The Turin Shroud Secret Read Online Free

not. I swear some of those guys down there are too young to cross the street on their own.’
    She laughs. ‘Listen to you – already the great veteran. You need to mind your manners, you’re still too wet behind the ears
     to be calling the rookies.’ She glances at the big clock on the wall near the captain’s office. ‘One more tape then I’m going
     for food. You comin’?’
    ‘Sure, but no pizza. I need to start getting into serious shape for the big trip.’
    ‘You
are
in serious shape – take a swim when you’re out at sea and those momma whales are gonna come courtin’.’
    ‘Funny ha ha.’ He slaps the small dome where his six-pack used to be. ‘Cut the carbs, hold the beer, skip pizza and I’ll be
     okay. Famished and bored but
o-kay.’
    ‘O-kay’s
not a good place to be.
O-kay’s
no man’s land. You’re caught in the crossfire between pigged out and happy and starved but gym-body hot. Only settle on
o-kay
when you’re married.’
    ‘You forgot – I’ve
been
married.’
    ‘It was good for you once – it’ll be good a second time.’ She looks up at him, eager his old pain doesn’t surface. ‘I’m just
     jerking your string. You’re still a catch. And not just for the whales. Don’t worry about it.’
    The phone on Nic’s desk rings. He glides his chair back and reaches over an exploded volcano of paperwork to grab the receiver.
     ‘Karakandez.’
    Mitzi sips her coffee and watches him. Shame he won’t start dating again. He’d make someone a good catch. Kind, modest and
     as honest as the day comes. Good looking but not so much of a pretty boy that he’s gonna get hung up when things really slide
     south. She smiles. Yeah, when Nic Karakandez finally drags himself out of his shell some gal’s gonna win the lottery.
    He hangs up, takes the notepad he’s been scribbling on and rolls back to her desk.
    She nods to the pad. ‘What you got?’
    He holds it up. ‘Look who our vic is.’
    Mitzi stares at his spidery scrawl. ‘Tamara Jacobs.’ She shrugs. ‘I’m supposed to know her?’
    ‘Clerk in fingerprints said you might. She’s a film writer. Some kind of a hotshot. Does big historic costume dramas – romantic
     stuff too, about ancientRomans and British monarchs. Is that your kind of thing?’
    ‘You kidding me? Harry Potter is as close to British costume drama as I get.’ She pulls over her keypad and Googles ‘Tamara
     Jacobs’.
    A page from the
Hollywood Reporter
comes up with a head-and-shoulders shot of the deceased and a big block of bold text beneath it.
    Nic leans back as he reads her screen. ‘Her new picture’s called the what?’
    ‘The Shroud,’
says Mitzi. ‘She was working a flick called
The Shroud.
Maybe I’m gonna like her kind of movies after all.’

8
    FRIDAY AFTERNOON
BEVERLY HILLS, LOS ANGELES
    Stepford wives and Mad Men husbands watch from the safety of grand doorways as LAPD cruisers crash the calm of the quiet cul-de-sac
     where Tamara Jacobs lived.
    The uniforms are locking down what could well be a crucial crime scene – one where the victim met her killer, was abducted
     or even murdered.
    After an eternity of bell-ringing at the writer’s six-million-dollar mansion Mitzi gets a couple of cops to bustopen the back door. She and Nic step cautiously into a vast kitchen full of mahogany carpentry and marble worktops. Both have
     their guns drawn, even though they’re 99.9 per cent certain the place is empty. Plenty of cops have been killed by that 0.1
     per cent.
    ‘Clear,’ shouts Mitzi from around a corner.
    ‘Clear,’ echoes Nic as he moves through the living room.
    The perp’s been here. Nic knows it. Feels it tingle his blood.
    They sweep the downstairs rooms first. There’s no sign of a struggle. Next they check all five upstairs bedrooms, accompanying
     en-suites and a separate dressing room full of clothes, shoes and handbags. Nothing seems obviously out of place.
    Mitzi slides open a wardrobe as big as a wall and