Free Thicker Than Blood by Penny Rudolph Page A

side of the street, his shoulders slumping dejectedly.
    Rachel gazed at him a moment, then strode across the street, squatted down at his side and looked up into his cherub’s face. “Can you show me where you found that envelope?”
    Goldie, moving as deliberately as ever, arrived at Rachel’s elbow. “You know what it is?”
    “All I know is it looks exactly like the stuff that was in the teapot in Lonnie’s kitchen.”
    “The stuff that did him in?”
    “Far as I know, yeah,” Rachel said. “Peter, show us where.”
    The office, almost as big as a conference room, was paneled with a dark wood that showed red in the grain. On the gray plush carpet, a blue-and-white-print Victorian sofa and two pale blue, velvety wingback chairs sat across from a huge, highly polished teak desk. The top was barren of papers.
    “This is where you found it?” Rachel asked Peter.
    He shook his head. “Not here.” He pointed to a door on the other side of the sofa. “In the bathroom, like I tell you.” Nervously, he chewed on a fingernail.
    Goldie gave the room an appraising gaze. “This guy don’t like cheap bric-a-brac does he?”
    “What makes you think this is a guy’s office? The chairman of the board is a woman.”
    “No joke?”
    “Nope.” Rachel moved across the thick, plushy carpet, opened the door Peter had pointed and flipped on the light. On the shelf over the sink sat a marble mug and two onyx-handled brushes, one obviously for shaving.
    “If this belongs to a woman, she’s got a beard,” Goldie drawled.
    “Might be Jason’s office,” Rachel muttered distractedly. “He was the only exec high enough to rate an office like this, except the chairman.” She picked up the mug. Something inside it rattled.
    Goldie frowned. “The guy who got himself killed?”
    “He was general manager of this place.” Rachel was peering into the mug. There was no soap inside. Instead there was something small and shiny. She tipped the cup over her palm and a cuff link rolled out. On its silvery face was the etched form of a tortoise.
    She motioned to Peter. “Show me exactly where you found this envelope.”
    “Over there.” He pointed.
    “In the toilet?”
    “No,” he giggled. “Behind it. I was doing the mop. I bump it.” Peter pointed to the lid of the tank. “That envelope, it fell down behind.”
    Rachel examined the envelope. The rim of the flap was damp. “Look,” she said, as much to herself as to Goldie, “he fit the flap over the edge of the tank and the lid held it there. But why?”
    Goldie was still staring at the tank. “Because if he was a coke freak or something, he couldn’t exactly leave the stuff laying around.”
    “But in a regular office envelope? Not wrapped up or anything? Any user knows you have to keep the stuff clean and dry.”
    “You’re making a big mistake if you think folks always do things sensible.”
    Rachel’s gaze was fixed on the envelope’s contents. “No,” she said softly, running her tongue over dry lips. Her eyes, huge and dark, found Goldie’s. “I don’t think Jason was a user. But I think I might be looking at why he was killed.”
    Chapter Fourteen
    “You telling me he was a dealer?” Goldie’s voice cracked with shock.
    “No.”
    “Then what are you getting at?”
    Rachel didn’t answer. She moved to Jason’s desk.
    Peter was shifting his weight from one ragged tennis shoe to another and flicking anxious glances from one woman to the other.
    “It’s okay,” Rachel said to him. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
    Goldie patted him on the shoulder. “The others are gonna be finished by now. You go on out to the van and tell them to get in and wait for me.”
    He nodded, clearly glad to be done with it. The door sighed on its hinges as it closed behind him.
    Rachel opened the desk drawers and began pawing through the contents.
    Goldie peered over her shoulder. “What the devil you doing now?”
    “They haven’t packed up his shaving mug. I