Sizzle and Burn

Lawrence Quinn showed up in Oriana the day my aunt died?”
    “That’s all I’ve got at the moment, but you have to admit it’s an interesting starting point.”
    She stopped in front of her room, a somber serious expression on her intriguing face. He didn’t have to jack up his mirror talent intuition to sense that she was about to confide one of her many secrets.
    “Everyone thinks that Aunt Vella died of natural causes,” she said quietly. “A heart attack. But I couldn’t believe it at first. She was only fifty-nine and she was in good health. So I paid for a private autopsy before she was cremated.”
    “That wasn’t in the file.”
    “I’m so glad to hear that J&J is not all-knowing and all-seeing.”
    “You’re doing that smile again,” he warned.
    “Sorry. Can’t help myself.”
    “What did the autopsy show?”
    “Nothing sinister.” She dug her key out of her purse. “No evidence turned up to indicate that her death was due to anything other than a heart attack. When you think about it, why would Quinn or anyone else want to murder her after all these years? She was no biochemist. She was an artist. She painted pictures and designed a lot of the masks I sell at Incognito.”
    “I’m not saying anyone killed her. I agree with you, there’s no obvious motive. But the coincidence remains and it bothers me. Bothers Fallon Jones, too.”
    She opened the door, stepped inside and turned to face him. “I’ve made my decision. I’ll cooperate with your investigation.”
    “I appreciate that.”
    She folded her arms and lounged against the door frame, studying him through the lenses of her black-framed glasses.
    “You knew I would say yes, didn’t you?” she said.
    He shrugged. “Figured you’d have a personal interest in the case. I would if I were in your shoes.”
    “You figured right. But I want to make one thing very clear. It’s true I’ve agreed to cooperate with you, but we don’t share the same agenda.”
    The hair stirred on the nape of his neck. “Meaning?”
    “Your objective and that of J&J is to find out what happened to Dr. Quinn. All I care about is my aunt. If she was murdered, I want the killer caught and punished. So long as you’re willing to help me do that, we’re a team.”
    He braced one hand on the outside of the door frame. “Deal.”
    “Good night, Mr. Jones.”
    She unfolded her arms, plucked the file out of his hand and closed the door quietly but firmly in his face.

Eleven
    “S on of a bitch,” Fallon Jones said.
    Zack cranked back in the chair, stacked his heels on the hassock and spoke into the phone. “Look on the bright side. Her goal and ours are aligned, at least for the moment. As long as that holds true, we’ve got her cooperation.”
    “And if it turns out there’s no connection between Quinn’s disappearance and Vella Tallentyre’s death?”
    “Then I think you can pretty much forget the whole cooperation thing. Raine has no fond feelings toward the Society and she doesn’t trust J&J as far as she could throw you and your office. She thinks Wilder Jones murdered her father before he destroyed the lab.”
    “Son of a bitch,” Fallon growled again. “Show her the damn file. It says that the accident was just that.”
    “She’s in her room, reading the file as we speak. Doubt that she’ll believe every word in it, though. I wouldn’t if I were her.”
    “It’s the truth, damn it.”
    “How do you know? You weren’t running J&J when the Tallentyre situation went down. We both know that good old Uncle Wilder wouldn’t have blinked twice about a little thing like shading the facts for the record. They didn’t call him Wild Wilder Jones for nothing.”
    “Huh.”
    They both contemplated that piece of family history in silence.
    Wilder Jones had gone out the same way he lived, in a blaze of reckless glory. He had been working for J&J’s unnamed government agency client at the time. He succeeded in taking down the bad guys and rescuing a number of people but it cost him his life.
    In a family studded with individuals who often got involved in high-risk ventures, Wilder had been frowned upon for his penchant for taking outrageous chances. He had been addicted to fast motorcycles, fast women and cigarettes.
    There were those in the Jones clan who held that he had always been unstable. Others maintained that, while it was true that he was born addicted to adrenaline, he did not go over the edge until the last few months