Read The Case of the Kidnapped Angel: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Six) for Free Online

I’m thinking,” Masuto said. “It’s nothing I can put my finger on. It’s just a smell. It doesn’t smell right.”
    â€œNo, it stinks, and I don’t know why either, except when there’s a crime and people tell the cops to keep hands off, well, that stinks for me.”
    â€œWho else is at his house?”
    â€œRanier’s still there, and there’s a uniformed cop I just sent over and told to sit in his car on the street, and if they don’t like that, they can stuff it. What did you find in their beach house?”
    â€œPuzzles. Questions.”
    â€œYou might go straight to Barton’s place.”
    â€œWell, we’re here, so we might as well talk to Netty Cooper who had the party here last night. It’s one-thirty now. I should be able to get to Barton’s place by three or a little later.”
    â€œOkay. I’ll meet you there.”
    â€œTry to hold McCarthy and Ranier there. Also the three servants and a woman called Elaine Newman. She’s his secretary.”
    â€œHold on, Masao. We can’t detain anyone. You know that.”
    â€œJust ask them, politely.”
    â€œI’ll try. But we got nothing to detain anyone on.”
    â€œWe’re not arresting them. All I want to do is talk to them.”
    â€œI’ll try.”
    They stopped at the drugstore where Masuto ordered a bacon and tomato sandwich and Beckman ordered ham and cheese on rye. “Didn’t you just eat lunch at my house?” Masuto asked him.
    â€œSure, but that was a long time ago.”
    â€œYes, I suppose it was.”
    It was only a couple of hundred yards from the police station to the gate to Malibu Colony. At that point, where one turns off the Pacific Coast Highway to the old Malibu Road, the Colony is directly to one’s left, a manned gate, and then beyond it a row of some of the most expensive houses in southern California. Masuto had frequently reflected on the lot of a detective trying to juggle the payment of bills, mortgage, doctor, dentist, grocery, insurance, etc., on a policeman’s salary while protecting people who earned more in one year than a policeman could earn in a lifetime.
    At the Colony gate, the guard looked at Masuto’s identification and shook his head. “Heavy today—heaviest day we had in a long time. First the local fuzz and now fancy Beverly Hills cops. What goes on?”
    Masuto shrugged.
    â€œCome on, I’m on your side.”
    â€œThe creature came out of the sea,” Beckman said.
    â€œFunny, funny.”
    â€œWhich is Mrs. Cooper’s house?”
    â€œDown there. You can’t miss it, painted bright yellow.”
    They drove through and parked in front of the yellow house. A Chicano maid opened the door and asked them to wait. In a few minutes she returned and asked them to follow her. Unlike the Barton house, this one had a proper entrance facing the road. It was two stories, had striped awnings, an entrance way, a huge living room-dining room with baroque furniture painted white, and, facing the sea, tall glass sliding doors. Netty Cooper was sitting on the deck-terrace with a man—a tall, elegant, good-looking man of about fifty. He was dressed in gray flannels, sported a carefully combed and barbered head of iron gray hair with pale gray eyes to match—and a face that was vaguely familiar.
    â€œTwo Beverly Hills detectives,” Netty Cooper said with obvious relish. “I never knew they had any detectives on the Beverly Hills police force, only those handsome men in uniform with the pale blue eyes, and so polite, so very polite. But you do have to be polite to be a policeman in Beverly Hills, don’t you?” Her own eyes were very pale blue. She was a slender, attenuated woman in her middle forties, with a long face, long neck, long trunk, and long legs. Her dyed yellow hair was piled on her head, and her nail polish was so dark it was almost