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

him in, apparently stashing the money in the fern pot while he mounted the stairs. She told him she didn’t have it, they quarreled, and he lost his temper and hit her with the statue, holding it by the head as I’d postulated. He took out his handkerchief and wiped it immediately, unknowingly leaving Parker’s print on it. Then he went into the kitchen and found my rubber gloves to wear while he looked for the money.
    He lied to Elena and me about telling the police he was at the bordello the night of the murder.
    When I told every reporter in town I’d found $25,000 in my apartment, he assumed Stacy would hear about it and realize that Kandi had stolen the money from him and that he’d killed her to get it back. So he tried to kill Stacy before she could talk. He’d thought that if he made it look like an accident, Elena either wouldn’t put two and two together or would find it to her advantage not to mention his interview with her at the bordello. After all, she wanted prostitution legalized, and he was a state senator working on that project—as well as a good customer. He counted on her being just enough outside the law to take that attitude and just straight enough not to try to blackmail him.
    At least that’s what he told Jodie. But I say a person who’s committed two murders probably wouldn’t stop there if he thought there was any doubt about his own neck.
    Jodie got the job as lobbyist for HYENA, and we had lunch not too long ago. She told me she’d filed for divorce, a capital idea, I thought. She also described—fairly painfully for both of us—the deterioration of a once-decent man. It had to do with the same things the senator was telling me about at Mom and Dad’s party—about making compromises and so many things in politics being about half-crooked anyway. He’d just kind of gotten jaded after years of being forced to make this or that compromise or deal to get his bills through, and his integrity had begun slowly to crumble. Jodie had seen it and worried about it, but she had no idea how far it had gone.
    When he’d gotten the offer from the mob, it hadn’t seemed such a bad thing; after all, they were asking him to do something his wife was already pressuring him about, something she thought right and moral. Why not do it and get something out of it as well? It was a kind of self-destructive game, a kind of weary giving in to his worst side almost as a sort of self-punishment, like those games he’d played with Kandi. He just took up legislative residence in Edge City.
    But he hadn’t become so grasping and corrupt that he’d kill someone for money. After he’d played his nasty little game with the mob, the payoff did assume a great deal more importance in his mind than his actual need for it, so he confronted Kandi about it. But he killed her because she taunted him. She called him a sicko and a weirdo and a crook who made her want to throw up. It wasn’t exactly an insult Dorothy Parker would have been proud of, but it was effective on two counts: it was exactly his opinion of himself, and it came out of Kandi’s mouth. Before that, he’d thought of Kandi as some sort of mechanical doll—not even a real person, never mind a worthy one—and here she was setting herself up as
his
superior.
    He told Jodie that in retrospect he believed he had turned his own guilt and self-hatred on Kandi for the split second it took to bash her head in, and I expect that’s not far from the truth.
    Jodie’s bounced back pretty well, and I’m going to introduce her to Uncle Walter at the first opportunity; I think they just might hit it off.
    Stacy got immunity for telling a grand jury who it was she’d delivered the money for, and a whole string of indictments followed for various offenses, including the murder of Frank Jaycocks. None of the indicted men was named George, but I always thought that was a pseudonym.
    Elena the incorrigible found herself a new house and went right back into business. If she gets busted again, I don’t know what I can do for her, I’m so swamped with clients. I’m almost as big a name as Daddy now, but I haven’t let it go to my head. I’ll make time for Elena if I have to; don’t worry.
    The police gave back my Don Quixote statue, but I couldn’t bear the sight of it anymore, so I gave it to Rob Burns for a souvenir. He and I are quite a heavy number now. In fact, he promised to give me something to replace the statue, and I know exactly what I