Death, Taxes, and Hot Pink Leg Warmers (11 page)

The only
y
on my mind was,
Why is she telling me how to spell Candy?
“Okaaay.”

As Candy stepped away, the other dancer came through the door.

“Hi,” she said, handing me a warm and slightly damp stack of bills. Urk. At least the girl couldn’t be accused of not giving it her all on the stage. “I’m Candi,” she said. “With an
i
.”

Aha! Now the spelling lesson made sense. “Candi with an
i
. Got it.”

I closed the door and put the money in two envelopes, one for Candy with a
y
and one for Candi with an
i
. Candi with an
i
had a bigger stack, probably because she was more stacked.

I’d just taken my seat to count the dancers’ tips when another knock sounded at the door. I looked through the window to see Christina standing in the hallway dressed in a Guys & Dolls cocktail-waitress uniform—a sheer-sleeved black halter top with a matching micromini, fishnet tights, and heels. She’d added a rhinestone choker for a touch of class. The skimpy uniform revealed quite a bit of Christina’s cleavage, as well as several inches of flat, brown belly. Her dark hair hung loose and wild. She held a round drink tray tucked under one arm.

I opened the door, noting Don Geils’s office door across the hall was now open, too.

“Hi,” she said. “I need a cash tray, please.”

“And you are?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

“Christie,” she said.

I retrieved one of the small plastic money tills, counted out forty dollars in start-up cash as Merle had directed me, and handed the till to Christina.

Geils appeared in his hallway, standing much closer to Christina than necessary, another toothpick between his lips. “Take off the ring.”

Christina instinctively took a step back. “Excuse me?”

Geils grabbed her left hand and held it up. “This ring. Take it off.”

On her hand was the enormous engagement ring her fiancé, a doctor named Ajay Maju, had recently given her. Ajay worked at a downtown minor emergency clinic. Given my proclivity for injury, he and I were well acquainted. In fact, I was the one who’d introduced Christina and Ajay after she’d accidentally shot me in the face with pepper spray.

Christina frowned at Geils. “But, sir, the ring—”

Geils slapped a hand over her mouth, and it took everything in me not to grab his arm, twist it up behind him, and push on it until he cried “Uncle!” Christina’s rigid posture told me she felt the same.

“You better learn something quick, honey,” Geils spat at Christina. “What I say goes around here. You got that?”

When she nodded he removed his hand.

Geils pulled the toothpick from his mouth and jabbed it at her for emphasis. “The customers don’t think they got a chance with you, they ain’t gonna drink as much or tip as good. Christ’s sake, a cocktail waitress oughta fuckin’ know that.”

Christina ducked her head. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. I’ll go put it in my locker.”

“Leave the cash with Sara until you get back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Christina didn’t look at me as she handed the till back and left to put her ring in the locker. A good thing, probably. All it would’ve taken was a look of violation in her eyes to push me over the edge. Self-control wasn’t one of my virtues.

Till in hand and anger temporarily in check, I retreated into the cash office, closed the door, and set the box on my desk. I picked up Candy with a
y
’s envelope, pulled out the cash, and began counting it, noticing some of her body glitter had transferred to the bills. George Washington sparkled like a drag queen.

Merle returned, took a seat, and pulled a file folder from the right drawer of his desk. I watched as he removed a stack of invoices. The one on top bore the Stillwater Spirits double
s
logo.

Looked like an opportunity to dig for information under the guise of a dutiful worker keeping an eye on her employer’s bottom line. I gestured to the invoice. “I noticed the delivery truck from Stillwater Spirits earlier. I would’ve thought getting liquor from a local supplier would be cheaper.” I hoped it sounded like a legitimate question.

“We didn’t use this outfit until Mr. Geils took over the club,” Merle said. “Their prices are about the same as the local distributors, but Geils got them to waive the delivery charge and agree to rebates when he buys in bulk.”

Rebates, huh? Interesting. The rebates could be legitimate. Then again, the rebates could be a way of crediting Geils for the cost of crystal meth and laundering the drug funds. I made a mental note to pass this information on to Aaron Menger. I wondered if I could make a copy of the invoice to show him. The printer in the office was one of those all-in-one machines that could also make copies, scan documents, and send faxes. But with a security camera in the room, I’d be taking a risk of getting caught and blowing the case.

I kept a discreet eye on Merle, making notes on his bill-paying procedures. He stamped the hard copy of the invoice
PAID
and scribbled the date below the stamp. He scanned the document, saved it to a computer file, then submitted the payment online. Good. Stealing computer data was often quicker and easier than dealing with hard copies.

The bill now paid, Merle fed the paper invoice into a shredder next to his desk.

Out on the stage, a barely legal girl in pigtails, knee-high socks, and a scandalously short plaid schoolgirl uniform paraded around to the Van Halen classic “Hot for Teacher.” By the end of the song, she’d removed her blouse, socks, and hair ribbons, and spun around a pole wearing nothing but the skirt and a jeweled rosary that hung between her ample breasts. The display was wrong on so many levels. The dancer who succeeded her paraded around to the explicit Lil Wayne song “Lollipop” with a pair of colorful, oversized suckers she strategically used to cover and then reveal her breasts.

Through the two-way mirror, I saw Nick come into the main room of the club. He swapped places with another bouncer situated on the far side of the stage. One of the ginger-haired girls dancing nearby spun around her pole, crooked her knee around it, and leaned backward to look at Nick, her hair hanging down behind her. Had her large breasts been natural, gravity would’ve dragged them down, too. Her girls stayed in position, however, like the solid silicone soldiers they were.

Nick slid the dancer his sexy grin and a sick feeling spread through me, as if my blood had turned toxic. I knew the smile was only an act, part of his cover. I’d seen the other bouncers and dancers flirting with each other. Nick had no choice but to play along, too. Still, that didn’t mean I had to like it any more than he’d liked Tarzan ogling my caboose.

I forced myself to turn back to the tips I was counting. I’d thought working another case with Nick would be fun. Clearly, working this particular case with him would be more difficult than I’d thought. I understood he had a role to play here, I only wished he didn’t play it so well and that I didn’t have to watch the performance.

The rest of the night was hectic, as Merle had warned. Seemed I’d just sit down and there would be another set of knockers knocking at the door. Tips streamed in from the dancers, including a Candee with two
e’
s (and two double Ds), a raven-haired performer with a faux-fur G-string and clawlike fingernails who called herself Pussy Kat (real name Katrina), and a dark-skinned, blue-haired dancer named Starr (real name Starr). Yep, there was a girl for every taste, no matter how bizarre.

Aaron, Christina, and various other bartenders, bouncers, and waitresses also brought us their tips, cover charges, and bar income. I was knee-deep in cash when a bartender I had yet to meet came to the door. He was thirtyish, with blue-black hair, pale skin, and an abundance of tatts, including a strand of inked barbed wire around his neck.

“You must be the new girl.” He handed me his tip jar along with a zippered bank bag containing the contents of his cash register. “I’m Theo.”

This guy’s parents had named him Theodore? Seriously? No wonder he’d covered himself with tattoos.

“I’m Sara. Nice to meet you.”

I emptied the contents of his tip jar into one envelope, the contents of the bank bag into another. I returned both to him and went back to counting.

As I counted, I noted that Theo had taken in nearly twice as much in cash register receipts as Aaron and the other bartenders. Did Theo mix, blend, and pour faster than the other bartenders? Or was something more going on?

We’d been taught in special-agent training to follow the paper trail. The papers in this case bore pictures of dead presidents. It seemed that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson were trying to tell me something. Of course, some of the dancers brought in significantly more than the others, too, but perhaps that was to be expected. Some were willing to work a little harder for their money and not all were equally equipped for the job. Still, I made discreet notes on a spare envelope, tracking each employee’s income for later comparison. I hoped anyone watching me through the security camera wouldn’t become suspicious. If someone asked, I’d tell them I was jotting notes as backup to ensure my accuracy. After all, I knew how important precise accounting was to Mr. Geils and I wanted to do a good job for him.

Yeah, right.

By the end of my shift, I felt exhausted. I slid my secret envelope into the desk drawer along with the other envelopes.

Merle put a supportive hand on my back as I stood to leave. “Good work, Sara.”

“Any chance I can get a foot rub, too?” I raised my brows hopefully. “It might make Bernice jealous, encourage her to commit.”

Good humor played in Merle’s eyes. “Tell you what,” he said. “If you’re still here in a month, I’ll do it.”

I stuck out my hand. “Deal.”

As I walked back into the club, Cyclops treated me to another frisk, though this one was cursory and cautious. I spotted Nick and Tarzan picking up chairs and turning them upside down on top of the tables to enable the cleaning crew to vacuum the floors.

“Hey, Sara,” Tarzan called. “Get your fine little ass up on that stage, show us what you can do.”

My first impulse was to tell the guy off, but then I remembered Nick looking at the dancer earlier and jealousy got the better of me. Two could play that game.

“Okay.” I stepped over and Tarzan held out a hand to help me up onto the stage. I walked over to the pole, put a hand on it, and looked up.

“Well?” Tarzan demanded. “What d’you got?”

I had squat, that’s what I got. I had no idea what to do with this pole. I supposed I could try to mimic some of the dancers’ moves, but without some practice first I feared my performance would pale in comparison. I did the first thing that came to mind. I shimmied up the darn thing like it was a rope and the club was gym class.

When I reached the top I looked down. Tarzan’s mouth gaped. Nick, on the other hand, was smiling.

“What the hell are you?” Tarzan barked, a deep crease between his disappointed brows. “A chimp?”

“Actually, it’s quite impressive,” Nick said. “Did you see how fast she reached the top?”

Tarzan waved a hand dismissively and went back to work on the chairs.

Nick hopped onto the stage and waited at the bottom of the pole, looking up at me. “This would be far more titillating if you were wearing a short skirt.”

I slid down the pole, shifting my weight so that I spun around it as I descended. I stopped myself when I came face-to-face with Nick.

“What I wouldn’t give to be that pole,” he said, his voice low and sexy, a grin playing about those soft, warm lips of his.

I turned my best bedroom eyes on him. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I slid the rest of the way down and Nick stepped toward me, pinning me between the pole and his chest. He leaned in to whisper in my ear. “How about I sink my teeth into that fine little caboose of yours?”

The man knew just what I needed to hear.

“Get a room!” Tarzan hollered from a table twenty feet away.

It was the second time that day we’d been told the same thing.

“He’s got a point,” Nick said, taking a small step back. “It’s time I moved out of my mother’s house and got a place of my own.”

Though Nick had had his own apartment before his three-year forced exile in Mexico, he’d lived with his mother since his return, making up for lost time and catching up on the repairs and maintenance she’d neglected while he’d been gone. But, yeah, it was time for him to move out.

“I noticed a town house for rent on my street,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? Get me the phone number.” Nick’s voice was low, deep, seductive. “I want you in
my
place, in
my
bed the first time I take you.”

My knees melted and I nearly fell off the stage.

chapter thirteen

Cooked Books with a Side of Salsa

My furry cat Henry normally tossed me only a cursory glance when I arrived home, but when I came in the door that night he stood on top of the armoire that housed my TV, arched his back, and treated me to an all-out hiss.

“What’s the matter, boy?” I asked, reaching up a hand to pet him. Big mistake. The ungrateful brat swiped the back of my hand with his claws, leaving three bloody lines across my skin.

He backed up against the wall, howling to wake the dead.
Rowooowl!

I gave him a raspberry in reply and went up to bed.

My cat Anne didn’t come curl up next to me in bed like she usually did, and my bones still felt chilled when I woke the next morning. Was it only my imagination or was it something more? No sense in taking a chance. I donned the leg warmers under my pants where no one could see them and made a stop by the cathedral on my drive to work.

The church secretary informed me the priest had left to visit a sick parishioner. So much for an exorcism. I had to settle for splashing my face with holy water.

There was no sizzle, no steam, no melting of skin. Okay, maybe the chill had been a figment of my overly active imagination. I felt warmer now, though, didn’t I? Any demon that might have inhabited me had apparently moved on. Perhaps it feared another Zumba class.