Private Dick Casefile 01 - Lily White Rose Red

to have his suits tailored. Off the rack was never going to fit him. His nose was flatter than Artie’s.
    “It’s private,” I said.
    The average Joe came forward. “Stand up.”
    Not wanting the indignity of Mr. X watching while I was dragged up out of the chair, I stood up on my own two feet and permitted him to pat me down. “Careful. I’m ticklish,” I warned him.
    “He’s carrying, Mr. Hamilton. Want I should take it from him?”
    “You can try,” I growled. One thing about being wiry, you learn how to take down guys that are bigger than you are, although the fireplug could present a challenge, especially if I had to take them on two at once.
    “Don’t bother, Brownie. He’s not here to dust me,” Mr. Hamilton said with a smirk.
    “You’re confident,” I said. “Send them out.” Mr. Hamilton said, “I prefer to keep my men here when I meet with strangers.”
    “I can understand that. They make a good argument standing by your side,” I said. “But Miss McIntyre sent me over to discuss something personal. Red roses.”
    Mr. Hamilton turned a little pale, but there was no sag to him.
    “Brownie, Stevens. Wait out there.”
    Brownie was the gunnie who could blend with a crowd; Stevens turned out to be the fireplug. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, so far he hadn’t said a thing, he just nodded and went to the door.
    When they were gone, I said, “Why did you ask Phil Martin to hire Marguerite Saint-Ville?”
    “Right to the point. I like that.” Mr. Hamilton leaned back like he was planning to dance around it. “Mr. Martin is an associate of mine—”
    “You lent him your wallet to start Topaz and Zircon,” I 108

    CATT FORD

    interrupted. “But you must have other resources. Why him?” Mr. Hamilton stared at me as if deciding how much to spill.
    Finally, he said, “I trust him.”
    “Don’t you trust your other associates?”
    “Mr. Martin is an honorable man.”
    Yeah, an honorable crook. Go figure. Not that I had any hard evidence that Martin was a crook, but if he was tied in with Mr. X, you could bet on it. I was.
    “So you trusted him to what? Not to jump her? Not to sell her to whoever was after her?”
    “Both of those, yes. And he has security at his clubs. As long as she stayed there….” Mr. Hamilton looked blank, completely empty.
    “It’s harder to protect someone than to kill them. You’d need an army to meet all eventualities.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So who was after her?”
    “She never told me,” Mr. Hamilton said. “I asked. She never told me.”
    “Did she know you were her father?”
    Mr. Hamilton tried to stare me down. He didn’t succeed. “Lily must trust you.”
    “I figured it out on my own. She just confirmed it.”
    “Where did I go wrong?”
    “You fucked up big time letting Lily get away from you in 1930,” I said. I could have kicked myself if I wasn’t afraid that Mr. Hamilton might join in. I mean, getting mouthy with a man with his connections isn’t usually a good way to stay healthy. Since he’d made it big, he’d left off carrying a gun on a daily basis, but I’m pretty sure he knew where to find one. Or he could just whistle for his goons.
    However, my crack startled a chuckle out of him once he decided how to take it. “You’re right about that. I’ll rephrase it. What I meant was, how did you tumble to it?”

    Lily White, Rose Red: Grey Randall, Private Dick Casefile #1
    109

    I shrugged. Maybe I should open a correspondence school: How to be a private dick in five easy lessons. Print the ads in the back of matchbooks. “Does it matter?”
    “I suppose it’s a moot point about Marguerite, but Lily—I’m married, you know. I got kids.”
    “Maybe we could work that out later, not that I moonlight on a lonely hearts column, but right now my priority is the man who killed your daughter, and I’m out to get him.”
    “I wish you luck. I haven’t been able to find out a solitary thing about it. If I could help you I would.”
    “You didn’t help her much, did you?”
    He frowned and leaned forward to glare at me. I didn’t let him see how it shook me. “Listen, there were reasons…. If I let it get out I had a daughter—an illegitimate daughter—it would have been open season on Marguerite. Blackmail, one of my rivals putting the snatch on her—
    I’d have had to hire that army you mentioned to keep her safe.”
    “Maybe you should have. It didn’t work out so well the way you handled it, did