can tell me about them.”
    “No,” I said.
    “Excuse me?” Darren said. “Why not,