by Kay Bigelow
“Yes.”
Jardain smiled and said, “Please don’t cancel, Leah.”
“I’ll text you my address after my next meeting.”
“I hope so,” Jardain said, holding her hand out to Leah.
Leah took the hand and felt a charge hit her body from one end to the other. Jardain turned Leah’s hand over and moved it to her lips. She softly kissed the palm and smiled. She glanced at Leah through the thickest eyelashes Leah had ever seen on a human. She released Leah’s hand and strode out of her office without looking back.
Leah was glad she was gone because in another thirty seconds she knew her knees were going to turn to a gelatinous mess. I need to get a grip on myself. What am I, thirteen and having my first crush? God, I’m acting like the teenager I never was. What’s wrong with me?
She turned to go join the others in the conference room, and found Cots standing in her doorway. He gave her a wide grin and led the way to the conference room. Leah wondered how much he had seen of her good-bye scene with Jardain.
After the meeting with the staff, Cots followed Leah back to her office. Peony joined them a few minutes later.
“Have you checked the murder board this morning?” Cots asked them.
“I have,” Peony answered.
“I haven’t. I was going to, but Dr. Bensington showed up earlier than expected.”
“How’d that go?” Peony asked.
“Cots was right. She has a titanium-clad alibi with about two hundred witnesses. We need to verify she was the keynote speaker at the conference she was attending that night.”
“Did she give you any insight into her sister?”
“No. She was gone from home by the time her sister was a teenager so they were never close.”
“That’s too bad.” Peony had a fairly large extended family and saw them nearly every Sunday for dinner at her mother’s home.
Since everything they would have normally talked about was already on the murder board, Peony excused herself to return to her office to continue her search for Sarah’s friends. Cots returned to his office to run down some leads and to hack into the family’s financials.
Leah remained in her office, sitting in front of the main murder board pretending she was studying it. In reality, she couldn’t get her mind off the feel of Jardain’s lips on the palm of her hand. Nor could she ignore the desire she’d seen in Jardain’s eyes when she’d looked at her. She wondered what it would be like to taste Jardain. She jerked her mind away from that thought as if thinking it would make it so. She took a moment, then sent Jardain her address and added, “I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”
Is that too much? Too little? Maybe I should just send the address. Before she could fall down the rabbit hole of second guessing herself over a text message, she hit the Send button.
Using her personal computer, she moved to the screen holding the immediate family members of the victim. She tapped on Jardain’s photo and began reading. There wasn’t much. She already knew Jardain was a psychiatrist and the head of the psychiatric department at the Peseshet Medical Institute. Beyond that, there was no other information.
“Do you want me to dig deeper?” Cots asked from behind her.
“Yes. No. Yes,” Leah said, knowing she sounded like a schoolgirl telling a girlfriend she wanted a note passed to the pretty new girl in class.
“You’re attracted to her, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“I hope you know I don’t mind if you are. Quinn was a real asshole, and you deserve better than someone who cheated on you and used you to pass on critical information to a mob boss.”
Cots’s sister, Quinn, and Leah had married when it was dangerous for a human to marry an alien. She had thought they were happily married right up to the moment she found out Quinn had betrayed her with a former lover.
“Thanks for telling me that. I was wondering how I was going to tell you.”
“You wouldn’t have needed to tell me. It’s obvious.”
“Well, phuc. I used to have a good poker face.”
“Let’s run over what we know—or don’t know—about Amara Bensington,” Cots said with a laugh. “Maybe that will take your mind off your woman troubles.”
Leah was not amused. I don’t have “woman troubles.” At least not yet.
“What do we know about Amara? I hope it’s more than we’ve got on Jardain,” Leah said, knowing she wanted to know more about Jardain. A lot more.
“It’s not. I’ve got several searches running on both women. But for two women, both of whom are connected to the filthy rich and very powerful Lionel Bensington, we’ve got almost nothing on either of them. That alone is enough to throw dozens of red flags in our faces. I bet someone has scrubbed his family. There’s no other explanation for these two beautiful women to be non-existent. At least Jardain lived off-world for many years. She arrived back on Xing about the time we arrived here, too. I’ll find the information we want, but it may take a day or two more.”
“What about their financials? Anything new turn up?”
“No. This family is boring as shit. And I don’t like it. Lionel’s grandfather immigrated from New America and by his death was very wealthy, so Lionel inherited millions. He married a daughter of one of the original Five Families. He used one of his millions to start his own business, which he grew into an empire. The rest of the money he inherited was used to create trusts for his wife and two children. No businessman I’ve ever come across, whether on Devaria or New America, got to the empire stage without getting their hands dirty somewhere along the road to success.”
“What’s Amara’s financials look like?”
“She’s much more interesting than her husband. As I said, her family is one of the Five First Families. Remember Peony telling us when we first got here, the Five Families were the first to immigrate to Xing? They’ve maintained their positions in society by well-thought-out alliances, growing their wealth, and staying squeaky clean.”
“I sense you’re either disappointed or incensed you can’t find something on these people.”
“I think it’s a little of both,” he said with a smile.
“Did you get the address of the diner where we’re meeting Andrew Becker, as well as Amara’s address?”
“Yes to both. Want me along?”
“Yes to both,” Leah said, smiling.
“I found something,” Peony announced when she stormed into Leah’s office. “You’re not going to believe this, Boss.”
“Do tell.”
“There was a sidebar in a little-known blog that strongly hinted that Lionel Bensington is homosexual. I thought it was just a rumor. However, in digging deeper, the rumor may be true. There’s also been a steady stream of ‘rumors’ that neither of his daughters is his.”
“That would explain why there’s so little resemblance among the members of his family,” Leah said as she studied the photographs on the Family Members page of the murder board.
“Just because he’s gay doesn’t mean he can’t have kids. So something has to explain why his daughters aren’t his. Maybe Amara insisted on artificial insemination, or maybe she was sleeping with others,” Cots said.
“Also,” Peony continued. “Lionel likes his boyfriends young, almost jailbait-young. His latest fling, according to one blog, if you can call a three-year-old live-in relationship a fling, is with a guy in his early twenties.”
“We’ll find out who the boyfriend is,” Cots said.
“While all this is interesting, it has no bearing on the case as it presents itself.”
“I know,” Peony said. “But it’s so very fascinating.”
“Any luck finding Sarah’s friends?”
“Yeah. I’m going on campus this afternoon to hang out and see if I can connect with a few of them.”
“Good idea.”
“It’s time for us to head out, too,” Cots said.
On their way to the diner, Cots asked, “Ar
e you going to see Jardain socially?”
“I’m having dinner with her to try to glean some more info on the family dynamics.”
“Yeah, right,” Cots said with a guffaw.
“What do we know about Becker?” Leah asked, ignoring Cots.
“Andrew Becker is a decorated cop with a reputation for being honest and hardworking. He’s got a ninety-five percent close rate. He’s divorced with no kids and his wife didn’t ask for maintenance payments. He’s not dating anyone currently. He lives within his means, and drives a bland sedan that is one step above the Toy.”
Cots hated the Toys and took the very mention of their names as a personal insult. Why he had made Seraph’s profile look like a Toy was beyond Leah’s understanding.
They took Leah’s car because it was a smidgeon less conspicuous than Cots’s fire-engine-red sports car. Leah suspected, too, it was loaded with technology that Seraph didn’t have, and which Cots didn’t want to have to share.
Seraph had them at Barney’s fifteen minutes early. “Seraph, cruise the neighborhood,” Leah said. They drove around the enormous sports arena, but found very few cars parked in any of the big lots and even fewer parked on the street. Leah thought it was kind of eerie. She’d only been in this neighborhood to attend a couple of games at the arena to try to understand the fascination with rugby, a game that was, apparently, hundreds of years old, and was making a comeback in a big way. Then, parking spaces were at a premium and you paid through the nose to get one. To see the street empty now seemed strange.
As they waited for one o’clock to roll around, Leah’s mind wandered to Jardain. She asked herself, not for the first time, why she felt such an attraction to her. Part of it was, of course, Jardain’s physical beauty, but there was something else. Something she could almost feel percolating just below the surface—a deep vulnerability that only showed when Jardain thought no one was watching. And beneath that, she thought there was something deeper, something for which Leah had no words. Leah, though, was watching, and she’d had a glimpse of it and wondered why she’d hidden that vulnerability beneath so many layers. Leah wondered if someone had badly hurt Jardain—and if that someone had been a woman.
Chapter Eight
Leah and Cots entered Barney’s at exactly one o’clock. There were only five people in the restaurant: two couples, and a single man at the bar nursing what looked like a glass of water. When he saw them, he slid off his stool and walked toward them.
“I’m Andrew Becker. Can I assume you’re Leah Samuel and Cots Benurbian?”
“You can,” Leah told him.
“I’m starved. Let’s order.”
Becker led them to a table in one corner of the large dining room, and took the seat that would put his back to the wall. Leah and Cots flanked him.
The waitress came immediately to their table. “Becker, it’s been a while,” she said.
“Too long, Sally.” He smiled at the older woman, who had the look of exhaustion from a lifetime of being on her feet earning minimum wage and having too many bills.
Becker ordered first—a double hamburger with cheese, real bacon, and all the fixings, including fries. Cots and Leah ordered the same thing. Leah hadn’t seen anything appetizing on the menu and figured it would be pretty hard for the short-order cook to ruin a hamburger.
As they watched the waitress walk away from their table, a man entered the restaurant and took a seat at the bar. He never glanced their way, but Leah could see him watching them in the large mirror behind the bar. Leah had him pegged as a cop from the moment he walked into the diner. She was sure of it when the couple seated at one of the tables took one look at him, quickly threw some credits on their table, and scurried out the door.
Two more men entered the restaurant and took seats across the dining room from Leah’s table. They were trying even harder to not look like they were watching them, but the younger of the two men kept glancing at their table. The older man was harder to peg. She didn’t think they were cops. They were nicely dressed in expensive suits and ties, for one thing. When they’d sat down, Leah had seen the bulge in the younger man’s coat indicating he was carrying a weapon. Who are they? Why are they interested in our meeting with Andrew Becker? How do they know about the meeting? Could they belong to one of the local gangs?
“So, Bensington tells me he’s hired you to find his daughter’s killers. Any luck yet?”
“Not much, but then we only got the case on Monday,” Cots said in a voice that told Leah this could be a very long lunch with the boys trying to outdo one another like two roosters on the same fence rail.
“I didn’t find his daughter’s killers either, and I’ve had the case for weeks,” he said with a smile. “So I guess we’re pretty even here.”
“I have a question for you, Mr. Becker,” Leah said, trying to head off a pissing match.
“Oh, please call me Andrew. If we’re going to work together, we don’t need to be so very formal.”
“Are we going to work together?” Cots asked.
Leah mentally shrugged her shoulders. Neither man was going to cede any ground to the other, which meant she had no way of getting them to stop strutting. So while the boys were establishing their respective positions on the “team,” Leah studied Andrew Becker. He appeared to be in his early thirties, and looked like no cop she’d ever worked with on a detective squad. He looked more like an undercover cop. His hair was caught up in a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck. He was tanned, with no noticeable white lines indicating his only exposure to the sun was while he was on duty, and his hazel eyes stood out in contrast to his dark chestnut hair and sun-darkened skin. He wore an open-necked shirt, casual slacks, and loafers with no socks. Leah wondered if he was on vacation and had come to meet with them anyway.
Leah tuned back into the conversation when she heard Becker say, “I think your boss gets the first question.”
“You and Bensington both say ‘killers,’ plural. Is there a reason to believe there was more than one murderer?” Leah asked.
Leah and Cots knew from the investigation notes Bensington had given them there was nothing to indicate there were multiple perpetrators.
“Not really. Bensington is convinced there were, though. Perhaps I started using the plural because he used it.”
“But?” Leah asked.
“But there’s no plausible explanation for how the killer got into Sarah’s apartment. I think he or she had an accomplice at the very least. Someone with a key or the ability to enter the apartment at will.”
Like a family member. I probably would have gone there, too, if I’d caught this case. But which family member…and why?
“I thought the three family members had solid alibis,” Cots said.
“On the surface, I agree. And we can only get so far in requesting a warrant to dig deeper into the Bensington financials when they’ve got alibis.”
“What are you thinking?” Leah asked.
“I’m bothered by someone gaining entrance to Sarah’s apartment.”
“Maybe she knew her killer,” Cots said.
“She was a loner with only one girlfriend. The girlfriend, Lotus, was at home playing mahjong with her mother, grandmother, and aunt.”
Why is he lying to us? Sarah wasn’t a loner. By all accounts, she had lots of friends, a few best friends, and boys sniffing around her like dogs in heat.
“What would the family members’ motive be?”
“Haven’t figured that out yet either.”
Over the next hour, Becker bounced theories off them. Leah and Cots contributed little to the conversation except to ask questions that Becker gladly answered. One thing bothered Leah: Becker was too cooperative, too open, and too willing to share things. He’s holding back a key piece of evidence, I’m sure of it. I want to know what he’s got that we don’t. He’s the first cop I’ve ever met who would willingly work with civilians to solve a high-profile case. What’s in it for Becker that he’s being so
cooperative?
When she said she had another appointment, they stood up. Becker held his hand out first to Cots, who reluctantly took it in his own, then to Leah. He held her hand a little too long, looked a little too deeply into her eyes, and smiled a little too broadly at her.
“I’m looking forward to working with you on this case,” he said. “You’ll share anything you find with me?”
“Of course. What’s important is to bring the killers to justice,” she said with a smile of her own.
Once they were in Leah’s car, she pointed to her dashboard where a red light was flashing. It indicated that while they’d been in the restaurant with Becker, someone had planted a tracking device on the car. Leah drove around the arena and pulled into a parking lot that had a half dozen cars clustered around one of the entrances, and parked in the midst of those cars. Cots got out and very quickly found the first device. He attached it to a nearby Toy. He continued to search the car and found two more and attached them to two other cars. Someone had known they’d find at least one of the devices.
They exited the lot at the rear. Cots pulled his personal computer out of his bag and typed something. He turned the computer to Leah. He’d typed an address where he wanted to go. He also sent the address to Seraph. A few minutes later, they pulled into one of the bays of a nondescript car repair shop. Leah got out and walked outside to stand on the sunward side of the building while Cots said something to one of the mechanics. As she stood soaking up the sun, her mind turned, of its own accord, to Jardain. She wondered what Jardain liked to do for fun. That thought led Leah straight to wondering what Jardain would be like in bed. Would she be sensuous? Immediately, she was aroused by the thought of Jardain touching her and could feel the dampness between her legs.
A half hour later, Cots found Leah leaning against the building, her face to the sun, and said, “We’re good to go. I found two more devices, one of which was a very powerful and expensive listening device. It is now on a motorcycle headed for the super highway.”
Leah laughed. Whoever planted the devices was in for some surprises, and it wouldn’t take them long to realize Cots had found their trackers. The only thing whoever had planted the devices succeeded in doing was to give Cots the reason he needed to step up their security.
