“Say again?”
“Melanie contacted me. Said she had a particular interest in architectural design copyright law. Only, once we sat down, she seemed more interested in putting her foot in my crotch and her tongue in my ear.”
An irrational stab of jealousy punctured my chest. He hadn’t exactly said he turned her away. “So you think her parents sent her to try and seduce information from you?”
“To establish blackmail fodder, more likely. But she didn’t get any of either. Which is why I made sure Kristin ended up as her mentor,” he said. “To keep an eye on her.”
We both glanced over toward the disassembled remains of the carousel, where Melanie was talking with a couple of uniformed officers.
“About the records she stole,” I began.
Valentine slid me a sneaky side-eye. “Don’t tell me Jane Avery is feeling benevolent toward Melanie Beidermeyer.”
“Of course not. It’s just that we all make mistakes, and once this mess with her parents hits the paper, she’s going to have a shit storm of epic proportions on her manicured paws. I thought maybe—”
“I’m not going to say anything to Dawes,” he said. “There’s enough shit shoveling going on at that firm as it is.”
“Which reminds me. I know why you made sure Melanie was assigned to Kristin. But what about Sam Shook? Why is it you made sure I was assigned to him?” The mere mention of my mentor’s name conjured into existence a vision of his dark, serious eyes. The way they might look at me when I came clean about everything. Which I fully intended to do come tomorrow morning. Or maybe the next.
“He’s the only one at the law firm I fully trust, outside of Krist—” His lips clamped down on her name. He shook his head as if to clear it of sorrow.
My hand floated up and landed between his shoulder blades. His spine stiffened against my palm before relaxing.
“I’m sorry for your loss. Your losses.”
“And for yours,” he said. A shadow crossed Valentine’s face, darkening his green eyes.
It took me a minute to twig to the fact that he was talking about my mother.
Well, shit.
I had been hoping he wouldn’t bring that up.
Mostly because I hadn’t told him about the note. Half because I didn’t want to ask him how my mother had gotten into his mistress’s quarters, and half because I still needed his help and wasn’t sure he’d give it if he knew there was a chance my mother had disappeared without telling him what I’d only recently found out the hard way.
One mystery solved, a deeper one only beginning.
“About my mother. I sort of, kind of, got the impression that neither Koontz’s nor the Beidermeyers’ hired goons succeeded in nabbing her.”
“That’s good,” he said.
“Not entirely,” I said. “She’s not coming back.” I hugged myself against a sudden chill. A cold current that had wandered my way from a distant hollow still smelling of winter’s dead leaves.
“How do you know?” Valentine asked.
“I know.”
“Well, there’s only one thing to do.” Valentine drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “You’ll have to move in with me.”
I felt like I was going to choke, but it was Koontz who made a strange gurgling sound. Probably because Shepard’s arm had inexplicably tightened around Koontz’s neck.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“I promised your mother I would keep you safe in her absence. As long as she’s absent, I’m on the hook.”
“But there’s no one to keep me safe from anymore. Dean Koontz here and the Beidermeyers are totally busted. Last time I checked, that’s pretty much everyone who wants me dead.”
“That remains to be seen,” he said.
“That’s him, Mommy!” We both glanced up just in time to see a certain annoying little shit dragging his mother toward Koontz, still pinned to the grass by Shepard.
“That’s the one who pushed me into the bushes.”
I couldn’t decide which was more priceless. The look of confusion on Dean Koontz’s face right before the little shit kicked him straight in the chops, or the fact that he was being punished for something he hadn’t actually done.
But I guess justice has a way of finding us all in the end.
And that’s no lie.
Epilogue
“And then I told her, I don’t care if Ida’s housebound or not, no way am I coming back to that team unless they beg me.”
Beg was pronounced like bayg by the woman sitting in the pedicure chair next to mine, who’d been extemporizing for the last thirty minutes on the dramatic developments of her church’s bunco group.
It was a regular hotbed for scandal, apparently.
I’d been nodding off to the lullaby of nail drills and salon chatter when my regular pedicurist held up a copy of the Mile High Grapevine, hot off the press and still smelling of printing ink.
“Magazine?”
“Sure,” I said.
I couldn’t contain my grin as I read the headline screaming across the front page in seventy-two-point Railroad Gothic: Dirty Dean David Diddles Debutante!
The Beidermeyers’ biotech company tanking had been a bigger story, of course, but unlike Dean David Koontz, they had enough juice left to keep it out of the scandal sheets, if not the traditional press.
Also, I had it on good authority that the Grapevine had a very willing if not very reliable source.
I flipped through the usual schlock about babies born with bat wings and Elvis sightings and came to the personals.
My heart squeezed involuntarily.
There, the first line of the first ad in the first column of the first page stopped me cold.
Intelligent Brunette Seeks Rescue.
My mother. It had to be.
Looking for a partner in crime to share in occasional adventures and recreational flaying. If you enjoy walks on the beach and the smell of patchouli oil, you might just be the person I’m looking for. Find me before it’s too late.
Walks on the beach and patchouli oil. How often had we poked fun at people from the Pacific Northwest region with that specific combination of words? She was somewhere in Oregon or Washington, but wouldn’t be for long.
And she wanted me to find her.
Before it’s too late.
This last phrase sent a thousand invisible ants crawling over my cheeks and down my spine.
Just then, my phone rang on the tray attached to the pedicure chair’s cushioned arm.
“Did you see it?” Archard Everett Valentine sounded younger than I had ever heard him. Terribly agitated and impatient.
And I knew exactly which it he was referring to. In the days since the Beidermeyers had been brought low, I’d refused several offers of “strictly platonic cohabitation” from Valentine, going so far as to quote to him the ad my mother advised that I place should he and I ever become lovers. Apparently this had been ample motivation for him to begin perusing the Grapevine as well.
“Yes,” I said. “I saw it.”
“Where are you?”
His asking was a courtesy. We both knew he’d not only been monitoring my every move, he’d also assigned a brand-spanking-new but poorly concealed security detail to ensure my safety.
Even now, the chair next to me normally occupied by my mother was currently filled by the hulking form of a nonverbal beefcake. I was pretty certain he’d never allowed a woman to touch anything more than his cock in his entire gun-toting, camo-wearing life. He was white-knuckling the chair arm as the pedicurist took a smallish cheese grater to the soles of his feet.
“At Le Vogue nail salon. Sitting right next to one of your goons.” I gave the man next to me a little finger wave.
“Stay there.” Valentine’s voice was smoky but stone-cold sober. A tone that sent fresh chills prickling up my arms. “I’m coming for you.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I don’t leave my house much. Which means I owe a huge debt of gr
atitude to a whole slew of people for telling me all kinds of things about what goes on outside it. This is probably a good time to mention that any mistakes made in the portrayal of any of these noble professions are purely my own, because the list of people that follows is full of ninjas and badasses who are the very best at what they do.
To Variable, for taking me on an actual stakeout and not laughing at me when I got mistaken for a prostitute . . . twice. To G-Unit, for telling me the best stories and answering my many pesky questions. To Rick, for letting me sit in on actual private investigator training classes and bringing me to eat pie with everyone afterward. Because pie.
To Heather, for putting me in the mind of a fresh-faced law grad and letting me pick her top-shelf-quality brain.
To Nathaniel, whose vivid recounting of army life changed the way I conceived of not just a character, but my world.
To Kerrigan Byrne (whose books you should totally read, by the way), for hauling me out of the trenches both literally and figuratively and to Christine, my agent lady, for believing.
Lastly—but not leastly—to my husband, Andy. I owe you all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 Jason Coviello
USA Today bestselling author Cynthia St. Aubin wrote her first play at age eight and made her brothers perform it for the admission price of gum wrappers. A steal, considering she provided the wrappers in advance. She never quite gave up on the writing thing, even while earning a mostly useless master’s degree in art history and taking her turn as a cube monkey in the corporate warren.
Because the voices in her head kept talking to her, and they discourage drinking at work, she started writing mysteries instead. When she’s not standing in front of the fridge eating cheese, she’s hard at work figuring out which mythological, art historical, or paranormal friends to play with next. The author of The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist series, Cynthia lives in Colorado with the love of her life and three surly cats.
Private Lies (Jane Avery Mysteries Book 1) Page 26