Free Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel by Lorena McCourtney

material. Cate had to admire the spin. In those heels, she’d have gone down like a sack of potatoes.
    “I want to see your insurance file,” the woman snapped at Radine. She didn’t appear to notice Cate’s presence or to consider that Cate might be a customer who’d been there first. “Everything that you have on insurance. Now .”
    Radine stood up, her back stiff. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have—”
    “I know there’s insurance. A lot of it.” Candy tossed her head, long earrings flashing like Star Wars weapons. “I remember very well Kane telling me when we got married thatthe business was set up for a half-million-dollar payoff if anything happened to him, and I want—”
    Radine picked up her cup of coffee and regarded Candy with ice in her eyes. “As I’m trying to tell you, Mrs. Blakely, I don’t have an insurance file.” A lift of her chin suggested that even if she had it, Candy was more likely to get that cup of coffee thrown in her face than the file.
    Insurance. Interesting. So maybe ex-wife Candy did have a motive for murder? Although you’d think she’d be a little more discreet about displaying her interest. Had she also been sneaking around the restroom and hallways at the hospital with accelerant and match in hand? At the moment, she looked fully capable of pulling a gun out of that pink Coach handbag—a gun fully color coordinated with handbag and fur—and blasting away.
    Cate almost injected a comment. You’re divorced. Kane wouldn’t have kept you as his beneficiary. But she managed to clamp her jaw shut. Not her case. It was also possible Kane had neglected to change the beneficiary, and Candy actually had grounds for demanding information.
    Halliday stepped around the corner of his office. “Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself, Candy? Kane’s not dead. No matter how much you might wish he were.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    Halliday smiled, not pleasantly. “Exactly what you think it means.”
    “I don’t want him dead! I just want . . . whatever I have coming.”
    “That’s what I think you should get too. Exactly what you have coming.”
    The snarky implication was clear. Whatever Halliday thought Candy had coming, it wasn’t a big insurance payoff.
    “I’ll have my lawyer—”
    Halliday lifted a hand and motioned toward Cate. “Candy, meet my private investigator, Cate Kinkaid. Cate, this is my business partner’s ex-wife, Candy Blakely.” Halliday’s smile was a home-run winner now. “Cate will be looking into the details of the shooting. And the fire at the hospital last night.”
    I will? Cate blinked. Now, for the first time, Candy noticed Cate’s existence.
    She was not, Cate could see, instantly intimidated. She looked Halliday’s investigator up and down as if Cate were a scruffy mannequin in a secondhand thrift store. Cate owned a pair of high-heeled boots. She wished now that she’d worn them instead of her jeans and old Reeboks. She yanked out a business card and handed it to the woman to affirm that she was indeed a private investigator.
    Unfortunately, Candy instantly picked out the incriminating word on the business card. “ Assistant private investigator? What does that mean? You’re the bargain-rate substitute because Matt was too cheap to hire the real thing?”
    Cate had been willing to give Candy the benefit of the doubt, but apparently she was fully as obnoxious as Halliday and Shirley had said.
    “I have full confidence in Ms. Kinkaid,” Halliday said.
    “And I have full confidence in my lawyer,” Candy snapped. Another spin—how did she do that in those heels?—and she clacked to the door on the hard-surfaced floor.
    The three of them watched her slide into the Lexus. Radine rolled her eyes and turned back to her computer. Halliday looked at Cate. He smiled ruefully.
    “I’m sorry to put you on the spot like that. But that woman always makes my blood pressure go up like a rocket blastingoff.” He