But until he returned to town later this afternoon, they decided to pursue another task: confirming Nina Kirby’s alibi. The drive from the lawyer’s Brentwood office to the giant Century Court Hotel in Century City where her legal event took place was only fifteen minutes, so they headed over.

  Kirby was sending Jamil and Beth in research the list of the other attendees at her table, as well as authorization to check her GPS data for last night and this morning. But even those things wouldn’t alone verify her alibi.

  What if Kirby had left her table—and her phone—for a long stretch while she took a cab to find and kill her almost-client? It was a long shot, but until they could follow up with Ava’s husband, Kirby was their only credible lead.

  Once they arrived, Ryan pulled into the driveway of the giant semi-circular hotel and flashed his badge to a valet, who directed him to a parking spot near the main doors. They got out and made their way into the enormous central lobby, with a giant chandelier hanging from a ceiling easily fifty feet high. They approached the concierge desk, where Ryan once again showed his police badge.

  “How can I help you?” asked the gorgeous, raven-haired young woman, apparently unflustered by a detective flashing his badge. Tall and tan with sharp, angular features, she looked like she was taking a break from her modeling career to moonlight here.

  “Yes, thanks,” Ryan said. “We understand that the hotel hosted a ‘Women in Law’ event yesterday evening?”

  “That’s correct,” she said. “I think it was called “Breaking Through the Barrister Barrier.”

  Jessie couldn’t help but smile at the title.

  “We’d like to speak to the person who ran the event,” she said.

  “That would be our senior event coordinator, Mary Portnoy,” the concierge said. “I can see where she is and have her meet you, if you like.”

  “That’d be great,” Ryan said. “We’ll just wait over by that sofa.”

  “Of course,” the concierge said.

  They moved over to the couch and marveled at the opulence of the place, which Jessie had never been to.

  “Maybe Kat and Mitch should consider this place for their wedding,” Ryan suggested, half-joking.

  “Don’t even mention the idea,” Jessie warned. “Kat’s so stressed over the cost of everything that even playfully suggesting a place like this might make her burst into tears, that is if Kat Gentry was the ‘burst into tears’ type.”

  Jessie felt for her friend. She’d even offered to help defray the cost of the celebration but was flatly rejected.

  “This is my responsibility,” Kat had said with an intensity that surprised Jessie.

  “But if your parents were still alive, you know they would have helped,” Jessie insisted. “Let me fill that gap.”

  “Just buy me a nice gift,” Kat had told her. “Besides, I know you’ve got a fortune, but with all your medical bills, you should hold onto a little chunk of that change. Plus, what if you and Ryan decide to have kids? You’ll need that dough.”

  Kat hadn’t known that she’d stumbled onto a sore spot and Jessie didn’t let on. She already felt pressure about starting a family from Ryan. She didn’t need to inadvertently let Kat in on the situation.

  “You know,” Ryan muttered, snapping her out of her thoughts, “I wonder if we’re spinning our wheels here.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “We don’t have any kind of credible motive for Nina Kirby to do this,” he said. “it’s hard to imagine that she would kill Ava Martell just because she was iffy on hiring her to investigate her husband’s unusual spending.”

  “Maybe not,” Jessie conceded, “and I’m sure that we’ll eventually uncover all kinds of incestuous connections among these neighbors, but for now, this is what we’ve got to work with.”

  “Hello,” came a smooth, unhurried voice from behind them.

  Jessie turned around to find herself facing an elegant, silver-haired woman in her fifties who was as tiny as the concierge was tall.

  “Hi,” Jessie said, “Are you Ms. Portnoy?”

  “Please, it’s Mary,” the woman said, extending her hand first to Jessie and then Ryan. “I understand that you have some interest in our event last night.”

  “We do,” Ryan confirmed.

  “Considering the organization you represent, I assume you’d like to discuss the matter in a more private environment.”

  “That would be great,” he said.

  “Perhaps we can go to the ballroom where the event was held,” Mary suggested. “It’s not being used right now.”

  “Sure,” Ryan agreed, and they followed her to an elevator.

  Once inside, Mary spoke in a hushed, cautious tone.

  “I understand that you’re proceeding with discretion,” she began, “but the more you can share about what why you’re here, the greater help I can be. I certainly hope that nothing at our event last night ran afoul of the law. From my perspective it seemed like a smashing success.”

  “No, Mary,” Ryan assured her, “we don’t have any issue with the event. Our questions are in regard to a specific participant. Does the name Nina Kirby sound familiar?”

  Mary Portnoy smiled uncomfortably as the elevator doors opened and they stepped into the hall.

  “It does,” she said, noting a man walking by in a suit and indicating that she would wait until they were alone again before responding. She led them to the Galaxy Ballroom, which she unlocked before opening the doors.

  They all moved inside the space, which was thickly carpeted with a large section in the middle dedicated to a wooden floor, which Jessie assumed was for dancing at non-lawyer events. At the far end was a dais with a podium at the center.

  “This ballroom can accommodate as many as 200 people,” she explained. “The event last night had 146 attendees, including the organizers and speakers. Other than that latter group, I didn’t interact with any individual more than Nina Kirby.”

  “Is that good or bad?” Jessie wondered.

  “I’d rather not frame the experience in those terms,” Mary replied. “Let’s just say that she was relentless in pursuit of her goals. She moved from table to table, seemingly trying to collect contacts and generate business opportunities. Normally that’s fine. After all, everyone was here to grease the wheels to an extent.”

  “But?” Jessie asked leadingly.

  “But she took it to another level,” Mary answered, shaking her head at the memory. “She would try to engage people in conversation while speakers were at the podium, when they clearly wanted to focus on the speech being made. And she was loud too, to the point of getting shushed multiple times. At one point, I had to pull her aside and plead with her to hold her conversations until speakers were done.”

  “Did she?” Ryan asked.

  “She would stop briefly,” Mary said, “but after a couple of minutes, she’d start up again. There were multiple complaints. Ultimately, after speaking with the event director, I warned her that if she couldn’t control her enthusiasm for inopportune communication, we’d have to return her payment and ask her to leave. That seemed to work. She held her tongue pretty well after that.”

  “Do you remember her leaving for an extended stretch at any time?” Jessie pressed.

  “No,” Mary said firmly. “Once she was on my radar, I had an eye on her pretty much the entire evening. I’d say that other than leaving for a few minutes for what I assume was a restroom break, she was there the whole time, making what I regret to say was quite a nuisance of herself. I actually made a note in the file to insist she not be invited next year. She was just too distracting.”

  “Are you able to get us a copy of the guest list, including who sat at each table?” Ryan asked, even though Jamil was securing it from Kirby herself and it seemed moot after what they’d just been told.

  “Certainly,” Mary told him. “I think there’s a copy in the annex office just outside. Give me a moment.”

  After she walked off, Jessie spoke.

  “Are you thinking that there might be some discrepancy between the list she’ll give us and the one we’ll get from Kirby?” she asked.

  “I doubt it,” he conceded, “but I just want to cover all our bases.”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd that the forceful but pleasant woman we spoke to earlier was such an unrelenting bulldog here last night?” Jessie wondered. “It almost sounds like a different person.”

  “Maybe she was just being on her best behavior for the police when we talked to her,” Ryan mused.

  “That’s certainly possible,” Jessie agreed. “But her attitude here seemed more alienating than productive. I can’t help but wonder why she’d risk it.”

  Just then, both their phones rang. It was Jamil. Ryan answered his and put the call on speaker.

  “Hey Jamil, you’re on speaker,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “We had a few updates for you,” Jamil said. “First of all. Ava Martell’s phone was destroyed beyond repair. Since it had an eSIM card rather than a physical one, we have to get into her cloud account to access her data. That’s proving to be a longer process than we’d like.

  “How long?” Jessie asked.

  “Everyone is short-staffed because of the impending holiday,” Jamil explained. “With all the bureaucratic hurdles we’re trying to overcome, I doubt we’ll make any progress before tomorrow.”

  Jessie tried not to let her frustration get the better of her. This wasn’t Jamil’s fault. And yet, she felt sure that if they could access Ava’s data, a whole new crop leads might open up.

  “You said you had a few updates,” she reminded him. “What else is going on?”

  “Right,” the head researcher said. “I wanted to let you know that Nina Kirby got in touch with us. She gave us the names of the people who sat at her table at the legal event. She also authorized us to check her phone and car GPS data, though not the content of the phone. She said that if we wanted that, it would require a separate approval, since there might be client confidentiality issues.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said. “We’ll be sending you the list of event attendees from the venue momentarily. Please let us know if you notice any substantial differences between the two.”

  “Will do,” Jamil promised. “By the way, we did a deeper background dive on Ava Martell’s husband, Harrison Buhner, and we found some interesting stuff.”

  Like what?” Jessie asked.

  “First of all, while he is a senior executive at the Deluxe Resorts and Hotels chain, he doesn’t seem to have much in the way of actual responsibility there. We found several articles that indicate that he was in middle management for much of his career, and that it was only after he married Martell that things changed. One article even suggested that he was elevated in the hopes that his wife’s modest celebrity and film contacts might mean the hotels could be used in upcoming film productions. I don’t know if that’s even relevant to your investigation, but it seemed notable.”

  “Could prove interesting,” Ryan mused. “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” Jamil replied, “according to some information that Beth uncovered, it appears that Buhner isn’t actually out of town.”

  “What?” Ryan demanded. “Maybe you should have led with that, Jamil!”

  Jessie shook her head in frustration, unable to disagree. Jamil was a genius, but he occasionally got so interested in particular trees that he forgot about the forest.

  “I’m sorry,” Jamil said. “Now that I say it out loud, it seems obvious.”

  “What did Beth find?” Jessie asked, hoping to move away from any conflict and get to the important stuff.

  Beth, while not a human supercomputer like Jamil, had an incredibly sharp mind, which people tended to underestimate because she was an attractive, six-foot-plus former college volleyball star.

  “I’ll let her explain,” Jamil said.

  “Hey guys,” Beth said over speaker, “so we only just learned this. Buhner did attend the Deluxe Resorts biannual executive conference, which was held the last few days in Las Vegas. The overall meeting didn’t end until after a brunch event today, but it looks like Buhner flew out yesterday evening.”

  “So he’s been here in L.A. since last night?” Jessie reconfirmed.

  “From everything we can tell, yes,” Beth said. “We have details if you want.”

  Just then, Mary Portnoy returned to the ballroom with a sheath of papers in her hand.

  “We do,” Jessie said to the researchers, speaking more quietly into the phone now. “We’re just wrapping up here at the hotel. We’ll call you back from the car and you can fill us in on the rest.”

  “Okay,” Beth said. Where are you going next?”

  Jessie looked at Ryan and could tell that he was on board with her plan, even before she said it.

  “We’re going to Buhner’s office,” she said. “He wants to meet at 3 p.m., but we’re not doing that. He’s on our timetable now.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jessie was restless and she knew why.

  This was her first real case in months, and she’d lost a valuable skill in the interim: patience.

  As much as she and Ryan wanted to get to Harrison Buhner’s office immediately, it wasn’t possible. Even using the siren and beacon, it had taken them almost forty minutes to travel from Century City to the downtown L.A. headquarters of Deluxe Hotels and Resorts.

  Normally she would pass that anxious time by reviewing the case with Ryan or mentally checking out to give her brain a little break. But on this drive over, she couldn’t make herself let go of the simmering anger she felt at Buhner’s deception.

  She tried not to let it color her view of him too much. Maybe there was a miscommunication. Maybe he had a legitimate reason for misleading them. But it was hard to give the man the benefit of the doubt, when he’d already seemingly lied to them.

  Ryan pulled up into a loading zone spot in front of the tower that housed Deluxe’s offices, passing a phalanx of TV trucks. Jessie suspected they were hoping to get a comment from the new widower to the daughter of the first couple of 90s American sitcoms. As Ryan put his LAPD placard on the dashboard, Jessie got out and headed for the front door. He jogged to catch up to her.

  “Let’s not announce our visit,” she told him as they pushed through the revolving entrance doors. “I don’t want to give this guy any kind of heads up. And I don’t want to give him a chance to run.”

  They were approaching the bank of elevators when they were met by a security guard who had dashed over to meet them.

  “Hold on, folks,” said the guard, a thin guy in his thirties who didn’t look like he could secure much of anything, “I need you to go back and sign in at the front desk. Then we’ll want to confirm your appointment with whoever you’re visiting.”

  Jessie worried Ryan might cave and explain where they were going and why, which could give Buhner warning if the guard called up to his office. But she should have known better.

  “No,” Ryan said bluntly as they stepped in the just-arrived elevator, holding out his badge and ID as silent explanation. “We’ll sign in when we come back down.”

  The doors closed on the befuddled face of the guard. Jessie turned and gave Ryan a firm kiss on the lips.

  “What was that for?” he asked, pleasantly surprised.

  “You’re the sweetest man I know,” she whispered, “but sometimes it gives me a little jolt when you’re more naughty than nice.”

  He smiled sheepishly.

  “Making a mental note of that,” he told her.

  The elevator doors opened on the thirty-fourth floor of the thirty-five-story building, and they stepped out into the lobby, which was clearly designed to look like the reception area of one of their hotels. They moved toward one of the three front desk receptionists, who were all wearing Deluxe Hotels & Resorts uniforms.

  “How may I help you?” asked the young woman with dark, curly hair and an aggressively bold smile plastered across her face.

  “We’re here to see Harrison Buhner,” Ryan told her.

  “Okay,” she said, typing on her keyboard, “and do you have an appointment?”

  “We do, for 3 p.m.,” he replied.

  “You’re a little early,” the receptionist, whose nametag read “Tina,” said, looking at the clock on the wall, which read 1:14 p.m.. “Why don’t I check in with his office and see when he’ll be available?”

  “Actually, Tina,” Ryan countered, holding out his badge and ID, “we’d like to meet with him now.”

  “Oh, okay,” Tina said, rattled. “Give me a moment and I’ll have his assistant come out and escort you there.”

  “I think we’d prefer if you just led us directly there,” Ryan instructed. “I’m sure your co-workers here can handle the reception desk without you for a couple of minutes.”

  “Of course,” Tina said as professionally as she could under the circumstances. “Please just follow me.”

  As they did, Ryan looked at Jessie and gave her a little wink, an apparent nod to his “more naughty than nice” demeanor.

  “Don’t get cocky,” she whispered, though she couldn’t fight off a small smile.

  Tina led them through a series of hallways, past multiple glassed-in rooms that were supposed to appear sleekly modern but looked more like high-tech detention areas than offices. They eventually arrived at an area along the back of the thirty-fourth floor with an expansive view of the western half of Los Angeles.

  A woman in her forties with glasses and gray hair tied in a bun sat at a small, glass desk outside the main office. Inside the office, a man Jessie recognized as Harrison Buhner sat at his desk, hunched over and on the phone, looking away from them. He was wearing a navy sport coat, a dress shirt without a tie, and casual tan slacks.

  “Gwen, these folks are here to speak with Mr. Buhner,” Tina said, before adding in a whisper, “they’re with the police.”