The Private Concierge

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“I know,” he chided. “I have a daughter. But you should know by now that I don’t have a thing for feet. Now, if you’d said earrings, that would be different. A woman’s naked lobes make the back of my neck sweat.”

“Earrings next, my love.”

“You tease.”

She laughed and was suddenly glad he’d called, even though she’d been trying desperately to close up shop and go home. She ran a private concierge service that had been growing like topsy up until very recently. But this had been another day from hell in a week of days from hell. She couldn’t believe anyone could make her laugh, but Jerry had. He always did, which was why she’d taken his call at this late hour instead of letting the service put him through to Zoe, his own private concierge.

Jerry was one of forty-five top-tier clients, who paid up to fifty thousand dollars a year for Lane’s Premiere Plan. They each had a private concierge devoted solely to their needs, who oversaw no less than six rotating concierges with different specialties, who were also at their beck and call around the clock. But Jerry wouldn’t necessarily be able to talk freely with Zoe about his very spoiled daughter—and Lane owed him so much anyway. He really was more than a mentor, much more, but not in a romantic way. They flirted a bit, but he’d never even come close to making a pass at her. Sometimes she wondered why not.

She slipped off her clip earrings and shook her head, aware of the caress of her hair, cool against her burning face. It had been a hard day, a terrible day, possibly the worst of her career. Normally she would have been frustrated at having to deal with a sweet-sixteen party when it felt as if everything she’d struggled and sacrificed for was imploding. She would have done it, though, because that was her job description. She took care of all her clients, and Jerry was a vital one.

But right now, maybe she needed one client she could actually help.

“Seriously, Jerry, you should consider saying no to Felicity.” She spoke softly, pleadingly, as she worked her kirt up, hooked her thumbs into the waistline of her ultra-stretchy Spanx and dragged them down. “I know how much you love her,” she went on, making her case as she peeled off the panty hose, “but the Bone Dawgs have a criminal record, and more important, if you don’t draw the line somewhere, Felicity will never learn to respect her limits—or others’.”

“Lane, when did you turn into Mother Superior?”

“Actually, I was trying for Dr. Phil.” So much for reasoning with Jerry. She stepped out of the Spanx and wanted to moan it felt so good. Her flesh was celebrating. Why was everything so tight? If stress caused water retention, then she was a dam about to burst. “How many are coming to this party?”

“Felicity hasn’t given me the final count, but I’m estimating half her class at St. Mary’s, which is a hundred, another twenty-five from her church group and that many again from company friends, my various clubs, colleagues and vendors.”

Lane began to calculate, adding up numbers and aware that the amounts her clients were willing to spend on lavish parties could still shock her, especially with the country’s struggling economy. Still, she had a job to do and a payroll to meet for her own employees, who now numbered several hundred around the country.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s say two hundred guests to allow for long-lost cousins, last-minute invites and party crashers. Kids love to crash these things. That’s half the fun. Does she still want the Avalon ballroom in Catalina? That means a charter cruise ship for transportation—and the talent will have to be flown in and flown out the same night, or put up at the island’s luxury condos. The guests are staying over, aren’t they?”

“Some will, I’m sure. As you said, whatever they prefer.”

She undid the button of her skirt and tugged at the silk camisole. “We’ll get a count when they RSVP. It’s good of you to be this involved, Jerry.” He could have had a personal assistant do it, or hired a party planner to work with his daughter. Most single dads with his bank account would have.

“It’s for Felicity.”

Anything less wasn’t an option. His voice said that, unequivocally. Lane could hear rap music playing on his end and smiled. At times like now, she worried how far he would go to make Felicity happy, and whether he was trying too hard to compensate for what had happened when Felicity was twelve. Her mother, Jerry’s ex-wife, had become despondent during their custody battle, knowing she was almost certain to lose custody of her child because of her drug use, and she had taken an overdose that proved fatal.

“This is going to be a great party, Jerry.” Lane walked across the carpet, bare of foot and shoulder, aware of her image flickering from the glass doors of her bookcases to the office’s wraparound windows. Her thoughts turned inward as the party unfolded in her mind. She could see revolving glitter balls, servers dressed like Bonnie and Clyde, drinks in crystal bathtub-shaped punch bowls, maybe even a fabulous antique car or two on display. It would be a twenties gangster theme, featuring a rapper band with no priors.

This was her forte, organizing and strategizing to create the client’s vision. She pulled gently on the tattered green rubber band she wore on her left wrist, calming as she took in her surroundings. She loved this office. Despite the frenetic activity during the day, at night it was an oasis of calm and monastic order. Her burlwood desk was so highly varnished the gloss could have been liquid, and the room’s muted lighting allowed her to see the bright twinkling lights of Century City, receding toward the Pacific coast.

“I’m thinking gangster theme, Jerry, but from the twenties.”

Reaching up to unbutton her blouse, she continued to ask questions and make mental notes of Jerry’s answers. It was oddly freeing walking around barefoot and taking off her clothes. She should do it more often…just strip down to nothing. She shivered as the silk blouse slid down her arms.

“Maybe a mix of past and present?” he suggested.

“Even better.”

“Lane, are you all right? You sound breathless.”

“Yes, fine. I’m changing clothes.”

“In that case, put on the videophone.”

“It’s not that exciting, Jerry, believe me. I’m changing into my sweats. I’m going to get one of my concierge staff to drive my car home, and I’m going to walk.”

“One of those days? Must have been a doozy if you’re walking home.”

“You have no idea. This day was spawned in the lowest level of hell and flung at me by the devil’s henchmen on thundering steeds.” She couldn’t give him the details. It would breach client confidentiality, but she needed to vent. She was gut-level terrified—and she rarely allowed herself to feel anything resembling fear. She controlled it with a game she’d played all her life, a silly game that worked.

“Lane, I know what’s happened to Simon Shan and Captain Crusader, if that’s what you’re talking about, and I don’t know what to say. It’s tragic. There’s been little else on the news the last couple of weeks. I have a call in to Burt, but he hasn’t returned it.”

Jerry also knew the two men were her clients because he’d referred them both, Burton Carr, the activist U.S. congressman, whom he’d affectionately referred to as Captain Crusader, and Shan more recently. Simon Shan was currently the hottest ticket in town, even considering the mess he was in. Everyone had expected the next Martha Stewart to be a woman, but Shan, a London-based fashion designer of Chinese descent, had stolen her spotlight while no one was looking. He did everything with a focus, precision and freshness that made all the other lifestyle gurus look like amateurs.

He’d gotten his start by designing and creating his own unique casual look for women. His first full line was a smash, and he’d gone from there into makeup and accessories. Eventually he’d partnered with an upscale discount chain, the Goldstar Collection, and branched into furniture, linens, decor, parties, gardening, everything. He was also tall, lean and singularly attractive, creating great speculation about his sexual preferences—and an instant mystique. No one had counted on the next lifestyle icon being male, Asian and very possibly straight.

His downfall was drugs, but not just any old drugs. Opium. He admitted to having tried it once as a boy in Taiwan, where he grew up an only child to a doting mother and an authoritarian father. The opium use was little more than teenage curiosity, but his father had been outraged. He’d sent Shan away to a boarding school in London, not realizing it would change the boy’s life forever.

Shan swore that was the extent of his own drug use. But several pounds of it were found in the trunk of his Bentley, and because he imported most of his furniture, textiles and other goods from Asia, he was also charged with smuggling the opium into the country. The charges had forced him to step back from his role as Goldstar’s spokesperson. But at least he’d had enough money to hire the best legal help, and he was out on bail, awaiting arraignment.

The congressman’s downfall had shocked Lane to her core. The feds had found child pornography on his computer in his D.C. office. Lane still couldn’t fathom it. Even if Burton Carr was a pedophile, which she didn’t believe for a second, why would he view child porn on his office computer? He’d always supported the fight for legislation to protect children, including the now-famous Amber Alert. He clearly cared deeply about people in general. On the national level, he’d worked doggedly to pass a bill compelling the large discount chains to offer benefits to workers, including heath care—and he’d cited Jerry Blair as one of the country’s most progressive CEOs, and his company, TopCo, as an example of how a discount chain could—and should—be run.

Carr was one of her heroes. Actually, both men were.

“Lane?”

“Jerry, can we shelve the party discussion for tonight? There’s plenty of time to iron out the details, and I’m really beat.”

“Sure, but do me a favor, don’t walk home. It’s not safe.”

“I’ve done it before, Jerry. The path I take is lit up like a movie premiere, and I don’t live that far—”

“Lane, humor me, okay?”

“Okay, no walking tonight.”

“I mean forever, Lane. Don’t walk home—not tonight, not ever again.”

“Well, geez, Jerry. I am thirty years old, and there are some decisions I feel qualified to make—”

“Yes, you are, but this is not a good one, Lane.”

She was nodding to herself as he spoke. This was why Jerry Blair was a good CEO. He took care of people. He was one of the few people who’d ever taken care of her, and she loved him for it. She stopped short of telling him that, but with the words balling up in her throat, she said, “Uncle.”

They said their goodbyes and as she hung up the phone, she felt the pain twist into sharpness. It nearly took her breath away, but she never had understood why her heart turned into a cutting tool at times. Loneliness, maybe. There wasn’t time to analyze it. There never was.

Ignoring the ache in her chest, she went back to the gossip site and clicked on Jack the Giant Killer’s byline. She had no choice. The paparazzo stalker was becoming famous for bringing down the infamous, especially since he limited his targets to those who abused their power and position. And he didn’t stick to celebs, either. Jack had outed Burton Carr—and listed Carr as one of The Private Concierge’s clients on the Gotcha site. And now Lane was terrified that Jack might have done it again with another client, someone she just signed yesterday.

Jerry Blair knew about the Carr and Shan scandals, but he didn’t know about Lane’s new client, and she hadn’t told him. She wasn’t sure she could—or should—tell anyone, including the police. Ned Talbert had signed his contract yesterday morning and late last night he’d killed his girlfriend, then killed himself. Lane had been struggling with disbelief all day.

She’d had three clients involved in felonies or capital crimes in just three weeks’ time. And then there was Judge Love earlier this year. Love had presided over a popular television-courtroom show and was known for her toughness until her lurid private life became public, all of this thanks to JGK, as the Giant Killer had become known. Lane had found herself right in the middle of that scandal because one of her key people had decided to confront the Gotcha people personally. The site’s owner swore that JGK operated under total anonymity, e-mailing or dropping his material at various specified locations. No one knew who JGK was, but Gotcha took pains to verify everything he gave them, including the raunchy Judge Love video.

Right now, Lane was terrified that her service would look like a hotbed of criminal activity. No one would come near her.

She clicked off the Web site and shut down her computer.

Everywhere she looked she could see herself, only she didn’t look liberated in her undone skirt and flimsy camisole top. She looked exposed. She was heartsick about what had happened to her clients, including Ned. She knew them all as good men who couldn’t have done what they were accused of, but sadly there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to protect them. The problems were escalating, and Lane had to think of herself, as well. A concierge service was its clients. If the clients went down, the service went down with them.

She opened the drawer of her desk and pulled out Ned’s application. She hadn’t given it to anyone yet to process, and she’d handled the credit-card transaction herself. Her receptionist and assistant, Mary, had been out on a break, and Lane had been watching the desk. So, no one knew about Ned Talbert but her. And no one could know.

4

Rick prowled the darkened house using only a penlight. He wore latex gloves and slipcovers over his shoes the way evidence technicians did to avoid contamination. He was familiar enough with the place to find his way around in the dark, but didn’t want to chance disturbing the crime scene evidence and signaling that someone had been here.

Not that anyone would notice, he suspected. It was just after midnight, and the guard had changed. The rookie had been replaced by a retiree. Sound asleep in a chair by the house’s front entrance, the night-shift guy was doing a good imitation of a rusty buzz saw.

Rick had parked on a side street, walked over and let himself in through the back way, using a customized attachment on his pocketknife to jimmy the lock, rather than touch the knob, which should have been dusted for prints but didn’t appear to have been. He was here to check out the crime scene, but he was also looking for the package he’d passed off to Ned all those years ago for safekeeping. And maybe the darkness would help him focus on his mission, instead of the countless reminders of his friend.

He’d identified the body at the morgue today. It was Ned without question. Rick saw the faded scar on his friend’s chin even before he saw the bullet hole. When they were kids, he and Ned had believed they could do anything—jump off roofs and fly, walk on water—and they had the scars to prove it. Nothing daunted them, even when Ned missed a branch playing Tarzan, fell to the earth and split open his chin. They’d been eight at the time.

Rick turned off the light and stopped, needing a moment to deal with all of it, to breathe against the suffocating weight in his chest. He’d gone numb after his visit to the morgue, and he wished to hell he could stay that way. Scarred or not, the face he’d seen on the concrete slab wasn’t his friend. It was a death mask with Ned’s features. The body that had housed his larger-than-life spirit was an empty shell. He was gone.

Rick didn’t believe in heaven and hell. He couldn’t console himself with the belief that he would ever see his friend again. The Ned who’d been like a part of him had vanished, leaving Rick feeling as empty as the body in the morgue. He couldn’t even hold a clear picture of Ned in his mind without having it replaced by a corpse with a bullet through its brain. There was no comfort to be found, even in his memories. That was why he had to find out what had happened. At least then he wouldn’t be haunted by questions.

When he left the morgue, he’d driven straight over to the West L.A. station to talk with his buddy, Don Cooper, in homicide, who wasn’t on the case but had confirmed that it was being handled by the big guns of the elite Robbery Homicide Division. Coop had heard unofficially that Ned’s celebrity status in the sports world warranted the high-level involvement, not because they believed it was anything other than a murder-suicide. Coop also confirmed that a suicide note had been found at the scene, but the contents had not been revealed.

And then, for some reason, he’d volunteered the kind of gun Ned had used. None of this information should have been shared with an outsider, which was why Rick had come to Coop. He was a talker. One of these days Coop was going to talk himself right out of a job, Rick imagined.

Rick beamed the light over the leather chair where Ned had been sitting when he pressed the barrel of a full-size 9 mm Glock to his right temple and pulled the trigger. The chalked outline showed him knocked to the left by the force of the discharge and slumped over the arm of the chair.

Jesus, what had made him do that?

Rick’s head swam with questions that were almost unbearable. Did Ned get that idea from him? Had the scene at the cabin triggered something in his friend? They’d done everything together as kids, and Rick had almost always been the leader, the instigator.

But Rick couldn’t let himself believe that, despite the lacerating guilt he felt. Ned was an adult, his own man. He wouldn’t have copycatted a suicide. Rick needed to start thinking like an investigator. What was Ned doing with a Glock? He didn’t own a gun and had no use for them. He’d always said he could do more damage with a baseball bat. Rick wondered if anyone had checked to see if Ned had bought a gun recently or had a permit to carry the gun that was used. Or dusted the empty shell casings for prints.

Rick flashed the beam from the chalked outline of Ned’s body to the woman’s on the floor at the foot of his chair. According to Coop, she’d died in a sexually degrading position while partially naked and restrained. The cause of death was suffocation. She’d had a cheap grocery-store plastic bag tied around her head.

Rick had asked Coop if burn marks were found on her genitals. He’d looked at Rick funny but hadn’t asked any questions. He’d said he didn’t know, but she probably hadn’t died quickly. The condition of the plastic bag, plus the way the vessels in her eyes had hemorrhaged indicated the suffocation might have been interrupted several times, perhaps intentionally.

Rick breathed a curse word. This was all wrong. He knew it to the depths of his being. This wasn’t a hero’s death. Suffocating a bound woman and then shooting yourself was cowardly. Ned wouldn’t have wanted to go out this way, or take her with him. He was trying to save Holly, not kill her.

Ned was drawn to self-destructive women, probably because of his mother. Her heroin habit had driven her to extremes, including hooking to get money for drugs. She’d died of an overdose when Ned was really young, and like a lot of kids with parents who screw up, he’d felt responsible. He’d been picking questionable women ever since, maybe thinking he could fix whatever was wrong. Or maybe they’d picked him. Nice guys like Ned were easy targets.

Rick looked from one chalked form to the other, trying to get a sense of the dominant emotion involved. Every crime scene had clues; the trick was to read them correctly. Murder was usually driven by fear or rage, but he didn’t pick up either here. There was a methodical feel to these crimes—and that wasn’t Ned. He’d said he was being blackmailed because of his sex practices, but he’d also said it was all lies. This crime scene said he was the liar. Only blind rage could have driven him to this. And why take his rage out on Holly? Unless he was being blackmailed by her.

Rick had no answers as he slowly flashed the beam around the rest of the room. The blood and spatter patterns were typical of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and according to Coop, there’d been no sign of forced entry. Rick saw nothing else that stood out, and with every passing second the risk of being discovered increased. But there was one last thing that had to be done.

He moved silently to the hallway that led to the master bedroom. He passed a writing desk on the way, and the beam of his penlight struck something small and shiny. The desk drawer was partially open and a high-gloss business card was stuck in the sliding mechanism on the side. Rick could imagine a technician opening the drawer and finding the card, along with other things to be bagged as evidence, then unknowingly dropping the card while closing the drawer. Or it might have been something else entirely. Someone may have been in a great hurry to cover his tracks and grabbed for the card but dropped it. The killer perhaps?

Rick fished the card out and held it under the light. The initials TPC were elegantly scrolled down the left side in gold leaf. Laddered across the card just as elegantly were the words The Private Concierge. On the bottom right was a woman’s name, a phone number and an e-mail address. Lane Chandler.

The name was familiar, but Rick couldn’t place it. He turned the card over and found a one-word question scrawled in what looked like Ned’s handwriting: Extortion?

Was Ned accusing The Private Concierge of extortion or had he been looking for a surface to write on, grabbed the card and then tossed it in the desk drawer without realizing it had fallen down the side? And why hadn’t homicide or the crime scene guys noticed it? Rick had spotted it in the dark.

Rick was running out of time. He continued down the hall to the bedroom and went straight to the maple armoire. The largest drawer had a secret compartment with a safe in the back, but Rick found it unlocked—and empty. Either Ned had moved the package, which he wouldn’t have done without telling Rick, or the police had found it and taken it as evidence. And Rick couldn’t avoid the other possibility—that certain people still had a vested interest in the contents of the package, and one of them had been here. But if that was the case, what connection did it have to last night’s carnage?

Rick heard a scraping sound, metal chair legs against concrete. The officer was awake, maybe shifting position or getting up. He checked his pocket to make sure the business card was there, clicked off the penlight and headed for the back door. He’d watched Ned put the package in the compartment, but it was gone. And he couldn’t risk taking any more time to search for it.

Monday, October 7

Two days earlier

Lane Chandler? Rick stared hard at the business card, aware that his eyes were tired and stinging. He rubbed them, massaging the sockets with his thumbs to relieve the pressure. It was six in the morning, and he’d been up and down all night. His mind wouldn’t let him sleep for any length of time. There were too many questions, and primary among them was why her name had struck a chord.

He wasn’t familiar with the concierge service, and he didn’t know anyone named Lane Chandler, personally or otherwise. He’d heard the name somewhere, but he was exhausted and emotionally spent. He just couldn’t seem to place it. He thought back, mentally sorting through the names of his clients over the years. He could check the actual files, but something kept him stuck in the chair in his cubbyhole of a home office, playing alphabet games. It didn’t sound real. Who had a name like Lane Chandler? A movie star, maybe.

L.C. What other women’s name began with L? Not that many: Linda, Lydia, Lilly, Laurie, Leigh, Lucille, Lucy. Lucy?

Oh, Jesus. He rocked up from the chair and left it teetering. He didn’t know any women, but he knew a girl named Lane Chandler. Or had known one. He’d arrested the little brat fifteen years ago. She’d assumed the name of a B-movie star when she ran away from home. She’d told Rick’s partner, Mimi, that she’d picked some bit player from the old celluloid westerns with the stage name Lane Chandler. She liked the name, but not because the initials were L.C. That had been a coincidence. Taking on a man’s name had made her feel stronger and tougher, like she could handle herself on the mean streets of L.A.

And then what had she done but trash herself on those streets?

Rick paced the room, feeling like he was in a cage, but maybe he needed the confinement right now. Where would he go if he wasn’t hemmed in by these L-shaped walls? He might head south and never stop. South to the border. Run, don’t walk. Go, Rick, go. Get the holy hell out of here. Have some semblance of a life while you can. Meet a woman, fall in love for ten minutes. Give your heart away. It’s the only thing you have left of any worth.

Lane Chandler.

He slowed up and let his thoughts roll back a decade and a half. She was Lucy Cox. What a dangerously precocious kid that one had been, a real handful, the Jodi Foster of her time. Rick had picked her up for street prostitution—an open-and-shut case, given that she’d propositioned him. Blue-eyed and bold, she’d actually made him wish she was fifteen years older—and that had never happened before.

He’d been working juvenile vice since he’d signed on with the force, and dealing with drugged-out street urchins was enough to make any normal man want to put them in a straitjacket so they couldn’t hurt themselves or someone else. They were sad, angry and desperate. Too often they ended up dead. But she wasn’t one of them. She was something else, an underage madonna, luminous enough to light up skid row. The courts had put her in juvie, and Rick had helped make sure she didn’t get out until she was legal, eighteen.

Rick walked to the window and stood there, shirtless, in the rising beam of light, letting it warm him. Jeans were all he’d bothered with this morning. There wasn’t a woman around to complain about his bare chest—or appreciate it, for that matter. Hadn’t been for quite a while. His last long-term relationship, and only marriage, ended ten years ago, for the same reason most law enforcement marriages ended. Criminal neglect. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. He just didn’t have the time or energy to love her the way she needed it. Couldn’t blame her for that. He shouldn’t have married in the first place, but he’d been young—and probably just selfish enough to want someone around on those interminable nights of soul-searching, someone to ease the loneliness.

The slam of a neighboring door brought his attention back to the view. His cubby was a converted storage room, and its only window looked out on the alley behind his house, exposing the back sides of a half block of badly weathered beach houses. The alley had little to recommend it, except bower after bower of glorious red and orange bougainvillea. Rick loved the stuff. It festooned the courtyard out front, too, and as far as he was concerned, it made his beach cottage look like a small palazzo.

Lane Chandler. God, he didn’t want to go back there. It wasn’t going to help anyone to dredge up that muck, least of all Ned. And there were so many other reasons not to pursue this investigation. A case like this could take months, years, even for a seasoned homicide detective, which Rick wasn’t. You needed the right resources, computer databases, labs and technicians to investigate a murder. He had access to none of that, and he was running out of time. Everything pointed to murder-suicide. The police had already written it off.

But foremost among the reasons to let this investigation go was her, Lucy Cox, all grown up and running her own concierge service. Why didn’t that surprise him?

He walked back to his desk, swept up her card, crushed it in his fist and dropped it in the trash. And then he left the room.

He got as far as the living room, as far as the doors to his beloved courtyard, before a realization stopped him. Like a bomb it hit him. What were the odds of so many seemingly disparate things converging on that one night at Ned’s place? Rick had found Ned and his girlfriend dead, the package missing and Lane Chandler’s card stuck to Ned’s desk, all within the same time frame. Or what appeared to be the same time frame. The package could have been missing awhile, but Rick didn’t think so. Ned would have mentioned it. And Rick suspected the card was recent, too. Ned wouldn’t have let that slip, either. But maybe that was what Ned had been trying to say the night he showed up at the cabin.

What Ned didn’t know, what no one knew except Rick, was that Lucy Cox was connected to that missing package. She was the catalyst for what had happened fifteen years ago—and the reason Rick had left the force.

If she really was Lane Chandler now, Rick questioned whether it was a coincidence that Ned had come across her somewhere. Had she approached him because she wanted the package herself? Why? He could think of people who might want to get their hands on it, but why her? Blackmail, most likely. And how did she know that Ned had it?

He turned and slammed back through the house, swearing to himself. He nearly took the door off the hinges as he entered his office, and the first thing he did was pick up the trash can. Now, where the hell was that card?

5