The Color of Death (7 page)

Scottsdale

Tuesday

10:30
P.M
.

Sam watched while Gavin Greenfield
entered the lobby of the hotel with three other mildly drunk conventioneers.

Finally. I was beginning to think he went with the guys to a whorehouse for an all-nighter.

When the men headed for the elevators, Sam put away his newspaper and followed. Two of the men got off on the eighth floor and one on the ninth, leaving Sam and Gavin alone in the elevator. When the doors opened onto the tenth floor, both men stepped out.

“Gavin Greenfield?” Sam asked as soon as the doors closed behind them.

“Yes?”

Sam pulled out his credentials. “FBI Special Agent Sam Groves.”

Gavin looked curious rather than alarmed when he saw the gold badge. “What’s this about?”

A photo appeared in Sam’s other hand. “Do you recognize this woman?”

“Sure. That’s Katie.” For the first time Gavin looked anxious. “Is she all right? Has anything happened to her?”

“She’s fine. Do you have a last and middle name for Katie?”

“Her full name is Katherine Jessica Chandler. Katie to her family. Kate to everyone else. Look, what’s this—”

“Excuse me, sir,” Sam interrupted without raising his voice. “How long have you known her?”

“Since she was eight. I’m an honorary uncle. Why are you asking about her?”

“Just routine,” Sam lied easily. “Her photo came up in connection with a background investigation we were running. We needed to match it with a name. You’re sure about the identity?”

“Absolutely.”

“Do you have an address and telephone number for Ms. Chandler?”

Gavin hesitated, looked again at the badge on Sam’s palm, and gave him the information.

“Local address,” Sam said, recognizing the name of a nearby bedroom community. “Is she staying at the hotel?”

“I don’t think so. It’s only a short drive from her house and the rooms here are pricey.”

“Thank you, sir. If we need anything else, I’ll be in touch.”

Leaving a bemused Gavin behind, Sam got on the elevator and went back to the front desk. Ten minutes later he found out that no Kate or Katie Jessica Chandler was registered under any variation of the name. He looked at his watch and decided it was never too late to catch a con artist at home.

And this time he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Glendale

Late Tuesday night

Kate heard her doorbell ring,
looked at the clock above her workbench, and shot to her feet.

Lee!

Even as the thought came, she tried to control the wild rising of hope inside her. She had a lot of business associates in the immediate area. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone with a handful of good rough gems was too impatient to wait for normal business hours to talk to her. It was one of the downsides of working and living in the same place.

With a caution that came from handling small, very valuable, easily portable goods, Kate looked out the expensive peephole in her sturdy front door.

Not Lee.

The Fed.

How did he find me?

Kate flipped on the intercom and left the locks as they were. “Sorry, wrong number.”

“Not according to Gavin Greenfield,” Sam said.

“What—how—is he all right?”

Sam found it interesting that both of them were so concerned about the other. Family friend and stepdaughter of family. Maybe Gavin was part of the scam, whatever it was.

“He was fine when I left him half an hour ago,” Sam said. “Do you remember my name and serial number, or should I entertain your nosy neighbor across the street by dangling my badge beneath your porch light?”

“What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“You mean you want to grill me like a cheese sandwich.”

Sam’s mouth kicked up at the left corner. “I have better manners than that. You going to let me in or do you want to do this the hard way?”

Kate stared at the unexpected smile for an instant. She started to ask him what
the hard way
was, thought better of it, and began opening the unusually strong bolts and locks that secured every door in the house.

“Don’t faint if you see my handgun,” she said. “And don’t bother to ask to see my permit. Arizona has an—”

“Open carry law,” Sam cut in. “It’s just one of the things that make this such an interesting state to work in.”

The door opened. A single look told Sam that the door had a magnetic contact on it. If it was opened after the alarm system was armed, bells would ring somewhere. The door also had a steel plate embedded in it and extralong bolts on the lock. Once that puppy was shut and bolted down, it would take a shaped charge to open it. He went to a window and saw that it was wired into the house alarm system.

Either the lady was paranoid or she had a lot to protect.

Sam turned from the window to the woman who was watching him warily, a woman whose hands were smudged with something fine and dark, like soot.

“You have more security than Fort Knox,” he said.

“I doubt it.”

“Any particular reason, or are you just paranoid?”

“For doubting you?”

“For the security,” he said. “The neighborhood isn’t rich enough or poor enough to need it.”

“Then I must be paranoid.”

Sam shook his head slightly. “Try again.”

“Why should I?”

“Why shouldn’t you?” he asked, smiling.

Kate stared at him and wondered how many people he’d questioned with that same combination of easy patience, professionally genial smile, and hard-eyed intelligence. “What do you want from me?”

“The truth about you and that sapphire you switched.”

She tilted her head to one side and studied him in silence. Hair slid out from the clip that was casually anchored on top of her head. She ignored it.

Sam’s eyes followed the slide and bounce of the strand of glossy hair. Hair like that had to be natural. None of the dyes were good enough to put that kind of richness and sheen into the hair shafts. No matter how costly the salon job, sooner or later dyed hair looked like what it was. Fake. And if he had any remaining doubt about the naturalness of her color, all he had to do was stand close enough to verify that the random flashing threads of light in the black were silver rather than gold.

So he stood that close.

“What are you doing?” she asked, stepping back.

He noted that she was fussy about her private space, which must have made flirting with Purcell hard work. “I’m looking at your gray hair. Most women would hide it.”

“My father was completely gray when he was forty. I’ve had thirty-three years to get used to the idea of my follicle destiny.”

Sam’s smile was different this time, real, like his laughter. “You really don’t add up, do you?”

All she said was, “You should laugh more.”

“Why?”

“It changes your eyes from hard blue to the kind of shimmer you only get from fine, untreated Burmese blues. Sapphires.”

His smile shifted to that of a male who has become intensely physically aware of an interesting female. The resulting expression wasn’t quite predatory, but it was a long way from safe.

Sam cursed the quickening of his body and concentrated on business, “You sound like you know a lot about sapphires.”

She nodded.

“You’re going to make this like pulling teeth, aren’t you?” he asked.

Kate didn’t answer. She was still stunned by the jolt of sheer physical awareness that had arced between her and the irritating FBI agent. She rubbed her work-grimed hands on her jeans, scrubbing away the residual tingling in her palms.

“I—” She stuck her hands in her pockets. “I’m not used to midnight visits by strange men with badges.”

“It’s not midnight yet and you’ve met me before.”

“That still makes you a strange man with a badge.”

“Do cops make you nervous?”

“Do you ever stop asking questions?”

“Sure. As soon as I have the answers.” Sam looked at the hands bunched in her front pockets, stretching her jeans over a good-looking butt and long thighs. “Most women don’t garden at night.”

“We’ve already established that I’m not most women.”

“Were you digging in the backyard?”

“No.”

Sam waited, letting the silence expand with each heartbeat until it was pressing against Kate from all sides like a vise.

“I was working,” she said.

At last. A small crack in her verbal defenses.

And they both knew it.

“Doing what?” he asked gently.

“I work for myself.”

Sam went back to silence and the sense of a vise squeezing air out of everything.

“I’m a gem cutter,” she said.

Bingo.

“Have you done any big emerald-cut blue sapphires lately?” he asked.

Kate’s breath wedged in her throat. If she’d had any hope that the man with changeable blue eyes was slow on the uptake, she knew better now. She watched him intently, seeking any shift in his expression when she said, “Not in the last five months.”

He didn’t miss the faint emphasis on the “five months” or the intensity of her stare. She was expecting him to react.

He was sorry to disappoint both of them.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Sam asked.

“Why should it? It didn’t mean a damn thing to the rest of the FBI.”

“Try me.”

“Oh, sure. You’re different. It says so right below the number on your gold-plated badge.”

“What do you have to lose?” he asked reasonably.

“My time and my temper,” she shot back. “I really hate being treated like I bark at airplanes.”

Sam fought it, then gave up and just laughed. “You nailed it. Nobody does high snot like the FBI.”

She tried not to grin but couldn’t help it. “ ‘High snot.’ Oh, God, doesn’t that just describe it.” Laughing, she decided that Special Agent Sam Groves might possibly be different from the federal robots who’d interviewed her several times in Florida. Not that the agents had wanted to talk to her after the first time, but she’d made their lives miserable by insisting that she had a lead on a kidnapping between Fort Myers and Captiva Island. And then she went to a local newspaper with the same story, forcing the FBI to at least pretend to listen to her.

She’d paid for it too. That was when the call had come telling her to back off or die.

“Who’d you tangle with?” Sam asked.

“Whoever was on nutcase duty in Miami in November of last year. I forget the names. Dumb and Dumber is how I thought of them.” As Kate spoke, she took her hands out of her pockets and decided she had to do something with them besides fidget. “Want a cup of coffee?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Long hours and less sleep?” she asked, heading for the kitchen.

“That about sums it up.” He followed her into a kitchen that wasn’t big or small. The appliances were into their third decade. If she made money scamming, she sure didn’t put it back into her house.

Kate reached for the bag of ground coffee.

“You going to wash your hands?” he asked.

She looked at her hands and the dark smudges that came from the various fine grits she’d been using to polish a rather nice orange topaz. “What are you worried about? Strychnine is white.”

He grinned and wished they had met some other way. But they hadn’t, and wishing wouldn’t change it.

Kate washed her hands at the sink, wiped them on a small towel, and went back to making coffee.

Sam leaned against a kitchen counter and watched. She moved quickly yet smoothly, no jerks or jumps or stumbles. Good balance. Great hands. The confidence that came of being in a familiar place.

Sexy too. Way too sexy.

Very soon he had a mug of rich, dark coffee steaming underneath his nose. He sipped, sighed, and sipped again. Then he settled back in a kitchen chair and wondered if he really would have to grill Katherine Jessica Chandler like a cheese sandwich to get any information.

The telephone rang before he could decide.

As Kate reached for it, she asked Sam, “Does the name Lee Mandel ring any bells for you?”

The mug stopped halfway to Sam’s mouth.

Scottsdale Royale

Midnight Tuesday

Ted Sizemore’s voice cut through
the fog of smoke and alcohol chatter at the hotel bar like a brass buzz saw.

“Hey, if it isn’t Jack Kirby! You old son of a bitch, what are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in years.”

Kirby turned, spotted Sizemore, and held out his hand. “I’m working, what else?”

“Still skip-chasing?” Sizemore asked, pumping the former Drug Enforcement Administration agent’s hand vigorously. He and Kirby had worked on the crime strike force that had made Ted Sizemore a legend.

“Along with background checks, divorces, child custody, and lost cousins. The usual PI stuff.” And some other things that weren’t usual, but sure paid well. Not that he was going to talk about that part of his business with old “Straight and Narrow” Sizemore.

“You look like you’re doing all right,” Sizemore said. He knew Kirby was nine years younger and had a full head of close-cropped gray-brown hair, but that wasn’t the real difference between them. Kirby was fit in the lean way that was genetics as much as hard work.

“Nothing big,” Kirby said. “Nothing fancy like you. But being a private investigator pays the bills with a little left over to put a few bucks on the ponies when I’m bored. But don’t tell my ex-wives. They think I should be eating dog food in a slum.”

Sizemore snickered. “Sit down. I just finished an interview with one of the local reporters.”

“The media always did love you,” Kirby said. And vice versa.

“I sell papers,” Sizemore said as he signaled the bartender. “What are you drinking these days?”

“Gin and tonic. Thanks.” Kirby settled onto the bar stool and looked around the room with the eyes of a former cop gone private. Nothing to worry about here. Just a gathering of conventioneers and good old boys. He gave Sizemore his full attention. “How are Sharon and Sonny?”

“Pain in the ass, that’s how.” Sizemore took a long swallow of beer. “Gotta watch Sharon like a frigging hawk or she’ll ‘forget’ to ask me and just run the damn show herself.”

“She always was a pistol.”

“And Sonny always was a blank round,” Sizemore said.

“You’re too hard on the boy.”

“Yeah yeah,” Sizemore said without interest. “I hear that from Sharon twice a week. How are your kids?”

“Grown and gone, like the last two wives.”

Sizemore shrugged. “Same shit, different day. What brings you to Scottsdale?”

“A cheating, lying, no good son of a bitch husband.”

Sizemore snickered and finished the beer. He rapped the bottle smartly on the bar. “How much is he worth?”

“To me or to his wife?”

“Fuck the wife, she’s probably doing the gardener.”

Kirby laughed. Even when Sizemore’s tongue was thick with alcohol, his mind was still quicker than most. “That bad-boy husband is worth a couple hundred a day and expenses to me. What brings you out of L.A.?”

“Business. I’m security advisor/coordinator for the National Coalition of Gem and Jewelry Traders.”

“So, you tuck them in bed when they’re drunk?” Kirby said, gesturing with his glass to a table of rowdy conventioneers.

Sizemore snorted. “I’m not their nanny. And those guys aren’t mine. They’re furniture types. My boys are having a convention here in a few days, but most of the high-end trading gets done in the days before the official opening. Private showings in their rooms. I make sure the doors are locked and everyone who leaves with more than he came with has a sales receipt, that sort of thing.”

Nodding, Kirby sipped his drink. “Your job sounds about as exciting as mine.”

“It will be real dull if I can keep the South American gangs out of my clients’ hair. You want excitement, you chase one of those bad boys.”

“Yeah, I busted my share of them working undercover. That task force you ran still takes the prize for sheer number of arrests.” Kirby saluted Sizemore with his glass. “The South Americans were doing drugs, then. Still are, I guess. I’ve kind of lost touch. I’m all over the country now.” He smiled slightly. “Pay might not be much, but the travel can’t be beat. It keeps me young.”

“You ever miss the DEA?”

Kirby narrowed his eyes and looked at the moisture beading on the gin-and-tonic glass. “Sometimes. A badge opens more doors than a handful of papers. But I can’t say I miss living undercover with twenty-two-year-old assholes holding more cash than a working stiff like me would make in a lifetime. That really used to piss me off, especially around April fifteenth.”

“Tax time.” Sizemore shook his head and picked up the fresh beer the bartender had put in front of him. “Yeah, I hear you.”

“How about you?” Kirby asked. “Do you miss the bad old days?”

“What’s to miss? I still work closely with the Bureau, but I can do things as a civilian that would get me bounced if I was carrying FBI
creds. Best part is I don’t have to worry about fancy lawyers fucking up my fieldwork.”

Kirby grinned. “Neither do I.” He clinked glass against bottle. “To life without badges.”

“I’ll drink to that.”