Tina Whittle_Tai Randall Mystery 01 (15 page)

Chapter 28

I marched up to him, broom in hand. “You don’t get to show up at…whatever time it is.”

“Nine forty-seven,” Trey supplied.

“Yeah, nine forty-seven, with
no
warning—no call, no text, no nothing—and demand that I tell
you
what the hell is going on!”

Eric took off his glasses and stuck them on top of his head. “I own this place as much as you do. And I
did
text you!”

“You said you were coming back to Atlanta—you didn’t say anything about driving up to Kennesaw.”

“I thought you’d be at the house. Only when I get there, the guest room is empty and your stuff is gone. So I check the Ritz, and they tell me you checked out. This was my next guess.”

Eric shut the door behind himself. He looked just like his usual J. Crew self, and he wasn’t at all tan. I’d expected him to be tan.

“I’m not pleased about this,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here this late at night.”

I waved my broom at him. “
Now
you decide to be concerned? You vanish for five days—”

“I didn’t vanish.”

“—leaving me with a murder in my lap and the police breathing down the back of my neck. You sic Phoenix on me, only you don’t see fit to tell me. You install a security camera—which you also don’t tell me about and which I only discover because somebody took a brick to it.”

“A what?”

“A brick.” I pointed. “Why do you think the front window’s boarded up?”

He glanced at what used to be the window. “Oh my god, what happened?”

Trey moved forward. Now that the threat was over, he’d tucked the H& back in its holster. “Now that you’re here, we can find out.”

***

We gathered around Dexter’s desk. Eric sat. He pulled up the log-in screen and typed his password. The archived footage was grainy, but after fiddling with the resolution, it cleared. Unfortunately all it showed was a sweatshirt-hooded figure, wrapped in shadow. Thick, hunched, brick in hand. Blurry face covered, hidden in the dark.

“Two-eleven am,” Trey said.

It didn’t show whoever it was slipping the threatening target under the door. That must have come afterward.

Eric slumped back in his seat. “This is news to me.”

“What, you weren’t checking things out with your little spy set-up?”

At least he had the decency to look chagrined. “I was going to tell you when I got back.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when you installed it?”

“Think about it. If I’d said, hey, let me get you a bodyguard, or hey, let me install this security system, you would have done what you always do—argue.”

“You’re acting like Dad.”

“And you’re acting like a child.”

That tripped my switch. “Don’t you dare—”

But Trey cut me off. “I’m sorry. I have to go now.”

In the heat of the argument, I’d forgotten he was in the room. Eric looked as abashed as I felt. He stood up and shook hands with Trey. “I appreciate your keeping an eye on her for me.”

Trey shook his head. “That’s not why I was here.” Then he looked at me. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

I smiled. “No, you’ve done plenty. Thanks for coming.”

“You’re welcome. The access codes are beside the cash register.” He slipped his yellow pads into his briefcase and left without looking back. I soon heard the Ferrari rip into the gravel and roar into the street. Zero to speed limit in two point seven seconds.

Eric looked at me. He shoved his glasses further into his dirty-blonde cowlicks. And then he got that patient “this is for the best” look. “Tai, there’s some things you need to know about Trey.”

“Like the fact that he cared enough to come out here tonight and help me undo what you did?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Screw complicated, Eric, I’m more interested in the things
you
haven’t told me.”

Now he looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on! It’s the question everybody’s been asking.” My voice shook despite my efforts to control it. “Were you involved with Eliza Compton?”

He exhaled slowly. “Don’t you think the police checked me out? And don’t you think they’d have pulled me in for questioning ASAP if they’d found anything? I barely knew the girl.”

“You knew her enough to change your plans to meet with her—secretly, out of the office—and then lie about it.”

“She needed help.”

“Which had nothing to do with the fact that she was a young, attractive woman?”

He made noise of disgust. “Oh, please. She was alone and desperate and scared.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know! But I do know that I had nothing to do with it! And you should know that, too!”

Tears blurred my vision, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

“You could have explained that to me instead of leaving me to deal with all this crap by myself!”

“What did you want me to do, turn around and come back here?”

“That’s exactly what I wanted you to do!”

Eric waved me off. Under the bleak fluorescence, he looked washed out and utterly alien. Not even familiar, much less my own flesh and blood.

“I didn’t have time,” he said. “This workshop wasn’t something I could abandon just because some girl I barely knew died across the street from my house. Life goes on, Tai. The grown-ups go with it.”

It was all I could do not to fling cold coffee on him. “You don’t get to lecture me about being a grown-up, not after what I went through with Mom.”

“What do you want, a medal?”

“I want you to take some responsibility!”

He laughed, a grating nasty sound. “That’s rich, coming from you. You’ve never stayed in one place for more than a year, never had a relationship for more than six months. Face it—even when she was dying, Mom was the one taking care of you. And now I’m the one stuck taking care of you.”

“I can take care of myself!”

“You can’t even keep a job!”

“I have a job, thank you very much!”

He dug one hand into the hair on his forehead. “Are you insane? You’re an arms merchant for a bunch of rednecks. There’s a goddamn rebel flag hanging on the wall! Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is to me?”

“You work for a company full of gun-toting corporate tools, and you have the gall to be embarrassed by Uncle Dexter? Like rich people with guns are cool and poor people with guns are trashy and dangerous?”

“One of those trashy dangerous people killed a girl five days ago! Have you forgotten?”

“Of course I haven’t, you idiot, but all you do is lecture me about being an embarrassment and then go back to pretending that Eliza’s death doesn’t affect you!”

He wasn’t listening, was just ticking off on his fingers. “I gave you a bed under my roof, I tried to get you a decent job, I—”

“I don’t need your bed, or your roof, or your goddamn decent job!”

“Where else do you have to go?”

“Here.”

He got steely quiet. “There’s a killer out there, Tai.”

“Lucky for me I got a whole bunch of guns.”

“You don’t even know how to shoot.”

If I’d had a gun in hand, I might have shot him just to prove the point. “You don’t know anything, big brother.”

I threw him out. I was trembling, and my chest felt hollow and crumpled. Despite my best efforts, the tears came hard and fast, blurring the lights into hazy globs. I lit up a cigarette. Then I blew my nose and double-checked the deadbolts. Then I engaged every device I saw on the keypad, including the motion detector. And then I got a .38 revolver from the safe and filled it with bullets. Dexter had a pull-out sofa in his office. It was brown velour and smelled like gun oil and stale popcorn, but it was the bed I had made, and for better or worse, I was going to lie in it.

***

The gun didn’t help. Neither did the security system. I stayed awake most of the night, all the lights on, dozing in fits and starts. Which is why I was fully awake when my cell phone rang at six in the morning.

It was Janie. “They found Bulldog.”

“They did! Where?”

“Meth lab in Smyrna. Son of a bitch got himself blown up last night. You feel like driving me out there so I can ID the bastard?”

Chapter 29

Gravel crunched beneath the tires as we pulled into the storage facility, past the barrier that kept out the news crews but far away from the smoking heap at the end of the driveway. The security zone, Garrity had informed me.

“Tell them you’re bringing in the identifying witness,” he’d said, “and they’ll let you in. Do exactly as you’re told, and I mean exactly. A meth lab burnout is not the place to go snooping.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. The air at the site reeked of ash and chemicals, even from our parking spot. Janie looked grim and determined. She wore her crucifix, but her fingers went nowhere near it, as if she didn’t want to be reminded of all that “turn the other cheek” stuff. When the patrol made her put out her cigarette, I thought for a second she might refuse. But she dropped it into the dregs of her coffee and got out of the car. I was not invited to go with her.

It was a slice of hell, that place, heavy with the stink of ammonia, like a radioactive litter box, and thick with clotted oily smoke. A hazmat-suited agent crouched next to an overturned oil drum, waving a Geiger counter at it.

But I did see one thing I recognized. A beat-up blue pick-up, swarming with uniforms. Janie was led to it. She stared at it, nodded, then spat on the ground.

Back in my car, she reached for her cigarettes. “They wouldn’t let me look at the body, said it was too dangerous right now. They said it didn’t matter anyway, that I couldn’t ID him if I tried. I asked if it was bad, and they said yes. Three people, all of them burnt to death. Crispy critters, one of them said. Didn’t think I could hear him. Somebody told him to hush.” She blew out smoke in a burst. “But I wanted to see.”

“They didn’t find any ID on the body?”

“All burnt up. The truck, though, that’s his. No doubt.”

We were back in the city by the time the morning commute had started its sluggish crawl. The radio reported the usual litany of accidents and road work and stalled vehicles. I was regretting my fashion choices. In an effort to look like a liaison, I’d put my hair up and worn this purple pantsuit I’d gotten at J.C. Penney. Now I was regretting it—the armholes were too high, and it itched. But I looked official. Somewhat.

“The fire took out the whole block of units, twenty at least. Went up like that.” Janie snapped her fingers. “You get a bunch of tweakers playing with fire, next thing you know, the whole neighborhood’s burning like hell itself.”

I thought of the smell, the ash, the odor that surely signaled death. The landscape, toxic and wasted. And somewhere in there, under a sheet, the charred corpse of a murderer.

“I wanted justice,” Janie said, and ground out her cigarette. “But this will do.”

***

Phoenix was jumping when we got there. Yvonne steered Janie toward Landon’s office, casting suspicious looks over her shoulder as she did. I shoved my ID into my tote bag the minute she got out of sight and headed straight for Trey’s office.

Marisa was already in there, clad in a charcoal skirt and jacket, accented with pearls a shade darker than her blouse. One eyebrow arched as she gave my pantsuit the up and down.

“Interesting color choice,” she said.

I smoothed the fabric. “It’s aubergine.”

And then she pummeled me with questions. I answered as best I could. Trey took notes. He watched me as I gave my recitation, jotting down information in his neat precise hand. Not reading me, just paying attention.

Marisa stood by his desk. “If this means what I think it means, then our part in the investigation is over. This changes everything.”

I understood. After all, every piece of evidence I’d seen was pointing to Bulldog as Eliza’s killer, so now that he was a pile of disreputable ash, further speculations seemed a moot point, as did the reward the Beaumonts had offered.

She directed a look at Trey. “Which means I need you this Friday at the Adams reception.”

He stared at her. “But I completed the security plan two weeks ago.”

“Things have changed. I need you in person.”

“Landon—”

“—is a personal guest of the Beaumonts, you know that. You were the only person who wasn’t going to be there this weekend, and now you are.”

Trey shook his head. “I don’t do that kind of work anymore. There are too many variables.”

“That’s why I need you. We’re dealing with rent-a-cops, local cops, other people’s bodyguards. I need somebody I can trust in the middle of all this.”

“We planned—”

“Not for this, we didn’t. You did the zone breakdown, the contingency protocol. All I’m asking you to do is be there and be available.”

He didn’t reply. But he didn’t drop his eyes or look away either.

“This is a major event for major players,” she said. “None of us wants it ruined by some stupid rumor.”

I was confused. “What rumor?”

She waved a hand dismissively. “It’s going around that there was something between Mark and Eliza Compton. The blogs are all over it, talk radio too. Probably that little photographer creep we ran off.”

Dylan. Of course.

Trey kept his eyes on his yellow pad. “Is there evidence?”

“Of course not. What evidence could they have for something that doesn’t exist?”

“Evidence can be misinterpreted.”

“Then it’s not evidence,” Marisa continued, “it’s nonsense, and if Mark takes the energy to deny it, he’ll just look defensive.”

“I still don’t understand why I have to be there this weekend.”

“I want you there because Mark wants you there, so you will be there. Period. Cocktails start at six, dinner at seven-thirty.”

Trey exhaled loudly. Marisa ignored the huff, dropped a file folder on his desk. “Black-tie. I know you’ve got a tux.”

“I do not.”

“So get one, now. Put it on your expense account.” Marisa indicated me with a nod. “Take her with you.”

This caught me off guard. “But Janie—”

“We’ll see that she gets back to her hotel, don’t worry. You stay with Trey.”

She glared at me as she said this. I remembered Simpson’s words:
they want to control you
. Setting me up with the resident Boy Scout probably seemed a great way to do it. I didn’t argue. Trey was a maze of rules, but I was beginning to get the hang of how they bent. And bend they did.

Trey stared after her, tap-tapping his pen on the edge of the desk as her heels click-clacked down the hall. His expression was blank, but the little wrinkle between his eyes was fast becoming a furrow.

I perched myself on the edge of his desk. “So tell me, where does one go to get a tux in this town?”

He slid the folder into a drawer. “Gabriella’s.”

I stifled a grin. The woman in the photograph Charley had confiscated from Trey’s office, the stunning redhead at his side during the Mardi Gras ball. In Marisa’s efforts to keep me out of the thick of things, she’d thrown me right into the briar patch.

I leaned over and rubbed the spot on Trey’s forehead. He looked puzzled, but he let me do it.

“Stop worrying, Mr. Seaver. Otherwise we’re gonna have to Botox you.”