Hit and Run (18 page)

He eyed her steadily as he made his way around the table. He took a few shots, but he seemed distracted now, and Krista lounged against the railing, afraid to look at the spot where his phone had been.

He positioned himself for a jump shot and darted a glance in her direction before taking it. One of his stripes slid into a corner pocket.

“Wow,” she said. It would have been a difficult shot sober, much less half-tanked.

He smiled slyly. “I’ve got the magic touch.”

Oh, gag.
She picked up her drink.

“Another round?”

The voice startled her, and Krista whirled around to see the pretty blond waitress.

“Uh—” Krista glanced down and noted the iPhone had reappeared on the railing. “No, thanks.”

The woman smiled and sauntered away, and Krista breathed a sigh of relief.

“Your turn.”

She turned around, almost giddy as she grabbed the cue. She leaned over and sank a solid. Then another. Then another. Holland looked on, frowning, as she cleaned up the table. She called the last shot and killed it.

“You’re a little hustler.” He tipped his glass back and then plunked it on the railing.

She smiled sweetly. “Thanks for the drink.”

“Hey, you’re not leaving—”

“I need to find my friend.” She slid her phone in her purse and tucked it under her arm. “Nice meeting you!”

“But—”

She turned on her heel and walked out, heart pounding, and another wave of relief hit her as she stepped into the cool air of the lobby. She darted a glance over her shoulder before ducking into the ladies room and calling R.J.

“That took long enough!” she said.

“Meet me at the car.”

She put her phone away and glanced in the mirror. Her eyes looked wild and her chest was flushed. Her stomach churned at the memory of Holland’s hands all over her butt. She shook off the thought as she strode out of the bathroom.

And smacked right into him.

“God, you scared me.” She stepped back, bumping the wall.

“Come upstairs.”

“I can’t. I—”

His mouth crushed against hers and she sucked in a breath of sour air. The bulk of him pinned her against the wall and she tried to get her arms up to push him away, but his thick, wet tongue pushed into her mouth, silencing a string of curses. She struggled to get her hands free. He was heavy, though, and panic bubbled up inside her.

“You’re a little hustler,” he mumbled, slobbering on her cheek as his giant paw squeezed her breast. “I like that.”

She brought her knee up hard, then smashed her fists against his chest and shoved him back. He gasped and slumped against the wall. She snatched her purse off the floor and darted away, leaving him wheezing and sputtering beside the restrooms as she made a dash for the lobby. She bypassed the revolving door and plowed through the handicapped entrance into the warm night air.

The sidewalk in front of the hotel was busy. People waited on cars and tipped valets. She sliced through the crowd and reached the curb, where she glanced up and down the street, catching her breath and trying to get her bearings. Then she strode down the sidewalk, heart hammering, adrenaline pumping through her veins as she neared the little black Porsche.

R.J. leaned against the passenger side watching her.

“Move it.” She stopped in front of him and he stepped away from the door.

“What’s got into you?”

She jerked the door open and slid inside. “Did you get what you needed?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s go.”

R.J. dropped her off with a thanks-I-owe-you-one and a promise that her check was in the mail. Having been on the receiving end of many such checks, she planned to stop by his office and collect the money personally.

Krista walked into her house and kicked off her strappy black sandals.

“No place like home! No place like home!”

She glanced across the living room. “Hey, Spence.”

Krista grabbed a handful of cashews from the bowl on the coffee table as Spencer flapped over to her. She fed nuts through the wire mesh of his cage. Spencer was geriatric blue-and-gold macaw named after Spencer Tracy. Like the canary-yellow bungalow she lived in, Krista had inherited the bird from her Grandma Dot.

“Give us a kiss! Give us a kiss!” he squawked.

Krista put her purse on the drop-leaf table by Spencer’s cage and wandered into her kitchen to peruse the food choices. Her cheeseburger had worn off, and she needed something to get her mind off of Holland. Barely half an hour with the guy and she felt slimed.

Rob Holland had managed to rattle her, and five years of tae kwon do training had gone out the window. It was pathetic. She’d left him with a sore groin, sure, but what she should have done was put him in the hospital.

Her phone chimed from inside her purse and she dug it out.  Scarlet.

“Where’d you go?” her business partner asked. “I thought you were doing books tonight.”

The contents of Krista’s fridge lacked appeal, but she didn’t want venture out again because it was drizzling.

“I got sidetracked,” she told Scarlet. “And I’ve got some good news.”

“Let’s hear it. I’ve had a crap day. And Alex is working late, so I’m stuck waiting for him at his apartment until God knows when.”

Krista settled for the box of Kashi she’d bought during her pre-summer health kick. She poured some into a bowl and sat down at the table with her notebook computer.

“I got us hired to help with one of Drake Walker’s cases.” Just saying the words made Krista’s stomach cramp.

“You
did?
”

“The Rob Holland trial.”

A pause. “That’s a big case. You get this through R.J.?”

“Yep.”

“Does that worry you?” Scarlet asked, and Krista knew what she was thinking. They’d teamed up with R.J. before, and he didn’t have a good track record of paying on time. Or paying at all.

The very first time Krista had met R.J., he’d screwed her over. It was a skip trace. She’d spent a week tracking down some low-life drug dealer who was set to testify, only to have R.J. swoop in at the last minute to steal both her man and her fee right out from under her.

“I’ll make sure we get paid,” Krista said. “So, why was your day crappy?”

“Forget it. It’s looking better now that we’ve got some money coming in. You hear back from your insurance company yet?”

“Yeah,” she said, thinking of the rental car in her driveway that was costing sixty bucks a day.

“And?”

“And the policy’s void because I missed a payment.” Or four.

“What about a grace period?”

“Nope.”

“Well I’m around all weekend,” Scarlet told her. “Let me know if you need help with anything.”

Krista got off the phone and jumped onto the Internet. Seconds later she was reading a slew of headlines about the murder of Brittney Holland. Krista clicked on an
L.A. Times
article and immediately knew why she’d been feeling queasy all night.

Brittany Holland had been killed with an icepick. The murder happened right in her own home.

Krista skimmed the article, which focused on the investigation conducted by Newport Beach PD. A woman’s partner or ex-partner is always top on the list in any murder case, and Brittany Holland was no exception. But police zeroed in on Rob Holland even faster than usual because he and his wife had recently separated. Oh, and one other troublesome fact: Holland had a history of domestic violence. In the two short years the couple had been married, police had been called to their home twice.

During her cop days, Krista had spent a depressing amount of time responding to domestic abuse calls. The calls never failed to simultaneously piss her off and make her sad because for every one time a victim picked up the phone, there were maybe a dozen incidents that went unreported. So how many times had Brittany Holland felt threatened? Two? Twenty? Krista read through the articles and suddenly she could hear Brittany’s voice, which had been on the news in the months following her death.

Get someone over here! He’s going to kill me!

Responding to the 911 call, police had rushed over to Brittany’s newly rented townhome to find Holland taking a baseball bat to his wife’s Range Rover while she looked on, sobbing. Brittany had been physically unharmed, though, and what should have been an aggravated assault rap got knocked down to a drunk and disorderly. It was a bullshit outcome, but not surprising. Holland was one of the wealthiest attorneys in Southern California. Who knew how many judges he had in his pocket?

Krista scrolled down and found a picture of the Hollands on their honeymoon. The smiling newlyweds had purple leis around their necks as they leaned close and mugged for the camera.

The next picture was a blurry shot of a covered gurney being loaded into an ME’s van—a shot likely taken with a zoom lens from behind a police barricade. Days after the picture was taken, the ME himself stepped up to a podium to tell a gaggle of reporters that Brittany Holland’s death had been ruled a homicide—although by that time news of the icepick had leaked, so the announcement was less about the ME’s ruling and more about media outlets getting fresh footage to alternate with the gurney.

Bile rose in Krista’s throat as she remembered Holland’s tongue in her mouth and his hands all over her. She had the sudden urge to take a scalding shower and burn the dress she had on.

“No place like home! No place like home!”

Krista glanced at Spencer. Then she glanced at the front door. She heard something scratching against it and got up to check the peephole.

The porch was empty. Ditto the rain-drenched street in front of her house.

More scratching. A yelp.

She pulled open the door to find a waterlogged poodle staring up at her.

“What are you doing out?” She scooped him up, and he scrabbled against her dress with his muddy paws. “You could have been hit by a car.”

She trekked across the street and rapped on Mrs. Ruman’s front door. The porch light was out, and Krista checked her watch. Almost eleven. She was probably asleep. Leo squirmed in her arms and gave a little yap.

“Hold your horses.”

More squirming. A whimper. Then the door swung open and Krista felt a warm gush flow down her side.

“Damn it, Leo.”

That did it. The dress was getting torched.

~ ~ ~

Saturday morning was clear and sunny after the rain chased much of the smog from the valley. Krista found R.J. on the Huntington Beach boardwalk jogging with the rest of the fitness nuts. She leaned against a palm tree and waited, and she could tell when he saw her because he picked up his pace. He stopped in front of her and his sweat-slicked pecs gleamed in the sunlight.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“How’d you find me?”

“Stopped by your office, bumped into Carrot Top.”

He peeled off his shades and gazed down at her with those too-blue eyes. “Uh-oh. Here we go.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I know why you’re here—my client’s a dirtbag and you don’t want to work for him. I’m disappointed, Hart. Thought you were a professional.”

“I am.”

“That’s the problem with all you cops-turned-PIs.” He tugged a T-shirt from the waist of his running shorts and mopped his forehead. “You’re never good for trial work. And I hate to break it to you, but that’s where all the money is.”

“I do trial work.”

“Not really.”

She crossed her arms. “I do plenty of trial work. But I happen to have some issues with this particular case.” When he just looked at her she continued. “Your client has a documented history of violence against women. He trashed his wife’s car. He slammed her head into a wall just three weeks before he killed her.”

“
Allegedly
killed her.”

“Statistics show that when women are murdered it’s more likely by a current or former partner than anyone else.”

“Innocent until proven guilty.”

Krista rolled her eyes.

“The accused has a Constitutional right to a fair trial, and Drake Walker is helping him get one. So am I. So are you.”

“Not yet I’m not.”

He rested his hands on his hips and stared at her, and she tried not to notice his perfectly sculpted abs. “The job we do plays a role in the world’s greatest justice system,” he said. “I take pride in that. You should, too.”

“You take pride in your fat fees.”

He smiled and eased closer. She stepped away.

“Come back to my place,” he said in a low voice. “I have something to show you.”

“No thanks.”

“You’ll like it, I promise.”

“I’m being serious here, R.J.”

“I am, too.” He stepped around her. “Come on.”

She hesitated a moment, then gave in. They walked in silence for the few short blocks between the beach and his one-story house. Krista had seen it before but never been inside. She eyed the chipping white stucco, the red tile roof, the overgrown oleanders. The house was utterly unremarkable—except for its location just three blocks off the ocean and the Porsche turbo parked in the carport behind a wrought iron gate.

Krista’s stomach fluttered as she followed him up the front steps. He pressed his thumb against a small black panel and the door unlocked with a quiet
snick
. He didn’t say a word as he led her into the cool dimness of a Saltillo tile foyer. She stood still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust.

“Gimme a minute.” He tossed his T-shirt on a black leather sofa and disappeared down a hallway.

R.J.’s place screamed bachelor pad, from the leather-glass-and-steel furniture to the gargantuan flat-screen television that dominated the living room. She glanced around, searching for oversized speakers, too, but spotted only a pair of almost invisible mesh panels in the ceiling.

To her right was a kitchen where the surfaces were black or stainless steel. She thought of her own refrigerator, circa 1980, and the scarred linoleum flooring that Grandma Dot had laid down in a do-it-yourself frenzy before Krista was even born.

A pair of barstools stood beside the granite island. Krista examined the crisp white dishtowels hanging neatly on the rack. She attributed them to whatever cleaning service R.J. hired to mop his floors and polish his counters and keep the place smelling like sandalwood instead of sweaty running shoes.