by Joanna Wayne
“If you believed that you wouldn’t have called Cameron Morgan to come stay with Alex. You’d have blown Karen off until this was over or had her meet you at PPS at your convenience.”
“You’re picking up on all my tricks.”
“I really do think this is going to come to a head today. What Karen’s going to tell us combined with what you and Lenny have discovered will fit together and give you the pieces to solve the puzzle.”
“Karen said she wanted to ask questions. She may not tell us anything.”
“Are you always so negative?”
“I just hate for you to count too much on this being the end-all when it might be a dead end.”
“Lenny said you are the master at taking isolated facts and fitting them into the complete whole.”
“Lenny exaggerates.”
“And you’re modest.”
“Does this mean you’ve given up on Hal being the killer?” Jack asked.
“Nope. I think Karen is going to supply us with that elusive motive you keep talking about.”
“You are optimistic today.”
“I am about this. I’m a little more concerned about Cameron handling Alex until we get back to the ranch. She was already wrapping him around her little finger when we left. She probably talked him into ice cream and cookies for breakfast.”
“He’d never do that. Beer maybe, ice cream, never.”
“That does not make me feel better.” Jack was trying to keep things light, but he’d been so upset after Karen’s call last night that his lustful passion had been transformed into an all-business protective surge. He’d been tense ever since, and she knew he didn’t share her optimism.
Kelly’s phone rang. She expected it to be Mitchell calling to badger her about returning to Los Angeles. Worse. It was her mom. She was tempted not to answer, but that would send her parents into a panic attack, and she couldn’t do that to them.
“Hi, Mom.”
“I just saw the news. They said that actor who fell from his hotel balcony was a friend of Nick’s.”
“They were friends, but Hal’s fall was just one of those freak accidents that happen sometimes.”
“The reporter said he might not have fallen, that he could have been pushed.”
News to Kelly. “He was just speculating, Mom. You know how they try to make everything a big news story.”
“I’m worried, Kelly, really worried.” Her voice broke.
“Don’t do this, Mom. Please don’t cry. I’m fine and so is Alex. I’d tell you if we weren’t.”
“Are you still staying at that bodyguard’s ranch?”
“Yes, and you wouldn’t believe the high-tech equipment he has there. He knows if a leaf blows a hundred yards away.”
“Don’t humor me, Kelly. We’re coming out there. Your father is on the computer right now getting—”
The phone cut out. “Darn!”
“What’s wrong?”
“My phone’s dead. With all that’s going on, I forgot to recharge the battery.”
“Here.” He handed her his phone. “But make it quick. We’re only a few blocks from Karen’s apartment.”
There was no making it quick. She had to get her father on the phone and persuade him not to click the submit button on his ticket purchase. She succeeded as they were hurrying up the stairs to apartment 204-B.
Kelly had her first intimation that this might not go as she’d hoped when there was no answer at the door.
“Maybe the doorbell’s broken,” she said.
Jack pounded on the door, but still there was no response. He tried the knob. It turned, so he pushed the door open and she followed him inside.
And there was Karen Butte lying in the middle of the floor, a bullet through her head.
JACK STEPPED OVER a stream of blood and walked to where he had a better view of the body. Karen had been shot twice when either bullet would have spilled her brains onto the carpet. This had hit written all over it.
“Don’t touch anything,” he warned.
“I wouldn’t.”
Kelly was standing behind him. When he turned, he saw that her face was pasty-white.
“Call 911,” she urged.
“It’s too late for that.”
“Then call the cops.”
“I’ll call them as we leave.” Kelly was hanging in there but he didn’t want to leave her standing alone and staring at the body while he searched the apartment.
“Ready for another Easter egg hunt?”
“If it helps.”
Jack went to the kitchen, located some plastic freezer bags and handed two to Kelly. “Put these on your hands like mittens, but still be careful what you touch. We don’t want to smudge fingerprints, though I doubt there are any. You can start in the bedroom.”
“What do I look for?”
“Anything with Nick’s name on it. I’ll take Karen’s office. She’s freelance, so I’m sure she has one.”
Her office had been ransacked as he’d expected. There was a computer monitor on Karen’s desk, but no computer. There was an adapter for a laptop, but no laptop. Files were scattered about the floor. The room had been combed by someone who probably knew exactly what he was looking for.
Jack searched anyway, getting angrier by the second. This was his town. He should know what was going on. He should know who called for a hit and why. He should know who’d ambushed them on the way to the airport.
He should know—but he didn’t.
The equipment at PPS was state-of-the-art, but this case wasn’t going to be solved at headquarters. Jack was taking it to the streets, and Kelly would not be going with him. He found her in the bedroom staring at a photograph of Karen receiving some kind of award. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
He put his arm around Kelly’s shoulders, wishing she hadn’t seen this, hating Nick for dragging her into whatever sordid mess he’d become involved with. “I’ll call the cops. They’ll contact her next of kin.”
His phone vibrated as he led Kelly to the door. He waited until they reached the car before checking it. A text message from Karen Butte.
Milo Kardascian.
Kelly looked over his shoulder. “Who is Milo Kardascian?”
“I have no idea, but the message is from Karen.”
“When did she leave it?”
“At 8:52 a.m.”
“Oh, God, Jack, she died while I was using your phone. We were only blocks from her apartment. If we’d left the ranch a few minutes sooner, if we hadn’t hit so many red lights, if…” She shuddered. “We must have barely missed the killer.”
“Looks that way.”
“She couldn’t’ have keyed in the message while she was dying—not with the top of her head blown away.”
“No, she died instantly,” he assured.
“So she knew she was about to die, and still she had the presence of mind to type someone’s name. It has to be a clue to what she was investigating—a very important clue.”
“Definitely worth checking into.”
“What will you do now?”
“Find out who Milo Kardascian is.” And go looking for a killer.
Monday, 11:06 a.m.
PPS Headquarters.
KELLY HAD BEEN DISTRAUGHT when they’d left Karen Butte’s apartment. Jack had been insistent that he couldn’t protect her on the Denver streets while he smoked out an informant. Still, she’d begged to go with him—until he’d reminded her that if she got killed, Alex would be an orphan. That had instantly put things back into perspective.
With the blizzard forecast to move in by morning, she’d suggested he drop her off at PPS headquarters rather than waste precious time driving all the way back to the ranch before hitting the streets. But she hadn’t sat around doing nothing. And what she’d found had her more convinced than ever of Hal’s guilt.
“You know, Kelly, you may have actually cracked this case,” Lenny said, as he dropped the faxed copy of Nick’s recentl
y revised will on Jack’s desk. “All on your own, too. Checking Nick’s will wasn’t at the top of my to-do list.”
“Nor mine, until I decided to call Olivia Turner. Of course it took twenty minutes of listening to her rave about her fabulous postpremiere soiree Friday night at her estate before I could get her to hear anything I was saying.”
“I’m still not sure I have all that straight. How did Olivia overhear Nick and Hal arguing when our agent at that same party had only seen them laughing together?” Lenny frowned.
“Olivia had invited Drake Patton upstairs to show him the frieze a local craftsman had carved in the ceiling of her boudoir. They walked in on Hal and Nick in a heated argument. That’s all I got from her.”
“Then it was Drake who actually alerted you to the will?”
“Exactly. He said Nick was slurring his words, that he was drunk or high on something.”
“The speed they found in his blood.”
“Right, pills that he’d probably gotten from Hal. Anyway, as Nick was bolting from the room, he spewed that the will would be changed by morning.”
“It seems that Drake would have called the police or at least called you when he heard about Nick being murdered.”
“His own movie was being premiered the next evening. I’m sure that claimed all his attention. Besides, like he said, he would never have suspected Hal of murder. He’d assumed Nick’s death was from a robbery gone bad.”
Kelly picked up Nick’s recently revised will to read it for herself, though the attorney had already given her the meat of it over the phone.
One-third of Nick’s estate—such as it was—was to go into a trust fund for Alex. One-third was to go to Mitchell Caruthers for his years of dedicated service. And one-third would go to Kelly, up until the date that she died or filed for divorce. After said filing or death, the one-third designated for her would go to Hal Hayden.
Nick would never have expected to die before she divorced him, but that provision must have satisfied some sense of legal obligation. Unfortunately, that phrase had almost cost three lives. With Nick dead, Hal realized there would be no divorce, so his only way to collect what he must have thought was a fortune was for Kelly to die, too.
The motive.
“I keep thinking about timing,” Lenny said. “It would be close, but it could work if Hal got Degrazia’s and Sheffield’s names right after he killed Nick. That would still leave him a few hours to line up one of them and give them time to be waiting for you and Jack when you were driving to the airport, provided he knew your travel plans.”
“I’m sure he got that information from Mitchell,” she said, “but where would he have gotten Degrazia’s and Sheffield’s names?”
“That’s easy enough,” Lenny said. “All you have to do is hit a honky-tonk on the other side of the tracks, down in the area where Jack is right now.”
Lenny picked up the mug of lukewarm coffee he’d been carrying around the last half hour, then set it back down without taking a drink. “I’m just not sure how Karen Butte fits into this.”
“My take at this point is that she was investigating one or more of the sleazy companies Nick had invested in, and she needed to know about his involvement. That might or might not be the story that got her killed.”
Lenny nodded. “That theory has some merit. What about the man who broke into the rented house in the wee hours of Friday morning? That wouldn’t have been Hal.”
Damn, how could she have forgotten that? But she refused to let one little loose end rain on her parade. Hal was the killer. She’d discovered his motive.
Jack would have to be impressed.
Monday, 11:52 a.m.
Denver Streets
THE BAR WAS GRIMY, the floor marred from boots and cigarette burns. And even in the dim light that filtered through the filthy window, Jack could see the layers of muck on the bar stools and smell the puke of one of last night’s drunks.
Jack had spent the last two hours going from one to another of his favorite informant’s regular hangouts and this was the most disgusting so far.
“You looking for somebody?”
Jack could barely hear the question over the loud rap music coming from the cheap overhead speakers. “I’m looking for Snarky.”
“I don’t know no Snarky.”
“Snarky Jefferson.”
“Still don’t know him.”
“I got a twenty-dollar bill says you do.”
The guy was perched on the edge of a bar stool, leaning over a porn magazine that looked as if it had been in and out of a lot of filthy hands. He needed a shave and a shower and a shirt that had been washed this year. Jack was in this area fairly often, but he was pretty sure he’d never seen this particular degenerate before.
“If I was to know this Snarky, who would I say is looking for him?”
“An old friend.”
“You a cop?”
“Nope.”
“You look like a cop. Talk like one, too. You totin’?”
“You got people walk through this neighborhood without a weapon?”
“Not for long. What kind of business you got with Snarky?”
The jerk knew where Snarky was. He was messing with Jack now, and Jack was fast losing his patience. He knew the game, but he was tired of playing it. He yanked his gun from the shoulder holster under his jacket and pushed the barrel into the man’s stomach. With his other hand, he grabbed the neck of the guy’s shirt, twisting until he was gasping for air.
“I said I need to see Snarky.”
The guy had to squeak out his response. “Try Laranelle’s.”
Jack tightened the twist. “Wouldn’t be good if I found out you were lying to me.”
The guy squeaked again, this time something incoherent. Jack let go of him, returned his weapon to its holster and walked out. Laranelle was legend. She had been the girlfriend of half the men who lived in this section of town where cocaine was king. Jack knew where she lived and where she worked. He’d killed a guy once in her bedroom. The guy had drawn first.
Jack walked the two blocks to her house, watching his back, though no one usually messed with him this time of the day. The ones who’d have cut his throat for money for their next fix were still asleep and recuperating from their last one.
Jack tapped on Laranelle’s front door. He saw the curtain being pulled back at the front window before he heard the dead bolt click. Snarky opened the door a crack. “What you doing here, man? I’m trying to sleep.”
“Looking for information.”
“Walk around to the back. I don’t want the bitch to wake up and find us talking.”
Jack followed Snarky into a run-down garage behind the house.
“You got a smoke, man? This time of the morning, I need my smoke.”
Jack didn’t smoke but he carried a pack for situations like this. He shook the pack and stuck it out for Snarky to take one, then offered him a light. Snarky puffed and leaned against an old Chevy that was up on blocks.
“What kind of information you looking for?”
“Ever heard of a man named Milo Kardascian?”
“Naw. No Kardascian down here.”
Snarky didn’t always talk to Jack, but when he did, he told the truth. Jack paid him well, and Snarky owed Jack for saving his son’s life one night when the teenager had gotten into a knife fight near where Jack had been meeting another snitch. Snarky had been his chief informant ever since.
“So tell me about Billy Sheffield. Is he staying clean?”
“Far as I know. Causes hell on the streets and beats up his old lady, but he ain’t in jail.”
“Did he do a hit for somebody this past weekend?”
“You talking about that movie star guy wanting his wife taken out?”
“Could be. You got a name for the movie star?”
“Same one who they keep talking about on the TV, but looks like his old lady got to him first.”
“Are you talking about Nick Warn
er?”
“That’s the one. The big shot came down here a week ago and offered fifty thousand to have her bumped off. We got people here that would’ve done it for ten.”
“Billy take the fifty?”
“Naw. He was ready to, till he heard the whole story.”
“What was that?”
“Woman was going to have a kid with her most of the time. Billy, he’s a ladies’ man, you know.”
“Like you?”
“Yeah, but not as good as I am where it counts. Know what I mean?”
Snarky laughed shakily. He was never easy when he was squealing. He knew all too well what happened to snitches if they got caught by their peers.
“Billy didn’t like the idea of killing off a woman to start with. But a kid? That’s a hundred times worse. You know what they do to kid killers in prison? It ain’t pretty.”
“So what did Billy do?”
“Told the guy to find somebody else.”
“Degrazia?”
“Maybe. Degrazia would shoot his own mother for fifty grand.”
“Have you seen Degrazia around town?”
“Me, personally? No, man. But Laranelle said he came by the club where she dances a couple of nights ago.”
“And Billy was sure that the man who wanted Mrs. Warner killed was her husband?”
“I just know what he told me.”
“Where do I find Billy?”
Snarky coughed, a hoarse noise that sounded as if the lining was being stripped from his throat. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. “Don’t let him know I told you anything.”
“Of course not.” Snarky gave him a couple of locations where he might find Billy.
“And where do I find Degrazia?”
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t go looking if I were you. Mess with Degrazia, they don’t ever find your body. And word on the street is he left town in a big hurry Saturday afternoon.”
Jack paid Snarky cash and left to go find Billy Sheffield.
It took a while, but Jack finally found Billy smoking pot in a run-down park near where Snarky had told him Billy’s mother lived. It took serious cash and some unfriendly persuasion to get him to talk. He finally agreed, but only because he hadn’t committed the crime.
