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But this one didn't take any offense.
He merely took a step back, raised his hands, and barked out a short laugh. "You're quite touchy about your job. I like that. I think you'll want this case."
I raised my brows, waiting for him to continue.
"The death of Harold Montgomery is all over the town's newspapers."
We already knew that. We weren't really all that interested. The man had a chain of family-run businesses in literature and the culinary world.
He was a tycoon, but a quaint one as far as I knew.
Nothing suspicious about his lifestyle or habits, although he came from a bunch of scoundrels. That didn't ruffle my feathers.
I wasn't one to lay sin to a man's life for things that weren't in his control.
"And?"
"And what's not out is that he's left everything to a twenty-nine-year-old girl who has apparently never met him outside The Quill and Hearth Library."
"That little old place in the Central Precinct?"
Leia used to love going there when she was a kid.
"The very same."
I shrugged. "I can't really see where the case is. Pardon me, Mr.... ?"
"Hunter. You can call me Hunter."
"Very well. Harold Montgomery could have left his wealth to anyone. He chose to bequeath it to this girl. That was really his choice."
"But what if it wasn't? What if she was blackmailing him, or worse, she conned him to get out of her own troubles?"
I could hear Miguel and Asher's breathing grow quicker.
It said something that this actually excited three war-exhausted, battle-ravaged ex-SEALs, but the good old whodunit did have its pleasures.
Tossing a young girl into the mix just made it all the more ...vivid.
"Nothing was wrong with Mr. Montgomery's vitals," Hunter continued, "and although the doctor said he'd passed from a heart attack, I find the timing most ... unusual."
"Didn't he die because of anaphylactic shock?"
"He had pre-existing heart conditions."
Oh. Okay.
"So, you're telling me someone mixed something into the food—something that triggered an allergic reaction that led to his heart going cuckoo on him?"
Hunter curled his lips into a sardonic smile. "That's a poetic way to say things. Yes, I believe that."
"But wouldn't that defeat the girl's purpose? Why would she kill him if she's getting everything?"
Hunter turned his back to me and sauntered to the door.
"Detectives, when I came here," he said, his voice silky, "I did not expect I'd need to brief a bunch of babies. Maybe a girl with a history needs to kill because she can't risk the man discovering her real past. Can you imagine the horror of that?
"Harold Montgomery would never associate himself with someone who could be ... questionable. It would tarnish the very image he's tried to build."
