The Trials of Nikki Hill by Dick Lochte, Christopher Darden Read Free Book Online Page A

intercom headset. He muttered a few words into the mouthpiece, then gave Doyle the once-over before sending him down the drive. “Somebody’ll be waiting for you at the main house, sir.”
    Somebody damn well better,
Doyle thought. What he said was, “Thank you.”
    At the end of the drive, a young black man in a powder-blue jumpsuit hovered in front of the huge, yellow stone home. He was wearing the same sort of Star Wars headset as the gatehouse guard. Doyle supposed that with his ears full of plastic and rubber the man probably wasn’t enjoying the crash of breakers and the squawks of seagulls in the near distance. He was too busy with other things, anyway, like directing visitors to park on a paved area just to the left of the house.
    Doyle eased the Lexus into an empty slot near a gray Mercedes sedan with a vanity plate that read “HOBO1.” That made it the property of Hobart Adler, the man who’d shaken his tree at six that morning, D.C. time.
    Doyle stepped from the car, straightened to his full five feet nine, and suddenly was struck by the realization of what Southern California was all about. The sun. The cool, salt-tinted breeze wafting toward him from the Pacific Ocean. Colorful, fragrant flowers growing in abundance. And a house and property worth upwards of ten mil.
    Just beyond the house he could see an emerald lawn and, past it, the ocean. On the lawn a chubby little black boy pedaled a tricycle furiously while a flustered young woman chased after him, shouting, “John Junior, you slow down, immediately.” She pronounced it “ee-mee-jit-ly,” which fit in with her dark blue dress with white collar, pale porcelain skin, and fine blond hair. A proper British nanny.
    “Mr. Doyle?” The powder-blue jumpsuit was suddenly at his elbow. There was a bulge at the man’s right side that Doyle assumed was a weapon of some sort. Maybe a space pistol. “Mr. and Mrs. Willins are waiting for you, sir.” It was a polite enough command. “Go right into the house. Somebody will take you to the salon.”
    The “somebody” turned out to be Hobie Adler, the president of the Adler Agency, or TAA, as it was known in and
    out of Hollywood circles. His lithe, six-foot-three frame was neatly wrapped in a subdued dark blue British-cut suit that made him look more distinguished and wealthier than most of his clients, at least four of whom were among the twenty richest people in the world.
    What always amazed Doyle about the superagent was that although he was handsomer than you and taller and certainly better dressed and more at ease with himself, and though he was as deadly as an anaconda, you still had to like the son of a gun. He shook hands with Doyle warmly. “I appreciate your coming here so quickly, Jimmy. I wouldn’t have wanted to settle for second best. John and Dyana are eager to meet you.”
    As the agent led him down a marbled hall, Doyle’s quick brown eyes evaluated the rich tapestries hanging from the walls. “The police have arrested someone,” Hobie Adler said. “Good news, I think.”
    Doyle gave him a sideways glance. He couldn’t remember having seen the elegant agent so much as frown before. This morning he was sweating a little.
    John Willins and his wife were seated in the salon, an airy room with lots of window space and antiqued walls and a floor of pale green tiles that Doyle guessed had been imported from Spain or Italy. Willins was a big, strapping guy with black curly hair and a face so dark he appeared to be angry even when he wasn’t. He was wearing black slacks and a black silk shirt buttoned to the neck. Doyle was guessing when he mentally placed his age in the mid-thirties. He could have been five years off either way. The fact that the man was CEO of a successful music company offered no hints. It didn’t take a lifetime of work to make it to the top in that field. Not when your wife was Dyana Cooper.
    She was not at all the waiflike creature he’d been expecting, possibly