Die on Your Feet Read online

  Lola nodded, then stood. “Let me know when you’ve set up your appointments. I’ll be in touch.” She headed for the door.

  Luke bolted out of his chair. “You’re not going anywhere, angel.”

  “Why Detective Inspector, having a change of heart? I’m flattered to think my charm has worked such marvels already.”

  Tsu stood, restraining his partner with a hand on the shoulder. “Miss Starke, we’re not making the appointments. You are.”

  Lola shook her head. “Sorry to bust your calendar, Tsu. I only came to satisfy my curiosity, see how far Copenhagen would push this. Tell your DS Shao whatever you like, but I’m not much of a secretary. You don’t need me for any of this. We all know it.” She turned once more at the doorway and smiled. “I’ll handle Copenhagen myself.”

  Chapter Six

  “The question is, will she take no for an answer?”

  Traffic was heavy. Lola managed to slip in front of a bus just as it pulled toward the curb and a stop full of waiting passengers-to-be. She ignored the horn of a tan car trying to pull into flow from its parking spot.

  “No, the question is how long can I borrow time?”

  “And her thugs? You can run red lights and turn wild corners all day, but it seems to me they’re pretty good at this. They’ve stayed on us.”

  “That? That was just a little loosening up. I’m not trying to lose them, not yet. Just getting a feel for them.”

  A delivery truck lumbered into the lane and Lola braked, hard. It sped up incrementally. She waited it out in first gear, eying the gaps in the other lane as the other cars rocketed away by comparison. Thick and Thin were two cars back now, the only ones not pressing impatiently on a car horn. Grinding gears and roaring engines heralded the release of a few cars into the next lane. Lola was content to stay behind. Eventually, she even shifted into second.

  “Where are we going?” Aubrey asked.

  “Herald office.”

  “With company?”

  “Without.”

  Lola wrangled the car into a left turn and sped down Western Avenue, heading toward the ocean. Tire squeals and car horns told her an escort was following. She threw a quick glance over her shoulder and found them coming up on the right, slowing behind a silver Wraith. A red farmer’s truck pulled in behind Lola. She changed lanes in front of the Wraith and slowed to match the farmer’s speed. Up ahead, traffic began to thicken as it approached one of the largest intersections in Crescent City: Western Avenue and Ocean Drive. Western widened into three lanes but Lola stayed put. The Wraith was slow to brake. It came within inches of her bumper. She saw the driver’s mouth tighten slightly. He had red hair beneath his chauffeur’s cap. An elderly woman sat behind him. She stared out the window at the farmer’s truck. She caught his eye, in fact. The farmer slowed even more, seemingly caught by her gaze.

  Lola saw an opening and tapped the gas, wrenching the wheel over to slide back over one lane. She braked in time to the farmer’s horn.

  A green grocer’s truck was coming up on the left. The sound of it down-shifting gears briefly overrode the honking of car horns. Lola slid in front of him. Another quick glance showed the thugs trying to pull behind her. She sped up, giving the grocery driver more room to avoid hitting her bumper. Meanwhile, the thugs’ black Buick managed to squeeze behind the grocery truck. Lola slowed again, letting the truck get as close as he wanted. The farmer eyed her cautiously as he pulled closer. Beyond him, in the far lane, the silver Wraith was gaining on a black sedan. The elderly woman was looking straight ahead now and her driver was as tight-lipped as before. He glanced over at Lola, slowing down slightly. In front of him, a gap widened slightly.

  Ahead, cars were lined three thick, waiting for the lights on Ocean Drive to turn green. The farmer remained just slightly beside and behind Lola as he slowed. The gap in front of the Wraith increased. The lights on Ocean flicked to green. Lola had three car lengths until she met with the bottleneck of cars moving forward. She checked the farmer’s eyes. He was still watching her warily. She looked at the Wraith. The redhead was shifting his gears, concentrating on the car ahead of him. His silver beauty of a car lurched slightly. Lola smiled and slammed down on the gas, aiming for the far right corner of the intersection. The farmer squealed his tires and hollered. The Wraith braked to a stall. The bottleneck cleared just in time for Lola to miss the rear bumper of a maroon sportster as she jumped forward. She slipped onto Ocean Drive, heading north, amid a fanfare of horns and curses. Thick and Thin, waiting with all the other cars to turn southbound onto Ocean, were now stuck behind the green grocer’s truck as it ground its gears to a jerky start.

  * * *

  Ria Monteverde wore a tweed jacket padded at the shoulders, and squared at the hem. Her pleated trousers were a coordinating shade of camel. Her long black hair was tied into a demure ponytail at the nape. She pointed accusingly at Lola with a black fountain pen.

  “You never came to my promotion party.”

  “I’m here now. Congratulations.” Lola grinned.

  “It was eight days ago.”

  Lola showed her hands placatingly. “I didn’t want to steal your glory. My mere presence and all that, you know.”

  Ria snorted. “Ha. You never could lie to me. Admit it—you simply forgot. You don’t love me at all, do you?”

  Lola rolled her eyes. “I love you just fine. It’s the nagging I can’t stand.”

  “So, you ungrateful wretch,” Ria continued, lowering her pen, “what do you want now?”

  “Just a visit to the archives.”

  Ria raised her eyebrows. “What’s your angle?”

  “Sorry, confidential. The less you know, the better.”

  “That has never rung true for me. The more I know, the happier I am.”

  “I’m not in it for your happiness, doll. This is strictly business.” Lola tapped her watch. “I’m on the clock.”

  “All those years at prep school, wasted,” Ria grumbled. “Your manners are still atrocious.”

  “You of all people should understand about deadlines,” Lola countered.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Ria got up. “Come on. Down to the dungeon.”

  The basement of The Crescent City Herald was a surprisingly bright and high-ceilinged space. The entire floor was one large library. Shelves upon shelves of old editions of the Herald lined the walls and stood in symmetrical rows. Framed pages from significant editions decorated one wall. Along that wall, a row of three tables with matching chairs. Reading lamps sat on each table. The elevator sat across the room from the reading area. Ria led Lola down the stairs that ended next to the elevator. Immediately within view was the librarian’s desk, a large reception counter of masculine millwork and dark wood.

  Someone actually got paid to index the stories and keep records of each and every piece of news that the Herald had published in the past sixty years. That someone was currently named Dinwoodie Kwong. He lit up like a firecracker in Chang Plaza when Ria walked through his door.

  “Hi Woodie, got a favour to ask.”

  “Hello, Miss Monteverde,” he answered. He stood up from his perch on a tall stool and walked around his desk. His eyes wandered briefly to Lola. Woodie looked like an overgrown kid, in an argyle sweater over a pale blue shirt with pressed slacks and shiny black shoes. His hair, however, was unruly to the point of alarm. It stood up in a medium-sized cloud. Paired with large liquid brown eyes and that shy smile, he was the picture of adorable earnestness.

  Ria gave him a real dazzler, then turned to Lola with an arch expression. “Well?”

  Lola motioned. “Scoot.”

  Ria shook her head, grinning. “Not if you want Woodie’s help. He doesn’t do scut work for non-employees of our great newspaper. Right, Woodie?”

  He gulped and nodded, turning red to the tip
s of his ears.

  Aubrey weighed in impatiently. “Get on with it, Lola.”

  After a pause, Lola gave up the name. Ria looked startled. “You don’t kid around.” She turned to the lovesick kid. “You heard her.”

  Woodie whirled around and walked over to a row of thick black ledgers sitting behind his abandoned stool. He plucked one out and took it over to his desk. Opened, it revealed itself to be an index, CH to CR. Woodie thumbed down a tiny-print list and then got out a pad of paper. He wrote with quick strokes.

  “And Stoudamire, Amber Jade.”

  “Let me finish with this entry first,” he murmured.

  Ria motioned her aside. “Come clean, girlie. Nothing free in this life.”

  “I’m just doing some research for a case, a possible case,” she added, stalling Ria’s protest.

  “Someone’s asked you to investigate the most powerful woman, Chinese or otherwise, in the Gaming Commission and it’s not my story?” She stood with hands on her hips. “Give me one good reason to keep my trap shut.”

  Lola jerked a thumb at her own chest.

  “You?” At Lola’s nod, she laughed. “You’re all the more reason to dig in. You’d be almost as good for circulation as your mother!” She scanned Lola’s scowling face. “C’mon, doll. Give me something.”

  Lola shook her head. “Can’t. This is my practice we’re talking about.” Lola shifted her stance. “Look, I don’t like holding out on you. But cut me some slack here. I don’t flap lips on my clients or my cases. That’s how I do business.”

  Ria chewed her lower lip while she considered her friend. Meanwhile, Woodie had opened up two more ledgers and was scratching away with his pen. Ria crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine, but if the story gets hot, I had better be the first call you make.”

  Lola put out my hand. “Deal.” The women shook firmly.

  Ria grinned. “So what’re we looking for?”

  “Not ‘we.’”

  “You were never much good at research neither,” she said.

  “Ancient history. I’m so far past thirteen, it’s painful to think on. A career can change a girl, you know.”

  Ria scoffed. She turned to Woodie. “Where do we start?”

  The starting was easy. It was all the work in the middle that found Lola still in the Dungeon three hours later. Woodie’s scribblings had proven to be a large list of articles. The Stoudamires had been a wealth of news stories throughout the years. Everyone knew the legendary story: Elijah Bell Stoudamire arrived from the East a penniless young man with an uncanny head for capitalizing on the needs of the masses. Given that the masses in his case were the thousands arriving weekly in the throes of gold fever, he quickly found his niche: supplying tough klondikers with a steady and reliable supply of wool socks. It wasn’t glamourous but it was a bona fide moneymaker of an industry. A wife and two sons later, Elijah Bell could claim paternity to a Crescent City mayor as well as a tough-minded civic prosecutor.

  Amber Jade was born to the latter. Her father, Elijah James, married a Southern belle, the former Adelaide Forrest-Gentry, and their only child was born three long years afterward. It was a well-known secret that Adelaide was unable to bear any more children, due to her delicate constitution. The Herald had many stories about the Stoudamires, with accompanying photographs. Over the years, Amber Jade appeared in a variety of flouncy white baby gowns and pretty little girl frocks. That changed after she turned thirteen.

  An accomplished horsewoman, Adelaide nevertheless was thrown from her favorite horse on a ride during Amber Jade’s thirteenth birthday party. She never awoke from the blow to the head and died two weeks later. A famous picture of Amber Jade was taken at the funeral service. She wore a black dress with veiled hat. It was impossible to see her expression.

  Despite the rumours at Rose Arbour Prep, Amber Jade was rarely mentioned in the papers during high school. There were articles about her father’s highest-profile cases, but nothing about his family life in them. Amber Jade showed up occasionally on his arm at appropriate fundraisers but otherwise, father and daughter did not take pictures together. After graduation, however, even these disappeared. Nothing about Amber Jade Stoudamire appeared in the Herald until her marriage to Theodore Marshall Copenhagen IV, a wealthy industrialist who’d been born a millionaire and gone on to earn his own money in oil. He’d celebrated forty years before marrying the twenty-three-year-old Amber Jade. Her gift to him for his forty-fifth birthday was a divorce.

  The same year she married, Amber Jade Stoudamire became AJ Copenhagen, Assistant Deputy Commissioner of Gaming. Her husband hadn’t seemed to mind. In a statement put out by his public relations office, Teddy Marshall IV was proud of his wife’s abilities and commitment to law and order. He was certain that she would rapidly become an integral part of the Gaming Commission.

  Similar sentiments were released to the press when the divorce became public. The couple were still dear friends; however, irreconcilable differences had led them to the decision to end the marriage. Teddy Marshall wished his ex-wife the best in her career and life.

  Throughout this, the Assistant Deputy Commissioner couldn’t be reached for comment.

  “A smart cookie,” mused Ria. “The husband took all the heat.”

  Lola nodded. “There’s got to be more. Not even a whiff of some dish on the side?”

  “For either one of them,” agreed Ria.

  “It wasn’t about the money. She was wealthy before the marriage. It wasn’t about his personality. He was so much older. I doubt she was ever in love with him.”

  “Doesn’t strike me as the type to do things haphazardly. Whatever Amber Jade wanted, she planned and executed until it was hers. Remember when she campaigned to become Student Council President in Senior Year?” Ria looked up, a wry smile playing at her lips. “Hard not to think we dodged a bullet at Rose Arbour. I never thought I’d be grateful to be beneath someone’s notice.”

  “Bullets would be too messy. She’d’ve gone for something colourless, odourless and tasteless.”

  “I can’t quite believe I never ran into her,” continued Ria. “A mayor for uncle and a star prosecutor as daddy. I wonder why I never pursued her for the school paper.”

  “As I recall, you were always more interested in the athletics department than in the society page.”

  A slow grin spread across Ria’s face, accompanied by a pale pink blush that turned her skin dusky. Lola caught movement out the corner of her eye. Woodie had just ducked his chin. A red flush ran up his neck.

  Lola stood. “Time for me to blow this joint.” She extended a hand to Woodie. “Thanks for the help.”

  Ria gave a hurried thanks herself and dogged Lola’s steps upward. “Where now?”

  “You, back to your desk. I’m off to hunt ex-husband.”

  “We’ve got a deal, right?”

  “Don’t you have an article to write or something? You’ve been coming and going all afternoon.”

  Ria skewered Lola with a dark-eyed glare.

  “If you want to feel useful,” Lola finally replied, “you can work the phone. Find out where she went after Rose Arbour, before she caught Copenhagen’s eye.”

  Ria grinned. “As if I needed direction from you, of all people.”

  Chapter Seven

  Lola avoided the office and grabbed a sandwich and coffee on the way uptown. The very posh offices of Copenhagen Industrial Inc. sat at the narrow tip of the downtown area. Teddy Marshall IV liked his architecture tall and imposing. That was exactly what he got from the infamous Marcel Letourneau Fong. A seven-storey monolith of bright white stone, ringed with darkened windows at every time of day, the Copenhagen Building looked like a stark and disapproving cousin to the Gaming Commission jewel in the heart of the municipal district. It too had elegant stonework and caryatids a
dorning its pristine exterior. It also stood out amidst its more drab neighbours. But there was something missing. Fong had very publicly denounced the capitalist spirit of the times, early in his career, only to accept, twenty years later, the commission from Teddy Marshall III for a corporate headquarters. Fong certainly wasn’t about to explain his actions, but rumours circulated that he needed the money, as patrons of his inconsistent visions had thinned out considerably after the unveiling of the Museum of Modernity in Sant’Angelo, a strange twisted structure that many critics, in varying degrees of bluntness, likened to human bowels. With the Copenhagen commission, he renounced his love for the curve and the circle, the symmetry of the infinity symbol. With the Copenhagen building, he articulated his bitterness in a perfect rectangle of bland wealth. It was a sublime blague, an arrogant gesture of defiance, all the more ironic because Teddy Marshall III loved it. It was the perfect symbol, to him, of his very masculine sense of power. Marcel Letourneau Fong didn’t attend the ceremonial unveiling, but he did release a letter to the press, stating his hopes that the Copenhagen family would find joy in their newest symbol of self-gratification.

  The lobby was designed to impress and intimidate, no surprises there. Gold and glass chandeliers hung from the twenty-foot ceiling. The ten steps from the doors to the main floor of the lobby accentuated this height. Gold sconces, stylized lilies, were spaced at regular intervals along the walls. A security desk sat almost immediately to the left at the top of the stairs. A matched pair of burly young men sat with sharp eyes and pressed uniforms. When they saw her, Lola averted her gaze shyly and put an extra sway in her walk. After a few paces, she threw them another shy look over her shoulder to confirm the nature of their attentions and was rewarded with a leer. Lola continued to the bank of three elevators and waited, touching her hair self-consciously.

  “I hate to bring this up now,” said Aubrey, “but how do you intend on getting in to see him?”

  Lola kept her eyes up like the others around her, watching as the dial of the middle lift slowly indicated an impending arrival. A discreet ding and the doors opened. A flood of people gushed outward. As the only woman, Lola entered first, giving the lift operator a small smile as he tipped his hat. She kept a pleasant expression on her face as the men filed in.