LITMIR.BIZ

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      “The singer who’s not around.”

      I nodded.

      “But you are trying to help.”

      I nodded again but didn’t appreciate the sarcastic edge to his voice.

      “Have you reported this singer as missing?”

      “She’s not exactly missing.” I told him briefly what had happened at the club on Tuesday night. “Yesterday, I hired a private investigator to find out what the hell’s going on.”

      Palmer barely refrained from rolling his eyes. “Who?”

      “Shannon O’Brien.”

      His face looked more friendly. “Get her on the phone.”

      “Isn’t it a bit early?”

      “Trust me, she’ll want to know.”

      “You know her?”

      “Since she was a hotshot young constable. Her dad was head of homicide when I got promoted.”

      The nearest phone was in the off-limits front hall, so I used my cell. I got an answering service and explained that I really needed to speak to my investigator, no matter what the time was.

      “Is this something that can wait until business hours?”

      “No, it can’t!” I barked. “Something really terrible has happened. I must speak to her right away.”

      The woman at the answering service calmly said she’d relay my message but didn’t sound enthusiastic about it.

      Two burly cops came into the room, took the last of the coffee after seeing our mugs, and went into a corner to huddle with Palmer. I could only catch words here and there as people began noisily going in and out the front door.

      My cell’s “Take Five” ringtone started playing, and I snatched it up.

      She sounded put out. “Mr.Curran, it’s Shannon O’Brien. The answering service said you needed to speak with me immediately. What’s up?”

      “When I got home from the club a few hours ago, I found a body on my porch.” It felt very odd to speak of such violence so matter of factly.

      “Whose body? Olivia’s?”

      “Olivia’s friend, Maggie. I haven’t seen her since—”

      Palmer stepped over and held out his hand.“Give me that. Shannon, it’s Guy Palmer... Yeah, it’s good to hear your voice, too... Well, the world’s a small place. Look, to cut to the chase, your boy came home tonight and found a stiff on his front porch. Strangled... Well, you and I both know these things can get out of hand pretty quickly. What can you tell me?... You will?... Okay, I’ll be here waiting. I don’t have to tell you the drill... Yes, I’ll let them know.”

      He handed back the phone, and she sounded more friendly. “Mr. Curran —”

      “Look, call me Andrew, or Andy.”

      “Andy – and you call me Shannon, okay? I will get there as soon as I can, less than an hour if the traffic gods are kind. Just sit tight. Everything is going to be all right.”

      I was beginning to feel a little rough around the edges. “That’s easy for you to say. You didn’t find someone murdered on your front porch.”

      “You’re right. But I will be there to help. Get some food in your stomach. You’ll feel better.”

      “I don’t feel like eating.”

      “Do it anyway.”

      I hung up as another plainclothes cop knocked on the back door. “Got a minute, Guy?”

      Palmer and one of the cops went out the back door. The third stayed behind to keep an eye on me. Palmer came back in after a brief discussion. It was easy to see from his red face that he was furious.

      “Still want to stick to your story about the dead woman?” he asked.

      “I’ve told you what I know.”

      “Have you?”

      “To the best of my ability, yes.”

      “Then how come the old lady next door told us she’s seen her here several times, and on one occasion you had a very loud argument, right out on that porch where she’s lying now?”

      Looked as if my private investigator was mistaken about everything being all right.

      Chapter 6

      Hell and damn! Shannon thought as she sped through the light traffic of the early morning at a rate considerably over the legal limit.

      This job had certainly gone south in a hurry. When she’d gone to bed the previous evening, she’d told her musician boyfriend, Michael, that the case would no doubt turn out to be a simple one of a woman on the lam from some charge in the States who had stupidly stuck her head up into the public light and consequently got hauled back to face the music.

      “I’ll have this whole thing cleared up within a week,” she’d told him confidently.

      Why couldn’t life ever be easy?

      She wished she’d taken Michael up on his offer to spend the night at his downtown loft instead of being the good mom and staying home with her two teenage kids. She’d have had a far shorter drive to get to Curran’s house. Of course, Michael had also offered to come out to her place in Caledon. Problem was, she still felt uncomfortable sleeping with Michael in her own house, even if they were doing just that: sleeping. She had to set some kind of example for her seventeen-yearold daughter especially, even though the whole thing was a complete sham. Rachel certainly knew what her mom was doing when she spent the night with her boyfriend.

      As she drove, Shannon wondered if something she or her latest recruit had done could have caused the death of this woman. She felt confident that talking to some people at the airport wouldn’t have caused any alarm bells to be sounded, but there was no telling what Jackie Goode might have stirred up the previous day.

      Swinging south onto the Don Valley Parkway, she had to remind herself not to formulate conclusions without sufficient information. Her experience with the Toronto Police and in her own business had certainly drilled that into her head: get the facts and be thorough. Sloppiness could get you killed.

      Now someone was dead.

      The constable on duty at the end of Curran’s street hadn’t been informed of her arrival, typical of Guy Palmer. Her dad had said in an unguarded moment years ago that Palmer was a competent enough detective,but he had a “terminal case of the sloppies”.He worried about the time he wouldn’t be around to pick up his underling’s shortcomings. When police detectives made mistakes, innocent people could go to prison – or worse.

      By the time Shannon was escorted up the driveway and around to Curran’s back door, her mood had blackened considerably.

      She found her client sitting at his kitchen table, head down. He looked awful, but she hadn’t expected anything else. From all accounts he was a good guy, well thought of by his peers. Murder has a way of hitting people between the eyes with a force they cannot imagine. The better the person, the worse the shock. What she now needed most were some private words with him, but she couldn’t think of how she might swing that.

      Palmer was on top of her before she was barely in the door, all “hail fellow, well met” as he pulled her into a bear hug against his foulsmelling overcoat.

      “Shannon, you look fantastic. How you doing?”

      She slid out of his grip and stepped back almost to the door, fighting to keep her expression blank. Palmer stank of cigarettes, coffee and garlic, a lethal combination.

      Regardless of the fact that her dad had been a storied homicide

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