Vixen by Bill Pronzini Page B

over Cory Beckett in his office; but then again, he’d always been a businessman first and foremost. “In that case, we’ll have to drop it. You know we can’t continue an investigation without a client.”
    â€œYeah. Damn, though. I’d sure like to know what that woman’s up to.”
    â€œSo would I,” I said. “After the fact, with nobody hurt, and from a safe distance.”
    *   *   *
    Abe Melikian was another Saturday workaholic, in his office and busy with a client when I rang up. I told the staff member I spoke to to let him know I had news for him and would deliver it in person within the hour.
    Runyon checked in as I was about to leave the agency, with the news that Cory Beckett had brought Frank Chaleen along with her to Belardi’s. The woman was brazen as hell. Lied in her teeth to me about not knowing Chaleen, then as soon as I was gone, called Chaleen in to help her fetch her brother home.
    As Tamara had predicted, Melikian didn’t want us to do any more investigating. He was upset that we’d probed into her background as much as we had. He already knew that Kenneth Beckett had been found and Cory was bringing him back well ahead of his trial date because she’d called to tell him so, and why the hell hadn’t I notified him right away myself instead of going to her apartment and harassing her?
    I tried to explain about her background, her ties to Vorhees and Chaleen, the lies and manipulations we’d uncovered, but I might as well have been talking to a statue. He refused to consider that she might be anything other than the selfless sister she pretended to be; kept defending her and her intentions. Kenneth Beckett was unstable, he said, parroting what she’d told me; the kid’s sudden run-out proved that, didn’t it? The story he’d told Runyon was “a load of drug-raving bullshit.” Cory had her brother’s best interests at heart, was doing everything she could to keep him out of prison.
    Old Abe was hooked, all right. So deeply hooked that I couldn’t help wondering if she was sleeping with him, too. He was always paying lip service to family and family values—he’d been married thirty years, had two grown daughters and a son in high school—and I had taken him for a straight arrow. But when a sexy piece half a man’s age makes herself available to him, the temptation for some can be too strong to resist. Not for me, and never with a woman like Cory Beckett—that’s what I told myself. I hadn’t succumbed in her apartment, but how could I be absolutely sure I wouldn’t under different circumstances?
    I said, “Okay, Abe. Have it your way. We’ll back off.”
    â€œDamn well better. Beckett’s back, I’m not gonna lose my bond—case closed. You want any more business from me, stay the hell away from Cory and her brother.”
    So that’s the end of it, I thought. Kenneth Beckett gets convicted or acquitted at his trial, his sister goes right on lying, manipulating, using men to her own ends, and we forget the whole sorry business and move on. Case closed.
    Only it wasn’t.
    No, not by a long shot.

 
    8
    KENNETH BECKETT
    He didn’t know what to do.
    Scared all the time now. Scared of the trial, scared of going to prison, but mostly scared of Cory.
    She didn’t trust him anymore. Made him give her his car keys, wouldn’t let him go out alone after dark, locked him in his room at night when she went off with Mr. Vorhees or that bastard Chaleen. She said it was just until after the trial, for his own safety, even though he’d promised he wouldn’t skip out again like he had when she flew to Las Vegas with Mr. Vorhees and left him all alone. Well, maybe it was for his own good, but did she have to treat him like he was a snot-nosed kid? Or worse, a half-wit the way Chaleen did?
    She wouldn’t confide in him