by Sean Black
Sofia’s hand shot up. “I get it! I get it!” She tried to refocus. That revelation might have come out of left field, but Tex could be an invaluable asset to the investigation. She had been there at the time. She must have known at least some of the guys. She might remember who had and hadn’t used protection. Or who, like Dr. Busch, wouldn’t have needed a condom but could maybe have used a mouth guard.
That would take more wine.
A lot more.
Sofia plucked Tex’s empty wine glass from her hand. “Refill?”
* * *
TWO HOURS and two more bottles of wines later, Sofia had wrung as much information as possible from her neighbor. Not that it had taken much wringing. If Tex had any hang-ups about sex, or discussing sex, Sofia couldn’t tell what they were.
She put her notepad to one side. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure.”
“Were you always kind of . . .?”
“Slutty?” said Tex.
“I was going to say adventurous, but whatever.”
Sofia knew a bit about Tex’s life, but this was a whole other side to her. As her nickname suggested, Tex had grown up in the Lone Star state. Her parents had been Chinese immigrants and she’d had a pretty conservative upbringing. They’d been horrified when she’d ended up going into the oil industry and working as a wildcatter. She had to be as tough, or probably tougher, than the guys in what was a super-macho environment. She’d made her money, then retired to live in Malibu, which had always been her dream.
“No way,” said Tex. “If I’d slept with a bunch of guys while I was wildcatting, word would have got round and no one would have taken me seriously. But I always had kind of a crazy libido so I had regular boyfriends. I’d wear ’em out after a year, and then I’d have to find myself a fresh one. But I was always a one-man woman. Then I moved out here, where people are a little less judgy about stuff like that than they are back home.” She stopped to take a sip of wine. “I’ve kind of calmed down, but back when I first moved out here I was crazy. Making up for lost time, I guess.”
“Huh.” Sofia wasn’t sure what to say.
“This isn’t going to make things weird, is it?” Tex asked her. “Me telling you all this stuff?”
“No. It was kind of a surprise. That’s all.”
Tex leaned back against the edge of Sofia’s couch. “Women aren’t expected to act like guys when it comes to sex. That goes double for Asian women. We’re supposed to be all sweet and submissive. Not this gal. If I liked a guy, I nailed him. No point living with regrets.”
It was a philosophy that Sofia could admire, while not necessarily agreeing with it. She wasn’t opposed to a no-strings relationship, but she wanted to find someone special. Maybe Dr. Mark would be the guy. She fancied the pants off him, which was a good starting point. And he was a doctor who looked after kids. Kind of a real-life George Clooney, only younger. Not that she’d necessarily have turned down Clooney if she had a shot and he wasn’t married.
“What about marriage and kids?” Sofia asked.
“Never appealed,” said Tex. “Not many guys are going to accept their bride spending weeks drilling for Texas tea with a bunch of roughnecks. I guess kids would have been nice, but I was never home, so it wouldn’t have been fair on them. Kids need their mom around.”
That made sense. Sofia agreed about children needing at least one parent there as they grew up. Having kids was a big commitment. Something to take seriously. Tex not having them because she couldn’t make that commitment seemed pretty responsible.
Tex slugged the last dregs from her glass and slammed it down on the coffee-table. “It was good talking, but I should hit the hay and you have work in the morning.”
As Tex reached the door, Sofia called after her. “Hey, Tex.”
She turned back. Sofia waved her notepad in the air. “Thanks for the intel.”
“I just hope it helps.” Tex grinned. “And that it doesn’t give you nightmares.” With that she was gone.
Sofia sat where she was for a few minutes more. She never really knew people. Not even when she thought she did. Perhaps especially when she thought she did. She arranged her papers, put them into her bag, ready for the morning, locked up, and went to bed.
CHAPTER 26
Sofia decided not to share too much of what Tex had told her with Aidan. She would dish out the information on a need-to-know basis. She walked into the office with a Wolverine shake and a Dragon Bowl from SunLife Organics. She threw her bag onto her desk and sucked up an inch of Wolverine shake. She figured if she could keep it down, she’d be good to go. Aidan and Brendan were already at their desks.
Aidan looked up from his row of screens. “Feeling a little bit sensitive?”
“No. Why?”
“You’re still wearing your sunglasses.”
Damn. She’d thought it was a little dark. She pushed them up onto her head, and winced in the light. “I was up late getting some more information on our prospective candidates.”
Aidan smirked. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s this new information?” Aidan pressed.
“Just general background.”
“Such as?”
“I got confirmation from another source that what Nate Kaufmann and Tom Busch told us was true. Y’know, in terms of Nate always using a condom and Dr. Busch only ever going south.”
Aidan’s head popped back up. “Another source? Who?”
“Can’t tell you. I promise them confidentiality.”
Aidan took in a sweep of the office with his hands. “Mi casa. Su casa. We work for the same agency.”
“I’m not telling you who it was. But they’re credible.”
“They don’t happen to live at Nirvana Cove by any chance, do they?” Aidan asked.
How the hell did he know that?
“When I tell someone I’m going to treat anything they say as confidential, I mean it.”
“I knew it!” shouted Aidan.
Brendan wandered through from his office. “What did you know? And why are you shouting?”
“Sofia has an inside track on the new case. A CI who might help us work out who Daniel’s father is.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Brendan.
“I was trying to explain the confidential part of CI to Aidan.”
Brendan folded his arms. “We’re on the same team here, Sofia. No one in this office is going to go blab.”
“I promised this person that their identity would stay between me and them.”
“Of course you did,” Aidan scoffed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re the CI. Come on, you turn up hung-over, you tell me you spent all last night chasing down leads. That you have intimate knowledge of the sexual habits of the two guys we saw yesterday. It doesn’t take a genius.”
“You are disgusting!” Sofia hollered at Aidan. She didn’t care if Brendan was there or not. His son was a complete pig. The only way he believed she could gather intel was by sleeping with someone.
“Someone in this room is disgusting, but it ain’t me, sister.”
“Enough!”
They both turned to look at Brendan. He glared at Aidan, then at Sofia. “One more word from either of you, and you’re both fired.”
Neither of them made a sound. Brendan didn’t do empty threats. And when he lost his temper, he was pretty scary. Those moments were rare but when they arrived they were something to behold. He didn’t even have to say much. It was all in his voice and body language. He hadn’t worked as an LAPD homicide detective for twenty years without having the ability to scare the living crap out of people.
“May I remind you both that we’re dealing with a young man’s wellbeing, and very possibly his life. Save the bickering and petty point-scoring for another case. Now, Aidan, if Sofia told her CI she wouldn’t divulge their name, she has to abide by that. And, Sofia, in future, that’s not a com
mitment you should make if it’s going to mean we’re shut out. Like Aidan said, we’re a team. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes.”
“Aidan?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Brendan walked back into his office and closed the door. Aidan and Sofia glared at each other.
Aidan stood up, grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. “I’m gonna go talk to Harvey Lemon.”
CHAPTER 27
“So, does Harvey Lemon have any crazy sexual kinks I should know about before we meet him?” Aidan asked Sofia. “He’s not going to try to pee on me or anything?”
Sofia kept her eyes on the traffic. She’d insisted they take her Tesla. This time Aidan could be the one kicked out on Sunset Boulevard. “I dunno. Maybe if you ask him nicely and you’re his type.”
“That what your source told you? You have to ask nice?”
Deep breath. “I don’t have any specific info from the source on Harvey.”
“You still sticking to this source thing, huh?”
“What? You think I got into my time machine, went back to the early noughties and slept with these guys?”
“Who said anything about a time machine?” Aidan smirked.
* * *
SOFIA PULLED into the parking garage of Harvey Lemon’s building. Aidan still wouldn’t let up about the identity of her source. He was like a dog with a particularly juicy bone. One he’d pawed out of reach under a couch. If he couldn’t chew it, he would worry it instead. That made for a good detective, but an irritating partner. If she had to, she would wait until they were driving back to the office, along a nice quiet stretch of Pacific Coast Highway, with no bus stops, and kick Aidan onto the curb.
They had already discussed their strategy. From what they did know about him, Lemon wouldn’t be easily intimidated.
They had to check in with security at Reception first. Aidan had already called Lemon’s office with a cover story about possible fraud relating to an investment Lemon had made a few years ago that had gone south. They were playing to Lemon’s vanity―how could he have made an investment that had lost money?―and to his greed by hinting that some funds might have been recovered and were to be disbursed to the original investors. Of course, Aidan had hinted at most of this. They’d left Lemon to fill in the blanks.
They rode up to the seventh floor. “Nervous?” Aidan asked Sofia.
“Should I be?”
“Scary-looking dude.”
The elevator doors opened. They walked down a corridor until they found the door that led into Lemon’s offices.
Inside, a secretary was sitting at a desk facing the door. She seemed to be counting paperclips. It was a moment before she looked up. “Damn, lost count,” she said.
Yup, she was counting paperclips, arranging them in rows of ten. There were a lot of rows laid out on her desk, maybe thirty, so around three hundred paperclips. Now Sofia was counting paperclips, too.
“Aidan Maloney and Sofia Salgado from Maloney Investigations in Malibu,” said Aidan. Sofia had noticed that he always made sure to work in a mention of Malibu when they visited anyone who might be at all status-conscious.
“Please take a seat,” said the secretary.
They sat down. She picked up her phone and announced their arrival. “He’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
She went back to counting paperclips. Maybe she had obsessive compulsive disorder, mused Sofia. Or she’d run out of work and wanted to stay busy, or at least look like she was.
They heard Harvey Lemon before they saw him. He was screaming at someone. “You tell that bastard if the amended contract isn’t here by midday tomorrow then I’m going to fly down to Florida, reach up into his asshole, and rip out his intestines!”
Someone was having a bad day.
The secretary looked up, panicked, and started laying out a fresh row of paperclips. Maybe she used them as a stress reliever.
“Hey, Marcella, send those pricks from Malibu in, would you?” Lemon bellowed.
Sofia guessed he didn’t feel the need to lift his desk phone when he could just shout.
“You may go through,” the secretary said, doubling down on her busy work. “Just follow the . . .”
“Sound of bellowing?” Sofia said.
“Second office on the left,” said the secretary. “He’s actually in a pretty good mood this morning.”
What did the guy sound like when he was in a bad one? If Woody Allen’s joke about all sex being angry sex was right, Sofia could understand Candice’s attraction. She couldn’t have been reeled in by the guy’s personality.
Aidan walked straight into the office. Sofia made sure to be a step behind him.
Lemon was sitting at a huge, completely uncluttered mahogany desk with a view out onto Wilshire Boulevard. “You don’t know to knock?” he said, not bothering to look up.
He reminded Sofia of some of the movie and TV execs and agents she’d met when she was an actress. Alpha-male. Super-aggressive. A big, swinging dick, as they say. From what she’d seen so far, he certainly had the dick part down.
Aidan ignored him. Sometimes being partnered with an asshat alpha-male had its advantages. Sofia guessed this was one of those times.
Aidan pulled up two chairs for them across from Lemon’s desk and they sat.
“Sit down, why don’t you?” said Lemon.
“Thanks,” said Aidan. “We will. And before we get started we’re here to do you a favor, so you do us one, and cut the belligerent crap.”
Whoa. This was not the approach they had planned. Aidan was meeting fire with fire. What was her role in the new scenario?
It seemed to work. Lemon didn’t seem taken aback, but he certainly appeared to calm down a little. “I’m a busy man. What can I do for you?” he asked, reaching up and adjusting his hairpiece.
“Like I just said, it’s a matter of what we can do for you.”
“And that would be?”
For once Sofia didn’t mind being the only female in the room and therefore ignored. Just this once, she was happy for Aidan to be in the firing line. She could come in later and tend the wounded. Or finish them off.
Aidan decided to cut to the chase. “Approximately fourteen years ago you had a brief fling with a woman called Candice Carlson. She has a thirteen-year-old son called Daniel. We’re trying to establish the identity of Daniel’s father. You can do the rest of the math.”
Lemon cleared his throat. He looked like he’d been thrown off balance. “You lied to me about why you wanted this meeting,” he said finally.
“We have strong reason to believe you are not Daniel’s father,” Aidan continued.
“So why are you here?”
“Mr. Lemon, there are three possible candidates. We’re almost certain that one man we have already identified is the father. He refuses to cooperate. We have eliminated the remaining man. We eliminate you, and it makes our job that much easier. You can get back to your life and pretend this never happened. Everyone here is a winner.”
Wow! Aidan was an epic liar. Halfway through his speech, even Sofia had started to believe him―she’d almost asked who the other two candidates were. Or maybe she was still hung-over and reeling from her night with Tex.
“I can get back to my life anytime I like. All I need to do is ask you to leave.”
Aidan smiled. “And we will. But that won’t be the end of it. It’ll get messy. We’ll all waste a bunch of time and money until finally you do what you can do now.”
“Which is?”
“Give us a sample of your DNA. We can officially rule you out, and move on.”
Lemon smiled. “That sounds like a very fair proposition.”
Wow again. Sofia had not expected Lemon to be so easy.
“It’s also a bunch of complete horse shit. The only thing I can do by agreeing to what you’re asking is put myself on line to lose a shit ton of money. Now, do I look the kind of guy who likes losing money?�
�
Uh-oh. Maybe she’d spoken too soon. Aidan didn’t respond.
“Now get out of my office, both of you. Come back, and I’ll have you arrested.”
Aidan shrugged, like he’d been half expecting this reaction. “Have it your way.”
They got up. Sofia’s heart was pounding. Lemon looked capable of opening his desk drawer and pulling out a pistol.
Aidan stopped at the door. He turned back toward Lemon. “You want to know why we’re sure you can’t be the father?”
“Not really, but go on.”
“Candice said you couldn’t keep it up for long enough. Have a good day, Mr. Lemon.”
CHAPTER 28
A s they stood in the elevator, Aidan took out his ‘master list’ and crossed through Harvey Lemon’s name. They had a lab tech arriving in the next fifteen minutes to take a DNA sample.
“Strike while the iron’s hot,” was how Aidan had explained it.
“Or while the guy’s still too angry to think straight,” said Sofia.
“Precisely.”
“Did you know he’d react like that?”
“It was kind of a Hail Mary, but it worked.” Aidan shrugged. “Anyway, who’s up next?”
“Gary Witter. The English actuary guy.” Sofia could feel herself getting sleepy just saying the word ‘actuary’. Imagine spending your whole life in an office doing a job that revolved around calculating when people would die. Even grave-diggers got to be out in the fresh air.
“Oh, yeah,” said Aidan. “I kind of didn’t get him being on the list.”
Sofia had had the same thought, but she wanted to hear Aidan’s take on why Witter would be an unlikely potential father. “How come?”
“Well,” said Aidan, “English. Actuary. Plus the picture I’ve seen of the guy. Even back in the day he was kind of geeky. Like he’d blow away in a light breeze.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Perhaps he was really great in the sack.” It seemed unlikely, but it was the only explanation Sofia had come up with.