Private: #1 Suspect by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro Read Free Book Online Page A

offer that I couldn’t refuse.
    “We’re not taking the job, are we?”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “I vote, no, no way, and not in a million years.”
    “Duly noted.”
    “Now, bring me up to date on Colleen.”
    About me and Justine. A few years back, we bought the beach house where I live as a future wedding present to us both. We made a lot of love and had a lot of good times in that house. Truth is, we fit together in every way—but one.
    I don’t like to spill my guts. And Justine is a shrink. I’m guarded, or what she calls “too well-defended,” and she gets pissed off. Then she closes up. And she stays mad.
    We were lovers. We broke up, then tried it again with the same result. After we split up the second time, more than a year ago, I started seeing Colleen—and Justine dated a guy not half good enough for her.
    A few months ago, we were both unattached again, and we’d started dating in a noncommitted way. I still couldn’t open up. She still couldn’t tolerate that. So for good and for bad, not much had changed.
    Sitting here looking at her, I couldn’t understand why I had to talk when Justine could pretty much read my mind.
    She was peeling back the layers even now.
    “There’s a witness,” I said. “A neighbor says she saw me on the beach around the time Colleen was killed.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “It wasn’t me.”
    I leaned back in the chair without breaking eye contact with Justine.
    “God. It was Tommy,” she said.
    We were both thinking about my evil twin. Would he dare set me up to be tagged for Colleen’s murder? Did he really hate me that much?
    Justine asked, “What do you think happened?”
    “I think she was walked in, maybe at gunpoint. She had the electronic gate key, and whoever killed her pressed her finger to the pad at the door.”
    “Colleen still had access?”
    “She’s not the only one. You’ve got access too.”
    “I’m sure it’s a pretty big crowd of insiders,” Justine said, swiveling her chair away from me.
    “I’m not hiding anything from you,” I said—but that wasn’t entirely true.
    She swiveled back. “You’re not telling me everything, Jack.”
    She was right. But the part I was leaving out had nothing to do with Colleen’s murder.
    “Colleen and I had lunch. There was a lot on my mind. I had to catch a plane. She was in a good mood. She seemed okay to me, but we didn’t talk about anything important.
    “Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to set me up.”
    “Okay.”
    “I’m staying at the Sun for a few days. Until the cops give me back the house. Let’s have dinner there.”
    “Not tonight,” she said. “I have plans.”
    That was a lie.
    She said, “What are you going to do about Tommy?”
    “What would you do?”
    “I’d go back in time and loop the umbilical cord around his neck. Make a slipknot and pull it tight.”
    “I wish I’d thought of that.”
    We both laughed loud and long.
    It felt really good to laugh.

CHAPTER 22
     
    CRUZ AND DEL RIO were in Del Rio’s office, working their case, comparing the phone calls Maurice Bingham had made from his cell phone with the list of escort services in the Beverly Hills yellow pages.
    “I had a girlfriend once who was an escort,” Del Rio told Cruz.
    Cruz said, “This I’ve got to hear.” He moved his chair to Del Rio’s side of the desk so he could see the computer screen.
    “I signed up for the ‘special-gift daddy’ section,” Del Rio said. “ ‘Special-gift girls’ want a hookup with one guy until they earn enough from him to buy this so-called gift.
    “Her name was Chelsea,” Del Rio went on. “Very pretty, very smart. On her way to becoming somebody in the fashion business when a friend of hers told her she could make a bundle being an escort. That she could make enough to get her business off the ground.”
    “When was this? Before or after you got out of the joint?” Cruz asked.
    Cruz was a good-looking guy of twenty-seven. Dark hair