by Cassie Miles
“No, Sister,” Dash said. “You’ve been most helpful. I’m grateful.”
“Put in a good word for me,” she said, rising to her feet.
On the way to the car, Liz shook her head. “She’s nice, the sister. But definitely on a different wavelength. What did she mean, put in a good word? With whom?”
“A good woman,” Dash said. “After all she’s done, Sister Muriel is entitled to be a little eccentric.”
“And I guess you’re the expert on eccentricity.”
He climbed into the passenger seat. “What’s next? You got any ideas?”
“More searching. I can only think of two other places where the bluebird statue might be stashed away. The OrbenCorp headquarters. And the warehouse.”
“Okay,” Dash said. “Let’s go.”
Liz parked in the garage under the office building and they took the elevator to the fourteenth floor. On a weekend, the skyscraper, honeycombed with offices, had a deserted air. Their voices seemed to echo even in the elevator.
“The keys to everything are kept in the receptionist’s desk, but I can get in there,” Liz said. “After we check the storage area, we can make a thorough office-by-office search. Remember that Sarah said she’d given mementos of Agatha. One of the employees might have wanted the bluebird.”
“The falcon,” he said.
“Whatever.”
But when she tried to fit her keys into the locked office door on the fourteenth floor, it was unnecessary. The door was already open. “Strange,” Liz said. “I hope nobody else is here.”
Inside, the office was dimly lit. The only illumination came from an inner office door that stood open. It was Liz’s office. She reached into her purse and wrapped her fingers around the handle of her gun.
Dash went ahead of her, pushing the door wide. “Call the police,” he said. “And let’s get out of here.”
“What is it?”
“You don’t need to see.”
She pushed around him. This was her office, dammit. She needed to know what had happened in here.
There was chaos in her narrow cubicle. File drawers were flung open. Manila folders and their contents were scattered on the floor and across her desk. In the midst of the clutter, she saw Jack Orben. He was facedown, lying motionless in a drying puddle of dark red blood.
Chapter Eleven
Liz closed her eyes. She heard a harsh ringing in her ears. Her mouth had that awful metallic taste of nausea. She felt like she might pass out, and she prayed that when she opened her eyes again, she would not see the blood.
As if from a distance, she heard Dash say that Jack had been shot. She heard Dash say that Jack was dead.
There was no escaping the facts.
When she looked down at Jack Orben, her boss for ten years and her sometime friend, she felt a cold revulsion. He was dead. All the breath had left his body. His skin would be clammy. His blood would be gelid. She probably ought to be weeping and mourning, but ice had formed at her nerve endings, numbing the sorrow.
This shell wasn’t Jack anymore. Whatever he had been, the essence of Jack Orben, was departed. He was gone, vanished. His spirit had fled.
Liz placed her hand on her breast to feel the beating of her heart, a slow and heavy rhythm. Her vital pulse made a mockery of death. The real horror in this office was that Jack Orben had died too soon. He had been murdered.
And that fact made Elizabeth Carradine mad.
In a flash, the ice melted and poured from her like the spring runoff from the mountains west of town. She shook herself. Tingling, she felt the stirrings of rage.
Unbidden, Dash took her hand and held it. His anger, identical to her own, joined with hers. Together, they communicated without speaking. Murder, the stealing of a life force, was unjust. The killer must be called to reckoning.
She turned to him. His elemental fury matched her own. “The person who murdered Jack also killed Agatha.”
“Yes,” he said.
“We’ve got to find them.” She gripped his hand. His fingers, hot as fire, knitted with hers. “We’ve got to prove it.”
“We will,” he said.
And she believed him. His voice resonated with conviction. He knew what had to be done, and he would accomplish it.
He looked down at the body. “You never get used to this. To the injustice. I’ve seen battlefields where hundreds of young men were dead and dying. Victims. Lives cut short by violence. It never becomes easier to face the horror…and the rage.”
“I feel it,” she said.
He released her hand. “We should leave now. We can call the police from another phone.”
“That’s not the way it’s done, is it? Aren’t we supposed to wait for the police?”
Logically, he pointed out, “There’s nothing we can do here. Jack is already dead.”
“But it’s not right to place an anonymous phone call and leave. Besides, the police will want to talk to you. They’ll find your fingerprints here.”
“Liz, I’m an angel. I don’t leave fingerprints.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. With sarcasm, she disguised the deeper emotions that churned inside her. “And I don’t suppose you have any identification papers, either. Being an angel must be difficult to explain to the cops.”
“It is.”
His tone and his expression were so serious that she almost believed him. Almost, but not quite. Liz was determined not to be sidetracked by any nonsense from Dash. And it seemed to her that every time he was confronted by a difficult human situation, he called up his angel excuse, like a rabbit out of a hat. What a bizarre ruse!
But that was his problem. If she was going to change her life, if she was going to move from being an executive secretary to a private eye, she couldn’t run from the tough decisions. She needed to be solid, rational. Even now, even when she had been confronted—for the first time in her life—by terminal violence, she could not take refuge in tears or a fluttering heart, or turn to Dash and plead for him to handle the bad part of the investigation.
And this was the bad part. Jack Orben lay dead on the floor in her office. Could it get any worse? She took one long step away from Dash, flattening her back against a file cabinet. “I’m not ready to go yet. There must be a clue in this…what do you call it?”
“Scene of the crime.”
“Right.
Fighting for detachment, she began to visualize a scenario. “Suppose Jack came into the office and surprised someone, a person who was searching through the files in my office.”
“The same person who searched your apartment,” he said.
“Perhaps.”
“When Gary was in your apartment,” Dash confided, “the little wimp conned you into leaving the room, going into the kitchen to make coffee. While you were gone, he shuffled through your briefcase.”
“Why would Gary be looking for anything in here?”
“Beats me.”
Carefully, she stepped around the body of Jack Orben and opened a file drawer. A handful of files had been yanked out, apparently scattered on the floor. In a glance, Liz knew what had been disturbed. “One of these files had Hector’s price comparisons.”
“Gary had no reason to take that,” Dash said.
“Definitely not. Gary had a copy.”
“And Hector?”
“I don’t know why he’d take that file, either,” she said. “The figures are on the computer. There’s a record of the checks that have been cut and sent to the growers in South America. There’s no reason for him to take my notes.”
“But suppose Hector was in here, looking for the document so he would be prepared to defend himself. Jack surprised him. They fought. Jack was killed.”
“That sounds as likely as anything else.” She reached for the telephone on her desk. “I’m going to call the police. I’ll stay here and deal with them.”
“All right, sweetheart. If you insist. When you’re done, come directly to the apartment.”
“I will.” She was a bit annoyed that he wasn’t going to go through the police questioning with her. On the other hand, she needed to experience the official side of an investigation by herself. “And what are you going to do?”
“Search,” he said. “For Hector Messenger. For the missing pieces to this puzzle. For the falcon.”
“Bluebird,” she said.
“Whatever.”
FOUR HOURS LATER, an exhausted Liz rode up in the elevator to the sterile high-rise apartment Dash had tried to pass off as his own place.
Dash held the door open for her as she stumbled inside, making a beeline for the sofa where she collapsed. Her entire body felt limp, completely wrung out.
“You were right,” she said. “Dealing with the police was horrendous. They kept asking me the same questions, over and over. They wanted to know where I was yesterday and last night and today.”
“I know,” he said. “They called here to verify that you were with me.”
“I couldn’t believe it! They considered me to be a suspect because he was murdered in my office.”
“That’s how it goes, precious. The person who finds the body is usually the person who put it there.”
“But what a waste of time! They’re going to be questioning everybody from OrbenCorp. In the meantime, Jack’s murder is going to hit the newspapers and local television news.”
“So what? A brief mention on page twenty-seven.”
“Hardly that. Jack Orben was a big deal in town. He belonged to all the right clubs. He swung with all the right swingers. There’s going to be a lot of sleazy publicity.” She groaned. “I’m so glad to be hidden in this apartment. Nobody knows where I am.”
“Nobody,” he confirmed. “You take it easy, now. There’s no place else you’ve got to go today. Nothing else you’ve got to do.”
“You know what’s really strange? I lied to the police. Before I got involved with this, I never even had a speeding ticket, and I sat there with a completely straight face and told the detective that I’d come into the office alone. I didn’t mention you.”
“If it made you feel bad, you didn’t have to protect me. I can handle the cops.”
“Well, excuse me, but I thought it would be easier to tell a little white lie than to fire off one of those angel stories.” She fluttered her eyelashes and launched into a perfect ditz impersonation. “Like, you see, Officer, my friend Dash, like, he couldn’t hang around for you. But, like, wow, you don’t have to worry, ‘cause he’s an angel, and, like, he had to fly.”
“Cute,” he said.
“Not really. Not at all,” she grumbled. “Did you find Hector?”
He shook his head. “He’s not at his house. I asked the kid who takes care of his yard if Hector’s been around, and he said he hadn’t seen him since yesterday.”
“He did it. Hector killed Jack,” she said, pushing her hair off her forehead and staring at the ceiling. “I have it all figured out.”
Dash leaned against the back of the chair and watched her as she slowly opened and closed her eyes. She stretched like a cat and sighed.
He knew she’d had a rough time with the police because he had been there, invisible in the offices while the interrogations had been going on. He knew that she’d been shaken, and he’d witnessed the moment of her transformation when she went from nervous to solid. At that moment, when she faced the cops and straightened her shoulders and answered their questions without the slightest quaver in her voice, he’d been endlessly proud of her.
And now, alone with her, he enjoyed watching her, having her with him at the end of a day. Usually, he would be alone, thinking. Sharing the case with her made all the difference.
“I like this,” he said. “This talking back and forth. It kind of reminds me of what home life is supposed to be.”
“Chitchat about murders?” She raised her eyebrows. “Instead of asking how was your day at the office, you’d ask about the police interrogation?”
“I like it,” he repeated.
“What kind of home did you grow up in, anyway?”
Still, in a way, she agreed. When she was with him, she felt comforted and more secure. She liked it, too. To be perfectly honest, a predinner discussion of their progress on the murder case was far more appealing than the standard evening discussions her parents had about work at the office and trips to the grocery store and shopping for school supplies.
“Spill it,” he said. “How come you think Hector’s our murderer?”
“Here’s my theory. He killed Agatha and Jack because he was taking some kind of payoff from the South American coffee bean growers. As soon as he knew we were going to find out, he took off. And now he’s out of here. It’s my guess that he’s already left the country, could be anywhere in the world. We’ll never find him.”
“I don’t think he’s flown the coop,” Dash said. “I’ve got a sense that he’s still in town.”
“You and your senses,” she muttered. “We need facts, Dash.”
“Here’s a fact for you. Yesterday, outside your place, I ran into Hector’s son, Carlito.”
“Little Carlito? Do you remember that photo we saw in Agatha’s attic? He was such an adorable boy.”
“He’s not so cute anymore.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged. “I guess I didn’t think of it. I forgot.”
Though Dash had meant to share all his information with her, he still wasn’t accustomed to reporting to anyone, not even a potential partner. He’d been a loner for a very long time, and change was hard. Keeping someone else in the picture didn’t come naturally.
“What happened?” she asked.
“He and another guy were checking out your house. I think because they wanted to ask questions about Hector. And Carlito pulled a knife and—”
“A knife? Excuse me, Dash, but how could you forget a knife fight?”
“Nobody got hurt.”
“This is going to stop right now.” She tried to gesture emphatically, but she was so pooped that her hand flopped back on the sofa. “You are not to go anywhere or do anything without me. Understand?”
“And vice versa?”
“Right.” She bobbed her head and yawned. “I’m so tired.”
“You want dinner? I got Chinese, and I can zap it in the microwave.”
“Maybe if I eat something I’ll feel better. I’d like to make a run out to Sarah’s tonight. I talked to her on the phone for a sec, but I’d like to see her before the news hits that Jack has been murdered and she’s deluged with news media weirdos.”
With groaning effort, she hauled herself off the sofa and over to the kitchen table where she plunked down in a chair. “Poor Sarah. This is her second close relative to die within a year. I feel so awful for her.”
“What about you?” Dash said. “Agatha was your friend. Jack was your boss. I’m no kind of shrink, but I’d guess you’re feeling some pain.”
Her eyebrows knotted in a frown. “Right now, I’m so angry about the injustice of the whole thing that I can’t feel anything. Maybe later.” Softly, she added, “Maybe later, I’ll cry.”
Dash knew that she wouldn’t call her attitude courage. But that’s what it was. She was brave and tough. And he wanted more than anything to hold her close and give her his strength while she shed her tears.
She sat a little straighter in the chair. “At least planning the funeral won’t be too overwhelming for Sarah. Jack had the arrangements made when he took out that key-man insurance policy.”
“With Gary Gregory’s friends,” Dash said as he stacked food in the microwave. “How much was the policy for?”
“Two million dollars,” she said. “It flattered Jack’s vanity to think he was worth that much.”
“And who gets the money? Sarah?”
“Sarah isn’t a suspect anymore.” She glared at him. “Remember? This morning with Sister Muriel? Sarah had nothing to gain because she’s going
to turn the house over to the shelter. Remember, Sarah was a battered wife.”
“Therefore, innocent?” If only it was that easy, Dash thought. Unfortunately, being a victim didn’t guarantee that you would never commit a crime—unless, of course, you fell under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Branch of Avenging Angels.
“Besides,” Liz said, “Sarah doesn’t get the insurance money. It goes into the company.”
The microwave dinged, and he laid out a spread of half a dozen white cartons of Chinese food. “So? Who gets the company?”
“I’m not sure. Jack’s stock shares are probably going to be parceled out. We’ll have to ask Gary.”
She dug into the cartons and loaded her plate while he sat back and watched. Again, he thought this was pleasant and comfortable. He liked being able to share dinner with Liz.
A voice in the back of his head warned that sharing— on a regular basis—might get real old, real fast. If dinner was a night-after-night affair, he might learn to dread it.
“When do you think they’ll have the forensics workup on Jack’s body?” she asked.
Dash felt a slow grin spread across his face. Her question wasn’t the standard fare. Dinner with her would never be dull. “A coroner’s report? They need to do the autopsy. And there’s ballistics because he was shot. I’d guess Monday or Tuesday.”
“I was just wondering,” she said, “because the police confiscated my handgun. It seems I don’t have a permit for carrying a concealed weapon.”
Though he’d been there, watching over her, he asked, “They’re not going to charge you, are they?”
“No, but they were very interested in knowing why I felt I had to take a handgun to the office. It was dumb of me to let them see it. But I started crying, and I dug into my purse to get a hanky, and there was my gun. Right there, in the middle of a murder investigation.”
He nodded. It was pretty much amazing that the cops had let her go without filing major charges. “I’m surprised you’re not in cuffs.”
“I’m a fast talker.”
“Yes, you are.” He smiled again. The pleasure he felt in her company sank deep within him.
