Suzanne Forster - The Private Concierge

She scribbled down a note on her desk blotter, which was unlikely ever to be found again, given all the doodling already there. “Maybe I could do some checking on Lane Chandler or Lucy Cox, just for old time’s sake and because I’m kind of curious myself. Not that I owe you any favors. Because I sure as hell don’t.”

“Thanks,” he said, deadpan. Better not to let her know that he was breathing easier. He lingered, wondering how to segue to his next concern.

She ripped open a bag of chips, about to wedge a few too many into her open mouth, when she realized he was still intent on something—her. “What? You hungry?”

“I was just wondering about the evidence from the crime scene. No big deal, but I left a package over at Ned’s. I thought one of the techs might have picked it up.”

“Rick, you’re not really asking me to mess with the evidence, are you? Tell me you’re not.”

He shrugged, tilting just enough to grab a couple chips from her bag. He was taking a chance by tying himself with the package, but what the hell. Getting caught with his hand in a fifteen-year-old cookie jar was the least of his worries these days, especially with his gut telling him the package had been lifted before the police ever got there. Mimi might be able to confirm that for him.

“You could tell me if it’s there, couldn’t you?” he coaxed. “It’s an old brown bubble pack, eight by eleven, unmarked but pretty beaten up. I’d like to have it back when the investigation’s over.”

“What’s inside?”

“Personal stuff,” he said, wondering if he could still blush. “It’s a little embarrassing.”

She heaved a sigh and picked up her sandwich, poking a bubble of red jelly back between soggy crusts. “Don’t push it, Rick.”

He nodded. “Right, I’ll leave you to your lunch.” He had a feeling she would check. Yeah, definitely, Mimi was going to check. It was that Peeping Tom thing. Whether she’d tell him was another question.

Rumor had it that the King of Rumors was agoraphobic. Seth Black of Gotcha.com had been outed as housebound by rival gossip Web sites. That’s what had given Rick the idea of staking out the man’s surprisingly modest apartment in the Hollywood Hills area. Either online gossip didn’t pay well—which wasn’t likely since the gossip sites were now scooping the mainstream media and forcing the big guys to go to them for entertainment news—or Black was a frugal man. Possibly he was too housebound to relocate. Regardless, he’d broken Ned’s murder-suicide story hours before the mainstream press had, and Rick was curious how the thirty-two-year-old agoraphobic got his information.

Rick bowed his head for a moment and dug his fingers into the aching muscles of his temples. He could feel the fatigue of his nonstop day. He’d been parked down the street from Black’s place for going on two hours, but so far he’d seen no one except a telephone repairman, who got no answer when he knocked on the door of Black’s ground-floor apartment. Rick had tried Black’s number before he drove over, but the phone went right to voice mail. He was beginning to wonder if Black was home, and if this surveillance idea was a good one.

That morning, after Rick had the epiphany about Lane Chandler, he’d tracked down the address of Jenny Shu, Ned’s housekeeper, and he’d gone over to pay her a visit. It didn’t surprise Rick to find Jenny upset, but he hadn’t expected a complete collapse. She’d been with Ned for years and Rick knew her well, so of course, he’d knelt down to hug the tiny Asian woman, and of course, they’d cried. Her sobs had ripped right through him, and Rick, who had been stoic until now, broke. Grief had washed through him until he shook, and Jenny had tried her best to comfort him. Maybe it was as simple as seeing someone else who knew and loved Ned.

Rick was sure his meeting with Jenny was a large part of what had exhausted him so completely. When they’d regained their composure, she’d patted his face and told him how sorry she was. She invited him in for tea, but he’d known he couldn’t take her up on that. Reminiscing about Ned would have killed him. The pain she’d already touched into had almost killed him. He did manage to ask her about the package, but she’d seen nothing that matched his description, and he was satisfied with that. He couldn’t ask her about what she’d witnessed when she arrived at the scene. Neither one of them could have handled that conversation. Maybe another time. Maybe.

After that, Rick had gone home to eat and get some rest. Good intentions, but somehow he’d found himself at the computer for another look at Seth Black’s site. That’s where he’d discovered that Black, with the help of Jack the Giant Killer, was routinely scooping not only the mainstream press, but all the other online sites, and that Black had been the first one to break the news on virtually every TPC client. From there Rick had gone to see Mimi, knowing in the back of his mind that a meeting with Black was inevitable.

Rick figured Black relied on the local paparazzi for pictures and salacious tidbits, but he had to be getting the more personal details from an inside source. A family member, friend or employee were the obvious ways, but given the nature of a concierge service, it only made sense that considerable client information was stored away somewhere, which had Rick wondering if TPC had a mole, someone intent on extortion as Ned’s card had suggested. If clients confided in their private concierges the way they did in their hairstylists, there should be plenty of blackmail material to go around.

Still, drug busts? Child porn? That wasn’t info you confided to anyone.

TPC had branch offices in San Francisco and Las Vegas, and according to the Web site they would soon be expanding across the country, but Rick was only interested in their corporate offices here in L.A. He’d found an employee tree with the names of some of the company’s key players, but rather than run a background check on each of them, which would probably yield nothing, he’d decided to stake out Black’s place to see who showed up. Even if the inside source wasn’t a TPC employee, he was curious, especially about the mysterious Giant Killer. And Rick was betting that some of the really juicy stuff was hand-carried to Black since everyone knew that e-mail was no longer secure for anyone, including the country’s chief executive.

Rick took a swig from a can of Coke that had gone flat. His last serious attempt at eating had been the Chinese takeout that morning, and he hadn’t thought to bring any food with him. Maybe that’s why he was perspiring and dizzy. It was warm outside, and hotter in the car.

He patted the front pocket of his jeans and realized he’d left something behind this morning, a bottle of prescription pills. They were probably sitting on the nightstand at his place. He forgot them half the time anyway, and when he did take them, he felt like shit, worse than before. He ought to flush them down the fricking toilet, but he couldn’t. He was dead without them. Well, dead sooner.

He shook off the morbid thought and focused on Black’s place. There were still no signs of life, so to speak, but Rick had planned for that. He’d brought a five-by-seven envelope, addressed to Black, in case he needed a reason to go to the door himself.

He grabbed it and let himself out of the car.

Whoa, something was wrong. The cracks in the sidewalk appeared to slide back and forth as he approached the four-story apartment building, causing him to weave like a drunk. He stopped to get his bearings, and as he glanced up, he saw the mail slot open on Black’s door. Someone was peeking through it from the other side, Rick realized. The slot was nearly at eye level and large enough to get a glimpse of a man’s face.