Inherit the Dead

with Loki, the aging, de pendently wealthy hipster. A bit of a poser, a big doper, but a kidnapper? A killer? Hard to believe. Then again, how could a lawyer not know about his own daughter’s inheritance? And if he did know, why lie about it?
    Perry sighed as he turned onto the empty highway. The interview that was supposed to give him a central piece of the puzzle had instead only delivered more questions. The scream of a lone seagull pierced the sky above him. Perry looked up and nodded. “Yeah, I’m with you, buddy.”

You don’t have to drive down the road to find out why the private eye has come here and who he’s come to see because you know exactly who he is talking to.
    You wait by the side of the road, car under the trees, hidden in the shadows, trying to imagine their conversation while you gnaw on a PowerBar to keep up your energy. You’ve got a whole bag of them, plus apples and juice boxes. You’re prepared.
    You think about all those mansions you’ve passed, the way these people live, and you’re going to have it, too, because you deserve it, and you don’t care who gets hurt. Somebody always gets hurt, but not you, not this time.
    You’re trying to picture it, your new life, when the PIs junk heap of a car comes rattling back down the private lane and he’s so damn preoccupied he doesn’t even look your way, just turns onto the main road, and you wait a couple of minutes so as not to arouse suspicion then turn the key in the ignition and follow under a sky with low dark clouds like filthy rags and feel a kind of electricity coursing through your body, hands tingling on the steering wheel because this is what you’ve been waiting for.

4
HEATHER GRAHAM
    I t didn’t take Perry long to reach his next destination.
    The afternoon sky over the Hamptons was darker now, an icy rain just beginning as he headed down the long drive.
    The minute Perry Christo walked into Lilith Bates’s studio, one thought came into his mind.
    Wannabe.
    She had made the third floor of her lavish East Hampton mansion into her work space, and it appeared that she had worked hard to create the image of the artistic recluse; canvases were everywhere. She’d studied the studios of others, and she’d had the house revamped to create magnificent, floor-to-ceiling windows and skylights for her work. She had all the proper utensils for her craft, palettes of oils and watercolors, cabinets with half-opened drawers spilling over with brushes, paint thinners, pens, pencils—every artistic supply an artist could ever want.
    Trust-fund baby turned artist!
    The Bates’s butler had walked him up, and he knew that she was expecting him, even though she pretended to have completely forgotten he was coming.
    One thing he would say for her—Lilith was beautiful.
    She was dressed in a form-hugging tank top and knit pants; a white smock blouse—artfully splashed with paint—was carelessly worn over her clothing. She was slender—it seemed that being slender was a requisite in the area. But she also had curves, and the black tank and knit pants revealed that the woman didn’t seem to have an ounce of fat or extra skin—surely carbs never passed her full, well-formed lips.
    She was, he believed, thirty-plus, and maybe plus, but whatever plastic surgery she had endured had been done with greater artistry than that seen on any of her canvases.
    She looked up from her current work in progress as the butler led him in.
    “Mr. Perry Christo, mum,” the butler announced. The butler had already made Perry feel as if he had stepped into an old black-and-white English film on the aristocracy. He was dead straight, didn’t crack a smile, and wore an impeccable tux. Maybe that was what butlers really did—walk around in impeccable tuxes and look good and stiff.
    Hmm. If the guy were a stiff, he might not look much different.
    “Oh, dear! That was fast. You just called.”
    “I did say fifteen or twenty minutes, didn’t I?”
    “It seemed like only a moment ago. I’m a mess.”
    She is anything but, thought Perry.
    Lilith seemed disconcerted as she set her brush on the palette, rose from the chair she’d been sitting in before her canvas, and walked—no, sailed, and quite regally—over to him. She extended a hand—a perfectly manicured, soft hand—and smiled.
    “How do you do, Mr. Christo. It is Mr., right? It’s my understanding you’re a private investigator, and not a detective? I seldom see people, but you did sound