Chapter 2
THE HOT SPRAY beat on me from six showerheads. Justine lightly placed her palms on my chest, tipped her hips against mine.
She said, “Someone needs a massage. I think that could be you.”
“Okay.”
Okay to whatever she wanted to do. It wasn’t just my car that could go from zero to ninety in ten seconds. Justine had that effect on me.
As she rubbed shower gel between her hands, sending up the scent of pine and ginseng, she looked me up and down. “I don’t know whether to go from top to bottom or the other way around,” she said.
“Dealer’s choice,” I said.
She was laughing, enjoying her power over me, when my cell phone rang. My fault for bringing it into the bathroom, but I was expecting a call from the head of our Budapest office, who’d said he’d try to call me between flights.
Justine said, “Here’s a joke. Don’t take the call.”
I looked through the shower doors to where my phone sat at the edge of the sink. The caller ID read Capt. L. Warren. It could only be about the rapists the cops had just arrested at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“The joke’s on me,” I said to Justine. “But I’ll make it quick.”
I caught the call on the third ring.
“Morgan. We’ve got problems with those pukes from Sumar,” the captain said. “They have diplomatic immunity.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
He gave me the bad news in detail, that Gozan Remari and Khezir Mazul were both senior diplomats in Sumar’s mission to the UN.
“They’re on holiday in Hollywood,” Warren told me. “I think we could ruin their good time, maybe get them recalled to the wasteland they came from, but the ladies won’t cooperate. I’m at the hospital with them now. They wouldn’t let the docs test for sexual assault.”
“That’s not good,” I said. I put up a finger to let Justine know I would be just a minute.
“Mrs. Grove is very grateful to you, Morgan,” the captain was telling me. “I, uh, need a favor. I need you to talk to her.”
“Sure. Put her on,” I said.
Justine turned off the water. Pulled a towel off the rack. “She’s in a room with her daughter,” Warren said. “Listen, if you step on the gas, you could be here in fifteen minutes. Talk to them face-to-face.”
I told Justine not to wait up for me.
By way of an answer, she screwed in her earbuds and took her iPod to the kitchen. She was intensely chopping onions when I left the house.
It was a twenty-minute drive to Ocean Memorial and it took me another ten to find the captain. He escorted me to a beige room furnished with two beds and a recliner.
Belinda Grove was sitting in the recliner, wearing the expensive clothes I’d last seen strewn around bungalow six: a black knit dress, fitted jacket, black stiletto Jimmy Choos. She’d also brushed her hair and applied red lipstick. And although I’d never met her before today, now that she’d cleaned up, I recognized her from photos in the society pages.
This was Mrs. Alvin Grove, on the board of the Children’s Museum, daughter of Palmer Tiptree, of Tiptree Pharmaceuticals, and mother of two.
Now I understood. She would rather die than let anyone know what had happened to her daughter and herself.