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

day,” she said.
    “You were upset.”
    “Look, I think your client or lover, or whoever he is, is guilty as hell, but I’ve been thinking about things. I mean, there’s something I ought to tell you. In the interests of justice or something.” Her mouth turned up in a half sneer, but I thought she seemed embarrassed. “I lied when we talked at the bordello.”
    “About what?”
    “I do know someone who had a motive to kill Kandi. Two people.”
    If I’d been a Victorian lady, I’d have called for the smelling salts. If I’d been a Buddhist, I’d have figured my Karma had just done an about-face. But I was a Jewish feminist lawyer, so I just sat there smiling and nodding, with my heart doing ninety in a residential neighborhood.
    “I mean I didn’t exactly lie; I sort of forgot at the time,” Stacy continued. “Elena brought it up later at a co-op meeting. In fact, she specifically asked all of us not to tell you.”
    She showed me those sharp little teeth of hers, meaning to be friendly I guess, but the woman simply could not smile without looking malicious. She should see a dentist.
    I had so many questions it was tough to know which one to go with. I decided on something low-key. “So why are you telling me?”
    “Hell, I don’t know. I guess I don’t see prostitution as an honorable profession with a code of ethics and all that crap. It’s a living, sure, but for Christ’s sake, on the off chance your client”—she sneered the word—“is innocent after all, he ought to get a break. Also, I figure I can trust you to use the names wisely.”
    “It’s the two guys Kandi was blackmailing, isn’t it?”
    “We don’t know for sure she was blackmailing them.”
    Oh God, when was she going to come to the point? I couldn’t take it much longer. “I can promise to be discreet,” I said. Was that me talking? That stuffy simp?
    “Good. Okay then.”
    I waited. I even reached for a pencil and a piece of paper to scribble the names down.
    “Martin Goodfellow,” she said. I scribbled. “And Walter Berman.” I kept scribbling, hoping Stacy wouldn’t see that I wasn’t writing down the second name at all, but making crazy little loops and circles to give myself something to do so I could stay in control. Because the worst had happened. My uncle Walter had just become a murder suspect.
    Those loops and circles helped, though. I was bearing down so hard I broke my pencil point, but I kept my cool. “Know anything about them?” I asked casually.
    She shrugged. “I’ve seen them a dozen times, and they look rich. That’s about all.”
    “I appreciate your telling me this, Stacy.”
    “I thought I ought to. See you later—I've got a date.”
    And she was gone. I turned my chair to the window and looked out to think. I had to admit Elena was right about her; she wasn’t a bad sort underneath that malicious smile and defensive exterior.
    “Who was that?” Chris was standing in my doorway, looking like a fashion model in a black silk blouse and slender camel skirt. Even in the state I was in, I wished I had her figure.
    “Stacy. Sit down.”
    “Uh oh. You sound like we is in a heap o’shit.”
    “I’m glad you said ‘we.’ But it’s me, really. Listen, let me pose a hypothetical ethical problem. Suppose a lawyer’s gentleman friend is accused of murder and he hires her to save his pretty ass. So the lawyer tries to find out who else might have had a motive for killing the victim and, because a prostitute with a sense of civic duty shoots off her mouth, the lawyer discovers the victim was blackmailing two men.”
    “Go on.”
    “And one of the men is the lawyer’s favorite uncle.” I spoke fast so I could get the words out before they got stuck somewhere on the way.
    Chris’s nose quivered. She sprawled back in her chair. “Oh, my poor peach blossom.”
    “Keep it hypothetical. We Schwartzes don’t like to tell family secrets.”
    Chris sat up, all business, like I knew she would. She could deal with a hypothesis a lot better than she could deal with a friend in trouble. With her friends, her natural inclination was to soothe any way she could, even if it meant saying what they wanted to hear when it wasn’t necessarily the truth.
    “The lawyer would have to decide whether she has a diddleybop.”
    “Conflict, yes.”
    She rubbed the side of her long nose with an equally long finger. If she were a man and the tales were true, she would probably have a long penis.