You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2) (7 page)

“But that’s it, Stevie! You don’t have to! Isn’t that marvelous?”

Her small oval face tilted up toward me. “Please?”

It was too much to ask her to adjust so soon to being able to spread our wings. That was my special talent, not hers. We wouldn’t be here long and it might be crueler for her to get used to sleeping in her own room before we had to cram into a closet again. “Okay,” I said.

She smiled so wide I thought her cheeks might split.

I went out to the car to get our bag. By the time I came back, she’d set up her computer. “Colin has it.”

On the computer screen was a picture of my bracelet on a messy countertop. Where had he taken that photo? I wondered. I didn’t remember a countertop like that in his apartment. “Anything else?”

“He says he’ll be ready for you at about eleven tonight.” Before I could ask, she added: “It’s six now.”

We ate dinner and I passed out on the sofa in the living room for two hours. Stevie shook me awake. “Let’s go over the map and familiarize you with the general layout of the city.”

“Show me,” I said. Despite my eyesight, I’m not very good at reading street signs. Or anything else, but street signs in particular. I have to memorize maps the hard way to learn a place.

She pulled out the
Thomas Guide
. We began with a little lesson on Los Angeles geography and the layout of the main streets on the Westside. The curve of the Basin, which made roads that had been more or less laid in a southwest-northeast line (Wilshire, Santa Monica) turn due east-west. The main streets that ran through to the ocean. The boulevards and freeways. Where Beverly Hills was in relation to West Hollywood or Brentwood or Pacific Palisades, where Gary’s house was.

I could go back to Colin’s apartment the exact way I’d driven to Santa Monica. But I had other choices.

Hell, if I could memorize how to navigate Paris, Los Angeles should be a snap. I nodded.

Just as I kissed the top of her head, the phone rang. Stevie glanced at it. “It’s Colin.”

“He’s going to try to weasel out of meeting.” I grabbed the phone. “I’m on my way, keep your trousers on. For once.”

There was a long pause. “Oh God, Dru. Things have turned to shite here. I’ve definitely fucked up this time. I need your help.” He sounded like hell. Something terrible must have happened since we first talked.

I was not only incredulous at his request, I went ahead and let him hear it. “You want me to help you? I want one thing from you. My bracelet for your briefcase. Then we’re done.”

He kept talking. “I’ve walked right into a massive shitstorm with Penelope. Jesus. She’s just left here. I don’t know what to do.”

I was so busy remembering Penelope was the actress in those photos I almost missed him adding: “And you’re in it, too. I was trying to help her. It’s all a bloody mess.”

“I’m in
what
, Colin?” I said.

“Jesus, Dru. Blackmail. Get over here, would you? She’s accusing me of blackmailing her.
Us
of blackmailing her. I don’t even know how your name came up.”

My name?
For what?
“How the bloody hell am I involved with this?”

The startled look on Stevie’s face was my first clue that I’d started shouting.

“I’ll explain everything. Hurry. I need your help.”

“You need my help?”

“You’re the best at fixing problems.”

Oh, that was me, all right. Ms. Fixer. “I’ll be there. Don’t expect me to be nice about it.”

I considered throwing the phone at the wall. Why in the hell had I ever gotten involved with this man? Oh yes, that’s right, he paid me to. When Stevie and I arrived in Las Vegas, we were dead broke and I thought Stevie was going to need some kind of massive therapeutic intervention, because she was repeating herself, losing her train of thought, having nightmares. When Colin offered me ten thousand for a simple marriage ceremony, of course I said yes. As it turned out, hibernating for six months in a dinky, featureless Las Vegas box worked some kind of magic. I never did find her that therapist.

Depending on what Colin had gotten me involved with, I might be the one in desperate need of a professional head-straightener.

My sister was looking at me over the edge of her knees, her hair draping the sides of her face. She started rocking back and forth, holding herself in a tiny ball. “What happened?” she whispered.

I told her.

She closed her eyes and rocked a little harder. “What do you think he did?”

I went straight from fear into fury. I had no idea what the hell Colin had been doing, but I was supposed to figure a way out of it for him, just as I’d figured out how to revamp his show and I’d figured out a way to turn the middle of the act from the draggy bit it had been into one of the highlights by doing my mind-reading act. “Hell if I know. Again.”

Sometimes I get so damned tired of figuring things out for everyone else.

Stevie saw something on my face she didn’t like. “Dru, don’t.”

“Don’t what?” I snapped.

She tucked her chin back into her knees. “Don’t do whatever you’re thinking about doing.”

I knew what she was saying, of course. How could I not? She knew better than anyone what could happen when my temper gets the best of me.

I tried to smile. It probably came out as a fixed, evil stare. “I’m not thinking about doing anything.”

She reached out one thin, bone-white hand and put it over mine. Her hand was so much smaller than mine. And cooler. “Everything’s going to be okay, Dru. You didn’t have anything to do with what he’s talking about, so there’s not a problem, right?”

I pushed back the black bangs off her face. “Here’s what I want you to do while I’m gone. Sit tight, and watch the telly. I’ll give you a call when I’m done with Colin and reassure you that he’s still alive and in one piece, okay?”

She nodded. I kissed her forehead and grabbed my purse.

I was glad Stevie had faith that I was going to deal with Colin in a rational, careful, adult manner. Because at the moment, I was so furious I had no such faith in myself.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

IT WAS MIDNIGHT before I arrived at Colin’s apartment. I found a space a block away and considered myself lucky, because I hadn’t seen much parking. The streetlights cast little skirts of light here and there, leaving enough dark patches to make me hug the street-side of the sidewalk. I can take care of myself and I don’t seek out trouble. It finds me often enough anyway.

As I neared Colin’s apartment, I saw a light brown sedan at the end of the block, near one streetlight. A common enough car, but a light brown sedan sat outside my Las Vegas apartment every day for six weeks, Vin Behar sitting in it, watching my comings and goings morning, noon, and night. What a coincidence that a similar light brown car, down to the dent on the front bumper, was right here, by Colin’s apartment.

In my universe, there’s no such thing as a coincidence.

I walked right past Colin’s building. In the front seat of the car was the glow of a cigarette held in a beefy hand.

Vin Behar was here.

How in the hell was Vin Behar here?

As I got nearer, the passenger side window slid down. The odor of sweat and cigarettes and sour cheese wafted out of his car. “So you found him after all,” he said to me. “Congratulations.”

Vin Behar, as large and ugly as ever, was right in front of me. This was a long way from the Marrakesh Casino. Vin looked like the cop he used to be, except older and meaner and with extra gut. He gave me the creeps the first time I’d met him and my feelings hadn’t changed since then. I wanted away from him and his ragged cuticles and short-sleeved shirt that I knew had the armpit stains burned in, even if I couldn’t see them in the dark car.

“Why are you here?” I said.

“Maybe I followed you.” He grinned.

Maybe he’d planted something on my car. A GPS tracker was a couple of hundred dollars. A lot of money for a tightwad like Coffey. The boss must have been desperate to find Colin.

“Did you get a good morning’s sleep?” I asked.

He spat out the window. Lovely man. “You’re going to pay for that.”

I appeared to consider the idea. “No, don’t think so.”

Behar smiled at me, those ugly tobacco-stained teeth dark in his mouth, and he started his car. “Go see loverboy.”

I walked back to Colin’s, wondering why Behar was here. If he was supposed to bring Colin back, shouldn’t he be in Colin’s apartment, wrestling my husband into a gunny sack or something? Why was he outside Colin’s apartment, so calm?

Screw them. Screw them all,
hard
. I would go in to that stupid, tiny apartment, deal with Colin, and then leave him to his own problems. It couldn’t be much harder to get divorced than it had been to get married, could it? Hell, my mother had managed three divorces by the time I was fifteen.

At the stairs, I hesitated again. Move it, I told myself; let’s get this over with.

The thumps of my footfalls should have alerted Colin to my presence, prompted him to open the door. But the door remained closed.

I peeked in through the bars over the side window. No lights on, no one moving around.

“Colin?” I said.

After waiting a few seconds, I rapped my knuckles on the door. That apartment was so tiny he had to have heard it. But he didn’t show.

I had arrived late, but damn it, I’d told him I was coming. Colin should have been on pins and needles, ready to talk, ready to get me to help him out of whatever he’d been babbling about on the phone.

Colin did not come to the door.

When something smells wrong, do not be around. And if you need to stay and not run far, far away, at least make it seem as though you are not around. I reached in the pocket of my jacket and took out a pair of latex gloves.

After I had the gloves on, I tested the door handle. If I’d needed to, I could have jimmied open the door—hell, breathing hard probably would have done it. But the doorknob turned.

My breath caught and I stopped pushing the door. Alarms went off in my head. Of course, there were lots of possible reasons for the door being open and Colin not answering. Maybe he’d walked to the nearest Starbucks for a midnight cappuccino. Or perhaps he’d gone out for a pack of cigs for himself, taken a walk around the block, gone to do some food shopping while waiting for me.

I pushed the door open.

The smell of copper hit me first. On top of the copper lay a faint acrid odor, like the wind near a portable toilet. Urine.

Turning on the light showed me Colin on his side by the kitchenette, his back toward the door. The back of his head was a pulpy red mass, mixed with plaits of his golden hair. Red flecks decorated his white shirt; a large red stain soaked the carpet under his head. I walked in a wide circle around him until I could see his face, with his eyes wide open in surprise. He’d left a puddle of vomit on that dusty carpet. His jeans were wet, which explained the smell of urine.

Colin looked like a part, a gruesome part, of our Grand Guignol stage act, with much better visual effects and an awful, horrible smell. It seemed unreal. It had to be unreal. I had to be hallucinating. There was no way he could be dead.

I leaned down and touched the side of his throat, my gloves smooth against his skin. His body was warm, but nothing pulsed under my fingertips. It had been two hours since I talked to him. How in the hell could he be dead?

Oh my God. Colin was dead. Dead.

I’ve seen dead bodies before. Even ones whose heads have been cracked open. And the smell is horrible and the sight is horrible and neither of those is the worst part. Someone who had been alive not too long ago was silent forever. Their soul, their spirit, whatever you call it, that animates the human body and gets it through the day is gone and there is no going back.

I wasn’t even aware I was crying until a tear dripped onto Colin’s sleeve.

Come on, Col, get up and wipe yourself off. Fun and games are over.

A glint from his hand got my attention: his hand was over my bracelet. He’d been holding it. Blood had smeared on the faint etching, highlighting the words there: IN C SE F EM G NCY LL and the phone number. That phone number. The number I couldn’t call ever again. Had Colin called it? More important, had anyone answered?

I thought about taking the bracelet. I even reached for it. But it was there, under his hand, and it was going to be obvious someone had disturbed the body taking it.

Near the other hand was his cell phone.

When I stood up, I did notice the bottle of gin that had been tossed aside, its glass smeared with blood and hair and flesh. Bombay gin. My brand. I was willing to bet folding money that was the bottle I’d left at Colin’s place in Vegas. Zeus in a sidecar, my fingerprints were on that bottle.

My bracelet. My fingerprints. I had to get out of here.

Colin, what did you do? Why would someone do this?

Behar had been sitting there in his car. Waiting for me? Waiting for me to come in here and see this? Waiting for me to get caught in here? He’d driven away as soon as I’d gone up the steps.

I ran out onto the top of the steps and promised myself I would find a pay phone and I would call 911, but until then I was getting the hell out of here. And maybe I wouldn’t use the first phone I found. I could put a little space between me and this.

As it turned out, I didn’t need to find a phone at all.

The first patrol car, lights and sirens blaring, rounded the corner.

Someone had called the cops. Behar, most likely. Or, if Behar hadn’t killed Colin, whoever did kill him. And Behar had to know who that was.

I stripped off the latex gloves, shoved them in my pocket, and pulled out my cell phone to call Stevie as I walked down the steps. No use waiting until the last second to get her working on this problem.

And there was no question that I had quite the problem staring me in the face.

She answered after one ring. “Is everything okay?”

“Find me a defense lawyer.”

She stuttered a number of noises, like she wanted to ask something but couldn’t find the words. Then she managed: “We have no money.”