House Justice by Mike Lawson

three. She wasn’t sure.”
    “Where’d she go?”
    Christine hesitated and DeMarco thought for a minute she wasn’t going to tell him. “New York,” she finally said. “She left this morning.”
    Ah, this could be good, DeMarco thought. “Do you have any idea how I can get ahold of her?”
    He knew Emma’s cell phone number but he also knew that she rarely turned on her phone. For Emma, a cell phone was primarily a one-way communication device.
    “Yes,” Christine said—but that’s all she said, and it looked as if that was all she intended to say.
    DeMarco, naturally, began to feel a wee bit irritated. He’d known Emma longer than Christine, and it wasn’t like he was some salesman who wanted to pitch her life insurance. On the other hand, he could understand why she wasn’t immediately forthcoming. One time, when Emma had helped him with one of his cases, she’d been kidnapped, tortured, and almost killed by a Chinese spy. Yeah, that could explain Christine’s reluctance. But still…
    “Look,” DeMarco said, “all I’m gonna do is e-mail her a guy’s picture. I just want her to look at it.”
    That was a lie, but who cared? Christine was being a brat.
    As Christine continued to ponder his request, she looked into his eyes trying to measure his capacity for deceit, and DeMarco did his best to look open and honest. This wasn’t easy. As she stared, shetapped the cello bow against the palm of her left hand—which made him instantly envision the bow as a riding crop and Christine dressed in a leather bustier and thigh-high leather boots.
    Finally, she said, “She’s staying at Edith Baxter’s in Manhattan. Edith invited her up there for a dinner party.”
    Edith Baxter was a prominent business woman whose son had been killed when terrorists bombed the trains in Madrid, and Emma had intervened when it appeared Edith was on the verge of suicide. If Edith was holding dinner parties it appeared that she was on the road to recovery, and that was good.
    “The phone number’s in the kitchen,” Christine said. “I’ll go get it.”
    She turned and walked down the hallway toward the kitchen, tapping the bow of the cello against her lower leg. As DeMarco watched her butt move beneath the lightweight cotton pants she was wearing, his S and M fantasy blossomed again.
    He was sick. He needed help. Or maybe he just needed to get laid more often.
    DeMarco got lucky: Emma was at Edith Baxter’s when he called. He quickly told her what had transpired with Sandra Whitmore since he had last spoken to her, concluding with, “So this guy Acosta might have been the one who impersonated Derek Crosby. It’s a long shot, but I want to send you his picture and since you’re up there already, maybe you could show it to Whitmore and see if Acosta’s the guy.”
     
    Emma didn’t answer.
    He could envision her sitting there as she pondered his request. She was tall and always slim because she ran marathons. Her short, silver-blonde hair was perfectly and expensively styled. She had a patrician profile, and because the topic was Sandra Whitmore, her thin lips were probably turned downward in disgust and her blue eyes would appear to be glazed with frost.
    “Emma,” DeMarco said, “please. I really need to identify the person who leaked the story to her.”
    “So give everything you have to the FBI right now and let
them
investigate.”
    “Mahoney doesn’t want to do that. At least not yet. And anyway, until Whitmore confirms that Acosta’s her source, I really don’t have anything to give the FBI.”
    Once again, Emma went silent and DeMarco could tell that she was really reluctant to get involved in this thing.
    “Come on,” DeMarco whined. “You’re up there already. Save me a trip.”
    “I despise that woman,” Emma said. “If I’m alone in a room with her, I just might snap her neck.”
    And Emma could.
    “Don’t snap her neck. Just show her the picture. If Whitmore confirms Acosta was the one