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

never even glimpsed. Was a man who could look at me with those eyes—me, his favorite niece!—capable of murder? I think I considered it seriously for the first time then. On the other hand, I realized that an intolerable situation had risen between Uncle Walter and me. For Walter Berman, the consummate family man, to be exposed as a person who went to prostitutes must be the worst thing that had ever happened to him. And that was only half of what I’d suggested; when you practically accuse your uncle of whoring and murder, you can hardly expect him to chuck you under the chin.
    Oh God, I didn’t want to think about it anymore! I turned the radio to KKHI, turned it up loud, thanked my stars something I knew was on, and started driving. God knows why, but they were playing
Swan Lake
. I hate the treacly thing, but I do know it by heart. I hummed along all the way to the supermarket, and then I sat in the car and kept it up to the end. That made me feel better, but still not good enough to start thinking.
    I concentrated on dinner with Mickey instead of on Uncle Walter. Ever since my Berkeley days, spaghetti has been my favorite security food, so I bought the makings for it to get me through the night. I debated whether I should tell Mickey about Uncle Walter, but I was just being silly. I knew I was going to.
    When I got home, I called Rob before I even put my groceries away, hoping—I don’t know what I was hoping for, maybe just that he’d say something to cheer me up.
    But he didn’t. He said, “Goodfellow’s clean.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Friday night he was at a fund-raiser for a politician at the Fairmont Hotel, and after that he went drinking with friends at Alexis until 1:30 a.m., whereupon he was driven home by said friends, arriving at his Hillsborough estate sometime after two. Matter cannot occupy more than one space at a time, or something like that. Ergo, he’s clean.”
    “How’d you find that out?”
    “Ordinarily a reporter does not reveal his sources, but for you… Suffice it so to say that I am on friendly terms with one of the Goodfellow daughters.”
    That annoyed me. “So that’s how you got your job,” I said.
    “Miss Schwartz! She’s married to an old college buddy of mine, an event which did not occur until long after I had proved my mettle in the trenches of journalism.”
    “I’m sorry. I’m just in a lousy mood.”
    “Uh oh. You spoke to your friend?”
    “Yes, but I don’t want to talk about it, if you don’t mind.”
    “I wish—oh, hell.”
    “What?”
    “I was just thinking how much I’d like to take you out tonight and get your mind off your troubles, but, alas, duty calls. I’m on special assignment.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Can’t talk about it. I’ll tell you later.”
    I’d meant what does “special assignment” mean, but if he wanted to be mysterious, the hell with him. I put on some music and started cutting up onions and mushrooms.
    The spaghetti sauce was simmering nicely when Mickey arrived. I poured us some wine, and we watched me on the seven o’clock news. I’d already seen the six o’clock version, but when you’re a show biz newcomer, you never get enough of yourself. Mickey said I did fine.
    Over dinner, we rehashed my adventure of the night before pretty thoroughly. Mickey had a few theories I hadn’t thought of. “Even if Jaycocks didn’t kill Kandi,” she postulated, “maybe he guessed she’d left the money there and he came for it.”
    “He hadn’t searched for it.”
    “Maybe you surprised him before he could.”
    “No good. He saw us leave for Mom and Dad’s. He could have searched and been gone long before we came back. There’s no other explanation except that he was there to kill me.”
    Mickey chewed on a bit of salad, and I poured myself a third glass of wine. It was going to take at least three to broach the subject of Uncle Walter.
    “What about this?” she said. “Suppose Kandi wasn’t killed for the money. Suppose she stole it or collected it from someone she was blackmailing. But meanwhile the famous George decides to make good on his threat to kill her. So he hires Jaycocks to do it. Jaycocks goes to the party, follows her here, gets in the same way he got in last night, and bashes her.”
    “It wasn’t exactly an execution-style killing.”
    “That could have been deliberate—to throw the hounds off the scent.”
    I considered. “Not bad. But what was he doing here last