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

rug in the bathroom, I remembered how Kandi’s dress had been shedding feathers Friday night. Now Elena had told me that Kandi took the senator’s clothes back down to the basement that night, and that he got them later. So that came back to me when I saw my rug with the feathers all over it, and I realized that she couldn’t have handled his clothes without getting feathers on them.”
    “And,” finished Mickey, “that if he’d happened to miss $25,000 from his pants pocket, he’d deduce that she stole it.”
    “Right. And if he were the one with the money, it would explain why he’d been so insistent about going back to the bordello even though he thought it was crawling with cops. I missed that before because I eliminated him as the one with the money, because (a) he didn’t have that kind of money, and (b) he wouldn’t bring it to a cathouse.
    “Once we got the idea that someone brought the money there to give it to someone else, and I got the idea the recipient was the senator, I naturally started thinking about why. And came up with the idea of a payoff from the mob to push legal prostitution. If that was the case, then who was the courier?
    “Elena told me his routine had been completely different that Friday—for one thing, he’d come in the afternoon, and for another, he’d especially requested Stacy as well as Kandi. Ergo, Stacy must have been the courier.”
    “Aha!” said Mickey. “And until tonight Stacy couldn’t have known Kandi was killed for the money, because she assumed the senator still had it. But after you told the whole world that $25,000 had turned up in your apartment, Stacy was bound to hear about it, put two and two together, and become dangerous to old Calvin. Hence this wild-goose chase.”
    “You catch on fast, kid.”
    Elena’s porch light was on, and it wasn’t red. Anybody could have seen us get out of the car and walk up to the door. I realized someone had when I heard light footsteps running across Elena’s tiny garden from the right side of the house. Mickey gasped. I wheeled around, clutching my purse like a weapon, ready to wrangle with a seven-foot plug-ugly. But the figure coming at us was slender and barely five-feet-ten. It was nattily attired in jeans and a corduroy jacket, and it was stage-whispering my name. It stopped in midyard and beckoned us over to it.
    “It’s all right,” I told Mickey. “It’s only a reporter on special assignment—Rob Burns, the
Chron's
illicit-sex expert.”
    Rob put a finger to his lips as we joined him. I introduced Mickey. “You’re not going to believe who’s in there,” Rob said, hardly able to contain his delight.
    “The senator!” Mickey mouthed, and her face was so genuinely horrified that Rob sobered up.
    “You know?” he said.
    “Calvin Handley’s in there?”
    Rob nodded.
    “Let’s go.” I turned and started grimly back to the porch. But Rob grabbed my arm.
    “No. Listen, there’s a place on the side of the house where the drapes don’t quite meet. Mickey and I could boost you up high enough so you could look in—and maybe hear what he and Elena are talking about.”
    “Is that the way reporters normally work?”
    He had the grace to look sheepish. “Of course not. But dammit, Rebecca, you don’t know what I know. He’s up to something pretty sleazy.”
    “Damn straight,” I said. “Lead on, MacDuff.”
    When I had one foot in each of their clasped hands, with the wall of the house for support, I could just see in the crack. Elena and the senator were sitting on the rose velvet loveseat, and the crucial moment seemed to have arrived.
    “But you didn’t come here to find out how I’m getting along,” Elena said, or something quite close to it; I could catch most of the words. “You must have a pretty compelling reason to take this kind of risk.” Her eyes were shrewd.
    “You’re an astute observer, Elena. I wouldn’t have come unless it was a life-or-death matter. Stacy may be in danger.”
    “What sort?”
    “I can’t talk about it, or tell you how I got the information, but I want to warn her.”
    “And you want me to deliver that message?” Elena looked puzzled.
    “No, no—there’s a specific message, and I—well—to tell you might endanger you as well. I must talk to her myself.” Elena shrugged. “I can give you her address and phone number, but I sent her out on a dinner date, and she won’t be home for hours.”
    “Uh—forgive my ignorance, but how