Kitabı oku: «The Private Concierge»

Praise for

SUZANNE FORSTER

“No one combines steamy suspense and breathless thrills like Suzanne Forster!”

—Susan Elizabeth Phillips

“Crackling sexual tension, a twisty mystery and some genuinely dastardly villains make this a fast, fun read.”

—BookPage on The Arrangement

“Hatreds and agendas converge with very wily plot twists as Forster brings her story to an unforeseen ending…a very original and clever story.”

—The Romance Reader on The Arrangement

“Only a writer of Forster’s skill could take the reader to the dark places in this story.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Lonely Girls Club

“An electrifying romantic suspense thriller that grips the audience…and never lets up.”

—The Best Reviews on The Lonely Girls Club

“Forster blends nail-biting suspense and steamy sexual tension into a seamless romantic thriller.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Morning After

“[Forster is] a stylist who translates sexual tension into sizzle.”

—Los Angeles Daily News

SUZANNE FORSTER
THE PRIVATE CONCIERGE

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks must go to Sergeant Podeska of the West Los Angeles Police Station for sharing his insights about crime and punishment in the west L.A. area. Surely our one conversation set records for producing usable information. It was a pleasure—and if there’s an award for demonstrating grace with rapid-fire questions and patience with a few obtuse ones, the sergeant richly deserves it.

Also, my deep gratitude to the ace concierge team at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, who will forever remain anonymous to ensure their continued employment. With great good humor they endured my quest for information about the concierge field and everything else relating to Century City and its environs. Plus, they answered questions no concierge should ever have to. Their restaurant recommendations and directions were great, too.

Finally, to reference librarians everywhere, and in particular to the Amazing William of the Los Angeles Public Library, for help above and beyond. And while I’m at it, I can’t forget the entire reference staff at the Newport Beach Public Library, my hometown branch and personal hangout.

Thank you all!

Prologue

Cox, Lucy: juvenile unit, prostitution

Case File: COX022378 15 lapd.juv.dtb

Closed: March 3, 1993

Sealed by Court Order: April 10, 1993

H e removed the legal-size folder from the file cabinet and gave the label a moment of reflection before opening it. Fifteen years ago, he’d stashed copies of the contents of the original case file in this locked cabinet in his home office. It was enough security for his purposes, although he would bring serious suspicion on himself if the file was ever discovered. The case was closed and had been sealed at the request of the juvenile offender, and the L.A. County Courthouse had the only official copy.

But he didn’t work for the law anymore. He worked for himself.

He sat down at his desk, opened the folder and looked at the last entry he’d made in the file: February 23, 1993: She walks free today, her eighteenth birthday. God help the weak of will and the feeble of mind, especially if they’re male.

He almost smiled, remembering his supervisor’s reaction. He’d taken some flack for this case, enough to end his law enforcement career. But he could also remember a time when he’d been more concerned about her, Lucy Cox, than about any unwary man who might cross her path.

Not anymore. He reached for a black-ink ballpoint, the kind he’d preferred for making case notes when he’d been a vice cop in the downtown L.A. bureau. He considered assigning the case a new number, but decided to stay with the original, based in part on his theory that people, like lab rats, didn’t change, they just learned new strategies for getting what they needed. Cynical, maybe, but he had more reason than most men to be that way.

He clicked the push-button pen and began writing the first new entry in fifteen years. It was about her, who she was today and why she hadn’t changed, either. And it was in his own words, his own unfiltered thoughts, because he had every intention of destroying these notes when he’d done what he had to do. No one would ever read this file but him.

Case Notes: Wednesday, October 9, 11:00 p.m.

Her real name is Lucia Cox. She changed it to avoid any association with her criminal past. But she hasn’t left her past behind. She’s still selling what everybody wants. She’s just found a way to make it legal.

He paused, aware of his quickening pulse. This was getting to him, getting too personal. And that was the problem. It was personal. He set down the pen, unable to write as fast as his thoughts were coming. She’d had the power at fifteen when he put her in jail. She was thirty now. She’d been free and on her own since eighteen, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that she’d planned her steps carefully, including choosing the perfect profession. She had some of the country’s highest-profile people in her care.

It should have been a match made in heaven for all concerned, except that Lucy’s clients were dropping like flies, being brought down by scandal, innuendo, and now, death. And no one seemed to get the connection but him. Her clients moved in the special spheres of power and privilege, isolated from the real world and its rules, and from anyone who would dare to tell them the truth. When you were that isolated, who really knew you better than your hairstylist, your personal trainer…or your private concierge?

1

Saturday, October 5

Four days earlier

Ned Talbert hit the brakes so hard his Alfa Romeo Spider snorted and its wheels dug into the gravel like a pawing bull. The back end lifted as if the sports car was about to do a somersault, and Ned’s knees knocked against the dash.

Geysering pebbles splattered the windshield.

He heaved himself back, grunting as the steering wheel disengaged from his ribs. Amazing the air bags hadn’t inflated. He’d barely missed colliding head-on with the entrance gate to Rick Bayless’s cabin in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The gate wasn’t just closed, it was padlocked. Even in the falling light, Ned spotted the shiny new lock as he struggled to get out of the Spider. His legs were jelly. Padlocked? Rick never padlocked the gate—and it wasn’t even 5:00 p.m., too early to close up the place for the night.

Ned broke into a run and didn’t stop. He could see he wasn’t going to get the gate open so he coiled and vaulted the chain-link mesh, leaving a strip of his pant leg on the scrollwork, leaving the door hanging open to his obscenely expensive new car, leaving it all behind, and running like a madman up the road to the darkened mountain cabin a thousand feet away.

Bayless had to be in there.

Ned could have been running the bases at Dodger Stadium. He could have been in the heat of a playoff game, that’s how adrenalized he was. But he wasn’t going to make it to home plate this time. Not without his friend’s help.

It was getting dark, but no light glowed in the cabin windows. Rick’s Jeep Commander sat in the driveway. Maybe he was taking a nap. Ned took all three porch steps in one leap and pounded on the creaky wooden door. No answer. He kept hammering, using his fist and making the door buckle with each blow. How could anyone sleep through this noise? He wondered about the odds of Rick having a girl in there. Ned had never known him to do that, but the way Ned’s luck was going, this would be the time. He hated the thought of interrupting them, but he had no choice. His life was in crisis.

“Rick, you in there?” he bellowed.

Ned hit the door with his shoulder and realized it was bolted. He was going to have to kick it in. Two blows shattered the wood enough that he could reach inside and open the bolt. The interior was dark, but light from the doorway revealed the lower torso of a man sitting in a straight-back chair by the far wall. Ned could see his denim jeans and his bare feet, but little else. His face and shoulders were masked by shadows. It looked like an interrogation scene, except that no one else was in the room.

Ned didn’t notice the gun until he saw Rick’s hands. They were in his lap, cradling a Colt .357 Python. Rick was a former vice cop. He’d carried a gun as long as Ned could remember.

Ned’s legs were jelly again. His whole body was limp.

“Rick, what the hell.” It wasn’t a question. It was a howl of despair. Ned knew what the hell was going on. He knew why Rick had a gun in his hands, and what he intended to do with it—and he couldn’t, by any stretch of good conscience, try to stop his friend, or even change his mind.

Ned knew the whole wretched story. It made no sense that Rick Bayless should be dealing with this. He was young, forty-two years old and in his physical prime. Ned had been jealous of Rick all his life, even though Ned was the star athlete. Hell, women swooned, or whatever it was women did around men who made their eyes lose focus and their minds swim with thoughts of drowning sex. They loved the dude, but only from a distance. No one really got close to Rick Bayless, not even Ned, and they had been friends since…forever.

“Buddy, are you sure? This is it? There aren’t any do overs.”

Ned’s voice broke, and Rick looked up. Ned couldn’t see his friend’s face, but he could see the movement of his head in the shadows. Rick’s gaze could burn paper, and those incinerating rays were now fixed on him. But his voice was tuned low, almost surprised.

“Ned, what are you doing here?”

Ned thought about whether he should tell him the truth, but then blurted it out. “I’ve got a problem, man. It’s bad. I’ve been looking for you everywhere, down at your place in Manhattan Beach, at Duke’s on the pier. I even checked out the old orange grove where you go to walk and think.”

Rick said nothing, which was significant because nothing wasn’t “Get out of here.” It wasn’t “Take care of your own damn problems for a change.”

Ned felt hope slam through him. It nearly knocked him over. Maybe he could talk his friend out of it? Rick was a sucker for a hard-luck story, and this one was the God’s truth.

“I’m being blackmailed. I’m getting anonymous calls from some crazy dude who thinks I’m into hard-core sexual sadism—whips and chains and leaving burn marks on my girlfriend’s genitals. It’s sick, man. He faxed me a picture that I swear isn’t me and Holly, but it looks like us. He’s threatening to fax the tabloids unless I throw the next game.”

Ned’s throat was so dry he couldn’t swallow. It sounded like he was strangling, and the pain was peppery hot. It radiated up his jaw.

He waited for his friend, and finally, Rick shook his head.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“I wish I could help.”

Another blow to Ned’s solar plexus. It felt as if his car had hit the gate and flipped this time. Ned wanted to cry. He fucking did. This should not be happening. God shouldn’t do things like this.

“Rick,” he implored, “we go back a long way, all the way. Don’t shut me out now. What can I do to help you?”

“You can leave, Ned. It’s all right. Really, it is.”

Rick’s voice echoed as if it were coming from somewhere else, heaven or another dimension. Ned gaped at the gun. He couldn’t seem to look anywhere else. He was waiting for Rick to say something else, but it didn’t happen.

Rick’s fingers curled possessively around the weapon he held. It was the only thing that mattered to him now, Ned realized, the instrument of his deliverance. He was going to do it.

“You can’t put this off long enough to help a friend who’s in deep trouble?” Ned croaked. “Are you really that determined? Are you really that selfish?”

“Goodbye, buddy.”

Ned nodded, but he couldn’t say anything, not even goodbye. “Yeah” was all he could manage before his throat sealed off.

Somehow he got his shaky legs to the shattered door and closed it behind him, praying that his friend would at least let him get out of earshot. Ned would collapse if he heard that gun go off. If it had been anyone other than Rick, any situation other than this, he would have wrestled the gun away. But there was no way to save Rick. The kindest thing was to let him be. But it was a damn tragedy.

Ned picked his way down the rutted road, knowing he could easily sprain an ankle in one of the deep holes. He had a home game coming up this weekend, and another practice tomorrow.

He almost laughed, but it was the kind of laughter that scorched everything it touched. How crazy was it that he was worried about twisting his ankle when his life was crashing down around him? Everything was on the line, his career, his reputation—

And his best friend was back in that cabin with a gun to his head.

At that moment what Ned recalled most clearly about Rick was the hellishly hard time he’d had teaching the big lug how to swim when they were overgrown sixteen-year-olds. Rick had a morbid fear of water. He’d never told Ned why, but it was crucial that Rick learn to swim, because the two of them had a plan. As soon as they turned seventeen, they were going to quit school, join the army, try out for Delta Force and become bona fide heroes. What better way to escape their drug-infested cesspool of a neighborhood than by fighting the enemies of freedom and democracy? Christ, those were innocent days.

Ned had been a magnet for trouble, and Rick was always bailing him out, but in that one small area, Ned had held the upper hand—Rick’s fear of water. Too bad their plan didn’t work. Even if Rick had learned to swim well enough to make Delta Force, it wouldn’t have mattered. A stomach ailment had kept Ned out, and Rick wouldn’t join without him.

Tears burned his eyes, but what came out of his mouth was helpless laughter. Rick was still scared shitless of water. But no one could deny his courage in cleaning up the streets of downtown L.A. when he’d worked in vice. He’d focused on runaway kids, drugs and street prostitution. The man was a legend. He’d actually busted a city-sponsored youth hostel that was exploiting the kids, and got local businesses to fund a new one, with a rehab staff and vocational classes. Not that he’d ever been officially recognized for it.

He and the brass had butted heads repeatedly, and Rick had finally left the force in a storm of controversy after Rick exposed a sex scandal involving several prominent businessmen. But that was years ago. Now he did private consulting work that couldn’t be discussed, for clients who couldn’t be named.

Ned came to the gate and stopped, wondering how he was going to vault it. He hoped to God his friend was making the right decision. And he hoped he’d just made the right one by leaving. There was nothing left now but to go home and deal with the puke the sky had vomited on his life. It was a filthy, stinking mess, and unless he could find some way to clean it up, baseball stardom as he knew it was over.

“Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way,” Ned said under his breath. It was a Pattonism that he and Rick had barked at each other repeatedly, ad nauseam, when they were kids, sometimes just for fun, but it could be a call to arms, as well. They had grown to adulthood in downtown Los Angeles, an urban jungle, and too often those three options were their only clear choices. Tonight, Ned was getting the hell out of the way.

Sunday, October 6

Three days earlier

Ginger Sue Harvey started every morning at the Midlands’ Gourmet Grocery by straightening the stock on the shelves and cleaning up after customers who moved things around and left them hither and yon. She’d clerked at the store for years, but now, as the newly appointed manager, she took special pride in restoring order and preserving the folksy charm of the converted mountain chalet. And she’d long ago divided her customers into two categories—destroyers and preservers.

No way around it, the ones who messed up her magnificent produce displays or moved merchandise from aisle to aisle were, without a doubt, destroyers. Some even left open boxes of cookies and chomped-on apples lying around. They made her want to call the police. There should be a special cell for people who filched produce and abandoned it, half-eaten and usually already rotting before Ginger Sue found it. The arrogance, the unmitigated arrogance. Really.

But since she couldn’t be calling the cops every day, she punished the destroyers by withholding new product samples. They would have none of the rich black olive butter and Seminole flour crackers she would lay out later today. Now, the preservers, they would be heaped with her gratitude and generosity. She might even make up little gift baskets for them to take home. It was Ginger Sue’s own special brand of behavior modification.

As she straightened the candy bars, gum and other impulse items on her countertop, she saw him through the window. He was putting change in the newspaper box. Her heart kicked into a higher gear, embarrassing her. Apparently she’d been hoping Rick Bayless would show up, even though he was one of the destroyers. He’d been especially bad yesterday when he stopped in for some things on the way up to his cabin.

He’d bought a padlock and two bolt locks and a stack of bath towels, but even more odd was what he didn’t buy. No food or drinks, nothing at all like the overflowing cart he usually brought to her checkout stand. You wouldn’t think a man buying locks could do much damage, but he’d knocked over her magazine stand like he was in a trance. She’d forgiven him that because she could see something was wrong. His expression was bleak, a man under siege. His clenched jaw was the dam against whatever emotion threatened.

She’d asked if he was all right. Of course, he’d said yes. He never talked much, but when you had this man’s unmistakable military bearing, close-cropped sandy hair and pale green eyes, you didn’t need to. Women were happy to fill in the blanks.

Ginger Sue hadn’t stopped filling in blanks since she’d met him, maybe two years ago when he’d bought his mountain cabin for cash on the barrelhead, or so the rumor went. She wouldn’t have thought twice about calling him handsome, despite the scar on his cheek and the notch on his upper lip, maybe even the kind of guy who broke hearts. But she figured it might be just the opposite. Woman trouble could explain his quiet manner and his way of looking at you from an angle, like he was guarding something.

Ginger Sue liked Rick Bayless, although she wasn’t sure why. She was also rather fond of his friend, the baseball player, who sometimes came up to the cabin with a girl in tow. He was polite and respectful, and he struck her as a kind soul, but Ginger Sue couldn’t say she approved of his taste in women. The one he’d had with him lately was a little on the flashy side, with her brightly painted nails and her ankle bracelet. She even wore a ring with a tiny precious gem on her second toe. Ginger Sue called that tacky—and she’d pegged the woman right away as the gold-digger type.

She gave her countertop another swipe with the disinfectant rag as the bell over the door jingled. In Bayless came, paper tucked under his arm. It wasn’t even nine, so he’d probably come down the mountain for some coffee, as he often did when he was in residence. Her store was in the village about twenty minutes’ walk from his place.

As he came closer, she saw that he was unshaven and bleary-eyed, as if he’d been on an all-night toot. It struck her that he might be grieving some loss, although that was probably a silly romantic notion. Keep it simple, sweetie. It’s just a hangover.

“Morning, Mr. Bayless. Anything I can help you with?” she asked.

“Just getting some coffee from the bar, thanks.”

Ginger Sue watched to see if his hand was unsteady as he held his plastic cup under the spigot. “You want a cinnamon bun?” she asked. “That’d go good with your coffee.” She’d heard cinnamon was some kind of sexual turn-on for men. Who knew? It might make him feel better.

When he came over to pay he set down the coffee and dug a money clip from the pocket of his jeans. He let the paper slip from under his arm and it fell open on the counter. As he laid down a five, Ginger Sue turned the paper around and skimmed the headline: Star Outfielder Dies in Murder-Suicide. The color picture of a crime investigation and the insert of a familiar male face caught her eye next.

Ned Talbert? Was that his friend, the baseball star? “Mr. Bayless, did you see this?”

She turned the paper around so he could view it. He’d just taken a sip of his coffee, and he let out a strange, strangled sound. Clearly he hadn’t seen the headline until that moment. Black coffee exploded from his cup as it hit the counter.

“Oh!” Ginger Sue ducked behind the counter, shielding her face with her arms. By the time she came back up, he was gone, flying out the door like a crazy man. The bell rang madly as the door crashed shut behind him.

She grabbed her rag and mopped quickly, but there was no way to stem the steaming morass. He’d scared her half to death, and look at the mess he’d made of her countertop. The coffee had already soaked a stack of TV Guide magazines and some credit-card receipts she hadn’t yet filed. That kind of behavior was enough to get a customer banned from her store, but right now, she just wanted to know what was going on.

2

Rick felt dread bloom in the pit of his stomach, cold and wet, like clammy flesh. He was only a few minutes from Ned’s place in Pacific Palisades, and Rick knew what he would find there, a crime scene in progress. He’d seen a million of them, but this wouldn’t look like anything he recognized. The corpse would not be a lifeless shell to be pitied, lamented and then analyzed down to the last gruesome detail. This was his friend, someone Rick knew only as warm, vital and human. Ned was a living, breathing part of him. And, worse, instead of wearing a badge that would give Rick jurisdiction over the nightmare, instead of taking charge and righting wrongs, he would be helpless to do anything.

His knuckles were blood-white against the steering wheel. He’d made the drive from the mountains to the beach in record time, despite having to ditch a cop in the foothills. The dread had been living inside him since he read the newspaper, but it hadn’t had a chance against his abject disbelief. Not Ned. No way. He couldn’t be dead. He was all that was left of their goofy boyhood dreams. He was supposed to carry the torch, be the man.

Rick had spaced out, driving without a thought to the consequences. But at some point, he’d noticed the vibration in his hands that had nothing to do with his grip on the steering wheel—and the explicable had dawned on him. His friend was dead, and Rick was probably to blame. If he’d listened last night instead of swimming in his own private pool of despair, he might have prevented this. He was guilty and friendless. He had nothing left and nowhere to go, yet his hands were vibrating, and he felt more alive than he had in weeks.

That wasn’t right. It was totally twisted. But there was no time to analyze it now. He’d been mired in self-analysis for days, weeks, and that wasn’t his style at all. Maybe anything that could drag him out of that muck would have sparked some life. But, God, why did it have to be this?

Ned Talbert’s turreted Moorish-style home was on a street that sloped toward the sea. It sat like a crown jewel in a neighborhood where selling prices ran into the millions, and the terraced bluffs below the house featured one palatial property after another.

Rick pulled in down the street from the house, giving himself time to scope things out. Yellow crime scene tape roped off the area, but other than that there was no sign of a CSI team or an active investigation. The deaths had occurred last night, according to the newspaper, some time before 11:00 p.m. Apparently Ned’s housekeeper had stopped by to drop off something she’d forgotten, found the bodies and called the police.

The way it looked now, the forensic guys must have done their work last night, packed up and gone. And so had the media, it seemed. Even a sports star’s lurid death couldn’t command attention for more than a few hours in celebrity-soaked L.A. There was money to be made on the living.

A lone police officer, young enough to be a rookie, sat in his car, clicking away on his cell, probably texting or playing games when he should have been standing guard at the door. Sloppy security, but not unusual with murder-suicides, where in theory the case was already solved before the cops got there. The victim and killer were all wrapped up in one neat bundle, a real timesaver. It was more than some overworked and underappreciated homicide investigators could resist, especially if all the evidence was there, including a suicide note.

But Ned would not have left a suicide note. Writing wasn’t his thing. He couldn’t even sign a birthday card without it sounding lame.

Rick could tell when a crime scene had been body-bagged and zipped up right along with the dead, and this one had, even before the lab results came in. Were the investigators already that certain about what had gone down, or were they more interested in getting rid of this case?

A cover-up? That was jumping the gun, but Rick’s mind was going there anyway. On the way down from the mountain, he had realized what the police could have found in Ned’s house. He was fairly certain the brass would want to keep it under wraps because of the scandal potential, even though the information was old news—very old—which was also why they wouldn’t connect it with the murder-suicide. But Rick could not get his mind around the idea that this was a murder-suicide, which only left one other possibility. Someone wanted Ned and his girlfriend dead.

Rick’s original plan had been to talk his way in. He’d worked with most of the guys at the West Side station at one point or another during his time at LAPD, and knew them well. Some of them had even gone to Ned’s games with him. Cops were a fraternity, as tightly bonded as the military, and they bent the rules for each other. All he wanted was to be escorted inside long enough to have a look around. Shouldn’t be a problem, except that he didn’t recognize the officer in the car, and his gut was telling him this wasn’t like every other crime scene.

Sweat dampened the close-cropped hair on Rick’s scalp. He needed to make his move now, while junior was still otherwise engaged. He slipped on his mirrored aviators, let himself out of the car and started for the house at a lope. With Ned’s front-door key clutched in his hand, he ducked down and swept past the black and white from behind and made it all the way to the porch before he heard the guy shout.

“Police! Stop where you are!”

Rick halted, but made no attempt to turn until he was told.

“Drop what you’re holding. Drop it!”

The house key clinked on the slate walk, dancing end over end until it hit the rise of the porch step.

“Put your hands up and turn around,” the officer barked. “Slowly.”

Rick turned, aware of the officer’s hand hovering over his hip holster. “The guy who lives here is my closest friend,” Rick said. “I just heard what happened. Please, I need to see him.”

The officer blinked, his sole expression of regret, if that’s what it was. “He’s not here. The bodies have been taken to the coroner’s office on Mission Boulevard. If a member of his family can’t be located, you may have to ID him.”

Rick wanted to slam the unfeeling words right down the guy’s throat. He would love to have decked him, but he understood that for some of these guys, lack of empathy was protection—if they bled over every victim, or even one, they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs—so Rick was going to give this SOB the benefit of the doubt.

Rick had never managed that kind of detachment on his watch. He’d been involved up to his neck, and look where that had landed him—on the sidewalk and looking for a job. He’d quit under fire, and probably just before they could fire him. He’d had the audacity to question policy decisions, but he didn’t regret any of it. Nor did he miss the politics and the red tape.

The officer peered at Rick, his brow furrowing. “You look familiar.”

Rick wondered if he’d made a mistake. He was pretty good when it came to names and faces, but he couldn’t place this guy. He just shrugged and left his glasses on. “I doubt it.”

The rookie should have asked to see ID and Rick’s car registration, but he let it go, maybe out of respect for the situation.

“Look, go over to the West L.A. station and tell them who you are. Maybe they’ll give you some information,” he suggested. “If you want, you can drop back tomorrow. The tape should be down by then.”

Rick pretended to be surprised. “They’ve already determined it was murder-suicide, like the newspaper said? What about burglary, a home invasion or some other kind of foul play? What if someone wanted it to look like murder-suicide? A jealous boyfriend? Or another ballplayer, trying to eliminate the competition? A rival team owner?”

The officer’s expression said Ned Talbert wasn’t that good an outfielder. “It was murder-suicide. Trust me, you don’t want to know what happened in there.”

The dread turned soft and queasy in Rick’s stomach. Something fetid coated the back of his throat. He would have said it was the tide, but the onshores rarely carried the sea smells this far. Most of the time, this area existed in a velvet-draped moneyed hush.

Rick didn’t want to know what had happened inside, but he had to find out. Ned wasn’t violent. He was a big chicken—not a coward, just a good-hearted, easygoing guy, who could leap like a ballet dancer to snag a fly and slam a ball into the next county. He would have made a terrible member of Delta Force. He didn’t like guns, and Rick had often kidded him about that, just the way Ned had dissed him about his fear of water. But even if Ned had that kind of violence in him, why kill himself and his girlfriend instead of the blackmailer?

Rick should have listened. He had nothing to go on, not even the most rudimentary details of the blackmail attempts. He didn’t know when, how often or why. But there was another reason Rick needed access to Ned’s house. Years ago, he’d given Ned a package for safekeeping. The police may have found the eight-by-eleven bubble pack in Ned’s safe, and Rick had to get it back, if it was still there. A part of him hoped this investigation was as cut-and-dried as the officer had suggested. It was why Rick hadn’t mentioned Ned’s concerns about blackmail, and wouldn’t.

3

Lane Chandler was doing four things at once, which was about two less than she normally did. She’d pulled up Gotcha.com, a tabloid Web site, on her computer screen, praying not to see any of her clients featured there. She was also mentally updating her to-do list, a never-ending task, and she was undressing…all while chatting with her favorite client on her cell-phone headset.

“She wants gangsta rappers for her sweet-sixteen party?” Lane draped her suit jacket over the back of her office chair and then perched on the edge of her desk, easing the pain of her obscenely overpriced new high heels. She turned enough to continue searching the Gotcha home page, but so far no clients in jail or rehab—and no mention of the one she was specifically looking for.

“Thank you, God,” she said, mouthing the words. She felt lighter, but it was too soon to relax. She had yet to check Jack the Giant Killer’s column.

“Jerry,” she implored her headset, “say no! Someday your daughter will thank you for refusing to book the Gutter Punk Bone Dawgs for her special day.”

“Say no to my Felicity? I’d stand a better chance against the Bone Dawgs.”

Jerry’s loud snort of laughter made Lane wince. She turned away from the computer screen to give her shoes a dark look. The way her day had gone, if her high-profile clients didn’t kill her the Manolo Blahniks would. Fortunately, she had Jerry on the phone rather than in her office, so he couldn’t see her torturing the side slit of her skirt as she bent over and pulled off the exotic footwear that was cutting her insteps to ribbons.

She sighed with relief as she sank her feet into the plush office carpet. Who invented these stilts, the Marquis de Sade? A woman in high heels was supposed to be a sexual thing, creating an inviting tilt to the pelvis and a sensual swivel when she walked. But only a guy into serious S&M could love the pain on this woman’s face.

“Lane, is that heavy breathing?”

“That’s me, in ecstasy. I took off my shoes, and I’m warning you, the Spanx are next.”

Silence. She couldn’t have shocked him. Not Jerry. He wasn’t shockable, and they often bantered. It was all in good fun. He was a big sweet bear of a man with a thick head of brown hair and a matching beard. He ran one of the largest discount chains in the country and he was among her top five clients, if you ranked by sheer business clout, but he was also her mentor and someone she could let down her hair with, which she was about to do right now, before the tightly embedded hair clip gave her a migraine.

She reached into the back of her upswept do and freed the claws that held the heavy mahogany waves off her neck.

“Spanx are panty hose, Jerry.”

“I know,” he chided. “I have a daughter. But you should know by now that I don’t have a thing for feet. Now, if you’d said earrings, that would be different. A woman’s naked lobes make the back of my neck sweat.”

“Earrings next, my love.”

“You tease.”

She laughed and was suddenly glad he’d called, even though she’d been trying desperately to close up shop and go home. She ran a private concierge service that had been growing like topsy up until very recently. But this had been another day from hell in a week of days from hell. She couldn’t believe anyone could make her laugh, but Jerry had. He always did, which was why she’d taken his call at this late hour instead of letting the service put him through to Zoe, his own private concierge.

Jerry was one of forty-five top-tier clients, who paid up to fifty thousand dollars a year for Lane’s Premiere Plan. They each had a private concierge devoted solely to their needs, who oversaw no less than six rotating concierges with different specialties, who were also at their beck and call around the clock. But Jerry wouldn’t necessarily be able to talk freely with Zoe about his very spoiled daughter—and Lane owed him so much anyway. He really was more than a mentor, much more, but not in a romantic way. They flirted a bit, but he’d never even come close to making a pass at her. Sometimes she wondered why not.

She slipped off her clip earrings and shook her head, aware of the caress of her hair, cool against her burning face. It had been a hard day, a terrible day, possibly the worst of her career. Normally she would have been frustrated at having to deal with a sweet-sixteen party when it felt as if everything she’d struggled and sacrificed for was imploding. She would have done it, though, because that was her job description. She took care of all her clients, and Jerry was a vital one.

But right now, maybe she needed one client she could actually help.

“Seriously, Jerry, you should consider saying no to Felicity.” She spoke softly, pleadingly, as she worked her kirt up, hooked her thumbs into the waistline of her ultra-stretchy Spanx and dragged them down. “I know how much you love her,” she went on, making her case as she peeled off the panty hose, “but the Bone Dawgs have a criminal record, and more important, if you don’t draw the line somewhere, Felicity will never learn to respect her limits—or others’.”

“Lane, when did you turn into Mother Superior?”

“Actually, I was trying for Dr. Phil.” So much for reasoning with Jerry. She stepped out of the Spanx and wanted to moan it felt so good. Her flesh was celebrating. Why was everything so tight? If stress caused water retention, then she was a dam about to burst. “How many are coming to this party?”

“Felicity hasn’t given me the final count, but I’m estimating half her class at St. Mary’s, which is a hundred, another twenty-five from her church group and that many again from company friends, my various clubs, colleagues and vendors.”

Lane began to calculate, adding up numbers and aware that the amounts her clients were willing to spend on lavish parties could still shock her, especially with the country’s struggling economy. Still, she had a job to do and a payroll to meet for her own employees, who now numbered several hundred around the country.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s say two hundred guests to allow for long-lost cousins, last-minute invites and party crashers. Kids love to crash these things. That’s half the fun. Does she still want the Avalon ballroom in Catalina? That means a charter cruise ship for transportation—and the talent will have to be flown in and flown out the same night, or put up at the island’s luxury condos. The guests are staying over, aren’t they?”

“Some will, I’m sure. As you said, whatever they prefer.”

She undid the button of her skirt and tugged at the silk camisole. “We’ll get a count when they RSVP. It’s good of you to be this involved, Jerry.” He could have had a personal assistant do it, or hired a party planner to work with his daughter. Most single dads with his bank account would have.

“It’s for Felicity.”

Anything less wasn’t an option. His voice said that, unequivocally. Lane could hear rap music playing on his end and smiled. At times like now, she worried how far he would go to make Felicity happy, and whether he was trying too hard to compensate for what had happened when Felicity was twelve. Her mother, Jerry’s ex-wife, had become despondent during their custody battle, knowing she was almost certain to lose custody of her child because of her drug use, and she had taken an overdose that proved fatal.

“This is going to be a great party, Jerry.” Lane walked across the carpet, bare of foot and shoulder, aware of her image flickering from the glass doors of her bookcases to the office’s wraparound windows. Her thoughts turned inward as the party unfolded in her mind. She could see revolving glitter balls, servers dressed like Bonnie and Clyde, drinks in crystal bathtub-shaped punch bowls, maybe even a fabulous antique car or two on display. It would be a twenties gangster theme, featuring a rapper band with no priors.

This was her forte, organizing and strategizing to create the client’s vision. She pulled gently on the tattered green rubber band she wore on her left wrist, calming as she took in her surroundings. She loved this office. Despite the frenetic activity during the day, at night it was an oasis of calm and monastic order. Her burlwood desk was so highly varnished the gloss could have been liquid, and the room’s muted lighting allowed her to see the bright twinkling lights of Century City, receding toward the Pacific coast.

“I’m thinking gangster theme, Jerry, but from the twenties.”

Reaching up to unbutton her blouse, she continued to ask questions and make mental notes of Jerry’s answers. It was oddly freeing walking around barefoot and taking off her clothes. She should do it more often…just strip down to nothing. She shivered as the silk blouse slid down her arms.

“Maybe a mix of past and present?” he suggested.

“Even better.”

“Lane, are you all right? You sound breathless.”

“Yes, fine. I’m changing clothes.”

“In that case, put on the videophone.”

“It’s not that exciting, Jerry, believe me. I’m changing into my sweats. I’m going to get one of my concierge staff to drive my car home, and I’m going to walk.”

“One of those days? Must have been a doozy if you’re walking home.”

“You have no idea. This day was spawned in the lowest level of hell and flung at me by the devil’s henchmen on thundering steeds.” She couldn’t give him the details. It would breach client confidentiality, but she needed to vent. She was gut-level terrified—and she rarely allowed herself to feel anything resembling fear. She controlled it with a game she’d played all her life, a silly game that worked.

“Lane, I know what’s happened to Simon Shan and Captain Crusader, if that’s what you’re talking about, and I don’t know what to say. It’s tragic. There’s been little else on the news the last couple of weeks. I have a call in to Burt, but he hasn’t returned it.”

Jerry also knew the two men were her clients because he’d referred them both, Burton Carr, the activist U.S. congressman, whom he’d affectionately referred to as Captain Crusader, and Shan more recently. Simon Shan was currently the hottest ticket in town, even considering the mess he was in. Everyone had expected the next Martha Stewart to be a woman, but Shan, a London-based fashion designer of Chinese descent, had stolen her spotlight while no one was looking. He did everything with a focus, precision and freshness that made all the other lifestyle gurus look like amateurs.

He’d gotten his start by designing and creating his own unique casual look for women. His first full line was a smash, and he’d gone from there into makeup and accessories. Eventually he’d partnered with an upscale discount chain, the Goldstar Collection, and branched into furniture, linens, decor, parties, gardening, everything. He was also tall, lean and singularly attractive, creating great speculation about his sexual preferences—and an instant mystique. No one had counted on the next lifestyle icon being male, Asian and very possibly straight.

His downfall was drugs, but not just any old drugs. Opium. He admitted to having tried it once as a boy in Taiwan, where he grew up an only child to a doting mother and an authoritarian father. The opium use was little more than teenage curiosity, but his father had been outraged. He’d sent Shan away to a boarding school in London, not realizing it would change the boy’s life forever.

Shan swore that was the extent of his own drug use. But several pounds of it were found in the trunk of his Bentley, and because he imported most of his furniture, textiles and other goods from Asia, he was also charged with smuggling the opium into the country. The charges had forced him to step back from his role as Goldstar’s spokesperson. But at least he’d had enough money to hire the best legal help, and he was out on bail, awaiting arraignment.

The congressman’s downfall had shocked Lane to her core. The feds had found child pornography on his computer in his D.C. office. Lane still couldn’t fathom it. Even if Burton Carr was a pedophile, which she didn’t believe for a second, why would he view child porn on his office computer? He’d always supported the fight for legislation to protect children, including the now-famous Amber Alert. He clearly cared deeply about people in general. On the national level, he’d worked doggedly to pass a bill compelling the large discount chains to offer benefits to workers, including heath care—and he’d cited Jerry Blair as one of the country’s most progressive CEOs, and his company, TopCo, as an example of how a discount chain could—and should—be run.

Carr was one of her heroes. Actually, both men were.

“Lane?”

“Jerry, can we shelve the party discussion for tonight? There’s plenty of time to iron out the details, and I’m really beat.”

“Sure, but do me a favor, don’t walk home. It’s not safe.”

“I’ve done it before, Jerry. The path I take is lit up like a movie premiere, and I don’t live that far—”

“Lane, humor me, okay?”

“Okay, no walking tonight.”

“I mean forever, Lane. Don’t walk home—not tonight, not ever again.”

“Well, geez, Jerry. I am thirty years old, and there are some decisions I feel qualified to make—”

“Yes, you are, but this is not a good one, Lane.”

She was nodding to herself as he spoke. This was why Jerry Blair was a good CEO. He took care of people. He was one of the few people who’d ever taken care of her, and she loved him for it. She stopped short of telling him that, but with the words balling up in her throat, she said, “Uncle.”

They said their goodbyes and as she hung up the phone, she felt the pain twist into sharpness. It nearly took her breath away, but she never had understood why her heart turned into a cutting tool at times. Loneliness, maybe. There wasn’t time to analyze it. There never was.

Ignoring the ache in her chest, she went back to the gossip site and clicked on Jack the Giant Killer’s byline. She had no choice. The paparazzo stalker was becoming famous for bringing down the infamous, especially since he limited his targets to those who abused their power and position. And he didn’t stick to celebs, either. Jack had outed Burton Carr—and listed Carr as one of The Private Concierge’s clients on the Gotcha site. And now Lane was terrified that Jack might have done it again with another client, someone she just signed yesterday.

Jerry Blair knew about the Carr and Shan scandals, but he didn’t know about Lane’s new client, and she hadn’t told him. She wasn’t sure she could—or should—tell anyone, including the police. Ned Talbert had signed his contract yesterday morning and late last night he’d killed his girlfriend, then killed himself. Lane had been struggling with disbelief all day.

She’d had three clients involved in felonies or capital crimes in just three weeks’ time. And then there was Judge Love earlier this year. Love had presided over a popular television-courtroom show and was known for her toughness until her lurid private life became public, all of this thanks to JGK, as the Giant Killer had become known. Lane had found herself right in the middle of that scandal because one of her key people had decided to confront the Gotcha people personally. The site’s owner swore that JGK operated under total anonymity, e-mailing or dropping his material at various specified locations. No one knew who JGK was, but Gotcha took pains to verify everything he gave them, including the raunchy Judge Love video.

Right now, Lane was terrified that her service would look like a hotbed of criminal activity. No one would come near her.

She clicked off the Web site and shut down her computer.

Everywhere she looked she could see herself, only she didn’t look liberated in her undone skirt and flimsy camisole top. She looked exposed. She was heartsick about what had happened to her clients, including Ned. She knew them all as good men who couldn’t have done what they were accused of, but sadly there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to protect them. The problems were escalating, and Lane had to think of herself, as well. A concierge service was its clients. If the clients went down, the service went down with them.

She opened the drawer of her desk and pulled out Ned’s application. She hadn’t given it to anyone yet to process, and she’d handled the credit-card transaction herself. Her receptionist and assistant, Mary, had been out on a break, and Lane had been watching the desk. So, no one knew about Ned Talbert but her. And no one could know.