Gated Prey (Eve Ronin #3)
Lee Goldberg
CHAPTER ONE
Eve Ronin was topless under her black Chanel suit jacket, so everybody she encountered at Bristol Farms supermarket had their eyes on her chest. That was fine with her. She wanted to draw attention to herself but not to her face, which she feared people might recognize, despite hiding it behind a big pair of sunglasses. She also didn’t want anyone studying her blazer’s long cut, which hid her holstered Glock and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department badge that were clipped to the waistband of her skinny jeans.
Her partner, Duncan Pavone, a fat man in his late fifties, leaned on a walker beside her in the checkout line. He wore an untucked oversize Louis Vuitton blue camouflage silk shirt that matched his cargo pants and sneaker boots. He would’ve been invisible in a jungle of Vuitton logos, which Bristol Farms often was, but not on this foggy February morning.
He pulled out a thick wad of cash from his pants pocket, peeled off a crisp hundred-dollar bill with a flourish, and handed it to the middle-aged female cashier to pay for their deli sandwiches, an apple pie, and a bottle of wine.
“Keep the change, honey. I don’t do small bills.” Duncan winked at the woman and shuffled out, leaning heavily on his walker, leaving Eve to handle the groceries. Eve snatched up the bag and as she passed Duncan, he smacked her on the butt.
She didn’t mind the swat. It was all part of the act. Now anybody watching who was trying to decide if she was his twentysomething lover or his daughter would have their answer.
Eve took a leather-wrapped key fob out of her pocket as she emerged from the store and aimed it at the white Rolls-Royce Cullinan SUV parked in the handicapped spot.
The suicide doors of the Rolls automatically yawned open, revealing the decadent leather, wood, and milled-aluminum interior, and the plush lambswool floor mats. She tossed the groceries on the back seat. Duncan hobbled up and she held his walker steady for him as he climbed into the front passenger seat.
She folded his walker, stuck it in the back seat, closed the doors, and walked around to the driver’s side.
“You don’t do small bills?” Eve asked as she climbed in.
“My money clip can barely hold all the cash I’ve already got.”
“It’s all singles under that other C-note.”
“The money roll and my Glock are weighing down my pants. They’re only held up by a drawstring and I don’t want them to fall.”
“Is that how you’re going to explain the expense to the captain?”
“What’s he going to do, fire me?” Duncan said. “I’m retiring in eighty days.”
Eve started the ignition and they both watched as a slot opened at the tip of the impossibly long hood and the silver Spirit of Ecstasy ornament, a winged woman ready to fly, rose up from hiding and snapped into place. It was a grand performance to mark the beginning of each journey.
“I wish my Buick Regal did that,” Duncan said.
With one hand on the wheel, Eve looked over her right shoulder and slowly backed out of the parking spot. It was like looking down the aisle of a 747, but she didn’t trust backup cameras and wasn’t going to start now when she was responsible for a half-a-million-dollar Rolls-Royce. Twisting in her seat made her blazer gape open. Duncan peeked at her cleavage. Slight yellowing traces of bruising still colored her skin where she’d broken her sternum a few weeks earlier.
“Stop looking at my boobs,” she said.
“You know I can’t resist a mystery. How are they staying in there?”
“Tape.”
She faced forward again and steered the Rolls out of the shopping center, which was across the street from the woodsy campus of the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital, where her estranged father, Vince, a retired TV director, lived in a bungalow. The Rolls weighed three tons but it felt like the Spirit of Ecstasy had somehow lifted them into the air and they were flying above the road.
“You mean like Scotch tape?” he asked.
“Of course not.”
“Duct tape?”
“Boob tape.”
Duncan shook his head. “I’ve been married for thirty years, I’ve got two adult daughters, and I’ve never heard of boob tape.”
Eve hadn’t, either, until last week, when her mother, Jen, a struggling actress, came down from Ventura and helped her choose the wardrobe for this assignment. “It prevents wardrobe malfunctions.”
That was something Eve never had to worry about before in either her professional or personal life. All of her clothes were practical, simple, and not the least bit flashy. It was a reflection of her life, or at least how she tried to live it. But that hadn’t been easy since she became the youngest female homicide detective in the history of the LASD, a promotion five and a half months ago that generated lots of publicity and that the rank and file, and Eve herself, knew she didn’t deserve. Her most recent case, only her second as a homicide detective, ended with the arrest of several deputies and the suicide of another, putting her in the media spotlight again, deepening the resentment toward her in the department. Duncan was one of three people with badges who she completely trusted.
Eve made a left onto Calabasas Road and headed through the center of Old Town Calabasas. The Leonis Adobe ranch house and the clapboard storefronts were authentic, harkening back to the mid-1800s, but it still felt like she was driving through a movie studio back lot. That feeling was especially strong today, since they were riding in a Rolls-Royce confiscated from a drug dealer, and pretending to be a couple, hoping to attract the gang responsible for a series of increasingly violent home invasion robberies.