You Don't Know Jack Page 9

  I got that she was telling me she had little time, which explained why we were meeting here instead of off premises. As though this weren't clear enough, she added, "Frankie is out — doing whatever he's doing with his mornings and afternoons."

  It was a jab, pure and simple, about my lack of progress on her case. I dreaded the next few minutes. I had to find a way to win her over again. To help Apollo I needed access to the nightclub, to the performers, and she was my in.

  The office, still looking as if her brother Jade had just walked out the door, smelled of Dinah's exotic scent and fresh brewed coffee. She offered me a cup. I declined. More acid in my gut? Bad idea.

  I took the chair opposite her desk as lights came on in the gallery and bar below. She explained, "My own cleaning crew. I want the place to sparkle tomorrow night."

  I nodded, trying to measure her mood. Less angry. More resolved. But about what? I cleared my throat, but she beat me to the punch. "I hired you because I wanted someone discreet and... unofficial. I heard good things about you, but—"

  "If you want your money back..." I reached for my checkbook, surprised to realize that no matter how much I needed access to the nightclub, I wasn't going to kiss her ass. Or beg. "But—" she said more firmly, picking right back up where I'd interrupted. "I asked only questions about you pertinent to my own needs."

  I glanced up sharply. Where was this going? I frowned, waiting, as she switched on the desk lamp casting a clearer light over her face. Previously, I'd seen her in dark settings her features somewhat obscured by sunglasses and huge hats. She wore little to no makeup today, her black hair wildly unkempt. The strain around her cat eyes, around her full mouth, was pronounced.

  I didn't want her appearance, her personal stress to affect me, but the urge to tell her to stuff it shriveled and something soft took its place. "It's been a tough week."

  "You're right. It has. Not only for me, I think. I just found out that you were once married to Lars," she said with genuine sympathy. "I've been told you didn't part as friends and, God knows, I had little use for that bastard myself, but still, I'm sure his... loss... has impacted you."

  "He was going to help me edit my manuscript," I blurted as though that alone was the impact of his loss or had any relevance to this conversation, but my mind was stumbling over the surprising compassion, even as I realized her sudden kindheartedness likely related to her ongoing grief over the death of her beloved brother. But it was the mention of how she hated Lars that set my pulse racing. Why? How much? Murder much? I could hardly ask.

  Or find a suitable response. "Thank you" seemed highly inappropriate. I opted for professionalism. "All the same, I would understand if you want to fire me."

  "I want results," she said, her attention locking on a desk calendar. "Do you think you'd feel up to working again in... say... another week or two?"

  "Actually, the sooner, the better."

  She glanced up, eyebrows lifted, but there was understanding in her eyes. "Tomorrow, then?"

  "I was thinking today, if you would allow me to interview some of your performers." It occurred to me that somebody might have seen or heard something the night of the murder that might be significant, and that they might not have told the police.

  Dinah scowled, looking as though she were rethinking her opinion of me yet again. Not good. She shook her head. "I don't want any of them to even suspect I'm having Frankie investigated."

  "Oh, I won't ask them anything about Frankie, not directly anyway. I thought I'd ask about the murder investigation. Since I found the body, I'm sure they'll want my take on it."

  "Gossip, you mean?"

  "Gossip is a two way street. I'll tell them something and..."

  She considered this, not totally on board from the doubt wrinkling her brow.

  I plunged ahead. "You have to know that employees gossip about employers... it would be the perfect ruse."

  Dinah sighed. "I suppose then it would be okay. For today. As long as you're gone before Frankie returns."

  "Agreed." But her concern about Frankie noticing me in the nightclub brought up my one reservation about continuing to investigate him. A big reservation. If he was going off every day for sexual trysts with another woman, I had yet to discover it. I might have to follow him for a few more weeks. If that turned out to be the case, he was likely to start wondering why he was seeing me everywhere. I told this to Dinah now.

  She said, "I've also worried about that, but something you said a minute ago has given me an idea that might work as a solution. Perhaps it will serve your purposes as well."

  I sat straighter. "I'm listening."

  "You said Lars was going to help edit your manuscript. Are you an aspiring writer?"

  I liked to think of myself as pre-published, but supposed that was too obscure of a term for the layperson. "Yes. Lars was going to help me with revisions."

  "Well, how perfect then. Frankie's sister used to be an editor for Random House Publishing in New York. She works from her home on Bainbridge Island now, still doing some editing for Random House."

  And this helped me how? The question must have shown on my face. Dinah added, "Oh, she also free lances as an editor for aspiring writers."

  I recalled the redhead I'd photographed hanging all over Frankie. She was also a book doctor? "I thought she owned a flower shop."

  "That's his bitch sister, Eve. He has two sisters. This is Teri's name, address and phone number." She wrote on a slip of paper and handed it to me.

  Teri Steele? I'd heard that name somewhere. Where? Oh, my God. This was the same book doctor Apollo suggested I contact right after my last manuscript was rejected and right before I accepted Lars' offer. Whatever misgivings I might have, hiring this woman would solve, for a while longer anyway, my biggest hesitation about following Frankie.

  Dinah's phone rang, the bleat urgent and jarring. She stood, dismissing me. "Remember, results."

  I descended the stairs to the backstage area, checking my watch. If he kept to his schedule Frankie would return in half an hour. Not much time for gossip, but better than nothing.

  I paused at the murder room, glanced up the stairs to make sure Dinah's office door was still closed, and peeked inside the dressing room. A woman in overalls with stains I didn't want to know the origin of, stopped mopping to stare at me.

  I said, "Find anything interesting?" Like clues.

  "Fucking ghouls!" The wind from the slammed door smacked my face. I blinked, gathered my poise and moved on.

  The door to the middle dressing room was shut. I knocked lightly. No answer. I opened the door. Dark inside. No one there. Great. Probably too early for any of the performers to come in for tonight's rehearsal.

  What was I going to do?

  Go home. Regroup. Find Apollo.

  As I passed the star's dressing room voices from within pulled me up short. Not just voices. Angry voices. One belonged to Bruce.

  Surprise held me in place. Dinah had been sympathetic to my grief, surely she was more so to her main attraction. Surely she'd given her headliner some time off to deal with his life partner's death? On the other hand, would anyone else be as big a draw?

  Of course. Dinah was a savvy business woman. She was into results. She was counting on Lars' spouse to pack the nightclub to the rafters tomorrow night. Bring on the gawkers! The gossip mongers! The fucking ghouls!

  The voices rose again and I caught the words: Lars. Manuscript.

  Where were my X-ray eyes when I needed them? Where was my recording device? I could only answer one of those. Evidence in a murder case. I wasn't getting it back any time soon. Meanwhile, I needed to know now who Bruce was arguing with. And why they were arguing about a manuscript. What manuscript?

  I stole into the middle dressing room, shutting the door behind me. I stood in the darkness, stared at the light coming through the small holes in the wall that abutted Bruce's dressing room. I wore no butterfly sized fake lashes to impede my vision today, but my stilettoes
wanted to click against the concrete flooring like happy little castanets. I slipped out of my shoes, held them to my thundering chest, and tiptoed toward the light. Caution and my bare feet on the cold floor made me hypersensitive to unseen obstacles.

  As I reached the wall something feathered my face like a thousand spider legs. I choked down a scream, batted at it, and felt it flutter to my bare feet. I jerked, kicked, only then realizing it was not a nest of spiders but a long length of fluff. I reached down and gathered up a boa. I hung it back on the hook, spat out a couple of fluffy floaties, and returned my attention to the wall.

  I could hear nothing from the room beyond over the roar of pulse in my ears. Maybe I wouldn't need to hear anything if I could just see who Bruce was arguing with. My gaze locked on the largest hole, I inched closer, focusing, nerves taut, stiletto heels pressed to my thudding heart. I caught a blur of movement, but couldn't adjust my optical tracking to clear the resolution. The hole was too small. I needed a wider screen.

  A rustling noise at my back, near the murder room wall made me jump. My breath choked off. Deja vú fell over me like a trapper's net. I twisted around, eyes wide, body rigid, feeling caught, pulled back to the night Lars died.

  I should have turned the light on, should have made sure I was alone in this room. A shiver washed through me as though I'd stepped off a ferry and dropped into Puget Sound in the dead of winter. I should have remembered the first rule of mystery writing: Killers always return to the scene of the crime.

  CHAPTER NINE

  If I turned on the light, I risked the men in the next room noticing, perhaps even spotting me. If I stood here like a dolt, shivering, I might be attacked by a killer. Instinct: run to door. Reality: in the dark I had no idea where the door was. I moved blindly toward where I thought it was.

  Hugging the stilettoes to my chest, I slipped my other hand into my shoulder bag, digging to the bottom as though I'd miraculously come up with a deadly weapon, or even one that could subdue an evil doer long enough to escape unscathed. Lipstick. Concealer. Lipstick. Pen. Lipstick. Antacids. Lipstick. No can of pepper spray, but four tubes of lipstick? What was I going to do, gloss the killer to death?

  I pulled my hand free and fended off unseen impediments as I skirted obstacles in the dark. I don't own a gun. I don't want a gun. I don't like guns. I don't know how to shoot a gun. Maybe though, I should carry a fake gun. Toy manufacturers these days were making them look like the genuine article. I didn't need bullets to scare someone into thinking I might shoot them, right?

  Was that breathing I heard?

  Oh, my God. I reconsidered my aversion to guns. As soon as I reached the door, I would duck out, run to my car and hightail it to wherever one goes to buy a gun, and then check into a shooting range resort and stay until I'm proficient enough to drill a hole in a dime at fifty paces.

  Unless I didn't make it to the door.

  I stifled a whimper.

  Some investigator. I'd left home this morning without so much as a flashlight. Note to self: Start carrying P.I. kit everywhere. Though at the moment it wasn't much of a kit. I no longer had my camera or a recording device. I didn't own a gun or even pepper spray. If I made it out of alive, I vowed to stock my purse with all of these. If nothing else, my purse would be as heavy as a bludgeon. But for now, I was stuck relying on my wits.

  I was screwed.

  Another rustling sound by the murder room wall. I almost wet my pants. I patted the wall, found the light switch. The sudden illumination blinded me. But my focus corrected like a Nascar racer. I was alone in the room. I must have been hearing the crime scene cleaners.

  My heart beat sputtered and slowed.

  "Fucking script!"

  I jerked at the shout from Bruce's dressing room, gouging breast tissue with my stiletto heels. A silent curse and a second later, the sharp pointy devils dangled from one hand. How was I supposed to prove Apollo's innocence if I kept scaring myself? I returned to the peep hole, shoving aside the annoying feather boas, sending more fuzzy floaties scattering. Since the hole hadn't enlarged during my distraction, the men were still a blur.

  I needed something to bore the hole a bit larger.

  "Darlin', use what you've got."

  I jumped. Looked around. Still alone.

  "Lars...?"

  "At your service."

  Damn you, Lars!" I whisper-shouted. "Stop startling me. What are you doing here?"

  "Supplying some Dr. Watson to your Sherlock Holmes."

  "Huh?"

  "You seem to need some assistance."

  "From a ghost?"

  "Why not?"

  He had a point. I wasn't doing so great on my own. "Okay, then... assist."

  "I already did."

  Had I missed something? "What? How?"

  "You said, or rather, you thought you needed something to enlarge the hole, and I said, use what you've got, darlin'."

  "What I've got?"

  Pain sliced my fingertip as if the stiletto heels had grown teeth and bit me.

  "Ouch!"

  "Use what you've got," Lars repeated.

  "Gotcha," I murmured, sucking blood from the fingertip stuck in my mouth. The stilettoes, sharp as awls, were perfect boring tools.

  "Stand back," I told Lars as though he was physically there towering over me. Silence. His job done, he'd gone.

  I stuck a heel against the plasterboard, praying the men on the other side were too intent on one another to notice the bright red heel waggling at them. I drew a breath, then hesitated. Given the age of this building the wall might crumble at first gouge.

  With that in mind, I scraped like an archeologist brushing sand from an ancient artifact, but the noise of my actions sounded magnified — like giant, scrabbling rats. I tensed. Cringed. Had they heard? No. The argument railed on. I twisted the heel once more. Cringed. Froze. Held my breath. No loud shouts of discovery. Better yet, the hole was now Peeping Jack B-sized.

  I could see into the room. For all the good it did. The man with Bruce had his back to me. Turn around, damn it. But no. And I couldn't hear his voice well enough to tell if I'd heard it before. Did I know him?

  "What are you doing in here, sweetheart?"

  My spine went rigid, my eyes wide. While I was busy trying to hear what was going on in the next room, I hadn't heard the door open. The heat left my face. "Stone, I..."

  I, what? I was just destroying the wall? I was just researching boas for my current manuscript? I was just spying on the men in the next room? I was just meddling in your case after you told me not to? I shoved my shoulders back, pushing the girls more fully forward in the vee neck of my sweater and faced him, sexiest smile I could muster in place.

  Our gazes met and an erotic flush swept through me like a struck match to spilled gasoline. I was so warm I swear steam oozed from the vee neck of my sweater. I grabbed Stone's upper arm as much for support as to keep his mind on me and off what I'd been doing. The feel of those bunched muscles almost undid me. I angled forward, giving him a shot of cleavage as I slipped into my stilettoes one foot at a time. I watched his mossy eyes darken.

  I said, "I thought you were done with the crime scene."

  He leaned toward me like a carnival barker offering me a free ticket on the most fun ride at the fair. My toes curled. His voice was raspy. "I thought you were going to stay out of my case."

  I swallowed and bent away from him wondering why the air felt so charged and thin, and why I felt so tingly and weak-kneed. Wondering why this man made me want to trade every promise and goal I had for myself for a few moments of carnal pleasure. I fought the urge to shove him against the wall and kiss him stupid. I was stronger than his lure. I was. He would not entice me into his arms or his bed no matter how much my body ached for him.

  "My being here has nothing to do with your case," I lied, struggling to regain my composure as well as to keep him from spotting the spy hole. "I have my own case — which I can't tell you about. Client confidentiality... and
all."

  "You don't have a license. Nothing is privileged between you and your clients."

  I felt like telling him some people lived by a code of honor. I didn't need a license to keep privileged information privileged, but I did need my investigating gear. "Speaking of my clients — I need my recorder and camera returned."

  "I can get you the camera. There was nothing on it of use to us. But I keep the recorder until the trial's over."

  "That's too late. I need them now." I moved toward him, slowly, seductively, keeping his gaze. "The only thing of use to you on that recorder is your conversation with Bruce. Unless you and Bruce were plotting Lars' dead, the recorder can't be of use for the trial. So just erase your conversation and give it back to me."

  "I'll see what I can do."

  "If I don't have them both back by tomorrow, you'll get a bill for their replacements."

  He grinned. "Maybe we could work off the cost."

  We shared a sexy, thirty second stare down, and then I shoved past him. "You're the most stubborn, unreasonable, insufferable—"

  I heard his quiet laughter as I stormed out into the hallway. Stone arrived on my heels as I was nearly run down by a man exiting Bruce's dressing room.

  He didn't even glance at us.

  I had only a view of his back dashing away. Damn. I started to run after him, but stopped in my tracks as I realized that Stone had just asked, "What's he doing here?"

  I put on my best not-really-interested expression and kept the excitement out of my voice. "Who is he?"

  "I thought you'd know."

  "I wouldn't have asked if I did."

  "Lars' agent. Carter Hawks."

  The agent who was supposed to change my destiny? He looked shorter in person, thinner. I wouldn't have known him anywhere. I hadn't known him. Had Lars really planned to introduce me to him? My pondering expression must have roused Stone's suspicions.

  He caught my arm as I turned to leave. "Stay out of my case or you'll find yourself in handcuffs, Jack."

  The words flashed a sexual image in my head and heated my cheeks... and other places. "If that's an invitation, Stone, I'll pass. I've sworn off sleeping with men." Especially you.