The Easy Sin Read Free

long have you known Mr. Magee?”
    â€œI don't know. A year, eighteen months.”
    â€œMiss Doolan, what do you do?” asked Malone.
    She gave him the full glare of the shrewd, challenging eyes. “I decorate.”
    â€œDecorate what?”
    â€œErrol's life.”
    Malone wasn't sure if he was supposed to laugh. He looked at Paula Decker and Kagal; they both appeared to be smiling at his naiveté. He looked back at the decorative Miss Doolan. “In what way?”
    â€œHe shows me off.”
    Malone pondered that one. She had a pre-loved look, like an expensive car. “So you're more a decoration than a decorator?”
    Her eyes scratched him. Then all of a sudden it seemed she decided to be patient with him, as if he were an Inuit from the remoter parts of Greenland. “No, I work at it. The social pages on Sunday—”
    Then John Kagal came to his rescue. “Our boss isn't into the social whirl. He's still getting over the Bicentenary gig.”
    Back in 1988: thank you, John . But he grinned benevolently.
    Kagal took a pull on the rescue rope: “Inspector, there's something I'd like to show you on the computers—”
    Malone got up and followed him into the main bedroom. “Look, I'm not interested in some feather-brained social butterfly—”
    â€œShe's no feather-brain, Scobie. I'd say she's as calculating as any girl I've ever come across.”
    Malone said admiringly, “And that would be a pretty wide circle.”
    â€œUsed to be,” admitted Kagal, safe in his conceit. “Before I settled down with Kate.”
    A relationship that had lasted longer than Malone had expected. Kagal had once confessed to Malone that he was double-gaited in his sexual preference, fluid as the gays called it, but he had been living with Kate Arletti, once one of Malone's Homicide detectives and now with Fraud, for five years and it seemed to be a happy arrangement. Malone, up to his belly in middle age, had given up guessing about the young. Including his own three young.
    Then Norma Nickles came into the bedroom: floating in , as Malone always thought of her. She had been a ballet dancer before she had become Sam Penfold's most reliable assistant in Physical Evidence. She was blonde and attractive and looked feminine even in the police dark blue blouson and slacks.
    â€œHow are you two making out with Miss Doolan?”
    â€œHave you spoken to her?” asked Malone.
    â€œOnly when I first came in. I told her we'd have to go through the entire apartment and she got a bit haughty about it.”
    â€œIf your boyfriend was missing, you've found your maid dead in your kitchen, kidnap notes on your computers, how upset would you be?”
    â€œWith the guy I just dumped, and no maid, not particularly upset. But I see your point. Our Kylie's not going to need smelling salts.”
    â€œYou come up with anything?” said Kagal.
    â€œ Nothing that's going to help us much. But I could write you a character profile on Mr. Magee and Miss Doolan. They're the original designer junkies, I think. The closets are full of designer labels. Alex Perry dresses, Blahnik shoes, Gucci handbags—”
    â€œWhat about him?”
    â€œVersace, Armani—”
    Malone, who wouldn't have gone beyond K-Mart if allowed by his wife and daughters, who was a life member of Fletcher Jones and Gowings, thought labels, especially if worn on the outside, were like birdshit, something that should be scrubbed off.
    â€œSpare me the details. Where does the money come from?” He looked around the apartment.
    Kagal looked at him as if he had just arrived from the upper reaches of New Guinea. “Scobie, Magee is I-Saw. I-Saw , for Crissakes.”
    â€œEyesore?”
    Kagal spelled it out for him: “I-S-A-W. Don't you ever read theBizCom pages in the papers? They have all the cute names, they're like twelve-year-old kids—”
    â€œI'm not interested