Undercover in Six Inch Stilettos (4 page)

“I don’t know. I guess too many years living with a cop has rubbed off on me. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone else is a victim. You know how it is.”

“No, I don’t suppose I do.” Roxy’s tone had suddenly turned hard, catching Cyndi off guard. The small room grew even smaller as the tension grew thicker. As quickly as it came on, it was gone. Roxy was busy flitting around, twirling her boa; she was a confusing woman.

“I’ve got to get out there. Lola’s run is nearly over.”

When she was gone, Cyndi sat alone for a bit, thinking. She had completely forgotten about Lola; she had been tight with Jade. She could know something about the young woman disappearing.

As if on cue, Lola entered the dressing room in her coconut bra and grass skirt, which had been arranged so that her long, tan legs were visible between the blades of grass. Lola was part Hawaiian, and part Filipino, and was absolutely gorgeous with dark, long curls that fell to the backs of her knees. The guys loved her sexy hula dances, as well as her part gymnastic, part dance routines. Lola could bend and twist her lithe frame in ways that Cyndi only ever dreamed about.

“How are you, Cyndi? That fall looked horrible!” Lola’s obvious distress over Cyndi’s injury was offset by the gentle lilting tones of her voice. When Lola spoke, it was so calming that Cyndi could almost imagine the gentle waves caressing the shores of Maui, under a picture perfect blue sky, disturbed only by the occasional wispy white cloud.

“I’ll be fine. Just need to take it easy for a few days, I guess.”

“Rafael threw that loser out on to his
okole
! That’s Hawaiian for
buttocks
, in case you didn’t know.” Lola offered a rare smile that added a twinkle to her chocolate eyes.

Cyndi chuckled. She couldn’t recall one time she had ever heard the younger girl cuss. Hearing the other woman say buttocks like it was a dirty word made her day. “You couldn’t be more adorable if you tried, Lola. And I am glad Rafael tossed him out—I just wish I had the chance to give him a swift kick in the
okole
first!”

Cyndi worked herself up to a standing position and hobbled over to the makeshift locker where she had stashed her clothes. Before going home, she had to get out of her costume. This was not one of those nights where she could sneak it past Jason under her “office cleaning” getup.

“Can I help?”

“Actually, Lola, if you don’t mind, could you undo the hooks on the back of this thing? I am not sure I could keep my balance and work this damned bustier off without falling on my
okole
.”

Lola giggled at the use of the Hawaiian word. Cyndi sort of liked the way it rolled off her tongue. She had a feeling it was going to become a favorite, especially around Harper.

Once she finished the tedious process of changing her clothes, Cyndi dropped back into her chair to rest up for the trip out to her car. It was nearly eleven; she had a bit of time before Jason would send out the cavalry after her—this was a good a time as any to ask Lola about Jade.

“Hey, Lola? Have you heard from Jade?”

The other girl stopped dead in her tracks. “No. Not since last Friday night.”

“Aren’t the two of you close friends?”

“Yes.” Lola walked over to where Cyndi sat and dropped into the chair beside her. “I’m worried about her. She hasn’t been around all week, and she didn’t show up tonight. That’s not like her. Jade likes this job. The money is too good, much better than…well, you know. Unless…”

A dark shadow passed over Lola’s face as her words trailed away.

“Unless what, Lola?” Cyndi prodded gently.

“Unless Markus had something to do with it.”

“Who’s Markus?”

“Her…um…boyfriend.”

More like pimp
, but she kept that thought to herself. “Does her…boyfriend…hurt her?”

“He tells her what to do, where to do it, and…who to do it with.” Lola got real quiet as she peered around the small space, assuring herself they were alone. “He makes her
do
men for money.”

“Like a prostitute?”

Lola clamped her hands over her ears. “Don’t say that. Jade isn’t a prostitute! She likes to dance, that’s all. The rest is Markus’s doing.”

“Do you think Markus has hurt her?”

Lola shrugged her shoulders, shifting her coconut bra. “He must have. What else could have happened to her?”

A lot of things could have happened to Jade, but Lola was far more naïve than Cyndi would have expected. The other woman was getting so worked up, Cyndi could see tears in her eyes.

“I am sure she is fine, Lola. Maybe she and Markus took a little weekend getaway.”

A weekend getaway was probably the last thing Markus would do with Jade, unless it involved her ‘working’ it off, but there was no sense in upsetting Lola further.

“Lola? What brought you to Virginia Beach? I mean, why leave paradise to come here?”

“I met a sailor when I was sixteen. I fell in love. He convinced me he loved me and that life as a Navy wife was better than graduating high school and going to college. We were going to travel the world together. Instead he got stationed in Norfolk and deployed to Afghanistan. He was killed two years ago when his truck drove over an IED buried in the road.”

“Oh, Lola, I am so sorry.”

Lola wiped at the dampness on her cheeks with a tissue. “It is what is, Cyndi. I accepted it a long time ago.”

“Why didn’t you go back to Hawaii?”

“When I left with Sam, my parents disowned me. I was never to show my face there again. My father said I was dead to him.” Her voice broke again, but her eyes stayed dry. Lola stood up, straightened her shoulders, and offered Cyndi a weak smile. “I will cover your last run tonight. I could use the extra tips. I hope your ankle heals quickly.”

When Lola was gone, Cyndi gathered up the rest of her things and hobbled her way down the hall toward the back entrance. Pushing on the handle, she eased the door open. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck bristled as gooseflesh broke out on her arms. The single incandescent bulb on the wall outside had long since lost its globe, so it glowed brightly. The light cast shadows against the wall of the building opposite her; one of them moved. Cyndi jumped back, letting the heavy metal door slam closed.

“Stop being such a wuss,” she chided herself. “It was probably the wind moving a tree.”

There were no trees in the alley. She still needed to talk to Johnny anyway. She would leave through the front door and come back during daylight to poke around.

Leaning against the wall for support, she limped her way toward Johnny. Lola was doing her thing, working the stage like the show girl in the song “Copacabana”
she danced to.

Cyndi stopped to watch the Hawaiian goddess as she cha cha’d across the stage, in awe of the way she owned the crowd with her body. Lola was a truly gifted dancer. She should have been on Broadway, not the crappy old stage at Sugar Shakers.

Humming the catchy tune, Cyndi half hopped, half dragged herself the rest of the way to the bar.

“I’m heading out, Johnny.”

The bartender dropped an envelope on the scarred bar top. “Here’s your tips for the night, doll. And the name’s Jonet, if you don’t mind. That tall drink of water, down there at the end of the bar, likes Jonet just fine, don’t need him to be knowing my alter ego.”

“Sure thing,
Jonet
. You
are
smokin’ hot tonight, you know!” She blew him a kiss.

Jonet winked and returned her kiss. “You take care of that ankle now, you hear? I don’t want you leaving us too, doll.”

The perfect opening to ask about Jade. “What do you mean
too
?”

Johnny…Jonet…filled a draft beer and handed it to a customer before leaning across the bar conspiratorially. Cyndi could see clear down his pink dress at the two pairs of tube socks rolled and tucked neatly into a satin bra that was the same pink as the dress.

“The cops were in here earlier looking for Jade. She has disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yup.”

“Are they sure she didn’t go home?”

“I guarantee you there ain’t no way that sweet little thing was ever going to go back to that nightmare of a home.”

“It was that bad?”

Johnny’s expression changed from serious to angry in a heartbeat. “It was that bad. What I wouldn’t give to get two minutes alone with that bastard…”

“Do they have any idea what happened to her?”

“Not that they shared with me.” Johnny’s expression changed from anger to anguish briefly. “I tried all week to get a hold of her. She left her tips here last weekend, and I was sure that piece of crap pimp—the one that came around here once in a while—would be after the money.”

“Do you mean Markus, her boyfriend?”

“He sure as hell ain’t her boyfriend. He treated her like a piece of property.” Johnny punctuated the thought with a few of his favorite cuss words. Despite the long red wig, the pink dress, and the fancy matching heels, Johnny was all man at the moment. If Cyndi didn’t know better, she would have thought he was in love with the missing girl.
Did
she know better? Actually, Cindy had no idea what Johnny’s sexual preferences were. Dressing like a woman occasionally didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t like women, did it? There were so many things Cyndi had not yet learned about the world.

“Do you think Markus did something to her? That’s what Roxy thinks.”

“I think anything is possible. Jade was involved in a crazy life, between here and the things Markus made her do.”

The door to the club opened then, as Lola’s “Copacabana” number ended. Five guys, who proudly boasted Greek letters on their shirts and were shouting crude things, tumbled into the room. Rafael stepped in front of the loud, obnoxious group, demanding ID as five more pushed in behind them. The clock behind the bar read half past eleven.

“I better head on out. You are about to get slammed with drink orders, and if I am not home by midnight, Jason’s gonna send out the cavalry. You know he wanted to come to work with me tonight?”

“Oh no, doll, that man of yours is crazy!” Johnny winked as he blew her another kiss. “You keep that handsome cop man of yours away from here. Jonet is a sucker for a man in uniform!”

“You better keep those acrylic nails off my man, Jonet!” Cyndi blew a kiss as she headed for the front door. Rafael was shooing the drunk fraternity boys toward a table far from the stage, where they could be as loud as they wanted.

“Night, Miss Cyndi. You want me to walk you to your car?”

“I’m good, Raf. Keep an eye from here. Johnny might need your help with all those sweet young men that just came in. They look like they might get a little grabby.”

“Pretty sure Johnny can hold his own, even with his fake boobs.”

Cyndi laughed as she pushed the door open. “I meant grabby with Lola!”

“A single one of them lays a finger on her, they goin’ outta here on a stretcher. You know I got my eye on you girls. That poor bastard who jumped on stage with you is gonna be hurtin’ in the morning…”

“I hope you didn’t hurt him too badly.”

“No worse than what he did to you.” Rafael nodded toward her swollen ankle.

“You always keep us safe, Raf. That’s why we love you.”

The door closed behind her, but Cyndi felt Rafael’s eyes on her all the way to her car. Without even looking into the alley behind the building, she unlocked her car and slid in behind the wheel. She had the key in the ignition before she noticed the paper tucked under her wiper on her windshield. She didn’t even have to get out to read what it said. In blood red, the words were a stark contrast to the white paper they were written on.

The girl is gone for good.

Chapter Four

The girl is gone for good. The girl…did that mean Jade? Of course it did. Who else could it mean?

So, who put the note on her windshield? Was he trying to give her a warning? Who was
he?

Why would he feel the need to warn her?

By the time Cyndi pulled into the driveway, lit up like a landing strip as per Jason’s security lighting protocol, the crumpled sheet, which she had put in her purse, had her mind in a jumbled mess. The incident had made her uneasy. For once she was grateful for Jason’s tactical obsessions.

Jason stood in the doorway, watching her get out of the car. When he saw her limping, he went to her. “What the hell happened, Cyn?”

“It’s nothing, J.J. I tripped and turned my ankle. I’ll be fine.”

“Dammit! I told you to quit that job!”

“It was an accident, could have happened anywhere. Let’s please go in the house, Jason.” Cyndi started limping toward the porch steps when, for the second time that night, someone swept her off her feet and carried her. Neither one of them spoke until he had placed her on the couch and set up a pillow under her foot to elevate it.

“I want to take a look at it.” Before she could respond, Jason was already removing her tennis shoes and rolling up the pant leg of her jeans. From her position, Cyndi could see the swollen black and blue mess that was now her ankle.

“See, now that’s not so bad.”

“Not so bad? You go blind when you tripped? It’s a mess.”

“Well, we know it isn’t broken because I can walk on it, so why don’t you go all medic on me and wrap it up? I find a man who can work an Ace bandage to be super sexy.”

Cyndi shot her husband a smoldering look, which she hoped was distraction enough from the direction their conversation was heading. Jason was extremely proud of the fact that he had been a medic attached to a Navy Seal team before he left the military and became a police officer. Not to mention the fact that he had the rampant, raging hormones of a sixteen-year-old.

It worked like a charm. Jason’s disposition changed instantly. He couldn’t resist a come on, no matter how annoyed he was with her. “You want to play doctor, do you?”

“Yes, Dr. Mills. Once you fix me up, I might need a sponge bath.” Cyndi fluttered her eyelashes at her husband.

“I know what you are doing. You are trying to distract me with sex so I won’t talk about how you should quit this job of yours.”

“And why would I do such a thing?”

“Because you know it will work.”

“Is it working?”

Jason grinned like the horny teenage boy he had never stopped being on the inside. “Of course it is.”

Scooping her up, he carried her all the way to the door of their bedroom, kissing her, his tongue exploring her mouth intently. By the time he had her on the bed, Cyndi had forgotten that her ankle hurt at all.

An hour and a half later, her foot finally wrapped in an Ace bandage, Cyndi tried to tip-toe out of the bedroom, after which she hobbled back to the living room where her laptop sat on an end table.

She thought about the note on her car. If she showed it to Jason, she would have to tell him more than she was prepared to. More than ever, Cyndi needed to keep her job so that she could try and figure out what had happened to Jade.

“You’re not a cop, Cyndi,” she muttered as she watched the computer sputter awake. “What makes you think you can solve a crime?”

Had a crime even taken place?

Cyndi logged in to her favorite social networking group and sent an invitation to her friends to join her for a chat using her usual greeting.

Cyndi: Hello, ladies! It’s three in the morning, do you know where your husbands are?

Diana: Donnie’s at a fatal house fire.

Cyndi: Oh no! I’m so sorry, Di! Officer or civilian?

Diana: Elderly gentleman. Collapsed in the hallway about three feet from the front door.

Angela: That’s terrible, Diana! My honey is off tonight, he is sound asleep and now I am glad.

Jessy: Yeah, mine’s home tonight too, thankfully.

Angela: How was work tonight, Cyndi? Jason go with you?

Cyndi: You know he didn’t! Good thing too. Some drunk dude jumped up on the stage and knocked me over. Twisted my ankle up pretty good.

Jessy: OMG! What did you tell Jason?

Cyndi: That I tripped and twisted my ankle. The truth—sort of.

Angela: Did you have to go to the hospital?

Cyndi: Nah, Jason wrapped it up with a bandage and then took my mind off it for a while.

Diana: Damn, Cyn! You two go at it like a couple of newlyweds!

Cyndi: You’re just jealous!

Diana: How could I be jealous? Donnie and I do it every Friday night at 9:30 p.m. LOL

Angela: OMG you two are awful! I would settle for a night when we both slept in the bed together! These opposite shifts are killing us! Whenever I work, he is off and when I am off…he is working…yay for civil service work.

Jessy: Back to the ankle…Cyndi will you still be able to work?

Cyndi: I will take it easy for a couple of days and then I will be fine. Besides, I have to get back to the club.

Angela: Why?

Cyndi: One of the girls has disappeared. No one will say anything, but I know someone knows something. The cops were there but she is a teenage runaway so no one will pursue it.

Diana: If she is a teenager what is she doing dancing at Sugar Shakers?

Cyndi: Her ID says she is twenty-one but I wouldn’t peg her for a day over seventeen.

Jessy: Ohhhh…I can’t even begin to imagine what her life must have been like to make her run.

Angela: Are you going to tell Jason to look into it?

Cyndi: Um…no…

Diana: Your job is more important than this little girl?

Cyndi: No, but my marriage is. Jason won’t understand my job.

Jessy: Ha. That’s an understatement! Exotic dancing isn’t tactically sound.

Cyndi: LOL Hey, we do have a security guard at the door. No one messes with Rafael or he might go all Cuban drug dealer on them!

Jessy: Well, if your girl disappeared, then the security can’t be all that.

Cyndi: What’s to say she disappeared from work?

Angela: So what are you going do, then?

Cyndi: I was thinking I would look around a little, ask a few questions, and then when I have something, drop an anonymous tip on the police tip line.

Angela: I just thought of something. What if she is “the girl”?

Diana: What girl?

Angela: You know, the girl the guy called in about.

Jessy: Oh…you don’t think…?

Cyndi: You think Jade’s the girl?

Angela: When did she disappear?

Cyndi: From what I can tell, the last time anyone saw her was last Friday after her shift at Sugar Shakers…oh wow…what if she is the girl?

Diana: You sure you don’t want to tell Jason?

Cyndi: Tell him what? That a runaway may not have run away again but she might be dead because some nut job called into dispatch about a random dead girl and no body has shown up? No, I’m going to stick with my original plan.

Jessy: Promise us you will be careful…

Diana: Yeah, promise…

Cyndi: I promise. I love you girls!

Diana: I’m heading to bed. It was a busy night on the 900 line tonight.

Jessy: I don’t know how you get away with that job when the hubby is home.

Diana: It’s easy. I go in the den, lock the door, and pretend to use the computer. He thinks the shopping network requires me to have a dedicated, uninterrupted work space. Which would actually be true if I worked for the Home Shopping Network…

Angela: You got a pair, that’s for sure. I would call myself out in about three days on that one! Of course, I bet you have a lot more fun than I do dispatching!

Diana: You would be surprised how entertaining some of those guys are. Remind me to share some stories with you. Right now though, I’m beat. Signing off, ladies! Sweet dreams!

Jessy: I’m heading to bed too. You ladies take care.

Angela: Night, all!

Cyndi: And to all a good night.

As Cyndi was about to hit the tab to log off, a message from Angela popped up on her screen.

Angela: Cyn? You still there?

Cyndi: Yeah, I am still here. What’s up?

Angela: I want to help.

Cyndi: Help?

Angela: Find your friend…or at least find out what happened to her.

Cyndi: Matt gonna be all right with you playing sleuth?

Angela: About as all right as Jason is with you doing it.

Cyndi: LOL You got me there. Want to meet for lunch down at the oceanfront today? We can do a little poking around out back of Sugar Shakers. Something about that alleyway gives me the creeps.

Angela: I’ll meet you out front of the club at 12:30?

Cyndi: Sounds good. See you then.