The Private Concierge. Suzanne Forster

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Ned? Personally? I’ve known him since he was five, and he isn’t into whips and chains. He’s not a killer, and he wasn’t suicidal. He had everything to live for, as the cliché goes.”

      “Did Ned tell you about this service? Did he have suspicions?”

      Lie, Bayless. She’s never going to get the significance otherwise.

      He drew Lane Chandler’s card out of his jacket pocket. “Ned was using this as a marker in a book he loaned me. Take a look at what he wrote on the back.”

      She glanced at the question Ned had scribbled on the back, her lips pursing as she turned the card over and continued to scrutinize it. “Not much to go on, Sherlock.”

      “Right, but Ned also paid me a visit at my cabin the night before he and his girlfriend were found dead. He said he was in trouble, that someone was trying to blackmail him. I had other things on my mind and sent him away. The next day, well, you know what happened.”

      She closed one eye, squinting at him. “So, this is about your guilt?”

      “It’s about follow-up, Mimi. Your specialty. You need to check this out—or get one of those RHD hotshots to do it.”

      Her expression said gimme a fricking break, but he knew Mimi, and she wouldn’t have cleaned it up that much. “You know how they are, Rick. They’re gods. The stink of the O.J. case will never go away, but they still walk on water. What do you think my chances are of getting them to go along with this? They’ll laugh me off the case and loan me out to Palos Verdes.”

      It was a credit to Rick’s years of practice that he didn’t smile.

      She held out the card, which he pointedly ignored.

      “It ain’t happening, Bayless,” she insisted. “From what I hear, the case is being written up as a murder-suicide, and the lab results aren’t even in yet. That’s how sure they are.”

      Rick’s jaw clenched so tightly he could hear a click in his ears. “How sure they are? How could they be sure of anything at this point? Maybe it’s how anxious they are to be rid of this case. Did you ever think to ask yourself why, Mimi? Did it even occur to you that something else might be going on here?”

      Mimi sighed. “I know cover-up is a buzz phrase these days, but it’s a little early for that, don’t you think? I was at the crime scene, and it sure as hell looked like a murder-suicide to me.”

      That’s what Rick had been waiting to hear from her, but he didn’t want to look too eager. Better to continue his rant a little longer. “And isn’t that convenient for everyone concerned. They’re not even going to bother with the lab reports? Either that came down from above, which raises more questions, or these guys are lazy.”

      Mimi shrugged, as if to say probably both. She peered at Rick. “If it were me, I’d write it off as a coincidence. Do you think it might be your history, not to mention animosity, toward the department that’s causing you to look for conspiracies where there are none?”

      “My history is exactly why I can’t write it off.” With that, he changed the subject. “Take another look at that card. Do you recognize the name?”

      “Lane Chandler?” She shook her head. “Should I?”

      “We booked her for prostitution when she was a juvenile living on the streets—fifteen years old, to be exact. She was calling herself Lane Chandler, but her real name was Lucy Cox.”

      Mimi rolled back in her chair, stunned. She stared at the card. “Holy shit, this is the kid that set off the firestorm. You might still be working in vice if not for her. Me, too, for that matter.”

      “I never shed a tear about leaving vice. The point is, Lane Chandler has a criminal past, even if she was a juvenile at the time—and we need to know what she’s been doing since. Does she have an adult record, anything at all? I’d love to know how she ended up with clients like the CEO of TopCo and a hot commodity like Simon Shan.”

      “She represents Simon Shan?”

      Mimi’s eyes widened. Apparently Shan was a hot commodity. Rick didn’t keep up with celebrity gossip, but he’d seen enough of it on Gotcha.com to know that Lane’s service had become a lightning rod. The coincidence of so many clients in trouble at one company had not slipped Seth Black’s attention, either. Of the bunch, Shan had been cited as the one with the most to lose.

      That was before Ned Talbert died under gruesome circumstances, but Ned wasn’t mentioned as a client of TPC, which meant the list had probably been made up before he joined—and Black had noticed the pattern even before Ned’s death.

      Rick added some more names. “U.S. congressman Burton Carr and Priscilla Brandt, who’s hawking a book about manners. It’s quite a list.”

      “Ms. Pris?” Mimi seemed impressed. “Still, the case is all but closed, and they’re not going to open it up again because Ned joined a concierge service whose clients are having a string of bad luck. So, what do you think is going on?”

      “I don’t know, but I sure as hell wish I’d listened to what Ned was trying to tell me.”

      She scribbled down a note on her desk blotter, which was unlikely ever to be found again, given all the doodling already there. “Maybe I could do some checking on Lane Chandler or Lucy Cox, just for old time’s sake and because I’m kind of curious myself. Not that I owe you any favors. Because I sure as hell don’t.”

      “Thanks,” he said, deadpan. Better not to let her know that he was breathing easier. He lingered, wondering how to segue to his next concern.

      She ripped open a bag of chips, about to wedge a few too many into her open mouth, when she realized he was still intent on something—her. “What? You hungry?”

      “I was just wondering about the evidence from the crime scene. No big deal, but I left a package over at Ned’s. I thought one of the techs might have picked it up.”

      “Rick, you’re not really asking me to mess with the evidence, are you? Tell me you’re not.”

      He shrugged, tilting just enough to grab a couple chips from her bag. He was taking a chance by tying himself with the package, but what the hell. Getting caught with his hand in a fifteen-year-old cookie jar was the least of his worries these days, especially with his gut telling him the package had been lifted before the police ever got there. Mimi might be able to confirm that for him.

      “You could tell me if it’s there, couldn’t you?” he coaxed. “It’s an old brown bubble pack, eight by eleven, unmarked but pretty beaten up. I’d like to have it back when the investigation’s over.”

      “What’s inside?”

      “Personal stuff,” he said, wondering if he could still blush. “It’s a little embarrassing.”

      She heaved a sigh and picked up her sandwich, poking a bubble of red jelly back between soggy crusts. “Don’t push it, Rick.”

      He nodded. “Right, I’ll leave you to your lunch.” He had a feeling she would check. Yeah, definitely, Mimi was going to check. It was that Peeping Tom thing. Whether she’d tell him was another question.

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