Free Murder Is My Racquet by Otto Penzler Page A

cheek. Still, sometimes when she woke, she felt a baby’s breath pass warm across her face.
    As a Wimbledon junior, she reached the semifinals before dropping a set, strode out to take the final, as she thought, by right, and went down two and love to the LTA’s new white hope in thirty minutes flat. Costain, who had been monitoring Victoria’s progress, waited till the hurt had eased and offered her a contract, sole representation, which her mother, of course, had to sign on her behalf. Costain’s play: retreat, lie low, for now leave domestic competition alone; he financed winters in Australia, the United States. Wait till they’ve forgotten who you are then hit them smack between the eyes.
    So far it had worked.
    • • •
    “I assume you don’t want to pay?” Kiley said. Victoria was still in the bedroom, door locked.
    “Quarter of a million? No, thanks?”
    “But you’d pay something?”
    Costain shrugged and pursed his lips; of course he would.
    “Sooner or later, you know it’ll come out.”
    “Of course. I just want to be able to manage it, that’s all. And now… the timing… you can imagine what this company’s going to be saying about their precious image. If they don’t walk away completely, and I think they might, they’ll strip what they’re offering back down to what we’re getting now. Or worse.”
    “You couldn’t live with that?”
    “I don’t want to live with that.”
    “All right, all right. When are they getting in touch again?”
    “Five this evening.”
    Kiley looked at his watch. One hour, fifteen to go. “Try and stall them, buy another twenty-four hours.”
    “They’ll never wear it.”
    “Tell them if they want payment in full, they don’t have any choice.”
    “And if they still say no?”
    Kiley rose to his feet. “In the event the shit does hit the fan, I assume you’ve damage limitation planned.”
    “What do you think?”
    “I think you should make sure your plan’s in place.”
    • • •
    “S o what did you think of her?” Kate asked. “Ms. Teen Sensation.”
    “I liked her.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, really.”
    They were lying, half-undressed, across the bed, Kate picking her way through an article by Naomi Klein, seeking something with which to disagree in print. Kiley had been reading one of the Chandlers Kate had bought him for his birthday—Give you some idea of how a private eye’s supposed to think—and liking it well enough. Although it was still a book. Before that, they had been making love.
    “You fancied her, that’s what you mean?”
    “No. I liked her.”
    “You didn’t fancy her?”
    “Kate…”
    “What?” But she was laughing and Kiley grinned back and shook his head and she shifted so that one of her legs rested high across his and he began to stroke her shoulder and her back.
    “You got your extra twenty-four hours,” Kate said.
    “Apparently.”
    “Is that going to be enough?”
    “If it’s someone close, someone obvious, then, yes. But if it’s somebody outside the loop, there’s no real chance.”
    “And he knows that, Costain?”
    Kiley nodded. “I’m sure he does.”
    “In which case, why not involve the police?”
    “Because the minute he does, someone inside the Force will sell him out to the media before tomorrow’s first edition. You should know that better than me.”
    “Jack,” she said, smiling. “You’ll do what you can.” And rolled from her side onto her back.
    • • •
    V ictoria’s mum, Leslie, was a dead ringer for Christine McVie. The singer from Fleetwood Mac. Remember? Not the skinny one with the Minnie Mouse voice, but the other one, older, more mature. Dyed blonde hair and lived-in face and a voice that spoke of sex and forty cigarettes a day; the kind of woman you might fancy rotten if you were fifteen, which was what Kiley had been at the time, and you spotted her or someone like her behind the counter in the local chemist or driving past in one of those white vans