Kissing in Action

by Camilla Chafer

"You do?"

  "Yup. It's about Mom and Dad's potluck dinner this Friday, and whether Traci is going to make her peach cobbler or not. The answer is yes."

  Obviously, that wasn't why I was calling, but it was good news. My mouth watered at the thought of the hot peaches. "Will she make enough that I can have two helpings?"

  "Most likely, since you're eating for... Oh, hey, what are you bringing?"

  That had me stumped, especially since I didn't recall a word about any potluck dinner. "Umm..."

  "You forgot, didn't you?"

  "No!"

  "You did!"

  "I might have," I said, struggling to recall an invitation and drawing a blank. "Don't tell Mom."

  "What if I tell Dad?"

  "What if I tell Traci you sent me to buy her anniversary gift because you were too busy handling a suspect?"

  "Okay, you win. Dinner is at seven. No need to thank me for saving your bacon with the parents."

  "Thanks. Actually, since we're shooting the breeze, I saw your guys following Lauren Young."

  "Shit. I knew I shouldn't have put those doofs on surveillance."

  "Yeah, your bad. Why are you having Lauren followed?"

  "She's my chief suspect in Katya Markova's murder!"

  "How come?" I asked, my heart sinking. It was bad enough that I was heavily suspicious of Lauren, but worse that Garrett could actually arrest her.

  "Let me go out on a limb here and say you saw my guys following her because you're also following her..."

  "Yeah, but your guys didn't see me!"

  "It's not a competition!" Garrett sighed. "You're also following her because she's your number one suspect too."

  "Yeah, but I want to prove she didn't do it."

  "I want to prove she did."

  "Which do you think the FBI want to prove?"

  "They're following her too? Jeez!"

  "You didn't know?"

  "I do now. We can't have three teams following her. She'll get wise."

  "You want to compare notes?"

  "Yes, but I don't have a report from my guys yet. What do you know?"

  "I know I have access you guys don't. I have Lauren's schedule and I can get inside the warehouse where they're shooting their video, and the hotel, too."

  "My guys just flash their badges. It's like a super cool, all-access pass," Garrett teased.

  "Again, with the competition?!" I harrumphed my dissatisfaction with skirting around our mutual knowledge. "Okay, so far, Lauren hasn't done anything out of the ordinary. She's following her schedule. I haven't seen her do a single suspicious thing, but I have two problems that I need answers to."

  "Is one her alibi at the time of Katya's murder?" Garret guessed.

  "Correct."

  "She told me she was taking a nap. Do you believe that?"

  "Yes and no. It's a crappy excuse so it doesn't sound made up, but without someone witnessing her, in reality, she could have been anywhere."

  "My money is on her being down the hall, holding a knife. What's the other thing?"

  "I'm trying to find a guy called Michael. He was the secret Lauren was trying to keep concealed when Amelia was blackmailing them."

  "What's the connection to Lauren?"

  "I don't know."

  "What do you know about him? I can run him through a few databases, see if we get any hits."

  "I only have his first name, so that's a no-go. Actually, I don't know anything about him at all. I hoped he might have come up in your investigation?"

  "I've got the file on my desk, and I don't see anything. No close relatives called Michael. No husband. No boyfriend, past or present."

  "Those are my findings too."

  "I can't promise anything, but I'll look into it."

  "Thanks."

  "About the FBI..."

  "I'll call Maddox," I decided. "Maybe we can set up a meeting and share resources?"

  "They're already supposed to be sharing with MPD. We had a deal."

  "You think he'll share with me? You are."

  "Not officially, and you may as well try. No need to tell him I'm pissed at his surveillance team. I'll let him know."

  I hung up after making a note in my phone's calendar about the family dinner. A cursory glance through my messages revealed my parents hadn't sent me a text or an email. I could only assume someone must have told me and I promptly forgot. At least, now I had the opportunity to save the day, so long as I could either bake something, or buy something and put it in a dish, and pretend I made it. The latter was the lazy option, but participating in a daily surveillance slot hardly allowed time for baking. I doodled Cookies? on my desk pad and grabbed the phone again, this time, dialing Maddox.

  "Hey, this is a nice surprise. Have you had lunch?"

  My stomach clenched with sudden hunger. "No. I missed it."

  "You should never miss lunch."

  "I was busy watching your guys watching Lauren Young."

  "Oh, crap. Were they that obvious?"

  I grinned, enjoying Maddox's squirming. Truthfully, I'd only spotted one team watching Lauren, but it was fun to tell both Garrett and Maddox that it was their respective team that I caught. "Yeah. Can I pick your brains?"

  "Sure. Meet me at the cafe on Century near my office in twenty minutes?"

  "On my way."

  Maddox was waiting at the counter by the time I walked the few blocks to the cafe. I slid onto the stool next to him. "Coffee?" he asked, leaning over to kiss my cheek in a friendly way.

  "Please. Did you order?"

  "No, thought I'd wait for you." He raised a hand, notifying the waitress to walk over. She poured me a coffee and refreshed Maddox's before telling us the day's specials.

  "I'll take a salt beef sandwich and..." He looked across to me.

  "Same for me," I said.

  "So you wanted to pick my brains?"

  "Yeah, about the case. Seems we have three teams watching Lauren."

  "Sounds like two too many."

  "That's what I figured."

  "I can't call off my team."

  "I'm not calling off mine."

  "Your team is you!"

  "Me and other people!"

  "Think we can persuade MPD?"

  I shook my head. "Probably not."

  "I could pull rank. This is officially an FBI case."

  "Do you want to piss my brother off?"

  "No, I remember last time, and it wasn't pretty." We both thought back to the awful time my brothers gave Maddox when we all thought he was cheating on me while working undercover. Turns out, a large segment of MPD were not happy about the events, but things cooled down pretty quickly and returned to normal. I figured my brothers had something to do with settling the tension in the atmosphere once it turned out things weren't as I first thought. It was a huge shame and I tried not to think about it. I was just glad that Maddox and I could be friends now, even if there was a lingering attraction that we both did our best to ignore. Or, at least, I did. Maddox, I reminded myself, had recently booked a romantic trip for two. "What's on your mind?"

  "Just the case," I lied quickly as I took a sip of the coffee. It was hot and nutty so I added a couple of sugars to sweeten it.

  "How can I help?"

  "I'm trying to find a guy called Michael. He's connected to Lauren somehow, but I don't know how."

  "He hasn't come up during my investigation."

  "That's what Garrett said."

  "How did you get his name?"

  "Michael was the threat used against Lauren in the blackmail plot."

  "Ah. The one orchestrated by Amelia?"

  "Yeah."

  "Sounds like she should be the one you talk to."

  "I plan on it. I just haven't had chance yet."

  "There could be a reason you can't find him."

  I shook my head as I held back a laugh. "I'm counting on it!"

  "No, I mean, he could be our hit man."

  For a moment, all I could do was stare. "Y
ou think Lauren hired a hit man to get rid of Katya?"

  Maddox shrugged. "Could be. Let's look at the facts as Lauren knew them a few days ago. The band hated each other. She was being blackmailed by someone who knew about her mystery guy. She puts two and two together, gets the wrong number and figures it's Katya behind the blackmail, since she's always so nasty. To protect her guy, Lauren and this Michael guy get together and plan to kill Katya. They use the secret passage to access Katya's room, unseen, and she's later found stabbed to death. He exits the same way and leaves via the service elevator, simply walking out of the hotel, never to return, and Lauren waits in Amelia's suite, pretending she took a nap."

  "How do they access the service elevator?" I asked, searching for flaws in Maddox's hypothesis.

  "One of them steals an employee pass or keycard?"

  "Could be. Did you check hotel records for access to the elevator?"

  "Yes, but it services all floors, so there's too many people to eliminate."

  "Fingerprints in the service passage?"

  "Still some unknowns. Some I've matched to hotel employees, and they've been cleared."

  "What about Lauren's alibi? If she planned a hit, wouldn't she give herself a rock solid alibi?" I asked, stating the most obvious problem with his theory.

  "Yeah, I'm stuck on that too." We waited while the waitress placed our sandwiches in front of us. I took a large, hungry bite, sinking my teeth into soft bread, tangy pickle, and delicious salt beef.

  "If you accessed her finances, perhaps you could find a payment to this Michael guy?" I suggested.

  "If they're in on it together, it's unlikely she would pay him; and definitely, not by bank transfer or check."

  "If they've been together a long time, she could have made other payments to him? Or him to her? Maybe they went on vacation and he bank transferred his share?"

  "Why would she accept that? She's rich."

  "I don't think B4U are that rich. I mean, they make a lot of money, but I think the band are salaried."

  "I'll look into it. Maybe see if she made any payments to menswear shops, or had gifts shipped to another address that we could match to him."

  "Can you..."

  "Keep you in the loop? Sure. And you'll give me a heads up after you've spoken to Amelia? It would be good to have something extra to go on when I dig into this further. Michael is a common name, you know."

  "I'll let you know what I find out."

  "You hear about that story that got leaked about Shelley?"

  "Yeah."

  "Some people are dumb," laughed Maddox as he stuffed the last of his sandwich into his mouth.

  I swallowed. "Er, yeah."

  "Who tells reporters that kind of stuff?"

  "No idea," I lied. "Who knows how reporters get that stuff?"

  Maddox lifted his wrist, and checked his watch. "I have a meeting to get to. Good to catch up. We should do this again, but for longer. Want to get dinner some time?" He dropped a few dollars on the table next to the receipt the waitress set down a moment ago. I noticed he covered the whole receipt.

  "Sure, that would be nice. I have surveillance for who knows how long, and a family dinner on Friday, but maybe after that?"

  "I'm out of town this weekend. Maybe, next week? I'll give you a call." Maddox pecked another kiss on my cheek, grabbed his jacket, and rushed out, leaving me with the remains of my sandwich and wondering not so much about Lauren's mystery man, but Maddox's mystery woman. Our friendship seemed to be edging out of the fledgling stage and back to an easy repartee, but it clearly hadn't yet gotten to the personal discussion point. He never asked me about Solomon. I never asked him about dating. It just wasn't something we were comfortable with. At least, not in the same way I could ask any other guy buddy. Now that I thought about it, did I discuss Maddox with anyone but Lily? Solomon never asked me about him, although I was sure he knew we met up from time to time, and I didn't usually bring up our meetings in conversation.

  "Being an adult is weird," I muttered, as I pushed my plate away and swallowed the last of my coffee.

  "Tell me about it," said the waitress, reaching for the cash Maddox left and pocketing it.

  We laughed, I thanked her and grabbed my jacket, ready to hail a cab for the hotel, and wishing I hadn't agreed to Lily picking me up in her car this morning. That gave me no other choice but to walk or take cabs. I could have gotten the bus, but Montgomery's public transit system wasn't the best, and I didn't have the time to take multiple buses across town to the hotel.

  Ten long minutes, and one expense receipt later, the cab tossed me out in front of the hotel. I entered through the main entrance, the paparazzi ignoring me, thankfully, and crossed the lobby to the elevators. Solomon's security waited by the elevator to the penthouse suites and they admitted me without question.

  Large and Larger waited in their usual seated positions in the corridor. "Hey," I said brightly as I stepped out. "I'm looking for Amelia." Large inclined his head to the right, which I took to mean she was in Joe's suite. I wondered if she moved in there permanently now that their marriage was out in the open. Fortunately, the door was ajar so I figured I wasn't interrupting anything that would cause me to want to bleach my eyes. All the same, I knocked loudly as I entered.

  Amelia was alone, reading a magazine. Her wig was firmly in place which was a shame because I thought the short cut suited her better.

  "How did the shooting go?" I asked.

  She looked up. "We got the first ten seconds," she told me.

  "But you were there for hours!"

  "Only the last two hours were filmed. Didn't I see you there? You and the blonde chick?"

  "Yeah, we stopped by."

  "You should come by later too, when we film the club scene. It's got a big dance number."

  "I'd like that; thanks. Are you all finished for now? When do you have to be back?"

  "Not until eight. Lauren and Shelley are filming their solo scenes now. I left early to take a break."

  A toilet flushed in the next room and I looked up, expecting to see Joe. Instead, Don stepped out. "Hey, the private detective!" he said, looking unhappy. "Are you interrogating Amelia? Amelia, do you want me to call someone? Joe?"

  "No, it's cool," Amelia replied as Don dropped onto the armchair and stretched his legs. She glanced at me again, frowning. "Unless you are here to interrogate me?"

  "No, not at all. Can I sit?" I took the adjacent armchair when she nodded, and slid off my jacket, folding it over the arm. "Actually, I wanted to ask you something about the blackmail?"

  Amelia sighed. "Didn't we wrap that all up? I returned the money and apologized."

  "That's great. I'm glad you did, but it's about..." I looked at Don, who was studying his phone and pretending not to listen. "Can we talk privately?"

  "Don knows everything. You don't have to worry about him."

  "Are you sure?" I glanced over at him and he looked up, giving me a sharp nod.

  "Yeah, we've been friends since the tour started. We just clicked, right, Don?" She waited while he agreed, then continued, "Look I'm over all that blackmail crap. I won't do it again."

  "That's okay. I just need to know how you knew about everyone's secrets?"

  "We've been together years. I overheard stuff, or sometimes the girls drank too much and blabbed it out. I just paid attention."

  "That's how you knew about Katya's past in Russia?"

  "No, that came from a reporter."

  "The reporter approached you?"

  "No, he went to Joe with a big file about Katya. He had photos and certificates, all kinds of stuff, and not just from Russia, but her life here too. He even had a video of her fancy, private school music recital. She didn't learn to play piano by ear like she told everyone in her big rags-to-riches sob story. Her parents paid a concert pianist to teach her."

  "You saw the file?"

  "Yeah, I read it. Joe doesn't know."

  "What happened to the file after that?"
/>
  "I don't know. I never asked. I assumed Joe paid off the reporter because the story never broke. Then Shelley ran into some PR girl who claimed to know Katya from way back. Honestly, I'm surprised it hasn't come out now that she's dead; but all the obituaries keep focusing on this terrible, sad life she was supposed to have had. If only they could have seen her in her prim, little, school uniform, or riding her twenty thousand-dollar pony."

  "She really had everyone sucked in," said Don. "We all believed her story. I think even Katya believed it sometimes."

  "None of you had any reason not to," I told them. "People lie so easily."

  "Yeah, I bet you can see through them all?" Don put down his phone, as our conversation piqued his interest.

  "Sometimes. Sometimes, it takes a while. None of you should feel bad about getting sucked in. Was Katya a friend of yours, Don?"

  "I thought so, at first. The dancers, me, we all really clicked with B4U. I thought Katya and I clicked, but she was a nasty piece of work. She must have heard about all the awful things she did to people. If Lauren killed her... well, I'm not surprised," he said.

  "No one deserved to die from a knife in her back," said Amelia, but she shrugged so I figured she wasn't all that devastated.

  "How did you know Shelley's secret?" I asked, directing the conversation back to my main concern.

  "She got really super drunk one night and it just came out." Amelia giggled. "Literally."

  "And obviously you know your own secret, but what about Lauren?"

  "Look, I don't know why you're asking all this, but really, I'm over it. I don't want to talk about it anymore."

  "I just need to know what you know about..."

  "I said, I'm over it, okay? I don't want to talk about it anymore. I'm past all that. Ask Lauren. It's her deal." Amelia fixed me with a furious look. With her pursed lips and narrowed eyes, I figured I only had seconds before she shut down completely. Having Don back her up didn't help.

  "Can I use your bathroom?" I asked, figuring I'd give us both a break and try again in another couple of minutes.

  "Sure, it's over there." Amelia flashed a hand at the furthest door.

  "Thanks." I walked over, shutting the bathroom door behind me. It was nice, far bigger than my bedroom, and beautifully appointed with marble countertops and a sink faucet that looked like it cost more than my whole bathroom. Since I didn't really need to be there, I opened the cabinet doors below the sink and took a look. There wasn't anything personal amongst the spare towels and extra toilet rolls, so I shut the doors and walked over to the shower cubicle. There were a couple of shower gels in the cubicle; his and hers. Besides that, nothing.