Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

you meet a guy named Frank? Big, beefy guy—kind of red-faced?”
    Both said no. Stacy looked at her watch. “I gotta go,” she said. “Got a date. Thanks for the bloody.”
    “What’s with her?” I asked when she was gone.
    “Oh, she’s not such a bad sort. We’re just annoyed with each other at the moment.
    “She was one of those kids who got batted about from foster home to foster home, and I guess she grew up poor and unloved. So she got married at sixteen to some older guy who was going to save her, but it turned out he beat her. She left him and a series of dreary file clerk jobs until someone propositioned her and she learned how to make easy money.”
    “So she’s insecure about being poor and upset about having to close the house.”
    “Yes, and angry with me, but it’s not serious. What she was doing here today was—well, seeking comfort, basically.”
    I still wasn’t exactly in love with Stacy, but I did like Elena’s maternal, tolerant attitude. She was much too fine a woman for a life of crime.
    “I have to go myself,” I said, “but I want to ask you one last thing.” I hoped she’d had enough booze to loosen her tongue.
    I told her about my conversation with Jeannette; how I’d learned Elena thought Kandi might have been blackmailing clients; how I thought this might provide a motive for murder. Elena’s eyes widened.
    “So I’m going to ask you to give me their names,” I finished quickly.
    “No. Oh no. I can’t give you the names of clients, even to you. My God, especially not these two. No. Christ. No. I just can’t do it.”
    I thought about Jeannette’s homily on ethics. You couldn’t say Elena didn’t live by the code. I respected her for it and said so. But I added this: “Listen, if push comes to shove with my client, I’ll have to tell the police. And then they’ll ask you.”
    “I understand,” she said, nodding. “But look, Rebecca, aren’t you kidding yourself? If Kandi was killed by someone she knew, she must have let him in. Why would she open the door to someone she’d been blackmailing? It must have been someone she knew well and trusted. And I can’t think of a more likely candidate than her own brother.”
    The words sounded as if they were meant to hurt. But maybe they weren’t. Maybe Elena just meant to wake me up.

Chapter Twelve
     
    I left wondering where all that got me. I now had detailed and unwelcome insight into the sex life of a senator, and I had the senator himself for a suspect. But no motive for him. And no names for the two men who might have
had
motives. But wait a minute! If Kandi was blackmailing other clients, might she be blackmailing the senator? I decided against it. He might like torture games, but amorous flights of the imagination with a blackmailer were out of that realm. If she was shaking him down, he'd have dropped her like the other two did.
    So far as I could see, I had only one solid piece of information: confirmation of the time Kandi left Elena’s. Elena had said ten minutes of one, which more or less agreed with my estimate. That meant Parker must have arrived at my place much later than Kandi did.
    I headed my gray Volvo toward Eighth and Bryant streets, and the Hall of Justice, but I noticed with surprise that I did it reluctantly. I wasn’t eager to see Parker. My feelings for him were very confused. Trying to pin them down did no good; I felt like a sea anemone, reaching for something I couldn’t grasp. I knew that I disliked the mother role I’d been forced into. Yet I felt guilty about that. Here was a human being in genuine trouble who needed me; I should have been glad to help. And I
was
glad, on one level; it was by all odds the most interesting case I’d ever had. But I didn’t like being a support system; I distrusted it. I didn’t know if Parker and I would be able to resume our previous relationship when this was all over, and I didn’t know if I wanted to.
    My next shrink appointment was Wednesday. I’d have to sort it all out then.
    * * *
     
    Parker had shaved, but he was still looking pale, and his forehead seemed permanently creased. He held me for a long time. I can’t explain it, but I felt rather used. We didn’t really know each other well enough to be going through this together.
    “I talked to your mom,” I said when we broke the clinch. “We didn’t exactly hit it off.”
    “I should have warned you. She has a tendency to behave like a dowager duchess.”
    “Yes,