Shadow Of Greed (Margot Harris 1)

“How did you get into my house?” Margot asked as she cleaned the area around the wound one more time and got ready to tape some clean gauze over the wound.

“You gave me a key, remember?”

“Yeah, I do remember. I also remember asking for it back when I caught you with that cocktail waitress.”

“I might have made a copy, you know, in case I lost the one you gave me.”

“I’m going to need that one too.”

“Why? It’s not like I abused having the extra key.”

“Dying in my place with a dead woman's bullet hole in your belly while Ames is trying to pin the dead woman’s murder on me would certainly constitute abuse.”

“But I didn’t die.”

“If Benton had an afternoon court date, you sure as hell would have.”

“You say that like you don’t know how to get rid of a body.”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t and if you know, don’t tell me.”

“You’d have figured it out.”

“How about instead of discussing how to commit felonies, you explain how you got capped with a dead woman’s gun? Last I heard she was having drinks at Lefty’s with some guy.”

“Yeah, they had dinner too. They took their time, but when they left, I figured I’d be tailing them both to some motel but they drove off separate ways.”

“That’s weird.”

“That’s what I thought, but maybe they were just friends. Anyway, I stuck with her. It was a long shot, but maybe after a nice platonic dinner with Mr. Friendzone she met someone else to do some dirty deeds. When she went home I was kind of disappointed until I remembered you bill by the day.”

“True. Maybe the Stone marriage isn’t in as much trouble as Mr. Stone thinks it is.”

“Never considered that. I did think either Mr. Friendzone and or Mr. Dirty Deeds might just be meeting her at her place so I decided to stick around for a few minutes. I was parked across from her house when she decided to take a walk on the beach.”

“Ames said she was found on the beach.”

“Yeah.”

“You saw it?”

“Kind of, it was dark. I was lucky to spot her. I was thinking it must be nice to walk out your back door and go to your own private beach when I saw a car pull in her driveway. If I hadn’t been watching the driveway, half-expecting somebody to pull in, I may have missed them since they rolled up with the headlights off.”

“That certainly sounds suspicious.”

“For sure, but it could have been her lover being extra cautious, which might be prudent considering who her husband is. Turning off the headlights is easy. Brake lights, however, are hard—or at least they’re hard to turn back on—so the flash of red as the car came to a stop convinced me I wasn’t seeing things. When the door opened no lights came on. Mrs. Stone’s late-night caller took his stealth seriously.

I didn’t get a good look at him as he went around the car and headed for the beach. I considered getting the license plate, but the man wasn’t the job. I kind of wish I had now, but given the way things went down, it was probably a dead end. Anyway, at this point, I’m starting to wonder if this guy's intentions aren’t very good.”

“I’d say they weren’t.”

“Yeah, it’s obvious now, but while it was happening I wasn’t sure. By the time I decided to head down to the beach, it was too late. I was going down there figuring to catch two people fucking. I was trying to be sneaky to get some pictures when I should have been running down with my gun drawn. By the time I figured out what really just happened, he was prying something out of her hand. I didn’t know it was her gun until he started shooting at me.”

“Did you shoot back?”

“Yeah, I thought I might have hit him, but all I did was wake the neighbors. My Glock was a hell of a lot louder than Mrs. Stone’s twenty-two. Lights started going on just in time to see my bloody ass leaving. No doubt someone got my license plate. Which is why Ames was leaning on you this morning.”

“Even if he knew you were there though, he wouldn’t know Mr. Stone was my client.”