Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel) by MAGGIE SHAYNE Page A

closed her eyes briefly. “One of them is dead.”
    “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”
    “I know. You lost a brother last year, too, didn’t you?”
    “Yeah.” It would’ve been hard to live in the vicinity and not know about that. Tommy had been one of the victims of the only serial killer ever to hit the Triple Cities. It had been big news.
    Mason cut in before I figured out a way to change the subject. “Rachel’s been curious how you come by your expertise in helping the blind adjust to their new situation.”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know if I’d call it expertise. My mother was blind. I lived with it my entire life. I heard about the judge’s daughter from another employee.”
    “Another employee?” Mason asked.
    She nodded. “I was working as a temp in his office at the time. At any rate, I went to him privately and offered to try to help. He was furious that I’d heard about it at all, but when I explained my extensive experience with my mother’s blindness and told him it might have happened for a reason, he calmed right down. I told him the universe knows what we need and always provides. Maybe I was put into his path because he needed me.” She smiled at me and I knew she’d gotten that “universe provides” line from one of my books. Yeah, I had one for every occasion. Hence the quote-a-day perpetual flip calendar.
    “Oh. So you don’t do this for a living,” I said.
    “Not at all.” She shrugged. “And the way it’s been going with Stephanie, it’ll probably be my first and last effort. Answering phones and managing files is way easier.”
    “I’ll bet.”
    “What else can I tell you?” she asked after another sip.
    “Did Stephanie ever mention anything about either of her boyfriends?” Mason asked.
    “Either of them?” she asked, lifting her brows. “I thought Mitchell Kirk was the only one?”
    “He is, as far as we know,” I said. “Mason’s referring to her ex. Jake...something.”
    “Kravitz. Yes.”
    Mason shot me a quick look. “You know him?” he asked.
    “I know who he is, yes.”
    “But you’ve only been working for the judge for...”
    “On and off for two years now. Whenever one of his staffers is out and he needs a temp. And yes, Mr. Kravitz and Stephanie had broken up before I came to work for them. But once I started coaching Stephanie, His Honor made sure I knew who Jake was. If I saw him anywhere near her, I was to report it.”
    “And did you? Ever see him around Stephanie?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “No. She never mentioned him to me, either, not that she’d be very likely to confide in me about her love life.”
    Mason nodded. He didn’t take any notes. I knew he was committing everything to memory and would scribble it somewhere as soon as we were in the car. He said note-taking tended to make suspects nervous. He liked them to be relaxed when he was questioning them. Which was kind of crazy, because who can relax while being questioned by a cop?
    “How about the current boyfriend, Mitchell Kirk?”
    She shrugged, but the telltale way she lowered her eyes told me something. Shit, there I went, using my eyes instead of my gut again.
    “I don’t think he really loves her,” she said softly, bringing my gaze right back to her.
    “Why not?”
    She shrugged. “Have you talked to him yet?” she asked me.
    “Not yet.”
    “But you’re going to.”
    “Yeah,” I told her. Tonight, actually, at the chief’s anniversary party, but that wasn’t anything she needed to know.
    “You’ll see, then,” she said. “He just seems...fake. To me.”
    He wouldn’t be able to get that past me, though.
    Finally she seemed to notice how much of her time we were taking. She got up from the table. “Was there anything else?”
    That was our cue. We got up, too.
    “Nothing I can think of at the moment,” Mason said. “If you think of anything, or hear from Stephanie, give me a call?”
    She took his card and nodded, tucking it into her