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Authors: Lori G. Armstrong

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Murder Victims' Families, #Women Sleuths, #Suspense, #Thrillers, #Crimes against, #Women private investigators, #Indians of North America, #South Dakota

Blood Ties (3 page)

BOOK: Blood Ties
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ZZ Top blared through the tinny speakers until I switched it off . “Home. I need a beer.”

His suspicious glance moved over my clothes. “You gonna change before we head to Dusty’s?”

“Something wrong with what I’ve got on?”

“Th

at suit makes you look like a damn lawyer.” He tossed a cursory look over his shoulder before switching lanes. “Put on that black beaded number you wore last 19

time. Man, you looked hot.”

Ray’s comment threw me; my fashion sense is as im-material to him as my political views.

“Forget it,” I said, picking a chunk of sheetrock off my Anne Klein blazer and knocking a wood shim to the tool-cluttered fl oor. Riding in his truck was hell on my wardrobe. “After working a ten-hour shift I’m not chang-ing into slut clothes to please you. Besides, I’m not going to Dusty’s.” Idle chatter with any of the wives or girlfriends at tonight’s league pool game sent a shudder of revulsion rippling down my spine.

“Jesus, you’re in a mood.” He punched the clutch, shifting to third. “What is your problem?”

His petulant, little boy expression didn’t hold its usual charm. “Did you tell Missy for me to ‘get my ass out there, pronto’?”

“I was kidding, Julie. Lighten up.”

I leaned forward, kicking aside the Th

ermos leaking

black goo on the toe of my leather pump. “Don’t pull that macho bullshit on me, Ray, even in jest.”

“You pissed off at the world in general
again
today?”

“Never mind, just drive, okay?” After the last stellar moments of my workday I’d prefer to sink into my couch and drink alone. Berating Ray for his overnight stay and his insistence we share transportation this morning stuck on the end of my tongue. I swallowed it back and turned my attention outward to the same scenery zooming past 20

like a
Flintstones
cartoon.

Spring.

Th

e season of rebirth. Newly planted fi elds zipped by, a black blur. Th

e furrows would sprout new

growth in another week; now the barren mounds of earth were eerily reminiscent of freshly turned graves. Why did my brain attach a gruesome meaning to everything today?

I stubbed out my cigarette at the same time Ray fl ipped on the radio. Our hands brushed, our eyes met. He locked his fi ngers around mine and set our joined hands on the bench seat between us.

“Bad

day?”

Th

e constant caress of my knuckle soothed me a bit.

“Turned out that way.” Carlos Santana crooned “Black Magic Woman.”

“You playing pool tonight?”

Ray nodded. He released my hand when he shifted, turning down the rutted, muddy road that led to my house.

Th

e sight of a familiar black SUV parked in my drive, and the body lounging on my front steps was as eff ective as a Band-Aid on my soul. My mood improved instantly. I grinned and jumped from Ray’s truck.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Kevin said, saluting me with a Diet Pepsi.

Why didn’t I feel the same punch of pleasure at the sound of Ray’s voice? A question for another day, or another lifetime perhaps. “When did you get back?” I said, reaching for his outstretched hand.

21

“Tuesday night.” Kevin ignored Ray as Ray crowded in behind me.

I turned slightly but Ray’s furious eyes were fi xed on Kevin. Kevin’s grip tightened when I tried to pull away.

Kevin and I have been inseparable since seventh grade, but Kevin’s disdainful once-over wasn’t winning him any best friend points. Kevin detested Ray. Again, no big surprise. Some stupid male pissing contest occurs whenever Kevin and Ray cross paths. I chalked it up to a hormonal thing and returned the favor by hating Kevin’s current squeeze, Lilly.

With deliberate provocation, I slid my palm up Ray’s bicep. “Game starts in fi fteen. You’d better get going.

Come by later if you want.”

Ray kissed me hard, his hands wandered. If he’d had a branding iron handy, no doubt he’d have seared my ass with his initials. God save me from territorial men.

“Maybe I will,” he spouted cockily, turning to Kevin.

“Later.”

Kevin’s curled lips in no way resembled a smile. “Most defi nitely later.”

Neither of us spoke until Ray’s pickup peeled out of sight.

“All right, Kev, what’s up? You are acting weirdly pro-prietary.”

“What’s weird is the fact you’re still boning that idiot.”

I chose to ignore his comment. “Want a beer?”

22

“Sure.” Inside the house I grabbed Ray’s leftover six-pack from last night, an ashtray, kicked off my heels, and shed my hose.

On the porch, Kevin hadn’t moved. I handed him a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. He snorted, “I’m gone a week and you resort to drinking this crap? What? Is pretty boy on a budget?”

“Pretty boy may be hard up for cash, but he stays hard in other, more impressive areas.” Kevin scowled and I laughed that I so easily provoked his scorn. I really had missed him.

Lines of fatigue were etched around his eyes. I fl opped next to him and cracked the seal. “Anyway. I’m glad you’re back.”

He took a drink of beer. “Feeling’s mutual.”

We stayed silent, secure in the comfort of old friends.

“Well, Detective,” I said after a while. “Did you solve the case?”

“Yes and no. Th

at’s partially why I’m here.” He mea-

sured me with a tiny smirk. “Called the sheriff ’s offi ce but

you’d just left.”

I reached for my smokes. “I imagine Missy told you where I’d gone?” He nodded and I moved the ashtray next to my hip. “What else did she tell you?”

He didn’t answer right off ; he shrugged, but his eyes never moved. “You were pissed off at the sheriff and went home in a huff .”

23

I laughed, choking a little on the exhaled smoke.

“Yeah, I guess that about covers it.”

“She told me about the fl oater.” Kevin sipped his beer, adding nonchalantly, “Course, I already knew.”

Th

at superior tone of his irritates the hell out of me.

“How could you know? We only found out half an hour ago.”

He picked up my lighter, fl icked it a couple of times before aligning it perfectly on the center of the pack. “Remember the missing person’s case I’ve been working on?”

I

nodded.

“Guess you could say when they found the body today, my case sort of solved itself.”

“Th

at your smug way of telling me that the body in the creek was the missing person you’d been hired to fi nd?”

“One and the same.” Kevin leaned back, cocking his head sideways. “You’re a quick study. Sure you don’t want to quit your lousy day job and come to work for me full-time?”

He grinned in that slow, wicked way that had most women dropping to their knees in front of him. I played it cool. “Do you have a decent dental plan?”

“Hell, no. I don’t even off er health insurance.”

“Th

en, no way.” I fl icked an ash. “Seriously, why are you here?”

“Can’t I have a drink with a friend?”

“Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re here on a Friday night after you’ve been out of town for a week? I imagine 24

Callous Lilly has her Liz Claiborne pantyhose in a twist.”

“Lilly has a cold or some damn thing. We’re meeting later.” He frowned, drained his beer. It hit the redwood decking with a thud.

Evasiveness is Kevin’s premier trick, and the fact he hadn’t bothered with it bothered me. “Kevin, what’s wrong?”

“Th

is damn case is wrong.” He shoved a hand through his hair, disheveling the sleek style. “I’m missing something.”

“Besides me?” I batted my lashes.

“God,

you

are
morphing into Missy.” He gave a mock shudder. “I could use your help on this case.”

His wasn’t an odd request. Kevin’s PI business is a one-man operation. Since South Dakota is one of the few states where you don’t have to be offi

cially licensed to be a PI, I’m

a legitimate investigator whenever I work for him.

On the occasions he needs extra help, I’m happy to oblige. He trusts my gut reactions and it’s a valid excuse to spend time together. Besides, the benefi ts are two-fold: Lilly hates it and the pay rocks. I think he overpays me with visions of me quitting my job and forming a partner-ship. After a day like today I’d jump at the chance. “What do you need?”

“Another pair of eyes and ears. My client will be in the offi

ce tomorrow morning, and if he agrees, I’d like for you to listen in.”

“But you said the case was solved.”

25

“I can’t get into it right now.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

He shook his head. Now that I thought about it, even his teasing had been half-assed. Kevin wasn’t just frustrated. He was disturbed.

He unlatched his briefcase and pulled out a picture of a young girl. “She look familiar?”

Sweet smile over straight teeth, wide blue eyes, light auburn hair. She might’ve been any girl I’d seen giggling in the food court at the Rushmore Mall. “No. She the one they found today?”

“Yeah.” Kevin reverently ran a fi ngertip over the picture. “Do you remember Shelley Macintosh? Graduated two years ahead of us?”

“Sure.” A memory fl ashed of Shelley and me standing in front of a roaring bonfi re, an autumn chill in the air, drinking warm beer from plastic cups and laughing in the way of teenage girls. She’d been older, cooler, and I’d considered myself lucky that she’d chosen to hang out with me that night.

“She married Dick Friel. Th

is is, or was, her daughter

Samantha.”

Th

e horror on his face matched my own. My earlier fl ip comments to the sheriff brought shame to my soul. “Jesus.”

“I told you this case sucked.”

I glanced at the picture again, then back at him. “But how . . . ?”

26

Kevin stared through me, absentmindedly sweeping a tangled section of hair over my shoulder. “Not tonight.”

“You can’t just drop this into conversation.”

“Sure I can. Th

at’s why I’m the boss.” His beer-cooled lips touched my forehead. “Eight o’clock tomorrow morning, okay?”

When he pulled away, I focused on his eyes, wanting reassurance. I found none. Th

e last thing I needed was the

image of a sweet-looking dead girl fl oating around in my head all night along with the other dead people already clogging my nightmares. I followed him to his driver’s side door to tell him so. “Th

anks a whole fucking lot. Just how

am I supposed to get to sleep tonight?”

“I think the better question, Jules, is, ‘How is Shelley supposed to sleep tonight?’”

As he drove away, a bad feeling coiled in the pit of my stomach, and it had nothing to do with cheap beer.

According to the newspaper, the body had emerged miles from where he’d abandoned it. Memories from that day fl uttered to the surface like aspen leaves caught in a windstorm, only to decay, rotten and dank, in the bad-lands of his mind.

Her hair, a dull, mousy brown, had shimmered beneath the silvery water. In death she’d possessed purpose she’d lacked in life.

Yet, he’d taken no joy in killing her. Unlike the others, the end result fell short of his sportsman’s sense of fair play.

Skill hadn’t been required; no negotiations for cheap booze, no pledges of monetary compensation; usually he broke these promises as easily as long-ago treaties. Although, he had granted himself bonus points for stealth when faced with her distrustful youth. Despite her adolescent pleas, one clean slice under the soft meat of her chin and she’d 28

bled out as neatly as last season’s antelope.

Icy water had purifi ed the gash discoloring his knuckle.

Th

e little whelp had lashed his skin in a fi nal, desperate act. He’d worn the mark with pride; worthy prey often scarred him as reminder of a hard fought victory.

A splash and shove later, she drifted away like she’d never been.

Disposing of the body hadn’t been an issue. Th e ebb

and fl ow of the cold creek, coupled with runoff from spring snowmelt, would sluice the carcass downstream. Someone would discover the corpse, or it’d become prime pickin’ for buzzards. Either way, he’d washed his bloody hands of the matter and nature would take its course, as it should have years ago.

In the fading sunlight, he’d surveyed his handiwork, cockiness a given; he, a hunter without equal, he, a man who lived by his own rules. God might be in the details, but He wasn’t in the bodies. After nineteen kills, he hadn’t witnessed a diaphanous soul soaring from the discarded shell, but he had seen plenty of blood, piss, and shit soaking the ground. His afterglow wasn’t attributed to outsmart-ing anyone, but in proving to himself again that religious platitudes and assurances of eternal reward had been, and still were, the world’s biggest con game.

He’d crossed himself then, as he did now, and got back to work.

The shadows in my room gave no indication of the hour. I groaned and cracked the shades open, noticing fat raindrops glisten, then slither down the foggy window-pane. A rainy Saturday.
Burrow under the covers, sleep till
noon,
my lazy thoughts insisted. Pure indulgence to spend the day making slow, lazy love, preferably with a partner.

Ray hadn’t dropped by last night. No blame there; my

“Miss Congeniality” sash was gathering dust rhinos under my bed.

Red numbers on the clock held steady at 7:05. If I fl opped back in bed for another fi fteen minutes, I’d give up shower time. Kevin wouldn’t care; we’d been stinky together for days during surveillance and he hadn’t complained.

Half an hour later I tossed back the star quilt, slipped on my toasty moccasin slippers, and shuffl ed to the kitchen

30

like an old medicine woman for my morning fi x.

Coff ee is a necessary evil. I’ll resist the showering ritual on occasion, but never coff ee. Th

e sad thing is I don’t even

like
coff ee. A friend once referred to it as hot dirt water.

However apt that description, I don’t bother doctoring the taste. I drink it quickly and hope the caff eine kicks in before the fl avor does.

BOOK: Blood Ties
4.88Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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