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“So I made a mistake,” Frank grumbled. “Give me a minute—” He twisted to look over his shoulder. “Okay, Casey, let’s give this bitch some juice!”
Within seconds there was a whir and more lights in the kitchen blinked on. Frank stood and, with Zach’s help, shouldered the oven back into place. “It’s a heavy bastard,” he said. “Fire it up!” he told the cook, who was a thin Chinese man with a small goatee. With a skeptical glance at Frank, the cook did as he was told. The lights on the face of the oven winked on and when the cook switched on the gas, after a series of clicks and a whoosh, blue flames eagerly licked upward. “How about that! Looks like it’s fixed,” Frank said. “Sometimes I amaze even myself.”
“Why don’t you tell me everything else that’s gone wrong.” Zach said.
“Got a few hours?”
“All the time in the world,” Zach said as they walked out of the kitchen, along a short hallway that opened to a small office located behind the lobby desk. “Good,” Frank said. “Let’s start with the security system—”
Oswald Sweeny prided himself on being everything Jason Danvers was not—well, almost everything. Short, with a thickening waist, and dark eyes that could see nearly a hundred-and-eighty degrees without moving, Oswald had spent a decade with
army intelligence before being dishonorably discharged over a small matter of beating up an enlisted man who’d made the mistake of trying to pick him up. Oswald had knocked out his two front teeth and the kid had taken offense. He’d had enough balls to file charges against Oswald. In the end, they were both kicked out of the service.
Which was fine with Oswald. Just as it was fine that he wasn’t a stuffed shirt like Danvers. They were as opposite as two men could be.
Jason was rich, Oswald was always sweating out his next paycheck. Jason was educated, Oswald thought academics were for idiots. Jason was married and kept a mistress. Oswald took his pleasure in thirty-dollar streetwalkers and never asked their names.
His only vices were unfiltered cigarettes, cheap women, and fast horses. Sometimes, unfortunately, the women were faster than the nags he picked.
Despite their differences, however, Oswald and Jason had a common trait: they both were willing to do whatever it took to get what they wanted.
Right now, Jason wanted the dirt on some woman named Adria Nash, a woman who claimed she was London Danvers, and Jason was willing to spare no expense. It seemed that this woman was the spittin’ image of his stepmother—a beautiful woman who managed to kill herself with booze and pills. Few people understood the reason Katherine LaRouche Danvers took a flyer. Sweeny was one of the privileged who thought he knew that particular piece of information. He should write a book. He could make a fucking fortune in a “tell-all” about the Danvers family.
“I don’t care what it takes,” Jason said as he paced restlessly on the cracked linoleum in Oswald’s hole-in-the-wall office. The single room contained a few army-surplus file cabinets, an answering machine hooked up to a phone he never picked up, a desk in which every drawer stuck, and two chairs.
Oswald didn’t trust anyone; he did his own books and typed his own letters. He paid his rent month to month for the little cubicle overlooking Stark Street—in case he had to blow town quick. No need to be tied into a yearly lease. Oswald needed to keep mobile and though this old concrete building didn’t have an uptown address, it served his needs just fine. He kept his money in a safe-deposit box and figured he had nearly fifty thousand tucked away. Not a fortune, but a nice little nest egg. He squashed out the stub of his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
“Find out everything you can about her, and here”—Jason snapped open his leather briefcase and withdrew a videotape—“this is a copy of her ‘proof,’ which is some guy who’s supposed to be her father making a tear-jerking confession that he thinks she could be Witt Danvers’s long-lost daughter. It’s schmaltzy enough to turn your stomach.”
“You think she’s in this alone?”
“Hell, I don’t know.” Jason slid the tape across the desk. “All I know is she’s trouble. If she runs to the press with this, it could hang up probate another couple of years.”
“You give a copy to the police?”
Jason frowned. “Not yet. Too many leaks in the department.”
So Danvers was trying to avoid the press. Oswald fingered the black plastic case holding the videotape. “Couldn’t you get Watson to handle this?” Oswald needled and was rewarded with a look that would melt steel. Bob Watson was the private investigator sometimes used by Danvers International. Bob wore three-piece suits and eighty-dollar ties and had more secretaries and flunkies than Kellogg’s had cornflakes.
“You know why I want you.”
Oswald knew, all right. He was willing to push the limits of the law, go a little further than anyone else, including Watson. Oswald Sweeny was only called in when Jason was desperate and needed more than a simple surveillance job.
“I want you to follow Ms. Nash. Find out if she’s working alone or if she has any accomplices. Also, dig up everything you can about her. She says she’s from some hick town in Montana—Belamy, I believe—and that uncle of hers, Ezra, practiced law in Bozeman. See what you can find on him and everyone else in the family.”
“How much do you want?” Sweeny asked, resisting the urge to rub his hands together in anticipation of his payment.
“Everything. All the dirt on this woman, enough so we can discredit her and force her out of town. Everyone has a secret or a weakness. Just find out what hers is. I’ll handle the rest.”
Sweeny couldn’t help but smile as he flipped the cassette over and studied it. He enjoyed seeing Danvers sweat, and right now Jason Danvers seemed more desperate than ever. Good news for Oswald Sweeny. “Any chance there’s some truth to this?” He tapped the case with a nicotine-stained finger.
“Of course not. But she worries me. She’s working this differently from anyone else.” With a scathing look at the cracked seat, Jason settled into the single worn chair for visitors and clients. “Instead of making harsh demands, threatening to go to the police and the press, she’s playing it cool. Too cool.” He tented his hands and stared at Sweeny, but the detective guessed his mind was miles away. With Adria Nash.
“She still wants to score. She’s just in it for more bucks,” Oswald said.
Jason seemed to snap back to the present. His lips pinched together. “It’s up to you to prove it. Unfortunately, this may take some time.”
Sweeny grinned, showing off a gap between his front teeth. “You’re in luck. I got nothing pressing.” He grabbed a legal pad from under the desk and a pencil that had been chewed repeatedly, then plopped a recorder onto the desk, as a backup. “Let’s go over it. From the top. Your old man, he hired a PI when London was kidnapped.”
