Deadly Beloved hcc-38 Read online

  Deadly Beloved

  ( Hard Case Crime - 38 )

  Max Allan Collins

  Til death do us part... Marcy Addwatter killed her husband — there's no question about that. Shot him dead in the motel room where he was trysting with a blonde hooker. Shot the hooker, too.

  But where the cops might see an open-and-shut case, private eye Michael Tree — Ms. Michael Tree — sees a conspiracy. For Ms. Tree, digging into it could mean digging her own grave... and digging up her own murdered husband's.

  Based on the longest-running private-eye comic book series of all time, Deadly Beloved brings you an all-new adventure of the legendary Ms. Tree — the groundbreaking female P.I. who put the 'graphic' into graphic novel.

  Raves For the Work of MAX ALLAN COLLINS!

  “Max Allan Collins is the closest thing we have to a 21st-century Mickey Spillane and...will please any fan of old-school, hardboiled crime fiction.”

  —This Week

  “No one can twist you through a maze with as much intensity and suspense as Max Allan Collins.”

  —Clive Cussler

  “Collins never misses a beat...All the stand-up pleasures of dime-store pulp with a beguiling level of complexity.”

  —Booklist

  “Collins has an outwardly artless style that conceals a great deal of art.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A suspenseful, wild night’s ride [from] one of the finest writers of crime fiction that the U.S. has produced.”

  —Book Reporter

  “This book is about as perfect a page turner as you’ll find.”

  —Library Journal

  “Bristling with suspense and sexuality, this book is a welcome addition to the Hard Case Crime library.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A total delight...fast, surprising, and well-told.”

  —Deadly Pleasures

  “Strong and compelling reading.”

  —Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

  “Max Allan Collins [is] like no other writer.”

  —Andrew Vachss

  “Collins breaks out a really good one, knocking over the hard-boiled competition (Parker and Leonard for sure, maybe even Puzo) with a one-two punch: a feisty storyline told bittersweet and wry...nice and taut...the book is unputdownable. Never done better.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Rippling with brutal violence and surprisingly sexuality...I savored every turn.”

  —Bookgasm

  “Masterful.”

  —Jeffrey Deaver

  “Collins has a gift for creating low-life believable characters...a sharply focused action story that keeps the reader guessing till the slam-bang ending. A consummate thriller from one of the new masters of the genre.”

  —Atlanta Journal Constitution

  “For fans of the hardboiled crime novel...this is powerful and highly enjoyable reading, fast moving and very, very tough.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Entertaining...full of colorful characters...a stirring conclusion.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “Collins makes it sound as though it really happened.”

  —New York Daily News

  “An exceptional storyteller.”

  —San Diego Union Tribune

  “A gift for intricate plotting and cinematically effective action scenes.”

  —Jon L. Breen, Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers

  “Nobody does it better than Max Allan Collins.”

  —John Lutz

  Dominique Muerta sat behind a mahogany desk about the size of a sideways BMW. Impeccable in severe though stylish business attire—gray suit, black silk blouse, by some European designer whose work I could neither recognize nor afford—she was a beautiful woman, no question of it, slender and yet strong and so pretty that the mannish severity of her no-doubt-expensive short hairdo took nothing away. The thin lips were a bright red and the almond-shaped eyes were as richly, deeply mahogany as the desk, softened with a touch of lavender eye shadow.

  “Michael Tree,” she said, and smiled as she rose. She came around from behind the desk and met me halfway, extending a graceful hand.

  As we shook, she said, “This is a long overdue meeting. We have so much in common.”

  She did not offer to take my trenchcoat and I left it on, as well as my gloves, purse on its strap over my shoulder.

  Indicating the glass coffee table, she said, “Sit, sit.... Cappuccino? Water?...I can have hot or iced tea or regular coffee or a soft drink—”

  “No,” I said, sitting on the nearest couch. “Thank you. This won’t take long.”

  Dominique sat on the white leather chair across the glass table. Her thin lips formed a razor-edge smile as she opened her hand to display the bullet in her palm.

  “Interesting business card,” she said. An eyebrow arched. “Did you mean to scare me, or just get my attention?”

  Dominique set the bullet on the coffee table, straight up, as if placing a miniature in a collector’s set. It made a little klik on the glass.

  “When I want your attention,” I said with my own smile, “it’ll be traveling faster...”

  Deadly BELOVED

  by Max Allan Collins

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-038)

  For Ken Levin—

  Ms. Tree’s Chicago counsel

  “Down these mean streets a woman must go who is not herself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”

  RAYMOND CHANDLER,

  “THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER,”

  PARAPHRASED

  ONE

  The woman in the skimpy black bikini on the perfect beach on the too-perfect day was me.

  I saw her from a God-like distance, the long legs stretched out, shoulders back accentuating the full bust, black hair brushing tan shoulders with help of a whispery breeze, well-carved handsome features that were almost beautiful taking on a serene cast as blue-green eyes studied the blue-green water that rolled gently to a picture-book tan sand shore.

  I watched her taking it all in, as she lounged there on no towel, basking in a sun that seemed to turn the world white and yellow and orange, though the sensation was of warmth, not heat. The green of trees was a backdrop, more perceived than seen, the blue-green of the lake glinting with sun sparkle, and—like the black of the bikini—subservient to the solarizing rays.

  Then I was within her.

  Inside myself, feeling a sense of repose encouraged by the lapping of the waves and the laughter and splashing of a young couple, happy honeymooners perhaps, cavorting in the water. I watched them for a while, but they were indistinct in the shimmer of sunlight.

  To the left of me, a digging sound drew my eyes to a boy around ten, in a yellow swimsuit with orange-red seahorses dancing on it, who was working with a shovel, gaining more raw material for the elaborate sand castle he was constructing, turrets and towers and even a carved-out moat.

  The sound of splashing drew my attention back to the happy couple coming up out of the water, hand in hand, stumbling onto the sand to fall onto beach towels, dripping, laughing, kissing.

  I smiled a little and gave them privacy they hadn’t requested by casting my eyes back out on the gentle rolling water with its diamond-like glimmer.

  Then, as if a switch had been thrown, the world turned shades of blue and gray, and a wind began to blow, kicking up choppy waves. My hair started to whip and a sudden, troubling chill enveloped me, encasing me in goose pimples. I looked around for my own towel, but there wasn’t one, and wound up hugging my legs to myself, a shivering oversized fetus.

  But when I glanced over at the boy building that sprawling castle, h
e didn’t seem to notice the wind and cold; even his sand-color hair remained unruffled, though the blue of fast-moving clouds shadowed him.

  And that honeymoon couple didn’t seem to notice the rapid weather shift either, stretched on their backs on their towels, eyes closed, sunning under a sunless sky that stained them blue-gray—they might have been corpses laid out on morgue slabs, so oblivious were they.

  My teeth chattered and my eyes returned to the rolling, choppy water, where emerged from the unruly waves a man in a black wet suit and full, masked scuba gear, including black flippers.

  I studied him, squinting as if the sun were still glaring.

  And then I saw it, in sharp focus: in his hands, a spear gun...

  ...which he raised and aimed at me.

  I reared back, as he fired.

  Dodging, I felt as much as heard the spear sink into the sand beside me and quiver there like a small tree shaken by the wind. I fumbled at my little pile of possessions—sun tan oil, a paperback, my purse....

  The masked man in the skin of black rubber advanced, a terrible grin on the piece of his face beneath the mask, the flippers no impediment to his progress, his spear gun reloaded somehow, and he fired again.

  As another spear thunked into nearby sand, I whipped the nine millimeter automatic from my purse and fired, three times, three small explosions that provided the dark sky with the thunder it called for.

  All three shots hit him in the torso, tearing the rubber suit and making little red blossoms, one over his heart, shaking him like a naughty child...

  ...and yet he still kept coming.

  And that damn spear gun was poised to shoot again.

  Scrambling to my feet, I let go with four more rounds, four more thunder-cracks that tore holes in the afternoon and that rubber suit, and blood spurted in shimmering scarlet ribbons and yet still he came, the goddamn black-rubber Frankenstein monster, and I was moving backward, all but stumbling, still shooting, but soon the gun’s thunder-cracks had been replaced by the clicks on an empty chamber, and the sand made my retreat impossibly slow, and I felt hysteria come over me in a wave but I would be damned if I’d scream, and I was raising the empty weapon to club the son of a bitch when finally he tottered and collapsed in a pile of flesh and blood and rubber at my bare feet.

  I looked down at him for the longest time before kneeling and taking in the bloody exit wounds of my multiple shots, any one of which should have dropped him, and I unceremoniously flipped the body over.

  Reaching for the mask, my hand began to tremble. For some reason, I hesitated.

  Then I sneered at the corpse, and ripped the damn thing off.

  And the face under the mask was as handsome in its battered way as it was familiar, because it was my husband’s face, Mike Tree’s face....

  “What the hell do you make of that, Doc?” I asked.

  The psychiatrist’s office was dim, curtains in the anonymously male dark-wood-paneled office shutting out the late afternoon sun. Trimly bearded, balding, fifty-something, Dr. Cassel wore an impeccably tailored gray suit with a darker gray tie as he sat in a comfortable black leather chair beside his desk.

  “Sometimes, Ms. Tree,” he said gently, “a spear is just a spear.”

  I was nearby on a reclining chair, with him at my side. The chair was leaned so far back I might have been at a dentist, not a shrink. Of course this was almost the clichéd couch that most head doctors have long since abandoned, though mine—whom I’d been seeing for over a year, since my husband’s death—was Old School enough to keep me comfortable and looking not into his eyes but into my memories and my troubles.

  And I had plenty of both.

  I was in brown slacks and a tan short-sleeved cashmere sweater—outside this office, a very crisp autumn in Chicago was in full sway. I’m five ten and one hundred forty-five pounds (I’d been ten pounds lighter in my dream) but have had few complaints about their distribution.

  The doctor, by the way, was taking notes in a spiral pad—though he recorded the sessions, he was Old School about that, too, and the scratch of pen against paper provided a soft if percussive accompaniment.

  “Why,” I asked, “would I dream I was attacked by my own husband?”

  “Late husband.”

  I gave up half a smile. “That hasn’t slipped my mind, Doctor....And why would I kill him?”

  “He was a threat in the context of the dream.”

  I shook my head. “No, a spear gun was the threat. Mike was the punchline.”

  I could hear him shift in the leather chair. “Let’s start with the other elements—the child on the beach.”

  “The kid Mike and I never had. Next.”

  “The happy couple on the beach might well represent—”

  “The happiness that was denied me. Denied us. Fine. But goddamn it, Doc, killing the guy I love...”

  “Note the present tense.”

  “You can still love dead people.”

  “You can also resent them. ‘Killing’ your husband in your imagination is not an atypical response, Ms. Tree—feelings of abandonment experienced by those who lose a loved one—”

  “Yeah, yeah, but why would Mike attack me? Even in my imagination?”

  “...Perhaps you were attacking yourself.”

  “Myself?”

  He shifted in the chair again. “There’s that odd coincidence that you and your late husband shared not just a last name, but a first one—both named ‘Michael.’ Two Michael Trees.”

  “Two Michael Trees is right....”

  My policeman father had wanted a boy and got me instead. And Michelle wasn’t good enough for him: Michael it was. Pop had justified it by saying Michael was the first name of the lead actress on The Waltons, wasn’t it? But I knew better. We weren’t the Waltons.

  “Ms. Tree?”

  “It’s a possibility,” I granted.

  “Do you feel in any way ‘attacked’ by your husband? Abandonment issues aside, did he keep...secrets, perhaps, that you learned only after his death?”

  I gave him a sideways glance. “You’re good, Doc—haven’t even got to that yet. So much to tell you, since our last session....”

  The smile in the trim beard was forgiving, as were the soft gray eyes in the angularly handsome face. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “After all, you’ve missed the last two.”

  “I know, I know.”

  He shrugged. “Well, you’re my last scheduled appointment this afternoon. We can go over. No problem.”

  Right. But we wouldn’t go off the clock, would we?

  I turned away from him and into my memories. “There’s a lot to tell, Doc. Things I didn’t witness—things I learned later.”

  “That’s all right. Tell it all.”

  “Even if I wasn’t there for it?”

  “Even then....You live an eventful life, Ms. Tree. But I hope you’ve managed to stay well-grounded. In the year since your husband’s death—”

  “Murder.”

  “...Murder. In that time, we’ve accomplished so much.”

  “ ‘Examine the past, understand it, then leave it behind...and move on.’ Great advice, Doctor. But as a detective I spend at least as much time in the past as in the present.”

  “The nature of your business.”

  “And yours.”

  “And mine. Go ahead, Ms. Tree. Start wherever you like.”

  “We’ll make it last week. That’s not really the beginning, Doc...more like the middle.” I glanced sideways at him. “I’m going to be jumping around some. Think you can keep up?”

  “I think so.”

  “Didn’t mean to patronize you, Doc. It’s just—you may have heard your share of wild things in this office in your time. But I’ll bet you double or nothing your bill that this is going to top ‘em all.”

  “Ms. Tree, I believe you.”

  “No bet?”

  “No bet. Please. Begin.”

  TWO

  A year ago or so—abou
t a month before his death—my husband Mike had moved the Tree Agency into new, nice, modern digs in a venerable, recently remodeled high-rise on Michigan Avenue that meant even our relatively modest space required a monthly king’s ransom.

  This was probably what had my young partner, Dan Green, upset with me.

  End of the workday, almost six, we both stepped out of our respective offices, which were side by side. He tagged along as I headed out, moving down the aisle between vacant cubicles, four on either side. Their inhabitants hadn’t gone home for the day—they didn’t have inhabitants.

  Dan was edging up on thirty, blond and boyish with a wispy mustache that he thought made him look older (it didn’t) but only served to suggest he was gay (he wasn’t). He wore a brown-and-white pinstripe shirt, tan khakis, brown Italian loafers, and a look of consternation. I was in a gray wool Ralph Lauren blazer, cream-color silk blouse and black slacks and ankle boots, pretending not to notice how worked up he was.

  “Look, Ms. Tree,” he was saying in his earnest second tenor, “we gotta make some changes. We’re stuck in the mud here and our wheels aren’t even turnin’.”

  “Nicely put,” I said, making him work to keep up. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but nicely put.”

  He gestured to a nearby empty cubicle. “Look at these chairs with no asses in ‘em! You know what the boss had in mind—expansion! And what have you done about it? Nothing!”

  I stopped abruptly, which threw Dan a little, as he kept going for a second, before backing up to face me and regain his composure.

  My arms were folded, my head tilted, just a little, my eyes not blinking. “Current caseload is easily covered by our staff of three. If anything, we should be seeking smaller quarters...and I’m the boss.”

  He huffed a sigh. “Our ‘staff of three’ includes Bea, who’s just a glorified goddamn receptionist!...No offense, Bea.”

  Bea, up at her reception desk, a sexy sentry in a V-neck blue-and-white polka-dot dress, glanced back at us with a blank expression that spoke volumes. “None taken.”