The Fashion Police (14 page)

‘I’m at your apartment,’ he said.

‘Are you naked again?’

He let out a smooth chuckle. ‘No, but I could be.’

‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

13

When I reached my apartment, I rushed into Romeo’s arms, partly because I’d really missed him, and partly because I felt bad for having naughty thoughts about Brad.

He buried his lips in my hair, hugging me tight. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘Me too.’ I smiled up at him.

‘So what’s been happening?’ He led me to the sofa and pulled me onto his lap.

‘Where do I start?’ I filled him in on the Cohens’ chop shop, the mob goons, and a few snippets about the Fandango case. Until I’d found out which police officer was investigating his disappearance, I didn’t want to give too much information away.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d been in an accident?’ He pulled me close. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I couldn’t get hold of you, remember?’ I rested my head on his shoulder. ‘Anyway, I’m fine now. Hacker did some kind of freaky voodoo stuff on me.’

‘Don’t go poking around with the Cohens too much.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t tell you. Just take my word for it.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘Do what?’ He feigned confusion.

‘You can’t tell me not to do something, and then not tell me why.’

‘The Cohens are nasty. I don’t want you going near them without any backup. Just promise me you won’t poke around.’

‘OK, I promise,’ I said, knowing I’d do the exact opposite. ‘So, who’s working on the Fandango case?’

He hesitated and shot me a wary look. ‘Janice is.’

My eyes narrowed involuntarily. ‘Great!’ Still, at least if she was working that case, she wouldn’t be working with Romeo on his case.

He pulled back, gazing into my eyes as he delivered the punch. ‘She’s helping out on my case, too.’

Not so great, then. I did some mental deep breathing.

‘She’s not that bad, Amber.’

I jumped up and paced the room. ‘She is. You just can’t see it. She doesn’t show you that side of her. Janice has been trying to get her hands on you for years. She’s a sneaky little–’

‘You can’t keep blaming her for getting you kicked off the force. You did shoot her.’

I threw my hands up in the air. ‘It was an accident! Anyone would think that I aimed that gun at her on purpose and shot her.’

He leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘Well, why won’t you tell anyone what happened, if it was an accident?’

I stopped pacing and sat down, staring at my feet for a while as I decided whether or not to tell him. After a while, I sucked in a sharp breath and spoke. ‘We were at the shooting range, and she told me she’d slept with you.’

‘What?’ His forehead wrinkled up, a confused, incredulous look on his face.

‘Janice told me that she was going to get you away from me and get me kicked off the force if it was the last thing she did. She told me how she was the one who’d stopped me from getting promoted all these years. All this time, she’d been blaming the other promotion board members for my lack of advancement up the career ladder, and it was actually her. Oh, she was ecstatic about what she’d done, hysterical almost. Then she walked out in front of my shooting booth to retrieve her target, which is totally against protocol, by the way, and I kind of flipped. I didn’t mean to shoot her, I just meant to scare her a teensy bit. Who knew I was such a good shot? That’s when I popped her one in the ass.’

He ran a hand over his closely cropped hair and sighed. It was a couple minutes before he spoke. ‘So why didn’t you tell me this at the time?’

‘Because technically, it was my fault.’

‘Yes, but technically, she broke the protocol. The way she tells it, you just shot her when she was walking away from her shooting booth back to the weapons check area, for absolutely no reason. That’s not what happened, apparently.’

‘And Romeo, who would have believed me? There were no witnesses.’ I ran a hand through my own hair. ‘And besides, she’s a detective chief inspector, and I was just a detective sergeant. It would have been her word against mine. God, I’ve been over and over that day in my head a thousand times in the last six months, and I still hate myself for that moment of weakness. And the worst part is that I’m supposed to be an investigator, but I missed all the signs staring me in the face. All the times she made excuses to keep me confined to desk duties, so she could keep me out of the field and get closer to you. All the snide, bitchy comments she made, which I’d heard about through the police station grapevine and dismissed without a second thought. Everything was connected to this sick vendetta she’s got against me.’

He frowned. ‘She obviously had this whole scheme of hers planned for a long time then, Amber. And something else – don’t ever doubt yourself as an investigator. You’re the best one I know. So, what are you going to do about it?’

I let out an angry snort. ‘Well, it’s too late to do anything now. There isn’t anything I can do about it.’

Romeo shrugged. ‘Maybe there is a way. This Fandango case is pretty high profile. If you can solve it before Janice does, maybe the Chief Constable will offer you your job back.’

I looked up sharply.

‘I didn’t sleep with her.’ He locked his gaze firmly on me.

‘I know. I worked it out later on that the time she said she was with you, you were actually with me. But it wasn’t mostly about you. It was mostly about me, and what Janice had been trying to do to me. That’s the reason I had a momentary insanity attack, not because I thought she’d slept with you, but because she wanted to destroy me.’

He held his arm out and I quickly tucked myself up underneath it. We sat snuggled on the couch for a few minutes, each lost in our own thoughts. Mine involved doing something nasty and painful to Janice Skipper.

Finally, he spoke. ‘Do you want me to cheer you up?’ he asked with that wicked little smile I couldn’t resist.

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘I’ll do the nasty thing you like.’

I didn’t need to be asked twice.

A very satisfying forty-five minutes later, we lay in bed. I traced a finger up and down the defined muscles of stomach, thinking how perfectly gorgeous he was, and how easy it would be to just move in with him and live happily ever after.

But would we? That was the million dollar question, and I didn’t have the answer. Most of the time I thought that ‘happily ever after’ was just a myth spread around by diamond jewelers and wedding dress shops. OK, so my parents were a good example of a couple who’d stayed together for years, but that was probably because they hardly ever saw each other. And I had inherited their crazy genes, which didn’t seem like a good omen.

‘Did you hear about Fandango’s wife?’ Romeo turned his head on the pillow and looked at me.

My finger stopped mid-stroke and I sat up. ‘What wife?’

‘The one he married nineteen and a half years ago.’

‘Tia said he didn’t have a wife.’

‘Who’s Tia?’

‘His daughter. Maybe’

‘I didn’t hear anything about a daughter.’

‘Snap. I didn’t hear anything about a wife.’

‘What’s the maybe-daughter like?’ He twisted around, propping himself up on his elbow.

‘Quirky, but she actually seems very sweet. What’s the story with the wife?’

‘From what I heard, Fandango moved to the UK years ago out of nowhere, and married someone named Samantha James pretty much as soon as he arrived. They stayed together for six months and then separated, but they never got divorced.’

‘Six months?’ I shook my head. ‘I just can’t get my head around the fact that Fandango didn’t exist until nineteen and a half years ago.’

‘He’s hiding something.’

I didn’t tell him those were the exact words Brad had spoken.

‘Or maybe hiding
from
something, like a wife that isn’t quite an ex. But Fandango is a famous fashion designer. OK, so he’s quite private, and there’s not much information about him in the press, but even so, anyone who cares to, knows who he is. Only an idiot would try to hide in public,’ I mused.

‘I’m guessing that with a fortune worth millions and the Fandango fashion empire, he’s not an idiot.’  

‘Exactly, that’s why it seems weird. And now his assistant has gone missing, too.’

‘I hate to say this, but word on the street is that Fandango is dead. From what you’re saying, it looks like his assistant is probably dead, too.’

‘That’s the way it seems. And if he isn’t dead, where the hell is he? Maybe the wife can shed a bit of light on something because I seem to be getting nowhere. Have you got an address for her?’ I asked.

He rolled out of bed, strode naked to his jeans, and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket with an address written on it. ‘Here. And don’t tell anyone you got this from me. I’m under strict instructions from Janice not to tell you anything.’

I smiled. ‘Thanks very much. I’ll pay you in kind if you want.’

His grin lit up his face. ‘Now you’re talking.’

We did the nasty thing again, and then shared a shower. While I really wanted to snuggle in bed with Romeo all day, order take-out, lounge around, and forget about everything, I had work to do. I half-heartedly pulled on my clothes, bade Romeo a reluctant goodbye, and headed for the office. It wasn’t until I was in my car and on the road that I realized I still didn’t know where Romeo was headed. He had very skillfully distracted me from finding out, too, and I had an uneasy feeling that I wouldn’t like the answer. 

****

I waved a pizza box under Hacker’s nose when I entered the office. My coffee table had been replaced by a full-sized office desk, complete with file holders, drawers, laptop, and even a pen holder. I found a packet of pens in the drawer with a red ribbon tied around them and a bow on top, along with other stationary paraphernalia. I took it as a good sign that Brad wanted me to stick with the job. In a way it was pretty flattering, but did he want me around because he thought I was a good investigator, or for some other non-work-related, completely sexual reason? And if it was the latter, I wasn’t even sure that I felt annoyed about that possibility. I shook my head to clear it of random – and quite dangerous – sexual thoughts about Brad before I had a hot flush.

‘What are you doing here on a Saturday? Do you live here?’ I said to Hacker as I sat down, swiveling around in my chair to face him.

‘I’ve got no life. What are you doing here?’

‘I’m just conscientious.’ I opened the box and stuffed a piece of pizza in my mouth. ‘Yum, double pepperoni. I need brain food.’

‘Do you know what’s in that? Refined wheat flour, E numbers, processed cheese–’

I pressed my hands over my ears when he got to the processed cheese part. Processed cheese didn’t sound like real cheese and it tasted so good. ‘Can’t hear you.’ Then I realized that I couldn’t eat with both hands tied up, so I took one hand away, pressed my uncovered ear against my shoulder, and resumed eating with the other hand until I got a neck ache.

‘You’re crazy.’ Hacker shook his head at me. ‘I know who EF is, by the way.’

‘Who?’

‘Enzo Fetuccini.’

‘And who’s Enzo Fetuccini?’

‘He’s the boss of a big mob family in the USA.’

‘How do you know it’s the same EF?’

‘I’ve been checking out Longshore Holdings. They’re owned by another company, who are owned by another company, who are owned by Enzo Fetuccini. They covered their tracks pretty well, but not good enough. Fetuccini was in Sing Sing prison serving twenty years for murder, money laundering, and tax evasion.’