Lanyon, Josh - Adrien English 04 - Death of a Pirate King (7 page)

It had occurred to me that what I was doing was potentially
dangerous. Even so, what Jake said gave me pause. I didn’t plan on pushing
anyone too hard or too far, but who knew how a guilty conscience might
interpret a few casual questions?

I asked, “Would you happen to know the name of the PI that
Porter used?”

His face went blank. “What PI?”

Hell
. My mistake. I
said cautiously, “I had the impression Porter had hired a PI to follow Ally.”

“Did she tell you that or did it come from Paul?”

I said reluctantly, “Paul mentioned it, yeah.”

How well I remembered that old flash of anger -- and how
happy I was that this time it wasn’t directed at me. Jake said curtly, “Leave
the PI to me. That’s a different thing.”

He didn’t say anything else but I could see that he was not
happy. We finished our meal -- rather, he finished his and I watched people go
in and out of the pet shop next door. I thought about what Lisa would do if I
showed up with a puppy for Emma. What she would do was call my bluff, and as I
didn’t really have a place to keep a dog, I let the idea go.

Jake paid the bill -- and since as far as I was concerned
this was a business lunch, I let him pick up the tab without comment. We parted
ways as soon as we were through the glass door, Jake heading for the back
parking lot, I walking toward the front. As I unlocked the Forrester, he
called, “Hey.”

I turned inquiringly, and Jake was striding back toward me.

“I’m dead serious about this: I want you to call before and
after each interview. Understood?”

Understoo
d
? Wow. Was there an echo out here?
Like from two years ago?

I sketched a salute and he said as though I had objected --
which I wouldn’t, since it made perfect sense to me to have some kind of safety
net, “Call me
before
you talk to
anyone else.”

And for one stupid moment, I was actually touched, thinking
he might be concerned for me -- except that his concern would be that I didn’t
screw up his investigation or that a civilian didn’t get injured poking around.
Either scenario would not go over well with the brass, and no way would Jake
want to endanger those all-important stripes he wore to funerals and award
ceremonies.

“And here I thought you didn’t care anymore.” I was smiling,
mocking him a bit -- and myself.

He said evenly, “You’re the one who cut all ties, Adrien.
That wasn’t my choice.”

I don’t know why his words hit me so hard. To start with, it
wasn’t true -- but that was sure as hell not a discussion I planned on ever
having with him. My smiled faded. I said, “Ancient history.”

He didn’t say anything.

I got into my car, started the engine, and reversed under his
hard gaze. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I could see him in my rearview,
standing there straight as a soldier, the afternoon sun shining on his blond
hair.

Chapter Six

Dear Adrien,

I hope you are well and
that business is great. I have been thinking of coming home. Do I still have my
job at Cloak and Dagger Books?

Yours sincerely,

Angus Gordon

“Did you forget to meet Lisa for lunch?” Natalie asked over
the din of power tools and construction workers shouting to each other behind
the plastic wall that separated Cloak and Dagger books from the adjoining
space.

I looked up blankly from the postcard offering four scenic
shots of the pyramids at Chichen Itza. “Huh?”

She said, “Isn’t today your day for lunch with Lisa?”

“Jesus!” I yelped, dropping the card -- and knocking over the
stack of mail that had accumulated while I was ill and that I’d been sorting
through.

“Adrien! What’s the matter with you?”

“It totally skipped my mind.”

Her blue eyes widened. “Yeeowch,” she said, which was the
understatement of the year.

By then I was on my cell phone dialing.

Before my mother remarried we had a long-standing tradition
of Saturday brunch. She wanted to keep up this tradition after her marriage --
and include her new family and Guy in the mix. I’d declined on the basis of not
being able to afford getting genteelly snockered with the stepfamily on a
regular basis, and had managed to move our weekly session to lunch on the first
Tuesday of the month. I told myself that this way it kept the innocent
bystander casualties to a minimum.

I got her on the first ring.

“
Adrie
n
!” Lisa said, and lucky for me the
blend was ninety percent relief and only ten percent caustic acid.

“Lisa, I can’t apologize enough,” I said -- although I was
well aware I was going to have to. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten, and put it
down to the fact that my schedule was whacked after nearly a week in hospital.

“Why weren’t you answering your cell phone? I’ve been so
worried. Darling,
where
in the world
have you been?”

I wasn’t about to tell her where I’d been. Jake Riordan had
never been on Lisa’s A-list, and she’d been even less keen on him after he and
I had parted ways -- not that I’d ever discussed my relationship with her.
Before or after.

“I know, I’m sorry. I just got caught up in some things.” The
story of my life, actually.

She protested, “But Natalie says you haven’t been at the shop
all day.”

If only they hadn’t outlawed corporal punishment for
bookstore employees with big mouths. “No, I’ve been running errands,” I
admitted, glaring at Natalie.

She spread her hands in a
What?
What’d I do?

“Darling, you’re not well enough to do all this racing
around. Horseback riding lessons for Emma last night and these mysterious
errands today. You’re just out of hospital. You mustn’t tax yourself.”

I managed to swallow my impatience. “Lisa, I’m fine. Really.
And I’ve been out of the hospital for a week.”

“You’re not strong, darling. I wish --”

“I know you do,” I said. “So what’s the plan now?”

There was a pause while she registered my tone. Then she
sighed. “Well, we’ve missed lunch. I suppose we could meet for drinks.”

My heart sank. There was nothing I wanted more than to lie
down for half an hour, but I could hardly insist on naptime, having stood her
up and then made a point of how terrific I felt.

We arranged to meet at Villa Piacere on Ventura Boulevard in
forty minutes.

I took my meds, checked my wallet, grabbed a jacket despite
the warmth of the afternoon. The phone was ringing as I headed out the side
door. I stopped when Natalie called to me.

Handing over the mouthpiece, she hissed, “It’s
Paul Kane
again.”

“I’ll take it in the office.” Back in the storeroom that
doubled as my office, I picked up, waited to hear Natalie clicked off, and
said, “Hi. I was going to call you later.”

He chuckled -- a lazy, vaguely seductive sound. I wondered if
he and Jake laughed a lot together. Not that Jake was exactly Comedy Hour
material…but, yeah, there had been some good times. We had found a lot of the
same things funny.

“I’m not expecting an hourly report,” he assured me. “Just
wanted to make sure you hadn’t had second thoughts. I’m afraid Jake was
rather…hacked off with our arrangement.” He added. “I do apologize. Was he
particularly obnoxious?”

“Not for Jake,” I said. And in fact Jake had been
uncharacteristically agreeable to my poking around, so Paul’s apology caught me
off guard.

“He did give in, in the end,” Paul said ruefully, “but he
said he was going to have a word with you. Establishing the parameters, I suppose.”
He chuckled. “He tore a strip off me for not telling him that Porter had hired
a PI.”

“
That
he didn’t
seem pleased about,” I admitted. Although I hadn’t realized that Jake didn’t
know about the PI, just that he was annoyed at the possibility I might trespass
too far with my interviewing.

“The thing is,” Paul said -- and I wished suddenly that I
could see his face because his tone was…not quite right -- “I had thought it
might be more pleasant for all concerned if you spoke to this bloke first. And
then, depending on what you learned, we could decide whether to bring Jake in
or not.”

We?

I said, “Yeah, well. Too late now. I’ve got orders from the
top to call in before and after I interview anyone.”

There was a pause. I heard the echo of my words:
Orders from the to
p
? I had to bite my lip to contain an inappropriate laugh.
This was followed by even more inappropriate speculation as to who
was
the top in that relationship? I
didn’t see Paul Kane as the submissive type, but picturing Jake on his knees to
anyone was pretty much…although there had been one astounding night, one
transcendent night.

I remembered the soft drift of his mouth on my naked skin,
the delicate rasp of tongue as he licked and nibbled the point of my chin, the
thin skin of my throat where the jugular vein pounded in crazy hot
excitement…taking a sweetly torturous lifetime to kiss his way down the length
of my body -- a seductive game of connect the dots: collar bone, breast bone,
belly, the sensitive joining of groin and inner thigh until at last his wet,
hot mouth closed around me…

Heat washed through my body. I made myself focus as Paul said
carefully, “But you see, I didn’t tell Jake the name of the PI. I told him I
didn’t know it. In fact, I told him I wasn’t absolutely certain Porter had gone
ahead and hired anyone. That it might have been nothing more than bluff.”

“But you do know the name of the PI?”

“Er…yes.”

I said, equally careful, “Why wouldn’t you tell Jake?”

He made a little sound of impatience as though I were being
disappointingly slow. “In addition to being a very dear friend of mine, Porter
was my business partner. I’m not in any way suggesting we would or should keep
information from the
politzia
, but I
should like to hear firsthand anything that’s liable to prove damaging --
rather than wait for the police to inform me.”

I was silent.

“I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?” He laughed but I could hear
the unease.

“No,” I answered. “But if this investigator was hired to
follow Jones’s wife, what potentially damaging information do you think he
might have?”

“I don’t know, do I?” Kane said. “That’s why I’d like to hear
whatever it is first.”

It’s not that I didn’t understand or sympathize, but no way
was I going to be placed in that position.

“Look, Paul. I appreciate what you’re telling me, but I gave
Jake my word. Not to mention the fact, he’d throw my ass in jail if he found
out I tried to go around him.”

“He wouldn’t, you know,” he said. “Jake’s a pussycat.”

Yeah, just a big old saber-toothed tiger.

“Then you go talk to this PI,” I said shortly.

“I’m afraid that really would put a strain on our
relationship,” Paul said, and I was pretty sure he didn’t mean his and mine.
“Look, the bloke’s name is Roscoe Markopoulos. Markopoulos Investigations. He’s
in the book. Just think about it. I won’t tell Jake for a day or two.”

Safe to say, few people ever told Paul Kane no. I said, “You
might as well tell Jake now because I’m not going behind his back. Also, since
we’re sort of on this topic, I don’t think Ally is your murderer. She admits she
and Porter were having some problems, but she says that was all in the past.”

“Of course the stupid slag says that,” Paul said without any
particular venom. “She married Porter for his money, and when she realized he
wouldn’t put up with being cuckolded, she decided to play the devoted wife in
hopes of keeping him from changing his will. She’s an actress, Adrien. Not a
very good one, I admit, and I didn’t expect you to fall for the act. I tell
you, that woman is evil.”

Cuckolded? Will?

I said, “Right, did you want me to focus on Ally to the
exclusion of everyone else? Because, personally, I don’t see why she didn’t
knock Porter off at home and in private, where there was less chance of the
poisoned cocktail going astray.”

He said quickly, “No, no. I’m not trying to railroad the
woman. I trust your instinct. You’re the expert here, after all. By all means
you must keep talking to people -- with my blessing. Besides, perhaps someone
will have seen something to prove Ally is guilty.”

He was so sure. What was it he hadn’t told me? And why wasn’t
he telling me?

Into my silence, he said, “Why don’t you speak to Valarie?”

I was totally blanking on the name. “Valarie?”

“Valarie Rose?” He gave that attractive laugh. “She’s going
to be directing
Murder Will Out
.”

“Oh God,” I said. “I remember. I do remember. Any particular
reason you think I should talk to Valarie? I was thinking maybe I’d talk to Al
January next.”

“Al?” Kane sounded wary. “Why?”

“He was a longtime friend of Porter’s, right?”

“Er…yes. But Al tries to stay removed from all of our little
personal dramas.”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t talk to Al?”

“No, of course not.” His amusement sounded perfectly natural
-- but then he was an actor. “I’ll call Al and arrange a meeting.”

And I was apparently paranoid.

I said, “And if you could also set something up with Valarie,
that would be terrific.”

“I’ll see what I can arrange,” Kane said -- again sounding
amused.

* * * * *

Lisa was sipping a G&T in the brick courtyard behind the
Villa Piacere restaurant. The broad pepper and willow trees shading the patio
threw lacy shadows over the white canvas umbrellas, and the fountain in the
rear alcove splashed soothingly.

“Sorry about lunch,” I told her, slipping into the chair
opposite.

She fastened those wide Siamese blue eyes on me and gave me
the maternal once-over. “Oh, darling,” she said in gentle dismay. “You look so
tired
.”