Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

Justine said, “Don’t worry. We’ll be careful not to step in anything. Where is the master bedroom?”

Some other day, Justine would have enjoyed the house tour of the first-class chef’s kitchen, the loggia and pool, the screening room, the master bedroom that looked like a set from a James Bond film and was equipped with more high-def, high-tech gizmos than the Situation Room at the White House.

Justine expected a tidy closet in the master suite, but this one was a mess. Expensive clothes were hung haphazardly and draped over hooks. Heaps of shoes were under the racks, all types, in no particular order.

While Rick stood in the bedroom doorway, Justine used gloved hands to pick through the shoes. She was looking for a rubberlike sole that could match the three inches of usable shoe print Sci had found next to the tire tread.

Justine paused, trying to sort the shoes in her mind before diving in, and then she saw what she was looking for, a pair of ASICS GEL-Kayanos, the current trend in men’s conspicuous casual footwear.

She plucked the left shoe off the heap and turned it over. She called to Rick, and when he came to the closet, she showed him the bottom of the shoe.

“The good thing about transfer is it works both ways. The shoe makes an impression on the soil. And the soil—see it?”

“I see a dark crumb of something.”

“I see a happy day for Dr. Sci.”

Justine sealed the shoe in an evidence bag, starting as she saw that the housekeeper was now standing behind Rick at the entrance to the closet.

“You get me in trouble,” she said.

“No, no,” said Rick, using his very patient, even fatherly voice. “You don’t tell anyone that we were here. This is a top-secret investigation, covered by the California Seal of Silence. Understand?”

They were leaving North Bentley Avenue when Justine’s phone rang. It was Nora.

“You have something?” Justine asked. She put Nora on speaker for Rick’s benefit.

“We’ve got the Porsche at six stoplights from two to two-thirty this morning, traveling from Bel Air to Topanga Canyon. He was driving fast and leaning over the wheel, so we got close-ups of his mug.”

“This is good, Nora. And I think we have a cherry on top for you.”

CHAPTER 96

I WAS DRESSED in my best, had on the nice aftershave Justine had given me, and was driving the Lambo at a pretty good clip from the office toward Beverly Hills. Justine was sitting beside me and urging me to go faster.

She was edgy, and she was talking to me like I was hired by the hour.

I got onto the 110. Although it was largely ignored, the posted speed limit was fifty-five. I nudged the accelerator until I was going a shade over sixty, and still Justine was applying the whip.

“If we get pulled over,” she said, “don’t worry. I’ve got a friend in the LAPD.”

“I’m the one who’s out on bail, Justine. Bail can be revoked. Let’s not push my luck, all right?”

Justine said, “Uh-huh,” looked at her watch, then stared through the windshield. I knew she wasn’t seeing anything on the freeway. She was inside her head, thinking back, projecting forward.

“Justine. Hello. It’s me. Jack. I’m right here.”

“I’m running it all through my mind again,” she said, her voice heavy with exasperation.

“Okay.”

“Danny could have finished the film, but he’s so messed up, it would have been a joke. It would have been panned. And a bomb at the box office meant certain bankruptcy.”

“Piper’s death killed the film.”

“Yeah. Who would’ve guessed that could be a good thing?”

I left Justine to her thoughts, dwelling on other fights we’d had, how I hated them, how much I wanted things to be all right with us. Christ, I missed her. I wished she missed me.