Death of a Pirate King - lanyon Josh - Страница 8

Anyway, thinking about how to approach the widow Jones was a lot better than thinking -- brooding -- about the fact that all the things I had believed about Jake Riordan were pretty much a lie. And now that I thought back, I wasn’t sure why I’d believed he’d given up his S/M activities while he’d been seeing me. He had never specifically said so; I guess I had just assumed it. Because I wanted it to be so.

If I was honest, Jake continuing his S/M activities wasn’t even the part that gnawed my guts. It was the idea that he’d been seeing Paul Kane steadily during that time -- because I really had flattered myself that I was his first genuine relationship with another man. He’d said so. But whatever he called his encounters with old English Leather, five years was a relationship to my mind.

So, yes, it bothered me. And it bothered me that it bothered me because…Jesus Christ, it was over. It was two years over. I was involved with someone else myself, so why the hell was I standing there with the smell of manure and horse in my nostrils and my stomach in knots over something that didn’t matter anymore?

It made murder seem like a cheerful change of subject.

According to Paul Kane, the only person at the party with motive to kill Porter Jones was his much younger and soon to be ex-wife, actress Ally Beaton-Jones. If Paul’s intelligence was correct, Porter had been planning to divorce Ally, and he’d had a PI following her.

“Let me guess,” I’d said. “There’s a prenup?”

“Common sense in this day and age,” Paul had replied.

And maybe it was. I’d never reached the stage of negotiations in my affaires de coeur, as my old friend Claude would have put it.

“Adrien, watch me!”

I looked up out of my thoughts, catching Emma’s grin as she cantered toward the next jump. I gave her thumbs-up and wondered if Lisa and Bill Dauten had drawn up a prenup, and what the odds were of my getting Em in any possible settlement.

Not that my mother’s second marriage looked shaky. Far from it. Which just went to prove how little I understood about these things. I thought of Guy and my thoughts shied as though faced with their own unexpected triple bar.

As fond of Guy as I was, I wasn’t ready to make any commitments -- and hearing from Paul Kane that he and Jake had been carrying on the whole time I’d been seeing Jake didn’t do much to improve my attitude. Why was it such a shock? After all, I’d known Jake was seeing Kate Keegan during that time -- engaging in unprotected sex that resulted in a pregnancy -- and I’d been able to deal with it. I’d even accepted it on one level. It was a little late to be angry now. Posttraumatic Sex Syndrome?

And why the hell was I once again thinking about this? Once more -- with feeling -- I redirected my thoughts.

My own impression of Ally and Porter was vague at best. If I’d realized he was going to get himself bumped off, I’d have paid closer attention. He had seemed too old for her -- and way too obsessed with deep-sea fishing. She had seemed very…blonde.

Blonde or not, I couldn’t see why she’d have to resort to murder. Granted, I was no judge, but she seemed like a girl who wouldn’t have a lot of trouble landing another meal ticket -- assuming her acting skills weren’t breadwinner caliber.

Maybe Porter had told her one too many deep-sea fishing stories. In that case, she had my sympathy. There had been a moment or two at luncheon when I wouldn’t have regretted seeing Porter impaled on a swordfish’s bill and disappearing into the sunset a la Captain Ahab in the last act of Moby Dick.

Anyway, it wasn’t like I had any theories, so Ally Beaton-Jones was as good a place to start as any. I just couldn’t imagine her willingly opening up to me -- even if she hadn’t knocked her old man off -- regardless of how sensitive and tactful Paul thought I was.

“Look, Adrien!” cried Emma.

I looked and smiled. Her cheeks were pink, her blue eyes sparkled, the dark ponytail bobbed perkily beneath her safety helmet as she cantered past, the gelding’s hooves thudding rhythmically on the sand. I never saw myself as the paternal type, but even I had to admit I was pretty damned fond of Emma.

“Heels down,” I ordered.

She giggled.

Paul had promised to phone Ally and set up my visit. That was fine as far as it went. I wondered if there was some way of my finding out the name of the PI that Jones had hired.

Jake probably knew. Jake was a methodical and relentless investigator. By now he’d be deeply immersed in Porter Jones’s public and private lives, sifting and sorting through the kinds of things most of us would prefer to have buried with us. But cops can’t afford to be tactful -- not in the ordinary course of things. In a homicide investigation every minute counts; most murders are solved within forty-eight hours. Of course, that’s because most murders are committed by morons.

Yeah, if Porter Jones had really hired a PI, Jake probably knew all about it. But there was no way I could ask him. I wasn’t going anywhere near Jake. Of course, I could always ask Paul Kane to talk to Jake, but -- funny thing -- I didn’t like that idea any better than the idea of me talking to Jake.

In fact, I liked it less.

Chapter Five

The Joneses were keeping up with everyone else in Bel Air.

The house sat at the end of a long, hedge-lined drive behind tall and ornate gates reminiscent of those guarding Paramount Studios. It looked like a small-scale replica of the Palace of Fontainebleau -- and probably cost more. Just one of any number of the lushly landscaped multimillion-dollar mansions dotting the winding hillside of Chalon Road in the Platinum Triangle of Los Angeles’s Westside.

A maid with a German accent opened the door to me, and I was escorted upstairs to an enormous bedroom suite. It looked like it had been decorated for Barbara Cartland -- or Emma. I’ve never seen so many shades of pink in one room. The grieving widow greeted me in her red satin slip. By greeting, I mean she spotted me and said, “I don’t have time to talk to you.”

“Would you prefer that I come back later?”

“I’d prefer you not to come back at all.” She held up two black dresses on hangers. “Which do you think?”

Did I look like Mr. Blackwell? “The one on the right,” I said, which is what I always say on the rare occasions a lady asks for my sartorial guidance.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, and tossed both dresses over the winged back of a rose-colored Queen Anne chair. Then, propping her hands on her hips, she stared at me.

I estimated her age as a little younger than mine. She was very tanned and very blonde. I’d assumed because her hair was such a brassy color that she -- unlike my stepsisters -- dyed it, but the startling absence of eyelashes and eyebrows indicated otherwise.

“I just have a couple of questions. I won’t take long,” I assured her. The flimsy slip and bedroom setting pretty much guaranteed that. Nothing against Ally, who was built like a Valkyrie, because I wouldn’t have been happy interviewing any half-naked stranger in his chamber.

“Hmph,” she said with a little toss of her head. I didn’t know women really did that. Hmph! Just like a cartoon character. Like Betty Rubble when Barney was more of a bonehead than usual. She turned away, rifling through one of those tall jewelry boxes that could have doubled for a walk-in closet, and muttered, “This is the dumbest plan. I don’t know what Paul is thinking.”