Back in Black (McGinnis Investigations #1) - Rhys Ford Page 0,70

a sentinel, unwavering and not blinking but definitely keyed in on the conversation. “I was only there that night because of Stevens. Could he have tapped me to be there, Montoya? Did he ask for me by name, or did it just come up?”

“It just came up. I told him you or Dawson could probably do the surveillance for him,” Montoya said with a shrug. “He was going to have his cousin Alex do it, but he and his husband were going to be out of town, so that wasn’t an option. I can verify Alex and James were gone, and Rook wanted to get the security shakedown done as quick as possible because the property’s owner was coming into LA soon to start work on the place. It was just supposed to be an easy job, and Rook figured a lot of it was pretty much install cameras here and maybe take a flamethrower to the garden.”

“And instead I find a couple of adulterers with attack dogs,” I replied, grimacing when I remembered the Doberman who’d tackled me was more interested in licking my face than chewing my nose off. “I think me finding Adele was a coincidence, but everything after that wasn’t. The attack on Arthur was somebody looking for something. It could’ve even been the fake Marlena, because we didn’t get a very good look at the shooter, but from what I remember, they were a lot smaller than Ivan.”

“We haven’t got a positive ID on her body yet. Even though lover boy told you they were lovers, he ain’t talking,” O’Byrne said. “They’re running fingerprints on her now, and facial recognition is probably going to be screwy because the coroner tells me she had some work done on her face and body. Those hips were a lie, and that pretty face didn’t start off as pretty as it was when you saw it. If her prints don’t come back with something, we’re going to have a Jane Doe to chase down. Dawson said she sounded like she was from back East, so we might do a few reach-outs toward that coast.”

“If she was working with Ivan and the feds yanked him, maybe they also have an idea about who she is,” Montoya pointed out. “Providing they’re willing to share information.”

“Let me talk to the agent who tagged me,” O’Byrne murmured, shuffling through her stack of papers before coming up with what she’d been looking for. “You were right about one thing, Mac, the Brinkerhoffs’ place looks like a damned museum. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they had close to thirty million dollars of artwork on their walls.”

“So maybe that’s why they killed Adele,” I said, turning the theory over in my head. “I looked into lab-grown diamonds, and it’s becoming a pretty huge industry. Even diamond companies are beginning to develop their own lines, marketing them as pristine works of art, polished by artisans with years of knowledge so you can’t even tell the difference between one grown in a lab or one dug up from the dirt. If Arthur and Adele switched up their forgery from art—something easily traceable—to fake diamonds being passed off as authentic or maybe from one of those exclusive labs, you’ve got a motive to kill as well as a desire to find out what else they have in their inventory.”

“Because the handful that we got from the body were good but not spectacular,” she commented, tapping her pen against the table. “But why have Ivan go after you? Why was his girlfriend passing herself off as Marlena? What’s the reason behind either one of those people to be in the picture?”

“I don’t know, but we could start by asking Arthur and maybe put a couple of questions to that ex-cop neighbor of theirs,” I suggested. “He could tell you whether or not he’d seen Ivan around, or the woman.”

“What we really need to do is talk to Arthur Brinkerhoff himself,” Montoya growled. “He can tell you what his wife was doing that night and probably why she was murdered.”

“Maybe,” O’Byrne said, pulling her mouth into a tight line. “Our problem is Arthur Brinkerhoff slipped into a coma about two hours ago and the doctors aren’t sure if he’s ever going to come out of it. So right now our problem is whether or not the LAPD is going to charge McGinnis here with anything, and if they don’t, I have to decide if he’s going to stay