Animal Instinct by David Rosenfelt

Author:David Rosenfelt [Rosenfelt, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781250257208
Google: fBeGzQEACAAJ
Amazon: B08BYCX738
Goodreads: 53138017
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2021-03-23T05:00:00+00:00

“I hate to say it, but I believed him.”

We are back at Andy and Laurie’s house to debrief about the evening.

“He would have said anything to save his ass; Simon had him scared to death. But he wouldn’t cop to having killed Lisa and Kline because I don’t think he knew what the hell I was talking about. And he didn’t react to Jake Gardener’s name at all.”

“But we know for a fact that Lisa and Kline were buying from him, and that she was afraid of him,” Laurie says.

I shake my head. “I wish that was true, but I don’t believe it. You saw his operation; this is not a guy who was buying high-priced hit men. And Kline and Lisa were pretty well-off financially, especially Kline. He’d have a classier dealer; he wouldn’t be going to that parking lot in Passaic with an envelope full of cash.”

“There’s always a chance we had the wrong Rico,” Andy says. “Maybe among drug dealers Rico is like Smith, or Jones.”

“Or maybe Rico is just the name the dealer used in dealing with Kline and Lisa,” Laurie says. “Maybe his real name is Jeeves, or Shirley.”

Andy is nodding. “Don’t forget, Kline did a lot of traveling to do his seminars. He could have met Rico in any one of those places. But to cross-check all of those locations against places with drug dealers named Rico is not going to happen.”

“Has anyone noticed that we seem to run into a lot of dead ends?” I ask. “We’re chasing our tails here; no offense, Simon.”

Andy nods. “But we still have the knowledge, and Lisa’s email to back it up, that she and Kline were involved with drugs. That remains tremendously significant legally.”

Sam calls to say that he has gone through Lisa Yates’s phone records, but does not see any calls to Doris Landry or either of the two other people whose obituaries Lisa had. “I did find one other thing that might be of interest. Can I come over and show you?”

I ask that he come over this afternoon because I want to hear it and I have an appointment first. I’m going to see Richard Mahler, the guy who replaced Don Crystal as head of the IT department at Ardmore Medical Systems. Crystal said his name was “Miller, or Marler, or Marley, or some asshole,” so even though he got the name wrong, he was damn close.

Mahler was reluctant to talk to me when I called him, so I used the Andy Carpenter technique of threatening him with a deposition. Threatening depositions tends to convince people to do things they would not ordinarily do.

Mahler, like his boss, Jason Musgrove, has an impressive office with the all-glass view of Route 17. I have to admit that it’s hard to picture Mahler’s predecessor, Don Crystal, in this office. I can’t see him sitting behind this desk in his pajamas with feet, offering Tang to his corporate colleagues.

“Let’s get this over with” is Mahler’s congenial opening comment once I’ve sat down across from him.

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