Crash Into Me - L.A. Fiore Page 0,23

And if so, why? What the hell were we walking into?

Salem greeted me, as soon as I closed and locked the door to my apartment. “Hey, buddy,” I said, hunching down to scratch his head. “Did you miss me?” He rubbed his head into my hand in answer.

My place wasn’t much, but I was glad to be home. I unpacked, made sure I had clean clothes for tomorrow, then settled at my desk in the living room and consolidated my notes. The more people we interviewed, the more questions we had. What was perfectly clear was someone was willing to kill to keep the secret of Katrina’s death. And now, we needed to figure out why.

I spent an hour getting my stuff together for the briefing the captain would want in the morning, and then I walked to the kitchen for a glass of wine. Dropping down on the sofa, I flipped on the television.

I caught the tail end of a story on the attempt on Gregory Enzi senior’s life. He was a known crime boss, dabbled, some said too much, in politics. Meaning, he had people at all levels of the government in his pocket, though that was never proven. I had enough in my head, didn’t need to think about the attempted murder of a crime boss, so I was switching to a movie when a familiar face filled the screen. My heart skipped, as I turned up the volume.

“Kade Wakefield’s annual masquerade party has a date.”

I entertained the fantasy of going to that for about three minutes, before I came back to reality and changed the channel.

“So the coroner and lead detective weren’t convinced it was a suicide, and yet, ruled it as such. And the one person who could shine some light on this mess is in the wind,” Captain summarized.

“In a nutshell,” Zac said. “For someone connected to the level of celebrity Katrina Dent had been, there is surprisingly little on Jason Benjamin.”

“Maybe that was intentional. Maybe he planned his backout strategy,” Cap said.

“Yeah, but why?” I asked.

Captain shook his head. “Good question. I’ll get the forensic division on it. They can reach out to their counterparts in Los Angeles, see what they can shake out.”

Captain stood and turned to the window. “What a crazy case, but we’ve got three bodies, so keep at it.” He looked back at us. “You need more hands, say the word.”

“You got it, Cap,” Zac said, standing and heading for the door.

“Thanks, Captain,” I said, and followed Zac out. He was itchy; the wheels were turning. He dropped down at his desk. “I’ll start digging into people we know Jason dealt with as Katrina’s representative. See if we can find someone who can tell us about this guy,” he said.

“I’m going to finish the report on what we learned in LA,” I said, then saw the black envelope, with my name in silver, sitting on my desk. Lifting it, I asked of the room, “Where did this come from?”

“A courier dropped it off yesterday,” someone shouted back.

Pulling out my chair, I dropped down into it, turning the envelope around in my hands.

“Are you going to open it or are you practicing your x-ray vision?” Zac teased.

I flipped him off. Then ripped the envelope open and pulled out an invitation, also black, with silver writing, and a purple mask on the bottom right corner. I read it four times, my body growing warmer with each read through.

“What is it?”

I glanced up to see Zac watching me with interest. “An invitation.”

He rolled his eyes before he said, “To what?”

“Kade Wakefield’s masquerade party.”

Zac stopped tapping on his keyboard, his curious stare fixed on me. “Really?” Then he leaned back in his chair, lifted a pen and rolled it around his fingers. “An invitation to the most sought after party of the year, hosted by a man we’ve got on our radar. Interesting.”

I dropped the invitation, but I wasn’t unaffected. Butterflies were going crazy in my stomach. I showed none of that to Zac because I’d never live it down. “You know as well as I do the likelihood that Kade Wakefield has anything to do with this case is slim to none.”

“Still an awfully big coincidence.”

Dropping my elbows on my desk, I didn’t hide my irritation because, for as smart as Zac could be, he let his bias color his judgment far too often. “Did it ever occur to you that he might have invited me because he thinks I’m attractive?”

Zac opened