Kill the Messenger

24

For a woman the size of a pixie, Andi Kelly’s capacity for food seemed to defy the laws of nature. She ate like a wolf, like she would actually snap at the hand of an unsuspecting busboy trying to take her plate away before every molecule had been devoured.

Parker watched her with amazement. LA was a town where eating real food was frowned on for women. Half the women he knew would come to Morton’s, order endive salad and a piece of shrimp, and go throw it all up afterward.

But then, Andi Kelly didn’t fit any particular mold. In Parker’s limited experience with her, it seemed Andi was who she was 24/7. No apologies, no subterfuge, no games. She said what she wanted to say, did what she wanted to do, wore what she wanted to wear. She was a breath of fresh, cinnamon-scented air—he’d noticed her perfume during the kiss hello. She greeted him like he was an old dear friend she’d seen just two days ago, sat down, and started chatting.

Parker was getting too keyed up to eat much himself. The nervous tension that wound inside him during an investigation like this one—a case that had snagged his interest, intrigued and challenged him—revved him up to a point where he didn’t want to stop moving, not to eat, not to sleep. He wasn’t quite to that point yet, but he knew all the signs. He could feel them now like the subtle foreshocks of an earthquake.

“So this kid, Caldrovics, says he got a tip on your murder,” Kelly informed him between bites of prime Angus beef.

Parker nursed a glass of Cabernet. “From who?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re kidding, right? These little devil spawn come out of the womb ready to claw your throat out so they can feed on your blood then step over your rotting corpse to move up the mountain to stardom. He won’t tell me.”

“Beat it out of him,” Parker suggested, deadpan.

“What do you think I am? A cop?”

“So you’re saying you’re old and you’re marked for death?”

Kelly snarled and sliced another juicy chunk off her steak. “I’m too mean to die. I know I look sweet, and everyone remarks on how pleasant and agreeable I am, but I have a dark side,” she informed him, pointing her steak knife at him. “I’ll turn this little shit inside out and pick my teeth with his bones if there’s something in it for me.” She gave Parker the hairy eyeball. “There had better be something in it for me.”

“You’re not the only one who’s after something in this,” Parker confessed quietly, his gaze casually scanning the territory around them.

Tucked back in lush landscaping on Melrose in trendy West Hollywood, Morton’s was a throwback to the days of old Hollywood glamour and still a hangout for deal-makers and power players. Particularly for the old-time heavy hitters, the generation that had never stopped eating red meat. They all had their designated tables forward of the second palm tree, where they could see and be seen.

Looking around, Parker wondered if an eavesdropper might tune in to his conversation with Kelly and mistake it for a movie pitch.

“Lowell’s daughter is holding back on me,” he said. “Someone tossed her place today, threatened to kill her. Assaulted her, she said.”

“She said?” Kelly arched a brow.

“Knocked her down. She didn’t look any the worse for wear to me.”

“Don’t you know it’s politically incorrect to doubt the victim?”

“My victim is Lenny Lowell, who’s dead on a slab in the morgue. For all I know, the daughter had him whacked. She’s looking for something besides her father’s will, and she lied to me about it. Whoever tossed her place was looking for something, and she claimed not to know what. If she was at that murder scene before I got there, I need to know about it. That’s why I want an explanation from your little friend down there at the Daily Planet.”

Sitting back, Kelly gazed with satisfaction at the puddle of blood and grease on her otherwise empty plate. She patted her mouth with her napkin, took a breath, and let it out. “Here it is, Kev: The kid says he picked up the call on the scanner—”

“Bullshit. He was never on the scene. If he caught it on the scanner, why didn’t he come to the scene? He never talked to me. Nobody said anything to me about a reporter.”

“Well, he claims he talked to someone who knew what was what, and that he confirmed with someone else at the coroner’s office.”

“Who at LAPD? Who at the coroner’s office?” Parker demanded, as if Kelly had given the kid written directions herself.

“Hey, don’t kill the messenger,” she said, reaching for the last of her scotch. “You asked me to find out what I could. I’m telling you what I found out. I got this from the boss.”

Parker sighed, scowled, turned the news over in his mind. “And it’s okay with him the kid won’t reveal his sources on this nothing little story?”

“A newspaperman? We’re all wrapped in the cloak of the First Amendment, or did you forget you’ve had your fill of ‘unnamed sources’? Nobody had to tell you where they got the dirt to smear you with.”

“It’s obstruction,” Parker complained. “This is a murder investigation. If this little jerk has something, if he talked to someone—”

“Maybe you can put the fear of God into him yourself,” Kelly said. “You’ve got more leverage than I do. He’ll think I’m trying to screw with him, get him in trouble, steal his story. You can, oh, I don’t know, pistol-whip him or something. Threaten to arrest him for a traffic violation then stick him in jail and lose his paperwork while he gets to know his cell mates on an intimate level.”

“So I’m buying you a steak at Morton’s so you can tell me all you have to give me is his name,” Parker said.

“Actually, that’s all you asked me to do. Think of it as goodwill that will pay off later,” Kelly suggested with a sweet smile. Her eyes were an amazing shade of French blue. Her hair was the color of an Irish setter, and looked like maybe she’d cut it herself with pinking shears. It stood up in a messy little spiky cap on her head. It suited her.

Parker shook his head, smiling. “You’re a trip, Andi.”

“To paradise,” she murmured dramatically, then bobbed her eyebrows.

“How’d this story make the paper at all?” Parker asked.

“Slow news day. They got down to press time and needed filler on the page. Caldrovics had two inches of ink for them.”

Parker’s pager vibrated at his waist. He unclipped it from his belt and squinted at the screen. Diane’s cell phone number.

“Excuse me,” he said, standing up. “I have to make a call to someone much more important than you.”

Kelly rolled her eyes. “You’re just trying to stick me with the tab.”

Parker ignored her and went out of the restaurant to return the call.

The marine layer had crept into the city, a cold, silver mist tinged with salt. Parker could feel it envelop him and seep into his bones, making him wish he’d grabbed his trench coat.

Diane answered before the first ring had finished. “Did I tear you away from a hot date?” she asked.

“Not exactly.”

“Where are you?”

“Morton’s. Where are you?”

“The Peninsula. A fund-raiser for the DA. I just overheard your name in a conversation.”

“Yeah? And then did they all turn their heads and spit on the ground?”

“It was Giradello,” she said. “And Bradley Kyle.”

Parker said nothing. Everything seemed to freeze in and around him for a few seconds as he tried to process the significance of the information.

“Kev? Are you there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. What was the context?”

“I only caught a few words. I got the impression Kyle was supposed to have done something about something, but hadn’t.”

“And my name was in there somewhere?”

“First there was a name I didn’t recognize. Yours came later in the conversation.”

“The first name—do you remember what it was?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t mean anything to me.”

“Try.” Parker held his breath and waited.

Diane hummed a little as she searched her memory. “I think it started with a D. Desmond? Devon, maybe?”

A rush of internal heat went through Parker like a flash fire. “Damon.”