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

danger came from his trying to solicit me, not my working on the case.”
    “He could have been trying to find out how much you knew about the money even if he were the murderer,” Daddy suggested.
    “No. I accused him of the murder and said I thought Kandi’d left the money there. If he actually were the murderer, he’d already gotten as much information as he needed. He didn’t have to drown me.”
    Daddy conceded the logic of that. “Okay, Beck,” he said. “Just let me know if you need any help.”
    But Mom wasn’t done. “Rebecca, darling,” she said, “why did you have to go to that silly bordello party in the first place? Weren’t you brought up to realize the criminal element is dangerous? You of all people? Darling, I just can’t understand why a nice girl like you would dress up like that and…” It was the speech I’d been dreading.
    “Mom, look, it was a silly thing to do, and I’m sorry. I promise I won’t—”
    “But darling, I don’t
understand
—”
    “I don’t really understand it myself, Mom. Gotta go now.” I hung up and stretched, trying out my right arm to see if it still worked. It was stiff, but the pain was bearable. I figured another hot bath would do a lot of good.
    So I walked into the bathroom, squeezed the Flokati rug as usual, picked off a few feathers and, when I couldn’t put it off any longer, looked at myself in the mirror. And made a vow never again to say an unkind thing about another woman’s appearance.
    Half the right side of my face was an arresting shade of purplish brown and twice its normal size. All the make-up at Elizabeth Arden wouldn’t disguise it.
    So I’d just have to be brave. I soaked for a long time, putting off going to see Parker. But it had to be done sometime; he was probably going to be charged that day and arraigned the next, unless Martinez had evolved overnight into a person of normal intelligence.
    Parker’d seen the paper, so he didn’t do a double take when the Bride of Frankenstein walked in. He kissed my bruises ever so gently, even the one on my right wrist left by Frank’s beefy fingers. “How do you feel?”
    “Fine. The worst part was being interrogated down here.” That wasn’t strictly true, but I thought he might be able to identify with it.
    “Rebecca, I’m so sorry.”
    “Don’t go getting guilty on me, you ape. It had nothing to do with Kandi or the case or you.”
    I was pretty happy with the way he reacted to the thing; he was coming back to his old self: the Parker who liked me—loved me, maybe—but didn’t need me for a surrogate mother.
    So I said: “Let’s talk about you.”
    “Okay. I took my polygraph.”
    “Good. Did you pass?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I’ll ask Martinez. But tell me something else first. How much money were you carrying the night of Elena’s party?” I watched to see if his face gave anything away. There wasn’t even an eyelash flicker. “About fifty dollars. Why?” I told him. I may not be a physiognomist, but I swear I couldn’t see a thing in his face except bewilderment, then pleasure, as he realized the money could get him off the hook. He whistled. “It kind of blows the theory that I hit her in anger.”
    “That’s my opinion. But Martinez has a lot invested in that little theory. I’m going to see him right now. With any luck, I’ll have you out today. Otherwise—uh—they’ll charge you today and I’ll meet you here at nine o’clock tomorrow for your arraignment.”
    * * *
     
    Martinez was chewing on a pencil and looking grumpy. “You look like hell,” he said. I asked him what he made of the money. “We’re investigating,” he snapped.
    “It’s what the murderer was looking for, you know. It kind of argues that Parker didn’t do it.”
    “You don’t have to prove motive in a murder case. We got witnesses that saw him at the scene, and we got a print on the murder weapon.”
    “He told me he took his polygraph,” I said, holding my breath.
    “Inconclusive.”
    Damn! The things aren’t admissible in court, but the cops love them. If Parker’d passed, Martinez probably would have been a lot more reasonable.
    “He was probably nervous when he took the test.”
    “How do you get around the fingerprint?”
    “That’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about. Whereabouts was that print?”
    “Around the middle of the statue, I think. What difference does it make?”
    “Doesn’t that strike you as an awkward way to