by Kay Bigelow
Before getting into the car, Leah paused to check her messages, wondering if Jardain had responded to the text with her address she had sent earlier. Jardain had replied immediately. “See you at eight. Looking forward to spending time with you.”
“Can’t wait,” Leah murmured.
As Seraph drove away from the garage, Leah said, “I don’t have time to drop you off at the office.”
“That’s okay. I’ve got work I can do while I wait for you. Did we find out anything from Becker?”
“No. I’m sure he was convinced we thought he was being forthright. But nothing he told us was not in the files Bensington gave us. He had to know we’d ask for everything Bensington had, and Becker’s files would be part of what Bensington would turn over to us. I’m sure he thought he’d played us. Like every cop I’ve known, he held something back, and he’s not about to share fully with a couple of civilians.”
“That’s what I was thinking. While you’re talking with Mrs. Bensington, I’ll see what I can find out about whoever left us the gifts of the devices. We should have clear photos of the perps and I’ll have IDs on them hopefully by the time you return.”
“Did you see the two well-dressed men come in?”
“Yeah, I got a pretty good photograph of them.”
“Did they leave at the same time we did?”
“No. Strangely, they’d ordered lunch and they were still eating when we left. So either they’re not interested in us or they didn’t want to blow their covers.”
“I wonder if Becker knew them or even noticed them. Maybe they were waiting to meet with him and only needed us to be out of the way.”
“Good question. I’ll try to find that out, too, once I’ve got identifications on them.”
“Unless it turns out the men in the restaurant were in some way connected to Sarah’s murder, let’s not pursue an investigation of them. Leave that to Becker and his buddies.” Leah had no intention of being distracted from her main goal—to find Sarah’s murderer. And, if she were honest, spending time with Jardain.
Chapter Nine
The doorman of the building where Amara Bensington lived held the door open for Leah and welcomed her to the building When she entered the lobby, she went to the desk to the left of the doors and gave the young woman sitting there, whose name tag read “Shelley,” her name and who she wanted to see.
“Is Mrs. Bensington expecting you?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask your business with her?”
“No.”
The look Shelley gave her told her Shelley was perturbed Leah wasn’t more forthcoming, but there was little she could do about it. Leah was sure the building’s residents wouldn’t be happy if they found out the receptionist was asking their guests what their business was with the resident.
The receptionist picked up a phone and dialed a four-digit number. “There’s a Leah Samuels at the front desk who says she has business with you.” She listened for a moment and then said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“You can go to the penthouse in the third elevator on the left.”
“Thank you.”
Leah entered the elevator and pressed the only button on the board. She zoomed up the sixty-five floors to the penthouse. When the elevator glided to a smooth stop, the doors slid open and Leah found herself in the foyer of an apartment.
“Ms. Samuels,” a voice said before the person entered the foyer. “Thank you for coming to me for this interview. I don’t go out in public very often anymore. I prefer my privacy.”
Amara strode toward Leah with her hand outstretched. She was wearing a loose-fitting pair of navy-blue silk slacks with a pale lavender long-sleeved silk shirt with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her feet were bare. She was a remarkably beautiful woman who had no need to announce it with loud clothes, strange hair coloring, or a brash persona. Leah wondered why Amara and Lionel didn’t live together.
Amara and Jardain looked enough alike to be twins. Maybe the rumors about Lionel were true. There was nothing of her father in Jardain or her sister, but then there wasn’t much of a shared likeness between the two sisters, either. It was Amara who tied the sisters to one another.
“I can’t blame you,” Leah said as she followed the woman into a living room where the walls were windows with spectacular views of not only the city, but far in the distance a large mountain range, and in the near distance, an ocean. The room was decorated with the same colors as the blue mountains and the green water of the ocean with accents of yellow, representing, Leah guessed, the sun shining brightly.
“My daughter told me earlier I need to be careful with you. She said you were intelligent, observant, perceptive, and beautiful. I think she’s taken with you, which would be a first.”
If that was meant to throw her off her stride, it very nearly succeeded. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised Jardain had spoken with her mother, but she was. Just because Jardain hadn’t been close to her sister didn’t necessarily mean she was not close to her mother.
Amara led them through the living room to a solarium. The room housed several dozen orchids. The solarium felt slightly humid and smelled of rich soil, both of which took Leah straight back to her childhood. Amara led them to a grouping of comfortable-looking chairs with a coffee table in the middle. She motioned for Leah to be seated. Leah chose a chair that would give her a view of the majority of the solarium. She knew she’d have to force herself to pay attention since her senses were drawn to the beauty of the orchids, the aroma of the dirt, and the woman sitting nearby.
“I see you’re drawn to my orchids. I’m glad. It’s not often I have someone here who truly appreciates an orchid. Is that why you named your firm Black Orchid Investigations?”
“It is. My grandparents collected and grew orchids. I grew up knowing more about orchids than geometry.”
Amara laughed. She had a rich laugh that was honest and made Leah want to hear more of it.
“As much as I’d love to talk to you about orchids and show you several special blooms, I know you didn’t come here to talk about flowers,” Amara said.
“No, I didn’t. I’m trying to learn about your daughter. The more I know about her, the better able I am to catch her killer.”
Her computer beeped at her in a rhythm of pulses, telling her Cots needed her to look at what he sent her.
“Excuse me,” Leah said, pulling her personal computer from her bag. The message said, “Apt heavily protected, still bugged esp in something called a ‘solarium.’ Be careful.”
Leah opened her notes app and typed, “Solarium bugged. Can we talk elsewhere?” She turned the app toward Amara and showed her what she’d written.
Amara’s eyes looked at the screen and immediately lifted to meet Leah’s eyes. She nodded her head once and stood up.
“I need to check on our tea. It seems my cook has been distracted again. Walk with me. I can show you an orchid or two on the way to the kitchen.”
Leah was impressed. Amara’s voice hadn’t changed timbre at all. Leah wondered if she were aware of the bugs and this wasn’t the first time they’d been found in her home. She suspected that whoever had the solarium bugged knew it was Amara’s favorite place. She wondered if other rooms, like Amara’s bedroom, had listening devices, too.
They walked slowly through the house, stopping every now and again to look at and discuss an orchid. Leah found she missed talking about the world of orchids with someone more knowledgeable than herself. She missed her grandparents; her grandfather had died four years earlier, but her grandmother was still alive. She made a note to herself to call her grandmother for a chat and to tell her she’d found another orchid lover.
When they got to the kitchen, the cook was startled to see them. Amara put her finger to her lips and the cook nodded her understanding that a game was on.
“I’ve come in search of our tea, Katie.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. B. We got a delivery this morning, and I was caught up pu
tting things away.”
“That’s all right. Let’s get the tray ready, and I’ll take it myself.”
Katie spent a minute or two rearranging the cups and saucers already on a tray with far more noise than necessary. “Here you go, Mrs. B.”
“Thank you, Katie.”
Leah followed Amara out of the kitchen and down a hallway where she turned into a room. Amara closed the door with her hip after Leah had cleared the door. Leah’s computer dinged immediately. “Where did you go?” Cots’s question appeared in large text on the screen. Leah ignored it.
“We should be safe in here,” Amara told her.
“You know about the bugs then?”
“Oh, yes. The place has been bugged from the very moment I moved in three years ago.”
“I know someone who can make your apartment a safe haven.”
“Give me his name. I want to talk to him.”
“Do you know who’s doing the bugging?”
“Of course. It’s Lionel.”
“Why?”
“Lionel and I haven’t lived together for nearly twenty years. In all that time, he’s been unable to completely let go of me or our daughters. It’s become a game we play with each other. I have the apartment swept for bugs every few months. I don’t think it takes him very long to replace them.”
“Doesn’t it bother you he’s invading not only your space but your privacy as well?”
“It does, but if I need privacy that much, I go to my friends’ homes.”
“Good heavens. Why not just divorce him?” Leah asked, surprised.
“From the start, ours was a marriage of convenience to everyone concerned, from our parents to Lionel and myself. Both Lionel and I are gay. Our parents, not wanting the shame of having produced homosexual children, threatened to cut us off if we didn’t marry and produce an offspring or two. It was still very important to my parents that the proprieties of a ‘normal’ society be followed. That ‘normalcy’ did not include a lesbian daughter. His parents were trying to establish a toehold in the upper echelons of society and knew that having produced a homosexual son meant their acceptance would always be tainted.”
“I had no idea those kind of antiquated ideas still existed.”
“Well, I don’t think they do today, but this was thirty years ago. Our ‘arrangement’ worked for us both for many years. Then, as we got older, we both decided we wanted something more from our personal lives. When Sarah was two, I moved out of the mansion to a smaller house on the grounds. The girls lived with me, but spent time with their father when he was around. When Jardain announced she was a lesbian, she led us out of our self-imposed closets. The time was right for us to go our separate ways. Lionel, however, was too used to knowing everything about my life. As I said, he had a hard time letting go.”
“Thank you for sharing your story. So Sarah is not Lionel’s child?”
“No. Sarah is not his biological child, but in every other way, she’s his daughter. Nor is Jardain his child. I was artificially inseminated from a sperm bank because neither of us was interested in sleeping with the opposite sex. He was fine with going the artificial route, especially after he found out his sperm were lackadaisical.”
“Is Lionel currently in a relationship?”
“His current friend is a boy only a couple of years older than Sarah.”
“And you?”
“Yes, and the woman is my age. We’ve been ‘together’ for twenty-five years, but have chosen not to live together. Jardain is single. She doesn’t believe in monogamy, which is no wonder, considering her family history.”
“That wasn’t my next question,” Leah said. While she would never have asked the question, it didn’t stop her from thinking of asking it.
“Just thought you’d like to know.”
“Do you know any of Sarah’s friends’ names?”
“I do. I thought you might ask, so I wrote down the friends I know and, where known, their address and phone numbers.”
“Thank you. Did you have a problem with any of them?”
“She had some questionable friends when she was a few years younger, but the current bunch seem perfectly normal.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh…you know, seeming more interested in getting laid than getting an education.”
“What set off your alarms about the friends she used to have?”
“I don’t know if she stopped seeing them, only that she stopped bringing them around when her father threatened to cut her off if she didn’t give them up. It’s very likely she simply outsmarted her dad with all his surveillance. I never asked her.”
“Are any of those people on your friends list?”
“No. She didn’t share many details about them, but I’m pretty sure at least some, if not all, belonged to a gang of young Asian people interested in returning the planet to a simpler time when the Asians were the ruling force. Sarah had always been interested in environmental issues, and apparently this group wanted to prevent Xing from becoming the next New America with its perpetual winters and limited life span.”
“Why don’t the police know any of this?”
“Because Lionel doesn’t know about it. He rejected her friends because they were insolent, dressed differently, and didn’t kowtow to him. So he had none of this information.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“Lionel forbade them to approach me. In spite of that order, the young man in charge of the investigation spoke to me briefly on the telephone, but didn’t ask about her friends beyond asking if she had a best friend. I told him it was Sioux West.”
Leah wondered why Becker had told them that Sarah’s best friend was named Lotus. Is that the tidbit he’s keeping from us?
“You didn’t think it important to tell them of the existence of multiple friends in your daughter’s life?”
Amara studied Leah for a minute. “I’m not interested in having Sarah’s killer found. It won’t bring her back. Lionel is obsessed with knowing who murdered Sarah. I’m afraid he’s going to do something incredibly stupid when they find whoever killed our daughter.”
“Like what?”
“Kill the person himself.”
“So you don’t want justice for your daughter?”
“I do want justice, but I don’t want revenge if it’s meted out by Lionel. I’m willing to let the police—and now you—do your job. I’m trying to move through my grief because I’ll not let the killer steal my life, too.”
It was Leah’s turn to study the woman sitting across from her. She’d never heard a parent say they weren’t interested in wanting vengeance for their child’s death. She’d heard several parents—not many, but a few—say they’d forgiven their child’s killer, but it was many years after the child’s death.
Leah and Amara continued to talk about Sarah and other subjects as well, but Leah learned nothing she didn’t already know. She was enjoying being with Amara and listening to her talk. She learned more about Xing in the short time they were together than she had reading a number of books on the history of the planet and its inhabitants.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got an appointment at five. Were you serious about knowing someone who can get Lionel out of my life, electronically speaking?”
“I am,” Leah said as she dug one of Cots’s personal cards out of her bag. “His name is Cots Benurbian.”
“Cots? What an interesting name.”
“No more interesting than the man himself.”
“May I make a suggestion?”
Leah suspected her suggestion wasn’t going to be about the murder of her daughter, or anything about Cots, either. She said nothing.
“Fair enough. I’ll give you my suggestion anyway. I know you’re having dinner with my daughter tonight. Ask to go to the Wildfire Restaurant. It’s her favorite, but she’ll try to impress you and want to take you to one of those ridiculous and expensive places in town that think presentation is mor
e important than the food.”
“Thanks. If you think of anything that might be helpful, please call me,” Leah said, not knowing whether she meant about Sarah or Jardain.
Amara escorted Leah back to the foyer and the elevator. Before the elevator doors opened, Leah held out her hand. “Thank you for seeing me and the help you’ve given me.”
“It was my pleasure. I hope we’ll see one another again very soon.”
The elevator arrived and Leah stepped inside to be whisked down sixty-five floors to the ground floor. She really liked Amara. She was very different than nearly every other woman she knew. If Amara wasn’t in a relationship, Leah was sure she’d have asked her out. Wow. That would be weird—dating both the mother and daughter. It would be incredibly interesting though.
Chapter Ten
As Leah stepped out of the building, Seraph pulled to the curb with Cots still in the passenger seat. Leah slid behind the wheel and told the car to take them back to their office building. Next, she asked Seraph to call Peony.
“Hey, Boss.”
“Sarah’s mother believes Sarah’s best friend is named Sioux West.”
“Sioux was Sarah’s best friend from when they were little. But according to Sioux, Sarah cut her off about two years ago to hang out with a different crowd. She’s heartbroken over Sarah’s death and has an alibi. I’m on campus at the quad waiting for them to arrive for their daily coffee get-together. Sarah’s new best friend was a girl named Lotus.”
“Where did you get the info on Lotus?”
“From Sarah’s social media pages.”
So Becker hadn’t investigated Sarah—or at least not her friends. He’d only given them the information he or one of his colleagues gleaned from Sarah’s social pages, but hadn’t followed up. With the information Peony had found, she wondered if Amara hadn’t known about Lotus and why she didn’t know.
“Good work, kid,” Leah said, knowing Peony hated being called “kid” as much as Leah hated being called “Boss.” She laughed when Peony started sputtering about not being a kid and broke the connection.
