Chapter Eight

Dear Adrien,

I hope you are well and that business is great. I have been thinking of coming home. Do I still have my job at Cloak and Dagger Books?

Yours sincerely,

Angus Gordon

“Did you forget to meet Lisa for lunch?” Natalie asked over the din of power tools and construction workers shouting to each other behind the plastic wall that separated Cloak and Dagger books from the adjoining space.

I looked up blankly from the postcard offering four scenic shots of the pyramids at Chichen Itza. “Huh?”

She said, “Isn’t today your day for lunch with Lisa?”

“Jesus!” I yelped, dropping the card -- and knocking over the stack of mail that had accumulated while I was ill and that I’d been sorting through.

“Adrien! What’s the matter with you?”

“It totally skipped my mind.”

Her blue eyes widened. “Yeeowch,” she said, which was the understatement of the year.

By then I was on my cell phone dialing.

Before my mother remarried we had a long-standing tradition of Saturday brunch. She wanted to keep up this tradition after her marriage -- and include her new family and Guy in the mix. I’d declined on the basis of not being able to afford getting genteelly snockered with the stepfamily every weekend, and had managed to move our weekly session to lunch on the first Tuesday of the month. I told myself that this way it kept the innocent bystander casualties to a minimum.

I got her on the first ring.

“Adrien!” Lisa said, and lucky for me the blend was ninety percent relief and only ten percent caustic acid.

“Lisa, I can’t apologize enough,” I said -- although I was well aware I was going to have to. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten, and put it down to the fact that my schedule was still whacked after nearly a week in hospital.

“Why weren’t you answering your cell phone? I’ve been so worried. Darling, where in the world have you been?”

I wasn’t about to tell her where I’d been. Jake Riordan had never been on Lisa’s A-list, and she’d been even less keen on him after he and I had parted ways -- not that I’d ever discussed my relationship with her. Before or after.

“I know, I’m sorry. I just got caught up in some things.” The story of my life, actually.

She protested, “But Natalie says you haven’t been at the shop all day.”

If only they hadn’t outlawed corporal punishment for bookstore employees with big mouths. “No, I’ve been running errands,” I admitted, glaring at Natalie.

She spread her hands in a What? What’d I do?

“Darling, you’re not well enough to do all this racing around. Horseback riding lessons for Emma last night and these mysterious errands today. You’re just out of hospital. You mustn’t tax yourself.”

I managed to swallow my impatience. “Lisa, I’m fine. Really. And I’ve been out of the hospital for a week.”

“You’re not strong, darling. I wish --”

“I know you do,” I said. “So what’s the plan now?”

There was a pause while she registered my tone. Then she sighed. “Well, we’ve missed lunch. I suppose we could meet for drinks.”

My heart sank. There was nothing I wanted more than to lie down for half an hour, but I could hardly insist on naptime, having stood her up and then made a point of how terrific I felt.

We arranged to meet at Villa Piacere on Ventura Boulevard in forty minutes.

I took my meds, checked my wallet, grabbed a jacket despite the warmth of the afternoon. The phone was ringing as I headed out the side door. I stopped when Natalie called to me.

Handing over the mouthpiece, she hissed, “It’s Paul Kane again.”

“I’ll take it in the office.” Back in the storeroom that doubled as my office, I picked up, waited to hear Natalie clicked off, and said, “Hi. I was going to call you later.”

He chuckled -- a lazy, vaguely seductive sound. I wondered if he and Jake laughed a lot together. Not that Jake was exactly Comedy Hour material…but, yeah, there had been some good times. We had found a lot of the same things funny.

“I’m not expecting an hourly report,” he assured me. “Just wanted to make sure you hadn’t had second thoughts. I’m afraid Jake was rather…hacked off with our arrangement.” He added. “I do apologize. Was he particularly obnoxious?”

“Not for Jake,” I said. And in fact Jake had been uncharacteristically agreeable to my poking around, so Paul’s apology caught me off guard.

“He did give in, in the end,” Paul said ruefully, “but he said he was going to have a word with you. Establishing the parameters, I suppose.” He chuckled. “He tore a strip off me for not telling him that Porter had hired a PI.”

“That he didn’t seem pleased about,” I admitted. Although I hadn’t realized that Jake didn’t know about the PI, just that he was annoyed at the possibility I might trespass too far with my interviewing.

“The thing is,” Paul said -- and I wished suddenly that I could see his face because his tone was…not quite right -- “I had thought it might be more pleasant for all concerned if you spoke to this bloke first. And then, depending on what you learned, we could decide whether to bring Jake in or not.”

We?

I said, “Yeah, well. Too late now. I’ve got orders from the top to call in before and after I interview anyone.”

There was a pause. I heard the echo of my words: Orders from the top? I had to bite my lip to contain an inappropriate laugh. This was followed by even more inappropriate speculation as to who was the top in that relationship? I didn’t see Paul Kane as the submissive type, but picturing Jake on his knees to anyone was pretty much…although there had been one astounding night, one transcendent night.

I remembered the soft drift of his mouth on my naked skin, the delicate rasp of tongue as he licked and nibbled the point of my chin, the thin skin of my throat where the jugular vein pounded in crazy hot excitement…taking a sweetly torturous lifetime to kiss his way down the length of my body -- a seductive game of connect the dots: collar bone, breast bone, belly, the sensitive joining of groin and inner thigh until at last his wet, hot mouth closed around me…

Heat washed through my body. I made myself focus as Paul said carefully, “But you see, I didn’t tell Jake the name of the PI. I told him I didn’t know it. In fact, I told him I wasn’t absolutely certain Porter had gone ahead and hired anyone. That it might have been nothing more than bluff.”

“But you do know the name of the PI?”

“Er…yes.”

I said, equally careful, “Why wouldn’t you tell Jake?”

He made a little sound of impatience as though I were being disappointingly slow. “In addition to being a very dear friend of mine, Porter was my business partner. I’m not in any way suggesting we would or should keep information from the politzia, but I should like to hear firsthand anything that’s liable to prove damaging -- rather than wait for the police to inform me.”

I was silent.

“I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?” He laughed but I could hear the unease.

“No,” I answered. “But if this investigator was hired to follow Jones’s wife, what potentially damaging information do you think he might have?”

“I don’t know, do I?” Kane said. “That’s why I’d like to hear whatever it is first.”

It’s not that I didn’t understand or sympathize, but no way was I going to be placed in that position.

“Look, Paul. I appreciate what you’re telling me, but I gave Jake my word. Not to mention the fact, he’d throw my ass in jail if he found out I tried to go around him.”

“He wouldn’t, you know,” he said. “Jake’s a pussycat.”

Yeah, just a big old saber-toothed tiger.

“Then you go talk to this PI,” I said shortly.

“I’m afraid that really would put a strain on our relationship,” Paul said, and I was pretty sure he didn’t mean his and mine. “Look, the bloke’s name is Roscoe Markopoulos. Markopoulos Investigations. He’s in the book. Just think about it. I won’t tell Jake for a day or two.”

Safe to say, few people ever told Paul Kane no. I said, “You might as well tell Jake now because I’m not going behind his back. Also, since we’re sort of on this topic, I don’t think Ally is your murderer. She admits she and Porter were having some problems, but she says that was all in the past.”

“Of course the stupid slag says that,” Paul said without any particular venom. “She married Porter for his money, and when she realized he wouldn’t put up with being cuckolded, she decided to play the devoted wife in hopes of keeping him from changing his will. She’s an actress, Adrien. Not a very good one, I admit, and I didn’t expect you to fall for the act. I tell you, that woman is evil.”

Cuckolded? Will?

I said, “Right, did you want me to focus on Ally to the exclusion of everyone else? Because, personally, I don’t see why she didn’t knock Porter off at home and in private, where there was less chance of the poisoned cocktail going astray.”

He said quickly, “No, no. I’m not trying to railroad the woman. I trust your instinct. You’re the expert here, after all. By all means you must keep talking to people -- with my blessing. Besides, perhaps someone will have seen something to prove Ally is guilty.”

He was so sure. What was it he hadn’t told me? And why wasn’t he telling me?

Into my silence, he said, “Why don’t you speak to Valarie?”

I was totally blanking on the name. “Valarie?”

“Valarie Rose?” He gave that attractive laugh. “She’s going to be directing Murder Will Out.”

“Oh God,” I said. “I remember. I do remember. Any particular reason you think I should talk to Valarie? I was thinking maybe I’d talk to Al January next.”

“Al?” Kane sounded wary. “Why?”

“He was a longtime friend of Porter’s, right?”

“Er…yes. But Al tries to stay removed from all of our little personal dramas.”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t talk to Al?”

“No, of course not.” His amusement sounded perfectly natural -- but then he was an actor. “I’ll call Al and arrange a meeting.”

And I was apparently paranoid.

I said, “And if you could also set something up with Valarie, that would be terrific.”

“I’ll see what I can arrange,” Kane said -- still sounding amused.