Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Disappearing Diva Page 6

  "Apparently not. Funny thing, though. He said the files that were hacked had to do with an officer named Bryan Steele." He paused. "Ever heard of him?"

  I thought about lying, but that shtick seemed done to death in this situation. "Of course," I said. "I'm a detective." Oops. There went another lie. "I know that Steele dated Rebecca Lowery."

  "Whose body just happens to be missing."

  "Talk about coincidence," I said. I gave him my toothiest grin.

  "Yes, let's talk about coincidence." He crossed his arms.

  Crossed legs and crossed arms were a bad sign. It meant he was closed off to a perfectly innocent explanation. If only I had one.

  "Does Mr. Holmes happen to know anything about this?" he asked.

  "Mr. Holmes?" I scrubbed at a nonexistent stain on the table. "No. In fact, I'm sure he doesn't." Mostly because he didn't exist.

  "How about you?"

  "Me?" I squeaked out on a laugh that sounded totally forced even to my own ears. "I wouldn't know how to hack into anything. I can barely figure out most of the apps on my phone." I gave him a sheepish grin meant to impart my embarrassing lack of technical know-how, when the cell phone in my pocket chimed with an incoming text.

  I didn't move. Not even my frozen grin.

  He frowned. "Aren't you going to check that?"

  "Oh, was that mine?" I pulled the phone from my pocket.

  Steele lives at 479 7th Ave.

  I put the phone facedown on the table, resolved to talk to Irene about her timing. "It's nothing important."

  "You seem upset."

  "Do I?" Dang, the grin had thawed.

  "Do you need to call someone back?"

  I shook my head. "It was a wrong number."

  Another text chimed.

  Watson's eyes dropped to my phone before rising to meet mine. "Maybe you want to let them know that."

  "Good idea," I said. Except if I did that, he might catch a glimpse of the screen. "I'll do it later. This happens all the time. Now, what were we talking about?"

  "Hacking."

  "Oh. Yeah. Right." Rats. So much for my seamless change of topic. "So, uh, do the police have any leads as to who might have been the hacker?"

  "Not yet," he said, watching me closely. "But they're working on it. I thought you might want to talk to your boss about it."

  "My boss?"

  A frown flirted with his perfect features. "Yes."

  I glanced behind myself, checking to see if Alberta, the day manager, was at the coffee bar. "I don't know what she'd have to do with—"

  "Sherlock Holmes," he said flatly.

  Oh, right. That boss. I swallowed hard. "I'll be sure to let him know," I said. "Or see if he knows. Or anyone else. I mean, I'm not the only detective."

  He stared at me.

  "Sure I can't get you some coffee?" I asked brightly.

  "Thanks, no." He made a move to stand, then hesitated. "One more thing."

  Customers were starting to trickle in again, much to my relief, lining up at the counter for service.

  I grabbed my phone and leaped to my feet. "I'm sorry. Pam's on break, and I'm working alone right now. I have to go take care of them."

  "Marty, wait."

  The urgency in his voice compelled me to turn back to him.

  "Are you available for dinner tomorrow night?" he asked.

  Pure adrenaline surged through me. Dinner? I'm available for dinner, dessert, a midnight snack, and breakfast. In bed. But probably I should play it a little cooler than that.

  "I'm not sure," I said. "I'll have to check. Why?"

  He sighed. "The thing is, I'd really like a chance to discuss what you've learned about Rebecca Lowery. To be honest, the circumstances of this…" He ran a hand through his hair, his expression pained. "Let's just say it's concerning to me. Professionally."

  My excitement was swept away in a flood of disappointment. And sympathy. "But you had nothing to do with it. You didn't lose the body. You followed protocol."

  "I know, and I wish I could put it out of my mind," he said. "But I can't. What do you say? Dinner?"

  How could I refuse? He was genuinely disturbed by the case, and I couldn't blame him. In fact, I felt the same way. Still, did I want to sit through another dinner with him while posing as a detective, afraid that I might say the wrong thing at any moment and reveal my flagrant deception?

  I glanced at his wide shoulders and pouty lips.

  On second thought, maybe I'd take the chance.

  My cell phone chimed with another incoming text. I shoved it into my pocket without looking at it.

  "Alright," I said. "Dinner tomorrow night."

  He smiled. "I'm looking forward to it."

  I wished I could say the same.

  * * *

  I felt like I'd worked a double shift by the time I slid into the passenger seat of Irene's car idling in the Tresidder parking lot.

  "Hey," I said wearily.

  "Hey, yourself." She paused, giving me a quick once-over. "What happened?"

  "Huh?"

  She rolled her eyes. "Your cheeks are flushed, you've been biting your nails, and your forehead is so wrinkled it's screaming for Botox."

  I sighed. She knew me so well. "Watson came to see me today," I confessed.

  "Nice." She pulled out onto Mayfield, toward Campus Drive. "How'd he look?"

  Hot. "That's not important."

  "It's always important. So what'd he want?"

  "We're going out to dinner tomorrow night," I said as casually as I could.

  She hit the brakes at a stop sign, lurching me forward. "He asked you out on a date? This is huge, Mar!"

  "It's not a date. We're just…having dinner."

  Irene grinned. "Uh-huh. Dinner. Together?"

  "Yes."

  "Alone?"

  "I guess."

  "Someplace nice?"

  "He hasn't specified yet…" I trailed off.

  "Dude. That's a date. That man's hot for you."

  I felt my cheeks grow warm. "He's hot—that much is true. Hot for me? That's debatable."

  "You've got to wear that cute little drop-waist Moschino dress and—"

  "That's not all," I cut in.

  "Of course it's not! You need shoes too. I've got just the pair." At the insistence of the cars behind her, she finally pulled forward again.

  "No, I mean, that's not all Watson said. He told me the police know someone hacked into their database," I told her.

  She shrugged. "So what?"

  "So Watson asked me if I knew anything about it," I said. "I said no, of course, but I don't know if he believed me. Which is why he asked me out to dinner. Purely to interrogate."

  "He can't prove anything," Irene said. "And neither can the police." She narrowed her eyes. "You didn't confess, did you?"

  "Of course not," I snapped. "I played dumb." I paused.

  "Then we're fine."

  "You seem pretty sure of yourself," I hedged.

  "There's a reason I make the big bucks," she said lightly.

  Which was true. She did make the big bucks, but she was the most low-key billionaire I'd ever met. Granted, she was probably the only billionaire I'd ever met.

  "Don't think I'm going to let you off the hook about that dress," she said. "

  "It's just a business meeting," I insisted. "With a side of interrogation."

  "Just don't let him tie you up." She paused. "Or maybe you should." She waggled her eyebrows at me suggestively.

  I shook my head. "Pay attention to the road, will you?"

  Nearly an hour later, we found Bryan Steele's house sitting in the middle of the block in the Inner Richmond District. The place was a monument to boring, a square, two-story building with four square windows above a square garage door and gated front entry. The outside was 1970s baby-poo-brown stucco, the windows all barred, and the garage door was a utilitarian rust color. No flowerpots, no kitschy architecture The City was known for, and no personality. Even the windows were boring, covered in simple white horizontal blinds beyond their prison cages. Clearly there'd been no feminine touch at play here.

  Irene turned to me. "Ready to talk to Officer Steele or what?"

  My choice was "or what," but she was already out of the car, so I hurried after her, trying to ignore the anxious flutters in my stomach. It was one thing to play PI with Barbara Lowery Bristol. It was another to do it with a police officer, especially a police officer with a temper. I wasn't at all sure we could pull this off.

  When he answered Irene's knock on the door, Bryan Steele's appearance immediately betrayed his profession. He stood a little over six feet tall, with a broad chest, close-cropped brown hair, and suspicious brown eyes. He was not smiling, and I wasn't sure if he ever had. "Yeah?"

  Irene stepped forward, unflinching. "Bryan Steele? We'd like to ask you some questions about Rebecca Lowery."

  "I don't talk to reporters," he said flatly.

  "Good thing we're not reporters then." She smiled at him, to no discernible effect. "My name is Irene," she said. "This is my partner, Marty."

  "Partner," he repeated. "You on the job?"

  "Private," she said. "We've been hired to find Rebecca Lowery. Her body, that is."

  "Hired," he repeated. If he felt any grief at the mention of his deceased girlfriend, he hid it well.

  She nodded. "We're private investigators. We work for Sherlock Holmes. Have you heard of him?"

  "No."

  This was like trying to interview Mt. Rushmore.

  To Irene's credit, she forged ahead. "You do know Rebecca Lowery's body is missing, right?"

  He crossed his arms, making his biceps bulge, probably as a means of intimidation. "Who hired you, exactly?"

  So he could form actual sentences.

  I stepped forward so that Irene didn't have to do all the heavy lifting. "Barbara Lowery Bristol," I said. "Her sister."

  He let out a derisive snort. "That's rich. Barb couldn't have cared less about Rebecca."

  Irene's glance silently entreated me to continue.

  "Why would you say that?" I asked. "She cared enough to hire us to find her."

  "Probably wanted to make sure she's really dead," he said. "She tell you they hadn't spoken in years?"

  I nodded. "Yes, she did."

  "She feels bad about that," Irene added.

  "Suckers," he muttered under his breath.

  I bristled. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Steele leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, arms still crossed, perfectly at ease in his derision. "She also tell you Rebecca was going to sue her?"

  I tried to hide my surprise. "Maybe she didn't know."

  "Oh, she knew. Just like she knew what she was doing when she moved into their dead parents' house instead of selling it and splitting the proceeds like she was supposed to. Barb is all about the money."

  My shock must have registered on my face, as his expression held a hint of a smile for the first time. "Bet she didn't mention that, did she?" he pressed.

  "You said going to sue her," I said instead of answering. "Does that mean Rebecca never went through with it?"

  He focused on a point somewhere over our heads, out in the trees. "Rebecca gave her sister a break and waited, hoping she'd come to her senses. I told her that wasn't going to happen, but she wouldn't listen. Finally, when she realized the truth, Rebecca decided to sue for her rightful half of the inheritance."

  That couldn't be farther from the story Barbara had given us. True, she hadn't been wracked with grief when it came to her sister, but she had flown halfway across the country and hired private investigators—or at least us—to find her. That had to count for something.

  "When, exactly, did she finally decide to sue?" Irene asked.

  Bryan pinned us with a stony look. "A couple weeks ago. Rebecca called her sister and warned her about it."

  If Bryan Steele was telling the truth, it was hard to deny the timeliness of Rebecca's death as far as Barbara was concerned. If she was as money-hungry as he suggested, Barbara could have removed the threat to her inheritance by removing her own sister.

  Which meant we could be working for a killer.

  "When was the last time you saw Rebecca?" Irene asked him.

  He reverted to his default scowl. "I dunno. Why?"

  "You were seen at the theater arguing with her just days before her death."

  "What do you care? Her death was an accident, right?"

  "Officially," Irene said.

  He narrowed his eyes. "What kind of crap is her sister trying to stir up, huh?"

  "Is there anything to stir up here?" Irene pressed.

  I bit my lip. The way Bryan's jaw was setting and his muscles tensing, I wasn't too keen on stirring anything else up.

  "What, you thinking I killed her and dumped her in a vat of acid or something?"

  Ugh. Now I was.

  "Let me help you out. I didn't." He glanced at his watch. "You finished?"

  "Not quite," Irene said. "What did you two fight about at the Bayside Theater?"

  His expression turned to granite. "We're done here." He stepped back and slammed the door in our faces.

  Irene stared at it. I could feel her eyes narrowing and her spine straightening. Irene was not used to doors slamming in her face.

  "Let's go," I urged her. "Before he gets his gun."

  She let me pull her away from the house. "What a charmer. How could any woman resist him?"

  "It might be grief talking."

  "It might be guilt talking."

  We got into the car.

  "Do you believe him?" I asked.

  "You mean that not-so-subtle implication that Barbara had her own sister killed?"

  I nodded.

  "I don't know. I mean, he is being investigated by Internal Affairs. Doesn't exactly paint him as an upright citizen."

  "But it seems an odd thing to make up," I reasoned. "It would be easy enough to check public records to find out about the inheritance from the parents."

  Irene chewed her lower lip, thinking. "Okay," she said finally, "this is diabolical, but let's say Barbara did have Rebecca killed. Why go to the trouble of hiring us then?"

  "As a red herring," I said slowly. "I mean, maybe she thought it made her look innocent."

  "So, Barbara stole the body herself to cover up the crime, then hired us to look for it?"

  "Assuming we'd never find her sister." Suddenly I felt a dip in my stomach. Had Barbara Bristol hired us not because we had a stellar reputation but because we had virtually no reputation? Had she hired us because she thought we'd fail?

  I blew out a breath so hard it ruffled my hair. I didn't feel good about cashing a possible killer's check. And I certainly didn't want to help one cover up her crime.

  "So, what do we do now?" I asked. "I mean, what do we tell Barbara Bristol? 'Thanks but no thanks for hiring us…'" I hesitated.

  "Even though it was because you thought we'd never be skilled enough to find her?" Irene finished, following my same train of thought.

  I nodded. "Yeah. That."

  "It's pretty clever, really," Irene mused. "It also supports any future claim of innocence Barbara might need to make. Can't you just imagine it? 'But Judge, if I'd killed her, I'd never have hired a private investigator to find her.'"

  "Believing she wouldn't be found." I paused.

  "Like I said, diabolical."

  I sighed. "Normal baristas don't need to worry about dealing with this kind of thing."

  "They also can't afford to renovate pricey Victorians," she pointed out.

  I knew that. I just didn't know if it was enough.

  "Know what I think?" Irene started the car. "I think we need to find out more about our client. Maybe Steele's story wasn't even true."

  I could only hope. The case was unsettling enough without working for a body-snatching murderer.

  CHAPTER SIX

  "I don't understand." Dominic Gordon frowned at us over the top of a huge arrangement of pink carnations, baby's breath, and lush greens in a pink vase. The flowers would have been lovely, except he was holding them while standing in Viewing Room Two, beside a pearl gray casket that was presently occupied by a pink-cheeked, white-haired lady who, for reasons I couldn't understand, was still wearing her glasses. "Why do you need to contact Miss Lowery's attorney?" he asked. "I followed all his directives. Do you think I've done something wrong?"

  I didn't think it.

  "It's routine," Irene said. "We just have a few questions for him."

  "Questions about me?" He settled the vase on the floor beside a smaller arrangement of daisies, which seemed incongruously cheerful for a wake. It turned out that Viewing Room Two was no improvement over the lobby. Faded flocked wallpaper, thin dirt-colored carpet, dusty faux crystal sconces. Viewing Room Two made my apartment look luxe. A visitor's book lay open to its first blank page on a podium near the doorway, along with a few pens and a stack of prayer cards. I wished the pink-cheeked lady well in the afterlife. It seemed to me she'd already paid her dues, being buried out of such a bargain basement mortuary.

  "Listen." Gordon dropped a thin, cold hand on my shoulder to steer me away from the casket to the rows of folding chairs that faced it. When he sat beside me, I could have sworn I felt a rush of cold air envelop me. Instinctively, I leaned away.

  Irene remained near the casket, her distrust evident in her expression.

  His long, thin fingers intertwined, dancing like anemones in an aquarium. "I have an idea," he said. "You don't call the lawyer on me, and I'll give you both a 5 percent discount on a preplanned life celebration. How about that?"

  I planned to celebrate my life while I was alive.

  "To be honest," I began.

  "Ten percent," he cut in, clearly not interested in honest. "Ten percent and I'll throw in my top-of-the-line casket, the Sleeping Beauty." He stood and glided toward Irene. "You'll look like a movie star," he assured her.

  "I don't think so," she hedged, looking like a trapped gazelle between Mr. Creepy and the occupied casket.

  "Okay. Alright." He pressed his hands to his mouth, considering. "How does this sound? Fifteen percent off and free embalming. That's some deal. Don't make the mistake of waiting. You can't plan your life celebration soon enough."