Dead Midnight Read Online Free PDF

legal and illegal investigative tactics with my new hire, Julia Rafael; and made a list of the things I needed to do on the Nagasawa case. The first item was to talk with the members of Roger’s family, so I put in a call to their home number, but received no answer. When I reached Daniel Nagasawa at his Bush Street eye clinic he said it would be best if he and I met there tomorrow morning. Margaret asked me to come to her publishing house’s offices on Till-man Place near Union Square in the afternoon.
    Their setting up separate interviews made me wonder if there might be trouble in the Nagasawa marriage. The aftermath of a child’s death, particularly if by suicide or violence, could often exert pressure on previously undetected fault lines. I made a note to ask Glenn Solomon if that were the case.
    Neither of the surviving Nagasawa sons was available at the numbers I had for them, so I left messages. The same was true of most of Roger’s friends who had been named on a list in Glenn’s files. With any luck they’d return my calls tonight or in the morning, and tomorrow would be my day to work intensively on my profile of Roger’s state of mind—
    “Shar?”
    The voice was that of Rae Kelleher—my onetime right-hand who had resigned from the agency last fall after her marriage to my former brother-in-law, Ricky Savage. I looked up, saw her standing in the doorway, her freckled face glowing. She wore blue, her best color, and she held a champagne bottle in either hand.
    I said, “You sold it!”
    She nodded, a slight motion that told me how hard she was trying to contain her excitement.
    I got up, rushed over, and hugged her. Then we were jumping up and down and making undignified squeaking noises. Rae bumped the bottles against my back, gasped, and we got ourselves under control before the wine became so agitated it would be dangerous to open.
    “Don’t say another word yet,” I told her, and went to call Ted so he could round up the staff for a celebration. While Rae unearthed a third bottle from her tote bag and popped corks, I hunted up glasses. Soon everybody was filing in.
    Ted and Neal, both looking broody at first, but snapping out of it as soon as they saw Rae and realized what her news must be. Mick and Charlotte, a handsome couple: he big and blond, she petite and brunette. When his father’s marriage to my sister Charlene broke up, Mick had blamed Rae and vowed he would never forgive her; now I saw nothing but affection in his eyes as they met hers. Craig Morland, my FBI agent-turned-operative, was stroking his thick mustache and looking puzzled; Craig was part of our social circle, as he lived with a close friend of mine who was an inspector on the SFPD homicide detail, but he paid so little attention to what went on that I sometimes suspected he spent most of his time in an alternate universe.
    And then there was Julia Rafael, two months on the job and looking ill at ease. A tall, strongly built Latina with a haughty profile and spiky hair, Julia had dragged herself up from one of the worst personal histories I’d ever encountered in a job applicant. I’d taken a chance on her because I figured that anyone with so much guts and determination to improve her lot in life couldn’t help but succeed as an investigator.
    I motioned to her and introduced her to Rae, whose smile she met with a brusque nod. Julia had few social graces— hadn’t been given the opportunity to develop any in her twenty-five years—but I was confident that in time she’d possess a full complement of people skills. Beneath her rough exterior I sensed real value, both as an employee and an individual.
    Charlotte and Mick were passing out glasses of champagne. When everybody had been served, I held up mine and said, “Here’s to Rae! She’s sold her novel!”
    “Way to go, Kelleher!”
    “All
right!
”
    “Who’s the publisher?”
    “When can I buy my copy and get you to autograph it?”
    “Did you get big bucks