PI On A Hot Tin Roof

expecting.
    “I think you’re in a bit over your head.”
    Talba kept silent.
    “It pains me to say this. I do hope you realize I wouldn’t do it if there were any other way.” He stopped, and again she held her tongue. “My daughter’s manipulating you, Talba.”
    So much for honorifics. “Manipulating me.” She thought about it. “She’s paying me to do a job. What more do you think she wants?”
    “I wish I knew, Talba. I really wish I knew.”
    She sat still, trying to wrap her mind around this one, but all she could think was how much she hated people who used your name in every sentence. “Why,” she ventured, “do you think she’s manipulating me, then?”
    “Because that’s what she does. She’s never had a straightforward thought in her life.” He was quiet himself for a moment, letting her absorb it. “I’m sorry to say it, but my daughter’s psychotic.”
    “Psychotic. What kind of psychotic? Schizophrenic? Bipolar?”
    “Sociopathic might cover it better. Even as a child, she was different. Never told the truth when a lie would do.”
    Talba wasn’t impressed. “Kids lie.”
    “Using drugs in high school. Selling them in college. Stealing. More lying. My God, you should have seen what she put that poor husband of hers through.”
    Talba waited, but no more was forthcoming. “Well? What?”
    “The gamut.” He stopped to sip coffee. “Other men. Spending all his money. Mind games.”
    “Let’s go right to mind games.”
    “She’d pretend to be obsessively jealous—cut up all his clothes; call him at the office and accuse him of having affairs.”
    Talba wondered how he could possibly know. “When Kristin was the one who was having them,” she said.
    “In fact, she’d accuse him of anything she could think of, including dishonesty in business.”
    She wondered if she dared mention the supposed mob connection, but decided to pass. As for the other things, she couldn’t identify anything any judgmental, old-school, extremely controlling parent might not say about his child. It might all be true, but none of it sounded psychotic. “Why,” she asked, “are you in business with her, then? She’s an officer of your company.”
    He laughed, but this wasn’t the polite laugh of before; it was more like an astonished guffaw. “I’m not in business with her. You can be vice president of a company and do practically nothing. However, Kristin stays perfectly busy. She’s in charge of acquisitions, which means she looks at property we might want to buy. Spends the day making realtors’ lives miserable, then makes reports. And sure enough, sometimes we take her suggestions—certainly when it comes to decor, a field in which she excels. I never said she was stupid or talentless; merely crazy. But she has no real responsibility. Certainly no access to our accounts.”
    “Or she’d steal from her own father.”
    “You never know what she’d do. She’s unpredictable. And dangerous.”
    “Okay then. I’m going to ask you the million-dollar question. You don’t even know me—why are you telling me all this?”
    “Listen to me, little girl. I’d be best pals with the maître d’ here even if I didn’t own this hotel. Do you have any idea how many of these little talks I’ve had to have with people she’s gotten involved with?”
    In that case,
Talba wondered,
why doesn’t Kristin move out of town?
She had a better question. “Was Buddy one of them?”
    “Buddy?” He snorted. “My first take was, he deserved her. But there was a child involved.” He thought about it. “Eventually I might have had to do it. Even with Buddy.”
    Talba remembered how patient and loving Kristin had been with Lucy. She was one of the few adults the girl seemed to approve of.
    “You still haven’t answered my question—why are you telling me all this?”
    “I don’t want to see you get hurt, that’s all.”
    That struck a chord. He’d said his daughter was dangerous. “It sounds oddly as if you’re talking about physical peril.”
    “Peril. Good word.” He fiddled with the tiny doily under his cup, buying time. “Anything’s possible, Your Grace. Anything at all.”
    The light was beginning to dawn. “You think
she
killed Buddy.”
    “I don’t know. I just don’t know. And I don’t want to know. I’m prepared to pay you to stop your investigation.”
    “Bribe me, you mean.”
    “Not at all. I’m trying to protect you.”
    “Look, if she’s dangerous, why