Foolproof (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 4) Read online

“Thanks. I’m still a bit overwhelmed. It’s going to be a killer to pay the mortgage.”

  “You’ll do fine. You’re doing great. Many good things ahead for you, Iris, and you deserve them all.” Bridget hugged her friend.

  They watched Brianna squat down to examine something on the lawn. “She’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Everything else pales in comparison to her,” Bridget said.

  “Lately I’ve been thinking about having one of those myself.”

  “No kidding?”

  “It’s been on my mind, sure. I’d love to have a little girl just like her. Then I think about how it would change my life. I’m so used to only considering myself. Oh, it’s all so confusing.”

  “Would you do it on your own?”

  “If I do it—no, I wouldn’t. I’ve thought a lot about it and have discovered I’m surprisingly traditional. I think a family should have two parents. It’s not fair to the kids otherwise.” She bit her lip, knowing this was unkind given Bridget’s planned divorce, but refusing to be less than honest.

  “Your parents’ divorce really affected you.”

  “I was fourteen when it happened, and it remains one of the defining experiences of my life.” Iris looked carefully at her friend. “I wouldn’t want to put a child of mine through that.”

  Brianna was carrying whatever she had found on the lawn to the flowerbed, where she carefully deposited it. The sun on her long, dark brown hair shone red.

  “Iris, what am I doing? Am I going to ruin her life?”

  Iris put her arm around Bridget’s shoulders. “Now that you’ve forced the issue, maybe Kip will come to his senses. This is none of my business, but why don’t you see how things go for a few weeks? Breaking up a family is so hard on the children.”

  Bridget wiped a tear from her cheek. Another quickly followed. She retrieved a tissue from her purse and blew her nose. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should try to make it work for my daughter’s sake. I asked Kip to move out, but…”

  Brianna was now pulling dandelions from the lawn, holding them by their stems in a bouquet.

  “What about Pandora?” Iris asked.

  “I’m still taking it public. Kip’s got to get over it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Bridget slipped off her oversized T-shirt, tossed it on a lounge chair next to the pool, and stood barefoot on the diving board wearing a red, one-piece, racer-back swimsuit. The elastic cut her slender hips only slightly. A gust of dry, warm wind blew, rustling her short brown hair and sending an empty aluminum can scuttling across the patio. She faced the wind, squinting against the airborne debris, then gazed at the black ocean, at the same time turning her back on Kip, who had just walked onto the patio.

  The curved coastline was outlined by the Pacific Coast Highway and its endless procession of head- and taillights. The wind had thinned the air, rendering colors and shapes with a surreal clarity. Bridget looked at the sky. A crescent moon hung high and a spray of rarely visible stars shone. Another gust of dry, hot wind blew. She licked her lips and dragged her fingers through her tangled hair.

  “I wonder how long it’s going to blow.” She could have been talking to herself. “It makes me edgy.”

  “I don’t know what to say to you anymore,” Kip said as if he had been carrying on some other, silent conversation with his wife. He wore nothing but red jogging shorts and running shoes. The patchy reflection from the water cast him in a crazy light.

  Bridget looked at him as if she had only just realized he was there. She pressed her hands together above her head and bounced on the diving board once, twice, three times, going higher with each jump, and then propelled herself into the blue water with a splash.

  Stetson, their German shepherd, dozed on the cool cement. He sleepily raised his big head from his paws and pricked his ears when a drop of water hit him on the back.

  Kip watched Bridget swim underwater until she touched the wall on the shallow end. Without surfacing, she turned and headed back toward the deep end. Her body grew luminous as she neared the submerged pool light. He held his breath along with her, unaware he was doing so. At the wall, she turned again and forcefully pushed off, almost reaching the middle of the pool before stroking.

  At the shallow end once more, she finally broke the surface, panting and smiling. She was proud of herself. “Not bad for an old broad, huh?”

  Her smile warmed him. “I love you.”

  Still trying to catch her breath, she gracefully swam across the pool on her side, her head above the water. She admired her house as she swam. It had a sloping roof of turquoise blue tile, white stucco walls, and windows fitted with shutters. The wood trim was painted turquoise blue. A wall of French doors opened onto a large room. It was designed to be a family room, but Kip had appropriated it as a work area. He had left one of the doors open and it banged in the wind. In a corner of the patio near the French doors was Stetson’s doghouse. It was wooden with a pitched roof and was big enough to comfortably accommodate the large dog.

  The glamorous, blonde, 1930s movie star who had built the mansion had been murdered in the garage—shot in the head. Her killer was never found. Even though the murder had happened a long time ago, Bridget didn’t want to buy the house because of it, but the history made Kip love the house even more. He had always had a morbid streak. Bridget couldn’t begrudge him that. It was part of the reason they had become successful.

  Bridget reached the end of the pool and started swimming in the other direction, this time looking across the patio at the stars. Beyond the patio, their property dropped steeply down the hill, which was densely planted with ice plant to help keep the earth from eroding. A cinder block supporting wall was built at the edge of the property against the street below. On the other side of that street, smaller homes clustered together on the precious oceanfront land. Kip and Bridget’s home was the only one on the hilltop.

  “You’re the love of my life,” Kip told her. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Bridget turned and again swam in the other direction, now watching her husband. “I do.”

  Kip nodded as he walked around the pool to stand at the edge of the patio. The dog rose and followed him. Kip looked at the black ocean and scratched the dog’s head. “I’m so sorry for hurting you.”

  Bridget swam to the shallow end of the pool and climbed the steps. She picked up a towel from a lounge chair and patted herself with it. “I know.”

  Kip dragged his hand back and forth across Stetson’s back. The dog crouched with pleasure. “Now that I’ve come clean about everything and promised not to hurt you again, maybe you’ll do the same for me.”

  Bridget wrapped the towel around her and walked to a flowerbed at the edge of the yard beyond the shallow end of the pool, reached down, and picked up the empty aluminum can that had rolled there. She crumpled the can in her hand and walked to a row of garbage bins on the other side of the yard, lifting a lid and dropping the can in one labeled CANS AND BOTTLES. “What do you mean?”

  “You want to take Pandora public to get back at me, don’t you?”

  Bridget gaped at him. “Kip, we’ve been over this time and time again.”

  Kip’s face grew red. Still standing on the other side of the pool, he clenched his fists and leaned slightly toward her, his back rigid. “You’re not destroying everything I’ve built.”

  “We’ve built, Kip. We. And you can’t keep spending money like you have been. That was embarrassing today in front of T. Duke. We have to look good for people to want to invest in us.”

  “Hey, I promised I’d clean up my act. Now it’s your turn to fulfill your part of the bargain.”

  “Bargain? The only thing I committed to was giving our marriage another try for Brianna’s sake. I never said anything about not taking Pandora public.”

  “I’ve earned the right to do what I want with Pandora, even if that means running it into the ground. I’m the genius behind Pandora. Anyone can manage the books.” Kip waved di
smissively.

  “Please stop shouting before you wake Brianna.”

  He walked across the patio to a wooden fence in the cinder block wall and punched a series of numbers onto a keypad next to it. A light on the keypad changed from red to green, indicating the alarm was disengaged. “I’m going for a run.” He opened the gate, stepped outside, and glanced back at her before bolting down the cement staircase beside the house, leaving the gate ajar.

  She listened to his footsteps until they faded, when she slowly closed her eyes. She opened them when the dog nudged her hand. She patted his head. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”

  She pushed the gate closed. “Probably doesn’t have his key. And I don’t want to get out of bed to let him in.” She left it unlocked.

  “How about one more swim to adjust the attitude, Stetson?”

  The dog cocked his head at her.

  She unwrapped the towel from around her, dropped it on the ground, walked to the side of the pool, and leaped in. No fancy diving this time. She did the crawl hard and sloppily, kicking up a lot of water, expending a lot of energy. She didn’t see the dog get up, take a few steps, and stand with his ears pricked as he watched the gate slowly swing open.

  She swam to the shallow end of the pool, walked up the steps with her back to the gate, and bent over to pick up the towel. She frowned at the soft sound of flip-flops slapping against the cement. Stetson started growling. She quickly spun around, clutching the towel to her breasts.

  A bullet whizzed in front of her, hitting the cinder block wall. She dove for the ground between the lounge chairs, but not before a second bullet hit her in the thigh. A third hit her in the side as she tried to scamper away. She made it behind the doghouse, barely avoiding a fourth bullet that tore through the structure and embedded itself in the cement patio in front of her. She crouched behind the flimsy shelter, screaming. Blood spilled across the patio and she clutched at her wounds as if she could stop the flow.

  Stetson was ferociously barking and snarling.

  Bridget began to creep from behind the doghouse and closer to the unlatched French door that still banged in the wind. She stopped and looked with horror at a small shape that was almost hidden in the shadows inside the house.

  “No,” she hoarsely whispered. “Brianna, run!”

  There was a fifth gunshot. It hit the patio near Stetson. The dog dodged away and started to run toward the shooter, but not before a sixth shot hit Bridget in the neck. She collapsed on the patio. The dog chased the fleeing figure who escaped out the back gate. Stetson jumped against the closed gate, barking and whimpering.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “They were in the frozen food section of the market, shrink-wrapped in plastic. When I pushed the cart past, their eyes started rolling around.”

  “Gross!” Kyle Tucker exclaimed.

  Iris entered the lunchroom and caught the end of the story. “Liz, what in the world are you talking about?”

  Liz Martini clenched a Styrofoam cup between her long, red fingernails. She was wearing her signature white: a white leather miniskirt, a matching jacket, and a bright orange jersey top. Her long, dark hair was teased and fluffed into a big style that would have done the Grand Ole Opry proud. “My toy poodles, Thelma and Louise.”

  “I don’t know why you take that stuff.” Kyle sorted through the sections of the daily paper that were tossed on one of the tables. He held his long, rubbery lips in a diagonal line.

  “Oh honey, puh-leese.” Liz slapped her non-existent belly. “I’ve put on ten pounds right here since—”

  “Would someone please tell me what the hell you’re talking about?” Iris complained.

  “Redux,” Liz pronounced momentously. “I just started it two days ago. It’s fab-ulous.” She pressed her fingertips against Iris’s arm. “Now the government’s taken it off the market, but I have a friend who can buy you some in Tijuana”—she leaned close to Iris and whispered—“real cheap.”

  Iris filled her mug with black coffee. “I thought you were taking fen/phen.”

  Liz pursed her lips as if tasting something bitter. “Redux is much better.”

  “Doesn’t it have side effects, like heart damage?” Kyle asked in his straightforward manner.

  Liz brushed away his comment with a flick of her hair. “Some rats got sick or something. What does that have to do with me? I feel great. Know what I ate last night? A rice cake. And I couldn’t even finish it. Ozzie had a fit. ‘Liz,’ he tells me, ‘you’re going to end up in the hospital at the rate you’re going.’ I told him, ‘Ozzie, you’re the one who’s always looking at all the skinny tramps.’”

  “So what’s with Thelma and Louise?” Iris asked.

  “Another side effect of Redux,” Kyle explained. “Vivid dreams.”

  As Kyle left the lunchroom with the sports section, he held the door open for Amber Ambrose, who entered and greeted everyone with a cheery, “Hi!”

  Iris and Liz smiled and greeted her unenthusiastically. Iris liked Amber’s sales performance and Liz admired the clientele Amber had built in her relatively short number of years in the business, but neither of them trusted the young woman farther than they could throw her. Amber was hopelessly competitive and a proven backstabber. A backstabbing bitch, according to Liz. Even worse, Amber was suspected of taking office news directly to Sam Eastman, Iris’s boss. That made her a spying, backstabbing bitch.

  When Amber entered the room, Iris and Liz exchanged a glance, both of them knowing what the other was thinking. Silently, both decided Liz’s notorious mania for dieting didn’t need any further propagation throughout the office.

  Iris was about to make her departure when Louise abruptly opened the door.

  “Ah, here you are,” Louise said. “There are two police detectives to see you.”

  “Detectives?” Iris repeated. “About Alexa again?”

  Iris could almost see Amber’s ears prick up. Liz, on the other hand, looked concerned.

  “They wouldn’t tell me why they’re here,” Louise said.

  Without another word, Iris quickly walked back to her office. Standing at the window was a petite, dark-haired woman in her thirties. A fiftyish man with a fringe of black hair encircling the base of his shiny head was sitting in one of her damask chairs. He had protruding, almond-shaped eyes and stood when Iris entered.

  The woman made the introductions as the man closed the door.

  “I’m Detective Tiffany Stubbs and this is Detective Jess Ortiz. We’re with the LAPD West L.A. Division, homicide. Casa Marina is in our jurisdiction.”

  Iris sat in her leather chair. She sensed it might be necessary.

  Stubbs continued, “There was a homicide at a house there last night around ten o’clock. Has anyone told you…?”

  Iris slowly shook her head.

  “I’m sorry to bring bad news. Bridget Cross was shot to death.”

  Iris stared at the woman. She was aware of the other detective dispassionately watching her from where he sat. Something in her head started to buzz. Stubbs was talking and Iris could barely make out what she was saying.

  “…a terrible loss. Her husband told us you’re a friend of hers and saw her yesterday.”

  Iris swiveled her chair to look out the window behind her desk. The day was clear and she could see Catalina Island. “Where’s Kip?” she blurted, thinking she was interrupting Stubbs, then realizing the detective had asked her a question and was waiting for a response.

  “He’s been arrested for his wife’s murder,” Ortiz said.

  “Do you have evidence?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We do.” Stubbs hooked a lock of her straight, dark brown, chin-length hair around an ear. The severe style did not complement her round face. She was wearing an inexpensive gray flannel suit with nap that had balled in spots and a white blouse with a round collar and a narrow self-tie. Her shoes were plain, low-heeled, black pumps. She had deep-set brown eyes and thin lips that barely moved when she talked. For som
e reason, Iris took an immediate dislike to her. Perhaps it was simply because she had delivered the bad the news.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” Stubbs said.

  “I wanted her dead, Iris. I did. I’m not going to lie to you. But I didn’t kill her.” Kip talked to Iris from behind a window of thick, scratched plastic. He was wearing a royal blue jumpsuit. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  She responded with conviction, even though she had her doubts. “Yes.”

  “The police are after me, Iris. I heard some of the guards talking: ‘Another rich guy who murdered his wife. Watch him get away with it.’”

  “What do you think about Tommy Preston?”

  Kip grimaced. “What a blowhard.”

  “He’s one of the best criminal defense attorneys in town.”

  “Is that why I’m paying nine hundred and fifty dollars an hour, because he’s got everyone duped into thinking he’s a superstar? I saw him in the paper at some benefit standing next to Barbra Streisand. Mr. Big Celebrity,” Kip sneered.

  “They haven’t even officially charged you yet. Preston thinks there’s a good chance the D.A. will decide there’s not enough evidence to prosecute. They’ll have to let you go.”

  “If this thing goes to trial, I’ll have to file bankruptcy. Bridget doesn’t keep that kind of money in our personal accounts. She has it tied up in the firm.”

  He was talking about his dead wife in the present tense. Iris didn’t correct him. She’d been having the same problem herself. “Pandora can pay your legal fees. You’re a principal of the company.”

  “Why do I need an attorney when I’m innocent? The only reason I’m in here is because they’re afraid I might flee. I can thank O.J. Simpson and his Bronco ride for that.”

  Iris looked at a guard standing in a corner who was eyeing them and lowered her voice. “Are you innocent, Kip?”

  His face hardened. “You think I’m not?”

  Iris persisted. “Kip, you wouldn’t be in here if the police didn’t think there was at least a possibility that you murdered Bridget.” The words almost stuck in her throat. That was how she would always think about Bridget now. Her murdered friend. “Preston filled me in on what happened last night, but I’d like to hear it from you.”