Suspect. Jasmine Cresswell
a price attached to keeping a forty-nine-year-old body fitting into size four designer clothes, and Julia’s face was paying it. “The Feldmanns know everyone who’s anyone in Chicago. There are going to be lots of people there with money to invest—”
There was so much else going on right now that he couldn’t be bothered to disabuse Julia of her naive notions of how capital was actually raised. “Okay, okay. I’ll be home at seven.”
Julia was shocked into silence. He shut the library door before she could find her voice. His wife speechless was a rare enough occurrence that he needed to savor the moment. He had Sam’s number on his speed-dial, and he barely waited for the door to cut off the view of Julia’s startled expression before he pressed the appropriate key.
“Hello.” Sam picked up the phone right away, but he sounded both sleepy and disgruntled.
“This is Paul Fairfax. You need to switch on your TV right now. Jason Hamilton’s dead. He’s been murdered.”
“Jason’s dead? Murdered? Christ almighty. There has to be a mistake!”
“It’s all over the news. He was killed last night. Stabbed to death in the mayoral mansion.”
“Jesus H. Christ, that’s impossible! I just had dinner with the mayor last night. I had some friends in from D.C. and we were talking about Jason running for the Senate—”
“Well, he’s dead now.” Paul wasn’t interested in hearing how close Jason and Sam had been, and even less interested in hearing about the mayor’s ambitions to hold national political office. Bottom line, Sam’s friendship with the mayor meant zilch now that the guy was dead. It could even be a negative as political factions lined up behind new players.
“I guess that means we can kiss goodbye to getting the Arran property rezoned any time in the next year or two.” Paul didn’t bother to hide his resentment that Sam DiVoli had taken so goddamn long to get the zoning variances he’d promised to deliver when Paul forked over money he goddamn couldn’t afford. “The zoning committee is stacked with Edgar Showalter’s people, and they’ll never grant us a variance.”
Sam swore with truly remarkable variety and fluency. “They’ll stonewall us at best,” he said when he finally ran out of curses. “And every day we can’t get started is costing us money. Worst case, they’ll flat out reject the rezoning, and then the project is dead.”
Paul’s stomach knotted with dread. He simply couldn’t allow this project to turn sour. “There’s going to be a couple of weeks of confusion in the wake of Jason’s death,” he pointed out. “We need to get to somebody powerful on the zoning committee before Showalter has them lined up and on the record as opposed to the Arran rezoning.”
“Yeah, great idea.” Sam’s voice oozed sarcasm. “Which councilman do you suggest we approach while they’re all busy issuing statements mourning the loss of the mayor.” He broke off. “Damn, Jason was a good guy. I’m sorry he’s gone. He would have made a truly fine senator.”
Paul couldn’t spare time to waste mourning the mayor. “What’s the name of the annoying little Nazi who guarded access to Jason as if he was in charge of the gateway to heaven?”
“Fred Mitchell,” Sam said. “He is…correct that. He was the mayor’s chief of staff. Jesus! I can’t believe Jason’s dead. Son of a gun, he was right here, enjoying dinner, less than twelve hours ago. He was smart and honest, too. You don’t get many politicians like that. Especially not with approval ratings like Jason was getting. Dammit, his death is a real loss to the community.”
Not to mention a real loss to the Arran project. Sam needed to get his thinking focused on what was important here, namely that there was nobody left to get their project the zoning variance it needed and that Paul’s financial future was on the line. It was a hell of a nuisance that he had to rely on Sam, Paul reflected, but he really had no choice. The man had a knowledge of the inner workings of Denver city government that was second to none. Paul sure as hell hoped the guy would be able to put that knowledge to good use and pull a rabbit out of the hat. The financial consequences of an implosion of the Arran project were more than Paul could bear to contemplate.
“I’m going to fly out to Denver right now,” Paul said. Sam might know Denver politics, but when the going got really tough, Sam backed off. He would apply pressure, but only so much. Paul, on the other hand, had discovered that if bribes didn’t work, a touch of polite blackmail could usually turn the trick. Sam was one of those naive, old-fashioned types who scorned bribes and didn’t understand blackmail—although he knew exactly where all the bodies were buried.
“I can maybe catch the ten-thirty flight.” Paul was already walking toward his bedroom. “With the time difference, I could be in Denver before noon. I’ll go straight to your offices. We need to plan our strategy.”
“What are you smokin’, Paul? Nobody in the mayor’s office is going to be meeting with developers today. For Christ’s sake, Jason Hamilton’s dead! Show the man some respect, will you?”
“I’m sure he was the best mayor in the country. But showing him respect isn’t going to get the Arran zoning sewn up before Edgar Showalter can fuck us over. We need to get somebody on the zoning committee to sign off on the paperwork. Today, if possible. I’ll see you this afternoon, Sam.” Paul hung up the phone before DiVoli could object some more. Maybe the millions at stake didn’t matter all that much to Sam, but they sure as hell mattered to Paul.
He walked through the empty bedroom and into the shower. Julia was already dressed. He could hear her down in the kitchen, grinding beans for their thousand-fucking-dollar super-deluxe espresso machine. He wouldn’t tell his wife he was going to miss the Feldmanns’ dinner, Paul decided. He’d call once he landed in Denver. That would teach her to try to manipulate him into accepting invitations from people she knew he didn’t like.
Paul turned the water on full blast and calculated how much he and Sam DiVoli might have to shell out in bribes to get the rezoning sewn up. Right now he was so strapped for cash that it might even be difficult to come up with a bribe big enough to do the trick. Maybe they should bag the idea of bribery and move straight on to blackmail. If that was the route they took, Sam would be crucial to their success. If you were important enough to have a secret, and you lived in Denver, Sam knew your secret. He was a useful business partner to have, Paul reflected, provided he didn’t get sidetracked by an annoying attack of civic responsibility. Sometimes Sam DiVoli was just too damned honest to be reliable.
Paul couldn’t afford to let this become one of those occasions on which Sam was afflicted with a conscience. The entire financial future of Raven Enterprises was riding on the success or failure of the Arran project.
He’d already suffered the public humiliation of being identified as the business partner of a bigamist. He sure as hell wasn’t going to go bankrupt because that same damn bigamist wasn’t around to tell him where to invest his money. Whatever the business and financial communities might think, Paul Fairfax was every bit as smart an investor as Ron Raven had ever been. The Arran project would prove that to all the doubters and then Raven Enterprises could be renamed Fairfax Enterprises, which it should have been from the first.
Bottom line: the Arran project simply could not be allowed to fail. It was Paul’s ticket out of a deep financial hole and into a promising future.
Five
Conifer, near Denver, the Evening of August 7
Liam drove slowly along the twists and turns of Coyote Lane, looking for 356, the house belonging to the Mallorys, Chloe’s sister and brother-in-law. The road was narrow and gravel-surfaced, in keeping with Conifer’s past as a frontier town, but the houses still managed to project an aura of yuppie success with front yards expensively landscaped to look untamed.
In keeping with the phony rural atmosphere, there were no sidewalks, no mailboxes and the house numbering seemed expressly designed to be invisible from the road. This last feature would have been infuriating except that it provided