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

grab a club? I mean, wouldn’t you grip it near the top?”
    “I might. Your client apparently wouldn’t.”
    “You’re pretty determined to charge him, aren’t you?”
    “Damn straight.”
    That Martinez should see a shrink. I’ve never seen a man more hell-bent on self-destruction.
    It would have been unladylike to stalk out, so I just made a dignified exit without another word. Then I broke the news to Parker that he was probably going to be charged.
    Seething, I went back to my office and made coffee, to have something to do with my hands, since Chris was on the phone and I couldn’t buttonhole her quite yet. I counted to a hundred while the coffee cooled and noticed my hand didn’t shake when I picked up the cup.
    Chris and I have only two tiny little rooms opening off a tiny little entry way, so I could easily hear when she hung up. I poured another cup of coffee for her, went into her office, and plunked myself down in the client’s chair. “Oh, you poor peach,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d look
this
bad.”
    “Thanks. I think they’re going to charge Parker.”
    “Oh foot.” Chris is southern and prone to talk funny now and then. She wrapped spidery hands around her coffee cup and wrinkled up her face. “Well, hell, that’s the least of your worries.” She produced a stack of telephone messages. “Every TV and radio station in town is hot on your trail. Also a Stacy Clayton and a Rob—um—Pigball.”
    “Burns. He works for the
Chronicle
. And Stacy’s one of Elena’s partners. Did she leave a number?”
    “No. Said she might drop by sometime today. Are you going to duck the reporters?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe I can use them.”
    She frowned. Chris didn’t care much for my self-serving manipulation of the press, so I decided not to tell her yet about the little idea that stack of messages had given me. Rob Burns wouldn’t like it either.
    I changed the subject and told Chris about the money. “Maybe it’s Diddleybop’s,” she said. “At the bordello.”
    “Elena? Yeah, I was going to call her first thing this morning.”
    Chris pulled the phone over, and I dialed. Elena must not have been a mass media addict, because she didn’t seem to know about my adventure of the night before. “Do I gather from our conversation of the other day,” I began after a few pleasantries, “that Kandi got half the money for her tricks and the rest went into the co-op’s kitty?”
    “Right. That’s the way it works for everybody.”
    “And where is the money kept?”
    “In a safe here at the house, and then in two bank accounts: a savings and a checking.”
    “Are you missing any?”
    “No. Why?”
    “Who has access to it?”
    “All the co-op members, in all three places. Why?”
    “None of the part-timers? I mean Kandi, specifically. Could she have gotten into the safe?”
    “No way. She didn’t even know where it was. But why, for Christ’s sake?”
    I figured I might as well tell her. If she were the murderer, she’d guess anyway. “Because Kandi hid $25,000 in my asparagus fem before she got killed. I’m trying to find out where she got it.”
    Elena was silent. It would be unkind to call her an acquisitive woman, but I figured if I could see her, she’d probably have dollar signs in her eyes, like old-timey comic book characters. “We never have that much in the safe,” she said at last.
    “Did anyone at the party complain of missing any money?”
    “No.”
    “What about the senator? Think hard; did he say anything that hinted at it?”
    “Are you kidding? Who’d bring $25,000 to a whorehouse?”
    “Well, somebody must have. Who had access to his clothes besides Kandi?”
    “Anybody could have. All the co-op members would have known where his clothes were, and anyone else might have slipped upstairs, found them, and patted them down. That Frank fellow, for instance.”
    “No. I had a little talk with him last night, and I don’t think he knew about the money. He’s a cop.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Read today’s
Chronicle
—you might get a kick out of it. But back to the senator. Who had access to his clothes after Kandi took them to the basement?”
    “Again, anybody might have. Although it isn’t really likely that any of the guests would have wandered down there.”
    “Did you tell the senator that Kandi took his clothes to the basement?”
    “No, but for Christ’s sake, Rebecca, do you honestly think the senator would be dumb enough to bring