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Darwin snickered. “So, Black is bringing down Val by destroying our clients one by one? Maybe even setting them up for the fall and then breaking the story? I hate to be the one to break it to you, Lane, but our clients are burying themselves. Do you really think Seth Black is capable of framing Ned Talbert for a murder-suicide?”
That was a stretch, she had to admit. Black was a vicious snitch, not a hit man, and Lane could prove nothing. It was just a gut feeling that her company had a bull’s-eye on its back, but it was a strong one.
There were no more crumbs on Dar’s shirt. She brushed at it anyway. “Just say you’re with me, okay? We have to stay on top of this.”
“Of course I’m with you. I’ll do a background check on Seth Black and scour his site—and I’ll check out JGK, too. If I can’t find out who he is, maybe I can figure out who he’s going after next.”
She thought about hugging him, but he was saved by his cell phone. It was buzzing, as if he was getting some kind of alert. Darwin’s personal phone was truly a one-man band. He hit some buttons and began to read the display screen.
“What is it?” she asked, alarmed at how pale he was.
“Video feed from the Associated Press.”
“Feed about what?”
Darwin looked up. “Jack the Giant Killer just saved me some research. Here’s his current victim.” He flipped the cell phone so that Lane could see the screen.
It was hard for her to watch the stark news footage of Priscilla Brandt beating up a homeless person. Lane sat down on the console behind her, jiggling the water pitcher. Shock seemed to take hold, causing her to shudder and go numb at the same time. The acidity from the limes burned her nostrils.
“That’s number four,” she said under her breath. Priscilla had said the situation was embarrassing, not violent. It looked like assault with a deadly weapon. She could wind up in prison. Priscilla hadn’t been with TPC six months, but Lane knew her background, and she’d sensed a desperation in Priscilla to succeed. Lane could relate to that to some extent. She’d fought her way out of the gutter, too, and maybe she’d done some questionable things along the way, but she’d never tried to kill anyone.
Lane went to her computer and pulled up the Gotcha.com Web site. Jack the Giant Killer’s byline dominated the opening page. Ms. Pris is Pissed! screamed the headline.
“Listen to this,” Lane said. “‘Ms. Pris had a manners meltdown. This morning, Priscilla Brandt, author of a bestselling book on etiquette, viciously assaulted a homeless man. Apparently he camped out on her lawn, impeding her tea-garden interview with morning-show anchor Leanne Sanders, so Brandt knocked him cold with an iron statue, but couldn’t drag him off her property. She shrieked obscenities and beat the homeless man with her fists. She then called Lane Chandler, her private concierge, for help.’”
Lane stopped, shaking her head in disbelief. She glanced over at Darwin, who was back in the chair, collapsed like a punctured tire. “Do you believe me now?”
7
She was legit. Her concierge service was first-class all the way. Rick’s Internet search had pulled up countless references to TPC as the crown jewel of the private-concierge field, despite its fairly recent appearance on the scene six years ago. A large infusion of investment capital from an unspecified donor had launched the company, and a reputation for consummate perfectionism had kept it going. TPC was known for its round-the-clock devotion to making the lives of its clientele complete in every way.
Apparently there was nothing a TPC concierge wouldn’t do, as long as it was legal, according to its founder and CEO, Lane Chandler.
She was legit, and successful.
Rick wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It was always easier dealing with people when you had some leverage. In her case, doubled-jointed escorts and masseuses who specialized in happy endings would have been helpful. Of course, he always had her criminal past to fall back on.
Her company Web site described the boggling array of services offered and the different plans available. If you wanted round-the-clock attention with all the extras—and you had unlimited funds—the Premiere Plan was your baby. Rick found more than he needed to know about the company, but no mention of Lane Chandler’s background anywhere, except the usual references to education, work experience, achievements and service awards.
She’d received a BA in business administration from Pepperdine on a full scholarship program. Highest honors, which didn’t surprise him, despite her questionable start. He could still see the hungry glint in her mist-blue eyes. Funny how the soft-focus gaze and butterscotch voice had made her edges seem all the sharper, even at the tender age of fifteen.
A gossip Web site called Gotcha.com had broken stories about the messy scandals with some of TPC’s clients, but Ned hadn’t been mentioned among them. Rick also found references to the service’s expansion plans, and the heavy debt it was carrying. Maybe she needed money. Now, there was a motive to go after the package Ned was holding. She could use the contents to blackmail the VIPs involved in the epic scandal her own arrest had caused. She seemed to be a magnet for scandal, no matter what she did.
But how did she know Ned had the package?
Rick sat back in his chair to think. He rested his feet on the desk next to a carton of take-out Chinese. He’d found it in the fridge, left over from before he went up to the mountain cabin. The rush of hunger he’d felt when he opened the refrigerator door had dizzied him. It had been over thirty-six hours since he’d eaten, and he’d wolfed a forkful of the pork lo mein, but couldn’t get it down. His throat had closed up, and even a basic act like swallowing had been a challenge. He didn’t know if it was grief, stress or…something else.
The pills, he told himself. Maybe he needed to lay off that garbage.
He’d entered into a specialized form of private investigation when he’d left vice years ago. Essentially he did things that law enforcement wouldn’t—or couldn’t—do. It had kept him busy and paid well. But, over the last few weeks, he’d closed all his open cases and informed his clients he was taking some personal-leave time. That was all they needed to know. All anyone needed to know.
Now, here he was, faced with the toughest investigation of his life—and as much as he wanted to walk away from it, he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He had to do something. The question was, what?
His sigh was resigned. A talk with Ned’s housekeeper might be the way to start. Less complicated than the Lane Chandler situation, which could easily take him places he didn’t want to go. Ned’s funeral arrangements were being taken care of by his attorneys, who were also handling inquiries from the press. The public knew Ned as a star outfielder, not as Rick Bayless’s friend, so Rick had been left out of it, thank God. He could not have dealt with that right now.
Rick hesitated, listening. A loud pop came from somewhere in the house, launching him out of the chair. The carton of lo mein landed on the floor with a splat and Rick kicked it aside, taking care not to slip in the streaming juices. It sounded like a gunshot, and it had come from down the hall. He could see nothing through the open doorway, but someone was definitely in his house.
He slipped out of the small office, his bare feet soundless on the Mexican tiles. He crept down the hallway, his back to the wall, wondering if the intruder had found his gun. It was in the top drawer of the night table next to his bed, but the noise had come from the other side of the house, the kitchen, and he could hear a clicking sound coming from that direction.
Was the intruder reloading? That meant he’d come armed. Rick’s gun was a Colt .357 Python with a cylinder that took six bullets. There would be five left before reloading was necessary.
An odd, breathy squeak made him hesitate. The clicking got louder, urgent. The squeak became a plaintive cry. What the hell? It sounded like a baby or an animal in distress. And suddenly he knew what had happened.
His heart jammed into high gear as he spidered up to the arch that opened onto his kitchen. He craned to look inside—and saw exactly what he’d hoped. Yesssssssss. The mousetrap he’d baited and set days ago had been sprung. Unfortunately, the mangy little creature pinned by the bar was still alive. He was caught by the leg instead of by his skinny neck, but at least he’d been caught.
Rick Bayless had won the war. He’d finally caught the cunning sneak thief that had been raiding his garbage and springing his mousetraps for months. The reign of the devil mouse was over.
Like most bachelors, Rick had never kept what you’d call a tidy kitchen. He routinely left the dinner dishes unscraped and unwashed until the next day or whenever he got around to them. Sometimes they waited until his housekeeper made her weekly visit. It was when she’d found the usually crusty dishes nearly spotless in the sink, and asked Rick if he’d done them himself, that he realized he had an ugly, hairy little dishwasher on his hands—and the war had begun.
He hated mice. He didn’t like snakes, either, but at least most snakes ate insects, which justified their existence to some extent. Mice were scavengers and disease carriers. Can you spell bubonic plague? If Walt Disney hadn’t turned them into saucer-eared heroes, no one would like mice.
But Rick’s enthusiasm waned as he watched his nemesis roll and flail, trying to get his leg free of the spring-loaded bar. Amazing that he had a leg left. The bar would have broken his neck if he’d gone for the cheese first, instead of trying to spring the trap.
Not so clever this time.
Now Rick had to figure out how to quickly end this. The mouse’s shrieks had become heartrending, and trapped animals had been known to chew off their limbs to escape. From the drying rack on the counter, he grabbed a large stainless-steel colander to contain the struggling mouse.
A gunshot was the quickest way to end an animal’s misery, but that would be overkill for a mouse, literally. Drowning it was too much like torture and a cerebral concussion too brutish, but Rick had little choice. The concussion would be quick and painless. He should have invested in one of those live traps, but somehow this had turned into an epic war of wits, with the mouse trouncing him repeatedly, which had probably made him want the wretched little thing to suffer. Obviously, now he was getting soft.
He got a wooden mallet from the kitchen drawer where he kept his tools. But when he flipped the colander over, he found the mouse unconscious—or possibly dead. It didn’t appear to be breathing, and there was no response when he nudged it with the mallet.
He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his jeans’ pocket and settled on his haunches. He’d been carrying gloves with him since his vice days, as religiously as some guys carried condoms. You never knew when you were going to need the protection of latex.
He quickly had the mouse free of the trap, but it still showed no signs of life, and its leg was clearly broken. Funny how it didn’t look so diabolically clever anymore. More like a defenseless creature that was caught up in the universal fight to survive, like everyone else. Food was survival. Cheese was food. It was simply trying to eat without dying.
Rick’s thoughts took a grimly ironic turn. Maybe the mouse wasn’t such a zero after all. It had cleaned up the place. Rick Bayless was the slob who’d left the dirty dishes. Besides, having somebody set a trap for you was no way to die. It just seemed wrong to be tempted with what you wanted most—and then killed for wanting it. Was that how Ned had died? Was he lured into a death trap?
His gut clenched at the thought. He shook off the questions. He had no answers. What he had was a dead mouse that needed to be disposed of. He left it where it was and headed down the hall to his bedroom to get a shoe box. Maybe he’d even give the devil mouse a proper burial.
By the time he got back, the mouse was gone. The trap was where he’d left it, and he could see a faint blood trail leading toward the refrigerator, but no sign of the mouse. It had regained consciousness and made a break for freedom, dragging itself across the floor. Or it had been faking the entire time.
Score one—or twenty—for Mickey. Rick had lost count.
8
Simon Shan walked over to the display of ancient ceremonial swords on his bedroom wall and removed a nineteenth-century jade-handled dagger. Other than a rare ivory mah-jongg set that had belonged to his grandmother, these weapons were the only heirlooms of value in the Shan family. They’d been passed down from father to eldest son for generations, and his father had told him that this dagger’s blade was sharp enough to cut floating silk.
Simon ran the pad of his index finger over the edge, watching the blood rise to the surface and bubble. Amazing. He hadn’t felt a thing.
Holed up in his spacious bedroom, he’d been considering the remains of his brilliant career. The media had made quite a fuss over his Eurasian features when he became a celebrity two years ago, calling them both exotic and patrician. Possibly that was why his face had graced the covers of five popular magazines this month alone.
The magazines were fanned out like a huge tiara across the cushioned bench at the foot of his bed where his former assistant had arranged them. He’d also been on countless talk shows and news programs, answering questions about his new gig as spokesperson and designer for the Goldstar Collection, one of the country’s largest discount chains.
He’d been labeled the male heir to Martha Stewart and the next bona fide lifestyle icon. But that was then. Yesterday. Today he was a drug dealer. Two weeks ago, DEA agents had found half a million dollars’ worth of opium in the trunk of his sports car. He’d been charged with dealing, possession, and with using his import-export company to smuggle in the contraband.
Today he was an exploding sun, a blindingly bright has-been.
He walked the length of his blue-and-green Olympic pool of a bedroom to one of the room’s three bubble windows. He slipped the curved blade behind a light-blocking blind, moving it enough to look out at a typical Monday morning in Santa Monica. The sun was rising over the ocean, but he didn’t dare press any of the remote buttons that would open his condo’s custom blinds. Fifteen stories down, the paparazzi waited on the busy street with their zoom lenses. He could see them on the roofs of nearby buildings, as well.
They were probably hoping for a shot of him dirty, disheveled and strung out on his own alleged stash of drugs, which was why he’d taken extra care with his grooming, slicking his hair back from the widow’s peak on his forehead and dressing in the black silk-blend turtleneck and unpleated gray slacks that were his signature look. If someone showed up at his door disguised as a deliveryman, or crawled through the air-conditioning ducts, Simon Shan would be ready.
He checked his left index finger. The blood had already dried in a perfectly precise line, and still he felt no pain. The skin didn’t know it had been breached, and to his way of thinking that was more humane than a gaping, disfiguring bullet hole. He preferred Chinese martial arts and direct contact with his opponents, but if weapons were necessary, only daggers and swords should be allowed in civilized warfare. They required coordination, precision and courage. Guns were for cowards. Any idiot could pull a trigger, and too many did.
In motion, move like a thundering wave. When still, be like a mountain. The first two tenets of the Twelve Descriptions of ability came back to him. Ability was the literal meaning of kung fu in English, but Simon hadn’t had to think about his martial-arts training in years. It would feel good to get physical with some slimy photog who stole pieces of a man’s soul and auctioned them off to the highest bidder. It would definitely break the monotony.
The walls of his penthouse condo were closing in. He kept the televisions and computers dark to avoid the almost continuous coverage of his case, and the phone had stopped ringing, except for the press. For his part, he’d been avoiding all contact with the outside world. He’d chosen to isolate himself, and at first it had felt right, like protective custody. But now, the silence was deep and lonely. Painful. Today, he was going to break that pattern.
He opened the bedroom’s double doors and walked down the long slate hallway to the kitchen, the dagger at his side. If the bedroom had always reminded him of a swimming pool, this hallway was a lap pool. The floor was flowing slabs of blue stone, cut and set so tightly that no seam could be seen, and the Oriental art on the walls featured black swans.
Recessed lighting haloed the brushed-steel and green granite kitchen. He’d had the oversize room designed to accommodate a cooking show, should he ever want to shoot out of his home. He’d envisioned parties featuring fusion cuisine, paired with the best California wines.
He attacked the pile of mail he’d been avoiding on the kitchen countertop, knowing it would be one rejection after another, some polite, some not. Events he was scheduled to host were being rescheduled, but with someone else at the podium. Parties in his honor were being postponed, forever. Even some interviews had been canceled, but most were being rethought along the lines of an exposé. Would he talk about the drug charges? About his guilt or innocence? About the disastrous impact on his future?
He wanted to talk about who had framed him—and how they could possibly have known where he was going to be that day, and when he was going to be there. But that would put him in the position of doing what all criminals did: swearing that they were innocent, crying that they’d been set up.
One reporter had done enough research on his past to ask probing questions about Shan’s drug use when he was a teenager. He’d admitted to some experimentation and to getting caught, but he’d seethed inwardly at the insinuations that it had been more. He’d been educated in London, but most of his family still lived in Taiwan. They were people of honor, and this latest incident had brought them deep shame. Worse, his father seemed to believe the charges. The proud old man had stopped taking Shan’s calls.
He slit open one envelope after another, skimming the contents, which were exactly what he expected. He was being uninvited from his own life, shunned. He had stopped reading the return addresses. He just wanted to get through all of it. Right now a clean counter would feel like a small victory.
He picked up another letter-size envelope, slit the top, turned it upside down and shook it. Money floated out like confetti, hundred-dollar bills. He didn’t count them. It was several thousand dollars—and he knew immediately who’d sent it.
His father had returned the money Simon had sent him. He’d been sending checks since he graduated from Oxford and got a job as a waiter to help pay his way through Cordon Bleu, the famous French cooking school. Now he was able to send a great deal more in the monthly envelopes, but this was his father’s way of saying that his help wasn’t welcome anymore. They would starve first.
Misery fizzed up into Simon’s throat. It tasted brackish, and he fought the urge to be sick. He had to be strong. There was only one way to restore his family’s name and their dignity. He either had to prove his innocence—or take his own life. There was no other way to stop the nightmare he’d brought down on them. When he was gone they could hold their heads up again. He knew his way of thinking would be alien to anyone not raised as he was. It was part of his culture.
Strong. Proud. Brave. He was a warrior.
“Simon…voice mail.”
Simon looked around, confused. It sounded as if someone had whispered his name. A woman. Lane Chandler? A tiny flashing blue light caught his eye, and he realized he’d left his Darwin cell phone here in the kitchen. In his rush to shut off the phone, he must have hit the volume control rather than the End button.
“Simon, you have voice mail.”
It was his cell, and whether or not the programmed voice was Lane’s he didn’t know, but it had always reminded him of her. Soft and soothing, slightly haunting. The kind of voice a man who liked women automatically responded to, vibrating up and down his spine. And Simon did like women, despite the media’s speculation.
He set down the dagger next to the cell, contemplating both. One was ancient, the other ultramodern. Both had many uses, both were designed as protection, but in today’s modern age, either could destroy a life in an instant. He drew in a breath, knowing the call was going to be ugly. Still, as long as he was cleaning up the mess, he might as well listen to his voice-mail messages, too.
His mailbox was full. He would have to call TPC to get the overflow, but he quickly screened all the calls he had by listening to the caller’s name and the date stamp. There were several from his attorneys, his publicist, his TPC concierge and Lane herself, but right now, the only message that interested him was from Goldstar’s chairman. It had come in two days ago.
“Simon, I apologize for the voice mail, but you haven’t been answering your phone. Listen, my friend, that statement of confidence we discussed about believing in your innocence and standing by you…well, our lawyers and public relations people are advising against it. They’re suggesting we keep a low profile, and that you do the same. The board has voted to put the launch of your products on hold until the outcome of your trial. That way you and your lawyers can concentrate on clearing your name, and we can all put this unfortunate incident behind us. Good luck, Simon. You have friends at Goldstar.”
Simon pressed the End button. He picked up the dagger and touched the blade again. No pain. No pain at all. A second later, he whipped the dagger over his head and with a crack of his wrist, launched it like a missile at the kitchen’s other doorway, the one off the hallway to the front door.
The tip of the blade stuck in the door frame, the handle quivering like the crossbar of an arrow. A strangled gasp came from the shadows of the hallway. Simon flipped on the overhead lights and strode toward the door. He was shaking. “Don’t ever come up on me unannounced.”
The tall, lithe creature he’d caught eyed him with a mix of fear and defiance. The material of her blouse sleeve was pinned by the knife blade, tethering her to the door frame. Simon didn’t free her. He didn’t trust her, either.
“I picked up the things you wanted,” she said, pointing to the magazines that had fallen to the floor. “I thought I could leave them without disturbing you.”
He unstuck the knife, ripping a chunk of lacquered wood from the door frame. His voice was frozen with rage at the world that had turned on him. “Give me another reason to think you’ve betrayed me, and you’ll die by this blade.”
9
“It’s a go, Ashley. Sign the lease.” A squeal on the other end of the line forced Lane to lower the volume of her earpiece. But she couldn’t suppress a grin as she walked briskly down the Avenue of the Stars, toward the Santa Monica Mountains in the distance. She’d just green-lighted the plans to open the TPC branch in Dallas. She’d been putting it off for weeks, and she was as excited as Ashley, who’d been stranded in Dallas, scouting locations. Probably as nervous, too.
“Make sure it’s the entire tenth floor,” Lane said, “and we’re good to go. Next step is getting the place staffed. You’re going to be running the show, so put together your short list of contenders for the key positions and set up the interviews. I can be there this Thursday. That gives you four days.”
“Will do! I’ll have everything ready when you get here, and thank you so much for this opportunity. This is it for me, the ultimate, really. My dream.”
“And your chance to make it come true,” Lane said, congratulating her warmly, even though Ashley was really Val’s choice. But that felt good, too. It was time to let go of the reins and give Val his head. He’d been pushing for the expansion, and he knew the staff better than she did, in terms of their leadership abilities. Besides, Lane was not the maverick that some people thought. She believed in teamwork. She’d played some beach volleyball when she was in college, and she’d admired the way the really good teams worked. One set up the shot, and the other one took it. That’s what she and Val had just done, although he still didn’t know it.
Lane excused herself, gently cutting the conversation short with Ashley. Lane’s next call was to their receptionist, letting Mary know the Dallas move was official and to order champagne. Lane had decided the office needed something to celebrate, given their latest client fiasco—the frightening business that very morning with Priscilla Brandt. But Mary reminded her that Val was holding staff meetings all afternoon, so Lane’s bright idea would have to be postponed.
She dropped her cell in her suit pocket and kept walking, oblivious to the fashion incongruity of white Nike Turbo Plus jogging shoes and a black spandex designer suit with a pencil skirt. She probably should have been a New Yorker. Walking was a requirement for her sanity. And today, she’d had no choice. She’d been stuck for too long, mired in doubt and indecision about the expansion. Walking helped clear her head and give her the perspective she needed to make decisions. It felt like she was moving forward in all ways, not just physically. She was charging, going somewhere.
But Jerry had told her never to venture out at night, so here she was, on her lunch hour, despite the obvious drawbacks of walking in L.A. at noon. Car exhaust, for one. It really wasn’t a good idea to walk in cities where you could see the air you were breathing. Worse, it was the middle of the day, and hot. Her breasts were sweating again. And walking was costing her a fortune, no matter what anyone said about it being the low-cost alternative to health clubs. She was paying dearly just for the privilege of living close enough to walk back and forth to work.
But who’d have thought she would ever have a fortune to pay. Not so terribly long ago she was penniless and homeless. She attended high school classes in juvenile hall and later tackled college on a scholarship, supplemented by multiple part-time jobs, one of which was helping a professor who’d penned a surprise bestseller and desperately needed someone to organize his life. He’d been so thrilled with her efforts he’d referred his entertainment lawyer to her, who’d referred more clients. It had started like that, a chain reaction. And then she’d dragged Darwin, kicking and screaming, into the fold, and he’d invented his crazy “electronic bodyguard” phone, as he called it in those days. Finally, after two years of abject toil, she’d bagged her first really big client, who’d become another source of referrals, and ready cash.
And she hadn’t stopped moving since.
Rick Bayless watched Detective Mimi Parsons take a huge bite of her PB & J on Wonder Bread, give it several distracted chews and then wash everything down with a slug of milk from a quart carton, which she’d probably swiped from the coffee room. She was glued to the tabloid magazine on her desk and hadn’t noticed him standing not six feet away, observing her and the otherwise empty police-station bullpen.
Everyone’s out to lunch, Rick thought, especially her.
At least she wasn’t into health food, like the rest of southern California. She had snack packages of potato chips and chocolate-chip cookies lined up for her second and third courses. Not into highbrow reading material, either. The article was upside down to Rick, but he could make out the title from where he stood by the door, and it had something to do with a transgender female prison inmate giving birth to a fur-bearing baby of questionable species.
Not much has changed, he thought, smiling to himself. Mimi was still a mess. Her desk was stacked high with case files, unfinished reports and research data. Her blazer jacket was wrinkled and too large on her petite frame, not that he was any expert on fashion. Most notably, though, she was completely tuned out to everything but what held her attention at that moment. That’s what had made her a stellar detective when they were partners, her avid, Peeping Tom–like concentration.
Rick had asked for Coop at the desk, but the clerk told him Don Cooper had been loaned out to the Palos Verdes Estates Police Department on a case. Rick figured that was apt punishment for Don’s loquaciousness. Not much to talk about at PVEPD. A big case there involved victims of rabid squirrel attacks on golf courses. Occasionally someone got nailed by a runaway cart.
Rick had done a little more digging with the clerk, found out that Mimi was peripherally involved in the Ned Talbert case, and used all of his considerable stealth to sneak in here and surprise her. He and Mimi had done their thing fifteen years ago, working juvenile vice out of the downtown L.A. bureau. A year or so after he resigned, in part because of remarks he’d made that were critical of the juvenile-hall system, Mimi had called and told him she was switching to homicide. She’d sailed through the requirements, eventually transferred down here to the West Side police station, and she’d been an integral part of their detective division ever since.
Rick had been instrumental in helping her get the job. She’d wanted out of the grinder, and he had pulled a few strings. Mimi actually did owe him for that, not that she’d ever admit it. Theirs had been a love-hate relationship, never romantic, sometimes trying, but always interesting.
He scuffed his feet, and she looked up, eyes narrowing at the sight of him. “What in the H are you doing here, Bayless? I haven’t fired my gun yet this year. You’re going to make me break that record?”
It was her way of saying hi. Rick nodded, unsmiling. His way.
