Jennifer Crusie - What the Lady Wants

He leaned forward. “Okay, let’s forget Uncle Gio for the moment. Aside from your sixth sense, which I’m sure is extremely accurate, you must have had another reason for coming here since, according to you, no one who knew him killed him. So tell me the truth. Why do you think he was murdered?”

This was it. Mae moistened her lips again. “You mustn’t tell anyone this.” She leaned forward a little to meet him halfway. “His diary has disappeared. I heard him talking on the phone about it the day he died, and now it’s gone. The diary isn’t important, but whoever has it murdered him. I’m sure of it.”

SHE WAS LYING, of course. Mitch’s take on humanity had deteriorated to the point where he assumed someone was lying if her lips were moving, but she was definitely lying about the diary. Either there wasn’t a diary, or there was and it was important. Either possibility was irrelevant; what was important was to find out why she was lying.

And with this woman, it could be because of her sixth sense. Or her twenty million.

Twenty million.

Hell, with twenty million, she could lie to him forever as long as she paid him $2,694.

If only she hadn’t mentioned her Uncle Gio.

He really had been interested in taking the case. And not just because of the money or because she had a terrific body. Well, okay, partly because of that. But mostly because it would have been great to take as his last case one that didn’t involve drinking lukewarm coffee in parked cars outside cheap motels. He’d come to terms with the fact that his bet had been the result of a midlife crisis, and that it would have been a hell of a lot easier to just buy a Porsche and date a twenty-year-old, but somehow he’d wanted to have at least one real fight-against-injustice case before he quit and went back to being Mitchell Kincaid, yuppie stockbroker.

But now there was Gio Donatello. He raised his eyes to hers to tell her that he didn’t think he’d be interested, and she looked back at him, trusting and vulnerable. He couldn’t tell whether it was real-vulnerable or fake-vulnerable, although his money was on fake-vulnerable, but as vulnerable went, it was very attractive.

“So.” Mitch shifted in his chair, squirming as his shirt stuck to the sweat on his back. “Let’s sum up here. You have a seventy-six-year-old man with a heart condition who makes love to his twenty-five-year-old mistress and dies. The doctor says it’s a heart attack. You, the woman who inherits half of his stock and everything else he owns, say it’s murder. The suspects are the housekeeper and the butler, his brother who inherits the other half of his stock, his mistress who inherits nothing and a local mob boss and his homicidal son, but in your opinion, none of them did it.”

“That’s it.” She nodded. “I know these people. I’ve asked them if they know anything about Uncle Armand’s death, and they’ve said no. They wouldn’t lie to me.”

Mitch shook his head at her naiveté. “Sure they would. The first rule in life is ‘everybody lies.’ Remember that and you’ll get a lot further.”

She blinked at him, her thick lashes making the movement much more of a production than it usually was on regular people. “That’s awfully cynical, Mr. Peatwick.”

“That’s me. And cynical doesn’t mean I’m not right. For example, I’ll bet you fifty bucks you’ve lied to me already today.”

Her eyes met his without blinking this time. “Of course I haven’t.” She widened her gaze, looking stricken. “How could you think that?”

Mitch grinned. “You’re good, sweetheart. You’re very, very good. But you blew it there at the end. Don’t widen your eyes like that. Gives you away every time.”

Her eyes narrowed. It was amazing. Even narrowed they looked good. Sort of bitchy and mean, but good. “Mr. Peatwick,” she said. “Do you want this job?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say no, thank you, I don’t like your relatives, and besides, you lied to me, and you’re up to no good, and the diary bit is too farfetched, and what the hell are you trying to do, anyway? and then he realized that the only way he’d ever find out what she was trying to do was if he took the case.

And it was a real Sam Spade kind of case.

And he needed the money to win the bet.

Mitch sighed. “What did your uncle say about the diary on the phone that makes you think somebody killed him?”

“He said, ‘Don’t worry. No one can get me without the diary.’”

Mitch felt depression settle over him. For the first time that afternoon, she was making sense. “Are you sure it wasn’t gone before he died?”

“I don’t think so.” She gazed at him, wide-eyed and innocent, and he knew she was up to something. “He said that on the phone Monday evening, and he died later that night. He wrote in the diary every night, so he’d seen it the previous evening at the latest.”

Mitch threw his pencil on the desk. “Okay. Five hundred per day plus expenses.”

Her eyebrows snapped together. “That’s ridiculous.”

Mitch shrugged. “That’s my price.”

She scowled at him for a moment, and he smiled back, impervious. “All right.” She opened her purse and took out a checkbook. He watched her scrawl the amount and her name across the check, her handwriting the first uncontrolled thing he’d seen about her.

Then she tore the check out and tossed it across the desk to him. Thirty-five hundred dollars. He took a deep breath and tried to look unimpressed. “This is for a week. What if I solve this in an afternoon?”

“You can give me a refund.”

She didn’t seem unduly interested in the possibility. The woman had no faith in him. Just as well. There was no way in hell he was giving her a refund.

He’d just won his bet.

Mitch walked around the desk and pulled his jacket from the coatrack. “Come on then, let’s go see Uncle Gio.”

She took a deep breath, and he watched in appreciation. “Mr. Peatwick, I just paid you to find the diary—”

“And I will do that, Miss Sullivan. I will do whatever you want. But first we will go see Gio Donatello.”

“Why Uncle Gio? I told you—”

“I have to talk to all of these people,” Mitch said patiently. “And if I manage to live through an afternoon of accusing a mob boss of murder, the rest of this case has got to be all downhill.”

“Uncle Gio’s not with the mob.”

“Your cousin Carlo cut off somebody’s finger. Who cares if they’re with the mob? They’re psychopaths.”

She shifted in her chair. “They’re just volatile.”

“Volatile.” Mitch snorted. “That’s cute. Come on, let’s go, but I’m warning you—you protect me from your homicidal relatives or my rate doubles.”

She picked up her purse, contempt clear in her eyes. “Fine.”

He watched her stand, pushing her weight up with her calves, which flexed roundly as she moved, and then he watched as she swiveled toward the door.

If she’d just keep her mouth shut…

She turned back to him, impatience making her face stern. “I don’t have all day, Mr. Peatwick, and you’re already wasting my time with this trip. Are you coming or not?”

His fantasy evaporated, and reality returned, still sucking. Mitch sighed and followed her out the door.

HIS CAR LOOKED LIKE a two-toned aircraft carrier. Mae had known he wouldn’t be the Volvo type, but she’d expected something from the current decade. “This is your transportation?”

“This is a classic.” He patted a massive metal side panel. “There aren’t many ’69 Catalinas on the road anymore.”

“Yes, and there’s a reason for that.” Mae touched the paint. “What exactly do you call this color?”