Free A Clean Kill by Mike Stewart Page A

Baneberry out of my office, down the service elevator, and through the parking deck to a waiting cab. When she was well away, I walked through the lobby and stopped just inside the glass front doors.
    It took a few minutes to spot them. Bobbi Mactans and Jonathan Cort sat in a silver BMW at the end of the block. They were watching the front of my building.

Nine
    I was reading back over the newspaper—checking out celebrity birthdays, running down the crossword clues to see if I knew anything—when Joey strolled into my office carrying a leather shotgun case and a file folder. It was 2:05. Sheri had been gone for more than an hour.
    Joey grinned. “Busy?”
    I folded the paper and tossed in on the desk. “I’m convalescing.”
    “Poor little fella.” Joey leaned my wreck-recovered shotgun against the wall and plopped into one of the tufted client chairs. “Did you know that
Mizzz
Bobbi Mactans is sitting in a silver convertible up the street staring a hole in your building?”
    “As a matter of fact, I did.”
    “And that there’s a man with her?”
    “I knew that too.”
    “Then I don’t guess I need to tell you who he is.”
    “Jonathan Cort, moderately tough guy and business partner of Jim Baneberry.”
    Joey raised his eyebrows. “And?”
    “And what?”
    “And Bobbi Mactans’s father.”
    “What?”
    Joey grinned. “Unh-huh. Not as smart as you thought you were, are you?”
    “They do look alike.”
    Joey grinned. “Yeah, I bet you were just about to put it together.”
    “What’s with the different last name? Has she been married?”
    “In case you hadn’t noticed, Bobbi ain’t exactly the marrying kind. No. She petitioned the court last year to change her last name from Cort to Mactans.”
    “Oh.”
    “I saw the paperwork at the courthouse. And I have to say: damn, Tom. Where do you find these fuckin’ people? Your friend Bobbi went on and on about how women are government-sanctioned slaves who acquire the names of their masters after marriage. She even put it in the petition that she chose ‘Mactans’ ’cause it’s part of the scientific name for a black widow spider.” He shrugged and shook his head. “I think it’s fair to say that Bobbi has
issues
.”
    Joey could always cheer me up.
    He tossed the file folder on my desk. “Here’s what you asked me for. It’s got some more background on Bobbi Cort Mactans. And the stuff on Dr. Laurel Adderson is in there.” He pointed at the folder. “The bottom line on malpractice, though, is Adderson has been sued twice in five years. One claim was dismissedon summary judgment. The other was settled. From what I could see from the court records, both cases looked like bullshit to me.” Joey leaned back in his chair. “By the way, we got something on the wreck.”
    I waited. “And that would be?”
    “Bubba, someone who does
not
love and admire you connected a carbon-monoxide canister to the heater in your Jeep.”
    “You actually found it?”
    “Yep. Took a while, but we got it. There was this piece of what looked like rusted tailpipe in the drainage ditch next to the road. Whoever rigged the Jeep went to a lot of trouble. The canister was glued inside the rusted pipe with foam sealant and fitted to the heater intake with wax. When the heater kicked on, the canister filled the Jeep with carbon monoxide in less than a minute. At least, that’s what the engineer said who I had look at the thing.”
    “Why wax? That seems weird.”
    “Yeah, that struck me too. But that’s where this dickweed got real professional. You see, the wax sealed the canister onto the air intake. But as soon as you slammed through the drainage ditch, the wax popped loose and the pipe fell off—’cause that’s what it was designed to do. This old piece of pipe with the canister hidden inside was a good seventy feet from the wreck. Hell, if I hadn’t had a mechanic crawling around on the ground collecting every little screw and doohickey, nobody