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

Mom’s brother. Aunt Ellen’s widower. Jeez, moneez. Uncle Walter was the success in the family. Dad was famous, sort of, but Uncle Walter was rich. He was an investor—in just about everything. How the hell could he have known Kandi? But I knew the answer, and it lay like a lump in my stomach.
    “Home or office?” I asked shakily.
    “Office. We were going to have lunch, Walter and I, and I was waiting for him to get off the phone. His secretary had already gone to lunch, so there was no one in the outer office. That’s how she got in.”
    “Kandi, you mean.”
    “Yes. She poked her head in and gave him a big wink before she saw me. He got off the phone fast, acting very flustered, and asked what he could do for her. She said she’d just dropped in to see if he was free for lunch, and he said he wasn’t; he even said he was having lunch with me and introduced us, very pointedly not asking her to join us.
    “Then he said he’d see her out, and he kind of grabbed her arm.”
    “Affectionately?”
    “No. Roughly. Your own uncle Walter! And I heard him tell her not to come to his office again. So naturally I asked him who she was. He said she was just a young woman he’d been giving some financial advice to, and he kept acting embarrassed and sheepish all through lunch.”
    “Well, I can see why you would have thought he was dating her, but what made you think she was a prostitute? He could have just been embarrassed because she was so young.”
    “I just knew, that’s all.”
    “Come on, Mom.”
    “Well, I didn’t really know for sure until I saw her picture in the paper and put that together with where you’d been the night she was killed. But that day in the office—” her voice got teary—“I knew she wasn’t a real girlfriend. I knew she didn’t love him at all. I could see it in her face. You know what I could see? I could see malice. She enjoyed it, Rebecca. Embarrassing him like that.”
    From what I knew about Kandi, that didn’t surprise me.
    “Does Dad know about this?” I asked.
    “No, and…”
    “Don’t worry, I won’t tell him.”
    “This thing is much bigger than you think, Rebecca. You’ve got to get out.”
    I said I’d think about it, and I meant it.
    I shivered, thinking of Elena refusing to tell me who the blackmailed—or
maybe
blackmailed—clients were.
“I can't give out the names of clients, even to you. My God, especially these two.”
If Walter were one of them, could she have known he was my uncle? That would explain the “especially,” but then lots of things might explain it.
    At least this much was clear: Uncle Walter knew Kandi and may have been telling the truth about giving her financial advice. I knew from my experience with the HYENA members that prostitutes who were starting to make money frequently leaned on successful clients for that kind of advice. That would explain a visit to Uncle Walter’s office.
    But I could
not
convince myself that Uncle Walter could have had anything to do with the murder. My own uncle would not walk into my apartment and bash someone’s brains out on the living room rug. It was simply not worth investigating.
    I looked for Mickey, hoping she hadn’t smoked the half a joint she’d offered on the way over. And ran straight into Uncle Walter. I kissed him and said wasn’t it a lovely party.
    He put his hands in his pockets and seemed to look straight through me. “Yes, darling, lovely,” he said absently. Uncle Walter never uses words like “lovely.”
    “You’re, uh, quite the celebrity, aren’t you?” he said. Beads of sweat moistened his hairline.
    I tried to put him at ease. “Hollywood’s been calling all day,” I said. “But don’t worry; I won’t forget my old friends.”
    “That’s nice, dear. How’s Alan?” He withdrew one of his hands and looked at his wrist. But there was no watch on it—only a band of skin lighter than the rest of his arm.
    “Uh, fine,” I said. “I guess. I haven’t seen him in a couple of days.”
    He flushed, then tried out a smile. It came out a grimace. “Oh, you girls and your boyfriends. For some reason I confused you with Mickey.”
    I told him I thought he needed a drink, and offered to get it. “No thanks, dear,” he said. “I’ll get it myself.” And he was off.
    You don’t know my uncle Walter, so you’ll have to take my word for it that he was the most solicitous uncle anyone could have. He was the kind of uncle who not only remembered his