Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 21

I took the stairs down to Justine’s office, which was directly under mine. Three associates were arrayed around her semicircular desk: Kate Hanley, Lauri Green, and our sixty-year-old virtual chameleon of a sleuth, Bud Rankin.

Justine was assigning them to collect background on all five of the hotel murder victims.

She looked up, her long dark hair hanging to her shoulders, framing her lovely face.

She thanked the troops and they filed out.

I sat down and told Justine about Noccia’s offer that I couldn’t refuse.

“We’re not taking the job, are we?”

“I don’t want to.”

“I vote, no, no way, and not in a million years.”

“Duly noted.”

“Now, bring me up to date on Colleen.”

About me and Justine. A few years back, we bought the beach house where I live as a future wedding present to us both. We made a lot of love and had a lot of good times in that house. Truth is, we fit together in every way-but one.

I don’t like to spill my guts. And Justine is a shrink. I’m guarded, or what she calls “too well-defended,” and she gets pissed off. Then she closes up. And she stays mad.

We were lovers. We broke up, then tried it again with the same result. After we split up the second time, more than a year ago, I started seeing Colleen-and Justine dated a guy not half good enough for her.

A few months ago, we were both unattached again, and we’d started dating in a noncommitted way. I still couldn’t open up. She still couldn’t tolerate that. So for good and for bad, not much had changed.

Sitting here looking at her, I couldn’t understand why I had to talk when Justine could pretty much read my mind.

She was peeling back the layers even now.

“There’s a witness,” I said. “A neighbor says she saw me on the beach around the time Colleen was killed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It wasn’t me.”

I leaned back in the chair without breaking eye contact with Justine.

“God. It was Tommy,” she said.

We were both thinking about my evil twin. Would he dare set me up to be tagged for Colleen’s murder? Did he really hate me that much?

Justine asked, “What do you think happened?”

“I think she was walked in, maybe at gunpoint. She had the electronic gate key, and whoever killed her pressed her finger to the pad at the door.”

“Colleen still had access?”

“She’s not the only one. You’ve got access too.”

“I’m sure it’s a pretty big crowd of insiders,” Justine said, swiveling her chair away from me.

“I’m not hiding anything from you,” I said-but that wasn’t entirely true.

She swiveled back. “You’re not telling me everything, Jack.”

She was right. But the part I was leaving out had nothing to do with Colleen’s murder.

“Colleen and I had lunch. There was a lot on my mind. I had to catch a plane. She was in a good mood. She seemed okay to me, but we didn’t talk about anything important.

“Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to set me up.”

“Okay.”

“I’m staying at the Sun for a few days. Until the cops give me back the house. Let’s have dinner there.”

“Not tonight,” she said. “I have plans.”

That was a lie.

She said, “What are you going to do about Tommy?”

“What would you do?”

“I’d go back in time and loop the umbilical cord around his neck. Make a slipknot and pull it tight.”

“I wish I’d thought of that.”

We both laughed loud and long.

It felt really good to laugh.