Текст книги "Death of a Pirate King "

Автор книги: Josh lanyon

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“She was at the funeral yesterday,” I said. “In fact, I heard her mention something about Porter not being in good health.”

“I don’t know about that. His doctors were after him for years to cut back on his drinking and to give up cigars. Anyway, Langley insisted that the affair end.”

“How young was Nina?”

“Very young. Just eighteen, I think.”

“I can see why Langley had a problem.”

He stroked his mustache, smiling. “You don’t have children, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“Nina was furious with Langley – and Porter. She felt doubly betrayed.”

“This was back when? The eighties? Could she be holding a grudge after all this time?”

“Nina is a world-class grudge holder,” Al said, “but in fairness to her, I don’t think she killed Porter. She’s not the…lie in wait type. If she killed anyone, it would probably be three and a half minutes after they pissed her off. Especially back then.”

“Why especially back then?”

“Nina was not always…in control in those days. Well, it was the eighties. I don’t know anyone who was in control.”

“Was she at the party last weekend?”

“No.” January got that evasive look again. “Not exactly. Her company catered the party.”

Chapter Eleven

Friday afternoon traffic was a bitch – as usual – and I got back to Pasadena in a less than jolly mood. Shelling out over fifty bucks on gasoline and the same again on a few staples like tilapia, Tab, and the magical elixir known as orange-pineapple juice did little to improve my mood.

When I reached Cloak and Dagger I saw that – predictably – the construction crew had knocked off work early again, and that the store was empty of customers barring one: a slim young man who looked like a sexy Harry Potter. He wore artfully ripped jeans and a fitted bronze mesh T-shirt, and he was contemplating Natalie over the top of his Windsor-style specs.

“Oh, here’s Adrien,” she said as I approached the counter. “He can probably tell you when the best time to drop by is.” To me, she said, “Hey, Adrien, this is…uh…one of Guy’s former students.”

I nodded hi, setting the bag of groceries down, and then I took another look. There was something very familiar about Guy’s former student. Something familiar about the cool, slightly challenging way he stared back at me. But it took a minute to place the pale pointed face and cropped dark hair.

Peter Verlane.

Last time I’d seen him, he had been doing his level best to help kill me. Well, no. To be fair, the very last time I’d seen him, he’d been fleeing into the night trying to avoid arrest for kidnapping, extortion, and murder. And suddenly I had a clear memory of the envelope that had fallen from Guy’s pocket the night I’d tried to catch him before he left for Margo’s book signing – the letter that had borne the return address of the men’s prison in Tehachapi.

“Peter Verlane,” I said. “Who left your cage open?”

He reddened, glanced at Natalie, and said stiffly, “I did my time. I’ve got as much right to be here as anyone.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “She works here, and I own the place. Remind me why you’re here again?”

Natalie looked from me to Verlane and said uncertainly, “He was asking for Guy.”

“Why?” I asked him.

“Not that it concerns you,” he said, “but he told me to contact him when I got out. We’re friends.”

“There’s no accounting for taste,” I admitted. “But why are you here?”

He said evenly, “I know he’s seeing you now.”

“I’m relieved he thought to mention it,” I said. “Didn’t he also mention that he still keeps an office at UCLA? Or that he still has his townhouse?”

The glasses gave Verlane an unfairly vulnerable look; scorpions have offspring too, after all.

He said, “I wanted to see you.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you came, you saw, you confounded. Now how about you skedaddle? I’ll let Guy know you called.”

“Guy wants to see me,” he said with complete and quiet conviction.

Against my best effort I was getting mad, and my heart was starting to race. I said, “I’m betting he wants to see you elsewhere. And I sure as hell want to see you elsewhere. So leave a number where he can reach you, and go.”

I wasn’t being magnanimous there. I thought it might be a good idea if I knew where Verlane could be found – just in case.

Bewildered, looking from me to Verlane, Natalie pushed a notepad at him and he scribbled something down.

He raised his bespectacled gaze to my face. “Guy wants to see me,” he said again with certainty.

“I don’t,” I said. “And if you show up here again, I’ll have a restraining order slapped on you.”

He gave me a final assessing look, turned and walked unhurriedly up the aisle, pushing out through the glass doors. As they jingled shut behind him, Natalie let out a long breath.

“What an arrogant little prick!” she said indignantly. “He seemed fine until you walked in.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.” I started for my office. My heart was starting that uncomfortable tripping beat, signaling trouble. Aggravatingly, she followed me, talking.

“I’ve never heard you talk to anyone like that. You were kind of an arrogant prick too.” She sounded like she found it entertaining. If only I did.

I sat down at my desk, pulled open a drawer, and pulled out my pills.

“Are you okay?”

I looked at her. “I just need a minute or two.”

She nodded but didn’t go away. Wouldn’t the normal thing be to give me a few moments? Controlling myself with an effort, I popped my pills, took a swallow from the bottle of tepid water on my desk. I drew a couple of experimental breaths. I seemed to be okay. My heart was already slowing back to its normal rhythm, so maybe I’d just mistaken reasonable agitation for something else.

“I really am okay,” I told her. “Do I have any messages?”

“Hmm? Oh. Paul Kane called again. A couple of authors want to set up signings. It was a pretty quiet day. Only three people came in searching for books with red covers and the word ‘murder’ in the title.”

Guy would have called my cell phone or left a message on the upstairs phone. Assuming Guy had anything to say to me. He’d left without waking me that morning.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Natalie said.

“I’m fine,” I said, and despite my efforts, it snapped out. I glanced at the clock over the desk. “Shit. And I’m late picking Em up.”

“Adrien, Emma can do without her horse riding lessons! You need to –”

“There’s no need for her to do without.” I rose, and she asked, “Aren’t you going to call Guy?”

“No.” And that was much curter than I intended. I glanced at her. “Sorry. Listen, Nat, can you do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Please don’t…discuss what’s happening here with anyone.”

She said honestly, “I don’t know what’s happening, Adrien. I know you and Guy are having a rough patch and that some parolee came to see Guy. Where would that guy even know him from? That writing program Guy runs at the prison? Do you think maybe this Verlane is stalking him?”

“No,” I sighed. “I don’t.”

As I went out the side door, she called, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

* * * * *

A deer crashed through the manzanita and underbrush beside the wide trail, springing away to vanish into the dusky evening. As Emma’s horse shied, I leaned across, grabbed his bridle, and yanked him down hard on the packed earth. The gelding tossed his head, blew out nervously, but settled fast, falling back into stride with my own mount.

Emma sat up very straight in the saddle. Her eyes were huge, but she said bravely, “I could do it!”

“I know you can.”

“I wasn’t afraid.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid,” I told her. “It’s how you handle it.”

Like, don’t ever kill anyone because they scared you.

Emma’s chatter, the creak of saddle leather and jingle of bridles, the thud of the horses’ hooves on the trail faded out and my thoughts turned inward once more.

The reasons people killed each other were as varied as the people themselves. Porter Jones, for instance, appeared to me to have been taken out mostly because he stood between someone and what they wanted. Well, that made sense. Most homicides seemed to be motivated by greed, and one thing I’d learned from Jake was that mostly murder wasn’t complicated. The most obvious suspect usually was guilty. Even in the unsolved cases that went cold, the police generally had a pretty good idea of who the culprit was; they just couldn’t successfully take them to trial. Or if they went to trial, they weren’t able to secure a conviction.

I thought there was a pretty good chance that Ally Beaton-Porter had offed her old man. She had the best possible motive: several million dollars and an illicit affair with a handsome young stud.

Although if Porter really hadn’t been in good health, it would have made good sense to wait – except that Porter had hired a PI, presumably with some purpose in mind. Paul Kane had insisted that Porter planned on divorcing Ally, and that had seemed to be reinforced by Roscoe Markopoulos.

And while Ally didn’t strike me as having the brains to pull off poisoning her husband without killing half the other people in the room, I’d be the first to admit my instincts – crime solving and otherwise – weren’t always infallible.

It just bugged me that everyone – barring Al January and myself – seemed to take it for granted that Ally was guilty. She probably was guilty – she didn’t exactly seem grief stricken at Porter’s demise, and there was good reason that wives were the first suspects in a husband’s suspicious death.

So what about Marla Vicenza? Had Porter left her any million-dollar behests? Because some people committed murder over twenty bucks in change. I wondered what Marla’s finances were like. She was certainly past her prime as far as Hollywood box office went, but if she had invested – or remarried – wisely, maybe money wasn’t an issue for her. But maybe getting dumped for a blonde bimbo was.

This is why I had a problem with the idea of this Nina Hawthorne as murderess du jour. Yes, she did own Truly Scrumptious Catering, but if she hadn’t been on the scene, I didn’t see how she could have orchestrated getting poison into the right glass by remote control. Besides, having the patience to wait nearly twenty years to destroy Porter didn’t seem to mesh with being motivated by that whole passionate woman-scorned thing.

I glanced at Em as she prattled on, and I tried to picture her at eighteen. Tried to picture her having an affair with some married asshole a couple of decades her senior. Now, had Langley Hawthorne killed Porter, I could more easily understand it. But Langley Hawthorne had been dead for years.

All the same…if Nina’s company had done the catering, then there was a very good chance that Nina had been on the premises at some point – maybe the day before or earlier in the day of the party? That would have given her access to…but there again was the problem. How could she anticipate what Porter would drink or what glass would be used?

She would have to be very familiar with Porter and with Paul Kane’s bar setup.

Maybe Paul Kane used her catering company a lot. Maybe she was familiar with his bar setup, and maybe she knew that he always made these Henley Skullfarquars, but again, how could she control administering the fatal dose? I doubted the mixture was made ahead of time, and she couldn’t poison one of the ingredient bottles because no one else had died or even gotten ill from the cocktails.

I kept coming back to the problem of Porter’s glass. Of course the simplest explanation was that Porter had taken the stuff himself. This mysterious ill health of his that – assuming I’d heard correctly and wasn’t jumping to conclusions – his ex-wife had referred to at the funeral: what if it was heart trouble?

But no. That would have been determined right away – the rest of his prescription would have been found on his body, for one thing.

Could he have taken the stuff thinking it was something else?

Like what?

Emma said thoughtfully, “You know what doesn’t make sense? Why does an X stand for a kiss? I think an O should be a kiss because it’s like your mouth.” She demonstrated with an O that made her look very young and very surprised.

“Who are you sending love letters to?” I asked.

She giggled. “No one.”

I looked skeptical and she laughed again. “I’m not!”

* * * * *

I dropped Emma off at her home – managing to avoid any meaningful discussion with Lisa, who tried to insist that I stay for dinner – and headed back to the bookstore.

By then Natalie had closed up for the night and gone home. It was very quiet as I locked the door behind me. The forest of bookshelves stood motionless and silent in the gloom. Outside the front windows the streetlamps were coming on, the traffic thinning in this mostly retail part of town.

I stared through the paint– and plaster-spattered plastic wall separating the store from the gutted rooms next door. Remembering Peter Verlane’s earlier visit, I hoped the construction crew had locked up properly before leaving for the day.

Not that I was unduly worried about Verlane. Not about him killing me, anyway. I believed that, like Angus, he had been caught up in something larger than himself, swept along by a more powerful and unscrupulous personality. That didn’t mean I had forgiven him – or was likely to any time soon – but I wasn’t afraid of him. Which didn’t make his showing up at the bookstore any less of a shock. Nor did it mitigate my anger at Guy – although maybe that wasn’t fair.

I went upstairs and checked the phone machine, but there were no messages. I recalled Natalie saying that Paul Kane had called earlier, but I really didn’t have the energy to talk to Paul Kane right then.

And it’s not like I had anything to tell him. My efforts at sleuthing seemed pretty ineffectual so far, if I did say so myself.

I poured myself a glass of orange-pineapple juice – and I realized that Natalie must have put my groceries away for me. I was grateful, but it gave me a strange feeling to think of her – to think of anyone – wandering through these rooms. Guy and Lisa had double-teamed me on that one, insisting after I’d developed pneumonia that my family needed access to my home in case of emergency. Guy had a key, of course, but now so did Lisa – and Natalie.

I drank my juice and stared down at the empty street. It was a warm, dry June evening. The summer night smelled of smog and distant dinners cooked in restaurants on the other side of town. A kid with a guitar sat on the stoop of the closed boutique across the street singing – practicing, apparently – an old Beatles song. The bald and featureless mannequins in the brightly illuminated boutique windows modeled their finery and gestured elegantly into space.

“…of lovers and friends I still can recall, some are dead and some are living…”

I thought about the league of extraordinary gentlemen I’d dated through the years. There was a lot to be said for being single; you couldn’t go by Friday nights.

I wondered what Paul Kane did on Friday nights.

I wondered what the hell Guy was doing tonight. Had Peter managed to track him down?

I wondered what Jake and his wife did on Friday nights.

Anyway, I could always call Guy. Ask him directly what the fuck was up with him and Harry Potter. Put him on the defense for a change. Because in my humble opinion there was a significant difference between working with an ex-lover, and continuing a friendship with someone who had tried to TWEP your current lover.

Yes, I could call Guy, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear what he might have to say.

* * * * *

Nina Hawthorne was something of a celebrity. She had inherited a bundle from her father when he fell off his yacht and drowned off the coast of Catalina, but she was a successful businesswoman in her own right. Truly Scrumptious Catering boasted an impressive roster of A-list clients, but it didn’t take a lot of Googling to figure out that Nina was a woman with a past – and it wasn’t all lemongrass chicken meatballs.

Before discovering her future was in food services, Nina – who, from her photos, looked small and dark and rather chic despite the crew cut – had tried acting, painting, and bounty hunting. Reading various interviews and reviews, I reflected what an excruciating thing it must be to grow up in the public eye. Every mistake was captured for posterity – and reviewed by the pundits. And Nina had made many mistakes – Porter Jones was the least of it.

There had been rock stars, movie stars – and even an astronaut. There had been car accidents, drug busts, alcoholic outbursts, and a Playboy centerfold.

And there had been Paul Kane.

Yes, about six pages back in my Internet searching I found a passing reference to a court case between Nina and Paul Kane. And before long I had the whole sad and sordid tale – and it was sad.

Not long after her father’s death, Nina – who was about nineteen at the time – had had a fleeting – very fleeting – affair with Paul Kane, which resulted in an illegitimate child: a little girl by the name of Hazel Honeybelle. The name alone proved pretty conclusively that Nina was probably not a fit parent. In any case, because of Nina’s much-publicized history of drugs, drinking, and promiscuity, Kane was able to win custody of the child – whose name he promptly changed to Charlotte Victoria.

This was the first salvo in a series of mildly comical skirmishes – legal and personal – between Kane and Nina as they fought for custody and control of their child, and it probably would have gone on for years, endlessly entertaining the readers of Us magazine. But farce turned to tragedy when Hazel/Charlotte drowned at age three in Paul Kane’s swimming pool at his villa in Sardinia.

I stared at the grim photos of a black-clad Nina and an equally somber-looking Paul Kane at the child’s funeral.

Now there, in my opinion, was a motive that age could not wither nor custom stale.

I picked up the phone and dialed Jake’s cell before I remembered that it was Friday night, and he was probably off duty – or at least not taking my calls.

The phone rang, I got ready to leave my message, and Jake said crisply, “Riordan.”

It startled me into one of my coughing fits. When I got my breath back, I said huskily, “Believe it or not, I think I have something for you.”

There was a peculiar pause. I heard the echo of my own words – and my tone – and considered how I might conceivably be misinterpreted. I said hastily, “I mean, I think we may be approaching this from the wrong angle.”

“What are we talking about here?” he asked neutrally.

“Porter Jones’s murder. I don’t think he was the intended victim. I think someone was trying to kill Paul Kane.”

Chapter Twelve

“Where are you?” Jake asked.

“At home.”

He hesitated. Said, “You want to meet for a drink, and you can tell me what you’ve found?”

I hesitated too. Glanced at the clock. Five after nine. But it’s not like I had anywhere to be – nor was I apparently going to have any company that night. “Sure,” I said colorlessly. “Where?”

“Do you know where Brits Restaurant and Pub is?”

“East Colorado Boulevard?”

“I’ll see you there in about thirty minutes.”

I hung up and went to change my T-shirt and sweats for jeans and a long-sleeved shirt in a charcoal multistripe. I wasn’t about to shave for a drink with Jake, but I did drag a comb through my hair and brush my teeth.

I didn’t have as far to go and I got to the pub before Jake, and – remembering that I hadn’t had dinner – ordered a roast beef sandwich while I waited.

He arrived a few minutes after my food. The Veronica Mars theme song was playing as I watched him – tall and sort of compelling in black jeans, black T-shirt, and black leather jacket – threading his way through the tables to the beat of the music. I smiled sourly as the lyrics to “We Used to be Friends” registered.

A long time ago. Yeah. Only it didn’t feel as long ago as it probably should have.

He spotted me at the bar, pulled out a stool next to me, and sat down. “Something funny?” His eyes – I’d forgotten how light they were: almost whiskey-colored – met mine warily.

“Not really. I’m surprised you could make it on such short notice.”

“Why’s that?”

“Friday night.” I shrugged. “I figured you’d be home with the little woman doing whatever it is little women like to do on Friday nights.”

“Kate’s working tonight.” The bartender approached us, drying a glass with a Scottish tea towel featuring Queen Elizabeth’s somewhat damp face. “What are you drinking?”

I considered it. “A Henley Skullfarquar,” I requested.

The bartender and Jake exchanged a look; the bartender nodded as though conceding a point to me. “But you usually don’t get it by the glass, mate.”

“How does it usually come?”

“Usually make ’em up by the jug. They serve it during the Henley Royal Regatta. Not to worry. I’ll do it for you. You want soda water?”

“Do I? What’s in it?”

“Smirnoff Ice, Strongbow Cider, Pimm’s Cup, gin, grenadine, a slice of orange or lemon. You can add lemonade or soda water if you like.”

“Jesus,” Jake said. “Are you on antibiotics?”

“I won’t need them after this. No germ could survive that amount of alcohol.”

“At least it’s got vitamin C.” He asked the bartender what he had on tap and requested Bass ale.

I realized something that had been subconsciously bothering me. He had changed his aftershave. Not that I didn’t like this one. It was nice: a sharp, oriental, woody fragrance. But it made him smell…different. Alien. A stranger.

Of course, he was a stranger. That was the point.

Jake got his ale, took a long pull on it, and turned on his stool to face me. “So what makes you think Paul was the target last Sunday?”

I ignored the fact that our knees were brushing – denim had never seemed like such a flimsy barrier – that he was close enough for me to see that there was a little more silver at his temples than I’d realized. I told him about my lunch with Al January, and January’s belief – which coincided with my own – that the crime just didn’t seem to fit Ally’s profile. I said, “She just strikes me as the type to try to fake a burglary – and do something like knock the windowpane glass out the wrong way. Or anonymously report the break-in from her own cell phone.”

“Maybe she didn’t come up with the idea,” Jake said. “Maybe the boyfriend did. He works as a personal trainer to a lot of people. He might have picked up heart meds from a client. It will take a little time, but we can check that out. It’s just a process of elimination.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But after I left January’s, I did some checking on Nina Hawthorne.”

“Hawthorne.” I watched him run it through the old memory banks. “The caterer?”

“Right.” I told him what January had told me about Nina’s youthful affair with Porter. “Except it turns out she had a lot of youthful affairs – and one of them was with Paul Kane.” This was the difficult bit – for a lot of reasons. I told him about the child who had played the role of Briseis to Kane and Hawthorne’s Achilles and Agamemnon.

He was silent as the bartender set my drink before me and departed.

“I know about Paul’s daughter,” Jake said quietly. “He was devastated.”

“That’s not the point though, is it?” I said. “The point is, does Nina blame him? And if she does, is she capable of committing murder in revenge for the death of her daughter?”

At one time there would have been no question. Wild child Nina would have dispatched Paul without a moment’s qualm – although she might not have remembered it a few hours later. The old Nina clearly had the imagination and recklessness for this kind of crime. But Nina had been a solid citizen for nearly a decade.

I sipped my drink – choked on what appeared to be pure alcohol – and managed to set the glass on the bar before I started coughing. It hurt like hell, my ribs still very painful.

“Are you okay?” Jake rose, moving behind me, but was apparently reluctant to thump me on the back – and that was fine by me. The last thing I wanted was his hands on me. I waved him away, and he ordered, “Put your hands up.”

Which – don’t ask me why – struck me as funny. For a spluttering, spiraling moment, I thought my last vision would be of Jake’s scowling alarm. But he rested a steadying hand on my back, and that warm weight between my shoulder blades drained all the laughter out of me. He smoothed his hand up and down my spine, and I got control, drew in a long, wavering breath.

“I’m okay,” I said, shrugging him off.

“What the hell is in that?” He picked up my glass, sipped from it. His eyebrows rose. “You’re not drinking that,” he said.

“Drink okay?” asked the barman, coming up.

“He’ll have a Harp,” Jake told him, and the man sighed at this disrespect to his creation and stepped away.

I sat back and examined Jake derisively. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘arrogant asshole’?” I inquired – the effect slightly spoiled by my hoarseness.

“Once or twice.” He sat down again and grinned crookedly. “Come on, you didn’t want to drink that. Who are you kidding?”

“Not you apparently.” It was like I could still feel his hand lightly smoothing up and down my back – cell memory or something.

He didn’t seem to have an answer.

The bartender slid a pint of Harp in front of me. I took a sip. Big improvement, I had to admit – not that I would.

Jake said – as though we had not been so rudely interrupted – “I don’t think Paul would have used the Hawthorne woman to cater his company if there was bad blood between them. I’ll check on that, obviously, but even so, I can’t see how she would have introduced the poison to the vic. She wasn’t there – unless she was there in disguise, which seems unlikely.”

“That’s the problem I keep running into,” I admitted. “How did the poison get into Porter’s glass? Especially if these Henley Skullfarquars are made by the gallon.” I gave him a questioning look.

He said matter-of-factly, “I wouldn’t know. I don’t attend parties at Paul’s.”

“But you’re friends.”

“We’re friends.”

“Old friends.”

He gave me a funny look. He said, “Let’s just say we travel in different social circles.”

No exchange of Christmas cards with naked Santa whipping naughty elves?

I said, “There were a lot of us grouped around the bar. Me, Porter, Valarie Rose, Al January. I don’t remember if Ally was standing next to us or not, but there were a lot of drinks lined up – half empties, that kind of thing. I mean, barring someone reaching over and dumping poison out of his pinky ring’s secret compartment, I don’t think anyone would have paid much attention.”

Jake snorted. “I assume you didn’t notice any pinky rings in play?”

“No.”

He drank his pint in thoughtful silence, then said, “It’s not a bad theory. A little too Sherlock Holmesy maybe, but we’ll talk to the Hawthorne woman.” His eyes slanted to mine. “That was clever, making that connection.”

“I learned from the master,” I mocked. I actually hadn’t intended the double meaning, but it worked well.

He reddened. Turned a stony profile to me.

“The thing is,” he said curtly, after a moment or two, “the Beaton-Jones chick has a better motive, and she was on the scene.”

“I’m the last guy to underestimate the power of the almighty dollar, but I think blaming someone for the death of your child –”

“But that’s my point,” he interrupted. “After I talked to the PI, Markopoulos, I went to see Ally’s boyfriend.” His eyes met mine again. “According to Duncan Roe, he got Ally pregnant. Jones forced her to have an abortion.”

Out of the blue I remembered that little shiver Ally had given when I’d asked her about children. I’d taken it as distaste for the idea. But maybe it was something entirely different.

Yeah, that did sort of change everything.

Not only did Ally share an eerily similar motive to the one I’d ascribed to Nina, but her pain was a lot fresher – nor was the forced abortion her only motive. And Ally had been at the party, even if I couldn’t remember her near the bar. Someone else might be able to place her there.

Following my own train of thought, I said, “Did Jones’s autopsy turn up anything to indicate he was terminally ill?”

Jake looked surprised. “How’d you come up with that?”

“I overheard Jones’s first wife at the funeral. She said something in passing that made me think he might not be a well man. I mean, before he was murdered, obviously.”

“Obviously. Well, she was right. Jones had been recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.”

“Wow.” I met his eyes. “Poor bastard.”

“Yeah. Not the way I’d want to go, for sure.”

“Did his wife know?”

“Apparently.”

“Then…why would she kill him?”

He said patiently, “Because he was planning to divorce her.”

“But was he? Have you talked to his lawyer? We only have the PI’s word for that.”

And Paul’s – and now I understood Paul’s comment about Porter not standing for being cuckolded. It turned out he had been right about that, so maybe he was right about the other things. Why was I so resistant to that idea?

I said, “Maybe Jones changed his mind about a divorce. Why would he have insisted on an abortion – why would she have gone along with it – if they were splitting up?”

Jake was silent, considering this.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“It’s worth checking,” he said grudgingly.

“The other thing is that apparently Porter yanked financing for a project near and dear to the hearts of Al January and Valarie Rose. I don’t have anything more to go on that that, but they were both standing at the bar. So was Paul Kane, come to think of it.” I added maliciously, “In fact, Kane had the best access to Porter’s drink of anyone. Any reason he might want Porter out of the way?”

Jake gave me a level look. “Funny,” he said. But then, proving he was still the hard-hearted bastard I’d known and – well, sort of known – he added, “Just the opposite. Most of the funding for these indie projects came from Porter – or were underwritten by Porter, anyway. And they’d been friends – good friends according to everyone I’ve talked to – a long time.”

I was smiling into my drink, and Jake said, “I wouldn’t compromise an investigation because of my feelings for the people involved. You should remember that.”

Not knowingly compromise an investigation, that I believed. But didn’t he see that his feelings might blind him to certain possibilities? In the interests of impartial justice, shouldn’t he really excuse himself from any involvement in this case? But he hadn’t. And he wouldn’t – because his personal connection to Paul Kane was something he couldn’t admit to. Wouldn’t want made public.