Vixen Read Free Page A

leather purse: Kenneth Beckett standing alone in front of a sleek oceangoing yacht. You could tell he and Cory were siblings—same black hair, though his was lank; same facial bone structure and wiry build—but where she was somebody you’d notice in a crowd, he was the polar opposite. Presentable enough, but there was nothing memorable about him. Just a kid in his early twenties, like thousands of others. The kind of individual you could spend an afternoon with, and five minutes after parting you’d have already forgotten what he looked like.
    We got the paperwork out of the way, and Cory Beckett wrote me a check for her half of the retainer; we’d bill Melikian for his half. The check had her address and phone number on it. The apartment she shared with her brother was on Nob Hill, a very expensive neighborhood. Melikian had mentioned at the start of our conversation that she worked as a model. One of the more successful variety, apparently.
    We shook hands—hers lingered in mine a little too long, I thought—and she favored me with another of her concerned little smiles while Melikian patted her shoulder and chewed on her with his eyes. And that was that. Routine interview. Routine if slightly unusual skip-trace. Nothing special at all, except that for a change the client was a piece of eye candy.
    Just goes to show how wrong first impressions can be.

 
    2
    From Bryant Street I drove to the agency offices in South Park. It was almost five by then, but Tamara, a workaholic like Jake Runyon was and I used to be, would probably stay until seven or so. Unless she had a date tonight. She’d taken up again with her old boyfriend, Horace Fields, who had moved back to the city from Philadelphia after losing both his cellist’s chair with the philharmonic there and the wife he’d dumped Tamara for. The reconciliation was a mistake, as far as I was concerned—she didn’t seem as happy as she should have been if it was working out well—but she hadn’t asked for my opinion and I hadn’t offered it. The Dear Abby syndrome is not one of my shortcomings.
    I gave her a capsule report on the interview, then put the notes I’d made in order and gave them to her to transcribe into a casefile. Tamara does most of the agency’s computer work—I’ve learned to operate one of the things, but with limited skills and a certain reluctance—and she is about as expert as they come. She also coordinates the various investigations, handles the billing and financial matters. Tamara Corbin, twenty-eight-year-old desk jockey dynamo who had tripled our business since I’d made the wise, very wise, decision to make her a full partner.
    She set to work on the preliminaries. Skip-traces are an essential part of the agency’s business, along with insurance-related investigations and employee and personal background checks, and most can be dealt with by relying on the various real-time and other search engines we subscribe to. The Beckett case didn’t seem to be one of those because of the circumstances and particulars, but you never know what might turn up on an Internet search.
    She suggested I hang around while she ran the initial checks—she’s fast as well as expert—and I did that. Kerry wouldn’t be home much before seven and Emily would get dinner started; singing was her primary passion, but she also loved to cook. Very good at both, too.
    I was in my office, going over the file on a new, and routine, employee background check, when Tamara came in through the open connecting door carrying a printout in one purple-nailed hand. The purple polish didn’t go very well with her dark brown skin, or at least I didn’t think it did, but I wouldn’t say anything to her about that, either. Who was I to criticize the fashion trends of a woman young enough to be my granddaughter?
    â€œNothing much on Kenneth Beckett,” she said.