Deadly Deceptions. Linda Miller Lael

wanted to cry every time I looked at her.

      Which wasn’t about the outfit, I know, but I needed to do something.

      While Gillian watched TV, I brewed a pot of tea and sat down at my kitchen table to study The Damn Fool’s Guide to Sign Language.

      After two hours I knew how to say, “The cow is brown” and ask for directions to the nearest restroom.

      Not very impressive, I know. But it was a start.

      When I finally went to bed Gillian was still sitting on the couch, staring blindly at the TV screen.

      CHAPTER THREE

      GILLIAN WAS GONE when I got up the next morning, and the TV was still on. Closed-captioned dialogue streamed across the screen.

      I sighed. Picked up the remote and switched to a news channel, clicking off the subtitle feature.

      This was an act of courage. Because of my last excellent adventure, I’d been all over the media for days. That’s what happens, I guess, when you suddenly remember who killed your parents when you were five years old, and the guilty parties try to shut you up before you can spill the proverbial beans.

      That was last week, I told myself, but it wasn’t much consolation.

      The talking heads were prattling about obesity in children, and I regarded that as a positive sign. Nothing bombed, nothing hijacked. A slow news day is a good news day.

      Trying to decide whether I ought to go to Wal-Mart for ghost clothes or run down another lead on Greer’s cheating husband, I padded into the kitchen to start a pot of java. Greer’s coffeemaker was state of the art, unlike mine, and I had my choice of everything from cappuccinos and lattes to cocoa and hot cider.

      All I wanted was coffee, damn it. Plain, ordinary, simple coffee.

      Again I missed my apartment and the chortle-chug of my own humble brewing apparatus. Heebie-jeebies or not, I was going to have to bite the bullet and go back. All this luxury was getting to me in a big way.

      I wrestled a single cup of caffeine from the sleek monster machine, with all its shining spouts and levers, and headed back to the living room, blinking blearily at the TV screen as the theme shifted from fat kids to Gillian Pellway’s murder investigation.

      Tucker Darroch’s harried face appeared, close up, then the camera panned back. He was wearing a blue cotton work shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, along with jeans and Western boots, and he looked as though he’d like to be anywhere else but in front of the sheriff’s office with a microphone practically bumping his lower lip.

      “An arrest has been made, and yet the investigation continues?” the reporter asked. “Does that mean you aren’t sure you have the right man in custody?”

      “Mr. Erland hasn’t been formally charged,” Tucker answered, tersely patient. “He’s being held for questioning.”

      “He’s been in the county jail for almost a week,” the reporter pointed out helpfully. She was ultra-skinny—obesity clearly wasn’t rampant among media types—and wore a pink suit with a pencil skirt and fashionably short jacket. Her hair was blond and big. “Doesn’t that indicate that Mr. Erland is a prime suspect?”

      Personally, I thought she was standing a tad closer to Tucker than absolutely necessary. I get sidetracked by things like that.

      I took another slurp of coffee and reminded myself that I had no claim on Tucker Darroch. Oh, no. He still belonged to Allison, the divorce notwithstanding. While I’d tossed and turned in my lonely bed the night before, dreaming about dead people, he’d probably been snuggled in his ex-wife’s arms.

      I almost choked on the coffee.

      “Mr. Erland,” Tucker said evenly, “is a person of interest, not a suspect.”

      Copspeak, I thought. Tucker couldn’t make a definitive statement regarding Erland’s innocence or guilt—I knew it, Tucker knew it and so did the reporter, along with most of the viewing audience, a few flakes excepted. It was all rhetoric to fill airtime.

      Translation: nobody knew jack-shit.

      The interview ended.

      The telephone rang.

      A wild fantasy overwhelmed me. It was Tucker, I decided, calling to ask if I’d seen him on TV.

      As if he’d ever do that.

      “Hello?” I cried into the cordless receiver I’d snatched up from the coffee table.

      “Who is this?” an unfamiliar female voice demanded.

      I bristled, disappointed. “You first,” I said. “After all, you’re the one who placed the call.”

      There was a short standoff, and I was about to break the connection when the caller relented.

      “My name,” the woman said, “is Mrs. Alexander Pennington. And I’m looking for Mojo Sheepshanks.”

      I hadn’t had all that much coffee. It took a moment for my brain to grope past Greer, the only “Mrs. Alexander Pennington” I knew, to the ex-wife with the drinking problem. I’d met her once at Fashion Square Mall, and her image assembled itself in my mind—overweight, expensively dressed, too-black hair worn Jackie O bouffant.

      “This is Mojo,” I said, against my better judgment. “What do you want?”

      All right, maybe that question was a little abrupt, but it was direct and to the point. The first Mrs. Pennington knew I was Greer’s sister, and that meant she’d probably called out of some codependent need to harangue the trophy wife in a flank attack. It’s always better to be direct with that kind of person.

      “I understand you’re a private investigator now,” Mrs. Pennington #1 said with drunken dignity. I wondered if she was still under the influence of last night’s cocktail hour, or if she subscribed to the hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you theory and had started the day with a Bloody Mary.

      I closed my eyes. Damn all that TV coverage, anyway. Why had I touted myself as a P.I. every time I got in front of a camera? Now people actually expected me to solve things. “How did you get my number?” I asked.

      “You’re in the book.”

      Right. And I’d programmed my phone at the apartment to forward calls to Greer’s guesthouse. I needed more coffee.

      “Yes,” I said, scrambling for a little dignity of my own.

      “I’d like to hire you.”

      “That would be a conflict of interest, Mrs. Pennington,” I said, intrigued in spite of myself. “As you know, your ex-husband is currently married to my sister.”

      “I’m aware of that,” she replied moderately. “Believe me. This is a separate matter, and it’s delicate, which is why I would prefer not to discuss it over the telephone.”

      It finally occurred to me that Mrs. Pennington-the-first might be one of Greer’s blackmailers. As I said, I hadn’t had enough coffee.

      While it seemed like a stretch, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and, besides, you can dig up dirt on just about anybody if you have the resources to hire enough muscle to do the shoveling.

      Suffice it to say that an instinct kicked in. There was something important going on under the surface here, and I had to find out what it was.

      “When did you want to meet?” I asked.

      “Noon today,” Mrs. Pennington answered readily, reeling off a posh address not that far from Greer’s. “I’ll have Carlotta serve her special lobster salad, so don’t eat before you get here.”

      I wasn’t sure eating anything prepared under the grande dame’s roof would be smart, but I liked lobster, and my budget didn’t allow for much of it. I had my stash in the bank, thanks to Margery DeLuca,