The Shadow Hunter

the hot tub she’d come close to cashing it in, and if things had gone a little differently when she was escaping from Hickle’s apartment last night, he might have unloaded his shotgun on her at point-blank range. She had cheated her own mortality twice already. Third time’s the charm? she wondered ruefully, and then headlights flared in her rearview mirror.
    She sank lower in her seat and watched a black Lexus roll by. As it eased past her car, she glimpsed the driver’s profile, lit by the glow of the dashboard. It was Howard. No surprise.
    The Lexus pulled into the bungalow’s driveway, and Howard got out to lift the garage door, then parked in the garage. He entered the house via the front door. Lights came on a moment later, but the curtains remained shut.
    Abby had seen all she needed to see, but she lingered, curious about Amanda Gilbert, who was sure to show up before long.
    At seven fifteen a white BMW parked at the curb a few doors down. The woman who hurried to the house was slim, almost bony, and quite young. She started to unlock the bungalow’s front door with her own key, and then the door opened from inside and Howard ushered her in.
    Abby got out of her car and took a stroll, partly to stretch her legs and restore the circulation to her tush, but mainly to check out the BMW. She noted the license plate number and, resting on the dashboard, a parking permit for KPTI stamped with the words
March
and
Employee
. Amanda Gilbert worked at Channel Eight. She was one of Kris’s colleagues, and if her car was any indication, she didn’t occupy an entry-level position.
    Driving out of the neighborhood, heading toward Hollywood, Abby activated her cell phone. She obtained the number of KPTI’s switchboard from Information, then called the station. “I have some correspondence for Amanda Gilbert,” she said when the receptionist answered. “May I have her exact title, please?”
    “Executive Producer,” she was told.
    “News Division?”
    “Yes, that’s right.”
    “Thanks very much.” Abby ended the call.
    So Amanda was Kris’s executive producer. All of a sudden Abby found her dislike of Howard Barwood rising to uncomfortably high levels. She supposed the identity of his illicit paramour shouldn’t have made any difference to her assessment of him. Yet it did, because intuitively she knew that it turned him on to be balling Kris’s boss, that in doing so he obtained a sense of powerand control over his wife that no call girl or receptionist could have provided.
    She pulled into a mini-mall and found a pay phone. Her next call was too sensitive to entrust to a cellular transmission. She dialed Travis’s office, expecting him to be working late. He answered the phone personally; his assistant had gone home.
    “The bungalow is Howard’s love nest,” she reported, keeping her voice low to be sure she wasn’t overheard. “He meets his girlfriend there.”
    “Who is she?”
    “Does it matter? If not, let’s leave her name out of it. What’s important is that Howard owns the bungalow, which means he owns Trendline, which almost certainly means he’s funneling assets overseas without Kris’s knowledge.”
    “Which means he has a motive for getting Kris out of the way.”
    “True. Marriage has become inconvenient for him. He seems ready for a fresh start. I doubt he’s capable of arranging Kris’s murder on his own, but when Hickle came along, he may have seen an opportunity.” Abby blew out a tired breath. “You remember how concerned he was about my safety, asking if I had backup or if I was on my own? I thought he was being chivalrous or sexist, depending on how you look at it. But maybe not. Maybe he wanted to assess my vulnerability so he could attack me.”
    “He may have had the opportunity. The guest cottage logs show that he left Malibu at six o’clock on Wednesday evening and didn’t return until shortly after midnight—later than usual.”
    “I was in the hot tub around ten o’clock, ten thirty.”
    “It fits. When he failed to finish you off personally, he may have decided to rat you out to Hickle and have him handle it.”
    “Was he out last night? The phone call reached Hickle around eight thirty.”
    “Howard was out from six thirty to eleven.”
    “Okay, then he might have spent the first part of the evening at the bungalow. After that, he called Hickle, using his WesternRegional phone because he didn’t know if Hickle’s phone was tapped, and he