Private L.A. (Private 6)

Much the way her mind had whirled back to the attack in the cell in Guadalajara, Justine’s thoughts now flew to the timeline of events she’d been carrying around in her head. Based on the surviving security camera footage, Jennifer Harlow had last been seen leaving the house on her evening run around eight. Justine would bet that Héctor Ramón was killed at roughly the same time, or shortly thereafter in that two-hour gap that Del Rio had discovered. But why kill the groundskeeper? Why not others?

“Are the dogs still searching?” she asked.

“Dissecting the estate on a grid pattern,” McCormick said.

Justine blinked, nodded, felt indescribably tired. She looked at Sci. “I’m not feeling that well, Seymour. Think I need to head back to L.A.”

“You okay?” he asked.

“Just a little light-headed,” she said. “And there’s not much more I can do here today anyway.”

Sci’s elastic face turned concerned. “I’ve never heard you trying to cut short your workday before, Justine. You want

to see a doctor?”

“No, I just need to go home, get some sleep. I’ll be better tomorrow.”

Chapter 70

GUIN SCOTT-EVANS WORE a mask, a bikini made of iridescent feathers, and glittering high-heeled pumps. She held out her hand to me, said, “Have you seen Tommy or Carmine anywhere? They’re late for the ball, Jack, and I so wanted to dance.”

“Jack?” Mo-bot called, and rapped on my doorjamb.

I startled awake from a nap on the sofa in my office, sat up, looked around groggily, saw the wonder lady moving toward my desk, and groaned. “Time is it?”

“Four in the afternoon,” she said. “Sci just called. Cadaver dogs sniffed Héctor Ramón’s body at the Harlow estate.”

That woke me up. “Any other bodies?”

“They’re looking.”

Mo-bot is by nature a mothering type. She also has a case of OCD when it comes to messiness, and rearranges my desk whenever she can. She started stacking folders, said, “Found a few things in those files you brought me.”

“Tell me,” I said, sitting up, desperately wanting a cup of coffee now.

Maureen looked down at the hopelessness of my desktop, hesitated, sighed, said, “It’s better I show you.”

I followed her down the hall to Sci’s lab, trying to figure out why I was so damn tired, then remembering that facing down a mobster and a conniving brother is a stressful thing, wrings you out. I stopped in the office break room, got a cup of coffee, and then went to sit beside Mo-bot at her workstation, looking at an array of screens that displayed scans of various legal and financial documents detailing the activities of Harlow-Quinn Productions and the making of Saigon Falls.

“This is dense stuff,” Mo-bot began. “And some of the accounting practices at work here are as archaic as a film studio’s. And forgive me, I haven’t waded through half of it yet, but—”

“But you’ve found something,” I pressed. Much as I love her, Mo-bot has a tendency to qualify everything if I let her.

She nodded, annoyed. “Until roughly twenty-four hours before they disappeared, the whole kit and caboodle was on the verge of insolvency. They were burning through cash at an astonishing rate, shooting in Vietnam.”

“That’s what Sanders said,” I replied.

“He did,” Mo-bot replied. “He also said that Thom predicted a white-knight investor, which is what he got.”

“When?”

“Day after they got back,” she said, and typed on her keyboard.

Up popped evidence of a ten-million-dollar deposit in the account of Harlow-Quinn Productions.

“Canceled check?” I asked.

“Ahead of you.”