“Are you blaming yourself for Amanda’s murder?” I asked.
He dropped his hands from my shoulders and shook his head. “If I haven’t agreed to the breakup, I might have been there that night. I might have stopped it.”
I shook my head. “No. You can’t think that way.”
“Maybe she could have stopped it,” Shuman said. “I keep thinking that she might have been distracted, not paying attention to her surroundings because she was thinking about me, wondering why I’d agreed to ending our relationship, why I’d let her go so easily.”
“This isn’t your fault,” I told him.
“I could have stopped it. I could have saved her.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
He gazed off across the park, his jaw clenched, his lips pressed together.
“There’s only one way to make it right,” he said.
If I had any doubt about Shuman’s intention to find Amanda’s killer, the look on his face and the tone of his voice erased it.
“I know who did it,” he said. “LAPD knows. They’ve got an eyewitness, surveillance tape, fingerprints, DNA. Everything. There’s no doubt.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Adolfo Renaldi,” Shuman said. “Amanda was prosecuting his brother Lorenzo. A couple of real scumbags. Into everything. Ruthless.”
“If the LAPD knows who he is, why haven’t they arrested him?” I asked.
“They can’t find him.”
“Are you having any better luck?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything, so I guess I had my answer.
I’d figured that a friend of Shuman’s inside the department was feeding him info on the investigation and that he hadn’t backed off the case just because they’d taken his authority to do so. Looked like I was right about both.
“They’ll find him,” I said. “The whole department must be looking for him. Sooner or later, they’ll find him.”
“And then what?” Shuman asked. “Put him in jail so some defense lawyer can get him off on a technicality? So his attorneys can drag his case out for years? So he can live like a king in his palace if he ever does go to prison?”
I couldn’t disagree with him, because I knew he was right. All of those things could happen—they’d happened in the past to other criminals. Our justice system was really great, but it wasn’t perfect.
Not everybody got the justice they deserved.
Shuman straightened his shoulders and drew in a breath.
“I can’t let this go,” he said. “I won’t, until I make it right.”
“I understand,” I said because, really, I did.
All the way back to the office I couldn’t stop thinking about Shuman. That look on his face, the tone in his voice when he spoke about how he should have fought for his relationship with Amanda.
Maybe I should have done the same with Ty.
I settled behind my desk in my office and saw that I had an e-mail from Annette. She liked my idea for the Hollywood birthday party for Minnie but wondered if I had any other suggestions.
Like there are that many themes for a dog’s birthday party.
I came up with a garden party birthday celebration for Minnie, with big hats for all her guests, flowers, a wishing well, and doggie treats that resembled tea cakes.
I slumped on my desk and clicked Send. I was planning a birthday party for a dog. Was this any way to spend my day?
Maybe this event planner thing wasn’t for me, after all.
Then I pulled myself together—as I almost always do—and decided it was time to tackle my major obstacle with Sheridan Adams’s Beatles party: getting the Cirque du Soleil dancers to perform. I looked up the Love show in Las Vegas on the Internet, found a phone number, and after being transferred around a dozen times, reached the theater manager.
I wasn’t sure she was even listening to what I was saying—just waiting for me to take a breath so she could transfer me to someone else—until I said, “And it’s a charity event at the home of Talbot and Sheridan Adams. There will—”
“Talbot Adams? The Talbot Adams? The producer and director?” she asked. “At his home?”
“Yes, along with two hundred A-list guests,” I said.
“How exciting for you,” she gushed. “What a fabulous job you have.”
I saw no need to mention that I was also planning Minnie the dog’s birthday party.
“Of course we can work something out,” she said.
I got her e-mail address and composed the message with all the details while she was yammering on about the Beatles, Talbot Adams, “Lady Madonna,” and blah, blah, blah.