Made to Kill by Adam Christopher Read Free Book Online

eventually but I bet the farm that the death cert would say “heart attack” or “cardiac arrest.” Maybe if the medical examiner doing the autopsy was doing it well he or she would pick up the signs of something else, but I didn’t count on it. The ranger was an older guy carrying a little too much weight doing a hard job under a hot sun.
    As I drove back to town I picked up the telephone that sat next to me.
    “Hello, Ada,” I said.
    “You stop to pick flowers?”
    “I picked something else, actually.” I described the spike and the contents thereof. Ada whistled.
    “I’m guessing you know what this all is, then?” I asked.
    “What you found is what they call in the business a dead drop spike. You put your best secrets inside, push the thing into the ground somewhere quiet, and either you pick it up later or you tell your buddies where to go looking.”
    “What kind of business?”
    “The spying kind.”
    I let that bounce around my transistors for a moment or two.
    “Ah, Ray?”
    “Still here, Ada. Are you saying that Charles David, the famous movie star, is some kind of spy?”
    “I’m not suggesting anything, chief. I’m just telling you what you found.”
    “And the papers? What’s the Temple of the Magenta Dragon?”
    Ada made a cooing sound like she’d just found exactly the right kind of handbag.
    “Oh, Ray, Ray, Ray, where have you been hiding?” asked Ada.
    If I had an eyebrow to lift I would have lifted it. I didn’t feel the need to answer that particular question and Ada came back on the line pretty quickly.
    “Sorry. It’s only the hottest joint in town, Ray.”
    “What, a club of some kind?”
    “A club of one of a kind. Nobody can get in.”
    “Something about what you said doesn’t quite make sense, Ada.”
    “No, Ray, listen. The Temple is a nightclub. Everyone who is everyone goes there.”
    “Even the ones who can’t get in?”
    “That’s the whole point. Nobody can get in unless they are somebody .”
    “Okay.”
    “Movie stars, producers, directors, agents. The big agents, anyway. But the Temple is where it’s at. It’s where the rich and famous of this wonderful town go to wet their whistle with no one looking.”
    “The rich and famous, huh?”
    “You betcha.”
    “Like Charles David.”
    “Absolutely. Only it looks like he went there for more than a drink and a dance.”
    “Maybe he wanted some souvenirs.”
    “Souvenirs which he must have stolen from an office at the Temple only to hide in a dead drop spike up on a mountainside, alongside some pictures of his famous friends? I know everyone needs a hobby, Ray, but even famous movie stars aren’t that crazy.”
    “I think I should go to this Temple and take a look around then.”
    “Yes,” said Ada, “you do that. Hey, your ranger friend. The one who was cleaning up. Did he find the spike, or did you?”
    “I did.”
    “Oh, good.”
    “But he saw me.”
    “Not so good. I assume you took care of things?”
    “I did.”
    “Can a girl ask how?”
    I explained how. Ada sighed when I was done.
    “Seems a shame,” she said, “when you had that big sign right there.”
    “You mean I could have made it look a suicide instead?”
    “Sure, why not?”
    “Well,” I said. “I guess I could have. But I had to be quick. He was about to call up his boss and tell him a robot was up at the sign finding things.”
    “Fair enough.”
    I was back in Hollywood traffic now. I said goodbye to Ada and put the telephone receiver back where I had found it.
    It was getting late but it was still just a little early for the jet set to get set up at their Temple. I had enough time in my pocket to take a cruise past this magical private club and get the lay of the land and maybe do a little of that old fashioned surveillance I used to be so good at.
    Back when I really had been a detective. Back before Ada took a wrench to my programming and came up with a new and far more profitable business venture.
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