Self-Defense by JONATHAN KELLERMAN

Del came over. “How you guys doing?”

“Owe you another guitar—oh, yeah, no time. How about dinner?”

“I can always eat.”

He asked Lucy if she was okay; then he walked off to drink coffee with a sheriff’s homicide investigator. People kept heading back toward the forest.

Lucy’d been back there an hour ago, pinpointing the spot as technicians created a string-and-post perimeter.

Now the two of us were sitting on folding chairs in front of the Seville. Lucy was covered with a blanket. She’d managed to eat half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

At 12:45 someone shouted, “Bones!”

Milo showed soon after.

He looked at us and shook his head. “Doctor and patient, perfect match. And I set it up.”

He bent and kissed Lucy’s cheek. She held his head and kissed him back. When she let go, he shook my hand and squeezed it.

“Del filled me in over the computer. Sorry I missed the cutting of the cake, but I was obstructing a helicopter.”

“Whose?”

“App’s.”

“Leaving town? How’d you know?”

“I didn’t. I was watching his office all day, followed him to lunch at Mortons, then over to Bijan to buy a nine-thousand-dollar leather jacket. Then back to his office, but instead of getting off at his floor he continued up to the heliport. Blades whirring, the whole bit. He tried the indignant citizen bit, claimed it was just a back-and-forth to Santa Barbara, tennis with some other shitbag producer. But his stretch limo was packed up with Vuitton luggage, and his chauffeur was carrying paperwork for a private charter to Lisbon out of the Imperial terminal.”

He smiled. “Big guy, the chauffeur, but very low pain threshold. Anyway, App’s not going anywhere for the time being. Got a suite at County jail.”

“What charge?” I said.

He gave a wide, malicious grin. “Traffic tickets. Idiot ran up four thousand bucks’ worth last year alone, mostly outside clubs and restaurants and violations of neighborhood permits.”

“Traffic warrants won’t keep him in very long.”

“Hold on, hold on. When I frisked him, I found a nice little chunk of a white powdery substance. Another chunk on the chauffeur. Then I called in a K-9 unit and the dogs went crazy. We’re talking half of one of the Vuittons crammed with coke.”

“Negotiable currency for an extended vacation,” I said. “So even if Graydon-Jones ran into trouble here, he’d be long gone.”

“Best laid plans. Only vacation he’s gonna get for a while is at good old Club Dread.” To Lucy: “I hear you’re quite a kick boxer.”

She shrugged under the blanket and forced a smile. “The things you learn in therapy.”

CHAPTER

46

Christopher Graydon-Jones, his head bandaged, whispered earnestly to his lawyer.

I sat on the other side of the one-way mirror with Milo, Lucy, and an assistant deputy district attorney named Leah Schwartz. She was a very good-looking woman, tiny, around thirty, with a cloud of blond, kinky hair, gigantic blue eyes, and the sometimes graceless manner of a very bright high school student. She’d been interviewing Lucy and me for most of two days, writing down detailed notes and using a tape recorder. She was writing now, sitting apart from the three of us. The little receiver she’d worn in her ear glimmered in the lap of her black skirt. Milo still wore his.

I said, “Any luck yet with App?”

Headshake.

The cocaine in the producer’s luggage had proved to be only a small part of his stash. Twenty times as much had turned up in a vault in his Broad Beach home, sparking the interest of men in suits.

“Another task force.” Milo had groaned.

Leah said, “The circus is in town.”

She found out, soon after, that the federal government had been looking into App’s dealings for a while, believing the Advent Group and its subsidiary businesses—including Enterprise Insurance—to be major conduits for money laundering. Milo’d filled in the details, yesterday, over coffee and crullers, as we waited outside Leah Schwartz’s office while she finished a phone conversation with her boss.

“How long have they suspected him?” I said.

“Long time.”

“So why didn’t they move on him?”

“Hey,” he said, “it’s the government. They could give a shit about crime control. What they’re into is getting precise appraisal of his holdings so they can confiscate everything under the RICO statutes. Better racket than parking meters.”

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