Los Angeles, Californiaâ
Waves of hot air shimmered above the tarmac as Sam and Heather walked through the air-conditioned LAX concourse to the baggage area. Sam didn't mind the idea of walking out into that heat; Boston had left him with a chill, and he was looking forward to warming up under the Southern California sun.
They picked up their bags and caught the shuttle to the Hertz lot. Heather had reserved an Audi Quattro, but decided to switch to a BMW convertible when they got to the rental counter.
“Detectives aren't supposed to call attention to themselves,” Sam said quietly as Heather filled out the paperwork.
“I'm not a detective,” Heather said. “If we get into a chase, this baby might come in handy. It hit a top speed of 180 on a test track.”
“God help us.”
They walked out to the lot, found the car, and put their bags in the back seat. Heather started to get into the driver's seat, but Sam said, “Hold it. I'm driving.”
“No, you're not. This car was my choice.”
“We're not playing bumper cars at the amusement park. You hired me to do a jobâand driving is part of the job.”
Heather shook her head and got behind the wheel, closing the door. She fastened her seat belt, then looked up at Sam, who was still standing next to the driver's side door.
“You're partly rightâwe hired you,” she said. “So you'll do as we ask. If you don't like it, you can go back to Minneapolis.”
Sam hated to ride shotgun, especially when he didn't know anything about the driver. But Heather was paying the bills. He got in the passenger side and connected his iPod to the car stereo and dialed up a '70s L.A. rock playlist: Eagles, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Poco, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and CSN&Y. “Already Gone” was playing as Heather squealed out of the Hertz lot and onto Sepulveda, heading north for Santa Monica.
She was wearing a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses, a white sleeveless shirt, a pink skirt, and designer sandals with toenails painted to match her skirt. She looked like she was born and raised on a movie lot in Beverly Hills.
They were booked into the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, a luxury resort just south of the Santa Monica Pier on Ocean Avenue. Sam asked her why they were staying in such a posh spot.
“Lou's on the Loews board of directors,” she said. She adjusted her sunglasses. “He insisted.”
The hot streets of L.A. were a jarring change from chilly, edge-of-autumn Boston: The palm trees rustled in the heavy breezes that surged northward from Mexico, and the concrete roadways seemed on the verge of melting. Heather got on the 405 heading north, and though the traffic was sluggish, they made decent time as Heather kept changing lanes, sliding into small openings, and constantly accelerating and braking with a deft touch. When she spotted the exit for the Santa Monica Freeway, she quickly maneuvered through four lanes of traffic to get into the right lane. She was so aggressive that Sam started glancing around for L.A. freeway nut-jobs who might pull a gun on them, but it was clear to him that she knew what she was doing.
“Where'd you learn to drive like that?” Sam asked.
“Driving between Hartford and Boston. They say L.A. traffic is bad, but the Mass Turnpike is no picnic, either.”
“You didn't get those skills on the freeway.”
“I went to one of those performance driving schools in South Carolina a few years ago.”
“Why?”
“Just for the rush. Know what I mean?”
Sam had to admit that he did. Most cops feed off that kind of adrenalineâyet it was always heightened by the fear that some civilian would accidentally get hit.
The more he learned about Heather, the less certain he was about her. She was one of only five people who knew he was working on this case, and it was becoming harder to ignore the possibility that at least one of them was responsible for the two recent drive-bys. When he told her about the attack on the
Katy K
, Heather had seemed genuinely surprised and concerned, but agreed with Katherine that they couldn't call the police.
“You'll have to be more careful,” she'd said.
But she didn't seem to be afraid of being around a man who'd possibly been the target of two failed hits. She didn't seem to be afraid of anything. Sam didn't want to discuss it on the crowded flight to L.A., but he thought about it from the time the plane lifted into the air over Boston Harbor, while he was thumbing through the latest Golf Digest, while he was eating the dry ham-and-cheese sandwich and drinking two overpriced Scotches, and he was still thinking about it when it was time to put the tray tables up on their descent into LAX.
What if Heather was in on the extortion plot?
It could be a way for her to end up with a much bigger chunk of Kenwood's money than she'd ever earn working for him. Being assigned to work with Sam was a perfect way for her to monitor his every move, and to orchestrate his murder. Maybe she'd had sex with him just to gain his trust, and to create a little complacency. If Sam were killed while trying to find Babe Ruth, it might just convince Kenwood that he should stop messing around and make the payment.
Hey, Lou, we've done all we could do to try to fend this guy off
, she could say
. He's obviously dangerous and determinedâlet's just pay him what he wants, and this all goes away.
A few weeks later, Heather quits her job, moves to the Caymans with a share of $50,000,000, and no one ever finds out.
Sam couldn't spend any more time distrusting her. As Heather maneuvered through the sluggish traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway, Sam reached into the back seat of the BMW for his suitcase, unzipped it and pulled out his Glock. In the lane next to him, a woman driving a Priusâadorned with “Kerry-Edwards” and “Visualize World Peace” bumper stickersâsaw the gun and veered onto the shoulder of the highway, frantically punching her cell phone keypad as her car came to a halt.
Sam rested the gun in his lap and watched the breeze play with Heather's hair, which had assumed an extra shade of gold under the California sun. Eventually Heather turned to look at him, and noticed the gun.
“What's that for?” Heather askedâpuzzled, but not alarmed.
“I want an honest answer from you,” Sam said. “Are you part of the plot?”
“What?”
“Did you set up the hit on me?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Somebody knows I'm on the case.” Sam fingered the trigger of the Glock and turned it so the barrel pointed at her waist. “I want to know how they found out.”
“You're out of your fucking mind,” she said, with a short laugh.
“Am I? I don't think Lou is trying to have me killedâwhy would he bother to hire me? Katherine? Paul? They could have both been killed yesterday, along with me. But you weren't there.”
Heather hung her head forward so that her hair brushed the steering wheel, laughing to herself. Then she threw back her head and laughed even louder, a genuine peal of mirth.
“I'm glad you find this amusing,” Sam said. “I started losing my sense of humor after the first bullet missed my head yesterday.”
Heather turned to look at Sam, brushed the blowing hair out of her face and held her index finger up to silence him.
“Listen, dumbass,” she said. “I wasn't going to tell you this if I didn't have to, but it looks like I have to. Lou and I are lovers. We have been for three years.”
“So?”
“So I want to find whoever is behind this plot as much as Lou does. Maybe more.”
“Why?”
“Because as soon as Katherine dies, Lou's going to marry me.”
Was she lying? The only way to know for sure would be to ask Kenwood. But Sam believed her. It fit with what he sensed the first time he saw Heather and Lou together in his office. Heather might have been smarter than Steven Hawking and have a better business mind than Warren Buffett, but when you see an old tycoon hire a beautiful young woman, you tend to think her résumé wasn't everything.
Sam didn't care whether she married Kenwood or not. Ethically, it put him, at best, in a gray area. It wasn't as though he was sleeping with his boss' wifeânot yet, anyway. Sleeping with Kenwood's mistress wasn't much different from a drug dealer getting ripped off by another drug dealerâthe guy getting ripped off wasn't going to go to the cops. And there wasn't much chance of their being caught. Kenwood wasn't going to hire another detective to trail the detective he'd just hired.
What did concern Sam was finding out that the members of Lou Kenwood's innermost circleâhis executive assistant/lover and his wifeâdid not necessarily share the same motivations.
“So you marry Kenwood, and then he diesâsomedayâand you get it all,” Sam said. He took his hand off the gun. “The business, the team, the moneyâeverything.”
He expected her to show some indignation at the implication she was a gold-digger, but if she resented it, it didn't show in her eyes.
“That's right.”
“You'd be the Anna Nicole Smith of the American League.”
“I can live with that.”
Kenwood was estimated to be worth more than a billion dollars. A woman could ignore a lot of insults for that kind of money.
“It's happened before,” Sam said. “The owner of the L.A. Rams married a showgirl. When he died, she got the team.”
“I'm no fucking showgirl. I've trained for this job. I'd be a damn good owner.”
“I'm sure you would.”
“Oh, don't give me that bullshit. It's all over your face. You think because I'm young, and a woman, that I have no business owning and running the Red Sox.”
“I don't think that at all. I just think you're not prepared for the shit-storm you're going to face when it all comes down. Fortune-hunting bimbo is probably the kindest thing you're going to be called. The late-night talk show hosts will cut you to pieces.”
“I can take it.”
“What about the team going into a trust after Lou dies?”
“Lou decided he doesn't want to do that. He'd rather keep the team in his family.”
“If he doesn't remarry after Katherine, there is no family.”
“Then it's lucky he found me.”
“Don't be surprised if somebody sues you.”
“My lawyers will kick their lawyers' asses. This is all legal, all above-board. Lou loves me, and I really do love him, too. We make each other happy.”
“Well, not completely.”
Heather shot Sam a quick squint and returned her gaze to the road. At least Sam could relax a little now. He was reasonably certain that Heather wasn't trying to kill him.
He watched the Hollywood sun work its magic on Heather's hair, and realized that she was born for this kind of life. She was going to love the attention that came with being the owner of a major league baseball team, even if Sam couldn't picture her dedicating the next thirty years to the nuts and bolts of running the Red Sox, when she'd have the money to be hobnobbing with stars and celebrities on the West Coast. Katherine Kenwood once had movie star looks, too, but baseball was her passion, and so was New England. She'd belonged in Boston, overlooking the icy Atlantic; Heather, on the other hand, was L.A. to her core.
“Were you going to shoot me?” Heather said. Her tiny smile suggested she hadn't been worried.
“Sure. On an L.A. freeway, who'd notice?”
***
They were greeted by a bellman under the orange awning in front of the hotel. He took their bags out of the trunk and gave the keys to the valet parking attendant.
“Will you be needing the car again this evening?”
“Maybe,” Sam said. “I don't know yet.”
They had adjoining ocean view suites on the eighth floor. Sam's room had a queen-sized bed and a sliding glass door that opened out to a deck, from which he could see the sun setting over the ocean, and the lights twinkling beneath the mountains up the coast. It was a gorgeous view, but it wasn't getting him any closer to the identity of Babe Ruth.
He called directory assistance and got the number for the Los Angeles Times. He was connected to the newsroom.
“Russ Daly, please,” he said.
“Would you like his voicemail?”
“No, I'd like Russ Daly. Is he in?”
“He's rarely in the office, sir, but he checks his messages.”
“Fine.”
Daly was the acerbic, nationally syndicated sports columnist for the L.A. Times whom Sam had met at the Masters that spring. Despite the image he cultivated on TV panels as an overweight wise-ass, he was a razor-sharp observer of the sports scene, and he was somebody Sam was convinced he could trust. If he promised Daly that he'd be the first journalist to get the story after everything was resolved, Sam could share some of the details of the extortion plot without seeing it in the paper the next morning. And at this point, there was nothing else Sam could do to get information without giving out some of his own.
Sam heard the beep on Daly's answering machine.
“Daly, this is Sam Skarda. I'm in L.A., working on a case. It could be a very big story. I can let you in on some of it in exchange for some information. Call me.”
He was about to hang up when he heard a rasping voice say, “Daly.”
“I thought you weren't in,” Sam said.
“That's what I tell 'em to say at the switchboard. I'd never get any work done if I answered my phone. So what's the story, Skarda? You still a cop?”
“No, I've gone private.”
“Who you workin' for these days?”
“I don't want to get into it over the phone. Have you eaten?”
“Let's seeâ¦I had a hot dog, one of those big pretzels, and a couple of tacos at the Dodger game this afternoon. So, no, not really.”
While Daly was talking, Sam heard a knock on the door. He walked over to open it and found Heather standing barefoot in the hallway, wearing one of the white terrycloth robes that hung in each guest bathroom. He motioned for her to come in.