Bad Blood: Latter-Day Olympians (2 page)

“Anyway,” I continued, ready to cut him some slack, “you wanted to know everything, right?”

His head came up out of his hands. “Just like that?”

“Well,
now
you’re expecting the smart-ass comments. I don’t want to be predictable.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “Fair enough. Mind if I record?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Armani drew a mini-cassette recorder from his inside jacket pocket, gave the details on the interview, asked me to state my name and set it down between us.

I gave him the whole song and dance, blushing a bit as I ’fessed up to the pit stop, and ending with the getaway. Unfortunately, Armani picked right up on the details that were glossed over along the way.

“I don’t understand. If the killer was busy with the vic, how did he manage to knock you back against the wall?”

Damn, the man was too sharp. “I don’t know—had to be something in his hand.”

“Like what?”

“Hell if I know, I was too busy flying through the air.”

“Okay, we’ll come back to that. Your client’s proposal—you have it on you?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

I weighed the pros of cooperating with authorities against the cons of invading my client’s privacy. “Not unless you’ve got a warrant.”

“How can I have a warrant when I didn’t know a damned thing about it until just now?”

I took that as a rhetorical question.

His glower was back. “Do you have something to hide?”

“‘Not I,’ said the cat. My client’s another matter. Whatever he had to say to Circe was private. For her eyes only. Even I don’t know what’s in the envelope.”

“You didn’t sneak a peek?”

“It’s sealed.”

“Seals can be broken.”

I gave him Yiayia’s fish-eye, which he ignored. “Remind me never to ask you to pick up my mail. Anyway, I’m not a snoop.”

Armani quirked an eyebrow at me.
 

“Not
that
kind of snoop anyway,” I huffed.

“So you only invade people’s privacy for money.”

Okay, that was uncalled for. And totally untrue. Truth was more like I only respected privacy when bound by confidentiality or the laws of California. I couldn’t speak to what curiosity had done to the cat, but I did know what it had done to my familial relationships. I’d also learned through painful experience that the truth wasn’t likely to set us free. Sometimes it was about as welcome as a cockroach in the soup. It was one of the reasons—beyond the debilitating fear of heights that kept me out of the family acrobatic act—that the Rialto Brothers Circus had been just as happy to see the back of me as I’d been to split.
 

I shoved those oh-so-happy thoughts back into their little black box. “Something like that.”

“We can subpoena your records.”

“Uh huh,” I answered, unconcerned. Since I hadn’t completed the job, there was no report on file for the client. There’d been no notes to take and I’d be giving the envelope back to my client as soon as possible. “So then I’m free to go?”

“As long as you come by the station later to sign your statement and look at mug shots.”

There was no good way to tell him that would be an exercise in futility. Still, later sounded sufficiently vague.

“Later then,” I answered, already halfway to the door.

Armani let me go, but I could feel his eyes on me all the way out. I was tempted to peel off the jacket to give him a real show, my sports bra ending well above the waistline of the pants, but the envelope sat in the special inside pocket of the jacket and I wasn’t sure I was smooth enough not to send it flying. Besides, I wasn’t all that certain to be a crowd-pleaser. A shortly thereafter
ex
-boyfriend had once described me as “good enough for television”, which in this town was a slap in the face. It meant that with my unruly black hair, dark eyes and slight build, I probably wouldn’t break the camera but neither would I carry a show on the big screen.

Unless, of course, it was the sideshow I’d just embroiled myself in.

Chapter Two

“Sometimes when you look a gift-horse in the mouth you get bit—and sometimes you get that green slobber all over your hands that comes from them eating grass all day. I’m not saying don’t do it. Just be prepared.”

—Uncle Christos

There was nothing I wanted more than to find a highway and
drive
, fast and furious. Not that I could outrace my thoughts, but having every last wit focused on hazards and speed traps ought to put them on hold—at least until the near-death experience of the whole thing snapped them into perspective. Unfortunately, I’d mistimed my escape to coincide with rush hour. The slow crawl was enough to drive me out of my mind.

By the time I reached my office, I was literally shaking—arms, legs, hell, brain cells all doing the jitterbug. Shock had set in or maybe worn off. Had I really just been all flippant with the police practically over Circe’s dead body? What the hell was wrong with me? I’d heard of gallows humor, but this was the first time I’d participated—assuming that anything I’d said could remotely be accounted humorous.

Jesus (ironically pronounced “Hey-Zeus” and, again, no relation), the part-time assistant I’d inherited from my uncle along with the fichus, the caseload and the rent on a second-floor office in a historic building downtown, was gone by the time I arrived. Uncle Christos had described the place as charming—and it was, if charming meant cracked tiles in the entryway, cracked paint on the walls and nary a closet. I couldn’t help but think that any one of those noir detectives whose exploits I’d devoured in my youth—Marlowe, Archer, Hammer, Spade—would have been at home in the seedy surroundings.

On the upside, we had high ceilings, honest-to-God moldings and warmly painted walls that I called buttermilk, but that Jesus assured me was “crème anglaise”. Since Jesus, as the only one who understood our filing system, was the keeper of all knowledge, it wasn’t wise to cross him. I let him have his little victory. The sepia-tone pictures of old L.A. Uncle Christos had spaced around the office added class, but did nothing to liven the place up.
 

Just to thumb my nose at all the gravitas, I’d added touches to my own office, like the singing fish mounted above my door, which for sanity’s sake I’d removed the batteries from within a week. I’d also strung chili-pepper lights above my windows for the pleasingly tacky effect. There didn’t seem to be any good place for fuzzy dice.

It was going on three months since Uncle had bolted for parts unknown, leaving the whole kit and caboodle—somehow the place made me think in words like that—in my lap. The winds of change, not to mention an actual color palette, were due to blow through at any moment. Must and dust and gravitas were not my bag. There had to be a way to mod the place up on a budget and still impress the clients. I’d just been too busy to take matters in hand.

I headed straight for the coffeemaker in the kitchenette off Uncle’s office and busied myself with getting a pot started, psyching myself up to dash my client’s hopes and dreams. It wasn’t that I wussed out over delivering bad news—that was an occupational hazard—more that it was his case that had put me face-to-face with a killer and I was in no mood for an argument over whether or not I’d earned my fee. The retainer was non-refundable, said so right in the contract, but when the chips were down, the haggling would commence and any balances due were hell to collect.

Five minutes later I was playing Freecell on my computer, not as a stalling technique—perish the thought—just as something to do while I got a bit more caffeine into my system and gathered my thoughts. But my concentration was shot all to hell and after being stumped two games in a row, I had to admit defeat or further blow my statistics. Sighing, I closed down the game and opened my Rolodex.

Kasim King answered on the very first ring, making me wonder whether Circe’s death had already hit the news or if he was just anxious for her reply.

“Mr. King?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Speaking. Ms. Karacis?”

He’d heard my voice once, two days ago when he hired me. Either he was, as I suspected, waiting for my call or he had a good ear for voices even when distorted over phone lines.

“That’s me. Have you heard the news yet?”

A beat, and then, “What news?”

“Mr. King, I’m afraid I was unable to present your proposal to Ms. Holland. She was killed today.”

“Killed? She’s
dead
?”

I’d expected dejection, resignation maybe, but not wonder and even, maybe,
hope
.

Puzzled, I answered, “Yes, sadly, I can confirm that personally. Would you like me to return your proposal or is there someone else at her company you’d like me to approach?”

Circe, it was well-known, had clung tightly to the reins of her talent agency, never letting anyone else’s star shine brightly enough to wash out her own, but there’d been rumors recently of a partnership—all very wink, wink, nudge, nudge in the trade magazines Jesus left around the office.
 

“Circe’s
dead
?” he repeated, as if still trying to wrap his mind around it. “I’ll be damned. I didn’t know it was even possible.”

“Mr. King?”

“Sorry. Sorry, I was just—thinking. Well, I guess that changes everything. No need to return the envelope. Just, I don’t know, burn it. Shred it. Whatever.”

O-kay
, I thought. “There’s one more thing,” I continued, hating to kill the odd relief Circe’s death seemed to have inspired, “since I was on the scene, the police may be interested in the case that brought me there. Unless you want to come forward, I’ll continue to keep things confidential until I’m hit with a warrant.”

Another beat. “Thanks for the warning. How about I come by and relieve you of that envelope and you do whatever else you have to do?”

Definite caution there. Curiouser and curiouser. I’d assumed the envelope contained pages from a screenplay or maybe headshots—though given Mr. King’s apparent age and, er, weathered condition, my money was on the former—certainly nothing that needed to be burned, shredded or kept from the police. Maybe King was paranoid, though that wouldn’t explain his strange reaction to Circe’s death. Then there was that odd comment about how he “didn’t know it was possible”. A million questions vied for attention, but none that I could focus on if I expected to keep up my end of the conversation.

“That sounds fine. When would you like to come by?”

“How about now?”

“I’m just on my way out,” I found myself saying. “Tomorrow would be better.”

“What time do you open?”

After I’d hung up, I pulled the envelope from inside my jacket pocket and sat it on the desk in front of me. Somewhere along the line, my subconscious, knowing that my conscious would object, had taken Armani’s words “seals can be broken” straight to heart. I picked up the envelope again for study—sturdy, manila, a bit mangled from the alleyway scuffle, sealed solely by the gummy backing. Not exactly high security; easy enough to open and reclose with no one the wiser.

I struggled with myself. On the one hand, the contents could have nothing to do with Circe’s murder—which nobody was paying me to investigate in any case. King was clearly surprised to hear of the death and didn’t even pretend to sorrow, which surely he would have done had he been guilty, unless he was being far too clever. On the other hand, there was that whole curiosity thing. Was I actually capable of turning it over to King without looking inside?

I tabled the question in favor of another. Could King really believe that Circe was
the
Circe of myth and legend? It would explain the surprise about her death, but
come on
. I mean, sure, I’d flippantly thought of Circe that way, partly based on the infectious ravings of my grandmother, who fervently believed the gods walked among us, and partly because the Hollywood scuttlebutt seemed to confirm that whatever Circe was, it was both more and less than human. Still, it seemed about as likely as—well—me truly turning a man to stone.
Or a scaly mutant murderer?
my inner devil’s advocate taunted.

Okay, imagining for a moment that we were dealing with
that
Circe, didn’t goddess-hood go hand-in-hand with immortality? I racked my brain, wishing I’d humored Yiayia a bit more when she went on and on about the Olympians. If I remembered correctly, pantheonic history, mythology, whatever you wanted to call it, was pretty inconsistent on the invincibility of gods, goddesses and their progeny. The gorgons, supposedly of my own family tree, were sisters born of the same divine mother (Ceto) and father (Phorcys), yet two were immortal and the third, Medusa, inexplicably was not. Come to think of it, Circe’s own brother Phaethon had been killed when Zeus struck him down for driving Helios’s sun chariot too close to the Earth. So, either there were levels of immortality or all it really meant was that you lived until someone was properly motivated to see you dead.

In that case, the amazing thing was not that Circe had been murdered, but that it had taken so long. Just off the top of my head, I could think of a number of people she’d pissed off, perhaps mortally: Odysseus, who she’d held for over a year after turning his men to swine; Penelope, his long-suffering wife; Poseidon or Glaucus, depending on whose “history” you read, because Circe’d turned the beloved nymph Scylla into a multi-headed monster; Scylla herself; even Picus, who she’d morphed into a woodpecker (of all things!). But these grudges were centuries old.

The envelope called to me. I tried to drown it out, searching the Internet for more recent references to Circe. It was fascinating reading. In the now, Circe Holland had been linked to everybody from Michael Eisner to gag-me-with-a-silver-spoon child stars Mary Jo and Katie Mann. Based on the numerous articles that took her name in vain, she’d poached stars from other heavy hitters like CAA and ICM. By all accounts, this was not a woman anyone wanted as an adversary. Her list of enemies read like an L.A. phone book.