Private L.A. (Private 6)

The Harlows’ housekeeper fell to her knees and embraced the boy, tears streaming down her face as she kissed him and spoke to him in Spanish, calling him her little one and her best boy. Pressing her shiny cheeks to his, she looked radiant and complete in an unexpected way. As if the two were deep soul mates.

Malia and Jin were on their feet, hugging Maria Toro and Jacinta Feliz, who’d also broken into tears.

“Look how big you get,” the cook said to Malia, who towered over her.

“You good?” Jacinta asked Jin.

Jin glanced at Sanders, bit her lower li

p, but nodded.

“They’re being well cared for,” Camilla Bronson declared.

“Dave’s hired round-the-clock help,” Terry Graves said.

“Cook. Maid. Tutors. Psychologists,” Sanders added. “Even a physical-fitness instructor. And we got a Wii and a Nintendo installed. Isn’t that right?”

Malia shrugged and then bobbed her head.

“But he won’t let us go out, Nita,” Miguel complained to the housekeeper. “He won’t let us watch TV hardly ever. He won’t tell us what happened to Thom and Jen. And he keeps Stella in a kennel all the time.”

Sanders gave a sickly smile to the boy, then to me and Justine, and said, “The dog’s been peeing everywhere.”

“And I advised that the children not be seen in public,” Camilla Bronson said.

“We’re trying to protect them from the howling mob,” Terry Graves said.

“I’m sure you are,” I said. “But who’s here to protect them from you three?”

Sanders acted as if I’d slapped him, sputtered, “How dare you insinuate that anything untoward has ever—”

“We’re fine,” Malia said to Justine. “No one’s hurt us or anything.”

Jin nodded, but her brother’s head was bowed.

Sanders’s chin rose and he gazed at us in triumph.

“Jack,” the publicist said. “You don’t really need to be here, do you?”

I winked at her a second time. “Why don’t you go get the dog so the kids can play with her, and then the five of us will have a little chat.”

“About what?” Terry Graves asked icily.

“C’mon,” I said. “You sound like someone who likes to know the end of a movie before you’ve even seen it.”

Chapter 93

AFTER BRINGING STELLA to the screening room, where the bulldog was greeted like Cleopatra returning to Luxor, Sanders reluctantly led us into his private library, a polished, meticulous man cave done up like an alpine lodge: oxford-red leather club chairs and couch; a poster-sized photograph of the attorney skiing at Aspen when he was younger; his framed degrees from USC and Boalt Hall; and a massive flat-screen television above the gas fireplace where the moose head should have been.

“What’s this all about?” demanded Sanders, who was flanked by Camilla Bronson and Terry Graves, both of whom were regarding Justine and me as if we were ferrets or some other kind of blood-seeking weasel.

I took one of the club chairs while they remained standing, said, “We think we’ve made a break in the Harlow case. Several, in fact.”

Their expressions mutated through a variety of emotions, surprise, skepticism, and wariness, all in a matter of two seconds.

“What—?” Camilla Bronson began before Sanders cut her off.

“You were fired, Jack.”