Red After Dark (Blackwood Security #13) - Elise Noble Page 0,48
she set foot in the projects and once squirted a Black man with Purell before she allowed him to shake her hand.
Alaric tilted his head from one side to the other. “Plenty to hire decent security.”
He ought to know—his parents were worth as much as Kyla, and they often had a bodyguard or two around.
“Precisely my point. Anyhow, I’ve had a word in the ear of a friendly reporter, and the American public will shortly be getting a reminder that Ridley was suspected of involvement in the murder of three little girls and their parents in Kandahar. Logan’s on his way there to see if he can dig up any further information.”
Alaric raised an eyebrow. “He’s going to Afghanistan?”
“I don’t believe Kyla Devane has an appropriate temperament to represent Kentucky in the senate, so it seemed worth the airfare.”
Black might have framed his motives as altruistic, but I suspected there was a teeny bit of self-interest involved. His genuine dislike of Ridley had come through loud and clear in our conversations over the last two days. But Alaric seemed to swallow the explanation.
“I find myself in unexpected agreement.”
Black ignored the jab. “I’ve also got our people in Syria taking another look at the incident off the coast of Latakia, but since Ridley was officially exonerated, I’m not sure it’ll help our cause to draw attention to it at this time.”
“Which brings us back to Kyla herself.”
“Yes. Assuming she is shady, it appears she’s also careful. We can’t find concrete evidence of any recent wrongdoing, just a whole lot of suspicious smears and rumours. It appears her ex-staff all signed NDAs, and she has a hair trigger when it comes to sending her lawyer after them. You mentioned you’d found something interesting, though?”
“It was Beth and Harriet rather than me, but yes. Kyla might not have been quite so discreet as a teenager.”
Alaric told us about two incidents—one where Kyla’s sense of entitlement was compounded by a boyfriend dumb enough to take the rap for her, fairly cut and dried, and another that sounded far more interesting. Black leaned forward an inch. He thought so too.
“Doesn’t sound hopeful for Piper.”
“No, it doesn’t. Although nobody found her car either, and that’s harder to hide than a body.”
“You’ve reviewed details of the case?”
“Harriet ‘borrowed’ the files from the sheriff’s archive. I’ve got digital copies of everything, although ‘everything’ isn’t as much as you’d expect. Apparently, the sheriff at the time of Piper’s disappearance was one of Daddy Devane’s cronies. The current sheriff’s more conscientious by all accounts, but he’s got limited resources and sees no need to reopen a case colder than the dark side of an iceberg. Piper’s grandmother still lives in town, according to Stéphane, but she’s got a reputation for being a bit out there so nobody listens to her.”
“Out there?” I asked. “In what way?”
“She believes Piper was abducted by aliens. Her buddies at the Saucer Syndicate stage a picket outside the Woodford County Sheriff’s Office every year on the anniversary of her disappearance, although in recent years, it’s turned into more of a general conspiracy theory-based rant.”
“I see how that could be controversial. What about her parents?”
“Never in the picture, so Harriet says. When Kyla and Piper started hanging out in ninth grade, Piper was the ugly duckling, but smart, and Kyla just wanted someone to do her homework. Piper managed to stay in the clique as she blossomed into a swan, but there was evidently tension between the two of them, which culminated in the homecoming queen face-off.”
“Wannabe royalty, tinfoil hats, and a body lying in a shallow grave. Maybe,” Dan murmured. “All the makings of a good novel.”
“Except this is real life,” I pointed out. “But you know how you love a good cold case…”
“I also love sleep.”
“You can sleep after the election. I’ll make you hot chocolate and sing you a lullaby.”
“Sing? You? I just said I liked sleep.”
“How about I promise to keep my mouth shut instead?”
Dan sighed and drained the last dregs of her coffee. “Fine, send me the file.”
Bradley had left me an outfit on the jet—a cocktail dress in deep purple, plain enough that I didn’t look like a tart but short enough for me to play the part of a trophy wife. Yes, some outsiders knew I was involved with Blackwood, but I never liked to disclose quite how hands-on my job was. Far better to play dumb and let people underestimate me.