Armed and Fabulous (Lexi Graves Mysteries) (41 page)

"All your family are cops?" he asked.

"Nineteen cops and counting.
Ted’s a lawyer.
"

He waited until we were inside before leaning against my desk as I sat on the couch. "You recognized them?" was his first question.

"Yeah. The goons who shot Martin Dean. How come they were outside my house?"

"Good question and I don't know yet. We've had a BOLO on them
,
but it looks like they were lying low."

"I guess they'll be lying six feet under now. Who were they?"

"Twinkles and Knuckles Finklestein."

I raised my eyebrows. "Twinkles and Knuckles?"

"If you knew them, you'd never laugh. Twinkles
wa
s really Eddie Finklestein. He
was
light on his feet
but
you
’d
see stars after he punche
d
you, hence the name. His brother, Rick, or Knuckles,
wa
s a bare
-
knuckle fighter. They
both
ha
d
rap sheets a mile long. Burglary, extortion, assault, witness intimidation, domestic abuse, and maybe a few killings besides Dean's too, not that the latter ever stuck.
I’ve heard of them
,
but
didn’t put it together that night. Thi
s is the first time I actually got to
match
faces
with
names.
"

Maddox
was intimating
I was lucky
to have found
them dead.

"It's not a coincidence they were outside your apartment," he told me
and
didn’t look happy about it.

I took a few moments
to regulate
my breathing instead of racing around the living room screaming. "They were waiting for me?" I said finally.

"I think it's likely, yes."

"Someone sicced them on me?"

"Probably."

I went for the obvious. "Then who shot them?"

"I don't know. But I do know I feel kind of grateful to them right
now. Can you sit tight a moment?
I have to go talk to the M.E."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Lock the door behind me."

Ten minutes later,
which
I used to
spy
through the window
,
along with every other resident
with
in peering distance, as the M.E.
prodded
the bodies, Maddox returned. Since
I watched
him enter the apartment, I opened the door before he had a chance to knock.

"Did you read the note on Knuckles?" he asked.

"You're not the first person to ask me that. The first officer on scene did too. And, no. Why?"

Maddox opened the notebook in his hand and read from his notes. "It said, 'Consider this a warning
.
' It was typed, so we can count that as an indication this was premeditated."

"You think someone planned to kill them outside my house?"

"I think someone planned to kill them, not necessarily outside your place. The warning could
have
be
en
meant for you, or
for whoever
hired the Finklesteins."

"This sucks."

"On the bright side, they can't hurt you now."

"Yeah. There's just a lunatic out there who can outsmart, and is more dangerous than the Finklesteins
,
along with the person
who hired them."

"It wouldn't take much to outsmart them. They're brawn, not brains. Besides, someone shot them in the back of the head
,
so it's not like they saw it coming.
I'm a little worried about who
ever hired them. We'll be checking their known associates."

"This still sucks."

"Once everything is cleaned up out there, I'm going to
assign
a car
to
your door all night. You don't have to worry."

"In the space of a week, I've found four bodies.
Four!
"
I was worried. It seemed like an awful lot for one person
to find in such a short length of time
.

Maddox crossed over to me and pulled me into a hug. I wrapped my arms around him gratefully and sank my head against his chest. He felt warm and comforting. Despite everything,
he made me feel safe
. A little bit of me wanted to ask him to stay, but I imagined the cops on the door would know, and
probably
tell someone
.
T
hat would get to my brothers
,
who would either decide to befriend Maddox (read: make his life hell) or, even worse, they'd tell my parents a man slept over.
I was fairly certain my parents knew I had boyfriends
,
but it didn’t mean I wanted a lecture about it
or constant bugging about if it was “serious”
.

"What's this?" Maddox pulled the carving knife
from
the back of my waistband and held it up.

"I didn't want to go outside without some kind of protection."

"You could have called the police from inside."

"I wasn't sure they were
definitely
dead until I was outside."
The flaw in my plan hit me but Maddox didn’t comment on it.

"N
ext time, call me straight away,
"
he said, his voice serious.

"There isn't going to be a next time. I'm not going to find any more bodies."
And if wishes were fishes...

"That's good to know. I was worried on the way over."

"About me?"

"That I'd find you hurt."

"I'm okay." Better than okay, now his arms were around me again. I looked up, into his lovely eyes
, now
a
blaz
e
with worry. "Thanks for coming."

"No problem." H
e kissed me
and my evening didn’t suck so bad after all
.

Chapter Thirteen

Lily got home to find a squad car p
ark
ed
at
the door and immediately came up to find out what was wrong. After assuring her everything was okay
and there was nothing to worry about
, she went back to her apartment
,
and after a while
,
everything
got
quiet.
Along the street
,
people
returned to
their homes, lights switched off,
and
dogs were brought in
side
.
After one last look outside to make sure the cops were still
at
my door and awake, I went to bed
with
the carving knife under the pillow
,
and had a restless night.

W
orr
y gnawed at me
. Martin Dean was dead, so was his girlfriend, and the two goons who killed Dean were shot to death outside my apartment, with a note that may or may not
have
be
en
intended for me.
Someone had definitely left me a clump of dead thorns.

The thing was, I was pretty certain the Finklesteins hadn't killed Dean's girlfriend. For one thing
,
they were too large and cumbersome
. T
he man in the alley
could
run pretty fast. Plus, even though I hadn't seen him clearly
that night
, I could tell he wasn't either Twinkles or Knuckles.
He was shorter and had hair.
Somewhere in Montgomery, a
merciless
killer was still at large.

I had a number of possibilities, and none of them reassuring.
I made a mental list, working through the options.
One, the man in the alley was behind Dean's killing
, Tanya/Tallulah’s
,
and the Finklesteins. Except, I couldn't see why the Finklesteins were
shot
outside my building unless it was to scare me
.
B
ut
in that case,
how
di
d that man know who I was and where I lived?

Second, the man in the alley only killed Tanya
,
and
might have
had a possible connection to
everything else.
Unless
her murder was a massive coincidence.

Third, I knew the Finklesteins killed Dean, but
could
their employer
have
killed them?

Fourth, someone else killed the Finklesteins, except that seemed like too much of a coincidence
as well
.
It was becoming unreasonable to think
that the four murders weren't connected
,
since
their common denominator was Dean.
I just couldn't see how one person could be responsible for
four deaths
.

Maddox picked me up in the morning and drove me to work after dismissing the officers who
were
replaced sometime in
the night. We hadn't arranged
t
o carpool
, but truth be told, I was relieved to have the company.

"How did you sleep?" he asked.

"Badly." It wasn't just the murders that caused m
y
sleepless night. Maddox played a part too. The kiss had been heavenly, reinforcing how yummy I thought he was.
T
he occasional thought about Solomon
also
crept into my mind. "How do you sleep at night after seeing so much bad stuff?" I asked
. I was trying to extinguish
my mental
c
omparison
about the way they kissed.
Me
. Not each other.

He smiled. "I'm overworked. I just keel over at night
,
then start all over again the next day."

Vincent was ex
iting his car when we parked and got out
two bays away
. He
ran his eyes
over both
of
us,
his forehe
ad puckering into a cross frown.
Saying
nothing
, he
strode on ahead
, although
h
e did hold the elevator.

"Car
pooling?" he blurt
ed, like he couldn't
contain his curiosity
anymore.

"Car trouble. I had to call
Adam
for a lift," I lied.

"Do you need a ride home?" Vincent asked hopefully.

"No, thanks, Vincent. Besides, I don't think
I’m
on
your
way. My friend
,
Lily
,
is picking me up." That was a lie, too, but I didn't want it to look like Maddox was
picking
me
up
and
taking me home. As the temp,
being
careful to avoid becoming
office gossip,
as well as
not
sleeping with the boss, was part of my job description. So far I had
succeeded at both
;
staying
on the edge of the former
,
while seriously wanting
to do the latter.

"Nothing's out of the way for you, Lexi," Vincent said, winking as we exited the lift. I th
ought
he was flirting with me
,
but I didn't have the
patience
to play along today. I tried hard not to encourage him, but he was so hopeful, like a happy little
optimist
that
truly
believed there was someone
special
for everyone. There
probably was
for Vincent too, but
I was not she
.
I
would
not
ever
be his honey.

"You're sweet," I said. Vincent flushed
,
but smiled happily at me and zoomed off to his cubicle. I hoped he hadn't taken
my kindness
as encouragement, or more than what it was
,
which was
simply
kindness
.

"He's sweet on you," said Maddox
, clearly not even remotely bothered
. "Please don't marry him. It'll break my heart."

"No chance of that."

"Why?"

"I have my eye on someone else."

Maddox smiled down at me.
"Anyone I know?"

"Maybe," I said,
arching my eyebrows at him,
a
s I
peeled
away
to my own desk. I slid my purse underneath and powered up.
Busying
myself
by
arranging my notepad and pens while
waiting for
the password
screen
to
pop up
,
I entered it and
looked down again at my handwritten to
-
do list.

When I looked up, I shrieked and almost fell out of my chair
seeing
the screen. Instead of the generic background, big capital words spelled out
“
I'M WATCHING YOU.
”

Maddox's IM box immediately popped up.

Adam:
What?

Me:
Someone
changed my screensaver.

Adam
:
?

Me:
Do that thing where you can see my screen.

I waited a moment
,
then saw that Maddox was typing.

Adam
:
Oh.

Me:
Can you see it? Who did that?

Adam
:
I'll look into it.

Me:
I'm getting rid of it.

I closed the
IM window
, and changed the screensaver back to the generic screen. It was bad enough that someone
already
deleted my files, but now they were in my computer leaving messages
that they were watching me too. I hoped they weren't watching everything I was doing. That would be creepy as hell for me, and boring for them. Even worse, it made last night's note
pinned
on Knuckles even more frightening.

I snuck a glance at Maddox, wondering if he thought the same, but his brow was furrowed as he concentrated on his screen. There was no way I could work without caffeine
,
so I went to the kitchenette and switched the pot on, too shaken to
function
.

"Hey there. You need a caffeine boost too?" Vincent sidled past me, aiming for the coffee pot
. He
touch
ed
it with the back of his hand to check if it w
ere
ready, before pulling a mug from the open shelf above. "Pass the sugar, sugar! Hah!"