The Blackmail Club by David Bishop Read Free Book Online

a plan.”
    “Sarah must be the honorary grandmother of all the neat freaks in the world. I kept trying to find a towel hanging crooked on a rack or a book out of kilter on a shelf.”
    Jack laughed. “I’ve always suspected that Sarah had a secret side, something like an elder leader of the flower children of the sixties, but for as long as I’ve known her she has been exaggeratedly proper. She’s going through a difficult period right now and being overly fussy may bring her some comfort. It’ll pass.”
    Nora raised her eyebrows. “I know she’s special to you, but I sensed a hard broad lurking somewhere inside that sweet, old frail lady.” She opened her notebook. “I jotted down the titles of a couple of the books that were on the shelf in the study: Perversions of Infidelity , and The Symbolism of Sexual Mutilation. ”
    “They probably belonged to Chris; his practice was sexual difficulties.”
    “That’s true.”
    “I guess the bottom line is,” Nora said, “if you want us to help her as a freebie, its okay with me.”
    “Chris Andujar did more for me than I could ever repay. I’ve gotta understand his death.”
    Nora leaned toward Jack, the light reflecting off her nylon-covered knee. “Where do we start?”
    Jack took a deep breath. “Donny Boy’s a jerk; I just hope he isn’t mixed up in it somehow. It’d break his momma’s heart.”
    “Remember his comment about Sarah’s shawl?” Nora said. “Donny hadn’t seen his mother since the funeral. Her son came by to size us up, and Sarah said she hadn’t told her son we were coming.” Nora slouched forward in her chair and crossed her arms, pushing her black bra and its mounded contents into sight. “Maybe he got a call from Smokehead in the coupe.”
    “Smokehead had to have been tailing us,” Jack said. “If he was tailing Donny he would’ve split when Donny left, and we’d have never seen him. But as you say, he might have called Donny to tell him we were at his mother’s.”
    Nora sat her coffee cup down, the red crescent from her lips still kissing the rim. “Let’s talk with Chris’s former receptionist and his psychiatrist buddy, Radnor.”
    Jack got up and wrote Radnor and Receptionist on the white board on the wall of their case room. Then he wrote Donny Andujar above those two.
    “What else?”
    Nora pushed a runaway strand of her strawberry-blonde hair away from her eyes. “I’ll go through Chris’s appointment book, and then attack his laptop. Maybe I can find a few more strings we can pull.”
    “I’m going to ask Sarah again if she told her son about our visit,” Jack said. “Then I’ll meet her at the bank to make certain Chris didn’t add someone else to the signature card for the box. And I’ll try to get Chris’s medical doctor to talk. We need to eliminate the possibility he had some serious health condition that made him choose suicide. I’d like you to call Suggs over at Metro to find out the status of any insurance policies on Chris’s life. We could ask Sarah, but I’d rather not. Now, how should we proceed with Donny Boy?”
    Nora swiveled the extra chair between them a half turn, kicked off her heels, and put her legs into that seat, her toes pointing toward Jack, her skirt inching up her thighs. “We need to learn more about his doings,” she said. “We could tail him, but we’ve got a problem. He knows us both by sight.”
    “We need somebody Donny doesn’t know,” Jack said. “That sounds like Max Logan, assuming Donny doesn’t know Max.”
    Nora’s calf muscles lengthened when she got up and dented her well-shaped butt against the edge of the table. “I’ll call and ask him to come by as soon as possible.”

Chapter 8
     
    Max came into MI mid-afternoon, Nora buzzed Jack to alert him before sending Max back. Jack motioned him to a chair and jumped right into why they’d ask Max to come in.
    “Did Nora talk to you about the help we need?”
    “She told me you’re needin’