John Lescroart - The Hunt Club

Four stools fronted a bar that ran along to their left. Behind it was a kitchen area with a sink and two-burner stove. The bar ended at a door to a small, shower-only bathroom. Directly across were full-length closet doors and built-in bookshelves filled with paperbacks. The far wall was all window, drapes open both sides, the ballyard across the way. He guessed that the couch was a sofa bed. There was a coffee table on an artsy-fartsy throw rug and a comfortable-looking brown leather chair under a reading lamp in the corner.

"The good life," Shiu said.

"You don't like it?"

"It's a hotel room. Nobody lives here."

"No, look," he said. "Daffodils on the bar there. Books in the shelves." Juhle was pulling on his surgical gloves. On the small table next to the sofa, he turned on a three-way reading light and picked up two framed photographs, one-badly out of focus-of a smiling young boy, and the other of Judge Palmer. "Personal photos. She lived here, all right, Shiu. She just didn't have much room."

Shiu was already behind the bar, poking around in the cabinets, the drawers, the refrigerator. He was reaching into a closet when Juhle grabbed his arm. "Gloves," he said.

Juhle opened another closet filled with clothes and a dozen or more pairs of shoes. Staci had color-coded the hangers. He turned. "Here's the wallet." On a built-in chest of drawers. Moving out into the room, he sat on the sofa and began emptying the wallet's contents onto the coffee table in front of him. Cash-four fifties and four ones. Credit cards. Library card. Social Security. Costco. A smaller version of the same fuzzy snapshot of the boy. One of the judge-much more casual than the formal office shot she'd framed and taken in this room, Juhle realized-in the reading chair, grinning.

Juhle made an unconscious noise and the sound stopped Shiu. "What?"

"That's weird."

"What?"

Juhle shrugged, held up a business card. "Andrea Parisi." At Shiu's blank look, he thought fast and said, "The TV expert on the Donolan trial?"

"Ah." Shiu placed the name, but neither it nor the card had any significance to him. "What is weird about her? She hangs out with the judge, she's going to know some lawyers. Plus," he added, "you know as well as me, MoMo's is famous lawyer land."

"Yeah, you're right." Juhle didn't see any need to tell his partner that his friend Wyatt Hunt was sometimes her jogging buddy. And that he had been regaling him with Andrea Parisi fantasies for the past six weeks or so. Instead, he placed the business card back with the other contents of the wallet. "But it's funny that this is the only card she kept."

Shiu didn't think so. "Maybe, like every other waitress in the world, she wanted to get into television."

"That's not here. That's in L.A."

"It's everywhere," Shiu said. "It's a universal truth. Anyway, I bet we find a stack of other business cards in some drawer here. Either that, or Staci got that card and hadn't thrown it away yet. Besides, you and I know this doesn't have anything to do with Andrea Parisi."

"We could pretend. Spend a little time with her cute little self." Juhle cracked a grin, got no response from his partner, tried again. "Spend a little time with her cute-"

"I heard you."

"That was a stab at humor."

"Adultery's not something you joke about."

"You are so wrong, Shiu. Adultery's no lower than number three on the list of all-time joke topics. In fact, there's this Irishman, Paddy, who hasn't been to church in something like twenty years, and this one day-"

"Dev." Shiu held a palm up. "It's something I don't want to joke about, okay?"

"So along with religion and ethnic and gay and women, now you don't do adultery. Christ, what's left?"

"Why does there have to be anything?" Shiu sat down on one of the stools. "Devin," he said, "it's the middle of the night. We're investigating a double homicide that's all about adultery, okay? We know we're going to arrest Jeannette Palmer in the next week, maybe sooner than that. Her life will be ruined, already is ruined. This young woman is dead. So is a federal judge. None of this is funny. And Connie wouldn't find it funny that you want to get cozy with Andrea Parisi."

"Yeah, you're right, I'm sorry, my bad." Juhle hung his head. "Getting cozy with Parisi, that would be wrong," he said with deep sincerity. Then he suddenly brightened. "But, hey, maybe I could invite Connie? If you wanted in, we could make it a foursome."

In his bedJuhle pulled the covers up over his sling with some care. Next to him, Connie stirred. "What time is it?"

"Unreasonable. Near three, I think. You awake?"

"No." Then: "How'd it go?"

"I think we solved the case. Surprise, it's the wife. But I've got to get a new partner."

"You always say that. What'd he do now?"

"Nothing. He's perfect. I hate him. I even invited him to get into a love thing with you and me and Andrea Parisi, the TV fox with the Donolan trial. Turned me down flat."

"I didn't know you knew her."

"I don't, but I could definitely meet her around this case."

"Is she involved in it?"

"I can't see how. But the victim had her business card, and I'm sure I could finagle an introduction."

"Maybe it's me. Maybe Shiu doesn't find me attractive."

"Impossible."

"It would be weird," she agreed. "Are you tired?"

"I could probably stay awake another few minutes in a crisis."

"You know how long it's been? Since the operation."

"Is that the last time? Nine days?"

"Actually, it was the day before that, if you're counting, which makes it ten. That qualifies as a crisis," she said, and rolled on top of him.

Out in the warehouse,practicing silent scales on his unplugged Strat, Hunt heard a muffled scream, Parisi coming back to consciousness. He stepped into the doorway where she could see him.

She was sitting up on his bed, the covers thrown off, in the clothes she'd been wearing last night. "Oh, my God! Wyatt? What am I…?" Her hands came up to her face, and she moaned again.

Hunt unslung his guitar and laid it on the rug. By the sink, filling a glass, he grabbed a bottle of aspirin and crossed over to her. Handing her the glass, he shook out some pills.

"Thank you." She took them all at once, knocked back the water. "What time is it?"

"A little after eight."

Her eyes widened, but the effort was too much. She lowered the glass into her lap. "It can't be that. I've got to…" Swinging her feet to the floor, she tried to stand but didn't make it. Putting the glass on the floor, she fell back onto the bed.

Hunt picked up the glass, went and filled it again, and came back to her. "Drink more water. You need to get hydrated."

She raised her head. "I don't think…"

He wasn't hearing it. "Water. Water will save your life."

She pulled her body up and drank.

"All of it," Hunt said. "You'll be glad you did."

She forced the rest of it down, tried to straighten up again. "I've got to get back home. I've got…"

"You want to give it a minute."

"I can't. I've got…what day is it?"

"Wednesday."

"How did I get here?"

"I didn't know where else to take you. You passed out."

She picked at the memory. "We were…Spencer, that bastard." Parts of it coming back. "All along, he knew…he couldn't do anything about…"

"New York?"

She lay back into the pillow, threw an arm over her eyes. "I've got to call work."

"I can do that for you."

"No." But she didn't move. Lying on the bed, breathing through her mouth.

Hunt got the phone. He had worked for her firm enough that he knew the number by heart. He also knew her secretary, Carla Shapiro, but didn't want to talk to her because she would ask him questions. So he talked to the receptionist. He was Andrea's doctor, and she had a bad case of food poisoning. She was resting and on fluids now and wouldn't be in till tomorrow.