The Private Concierge

Darwin snickered. “So, Black is bringing down Val by destroying our clients one by one? Maybe even setting them up for the fall and then breaking the story? I hate to be the one to break it to you, Lane, but our clients are burying themselves. Do you really think Seth Black is capable of framing Ned Talbert for a murder-suicide?”

That was a stretch, she had to admit. Black was a vicious snitch, not a hit man, and Lane could prove nothing. It was just a gut feeling that her company had a bull’s-eye on its back, but it was a strong one.

There were no more crumbs on Dar’s shirt. She brushed at it anyway. “Just say you’re with me, okay? We have to stay on top of this.”

“Of course I’m with you. I’ll do a background check on Seth Black and scour his site—and I’ll check out JGK, too. If I can’t find out who he is, maybe I can figure out who he’s going after next.”

She thought about hugging him, but he was saved by his cell phone. It was buzzing, as if he was getting some kind of alert. Darwin’s personal phone was truly a one-man band. He hit some buttons and began to read the display screen.

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed at how pale he was.

“Video feed from the Associated Press.”

“Feed about what?”

Darwin looked up. “Jack the Giant Killer just saved me some research. Here’s his current victim.” He flipped the cell phone so that Lane could see the screen.

It was hard for her to watch the stark news footage of Priscilla Brandt beating up a homeless person. Lane sat down on the console behind her, jiggling the water pitcher. Shock seemed to take hold, causing her to shudder and go numb at the same time. The acidity from the limes burned her nostrils.

“That’s number four,” she said under her breath. Priscilla had said the situation was embarrassing, not violent. It looked like assault with a deadly weapon. She could wind up in prison. Priscilla hadn’t been with TPC six months, but Lane knew her background, and she’d sensed a desperation in Priscilla to succeed. Lane could relate to that to some extent. She’d fought her way out of the gutter, too, and maybe she’d done some questionable things along the way, but she’d never tried to kill anyone.

Lane went to her computer and pulled up the Gotcha.com Web site. Jack the Giant Killer’s byline dominated the opening page. Ms. Pris is Pissed! screamed the headline.

“Listen to this,” Lane said. “‘Ms. Pris had a manners meltdown. This morning, Priscilla Brandt, author of a bestselling book on etiquette, viciously assaulted a homeless man. Apparently he camped out on her lawn, impeding her tea-garden interview with morning-show anchor Leanne Sanders, so Brandt knocked him cold with an iron statue, but couldn’t drag him off her property. She shrieked obscenities and beat the homeless man with her fists. She then called Lane Chandler, her private concierge, for help.’”

Lane stopped, shaking her head in disbelief. She glanced over at Darwin, who was back in the chair, collapsed like a punctured tire. “Do you believe me now?”

7

She was legit. Her concierge service was first-class all the way. Rick’s Internet search had pulled up countless references to TPC as the crown jewel of the private-concierge field, despite its fairly recent appearance on the scene six years ago. A large infusion of investment capital from an unspecified donor had launched the company, and a reputation for consummate perfectionism had kept it going. TPC was known for its round-the-clock devotion to making the lives of its clientele complete in every way.

Apparently there was nothing a TPC concierge wouldn’t do, as long as it was legal, according to its founder and CEO, Lane Chandler.

She was legit, and successful.

Rick wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It was always easier dealing with people when you had some leverage. In her case, doubled-jointed escorts and masseuses who specialized in happy endings would have been helpful. Of course, he always had her criminal past to fall back on.

Her company Web site described the boggling array of services offered and the different plans available. If you wanted round-the-clock attention with all the extras—and you had unlimited funds—the Premiere Plan was your baby. Rick found more than he needed to know about the company, but no mention of Lane Chandler’s background anywhere, except the usual references to education, work experience, achievements and service awards.

She’d received a BA in business administration from Pepperdine on a full scholarship program. Highest honors, which didn’t surprise him, despite her questionable start. He could still see the hungry glint in her mist-blue eyes. Funny how the soft-focus gaze and butterscotch voice had made her edges seem all the sharper, even at the tender age of fifteen.

A gossip Web site called Gotcha.com had broken stories about the messy scandals with some of TPC’s clients, but Ned hadn’t been mentioned among them. Rick also found references to the service’s expansion plans, and the heavy debt it was carrying. Maybe she needed money. Now, there was a motive to go after the package Ned was holding. She could use the contents to blackmail the VIPs involved in the epic scandal her own arrest had caused. She seemed to be a magnet for scandal, no matter what she did.

But how did she know Ned had the package?

Rick sat back in his chair to think. He rested his feet on the desk next to a carton of take-out Chinese. He’d found it in the fridge, left over from before he went up to the mountain cabin. The rush of hunger he’d felt when he opened the refrigerator door had dizzied him. It had been over thirty-six hours since he’d eaten, and he’d wolfed a forkful of the pork lo mein, but couldn’t get it down. His throat had closed up, and even a basic act like swallowing had been a challenge. He didn’t know if it was grief, stress or…something else.

The pills, he told himself. Maybe he needed to lay off that garbage.

He’d entered into a specialized form of private investigation when he’d left vice years ago. Essentially he did things that law enforcement wouldn’t—or couldn’t—do. It had kept him busy and paid well. But, over the last few weeks, he’d closed all his open cases and informed his clients he was taking some personal-leave time. That was all they needed to know. All anyone needed to know.

Now, here he was, faced with the toughest investigation of his life—and as much as he wanted to walk away from it, he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He had to do something. The question was, what?

His sigh was resigned. A talk with Ned’s housekeeper might be the way to start. Less complicated than the Lane Chandler situation, which could easily take him places he didn’t want to go. Ned’s funeral arrangements were being taken care of by his attorneys, who were also handling inquiries from the press. The public knew Ned as a star outfielder, not as Rick Bayless’s friend, so Rick had been left out of it, thank God. He could not have dealt with that right now.

Rick hesitated, listening. A loud pop came from somewhere in the house, launching him out of the chair. The carton of lo mein landed on the floor with a splat and Rick kicked it aside, taking care not to slip in the streaming juices. It sounded like a gunshot, and it had come from down the hall. He could see nothing through the open doorway, but someone was definitely in his house.

He slipped out of the small office, his bare feet soundless on the Mexican tiles. He crept down the hallway, his back to the wall, wondering if the intruder had found his gun. It was in the top drawer of the night table next to his bed, but the noise had come from the other side of the house, the kitchen, and he could hear a clicking sound coming from that direction.

Was the intruder reloading? That meant he’d come armed. Rick’s gun was a Colt .357 Python with a cylinder that took six bullets. There would be five left before reloading was necessary.

An odd, breathy squeak made him hesitate. The clicking got louder, urgent. The squeak became a plaintive cry. What the hell? It sounded like a baby or an animal in distress. And suddenly he knew what had happened.

His heart jammed into high gear as he spidered up to the arch that opened onto his kitchen. He craned to look inside—and saw exactly what he’d hoped. Yesssssssss. The mousetrap he’d baited and set days ago had been sprung. Unfortunately, the mangy little creature pinned by the bar was still alive. He was caught by the leg instead of by his skinny neck, but at least he’d been caught.

Rick Bayless had won the war. He’d finally caught the cunning sneak thief that had been raiding his garbage and springing his mousetraps for months. The reign of the devil mouse was over.

Like most bachelors, Rick had never kept what you’d call a tidy kitchen. He routinely left the dinner dishes unscraped and unwashed until the next day or whenever he got around to them. Sometimes they waited until his housekeeper made her weekly visit. It was when she’d found the usually crusty dishes nearly spotless in the sink, and asked Rick if he’d done them himself, that he realized he had an ugly, hairy little dishwasher on his hands—and the war had begun.

He hated mice. He didn’t like snakes, either, but at least most snakes ate insects, which justified their existence to some extent. Mice were scavengers and disease carriers. Can you spell bubonic plague? If Walt Disney hadn’t turned them into saucer-eared heroes, no one would like mice.

But Rick’s enthusiasm waned as he watched his nemesis roll and flail, trying to get his leg free of the spring-loaded bar. Amazing that he had a leg left. The bar would have broken his neck if he’d gone for the cheese first, instead of trying to spring the trap.

Not so clever this time.

Now Rick had to figure out how to quickly end this. The mouse’s shrieks had become heartrending, and trapped animals had been known to chew off their limbs to escape. From the drying rack on the counter, he grabbed a large stainless-steel colander to contain the struggling mouse.

A gunshot was the quickest way to end an animal’s misery, but that would be overkill for a mouse, literally. Drowning it was too much like torture and a cerebral concussion too brutish, but Rick had little choice. The concussion would be quick and painless. He should have invested in one of those live traps, but somehow this had turned into an epic war of wits, with the mouse trouncing him repeatedly, which had probably made him want the wretched little thing to suffer. Obviously, now he was getting soft.

He got a wooden mallet from the kitchen drawer where he kept his tools. But when he flipped the colander over, he found the mouse unconscious—or possibly dead. It didn’t appear to be breathing, and there was no response when he nudged it with the mallet.

He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his jeans’ pocket and settled on his haunches. He’d been carrying gloves with him since his vice days, as religiously as some guys carried condoms. You never knew when you were going to need the protection of latex.

He quickly had the mouse free of the trap, but it still showed no signs of life, and its leg was clearly broken. Funny how it didn’t look so diabolically clever anymore. More like a defenseless creature that was caught up in the universal fight to survive, like everyone else. Food was survival. Cheese was food. It was simply trying to eat without dying.

Rick’s thoughts took a grimly ironic turn. Maybe the mouse wasn’t such a zero after all. It had cleaned up the place. Rick Bayless was the slob who’d left the dirty dishes. Besides, having somebody set a trap for you was no way to die. It just seemed wrong to be tempted with what you wanted most—and then killed for wanting it. Was that how Ned had died? Was he lured into a death trap?

His gut clenched at the thought. He shook off the questions. He had no answers. What he had was a dead mouse that needed to be disposed of. He left it where it was and headed down the hall to his bedroom to get a shoe box. Maybe he’d even give the devil mouse a proper burial.

By the time he got back, the mouse was gone. The trap was where he’d left it, and he could see a faint blood trail leading toward the refrigerator, but no sign of the mouse. It had regained consciousness and made a break for freedom, dragging itself across the floor. Or it had been faking the entire time.

Score one—or twenty—for Mickey. Rick had lost count.

8

Simon Shan walked over to the display of ancient ceremonial swords on his bedroom wall and removed a nineteenth-century jade-handled dagger. Other than a rare ivory mah-jongg set that had belonged to his grandmother, these weapons were the only heirlooms of value in the Shan family. They’d been passed down from father to eldest son for generations, and his father had told him that this dagger’s blade was sharp enough to cut floating silk.

Simon ran the pad of his index finger over the edge, watching the blood rise to the surface and bubble. Amazing. He hadn’t felt a thing.