15th Affair (Women's Murder Club #15)(26)

“Can you stay? I have to go to work,” I said.

Rich gave me a scalding look, but Mrs. Rose didn’t catch it. She stepped up once again, saying, “Of course, Lindsay. At this rate I’ll be able to retire to the South of France pretty soon.”

“Before you retire, I’m promoting you to captain of the Emergency Baby Care Squad.”

“Fine. I’d like a salute,” she said. “No one’s ever saluted me before.”

I did it and she laughed so hard that I laughed, too.

Which really hurt.

While she made coffee, I hit the rain box. I examined myself as I stood under the spray. I was bruised from armpit to knee, from midriff to halfway around my back. But I had no internal injuries and my brain was OK, too. Thank God. I concluded that the four Asian hoods hadn’t tried to kill me. If it was a warning, they might work me over again.

I dressed, hiding the scrape along my jaw and cheek with makeup, and strapped on my gun. Locked and loaded, I went back out to the living room. Julie was awake, wearing a sunflower-yellow onesie and bobbing up and down in her bouncy chair.

She looked adorable and like she’d grown an inch or two since yesterday. My little girl. She stretched out her arms to me and howled. My heart just lurched.

What if I had been killed last night?

What then?

I picked her up and hugged her, cooing a little bit, before handing her off to Mrs. Rose.

I had work to do, and at the same time, I was leaving my heart, my precious little girl, with the nice lady from across the hall.

“You coming or not?” Rich said.

I followed him out the front door.





CHAPTER 41


MY PARTNER OPENED the passenger-side door and helped me into the Bronco with the care one might give to a baby chick.

I buckled up, plugged in my phone charger, and knocked back a couple of Advil, already thinking about Alison Muller.

We were days late to be following up on our only suspect in the Four Seasons killings. But the airplane crash had bumped all other cases, even this quadruple homicide, to the back of the line.

Because of the crash that was immobilizing a section of the city and nearly every member of law enforcement, a wide range of criminals, from shoplifters to psychopathic serial killers, had been given a cop-free holiday. And that might include Alison Muller—wherever she was.

As we headed out, Conklin told me he had worked last night scanning social media and websites of companies where Muller had worked during her corporate career. He had downloaded an assortment of her photos onto his phone, and while he drove, I checked out versions of “Ali” with her hair in different lengths, styles, and colors. Even the “striped” look was represented.

“Rich, you’re one of a kind, you know?”

“That’s two of us,” he laughed. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

We took 101 South, passing through that stretch of road bounded on the right by scorched grass and littered with airplane parts and on the left by San Francisco Bay before we hit the straightaway that hugs our famous coastline.

We turned off the radio and used this time to examine the ragged edges of our case, starting with Michael Chan and the three other victims at the hotel. We wondered if the crash of the airliner and the missing body of the second Michael Chan were in any way connected to the death of Michael Chan, the First. We discussed Joe’s video appearances and his uncharacteristic disappearance and how the Asian men who had knocked me around last night fit into this mess of mismatched parts.

All we knew for sure was that Alison Muller was a central figure. And without her, we didn’t have a clue in the world.

We were still sixty miles out from Monterey, just south of San Jose, when I wadded up my jacket, tucked it between my face and the window, and napped for about an hour. I woke to nauseating stop-and-go traffic, and then Conklin was asking, “You going to file a report on your beatdown?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

The car stopped. I looked out at a sunny street lined with beautiful homes.

“Now that I’ve thought about it,” I said, “I don’t think it would be a good idea. Do you?”

He shrugged. “There are pros and cons. Like I said, Brady will sideline you, pronto.”

“I’m fine, Rich. I’m perfectly fine.”

He turned to face me, looking at me with heartbreaking kindness and concern. “You tell me if you don’t feel perfectly fine, Lindsay. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“I know.”

My partner turned off the engine.

“We’re here,” he said.





CHAPTER 42


ALI MULLER’S 1920S Mediterranean-style home on Ocean View Boulevard was stunning. The many-windowed white stucco house was roofed in terra-cotta tiles and punctuated by a six-sided tower at the right-angle juncture between two wings.

I looked up through the windows of the squad car at the spiky native plantings on a rising slope up to the carved oak front door and I felt—warned off. The place was beautiful, and as welcoming as a fortress.

Conklin said, “You OK, Linds?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

The man who opened the front door was handsome, just over six feet, in his midforties, wearing a cashmere pullover, dark trousers, slippers, and a gold wedding band. He looked well put together and not happy to see us.