by Kara Lennox
“Not at all. Liz’s name didn’t come up.”
“How could he not know?” Liz asked. “I’m sure that clip of us at my apartment building has been on the news by now.”
“It has been,” Daniel confirmed. “So has the other clip of our stunt doubles.”
“All due respect, Mr. Logan,” Hudson said, “but even if you’ve created some momentary confusion with the look-alikes, it’s a short-term solution at best. Knightly and Sanchez are probably getting a warrant for that video footage as we speak. The county lab has ways to analyze the footage, blow it up six feet tall frame by frame. They’ll compare it to my picture, and that’ll be that.”
“Not if the footage has been accidentally...misplaced.” Daniel flashed a slight smile as he let that sink in.
Hudson was astounded at the man’s sheer gall. Daniel could be charged with obstruction of justice. As a cop, Hudson would be furious. As a suspect, he was...relieved. Grateful. Sanchez and Knightly might suspect Hudson and Liz were in cahoots, but they couldn’t know for sure that they knew each other. Or at least, they couldn’t prove it...yet.
“Okay.” Hudson took another bite of his brownie.
Something tickled his foot. He drew back reflexively, his reptilian brain thinking a cat, or some other animal, had brushed up against him. Then he saw the gleam of danger in Liz’s eye and realized with a start that it was her. She wasn’t playing footsie with him, much as he wished that were true. She was warning him to chill out.
Unfortunately, her actions were having the opposite effect. Seeing her only a few feet away, so elegant even dressed down as she was, and all he wanted to do was touch her, hold her. Kiss the hollow of her neck like he’d done last night. Provoke her into crying out with pleasure. The fact that he couldn’t was torture. Now the simple pressure of her bare toes against his instep had him squirming in his chair.
“So what else is happening?” Daniel asked. “Can I get an update? I’m aware that Mitch is trying to break the encryption on the laptop you found. In fact, he’s downstairs in my office—he wouldn’t even stop for lunch. We were working on it together, but so far we haven’t found a way in.”
Hudson pulled himself together enough to tell Daniel about his encounter with Carlos the previous night, carefully leaving out Liz’s participation. “So the address we have for Jazz is old.”
“Is that when the Lexus lost its wheels?” Daniel asked, more curious than angry.
“Um, yeah. Sorry about that.”
Daniel shrugged. “I’ll get new ones.”
“So, we’ve got leads on the prostitute, Jazz, or Yazmin,” Hudson said. “We’re looking for a man with a fish tattoo on his arm. Liz is going to talk to her father’s housekeeper, Mrs. Ames, to see if she noticed any events out of the ordinary. I’d like to sit in on that. All due respect to Liz, but she’s not trained in interrogation.”
“I’d like that, too,” Liz put in.
“Okay.” Daniel regarded him expectantly. He wanted more, and unfortunately, Hudson didn’t have much else to report. The investigation was stalled in the water.
“Once Mitch gets into that laptop,” Hudson added, “I’m sure we’ll have a lot of new leads. And, well, my father is talking to some old friends, retired cops who might know something about the, um, Holly Mandalay disappearance.”
Daniel squinted. “That happened, what, ten years ago?”
“Fourteen,” Liz said in a clipped voice. Her foot had been lightly resting on his. She withdrew it.
Hudson hadn’t wanted to mention the matter again in front of Liz, but he felt he needed to justify himself to Daniel.
“You think there’s a connection?” Daniel asked.
“Without elaborating, yes. Call it a hunch.” He glanced quickly at Liz and back to Daniel. Daniel seemed to get it.
“Okay.” Daniel didn’t force Hudson to explain further. “I’m sending a team with metal detectors to your house. I’ll need you to show me on a map where you think your housebreaker’s stray bullet might have gone. He fired at you with a handgun?”
“Yeah. A thirty-eight or a 9 mm,” Hudson said, irritated that he hadn’t thought of this route himself. If they could find the bullet, and match it to a weapon stored in the police ballistics database—he wouldn’t ask how that was done—it could help them identify Fish Tattoo man. He was the closest thing they had to a viable suspect in Franklin Mandalay’s murder.
“You have a car at your disposal. Joe can drive—he’s former Secret Service, trained in protection, marksmanship, evasive driving. If he starts throwing orders around, I suggest you follow them.”
Hudson nodded, though again, it irked him not to be calling the shots. But if he wanted the benefit of Daniel’s expertise and billions, he had to give up some of his autonomy. He recognized that, but that didn’t mean he was happy about it.
Liz nodded, too.
“I don’t want to tie your hands, but it would still be better if the two of you aren’t seen together. That would add fuel to the media fire. You do see why I cautioned you not to appear together in public?”
“Yes, Daniel, we get it,” Liz said. “Really, we do. I’m sorry we did something so stupid.”
Daniel shrugged. “Everybody makes mistakes. Live and learn.” He’d taken two bites of the pudding and set it aside; now he chose an apple from the dessert tray and started peeling it with his pocketknife.
The tightness in Hudson’s chest eased. They were getting off easy. From now on he would take Daniel’s warnings seriously.
Mitch chose that moment to appear, his arms full of what looked like enough electronic bits to build a robot. “Daniel, you won’t believe—” He skidded to a stop, blinking owlishly behind his glasses at Hudson and Liz. “Oh, y’all are still here?” he drawled.
“I did mention they were staying here indefinitely,” Daniel said mildly. “What won’t I believe?”
“Huh? Oh. The—”
“Is that my father’s laptop?” Elizabeth asked with some alarm.
Mitch looked embarrassed. “Oh, yeah. Don’t worry, Ms. Downey, I’ll put it back together good as new. Except—it won’t have anything on the hard drive.”
Daniel appeared a tad impatient. “What are you saying, Mitch?”
“I have tried every low-down dirty trick I know to crack this encryption. Then I tried one of your gadgets, and it worked. Or I thought it did. I thought I was in, till I got this black screen that said Unauthorized Access in flashing letters.”
“Is that the same thing as the blue screen?” Hudson was familiar with the dreaded blue screen from the computers at work. It meant the computer had suffered some kind of meltdown and it would take a genius from IT to bring it back.
“This is worse,” Mitch said. “The data self-destructed. The drive wiped itself clean. So did the backup drive. I can’t bring it back. I can’t get anything. I’m sorry.”
He looked so crestfallen, Hudson almost laughed. He guessed Mitch wasn’t used to failing when it came to outsmarting computers. But then the implications hit him, and the urge to laugh abruptly left him. He’d been counting on something from that computer providing a solid lead. Now they were back to square one.
Liz looked as if she wanted to cry, and Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose. “All you can do is try, Mitch. You gave it your best shot, working on it all night. Why don’t you find a bedroom upstairs and get some sleep? Take the rest of the day off.”
Mitch nodded glumly.
Daniel continually surprised Hudson. The press portrayed him as a driven businessman, determined to always get what he wanted. Hudson had expected someone more ruthless. With a temper, maybe. But Daniel seemed to him exceedingly fair-minded, respectful of his employees’ time and energy. He could have blown his top over the debacle with the photographers this morning, but he hadn’t raised his voice. Although Hudson had to admit, a single, quelling look from those dark, penetrating eyes could freeze his blood faster than any tirade.
* * *
>
AFTER LUNCH, ELIZABETH and Hudson went to her father’s house to talk to Mrs. Ames. Joe drove them in one of Daniel’s many spare cars—another Lincoln Town Car with heavily tinted windows. Hudson sat up front with Joe, talking to him about guy stuff, for which Elizabeth was grateful. She wasn’t sure how to deal with Hudson anymore. Her body still tingled from the memory of their unbridled lovemaking. Yet now a huge gulf separated them.
It had to do with her father, and what Hudson thought he’d done. That alone was enough to make her tense with anger. But it was only symptomatic of the real problem. Hudson had a dim view of humans as a species. He apparently thought people would devolve to their most base instincts if laws and cops weren’t in place to keep them in line. Elizabeth felt just the opposite; she believed people were basically good, and they wanted to be good. It was often terrible circumstances that drove them to commit crimes.
Not that she would make excuses for whoever killed her father. Nothing could excuse that, except perhaps self-defense, but her father wouldn’t actually physically assault anyone.
No, he would send one of his shady goons for that.
All this made her head hurt.
“So,” Hudson was saying, “Daniel said we’d have drivers who were, like, trained in high-level security and evasive driving. Is that you?”
Joe shrugged one muscular shoulder. “I’m former Secret Service. I guess that’s me.”
“Presidential detail?”
“First Lady. Spent a lot more time than I ever wanted to at tea parties and library luncheons and charity fundraisers.”
“Still, it must have been something, carrying that responsibility. Were there ever any threats?”
“More than I can count. Most of them bogus—bomb threats, usually. I was tense all the time and bored at the same time. Job gave me an ulcer. I like working for Project Justice better.”
So the Secret Service explained his clean-cut look and disciplined demeanor. But she recognized a broad streak of mischief and humor in him, too. Though Daniel didn’t enforce any particular dress code, today Joe wore a sharp blue suit, crisp white shirt—and a tie festooned with neon-pink flamingos. He couldn’t do that at the Secret Service.
Soon enough they arrived at her father’s estate. Elizabeth exited the car and punched in the code, and the wrought-iron gates swung open.
Sadness engulfed her again as she climbed back into the car and it glided down the driveway. It was so weird, knowing her father wasn’t inside the house. He’d driven her insane with his obsessive need to control her life when he was alive, but now that he was gone, she found herself missing him. They hadn’t even released his remains for burial; she couldn’t imagine what the police were waiting around for. It wasn’t as if his cause of death was in question.
She hadn’t given much thought to what she might inherit from him. It was too overwhelming to imagine herself the master of all his money and business interests. In a way, she hoped he’d left it all to charity, but what were the chances of that?
“You grew up here?” Joe asked as Elizabeth let them in the front door with her key.
She swallowed back the tears that threatened and tried to appear normal. “Yup. I had a pretty skewed view of the world until I got out on my own.”
“Mmm, I smell cookies,” Hudson said. “Unless I miss my guess, peanut butter.”
“That would be Mrs. Ames. She’s been cooking and baking nonstop since my dad died. She says she wants to use up the groceries before they go bad, but I think it just keeps her mind off things when she stays busy. Mrs. Ames?” Elizabeth called out. “We’re here!”
She’d called earlier to warn the housekeeper they were on their way to talk to her about her former boss. That alone had probably been enough to prompt a frenzy of baking.
“In here, sweetie,” Mrs. Ames called back in a wavery voice. She wasn’t old—maybe in her late fifties or early sixties. But she dressed in the manner of an earlier generation, and her demeanor was that of someone older. She’d been working for the Mandalay family since she was a teenager, first for Elizabeth’s grandparents, then her parents.
Today she had on a cotton dress with a full skirt that reached almost to her ankles and a pair of what looked like orthopedic army boots. A frilly white apron protected her clothing. Her hair, a mixture of once-fiery red and dull gray, was gathered into a tight bun at her crown. She wore rimless glasses that habitually slid down to the tip of her nose when she was working.
“Hello, sweetie. I’d hug you but my hands are all floury.” She wiggled white-coated fingers in the air. She was clearly in the process of baking more cookies.
“I’ll hug you, then.” Elizabeth walked over to the housekeeper and slid an arm around her shoulders for a squeeze. Mrs. Ames hadn’t exactly been like a mother to her when her own mother disappeared. She hugged a lot, but there were clear boundaries between servant and employer that she wouldn’t cross. She’d been a sympathetic listener but never tried to tell Elizabeth what to do, other than the cautious advice to cut her father some slack.
“Introduce me to your friends,” Mrs. Ames said. “Then you can all help yourself to those cookies on the rack. They should be cooled down by now.”
Elizabeth performed introductions, leaving out any reference to titles. If it was easier for the older woman to believe Joe and Hudson were merely friends, Elizabeth would humor her.
“Oh, man,” Hudson said, his mouth half-full of cookie, “these are outstanding. Is this your recipe?”
“My grandmother’s, actually,” Mrs. Ames said with a twinkle in her eye.
Honestly, Elizabeth thought, some advertising agency could make millions hiring Mrs. Ames to sell cookies.
“All of the women in my family are bakers.”
Hudson covertly nodded to Joe that he should eat a cookie, probably wanting him to get on Mrs. Ames’s good side. Reluctantly Joe grabbed one of the morsels and took a bite. “I’m training for a marathon and I’m not supposed to be... Whoa, these are good.”
Elizabeth ate one, too. Although her problems were too complex to be fixed with a cookie, the way they could be when she’d been a little girl and skinned her knee, the sweet-and-salty taste threw her back to a time when things were so much simpler.
Still, she couldn’t afford to wallow in sentimentality. She had a job to do.
“So, Mrs. Ames, I told you on the phone that we wanted to ask you about my dad.”
“I’m happy to cooperate any way I can, but I can’t see how it could help. The police already asked me lots of questions. So many questions.” She leaned against the counter for a moment, the weight of her grief etched in the lines of her face. “I can’t imagine there’s anything we didn’t cover.”
“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said. “I know this is painful.”
“For you, too, I’m sure,” Mrs. Ames murmured.
“It’s just—you know the police think I had something to do with Dad’s death.”
“Ridiculous. That’s why I don’t watch TV or read the paper. Those reporters are just looking for a sensational headline.”
“It’s not just the reporters. I really am a suspect. Hudson is, too. Our only hope is to find out who really killed Dad. And to do that, we have to find out what he was involved in.”
“He certainly didn’t confide in me about his business dealings or personal life.”
“But you were in a position to see who he met with, or who he talked to on the phone—”
“I’m not a snoop,” she said indignantly. “I have an impeccable reputation. I was once offered a job at the governor’s mansion.... Did you know that? But I stayed here. Your father treated me very well, and what kind of person would I be if I betrayed his trust?”
“Mrs. Ames,” Hudson said, “we understand that you wouldn’t intentionally violate Mr. Mandalay’s privacy, but surely you don’t want his daughter wrongly accused of his murder while the real killer walks free. You must have let in his guests sometimes, didn’t you?
As part of your job?”
“Yes, of course. It was my job to make his guests feel welcome.” Her cookie sheet was full of little mounds of flour-covered dough. Shortbread cookies. Elizabeth’s mouth watered.
“So who came to see him? Your answers don’t violate his privacy. He’s in a better place now where he doesn’t have to worry about what anyone thinks of him. And your answers could help us bring his killer to justice. You want that, right?”
Mrs. Ames frowned. “Of course. Mr. Mandalay didn’t entertain a lot, but he did have a guest now and then. His lawyer, Mr. Pine. The occasional, um, female friend.”
“These female friends,” Hudson said, smoothly taking over the questioning, for which Elizabeth was grateful. She had no idea how to ask these questions in a way that wouldn’t be offensive to someone who’d changed Elizabeth’s diaper when she was a baby. “How many were there, in the past year, let’s say? Did he have one particular girlfriend, or a bunch of them?”
Elizabeth wouldn’t have believed a woman Mrs. Ames’s age could blush, but she did. “Well, more than one. But not more than five.”
“Five?” Elizabeth couldn’t help saying.
“Were these young women?” Hudson asked. “Or more women his age?”
“Always younger,” she said with a disapproving frown. It was the closest Elizabeth had seen to the housekeeper criticizing her boss.
“And was there one in particular that he seemed to favor? One that came more often than the others?”
“I only saw one of his dates more than once. Very pretty girl. Spanish. Dark eyes and hair. I think he liked her because she looked a little like his late wife. Mrs. Mandalay, God rest her soul, had an exotic look about her, too, though I’m not sure where that came from.”
“Would you recognize this lady friend if I showed you a picture?” Hudson asked. He was already digging through the messenger bag he’d brought with him.
“I imagine. But surely you don’t think a sweet little thing like her could commit murder.”
“People can surprise you, Mrs. Ames.” Hudson pulled out a picture of Yazmin and showed it to Mrs. Ames.