The Private Concierge. Suzanne Forster

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      “Drop what you’re holding. Drop it!”

      The house key clinked on the slate walk, dancing end over end until it hit the rise of the porch step.

      “Put your hands up and turn around,” the officer barked. “Slowly.”

      Rick turned, aware of the officer’s hand hovering over his hip holster. “The guy who lives here is my closest friend,” Rick said. “I just heard what happened. Please, I need to see him.”

      The officer blinked, his sole expression of regret, if that’s what it was. “He’s not here. The bodies have been taken to the coroner’s office on Mission Boulevard. If a member of his family can’t be located, you may have to ID him.”

      Rick wanted to slam the unfeeling words right down the guy’s throat. He would love to have decked him, but he understood that for some of these guys, lack of empathy was protection—if they bled over every victim, or even one, they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs—so Rick was going to give this SOB the benefit of the doubt.

      Rick had never managed that kind of detachment on his watch. He’d been involved up to his neck, and look where that had landed him—on the sidewalk and looking for a job. He’d quit under fire, and probably just before they could fire him. He’d had the audacity to question policy decisions, but he didn’t regret any of it. Nor did he miss the politics and the red tape.

      The officer peered at Rick, his brow furrowing. “You look familiar.”

      Rick wondered if he’d made a mistake. He was pretty good when it came to names and faces, but he couldn’t place this guy. He just shrugged and left his glasses on. “I doubt it.”

      The rookie should have asked to see ID and Rick’s car registration, but he let it go, maybe out of respect for the situation.

      “Look, go over to the West L.A. station and tell them who you are. Maybe they’ll give you some information,” he suggested. “If you want, you can drop back tomorrow. The tape should be down by then.”

      Rick pretended to be surprised. “They’ve already determined it was murder-suicide, like the newspaper said? What about burglary, a home invasion or some other kind of foul play? What if someone wanted it to look like murder-suicide? A jealous boyfriend? Or another ballplayer, trying to eliminate the competition? A rival team owner?”

      The officer’s expression said Ned Talbert wasn’t that good an outfielder. “It was murder-suicide. Trust me, you don’t want to know what happened in there.”

      The dread turned soft and queasy in Rick’s stomach. Something fetid coated the back of his throat. He would have said it was the tide, but the onshores rarely carried the sea smells this far. Most of the time, this area existed in a velvet-draped moneyed hush.

      Rick didn’t want to know what had happened inside, but he had to find out. Ned wasn’t violent. He was a big chicken—not a coward, just a good-hearted, easygoing guy, who could leap like a ballet dancer to snag a fly and slam a ball into the next county. He would have made a terrible member of Delta Force. He didn’t like guns, and Rick had often kidded him about that, just the way Ned had dissed him about his fear of water. But even if Ned had that kind of violence in him, why kill himself and his girlfriend instead of the blackmailer?

      Rick should have listened. He had nothing to go on, not even the most rudimentary details of the blackmail attempts. He didn’t know when, how often or why. But there was another reason Rick needed access to Ned’s house. Years ago, he’d given Ned a package for safekeeping. The police may have found the eight-by-eleven bubble pack in Ned’s safe, and Rick had to get it back, if it was still there. A part of him hoped this investigation was as cut-and-dried as the officer had suggested. It was why Rick hadn’t mentioned Ned’s concerns about blackmail, and wouldn’t.

      3

      Lane Chandler was doing four things at once, which was about two less than she normally did. She’d pulled up Gotcha.com, a tabloid Web site, on her computer screen, praying not to see any of her clients featured there. She was also mentally updating her to-do list, a never-ending task, and she was undressing…all while chatting with her favorite client on her cell-phone headset.

      “She wants gangsta rappers for her sweet-sixteen party?” Lane draped her suit jacket over the back of her office chair and then perched on the edge of her desk, easing the pain of her obscenely overpriced new high heels. She turned enough to continue searching the Gotcha home page, but so far no clients in jail or rehab—and no mention of the one she was specifically looking for.

      “Thank you, God,” she said, mouthing the words. She felt lighter, but it was too soon to relax. She had yet to check Jack the Giant Killer’s column.

      “Jerry,” she implored her headset, “say no! Someday your daughter will thank you for refusing to book the Gutter Punk Bone Dawgs for her special day.”

      “Say no to my Felicity? I’d stand a better chance against the Bone Dawgs.”

      Jerry’s loud snort of laughter made Lane wince. She turned away from the computer screen to give her shoes a dark look. The way her day had gone, if her high-profile clients didn’t kill her the Manolo Blahniks would. Fortunately, she had Jerry on the phone rather than in her office, so he couldn’t see her torturing the side slit of her skirt as she bent over and pulled off the exotic footwear that was cutting her insteps to ribbons.

      She sighed with relief as she sank her feet into the plush office carpet. Who invented these stilts, the Marquis de Sade? A woman in high heels was supposed to be a sexual thing, creating an inviting tilt to the pelvis and a sensual swivel when she walked. But only a guy into serious S&M could love the pain on this woman’s face.

      “Lane, is that heavy breathing?”

      “That’s me, in ecstasy. I took off my shoes, and I’m warning you, the Spanx are next.”

      Silence. She couldn’t have shocked him. Not Jerry. He wasn’t shockable, and they often bantered. It was all in good fun. He was a big sweet bear of a man with a thick head of brown hair and a matching beard. He ran one of the largest discount chains in the country and he was among her top five clients, if you ranked by sheer business clout, but he was also her mentor and someone she could let down her hair with, which she was about to do right now, before the tightly embedded hair clip gave her a migraine.

      She reached into the back of her upswept do and freed the claws that held the heavy mahogany waves off her neck.

      “Spanx are panty hose, Jerry.”

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ