PI On A Hot Tin Roof

for that woman?”
    “Couldn’t. Confidentiality.” Technically she wasn’t bound by it this time—she was just embarrassed to say she’d been working Langdon’s case. “Did Kristin tell you about it?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Okay, look, I’m an idiot. The great Skip Langdon can’t solve a case, nobody can. I just thought I ought to do
something,
that’s all.”
    Langdon grinned. “Take it easy, Baroness. I can use all the help I can get. Have a seat. You’ve got something for me, right? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
    Talba knew perfectly well how Langdon worked—had already made the decision to give something up. “Maybe,” she said. “A thought or two. Who phoned in the tip?”
    Langdon shrugged. “A whisperer.” Meaning the caller could be either sex. “Pay phone.”
    “I’m curious. Did Kristin say anything about her father?”
    “No. Why?”
    “She told me he had a key to her car—she tell you that?”
    Langdon sat straight up and gave Talba a look clearly meant for Kristin. “Goddammit, no! She said she’d left it unlocked on the street one day. What’s up with Daddy dear?”
    “Couldn’t say. But he took me to lunch and filled my ear full of poison about her.”
    “Her own father?”
    Talba shrugged.
    “Well, if the gun’s registered to him, we’ll know soon enough.”
    “The question is,” Talba said, “was it the gun used in either Buddy’s or Suzanne’s shootings?”
    “Don’t know yet.”
    “But you probably do know whether the same gun was used in both of them.”
    “Yeah. I know. Why?” The cop barely paused, unable to wait for an answer. “She’s LaGarde’s
daughter
—why would he plant a gun on her?”
    “He told rne she was a manipulator. But maybe he was setting the scene for a setup. Kristin mention she thought he was having an affair with Suzanne?”
    “Christ, no!”
    “Quite the dutiful little daughter, isn’t she? Maybe you ought to ask LaGarde. By the way, was Suzanne really pregnant—or was that just some story of hers?”
    Langdon had evidently grown tired of being told how to do her job. “What was that you had for me?”
    “I’ve already given you two things—LaGarde had a key and he went out of his way to trash his daughter. What do you have for me? Same gun or not?”
    “Come on. More. And make it good.”
    “I don’t know if it’s good,” Talba said honestly. “It’s just speculation. But I’ve got some reason to think it might have happened—and if it did, it changes a lot.”
    Langdon sighed. “Dammit, Baroness. How do you always get around me? Yes. Same gun.”
    “I thought so.”
    The phone rang, and Langdon talked. She came back saying. “Great. The gun’s not registered. But then, neither are half the guns in this state. So what’s your big theory?”
    Talba told her the tape idea, along with Wesley Burrell’s story, ending up with, “What do you think?”
    “I think it’s a thought.”
    “I thought I was being a big help.”
    “Well, you told Kristin she had to bring the gun in. That was a help.” She shook her head. “I don’t know about that woman.”
    “What’s wrong with her? Lucy loves her; so does Adele.”
    “She’s a parakeet.”
    Talba giggled. She’d coined the term herself—in a poem about skinny Uptown women. “Don’t be a sizeist, Skip.”
    “Bad things come in little packages.”
    Talba left feeling as if she’d somehow dodged a bullet—Langdon had been unexpectedly gracious about her hubris in tagging after her on a murder case. But then why shouldn’t she be? She was the expert. If it made Talba feel silly, it was her problem.
    The tape thing bothered her. If there was anything there, there ought to be some way to prove it. Maybe there was something on Lucy’s Bacchus tape—words that Wesley might remember, that someone could have cut out and rerecorded.
    The only version she’d seen was the one edited for Raisa, which focused mostly on the child.
I wonder,
she thought, and called Lucy before she talked herself out of it.
    “Hey, Luce, how’re you doing?”
    “Tired. I just took a nap and the damned nightmares woke me up.”
    “I’m sorry, baby. You’re seeing a shrink, right?”
    “Oh, please. Let’s not go
there
.”
    “Listen, I need a favor. How is it over there?”
    “Quiet. Royce is up in his room, drunk. Just about everybody’s left. Mommo’s probably still downstairs with whoever’s left.”
    “Can you get something to me without anyone