Lanyon, Josh - Adrien English 04 - Death of a Pirate King (14 page)

“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
no
t
!”

* * * * *

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.