Deadly Gamble (25 page)

“Spare me the western movie clichés,” I said. “Of course it is. It's just weird that you'd give up your lab job, that's all. You must be down for a major cut in pay, for one thing. You have a nice condo in Tucson, friends—”

“I need a change,” she said. “I have plenty of money saved, so I won't feel the pinch for a long time, if ever.” She paused. “And I want to be closer to Lillian.”

“I still think there's more to it,” I insisted, but I understood about Lillian. From the looks of things, she didn't have a lot of time left and, like Jolie, I wanted to be there for her.

“Like what?” Jolie challenged.

“Like a man,” I said. “If somebody done you wrong, you can tell me. It's not as if I've got any room to judge.”

“No man,” Jolie said, and then she looked away, so I knew she was lying.

Before I could think of what to say next, she picked up a copy of the newspaper lying on the coffee table and handed it to me.

“Isn't that your uncle's wife?” she asked.

I focused in on the picture. Sure enough, it was Barbara Larimer, presiding over some charity event. She was rich and influential, so there was nothing unusual about that. What struck me like the heel of somebody's palm to my larynx was that she was standing up.

“Where's the wheelchair?” I muttered, scanning the article. I'd thought the photo might have been pulled from some file, and thus from an earlier and more mobile time in Babs's life, but it was current.

“What wheelchair?” Jolie asked.

“She was in a wheelchair when I met her.” I tapped the picture. Mrs. Senator-and-Maybe-Governor was smiling, her blond hair gleaming, and she looked strong enough to kick off her ritzy shoes, hike up her Vera Wang and run a 5K without sweating through her makeup. “What the hell?”

Jolie shrugged. “I just thought you'd want to see it because she's—you know—family.”

“You and Greer are family,” I said. “Uncle Clive might even turn out to be family. But Barbara Larimer—well—let's just say she and I won't be posing for shots for anybody's scrapbook.”

“You don't like her?”

“I didn't say that.” I read the article again, slowly and carefully this time. Barbara and the other senators' wives had raised a slug of money for charity. If she'd had a miraculous recovery since I'd encountered her a few days before, the reporter hadn't seen fit to include an account of it.

I was bugged.

I dug out Uncle Clive's card and called his office number.

I got Joseph. I knew who he was even before he introduced himself, by the freeze in his voice when I gave my name.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “The senator is in a meeting and can't be disturbed.”

“I just have one question,” I replied. “When did Mrs. Larimer shout hallelujah and rise out of her wheelchair?”

“It's really none of your business,” Joseph retorted, “but if it will get you off the phone, I'll tell you.” He waited.

I waited.

I had to pee, so I finally gave in.

“All right,” I said. “Tell me and I won't call again.”
Unless, of course, I damn well feel like it.

“Mrs. Larimer suffers from MS, and in this case, that is not an abbreviation for Mojo Sheepshanks,” Joseph said. What a smart ass, but I gave him points for a quick wit. “She has periods of remission, and only needs a wheelchair when she's very tired.”

“I see.”

“Good,” Joseph said. Then he hung up on me.

“Arrogant bastard,” I said to the receiver.

“If I didn't know about Tucker,” Jolie interjected, with a smile, “I'd say it was love.”

I snorted. “The man is a pig. He practically called me trailer trash the first time we met, and if he didn't live so far away, I'd put him on the list of suspects for the chow mein caper.”

“Is he cute?”

“He's a troll.” I slammed the paper down. Okay, a
cute
troll, but he probably gets his mail under some bridge.

“Why is this important to you?” Jolie asked reasonably.

“Damned if I know,” I admitted, but it
was
important.

I made a visit to the bathroom, then proceeded to the kitchen to check messages.

No mad killers.

No telemarketers.

Just Greer, wanting to know if we'd pick up some pasta salad at A.J.'s before we come over for dinner that night.

I hit 88 and called her back.

“Is Alex still out of town?” I asked.

“Hello to you, too,” Greer replied sunnily.

I wondered if I ought to tell her that I'd muffed my first real attempt at investigating her case. I definitely
didn't
plan to confess that I'd assumed her identity. She'd be mortified, if only because of my wardrobe.

“Hello, Greer,” I said patiently.

“Hello, Mojo,” Greer answered, with a laugh in her voice. At least she didn't sound crazy, or depressed. That cheered me up a little.

Presently, she went on. “Alex won't be home until tomorrow night,” she said. “I just talked to him on the phone. He sent me two dozen pink roses and said I ought to expect a package at any minute.”

Oh, shit,
I thought. She was going to cancel the job and ask for her money back. “So everything is all sweetness and light?” I asked carefully.

She laughed. “Hell, no,” she said. “The bastard is just trying to cover his tracks. Have you got anything on him yet?”

I felt guilty as hell because I was
glad
Greer wasn't going to pull my first case out from under me. What kind of sick attitude was that? I was cheering for the wrong side—I should have been hoping Alex would turn out to be innocent.

But I wasn't.

What did that mean? What did it say about me, as a person?

Was I a heartless, money-grubbing bitch?

Or did I simply hope that, if Greer lost Alex Pennington, she might find herself again?

“Not yet,” I said. “I paid a call on one of the suspects today. Gina Marchand. She runs a gallery in Old Town.”

“Do you think they're doing it?”

I swallowed, glanced uncomfortably at Jolie, who looked pensive as she listened shamelessly to my end of the conversation. “If I had to make a bet, I'd say they've done a tango or two.”

Greer let out an audible breath. “Is she pretty?”

“You put her in the shade,” I said, and I meant it. Okay, I might have been a little prejudiced, but Greer was a beauty by anybody's standards. Except maybe her cheating rat of a husband's.

“Does she have potential?”

“As what?”

“The mother of a second family.” Greer sounded wistful. Alex's
first
family lived on alimony and child support, somewhere in Scottsdale. The wife was active in local politics, and I'd run into her once, at Fashion Square Mall. The original Penningtons weren't hurting financially, but there are a lot of other ways to hurt.

Just ask me. I'd been through a similar thing with Nick, and the check from his mother wasn't going to change that. We didn't have kids, and we weren't married very long, but it still felt as though somebody had punched me in the stomach whenever I thought of it. While I was dreaming of picket fences and backyard swing sets and Christmas cards that said, “From the Three of Us,” Nick was making a lie out of every promise he'd ever made to me.

And believe me, there were plenty of promises.

I loved Greer. I really and truly did. But I couldn't help empathizing with the wronged wife.

“Her eggs would have to be rehydrated,” I said, shaking it off. “Alex might have banged her a few times, but she's no long-term threat.”

Greer was silent for a long, uncomfortable moment. “I know what you're thinking,” she finally said, softly and with no rancor. “What goes around, comes around.”

“I'm not thinking anything of the kind, Greer,” I replied. “I'm on your side.”

She wasn't listening. “I broke up a home, and now someone else is about to take a sledgehammer to mine. What am I going to do, Mojo?”

“You might be able to work things out.”

Another silence. I wondered if Greer was crying.

“Get here as soon as you can, okay?” she finally said.

“You got it,” I told her gently.

“And you can bring the dog.”

I said goodbye, hung up the phone and turned to Jolie.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“She said we could bring Russell.”

Jolie's eyes widened with sisterly concern. “Get out,” she said.

An hour later, Jolie and I arrived at Greer's in Jolie's Pathfinder, with three bags from A.J.'s, a basset hound and a whole lot of questions.

E
ven with all that was going on in our separate lives, there was something soothing and almost tribal about the three of us—Greer, Jolie and me—sitting around the same table again, there on the Pennington patio. A candle burned in the center of our little circle, like a campfire at the mouth of some primitive cave. Twilight fell softly, with a smattering of stars overhead, and the waterfall at one end of Greer's pool burbled cheerfully in the background, providing a subtle “dowah” to our sister-song.

While Jolie told Greer about the new job and recounted her visit to Lillian the day before, we nibbled pasta salad from the deli at A.J.'s. Greer served cold chicken breasts laced with rosemary and gallons of San Pellegrino. I was relieved at the absence of wine, since I suspected big sister had been hitting the sauce in lonely moments.

“I think you're crazy,” Greer said, apropos of Jolie's career change, but she looked wistful at the same time.

“Why?” Jolie challenged gently. “Because I'm taking a cut in salary? Sorry to be trite, but money isn't everything.”

“Great,” Greer sighed, looking from Jolie to me and back again, as though she were searching for some secret we were keeping from her, one that would make her life all right again. “You sound like Mojo. Take it as it comes. Skim the surface and never get in too deep.”

Jolie straightened slightly in her chair, and I tensed. It would be easy to call Greer on the glaring disparity between her talk and her walk, but it wouldn't be kind, and Greer needed kindness at the moment. We could deal with the bullshit later, when she was strong again, and capable of fighting back.

“Do you ever regret closing the design business?” Jolie asked quietly.

I let out my figurative breath.

Tears stood in Greer's eyes. “Yes,” she said, after a long, uncomfortable pause. “Does that make you happy?”

“Pull your head out of your butt, Greer,” Jolie said, in her singular Jolie way. “Mojo and I are on
your
side. I know all about the cheating husband, and how you hired Mojo to prove or disprove the theory. But something else is going on here—something you're not telling. If you fess up, we might be able to help you.”

Greer became fascinated with the waterfall in the pool.

Under the table, Russell shifted, in some doggy dream, and thumped his tail against the patio stones.

Jolie and I waited. I was nervous, but Jolie looked like a woman with her teeth in something and meaning to chew.

“I'm being blackmailed,” Greer said, after three or four changes in the partisan balance of Congress.

“Blackmailed?” I echoed, no longer slumping in my chair. “By whom?”

“Well, if I knew that,” Greer told me tersely, “I could put a stop to it, couldn't I?”

“Details,” Jolie demanded. “How did they contact you? Letters? E-mail? Have you told the police?”

“Of course I haven't told the police,” Greer answered in a peevish tone. She was huddling inside herself again, holding herself together with both arms. “I don't want this to become public knowledge. That, after all, is the whole
point
of giving in to blackmail, isn't it?”

“Why didn't you say something before?” I asked, more hurt than angry. In the years since Lillian and I had rescued Greer from the bus station, I'd never discovered anything real about her background. It was as if her life started that day in Boise, and the trail she'd followed to get there had dissolved, or never existed in the first place. I'd had to go on guesswork and suppositions.

Greer said nothing. She just looked at me.

“Shit,” I said, as revelation struck. “You were
testing
me. If I could nail Alex for adultery, then you would consider siccing me on the blackmailer.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“Are you going to tell us exactly what's been happening or not?” Jolie asked.

“No,” Greer answered, and I knew she meant it. Her tone was flat and cold, with no give at all.

“We're your sisters,” I pointed out.

“You,” Greer told me, with the same lack of inflection as before, “are somebody I met in a bus station in Boise.” While I was reeling from that, she turned to Jolie. “And you are Lillian's stepdaughter.”

“That's all we mean to you?” Jolie asked sharply. I was too stricken to speak. I wanted to load Russell up and boogie, and I deserve some credit for not doing exactly that. Sticking around showed I'd experienced some personal growth. Plus, of course, we'd come in Jolie's rig, not mine, and she had the keys.

“That's all I can afford to
let
you mean to me,” Greer said. “Lillian Travers is the only person in the world I know for sure wouldn't betray me, and she's practically comatose.”

“This sucks,” I said. “It totally sucks.”

Jolie plucked her elegant linen napkin off her lap and threw it down on the table. “Who the hell are you?” she barked, glaring at Greer. “And what have you done with
my sister?
”

So much for tribal spirit.

I scrabbled for my purse, rooted out my checkbook. I could afford to give back Greer's retainer, thanks to Margery DeLuca's apparent fit of conscience, and that was what I intended to do. I wouldn't miss the money.

I
would
miss the job. And I would miss Greer even more.

“Jolie,” Greer said, with cool intensity, “sit down. Mojo, put away the checkbook. I'm not cutting either of you out of my life. I'm just saying that this is big, and knowing you can trust somebody and doing it are two different things. I need some time.”

“You might not
have
time,” Jolie pointed out fiercely, but she looked as though she'd stopped hyperventilating, even if she still refused to sit back down at Greer's table. “Blackmail is serious stuff. Whoever's behind it could turn violent at any time. Have you ever thought of that?”

“Of course I've thought of it,” Greer said. “
Sit down,
Jolie.”

Jolie sat.

“Let us help you, Greer,” I said, once I'd swallowed the lump of hurt sticking in my throat like a burr. After all we'd been through together, after all the laughter and all the fights and all the girl-secrets we'd shared, lying in twin beds in some motel room, or in sleeping bags in the back of whatever car Lillian happened to own at the time, Greer was afraid to trust me?

“I want to,” Greer said.

“Then tell us the truth,” Jolie insisted, in an angry whisper.

“I can't,” Greer answered. “Not yet.”

After that, the party was over, and leaving felt like limping, wounded, away from a losing battle.

“I am
so
pissed!” Jolie blurted a few minutes later, when she was behind the wheel of her Pathfinder and I was buckled into the passenger seat. Russell barely missed a beat in his nap—he was already snoring in the cargo hold, nestled on a blanket I'd brought from the apartment.

I was biting my lip. “Did Greer ever tell you anything about her past? Before she hooked up with Lillian and me, I mean?”

“No,” Jolie said. She tossed me a concerned look before shifting her gaze to the rearview mirror to back out of Greer's driveway. “Look, Mojo, I know she hurt your feelings, but try not to take this too personally, okay?”

“I thought we were a family,” I said. “It never occurred to me that Greer didn't feel that way, too.”

“She does, though,” Jolie replied. “She's just scared. And if she won't tell us who's blackmailing her, and why, we'd better try to find out on our own.”

“How?” I asked. “Greer isn't her real name any more than Mojo Sheepshanks is mine. Lillian got her a new Social Security number, so we can't run a trace on that.”

“You're the private detective,” Jolie said, tossing me a grin. “Look it up in a
Damn Fool's Guide
. Check out some old lost kid/runaway sites on the Web. Most of all, chill. Greer's being a bitch because she's terrified.”

“Pretty lofty speech,” I observed dryly, “for somebody who made a scene at the table.”

“I'm human,” Jolie said. “Where to, Sherlock?”

I felt something intangible dance up my spine. Turned in the seat to look back at the headlights behind us.

“I think we're being followed,” I said.

Jolie sighed, glanced at the rearview. “You're taking this private eye thing a little too seriously,” she said.

“Somebody tried to poison me, I've been getting death threats and Greer's being blackmailed. Excuse me, but concern does not equal paranoia in this case.”

The car zoomed up behind us, lights on bright. Whipped alongside.

Jolie swerved to keep from being run off the road.

“Convinced?” I asked calmly.

“Probably just road rage,” Jolie said, but she sounded shaken.

The tail sped past, laying rubber on the blacktop. A black Mercedes sedan, late model.

“Follow them,” I said.

“Are you out of your mind? Whoever's driving that car could have a gun!”

“Just do it, Jolie!”

“Why?”

Yeesh. “Because I think that was Alex Pennington's car. So either he's not away at the medical conference, like he told Greer, or he left the car with a girlfriend.”

Jolie gave the Pathfinder a little gas, but not enough to suit me.

Up ahead, at a four-way stop, the Mercedes hung a right and shot down the highway.

“We can't be too obvious,” Jolie said, in reply to my unspoken question.

“Keep up, Jolie.”

Once in a while, the traffic gods smile. Just as we made the right-hand turn, I saw a squad car whip out of a side-road up ahead, lights whirling.

The Mercedes pulled over.

The squad car drew up behind it.

“Whoop-de-do!” I yelled.

“You really need to get a life,” Jolie said, but she slowed so we could rubberneck.

The cop waved us on.

“Pull over,” I told Jolie.

“Yeah, right.”

“I mean it. Pretend you have car trouble. I want to see who's driving that Mercedes.”

“I just accepted a job with Phoenix P.D.,” Jolie argued. “I'm not getting fired for interfering with the duties of an officer of the law.”

“Then just go around the block.”

“What block? This is a private road.”

“Turn around, then. If we get stopped, we'll say we forgot something at Greer's.”

“Damn,” Jolie said, but she turned around at the base of somebody's gated driveway and cruised slowly back past the Mercedes.

The cop ignored us. He was busy giving Alex Pennington a sobriety test on the side of the road.

“Hot damn,” I said.

Alex glared at us as we passed. He might not have recognized Jolie's ride, but he'd known we were at Greer's. And he hadn't liked the idea.

If I'd been driving, I would have given a few cheery toots on the horn, but I wasn't.

“I thought he was away at some conference,” Jolie said.

“So did Greer.” I felt smug. I was getting the hang of this detective thing.

“Why would he want to scare us, Moje? For all he knows, we were just hanging out with Greer. Come to think of it, he could have joined the party back at the house.”

“He doesn't want Greer to know he's in town,” I said. “And Gina Marchand probably told him I was in her shop today, asking embarrassing questions. I said I was Greer, but if the squeeze described me to him, he'd know it was me.”

“So why try to run us off the road? Now he's blown his cover.” We'd reached Greer's driveway again. Jolie pulled off on the opposite side. “Is there another way into town?”

I gave her directions, but I was almost backward in my seat, watching as the squad car pulled back onto the road, headed the other way. Alex's Mercedes followed, at a much slower pace.

“We could go back the way we came,” I suggested.

“Not a chance,” Jolie said. “Alex looked really pissed. I wouldn't put it past him to wait for us up there somewhere and cut us off. Then what would we do?”

“Ask him why he was following us, for one thing.”

“Oh, that's brilliant,” Jolie replied. “Did you see the look on his face when we went by the second time?”

I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “We've got him on the run.”

“You're nuts, Mojo Sheepshanks, or whatever the hell your name is.”

She kept right on going in the direction we were heading. “What is your name, anyway?”