Kill Smartie Breedlove (a mystery) (25 page)

“Thank you,” said Shep. “I’m starving.”

“I have some nice cognac in the kitchen.”

“Maybe later.”

“You were having a nightmare,” Suri said. “Was it about Van Reuse?”

He didn’t answer. She poured the tea, offering him the first choice of cups, as if to show him it wasn’t poisoned. Shep drank it and ate some flatbread with caviar. Suri took the lid from the honey jar and used an elegantly scrolled wooden dipper to drizzle a thick amber swirl into her tea.

“How deep is this thing with Barth?” Shep asked.

“Very.”

“How did it start?”

Suri set her teacup on the tray, dabbed her lips with a linen napkin.

“Before I say anything else, Shep, I’m going to need some tangible assurance of your continued cooperation.”

“There’s plenty to implicate me in all this, and with my record—” he started, but she shook her head.

“Circumstantial proximity and inadmissible prior acts.”

He considered it for a moment. “There’s DNA on the sheets. If we run crossways, you could charge me with assault.”

“Easily dismissed as consensual. Your word against mine. I’d need physical evidence.”

An innate tendency to keep his nose clean occupied the front of his brain. Fear of being burned again sat uncomfortably in his stomach. But the need to know why, to know her, dominated his heart. When he weighed them each in turn, the need to know won out.

“Add a scratch pattern.”

He moved the tray to the floor and laid his body over hers. Wincing as she clawed across his ribcage, he told her to do it again, then rolled onto his back, pressing the blood evidence into the bedding. He sat up and checked her hands, verifying detectible tissue under her nails.

“Satisfied?”

Suri inspected the stain and bit her lip.

“I still see plausible consent. I need bruising. Here.” She indicated her inner thigh. “And something I can match to your dental records.”

Shep reached inside the kimono and cupped his hand over her breast. Suri nodded and lay back on the bed with one arm above her head and positioned his mouth at the side of her breast. She pushed her lips together, but didn’t cry out until he kissed the deep impression and flicked her stiff, brown nipple with his tongue. She was stoic again while he raised her knee to her chest and left a hard grip-mark on the back of her leg.

“That should do it.”

“I won’t hesitate, Shep. I’m fond of you, but if it comes down to it, I won’t hesitate.”

Shep nodded and brought the tea tray back on the bed between them.

“Tell me about Barth,” he said.

“He used to work for a company that provides private security for oil industry professionals in the Middle East. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but his training is extensive, and his skills are diverse.” Suri selected the words carefully as she sipped her tea. “He was in Brazil for a while and became romantically involved with the wife of a client.”

“The plastic surgeon. Juarez.”

“Dr. Juarez began to suspect, so I had you follow his wife for a few days. Barth tagged you immediately. When he told Mrs. Juarez that we had her under surveillance, she offered Barth a fairly substantial sum to kill Dr. Juarez before he could proceed with the divorce.”

“But not substantial enough.”

“Mr. Barth approached me with an alternate solution,” said Suri. “Of course, I told him I wanted no part of it, but I couldn’t very well keep this information from my client. And I couldn’t prevent the two of them from having whatever conversation they chose to have about it. Ten days later, Mrs. Juarez was found dead.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“With what? The hearsay or the privileged communications? Juarez is my client.”

“Who now keeps you on a generous retainer.”

“For which he receives excellent legal counsel,” Suri said testily. “I’ve gotten him in and out of two subsequent marriages.”

Shep laughed heartily at that. “An incurable romantic, this guy.”

“I’m happy that you find it amusing. My twisting in the wind.”

“I apologize. We are not amused.” Shep brought her hand to his mouth, kissed her wrist, and stole the strawberry from her palm. “What about the Caitlyn Cassidy case?”

“As part of the pre-nup, Miss Cassidy and her husband were certified free of sexually transmitted disease before their wedding,” Suri said soberly. “When you presented evidence of his high risk behavior—drug binges, prostitutes—Miss Cassidy thought it prudent to have herself tested again. She was found to be infected. As was her eleven-year-old daughter.”

“Agh, Jesus,” Shep winced.

“That little piss dribble was gadding about Austin, squandering money for which his wife worked her ass off. His oily little attorney would come into arbitration meetings with this look of utter glee, grasping at every bloody trivet and teaspoon in the place.”

Suri closed her eyes for the duration of a deep breath. When she returned her gaze to Shep’s, she was a lawyer again.

“I was not about to hand over two-thirds of this woman’s assets to the man who’d maimed her and molested her child.”

“So you approached Miss Cassidy with an alternate solution.”

“Yes,” she whispered over the rim of her cup.

“What was the substance of the deal?”

“Barth wanted a permanent position with the firm. I couldn’t have that, but I set up a dummy corporation, a security company based in Dubai. I arranged for this company to provide security for the building, which is owned by the firm.”

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

“As they say.”

Shep pulled her down next to him on the bed, caressing the bite mark that was filling in nicely blue and purple.

“So now you essentially have him on retainer.”

“Essentially,” said Suri.

“Do the other partners know?”

“Paige Edloe suspects. But you know Paige. Bottom line is bottom line. As long as cash flow continues, she won’t trouble us. I’ve taken great pains to make sure there’s no paper trail between Barth and the firm. All the money goes out of the country, and there’s absolutely no traceable connection to me or to my clients. The few people privy to his activities have as much to lose as we do if it comes out.”

Shep’s eyebrow ticked involuntarily at her use of the word
we
.

“So there was Mrs. Juarez,” he said. “Miss Cassidy’s scumbag. Now Van Reuse. Have there been any other casualties?”

“Mr. Barth’s involvement is generally limited to a
nudge
, if you will. Tactics that fall into a rather gray area, but are generally within legal parameters and serve only to hasten an equitable dissolution of the marriage. I desperately wish Mr. Van Reuse had let it go at that.” She touched Shep’s cheek and added, “For your sake as well as his own.”

Shep asked about the anesthesiologist who ate the Imperial German general’s
Schnellfeuer
.

“The poor sod killed himself.” Suri shrugged, and when Shep didn’t respond, she held her hands up. “Some people kill themselves, Shep.”

“And others just look like they did.”

“I suppose we’re speaking now of Mrs. Bovet.”

“Are we?”

“I hate to tell you this, Shep, but Ms. Breedlove’s fertile imagination got the better of her. And I suspect Ms. Breedlove got the better of you,” Suri teased, tweaking him under the sheet. “I hope it was worth all the trouble she’s brought you.”

Shep allowed an irritated rumble from the back of his throat.

“Whatever little fictions she might have whipped up,” said Suri, “my involvement in that situation was purely spin control.”

“She’s already figured that out,” said Shep. “You can call off the dog.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“What was Barth looking for when he tossed her office?”

“I’m not aware that he did any such thing. Certainly not at my request. I thought you were on top of Ms. Breedlove.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“It’s bad form to brag about your conquests, Shep.” Suri sternly turned his face to hers. “Don’t brag about this one. Particularly to Mr. Barth.”

“Soul of discretion,” Shep pledged. “Did Barth do the job himself or was it the kid?”

“Kid? What kid?”

Shep breathed through the black key, his eyes locked into hers.

“Shep, I know nothing about it,” Suri protested. “Barth isn’t required to inform me of every little stone he turns over. Frankly, I prefer not to be informed. Plausible deniability and all that.”

“And you’re willing to trust that he found nothing he could use against you?”

“Well, I can’t imagine what that would be.” Suri looked at him, her lips slightly parted, and then she laughed an abrupt, nervous laugh. “That ridiculous little chippy? With her pathetically transparent ploy? As if I was going to be fooled into troubling myself over her and her wastrel husband. What could she possibly have gleaned from that? Unless…” A shadow moved through her gold-flecked eyes, the quick flash of a koi beneath dark water. “Oh, I do hope you haven’t spoken out of turn, Shep.”

“Of course not.”

“That would be a terribly unfortunate mistake on your part.”

“Suri, she’s flaky, but she’s not dumb. And she’s struck up quite a little friendship with Belinda Bovet.”

“Oh, dear.” Suri pondered that. “Barth isn’t one to waste effort.”

“If he did it,” said Shep, “or had it done, he must have had a reason.”

“Oh, God, how did this get so out of control?” Suri huddled into the cove of Shep’s shoulder, her cheek against his chest. “He’s got his tentacles in me, Shep. I’m paying him a hideous amount of money, and he’s getting quite bold.”

“That is a problem.”

“What do you think might be done about it?”

“Your alternatives are limited, Suri. You either take it on the chin or take it on the lam, and taking it on the lam…” Shep shook his head. “That never ends well.”

“Take it on the
chin
?” she said, incredulous. “Surely, you’re not suggesting that I should fall on the sword for everyone else involved. Because, pardon me, but fuck that.”

Shep lifted her chin with his finger and said, “Turn yourself in, Suri. While you still can. Roll over on Barth and the others. Cut some kind of deal with the DA, and let justice take its course.”

“What the hell kind of
justice
is that? Do you honestly think I have it in me to wriggle out of this by sending Caitlyn Cassidy and Jill Van Reuse to rot in prison, casting those children to the wind after all they’ve been through?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I thought you did.”

“No. I assure you, you would not.”

“Let’s talk about it later.”

Shep raised himself over her and kissed her deeply on the mouth, moving his mouth down across her breasts and belly and back to her mouth again. Suri reached for the foil accordion on the nightstand, but Shep caught her wrist and brought it to his lips, teasing the delicate bones and blue arteries with his tongue.

Suri pushed away from him with a Mona Lisa smile, reached down to the tea tray and used the little wooden dipper to drizzle honey over her bruised breast and flat belly, along the scythe of her hip bone and between her legs. She carefully replaced the dipper in the jar and reclined with one arm arced over her head and one ankle resting on Shep’s shoulder.

“This probably isn’t the best moment to tell you I’m allergic to honey,” he said.

Suri’s delicious laugh was full of lotus hearts and monsoons and the train from Pondicherry. The music of it moved through Shep from the nape of his neck to the caps of his knees, and he accepted the hard fact that if he had it in him to fall in love again, it would have been with her.

“Go take a quick bath,” he said. “I’ll get the cognac.”

She nodded and nipped his chin. “Don’t dawdle.”

“Don’t worry.”

Pulling her to her feet, he freed her from the kimono so he would be able to recall all of her, what she looked like walking away.

“Suri?”

She paused and looked at him over one sculpted shoulder.

“The first time I saw you,” he told her truthfully, “I knew I was looking at the most beautiful woman I would see in all my life.”

She smiled and said, “I do enjoy you, Mr. Hartigate.”

The bathroom door closed between them.

Shep nicked the foil packet from the nightstand and slipped down the hall to Suri’s office, flexing the second square on the accordion, which he’d carefully slit and gently resealed. A small circular listening device slid into the palm of his hand. He peeled a thin sheath of plastic from the adhesive backing and affixed it to the underside of her desk. Stepping quickly across the hall to the bathroom, he flushed the toilet, then turned on the shower and listened by the wall to see if she would do the same when she heard it.

She did.

Shep stepped quickly back to her office, slid another listening device from the third foil compartment, and tucked it under a buckle on her laptop bag. From the fourth foil compartment, he took a sliver drive, inserted it in the wireless router and made a quick check at the desktop monitor to make sure the Internet connection was working seamlessly through the interloper.

Back in the bathroom, he flushed the empty foil accordion down the toilet, rinsed hastily under the shower and tucked a towel around his waist. Pausing to listen outside the bedroom door, he heard Suri draining her bathwater. She opened and closed the medicine cabinet, started brushing her teeth.

Shep crossed to his neatly folded clothes and powered up his cell phone. The bathroom door opened at the precise moment he pressed the speed dial.

“Who are you calling?” asked Suri.

“Ordering pizza,” said Shep. “I’m starving.”

“Shep, don’t order in. It’s late.”

“Guido’s Pizza,” said a voice from the other end of the cell.

“Yeah, are y’all still delivering?” Shep asked.

“Hang on, I’m checking. Yes, sir, we’re good to go.”

Shep turned to Suri and asked, “What do we want on that?”

“
We
don’t want anything.” Suri pulled on the kimono and pushed her hands in the pockets. “You’re not going to be here that long.”