Lanyon, Josh - Adrien English 04 - Death of a Pirate King (15 page)

“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.

Oh yeah, I remembered only too well how that went.

Studying me, Jake said, “You don’t like Paul, do you?”

I hadn’t thought about it before. “Not particularly.”

He nodded like that didn’t surprise him.

I drained my glass, looked at my watch. “I should get going.”

“Yeah, me too.”

We paid for our drinks and walked out together. As we
strolled around the building to the parking in the back, I said, “I think
Nina’s movements on Sunday would be worth looking into.”

“We’ll check into it,” Jake said. “I’m not ruling anyone out
yet, and she’s a squirrelly broad, no question.”

The car alarm chirped in welcome as he stopped beside the
conspicuously innocuous vehicle -- with the police lights in the back window.

I said, “Night,” and pulled my keys out.

He said abruptly, “You know that Kate lost the baby?”

I said awkwardly -- realizing I hadn’t mentioned it before,
“Yeah, I’m sorry.” And I was. I didn’t wish Kate or that kid any harm. In fact,
I had almost called Jake when Chan told me about it, but I’d thought better of
it. It might have looked like I believed the only obstacle to our own
relationship was that baby; the truth was, it had merely been the final
roadblock.

He said unemotionally, “Since we have a choice this time
around, she’s not sure if she’s ready to start a family. She’s at a place in
her career where taking time off could set her back years. She’s in line for
promotion.”

I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to feel sorry for
him -- I didn’t want to feel anything at all. But I couldn’t decently walk
away, so I asked reluctantly, “How do you feel about that?”

I could just make out his lopsided smile in the parking lot
lights. “I want a family. But she’s worked hard for this. It’s her call.”

I’d thought the whole point of the marriage was so that Jake
could have family and a “normal” life. Maybe it was a real marriage, despite
the fun and games with Paul Kane. Maybe Jake did love Kate. It was to his
credit that he seemed to place as much importance on her career as his own --
or at least understand that she would.

But I had no idea what to say to him. Good luck with that? He
was talking to the wrong person. But he was looking at me like he expected
something -- needed something.

I said gently, “Drive safely, Jake,” and walked away.

Chapter Thirteen

I groaned when I saw Guy’s Miata parked outside Cloak and
Dagger. How the hell much of this was I supposed to deal with in one night?

Then it occurred to me that my lover coming safely home to me
should not, technically, fall into the stressful-shit-I-had-to-deal-with
category. Yet there it was: the old familiar feeling of not wanting to face
this -- and I knew there would be something to face. I’d known since Guy had
proposed a romantic weekend in Mexico, and I’d felt nothing but dismay that
there was something waiting for me to face.

I let myself into the store, walked upstairs, and opened the
door. Guy stood at the window, staring down at the empty street below.