A Job to Kill For (16 page)

“Decorating’s my job. Detecting is just sort of my hobby,” I said now. But I had to admit that one skill had led me to the other. If I could search a flea market and find the unpolished gem, maybe I could march into an ordinary situation and find the unexpected killer.

“Open the envelope,” Roger said.

I did. A bank check for ten thousand dollars had been clipped to ten crisp hundred-dollar bills marked “daily expenses.” I stared at the pictures of Benjamin Franklin. How come he graced the big bucks and Honest Abe got stuck on a penny?

I closed the envelope again. I probably could be bought off—everybody’s morality has a price. But mine happened to be many orders of magnitude more than this.

“Roger, I’m not taking your money,” I said. “I can’t work for you.”

“Why not?”

Why not? I could think of at least three reasons. One: I didn’t have a private investigator’s license. Two: I’d gotten involved only to help Molly. And three, I couldn’t be beholden to Roger Crawford. Not as long as I thought he might be the killer.

My face must have given me away—no World Series of Poker in my future—because Roger reached over and took the envelope back. But he hadn’t become a billionaire by losing negotiations. He had his next bid ready.

“Here, then,” he said, pulling a small box out of his pocket. “Take this. Not a payment. A sign of goodwill.”

Not waiting for me to respond this time, he flipped open the velvet box. I looked inside and gasped. The bracelet coiled inside the jewelry case couldn’t have been more perfect. Small diamonds in the shape of flowers, rimmed with gold.

Perfect—because I’d picked it out myself. The trinket glimmering in front of me happened to be the very one I’d joked about with Jack Rosenfeld that day at the jewelry store. The one I admired but hadn’t even tried on.

“Who told you about this?” I asked softly.

Now Roger laughed, finally triumphant.

“You understand now, Lacy, right? You can’t do anything without my knowing. You might as well take this. It’ll just be a reminder.”

He reached for my arm to slip the bracelet around my wrist, but I jerked away. The gorgeous diamond strand might as well have been metal handcuffs.

“Keep it,” I said.

“Oooh, why, Lacy?” Roger asked, his voice a smarmy croon. He had dropped his professional veneer and seemed vaguely ominous now. “You know you want this. And I want you to have it.”

“No.” I felt a sudden fear coursing through me, as if taking the bracelet would bind me to evil and put Molly in even more danger.

“Last chance,” he said.

“No. No, thank you,” I repeated.

Roger’s eyes turned cold and angry. He got up, opened the library door and motioned to his bodyguard, who stood outside. The thug took the bracelet and, in one swift move, yanked it in two. Gleaming bits of gold and diamonds scattered across the floor, and for good measure, Vince ripped it again. I gasped. I didn’t care about the bracelet, but the violence of the act left me stunned.

Roger took a single diamond flower from his thug’s meaty hand. He held it out to me on his palm.

“Don’t make me take what’s beautiful and destroy it,” he said in that same sinister whisper. “Don’t be so stupid.”

I stood up straight and tried to get my shaking body under control. “You destroyed that all by yourself, Roger,” I said. “You didn’t need me. But what’s the lesson I’m really supposed to take? That you don’t mind obliterating something beautiful? Maybe even something as beautiful as Cassie?”

“Get out,” Roger said.

Prepared to make sure his boss got his way, the thug grabbed my upper arm. But with unexpected strength, I shook him off.

“Don’t ever touch me again,” I said, striding toward the door on my own.

I yanked it open, and as I stepped out, I heard Roger and his bodyguard laughing, the snide, angry laughter of two nasty boys who didn’t get their way.

Chapter Ten

I
left Roger’s place and came straight home, driving quickly down Wilshire Boulevard while I replayed the scene over and over in my head and pictured the broken gems gleaming on the wooden floor. Maybe I should have just taken the damn bracelet. Had I proven anything this way?

Well, sure. I’d found out that Roger had a dark side. Not getting his way elicited a swift and ugly response. I’d also discovered that he kept his own hands clean and let his hired bully do the actual dirty work. Nobody would ever find his fingerprints on a bottle of Kirin—but he might have written the check that bought it.

I pulled into the driveway and noticed Jimmy’s skateboard upside down on the lawn and Grant’s twenty-four-speed Trek mountain bike leaning against a tree. The kids were around, so it was time to clear my head and focus on them. My rule number one of being a mom: Work hard when you’re working, but give 110 percent to family when you’re home.

I’d barely made it halfway up the long flagstone walk when Grant flung open the patio door and burst out, as eager as a racehorse bolting from the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby.

“Hey, Mom, look what I found for you,” he said, rushing down the path and waving a piece of paper at me. He handed me the printout from a web page, showing a heart-shaped pendant necklace. Maybe it was karma. Turning down one expensive jewel just got me another.

“Pretty,” I said. “What did I do to deserve it?”

“You’re the kind of mom who should have a nine-hundred-thousand-dollar diamond,” he said, grinning.

With it raining diamonds, maybe I should call Elizabeth Taylor. I handed the page back. “Is it real?”

“Certified twenty-carat yellow diamond. F grade for clarity, which sounds like failing but is apparently good. It’s up for auction at Christie’s in two weeks. I figure I’ll buy it for your birthday.”

“My birthday’s not for months and you already promised me a gift certificate to Ben & Jerry’s,” I said. “Even the Chunky Monkey isn’t as rich as this.”

“And not as rich as Cassie Crawford,” said Grant.

I looked from him to the picture. “It was hers,” I said, making the connection. “She wore it the first time we met. I’d recognize it anywhere. There can’t be two like that.”

Grant nodded eagerly. “I figure you could use some help, Mom, so I have a computer program that alerts me every time Cassie Crawford’s name gets mentioned online. That’s how I found it.”

“Where’d you get the program?”

“Jake and I wrote it,” he said. “Don’t worry, Mom. All legal.”

Grant’s best friend, Jake, the computer genius, had a blog, a personal website, and so many videos up on YouTube that he rivaled the Disney Channel. I sometimes worried about the kids creating tracks that would live forever online. But that was the new generation gap: Grown-ups fussed endlessly about identity theft and privacy; teenagers cheerfully invaded their own privacy and felt most alive when they lived online.

“Given all the news coverage on Cassie, you must be getting a lot of alerts,” I said.

“Yeah, but I get through the junk pretty fast, and I never would have found this necklace otherwise. Cassie’s name wasn’t in the Christie’s catalogue or anything, just in the fine print online that discloses provenance and stuff like that.”

“Good for you,” I said. Then, trying to figure it out, I added, “So Cassie put the necklace up for auction before she died?”

“Exactly what I wondered,” said Grant. “So I called Christie’s and asked about the whole history of the necklace—you know, blood diamond, conflict diamond, all that. Said I needed to know because I was interested in bidding.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Very resourceful, but you shouldn’t lie.”

“I didn’t lie. I would be interested in bidding if I had the money. True fact.”

I tried to look stern but felt the corners of my mouth twitching. “Okay, so what happened?”

He shrugged. “It took a while, but they connected me to some expert appraiser who traced the diamond back to 1904 in Canada. Before he hung up, I said I wanted to ask a hypothetical question. If I ran a hedge fund and my fiancée had psychic powers, could I buy her this diamond?”

“A fiancée with psychic powers?” I shook my head. “I didn’t even know you were dating.”

“I said it was hypothetical,” Grant said indignantly. “If he thought I meant me, well, that’s his problem, right?”

I couldn’t argue. Actually, I could, but why bother?

“So what did you learn?”

“He said I didn’t have to worry about a blood diamond in the people-being-killed-in-South-Africa way, but there might be some bad vibes because the second-to-last owner had died. Cassie Crawford.”

“Second-to-last?”

“Apparently Cassie had given it to some guy who contacted Christie’s and put it up for sale. They verified the diamond’s authenticity. No record of theft.”

“Who was the guy?” I asked, not able to resist.

“Somebody named Billy Mann.”

“Billy Mann?” I tried to keep my voice even, but as usual, my face gave me away.

“Wow, Mom, you know him, right? I can tell,” Grant said, immediately reading my expression. Forget the World Series of Poker, I’d be out in the first round of gin rummy.

“I met him briefly,” I said, deciding not to mention the ride on his motorbike and my little dip into the ocean.

“What do you think? Is he a suspect? I say Billy Mann stole the necklace and killed Cassie before she could report it.”

I shrugged. “Maybe she gave it to him as a gift. They were friends.”

“Some good friend. Jake’s my friend—and he just gave me a used hard drive he found at the dump,” Grant said.

“Maybe Cassie and Billy were more than friends,” I amended, incapable of using the word
lover
in front of my son. But he immediately understood.

“Then it’s easy,” Grant said, already envisioning their romping. “Billy snagged the necklace after they had sex, and he killed Cassie before she could take it back.”

“No way,” I said, shaking my head. “Cassie must have gotten the necklace as a gift from Roger. So she would have been married by the time she had it. She wouldn’t be having sex with Billy.”

“Mom, haven’t you ever heard of extramarital affairs?” Grant asked, with just a trace of condescension. “This is LA. Everyone does it.”

Uh-oh. I didn’t have a good answer for this one. I could get on my moral high horse and lecture Grant about love and honor. But my son was old enough to drive a car, go to R-rated movies, and join the Marines. He had surging testosterone and a subscription to
Maxim.
We could talk honestly.

“Let me just clarify that everyone doesn’t do it,” I said, hitting a middle ground. “If I’m having sex, it’s with your dad.”

Grant flushed. No kid wants to think about his parents in bed. Sunday school lessons about the Virgin Birth make perfect sense because we all figure it’s how we got here, too.

“Fair enough, but all I’m saying is that it happens,” Grant said, with more sophistication than he probably felt. “For all we know, Cassie and Billy Mann could have slept together the night before she died.”

I sighed. I didn’t want Grant involved, but at this point, I couldn’t turn him away, either. He liked puzzles, and since he could solve a Rubik’s cube in under three minutes and got bored with Sudoku, this was his next challenge.

“Billy lives on a fancy boat at Marina del Rey,” I said, deciding to share some information. “It’s too complicated to explain, but I think Cassie might have visited him there recently.”

“Maybe a final fling,” Grant said.

I nodded thoughtfully, envisioning the scene. Worried about losing Roger, Cassie came in her yellow gown and glorious jewels to end her affair with Billy. He took the news well but didn’t like it. Somehow he got the diamond from her and then concocted a plan. Normally, you didn’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg, but if it threatened to be the last egg you ever got, why not?

“I don’t want to jump to conclusions,” I said, thinking about the night the cops had come to the house. As I’d told them regarding orchids, don’t pick a favorite until you’ve seen ’em all.

Grant nodded. “Well, Billy Mann must have some story about how he got Cassie’s twenty-carat rock. You could ask him.” Then, suddenly concerned for my safety, he added, “Or maybe you should ask the police to ask him.”

I took back the printout of the necklace, folded the page, and tucked it in my bag. “The police have enough on their hands,” I said.

“Be careful, Mom. You have to admit that a million-dollar diamond is a pretty good motive for murder.”

Dawn Rose, Andy Daniels’s assistant at Genius Productions, called to say Andy needed to talk to me. Could we meet the next morning?

“How late will he be?” I asked, remembering our last meeting.

“Right on time,” she promised. “He has something to share.”

“Sharing” used to be reserved for kindergarten classes and AA meetings, but now it meant anything and everything. I didn’t know if Andy wanted to share his deepest thoughts or a deep-dish pizza.

“Should I come to your office?”

“No, a different place. I’ll e-mail you directions.”

The next morning, I drove across the Santa Monica Mountains, then followed the directions I’d printed out. After about thirty minutes, the houses got sparser and sparser and gave way to horse farms and open rolling lands. This wasn’t the parched, ragged countryside I remembered from growing up in rural Ohio. Irrigation sprinklers spread a gentle rain, and the grazing fields that extended as far as the eye could see appeared as perfect as the gardener-tended lawns of Beverly Hills. There was more green here than in a studio executive’s wallet.

Though I hadn’t traveled all that far from LA, my Lexus seemed to be one of the few cars on the road. I felt a moment of trepidation. Should I be venturing into unknown territory to encounter someone I’d met because of a murder? A silver-haired man driving a vintage Bentley passed me in the opposite direction, and I felt a little better. Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Andy Daniels wasn’t exactly a suspect. Just because he once knew Cassie didn’t mean he’d poisoned her.

I turned up a long winding driveway lined with palm trees. The asphalt quickly gave way to gravel, then to a short dirt path surrounded by more of the tall, leafy plants. Funny how palms, a tree indigenous to the tropics, had become a symbol of Hollywood.