MQuinn 03 - Lethal Beauty Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR A DEADLY BUSINESS

  “The second Mia Quinn mystery is action-packed from the first page. Layers of lies and deception make for a twisting, turning story that will keep mystery lovers entranced. This is a thrill ride until the very end, so hang on tight and enjoy the trip!”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW, 4 STARS

  “Wiehl’s experience as a former federal prosecutor gives the narrative an authenticity in its depiction of the criminal justice system. Henry’s expertise in writing mysteries and thrillers has placed her on the short-list for the Agatha, Anthony, and Oregon Book awards. The coauthors’ … fast-paced detective series will keep legal thriller readers and John Grisham fans totally engrossed.”

  —LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW

  “Wiehl has woven a wonderfully multi-layered story that will have readers on the edge of their seats … A Deadly Business delivers everything we love in a massively good mystery.”

  —CBA RETAILERS & RESOURCES REVIEW

  ACCLAIM FOR A MATTER OF TRUST

  “This suspenseful first in a new series from Wiehl and Henry opens with a bang.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “Wiehl begins an exciting new series with prosecutor Mia at the center. The side storyline about bullying is timely and will hit close to home for many.”

  —RT BOOK REVIEWS, 4 STARS

  “Dramatic, moving, intense. A Matter of Trust gives us an amazing insight into the life of a prosecutor—and mom. Mia Quinn reminds me of Lis.”

  —MAXINE PAETRO, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  “A Matter of Trust is a stunning crime series debut from one of my favorite authors, Lis Wiehl. Smart, suspenseful, and full of twists that only an insider like Wiehl could pull off. I want prosecutor Mia Quinn in my corner when murder’s on the docket—she’s a compelling new character and I look forward to seeing her again soon.”

  —LINDA FAIRSTEIN, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  ACCLAIM FOR THE TRIPLE THREAT SERIES

  “Only a brilliant lawyer, prosecutor, and journalist like Lis Wiehl could put together a mystery this thrilling! The incredible characters and nonstop twists will leave you mesmerized. Open [Face of Betrayal] and find a comfortable seat because you won’t want to put it down!”

  —E. D. HILL, FOX NEWS ANCHOR

  “Who killed loudmouth radio guy Jim Fate? The game is afoot! Hand of Fate is a fun thriller, taking you inside the media world and the justice system—scary places to be!”

  —BILL O’REILLY, FOX TV AND RADIO ANCHOR

  “Beautiful, successful and charismatic on the outside but underneath a twisted killer. She’s brilliant and crazy and comes racing at the reader with knives and a smile. The most chilling villain you’ll meet … because she could live next door to you.”

  —DR. DALE ARCHER, CLINICAL PSYCHIATRIST, REGARDING HEART OF ICE

  ACCLAIM FOR SNAPSHOT

  “…the writing is strong and the plot is engaging, driven by the desires (both good and evil) of the characters and the reader’s desire to know who killed a man decades before, how it was covered up, and whether an innocent man has been charged and imprisoned. The book offers a ‘snapshot’ of the civil rights movement and turbulent times.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “A pitch-perfect plot that tackles some tough issues with a lot of heart. Snapshot brings our world into pristine focus. It’s fast-paced, edgy, and loaded with plenty of menace. Lis Wiehl knows what readers crave and she delivers it. Make room on your bookshelves for this one—it’s a keeper.”

  —STEVE BERRY, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  “Snapshot is fiction. But it takes us along the twisted path of race in America in a way that is closer to the human experience than most history books.”

  —JUAN WILLIAMS, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF EYES ON THE PRIZE: AMERICA’S CIVIL RIGHTS YEARS

  “Inspired by actual historical events and informed by Lis Wiehl’s formidable personal and professional background, Snapshot captivates and enthralls.”

  —JEANINE PIRRO, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SLY FOX

  “Riveting from the first page …”

  —PAM VEASEY, SCREENWRITER AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

  ALSO BY LIS WIEHL

  Snapshot

  The Triple Threat Series (with April Henry)

  Face of Betrayal

  Hand of Fate

  Heart of Ice

  Eyes of Justice

  The East Salem Trilogy (with Pete Nelson)

  Waking Hours

  Darkness Rising

  Fatal Tide

  The Mia Quinn Mysteries (with April Henry)

  A Matter of Trust

  A Deadly Business

  2015 by Lis Wiehl and April Henry

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-71800-087-5 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wiehl, Lis W.

  Lethal Beauty : a Mia Quinn mystery Lis Wiehl with April Henry.

  pages ; cm. — (A Mia Quinn mystery ; 3)

  ISBN 978-1-59554-905-1 (hardcover)

  1. Women lawyers—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Henry, April. II. Title.

  PS3623.I382L48 2015

  813’.6—dc23

  2014036424

  15 16 17 18 19 QG 5 4 3 2 1

  For Dani and Jacob. You are my inspiration.

  Love always, Mom

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT
THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  A faint scream drifted up from the basement. Lihong shifted from foot to foot on the peeling linoleum, waiting in line to use the tiny bathroom. The girl named Chun bit her lip and avoided his eyes. A muscle flickered in Feng’s jaw.

  Was it a shriek of pain or fear? Or simply a continuing protest? Ying was probably okay, Lihong told himself. She was just getting acclimated. Life in America was not what she had expected. Ying must still be thinking that if she made enough of a fuss, things would change. That she would get what she had dreamed of, the American life where she would drive a Mercedes and live in a big house and wear expensive clothes.

  What she had gotten instead was the expectation that she would work nearly one hundred hours a week at a restaurant that served “Chinese” food that tasted nothing like what they ate at home and live crammed in a small house with eighteen other people.

  Ying had been handcuffed in the basement for refusing to work. It had been explained to her over and over. Both with words and with blows. She owed a debt to the snakeheads for smuggling her over here, and her life would not be her own until she paid them back.

  They all owed so much. Every day simply pushed them deeper into debt. It wasn’t cheap, their owner explained, to put them up in this house, drive them to work and back each day, provide them with food. So he would have to charge them for all these things. Lihong had tried to work out the total on scraps of paper, but he had learned only a little math in his few years in school. Whatever the answer was, it was a lot. It would take years to earn it back.

  And to make sure they all kept up their end of the bargain, they were warned that their families would be killed if they did not. None of them had known each other back home, and some of them spoke dialects that were hard for the others to follow. There was no loyalty among them, not when whispering a secret to the owner might earn favor.

  Lihong never left the house by himself. Even if he went to the store, it was as part of a big group, while one of the minders watched them and translated as needed. Of course, it didn’t take much watching. Not when everyone was so afraid.

  Hu slipped out of the bathroom, her dark head tilted down so that her hair fell over her eyes. The bathroom didn’t have a door, just an orange window curtain tacked onto the frame to give the illusion of privacy. It was the only curtain in the house. The other windows were either bare or covered with yellowed Chinese newspapers. Chun slipped into the bathroom and they all shuffled forward. Ping took her place in line behind Lihong. There were only two bathrooms, and to get to them you had to wend your way through bunk beds filling every space.

  When he first came to America, Lihong had agreed to the terms, made his mark on the paperwork, and handed over his identification. So had everyone else in this house. They all worked at the restaurant, taking orders, busing tables, refilling pots of hot tea, or standing for hours over flaming woks. Lihong washed dishes and sometimes cooked if they were shorthanded. He was clumsy, though, and often burned himself.

  Lihong had worked with Ying on her first—and so far, last—day. She had been filling one of the metal tea carafes with nearly boiling water when Lihong dropped a plate that exploded into shards. She jerked at the sudden clatter. The hot water burned her forearm, immediately forming a red fluid-filled blister. Ying had started weeping and wouldn’t stop, not even when the manager came back and hissed at her that the customers could hear and were asking questions.

  Lihong had tried to help her. He had taken her to the sink and run cold water over the burn. Patted her shoulder awkwardly. Then whispered warnings to her that she had to be quiet.

  Now another hoarse scream floated up.

  “I wish she would just shut up,” Feng muttered. “It’s impossible to sleep with her wailing down there.”

  “She’d better be careful,” Ping said from behind Lihong. “There’s a lot worse things she could be doing than working in a restaurant.”

  “She’s not pretty enough for that,” Feng sneered.

  “I hear that the men who come, they don’t care so much about pretty.” Ping bit her lip. “They could send her there as soon as her burn heals up.”

  Another shriek.

  “That’s it!” Feng balled his hands into fists. “If the neighbors hear, she’ll bring the police down on us. All of us rotting in prison or sent back home.”

  “The freeway is so loud,” Lihong offered, trying to placate Feng. He had found he could sleep better if he thought of it as a river. “It covers the sound.”

  Feng clenched his fists. “If she won’t shut up on her own, I’ll make her shut up.”

  “No, no,” Lihong said hastily. “Let me talk to her.”

  Abandoning his place in line, he went back down the hall. When he ducked under the rope hung with drying laundry, a pair of damp pants slapped him in the face.

  In the kitchen he washed out a glass and filled it with water. The basement stairs were next to the back door. On the door was posted a sign handwritten in Chinese. EMPLOYEES, PAY ATTENTION! TURN LIGHT OUT AT 12. PLEASE DON’T YELL, TALK LOUD, OR MAKE NOISE BECAUSE IT WILL DISTURB THE NEIGHBORS.

  Lihong would be fine with disturbing the neighbors if he thought they might help. That was all he thought about now. How to get out of this place, this position he was in, before he was an old man. To make it so that the enforcers would leave him in peace—or at least not know his whereabouts.

  He had thought of asking the people at the nearby businesses if they could help him get away. They came in to eat. It would not be hard to slip away and talk to them for a few minutes. But his English was very poor. And they were all friendly with the owner, and he bought them meals.

  Lihong knew what would happen if he asked a policeman. Beaten, maybe killed. Or at best, jailed and then deported. The owner had explained it often. Just thinking about it made him long for a cigarette to calm his nerves. But he had smoked the last one from his pack today. Cigarettes were so expensive, costing nearly as much as the owner gave him in a day, but they blunted his hunger, tamped down his anxiety.

  It was a cigarette that had led Lihong to his one hope, a man he called Mr. Scott. They weren’t allowed breaks, but sometimes when it was slow he would slip out the back door and smoke for five minutes. A few months earlier, Lihong had gone outside with a cigarette already between his lips, but in the spot where he normally stood was a white American man. Smoking. Lihong had started to hurry back inside, but with gestures and smiles and words he didn’t understand, Mr. Scott had indicated that he should stay. After exchanging names, they had smoked their cigarettes together. When Mr. Scott was finished, he had unwrapped a stick of gum that stank of chemicals and mint, then chewed it furiously. The whole time he talked, first asking Lihong questions that he could only answer with a smile and a shrug. Eventually it became a monologue that hadn’t seemed to require anything from Lihong but an occasional nod.

  Mr. Scott was well dressed, his clothes fitting him without a wrinkle, the stitching and the fabric very fine. And later, Lihong had seen him getting into his car. It was huge and shiny and raised high off the ground, without a single scratch or dent. Mr. Scott was like a vision of the America that Lihong had thought he was coming to. Maybe this was the sign he had been hoping for.

  The next time Lihong saw him, Mr. Scott asked, with a combination of words and gestures, for a cigarette. Despite the cost, Lihong handed it over without hesitation.

  Mr. Scott grimaced at the taste, and they had laughed, and somehow through the few words they had in common they started to become something like friends. Whenever he came to the restaurant, Mr. Scott would talk, long runs of words that flowed past Lihong like water. They were oddly soothing.

  The fourth time he saw Mr. Scott, Lihong tried to ask for help, using words he had gleaned from TV.

  But then Mr. Scott had so many questions. He had asked about “minimum wage.” About “sick leave” and “health insurance.” Words and concepts that Lihong didn’t understand. Y
ou worked every day from ten in the morning to ten or eleven p.m. You worked if you were sick or hurt or exhausted. You would probably still work, they often joked, if you were dead.

  And before Mr. Scott could help them, he had been killed in a car accident. A few months later, his wife had come to the restaurant. Lihong had been overjoyed. He thought she must be there to follow up on Mr. Scott’s promise. But when he risked everything to ask her, she seemed not to understand. Later, she had come back with a magic phone that understood them both and translated from English to Chinese and back again. They hadn’t gotten very far when the owner came out back and nearly caught them.

  He hadn’t seen the woman he called Mrs. Scott since. But he had seen the concern in her eyes, the caring. He was sure she would help if she knew what was happening.

  Now Lihong’s hand was slick on the stair rail. If the owner knew he was coming down here …

  In the basement, Ying sat with her back against the wall. One arm was handcuffed to a pipe. The other had been roughly bandaged, although the once-white wrapping was now stiff and dirty. Her face was swollen, her eyes so puffy she could barely see.

  Lihong put the glass of water in her free hand. She gulped it down greedily, and then he took the glass back. The last girl who had been put down here had tried to kill herself.

  “You have to stop crying,” he told her in a low but firm voice. “Stop shrieking, stop crying, apologize, and start working.”