“Hit the road,” I said in Mike Hammer’s voice. In fact, I didn’t know what Hammer sounded like—which would be Biff Elliot in I, The Jury, then Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly—so I winged it. It must’ve worked, because Ignacio hustled across the street and into a red Chevy Cruze. I caught the license plate as he took off. It was a rental, which figured. His business card was from Chicago, home of tabloid journalism and tabloid politics. I watched as he sped down the street and turned right at the first opportunity.
Which left me with only one of two possibilities. I could get the hell out of there and go have a beer even though it wasn’t yet noon, or I could stick around and apply recently acquired detection skills to the place before calling Danya—very likely the aforementioned Shanna Hayes who was “so far outta my league, dude” that it was cause for unbridled laughter.
So, of course, I chose the course most likely to get me back into the national spotlight.
I’ve only got a few real knacks, but that’s one of them.
First a quick tour of the backyard, which was dry grass, crumbling brickwork around a long-defunct garden, and the garage, which was emitting a funky smell, like moldering grass clippings. The yard was enclosed by a six-foot fence of warped planks, gray and splintery from years of exposure to sun and rain. An ancient dilapidated doghouse was up against the back fence, no dog. And that was about it. Not much going on back there.
Then to the house. As Danya had thought, the back door was unlocked. More than unlocked—Ignacio’s exit had left it wide open. Which meant I could enter without breaking.
I stuck my head inside. “Shanna?” I called out loudly. “Anyone home?” My reward was a deep, dead silence—which gave me my second chill of the morning. With my luck, I would go in and find Shanna, all right, strangled or bludgeoned, and Vince on his way out of town, having ditched a stolen rental car, grinning because his real name was Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy, something like that. At least I hadn’t touched the doorknob and left prints.
With my gun out, very likely leaving a trail of hair and fibers, I eased into the house, into a kitchen with windows facing the backyard. Nothing was obviously out of place, no blood or appliances on the floor, so I figured there hadn’t been a fight in there. Still calling for Shanna, I crept down a hallway toward the living room and the front door. Halfway down, it branched to the right, toward two bedrooms and a bath at the far end. I took a quick look in the living room, empty, a glance out at the street, nothing moving out there, then went back to the bedrooms. The one on the left was smaller and full of girls’ things. The one on the right was the master bedroom with a walk-in closet, also full of girls’ things. The room had a king-size four-poster bed with a royal blue comforter and matching pillow covers.
“Who the hell are you?”
I whirled. The girl was wearing exercise clothes—red nylon shorts and a seriously overloaded gray halter top, bare midriff, a belly button ring that was half-inch gold handcuffs studded with diamonds or cubic zirconia or maybe even moissanite—hard to tell which from ten feet away. She was a vision; tanned, lean, tall, strawberry blond, covered with a light glaze of sweat, and she had a kitchen knife in one hand with a gleaming eight-inch blade.
Perfect.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE KEPT THE knife on me, so to speak. At least it was pointed at my chest. “Are you, uh, Mortimer?” she asked, wary, eyes narrow, mouth tight, still a little out of breath. I figured she’d just returned from a run—one of my myriad deductive skills bubbling up. It also explained why no car had pulled into the driveway at the west side of the house, which I might’ve heard.
Her question also told me I was expected, which meant there was a good chance she wouldn’t charge across the room and skewer me before I could answer. “Almost,” I said.
She lifted the knife another inch. Evidently no one had told her not to bring a knife to a gunfight. My revolver was still in my hand, hanging at my side.
“Almost? What the fuck does that mean?” She backed away a step.
“Language, kiddo. And the name is Mort, not Mortimer.”
That slowed her down, got her brain going again.
“Mr. Angel?”
Man, these people were hard to train. Mister? Well, I guess I was to this girl, twenty years old, give or take, and gorgeous. The word “buxom,” if applied to her, would have been a world-class understatement. “Mister,” however, put me out there at arm’s length and in a different generation—farther away than I wanted to be—no disrespect to Holiday. But the thought blew through my head that this PI thing—beautiful girls cascading around like confetti at a New Year’s party—was still right on track. Sixteen years with the IRS, a thousand field audits, and I’d never seen a girl like this.
I stuck my gun back in its holster. “That’s me. Or I. Not sure about the grammar, kiddo, so you’ll have to make allowances.”
She smiled, sort of, still a bit uncertain. “Danya said she talked to you last night.”
“Yes, she did.”
“Mind telling me where and when that was?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “That sounds like a test.”
“You got it.” She still hadn’t put the knife down.
“Good for you. Can’t be too careful these days, what with a world full of terrorists and politicians. I saw Danya in
