Malicious. Jacob Stone
as he fought to lick Natalie’s face. While this went on Morris snuck in a kiss of his own and took a seat adjacent to his wife. After a minute Parker calmed down enough to sit panting.
“He’s happy to see you,” Morris said.
“Nah, he’s just trying to soften me up for some heavy-duty mooching.”
Morris laughed at that. The dog could certainly mooch food with the best of them.
A waitress came over with menus. She was new here, otherwise she would’ve known better than to bring Morris a menu. He was a creature of habit. Ever since the actor Philip Stonehedge had turned him on to this Beverly Hills restaurant he had ordered only their fish tacos, and he did so again. Natalie took a menu and gave it a quick look before asking for an arugula and tomato salad. Morris asked the waitress to bring a roast beef and cheddar sandwich for Parker. “You can skip the bread, horseradish, lettuce and tomato. Just put the meat and cheese on a paper plate.”
The waitress gave Parker a cautious look before asking whether the dog was friendly.
“He’s a sweetheart,” Natalie volunteered.
Morris concurred. “A bit of a clown, but a gentle soul.”
This was mostly true, even though over the last year Parker had attacked two serial killers and bitten the arm of a hardened criminal who had pointed a gun at Morris during a jewelry store robbery. But as long as you weren’t trying to kill Morris or others, the odds were good you wouldn’t see that side of him.
The waitress patted the short, bristly fur that covered Parker’s cement-hard head, and the dog’s tail thumped against the terracotta-tiled patio. “I’ll make sure to add some extra roast beef,” she said with a wink. Morris waited until the waitress left before asking Natalie how her day was going.
“Busy.” Natalie worked as a therapist and had her private office in downtown Los Angeles. “Before breaking for lunch I barely had time to catch my breath. But I have the luxury of not having to be back for another hour. Yourself? No new serial killer cases, hon?”
She said this mostly as a joke since Morris had sworn off those types of cases for his investigative firm, MBI, but some worry still showed in her eyes. Deep down inside she was afraid Morris would take on another of those cases, and she had good reason for this concern. The last serial killer case had left Morris battered and bruised, the one before that had brought a deranged killer to their door, and the very last one Morris had worked on while he was still an LAPD homicide detective almost killed him.
Her question also didn’t come completely out of the blue. Natalie had serial killers on her mind because that night they were going to the Hollywood premiere of The Carver, a movie that was based loosely on a notorious serial killer Heath Dodd. Since Dodd’s killing ground had been Miami, Morris wasn’t involved in the investigation, but he had still been hired by the movie producers to consult on the film. Even with Morris’s involvement in the movie, they probably would’ve skipped the premiere if Philip Stonehedge hadn’t invited them to a private dinner party afterward.
“As far as I know Los Angeles is still serial killer free,” Morris said. “If that changes, the LAPD will have to handle it without my help. Anyway, as you well know, MBI has gone almost a hundred percent corporate.”
This was true. After the Malibu Butcher business, Morris had made a concerted effort for his firm to take on only corporate cases, most of which were either company fraud or employee background investigations, although they were currently knee-deep in a corporate espionage case that they were hoping to break soon.
“Almost a hundred percent?” Natalie asked. Parker, who had plopped down on the ground and was now lying on his side by Natalie’s feet, let out one of his grunts to show that he also found the matter suspicious.
“We took on an unusual missing person investigation this morning,” Morris said. “A guy up and vanished four months ago. No sign of him or his car since. His wife brought us the case. She’s desperate.”
“She needs closure.”
“Nope. She needs the insurance money.”
Natalie gave him a reproachful look. “Hon, dear, don’t you think you’re being a tad cynical?”
“Not at all. She’s convinced her husband is dead, and she needs a death certificate before she can collect on his life insurance policy.” Morris grimaced at the water spot on his fork as he held it up for a quick inspection. “I felt sorry for her. She really is in desperate straits and genuinely seems to have been mourning him. We’re not quite taking it on as pro bono work, but close. MBI will only bill her if we find him or his body, and we’ll be capping the bill off at five thousand.”
Natalie bit her thumbnail. “Do you think she’s right?”
“I don’t know. She’s convinced that they were happy enough together and he was content with his life. She’s also adamant that if he were alive he’d be home with her now. Maybe that’s true. Or maybe he decided to start over someplace else. We’ll see.”
The waitress appeared with their food. Parker got to his feet, his eyes fixed on the tray she carried. The paper plate she had brought held what looked like twice as much roast beef as would normally be used for a sandwich. Parker let out a few excited grunts as he waited for it to be placed on the patio surface. As soon as Morris let up on the leash, Parker attacked the food as if he hadn’t eaten in days even though he’d had half a can of his food that morning.
Natalie patted Parker’s side. “Our little guy is getting pudgy,” she said.
“Nah, it’s all muscle.”
She gave Morris a funny look but didn’t argue. As she ate her salad, she seemed to lose herself in her private thoughts. When she shivered, he asked her what was wrong.
Natalie looked at him as if she didn’t understand what he was asking, then offered a wistful smile.
“I don’t know. Just something in the air, I guess.”
Morris glanced upward. Not a cloud in the sky. If a storm was coming, he couldn’t see it.
Chapter 3
Heather Brandley was fuming before she started her five-mile run, and whatever meditative value exercise was supposed to have was wasted on her. In fact, she was even angrier by the time she sprinted past her imaginary finish line, and had spent most of the thirty-six minutes and eighteen seconds that it took her to run a loop around West Hollywood fantasizing about gory and painful ways she could kill all of them. The objects of her ire? The producers, director, and casting agent for The Bumbleford Affair. The reason? Yesterday she had been brought in to read for the part of Tom Bumbleford’s mother. The producers had already announced that Peter Shays, with his washboard abs and dreamy boyish looks, would be playing the lead, and since he was only a few years younger than her, Heather assumed she’d be playing the mother in flashback scenes. When they asked her to read with Peter, Heather was stunned.
“Peter, darling, how old are you?” she sputtered out, her ears burning a bright red.
“Well, luv, all of thirty-two years,” he said in his trademark sheepish manner, an impish smile twisting his lips.
“This is a prank, right?” she asked the director. “You’ve got a hidden camera back there, right?”
“Why would you ask that?” the director said, pursing his lips as if he couldn’t fathom her reason for asking him that question.
“Why? Because Peter is only six years younger than me! And you seriously want me to play his mom?”
“We want you to play his hot mom,” one of the producers quipped.
Although she couldn’t believe this was happening, Heather read her lines like a true professional, and under the circumstances, thought she gave a good reading. As humiliating as the experience was, a job was a job in this godforsaken business. But then to add insult to injury, her agent had called this morning