Death of a Pirate King - lanyon Josh - Страница 18

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• 18/54
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Both Alonzo and Jake stood in the back of the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather -- on the opposite side of the door from me. Alonzo kept grimacing and tugging at his tie. Jake looked grave and distant in a well-cut dark suit, although I knew he was observing closely and taking mental notes on the mourners and homicide suspects. Even so, I couldn’t help but notice he smiled frequently during Paul Kane’s eulogy.

Not that I was watching him or anything.

I nodded hello to Al January, who also did not choose to reminisce in public about the good times with Porter. He paused long enough to invite me to lunch the following day, so Kane had been as good as his word.

I recognized a few other faces from Kane’s party -- or from television and film roles. Valarie Rose didn’t recognize me when I said hello after the service finished and we all filed out into the little courtyard. Paul reintroduced us; she was friendly, if preoccupied.

“I’ve told Valarie you’ll want to talk to her,” he said.

“Oh. Right.” I smiled at Valarie and she smiled politely back. I could see she thought this idea of Paul’s was lunacy. I was beginning to think she was right, though not for the same reasons.

Paul made one of those rueful, charming faces. “You’re not going to bail on me, are you?”

“No,” I replied.

“Paul, you’re putting Mr. English in a really awkward position,” Valarie said.

Something in the way she stood brushing shoulders and arms with Paul told me that they were -- or perhaps had been -- lovers. Kane had a reputation for playing the field, and certainly Jake was not in a position to complain about double-dipping, but I wondered as I saw him approaching us.

“Not at all,” Paul said. “Adrien and I are very much alike. We both enjoy puzzles.” He added, eyes on Jake, “And other things.”

My gaze met Jake’s -- locked -- and I felt a flush of heat. Then again, I was standing in a stone courtyard with the bright June sun beating down on my head. I deliberately moved my gaze to Alonzo, who was staring at me with that amorphous hostility. His suit was dark olive and the finish looked shiny in the bright sunlight; for some reason I found that comforting.

As Jake and Alonzo drew within earshot, Paul said conversationally, “Has anyone ever told you your eyes are just the color of the Mediterranean?”

I noticed, tardily, that he was speaking to me. I could feel Valarie, Jake, and Alonzo all gazing at me, and I realized that while Paul Kane and I might both enjoy puzzles, we did not share a love of all the same games.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I said, and I squeezed his arm in friendly farewell, moving away into the crowd.

“That dress. Oh my God. What was she thinking…?”

“He must have paid for his plot back in the seventies…”

“Please. Memorial Property…”

I stepped around the snickers and whispers, keeping an eye out for Ally and her stalwart escort as I listened in on the conversations floating around me.

“Sudoku? The New York Times provides all the mentalrobics I need…”

“Funny no one mentioned how he had no problem pulling financing when the mood suited him…”

As I joined the line of mourners straggling down the shady road to Porter’s gravesite, I zeroed on the dialog behind me.

“I’m surprised Valarie would work with him after the way her torpedoed her last project.”

“If Paul Kane told Valarie to jump, she’d be the first one on the ledge.”

I missed the next comment or two as a black limousine rolled slowly past and we all moved to the side of the road.

“It’s ironic, really. He had so little time left.”

That was the woman walking ahead of me. I considered the elegant line of her black-clad back -- the glossy brown bob -- and I recognized Marla Vicenza, the first Mrs. Jones. From behind she could have been a woman half her age. Like so many actors, she spoke in a slightly louder than normal voice.

I unobtrusively picked up my pace.

“Do the police know that he was ill? Maybe it was an accident?” Her companion was an older woman in a dark pantsuit.

“Apparently not. It was some kind of heart medication. Not the kind of thing someone takes accidentally. Anyway, Jonesy was always careful about things like that.”

“That alone should tell the gestapo that it couldn’t have been anyone who really knew Porter -- as if anyone who knew Porter would want to hurt him.”

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” the Vicenza woman said. “No one would want to hurt Jonesy. Jonesy was a lamb.”

“What about that slut?”

“What would the hurry be? She’d have had everything in a few months anyway.”

They nattered on, but after a bit I stopped paying attention. It was obvious neither of them had any idea who would want to kill Porter Jones. Just as it was obvious that there had been no need to kill him. He had already been dying.

So the question was: who couldn’t wait for Porter to die?

* * * * *

“How was your funeral?” Natalie asked when I got back to the bookstore later that afternoon.

“Well, when you put it like that, I was hoping for better music.” I popped open a can of Tab from the office fridge.

She laughed. “It can’t all be Verdi’s ‘Requiem.’ You should let Warren pick the music.”

Over my dead body. I took a swallow of Tab. Caffeine. Ah, yes. I remembered it well.

She asked suddenly, “Hey, what are you wearing tonight?”

“Is this a trick question?”

She gave me a look of sisterly exasperation. “The family portrait? The one Lisa’s been talking about for over a month?” She burst out laughing. “Oh my God, your expression, Adrien!”

Too bad the cameras weren’t clicking right then. I asked, “What time and where?”

“At the house. Seven o’clock -- but I think Lisa is expecting you to come for dinner.”

“I don’t know about dinner,” I said.

“We noticed! That’s why she wants you to eat with us.”

“Funny.”

Natalie seemed to think so. I left her chortling and went upstairs to change out of my funeral wear. I donned Levi’s and a black T-shirt from the Santa Barbara winery, which Guy and I had visited last year. For a moment I studied myself in the mirror behind the bedroom door. I looked all right. Thinner than usual -- okay, maybe my Levi’s hung loosely off my hips in disconcertingly gangbanger fashion -- and I definitely needed some sun. A haircut wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I’d totally forgotten about the damned family portrait.

I went downstairs and, for a change, it was halfway quiet while the construction crew knocked off for lunch. Natalie was special ordering some small press titles for a customer; I grabbed the phone book and settled down in the office flipping through, searching for Markopoulos Investigations.

They weren’t hard to find. The half page ad proclaimed Lying spouses? Spying Louses? We are discreet and diligent! There was a cartoon of a man who looked disturbingly like Luigi from Super Mario Brothers smiling through a spyglass at his prospective clients.

Me, if I was reduced to setting a shamus on my straying spouse, I’d go for a company that looked less…fun. I noted the Web site address and looked them up on my laptop. No goofy logo. Just a picture of a generic Los Angeles skyline and the information that Markopoulos Investigations was bonded, licensed, and insured -- with an “eleven-year track record.”

I phoned and asked for Roscoe. The secretary came back and asked who she should say was calling. I told her. She put me on hold -- treating me to some fuzzy local radio -- and then returned to ask what it was in regards to. I told her. Back on hold in time to hear Miley Cyrus -- a big favorite with Emma -- singing about having the best of both worlds.

Miley disappeared and a brusque male voice asked, “Markopoulos. Can I help you?”

I reintroduced myself. “I understand you were working for Porter Jones, the film producer.”

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