Tina Whittle_Tai Randall Mystery 01 (18 page)

Chapter 34

The first thing I did was try Dylan Flint at his Snoopshot’s number, but he wasn’t answering—again. I left a message asking him to please get in touch with me, then spent the rest of the afternoon with a bunch of manila folders and a note pad. And it gave me a lot to think about.

If Eliza was lesbian, she’d been hiding it, which meant she thought it was something to hide. Which put a whole new spin on Jake Whitaker’s comments. Was this the reason he didn’t believe the rumors about her and Mark? Was that what he’d been being “technically true but deliberately evasive” about? It made sense, especially considering some of the things Nikki had said about him, like how Eliza had caught him peeping into windows.

Still, I knew that people were too complicated to jam into rigid sexual categories. Even Rico had had a girlfriend once, back when we were in high school, when he was still Richard Worthington and I was still…confused.

I smiled at the memory. I’d learned a lot since then. Of course, none of that mattered. I needed smarts beyond what I’d gotten in Sex Ed 101 to explain Eliza. I didn’t have time to ponder the possibilities, however. It was two-thirty, and I had a 302 to complete.

Whatever the hell that was.

***

Trey showed up in the copy room an hour later, 302 report in hand. I had just slipped mine into the feeder, and the copy machine was humming itself to life. I hopped onto a work table. “Got a quick question for you, Mr. Seaver. Did you know Eliza was lesbian?”

“No.” Trey’s expression sharpened. “Do you know that?”

“It’s a theory at this point.”

The machine coughed and clunked to a stop. Trey knelt and opened the doors to find about seven million little lights blinking at him. He started turning knobs and rollers, threading his fingers into dark hot metal places.

“A theory requires evidence.”

“I’m getting to that. But first things first—Garrity called.”

“I know.” He pulled out a mangled, blackened piece of paper and handed it to me. “He called me first.”

I threw the paper in the trash. “Then you know that story. Factor in this—I called Whitaker. He said that the police told him that Bulldog was trying to break into Eliza’s apartment.”

Trey fished the paper out of the trash and put it in the recycling box. “Had broken into. He was hoping to retrieve the drugs he’d sold Eliza, but he couldn’t find them.”

I snorted. “Did it not occur to him that the police would have confiscated any drugs when they searched the place?”

“He thought she might have hidden them well enough that the police had missed them.”

“Had they?”

“No.”

I put a hand on his elbow. He looked at it, then looked at me.

“This lesbian thing is a big deal, Trey. A very big deal.”

“If it’s true.”

“I know of only one way to find out.”

The copy machine whirred and spat out my report, along with its duplicate. Trey fed his in next. I was expecting it to wheeze and rattle, but the contraption practically purred as it got to work.

“And that would be?” he said.

“We need to talk to Eliza’s friend Nikki. I think they were lovers.”

Trey shook his head, but I interrupted whatever he was about to say.

“Just come with me and talk to her, okay? Call it personal protection, call it whatever you have to, but I need you there to tell me if she’s telling the truth.”

“I’m in a meeting until six.”

“When you’re done then. I’ll go back to the shop, change into something less corporate agenty, then pick you up on the way.”

He collected his report from the tray and tucked it into a file folder. I noticed that it already had a label on it, neatly typed.

“Look,” I said. “Even if you don’t come along, I’m just going to do it anyway, and then who knows what will happen. You might end up bailing me out of jail tonight. Or worse. I mean, I’m not an idiot, but I’m no investigator either.”

“Fine. I’ll do it. You’ve made a compelling case that you’re in need of professional supervision. But we’re doing this on my terms.”

“Okay.”

“We stay together at all times.”

“Okay.”

“My role is not investigatory—I am there as your personal protection as per the original contract extension, not as an official representative of Phoenix.”

“Okay.”

“And whatever we learn remains confidential until the proper paperwork has been processed. Is that clear?”

“As a bell.” I extended my hand. He shook it solemnly.

“I’ll pick you up at the shop,” he said. “Stay in the suit.”

***

At Boomers, the first of the after-work crowd had reported for action—ties loosened, inhibitions too, oiled by the two-for-one drink specials. Boomers was kind enough to keep its website up-to-date with the dancers’ performance schedules, and I’d noticed that Nikki was due to go on stage in an hour. Only she was using her professional name—Sinnamon.

Trey flashed his ID, and the bouncer called back to see if she’d see us. We then had to go through the strip club den mother, who seemed even less enthusiastic than the bouncer. But in the end, Nikki said we could come on back.

We found her in a crowded dressing room putting on her stage make-up. She sported a platinum wig, plus fishnet hose, five-inch heels, and a tiny white blouse and seersucker skirt.

“You got something to tell me?” she said.

Trey stood politely at my side, hands folded. All around us, half-naked women pulled on thongs and shimmied into breakaway tops. He didn’t even glance their way.

“I was hoping you had something to tell me,” I replied.

“Like what?”

“Like how you and Eliza were lovers.”

She reached for a bottle of water and unscrewed the cap, her expression unchanging. Trey studied her, his eyes focused on her mouth. She didn’t acknowledge his attention.

“None of your damn business,” she said.

She turned her back on us and went back to applying her make-up. The dressing room was a buzzy cacophony of female sounds and thumping bass from the stage. I met her eyes in the mirror.

“You were at the party with her, the Mardi Gras Ball.”

Another shrug. “So? I told you we went to those things.”

“You didn’t mention this specific one, which makes me curious, especially since Dylan was there too, taking pictures of you and Eliza and the Beaumonts. What were they up to?”

“I told you, I don’t know. We got into a fight, and she left with him.”

“What was the fight about?”

“She kept dragging me around the room, following the Beaumonts around. She said she wanted pictures with them and wanted me in them, too. I told her that was stupid, she told me I was stupid, and I told her if she liked those people so much, she could get them to take her home.”

Nikki stroked mascara on in thick swipes. Her eyes grew darker and more recessed the more she talked.

“Why didn’t you tell anybody about the two of you?”

“What the fuck good would that have done? It wasn’t like they were ever gonna make her one of them. She was redneck white trash. That’s all she was and all she was ever gonna be.”

“Was that why she was so infatuated with Charley, because she used to be white trash too? Did she think that would make her sympathetic?”

“Give me a break. Neither of them had nothing to do with her. She thought they shit gold, though. Everything she wanted to be.”

She stood up then. She was an Amazon. Impenetrable.

“You think Eliza would be dead if she was some rich woman like Charley Beaumont? She was broke, and she was a nobody, and the only thing she had going for her was that she was white, and I ain’t got that. And you wonder why I ain’t told anybody about me and her?”

She pushed past me to leave. Trey had been standing there silent the whole time. She looked up at him. “You got any questions, Mr. Suit and Tie?”

Trey cocked his head. “Did Eliza’s sister know about your relationship?”

Nikki cocked her head back. “Yeah.”

“How did she feel about that?”

“That tight-assed bitch?” Nikki made a noise of disgust. “She told me I was gonna burn in hell, and Eliza with me. That’s what she thought about that.”

***

The ride back to Kennesaw was rather subdued. Trey didn’t speak and neither did I. I just watched the city roll by, the procession of organic food shops and cigar emporiums and adult movie stores. And always the road work, the perpetual bustle, the endless growing pains of a city forever too big for its britches.

I gathered my things. “So this turned out to be a successful trip, right?”

“My role was to keep you safe. I accomplished that.”

I didn’t argue. He liked proper categories, naming things. I found that I appreciated it too. It kept me honest. Mostly.

“We make a good team, me and you,” I said.

“We’re a team?”

I thought about that. “Yeah. A team.”

“Okay.”

I looked over at him, sitting there all neat and polite and—it hit me with a pang—so singular, so alone with all he was and all he could never be. I felt a keen sensation of loss, almost familiar now, and I suddenly wanted more than anything to hug him, and if he’d been anybody else in the world, I would have done it.

But he was Trey. And he was separated from me by a gulf far wider than a few feet of leather upholstery. I watched him drive away and thought of empty spaces.

But I also thought of bridges.

Chapter 35

The next morning, I woke up with a stiff back and a stuffed-up head. The photograph of Uncle Dexter looked spiteful in the half-light, like he knew I was taking down his Stars and Bars.

I was feeling conflicted. Not out of any Confederate loyalty—I didn’t much like the thing myself. But taking it down felt like an insult to Dexter, not unlike the way Atlanta had razed what antebellum architecture the Yankees hadn’t burned to a cinder, erecting in its place a post-modern skyline, gleaming and reflecting, a city of mirrors. Atlanta called itself the city too busy to hate. It was a heady fiction.

“Sorry, Dexter—it has to go,” I told him, and rubbed the ache out of my neck.

But it would wait. I had other things to attend to first, namely cleaning myself up and hauling it to Phoenix. So I dressed rapidly and closed the shop, setting every alarm Trey had showed me. The late morning sky loomed low and gray, like a ceiling of dirty ice, and I shivered as I walked to my car. Please, I thought, let this day be easy.

It was not to be. Standing square in my path was Dylan Flint, spiked hair and all. He yanked off his sunglasses. “You’re gonna pay for this!”

“For what?”

“You know what! You think you trash my place, I’m gonna get scared and back down? I’m not afraid of you or your boyfriend.”

He’d moved in close, and I realized for the first time how very young he was, barely twenty. His pale face popped with cold sweat, and he looked like he hadn’t slept, hadn’t bathed, hadn’t even changed clothes in a while.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Passersby stared and kept walking. I tried to sound patient and logical, but fear cracked my voice. This guy was a wing nut of the first order, and I was mostly alone with him, with all my guns locked up in the shop. And he was infuriated.

“That’s bullshit! I heard the message you left. You were checking to see if I was there so you could break in!”

“If I had been going to break in, do you think I would have left a message?”

“I know what I know! And I don’t need pictures to prove it!”

“Prove what?”

He sneered. “Maybe you should talk to your boyfriend, ask him what he’s been doing hanging around with Charley Beaumont when her husband’s out of town.”

“You mean Trey?” I took a deep breath. “He’s not my boyfriend—and she’s his client.” Then it hit me. “Is that why you were following us around Saturday? You thought I was the other woman?”

The sneer twisted, and he laughed. “Stupid lying bitch.”

And that did it. I gripped my tote bag tighter and widened my stance. What was it Trey had said to his class? Balance was my greatest strength. I felt it suddenly, the sturdiness that comes from standing on two feet, owning your space.

“Look, you moron, I don’t know why you’re here, but I know one thing—you’re in big trouble.”

“You don’t know shit!”

“I know you kept Eliza around so she’d score drugs for you. You got the shakes, dude.”

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. There was a folder in my tote bag that described the signs of meth addiction—agitation, paranoia, rage. He was a veritable poster boy.

“Is that how she paid you off for showing up and taking pictures at the Mardi Gras party? A few hits of this or that?”

“The cops want to talk to me,” he said. “And I’m thinking of doing it.”

“Why? What was so hot about those photographs you took?”

He clammed up again and stared at me with this smug look, but fear twitched behind the bravado. Dumb, simple fear.

I shook my head. “You have no clue, do you? All you knew was she could get you some attention from the Beaumonts, maybe throw some dope in the mix. Good times. You make up all kinds of rumors—Charley and Trey, Mark and Eliza, me and God knows who—and hope something will stick so somebody will pay.”

“You just keep thinking that.”

“Why’d you bust out the parking garage cameras at Phoenix on Thursday?”

“What?” His mouth twisted. “I didn’t do that!”

“Trey saw you there that morning, don’t deny it.”

“I was just taking pictures!”

“That’s all you’ve been up to, huh? You haven’t been hanging around here, have you? Tossing a few bricks? Slipping a few threats under the door?”

He started to say something, then clammed up. “I ain’t gotta tell you a goddamned thing, bitch!”

That did it. “Listen to me, you moron, and listen good. You may not realize how deeply over your head you are, but I do, and I am telling you, getting your photographs nicked is the least of your worries. Whatever it was Eliza was involved in, somebody killed her to shut her up.”

“If anybody needs to shut up, it’s you.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Just layin’ it on the line.”

He stepped forward as he said this. I held my ground. His hand went into my face, and I smacked it away, hard. His sunglasses went flying, and he curled his fingers into a fist…

And then he froze.

“Is there a problem?” Trey said.

I jumped as Trey moved to stand beside me. He was in full corporate agent mode and looked calm, but he exuded hazard the way that knives did, on a purely visceral level.

Dylan didn’t back away. “What’s the matter, girlie, can’t fight your own battles?”

I suddenly want to yank off his arm and beat him to death with it. “Back up, Trey. You don’t want to get blood on that Armani.”

Trey didn’t budge, of course, but then, he didn’t need to. Dylan was already backing down. “I’m talking to the cops. And then you’ll be sorry, all of you!”

He jabbed a finger at us, one last pathetic attempt at menace, then disappeared around the corner. I picked up his sunglasses and examined them. Tommy Hilfiger. Nice. I pocketed them and turned to Trey.

“Where did you come from? I don’t see the Ferrari.”

He nodded toward a gray sedan parked across the street. “Company car. I’ll be working at Lake Oconee most of the day, and Marisa insisted I take it.”

“Was she being generous or does this have something to do with the car chase yesterday?”

“The latter, I suspect.”

Now that the confrontation was over, I was shaking from the adrenalin spike and plummet. I steadied myself, but Trey noticed. He extended a hand, then just as quickly retracted it.

“Are you okay? Perhaps you should—”

“I’m fine.”

And I was. Mostly. There had been a shift during the confrontation, a moment when I’d felt aggressively powerful, but calm. Now I was cold—the wind had kicked up and the clouds had clotted and lowered. But I remembered that feeling.

“Dylan was seriously pissed about a break-in. You know what he’s talking about?”

“There was a burglary at his studio—his photographic and video equipment were taken, photographs and videos too. His computer was destroyed, but not before someone hacked his website and deleted it.”

“He mentioned having photos of Charley Beaumont.” I took a beat. “And you.”

Trey looked puzzled. “She’s a client. Of course there are photographs of us together. Why would he mention that?”

“Because he thought he had photos of Charley Beaumont and her illicit lover.”

It took Trey a moment to make the connection. “But we’re not lovers.”

He said it so easily, with such disarming confusion, that I wanted to believe him. Could a human lie detector spin a falsehood as easily as he could spot one?

My next question was even more delicate. “Phoenix did this, didn’t they?”

Trey didn’t reply. But his index finger started a restless tap-tap-tap on his thigh.

“Come on, Trey. Did Phoenix trash that boy’s place and steal his stuff so that he’d stop making trouble for the Beaumonts?”

“The Beaumonts are our clients.”

“That doesn’t answer the question. Is Phoenix responsible for this?”

“You could ask Landon. He’ll give you the same answer he gave me.”

“Which was?”

“Of course not.”

“Was he lying?”

Trey looked directly at me. “Landon is usually lying about something. It’s part of his job.”

He turned abruptly and started across the street. I followed after him. “Dylan also admitted he was at Phoenix on Thursday, when the cameras were busted out, but denies doing it. Likewise on busting out my camera and planting the threats.”

Trey opened the door to the sedan. He was avoiding my eyes. “I’ll be in-field for the rest of the day. Call me if you need me.”

I put a hand out as he went to get in, and he froze, my hand on his midsection.

“What were you doing here?” I said.

“Dylan came looking for you at Phoenix. It made sense that this would be his next stop.” He finally looked directly at me. “Please be careful. Even though Perkins has been caught, it’s still dangerous.”

I removed my hand. “You worried old Dylan will get me in some dark alley?”

“No, I’m almost certain this will be the last we hear of Dylan Flint. But I’m afraid he’s not our only concern.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’m apprehensive, and I don’t know why. And I usually do.” He got into the car. “Marisa told me that Janie has asked to see you. Please call me later and tell me what she said. And Tai…”

It was the first time he’d ever called me by name. “Yes?”

“I meant it. Be careful.”

***

I finished my emergency cigarette in the Phoenix parking garage, brushed my hair, and got ready to face Yvonne. To my surprise, she smiled as I walked to the front desk.

“You have to wait here,” she said.

“But Janie asked me to come, I’m supposed to—”

And then Landon walked out of the conference room. He was smiling too. My stomach sank.

“You just missed Janie,” he said. “She went to the hotel to pack. Now that her sister’s killer is behind bars, she going back to South Carolina.”

I shouldered my bag and turned to leave. Landon glided into my path.

“Not so fast. I heard you had a run-in with Dylan Flint.”

“I heard you did too, or so Dylan seems to think.”

A flicker of surprise rode across his eyes, but he covered it, quick. “I don’t care what he thinks, and neither does anybody else.”

“Somebody cared enough to trash his place.”

Landon tsk-tsked. “It’s a crime-ridden world out there.”

“Which makes it so great that Phoenix is there to protect and serve.” I delivered this morsel with a thick coating of sarcasm, but Landon didn’t bite. His smile deepened, which further unnerved me.

“Now that justice has been served and Janie is returning home, your services are no longer required. We’ll have the paperwork ready for you tomorrow, along with a check from the Beaumonts, a final thank-you.”

I didn’t move. He swept a hand toward the doors. “Go home. And don’t even think about running to Marisa. After I told her you dragged Trey to Boomers last night, she finally decided you’re more trouble than you’re worth, no matter what Eric says.”

I stared at him. He tsk-tsked.

“Of course I know about your little adventure—Trey submitted a 302 on it this morning. Filed it under personal protection.”

Of course he did. I fumed, but said nothing.

Landon continued. “So Marisa terminated your personal protection order as well. Case closed.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Maybe. But this isn’t. You have to leave now. Come back tomorrow morning for your termination package.”

“Keep it,” I said, and turned to go.

“Not so fast.” Landon held out his hand. “Your ID.”

“I lost the cheap piece of crap. Stick that in your termination package.”