Last Shot (Dev Haskell - Private Investigator, Book 6) (17 page)

“You kidding? H
e probably would have jumped all over it.”

She studied me for a long moment then said, “Not really. You think that
, most guys think that, but while some pompous bastard like Driscoll and frankly any decent guy might be interested privately, they’re really just thinking, maybe a wild weekend at most. Vegas? Sure, you bet, but only because it’s out of town and no one would ever know they’d strayed over to the dark side with someone like me.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. I’ve seen it too many times. It’s why I keep that aspect of my life on a more private level. It’s just a lot fewer problems that way.”

I decided not to pursue
what she meant by ‘private level’. “So where did you leave it with him? Your pal Gaston.”

“I’m calling him later today, once I’m out of class.”

“Class?”

“Remember
? He thinks I’m a student. He’s going to have someone give me a tour of the firm and interview me.”

“Someone else will interview you?”

“That’s what he said. Told me he didn’t want to present any undue influence in a decision making process.”

“And you said?”

“I said I really wanted and really needed the job, that it would be absolutely fantastic to work there and that I’d do anything to get hired.” She smiled.

“You really said that?”

“Yeah. Remember we were going to learn about the guy? Remember we were going to try and get the guy to woo me? And then we are so going to nail him.”

“And
last night someone followed you home, or attempted to.”

“Yeah, doesn’t make a lot of sense
, does it?”

“
What doesn’t make a lot of sense? You’re getting interviewed for a job, having dinner with this jerk or that idiot following you home?”

She seemed to consider all three
possibilities.

“Well?”

“All I know is I’ve had two meetings with him. How ‘bout you?”

“I don’t know, Marsha.
For supposedly just two meetings you suddenly got someone following you. I think that guy was pretty aggressive last night.”

“Gee, really? You think?”

I ignored her sarcasm. “Maybe he was checking you out. You know, just to see where you lived. Although, it seems he could have just asked for your address or gotten it off your job application. Did he have you fill one out?”

“A job application? No, that’s part of what I’ll be doing tomorrow.”

“Do you know who you’ll be meeting with?”

“A woman named Dawn something
. I have it written down.”

“Dawn Miller,” I said. T
he name had suddenly popped into my head.

“You know her?”

“No. I know she works in the HR department there. I spoke to her briefly on the phone the other day for all of about thirty seconds.”

“And?”

“Like I said, I spoke to her very briefly. If I had to guess, I’d say she was cautious, probably lives and breathes the company. Now that I think of it, she may be the current Driscoll play toy.”

“That’s sort of crude.”

“Yeah, it is, and unfortunately probably accurate. The stories I’ve heard and the lives this guy has affected…” I shook my head.

“Pity. H
e’s pompous, but he can be a very nice pompous.” She smiled.

“I can’t talk you out of this, can I?”

She shook her head. “No, you can’t. You know, in a strange way, he’s like all those stupid guys waiting for me to bend down and pick up their dollar bills every night. They love it, but they would never want anyone to know they had any interaction with someone like me. But what he did to Desi, I’m not talking her murder, I mean before, in a strange way I think that was almost worse.”

“D
on’t fall for this creep, Marsha. I’m telling you. Let me be on record as saying I don’t think you should go to this interview. I think you should just disappear off Driscoll’s radar.”

“
Not to worry, Dev,” she said, then pushed her empty plate across the kitchen counter toward me. “I suppose I better get dressed and head home.”

“I suppose, unless
maybe you wanted your back washed up in the shower.”

“Just my back?” S
he grinned.

“I think we could work something out.”

Chapter Thirty

I was standing on
my front porch watching Marsha back out of the driveway when my phone rang.

“Haskell Investigations.”

“Hi, Dev, Karla.”

“Hi
, Karla.” I suddenly remembered I hadn’t called her in the last couple of days.

“Just wondering how you’re coming along with the Desi stuff.”

“I’ve eliminated some possibilities, discovered some new ones…it’s becoming a little multi-dimensional,” I said, waving as Marsha honked, made an obscene gesture and drove off.

“Gee, sounds like the sort of bullshit my employees would try and lay on me. I got an idea
. Why don’t you drive over here and tell me in person? That will give you a chance to get your story straight, and in the end, hopefully you’ll feel better and I won’t think I wasted five grand. What do you think?”

“Yeah
, I think I can do that. Hey Karla?”

“Yes
, Dev.”

“
Not to worry, you haven’t wasted five grand.”

“Actually, I know that.
It’s just my crazy sense of humor, Sweetheart. When can I expect to see you?”

“I’ll be over in a bit,” I said
, hung up and went to grab another shower.

On the way over to see Karla
, I made a couple of decisions, one of which was to not tell her about Marsha sort of inserting herself into my investigation. Although, I’d be the first to admit Marsha had been a lot more successful than me at getting one-on-one time with Gaston Driscoll. Amazing old Gaston might be more in Marsha than me. Who would have known?

By
early afternoon, the temperature was in the mid-nineties and still climbing, with the humidity not too far behind. Karla’s Karwash was doing a brisk business. Two lines of vehicles, ten deep and growing, slowly made their way into the car wash. More customers were constantly driving in. There wasn’t an open space in the employee lot behind the building, so I had to park on the side street about a block away.

I made a beeline for the staircase leadi
ng up to the office level, hoping to avoid that idiot Pauley. With any luck, he’d be too busy cleaning interiors to spot me. Then again, if anyone was liable to hide from doing too much work, it would be Pauley.

Karla was cutting across the
small receptionist lobby just as I came up the staircase.

“Oh
, hi, Dev. Wow, look at you all showered and nicely shaven. You clean up pretty well. Come on back to my office.”

I followed her down the hall
, giving her rear some subtle, positive appraisal as she walked ahead of me. She was wearing wonderfully tight black slacks. Just the hint of a thong outline showed through her slacks, surrounded by the tease of her wonderfully firm flesh.

Her office walls and ceiling were painted
in the same off-white. Now that I thought about it, all the walls and ceilings on the entire second floor were painted the same off-white.

There wer
e two large framed photos on the walls of her office. I’m talking three feet by five feet. One was a black and white shot of the building exterior with just the sign Karla’s Karwash glowing neon red. The other, just as large, but in color, was a group of people sitting at a bar in some hotel swimming pool. Everyone was wearing large sun glasses, extremely small tops and very recent sunburns. I guessed the shot was taken in Mexico. There was a palm frond sort of roof over the bar and the crowd was drinking from tall glasses with large pieces of fruit and little umbrellas. No doubt just slaving away, getting their daily requirement of vitamin C.

“So,” she said
, stepping behind her desk and indicating a chair to sit in. “How’s my ass?”

“What?”

“You are such a predictable pervert, Dev,” she said and shook her head.

“It’s very nice,” I s
aid. I could feel my face redden.

“God, look at you, caught again.
I doubt you’ll ever learn. So, fill me in,” she said, sitting down.

“Well, like I said
, I’ve learned some more things, or maybe I think I have. But I’m still kind of circling around. Look, before I get to all that, I want to give this back to you,” I said and pulled out my wallet and fished around for her check for five grand. I pulled it out and handed it back to her.

“What’s this? Y
ou didn’t cash the thing?”

“Obviously not.”

“You’re quitting, not going to pursue this? Why the hell not? Don’t you think Driscoll had something to do with Desi’s murder?” She was increasing her volume and talking just a little faster, her eyes had begun to flash.

“
No, it’s not that. It’s just…”

“I can give
you more money, if that’s an issue,” she said, somewhat sharply.

“Karla, slow down. I gave you that check back because I’m not going to accept you
r money. I’m not going to quit. I’ll find out what happened. I’ll find out who is responsible and deal with things from there. You’re just not going to pay me for it.”

“But, Dev
, I’m…I’m not getting this. No offense, but I’m not so sure this is your strong suit.”

“What
, doing something nice?” I laughed.

“No
, I didn’t mean that. I meant the financial end of things. You know you’re sort of, or at least can be, sort of careless in that department and maybe you should just hang onto that check and reconsider.”

She opened the folded check and stared at it for a moment. The seams where I’d f
olded it to fit in my wallet were coated with enough dirt and grime to look like I’d drawn two dark lines from top to bottom on the thing. One of the corners on the check had somehow been torn off. It looked like it had been written a few years back instead of little more than a week ago. She reached across the desk and handed it back to me.

I shook my head.

“What happened?”

“I just can’t get that
picture of Desi out of my mind. Watching her become resigned to her fate, sort of giving up and just walking out the door and around the corner because her last chance to get things put right came down to hearing me say “No”. She thought I didn’t care enough or maybe not at all. Me.”

“Little hard on yourself,” she said
, setting the check down in front of me.

“Or not hard enough.”

“You are a very sweet and kind man.”

“Well, don’t tell anyone.
I’ve got a reputation to uphold. Let me tell you what I’ve run into thus far. The more I look into this, the more there seems to be the semblance of a pattern.” I proceeded to bring her up to date. I didn’t tell her about Marsha inserting herself or the car following her. I finished up telling Karla about my phone call to Amanda Richards.

“I didn’t learn anything talking to her
, other than she wasn’t going to talk. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say being drunk at that hour of the day has probably become just an everyday occurrence for her. She maybe hasn’t hit rock bottom yet, but she could probably see it from where she was. Again, it may have nothing to do with Driscoll, but it would fit the pattern of him sending another life into a tailspin and then down the drain.”

Karla sat there and lifted her eyes up to the right,
focused on some sort of fancy wooden box on a shelf. I followed her gaze. The box was polished wood, inlaid with some sort of design pattern running along the edge. It was a strange shape for a jewelry box.

“Desi,” she said,
half pointing with her chin. “Well, I mean her ashes.”

“Her ashes?”

“I guess she didn’t have family. At least that we could find. I checked her employment application. She left the next of kin section blank. Anyway, not unusual in this business.” She shrugged then stared off like she was rummaging through files somewhere in the recesses of her mind.

“So, like I said th
ere seems to be a pattern here…maybe…but nothing that could be proven in a court of law. And if Daphne Cole is any indication, he’s got something to hang over the head of each and every woman he’s done this to. I’m guessing Desi maybe just didn’t have anything else to lose. Well except her life. And maybe it was the same thing for Helen Olsen.”

“The woman who’s car went through the ice?”

I nodded.

“Keep talking,” she said
, suddenly sitting up and turning in her chair. She began clicking keys on her computer. “Something’s ringing a bell on that Amanda Richards name, but I can’t place it.”