by R. J. Jagger
“I understand.”
“Without even having to work at it,” she added.
“I get the picture.”
“In fact, I already have three or four things I could say, but I’m not going to.”
“Thanks. You’re too nice. Salter’s a businessman at heart,” Teffinger said. “He spent about two seconds concerned about Ripley being dead and spent the rest of the time worried that clients would find out that one of the firm’s lawyers was a John. He already knew about Ripley’s indiscretions, though, and wasn’t pleased about it.”
The dead lawyer clearly had something to do with Whitney White’s murder. It was coincidental enough that the woman died from being stabbed with something through the left eye and that Ripley had a voodoo doll in his dresser drawer with the same injury. Add to that the fact that they both worked for Radcliffe & Snow, and no doubt knew each other, and the connection was inescapable.
Was Ripley the one who killed her?
Teffinger looked at Sydney.
“Do me a favor,” he said. “Call the coroner and be sure he checks to see if our dead lawyer had any saliva on his dick. I want to know if he was really getting a BJ or whether the whole thing was just staged to make it look that way.”
“I noticed something,” she said.
“What?”
“The more coffee you drink, the more things you think of for me to do.”
Thirty minutes later, Teffinger walked into Wong’s on Court Street, and spotted Geneva Vellone in a corner booth. Geneva was the radio half of the Vellone sisters, a 27-year-old brunette beauty who had an insanely popular morning show on FM 104 called Hot Talk.
Teffinger listened to it a few times and found it a little too over-the-top for his taste.
She was the younger sister of Matt Vellone, Teffinger’s best friend in high school. Being six years his junior, he hardly noticed Geneva back then. Four or five years ago, they turned into flirting buddies, and occasionally got each other drunk.
Teffinger was surprised to see that Geneva wasn’t alone. She had a woman with her; and not just any woman, a black woman with a Polynesian mix, or vice versa, a combination that worked whatever it was. Her hair was long, panther-black and perfectly straight. Her skin was smooth and golden-brown. She wore black heels, a short white dress and a baby-blue, sleeveless blouse.
No wedding ring.
She looked to be about twenty-five.
He swallowed as he crossed the room, already in lust.
“Nick,” Geneva said, spotting him. She stood up, gave him a big chest-press hug, motioned him into the booth and then scooted in next to him. “This is Jessie-Rae Oceana.”
Teffinger looked into the woman’s eyes and knew he had to have her.
All of her.
Her mind.
Her body.
Her soul.
Her passion.
Her ups.
Her downs.
All of it.
Jessie-Rae studied Teffinger for a second, then turned to Geneva and said, “I’ll be damned. I thought you were exaggerating.”
Geneva chuckled.
Then she told Teffinger, “Jessie-Rae’s going to be a co-host with me on Hot Talk, starting tomorrow morning. She’s coming from a sister station in Cincinnati.”
Teffinger looked deep into the woman’s eyes and said, “Cincinnati, huh? I’m going to tell you something, and you’re probably not going to believe it, but it’s absolutely, one hundred percent true.”
She put an intrigued look on her face.
“And what’s that?”
He leaned across the table.
As if it was so important that he needed to whisper.
She leaned in and met him halfway.
Almost close enough to kiss.
Teffinger said, “About ten years ago, I knew a guy, who had a brother, who had a friend, who knew how to spell Cincinnati.”
She looked astonished.
“No way.”
Teffinger nodded.
“True story,” he said. “In fact, the guy could spell Cincinnati so good, that he could even do it with two T’s.”
“The elite version,” she said.
“He even did it with three T’s once,” Teffinger said. “But that turned out to be a one-shot deal. It just about killed him. He was never able to do it again.”
“A triple,” she said. “I’d heard rumors about someone doing that but always thought it was a myth.”
8
M ost people have a misconception that any author who has a book published is automatically raking in the big bucks, shopping for a house in a gated community and trading their Ford in for a Ferrari. The reality is that most debut authors, like Yardley Sage, get an upfront advance of $15,000 or less. Compared against the number of hours spent writing the manuscript, the pay was about the same as behind the McDonald’s counter. With her law practice in remission and her writing hours increasing, Yardley didn’t exactly have a pot full of gold coins to skip across the water.
Her savings account hadn’t been that big to start with and was now dangerously low.
In February, she moved from her apartment into the back of her law office; illegal but cost effective. In April, an upstairs tenant got careless with a cigarette and burned the building bad enough to make it uninhabitable. Luckily, Yardley’s files didn’t get destroyed. John Anderson, a former client from the old R&S days, offered to let her live on his sailboat for the summer while he toured Europe. She accepted, moved her furniture into a storage unit in Arvada, and turned the inside of her 4Runner into a file room for her cases.
She was set for the next three or four months.
Then it would be time to make some decisions.
Things were a lot different now than eighteen months ago, when she was an upper-level associate at Radcliffe & Snow, Denver’s largest law firm.
Still, she wouldn’t go back.
Ever.
Screw that place.
After her new client left mid-morning, Yardley fired up her laptop and Googled Lindsay Vail, the woman who got abducted Saturday night, to see if she and Aspen Asher had anything in common.
Something that might help identify the mystery man tailing Aspen.
Lindsay Vail, it turned out, designed and maintained websites.
She owned a small Colorado company called Web Magic, Inc. The address for the company turned out to be the same as the woman’s home address, on Marion Street in Denver. Yardley knew the neighborhood.
Small brick bungalows.
Crowded street parking.
City living.
Barking dogs.
Other than those few facts, cyberspace didn’t have much to say about Lindsay Vail.
Yardley Googled Julie Pratt, the woman who got stabbed in the back at Lindsay Vail’s house Saturday night. Google never heard of the woman.
Neither did Yahoo.
Now what?
Mid-afternoon, Yardley got in the 4Runner, pointed the front end towards Denver, and punched the radio buttons until she landed on Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe.” A half hour later she pulled into a parking space on the street two blocks down from Lindsay Vail’s house. She doubled back on foot under a sweltering Colorado sky.
It had to be every bit of ninety-five.
Hot.
Even in shorts and a T-shirt.
Yellow CSI tape stretched around the perimeter of the yard.
The front door was closed.
No cars were in the driveway.
Yardley hoped to find someone there.
Investigating.
Someone she could innocently pump for information.
She stood on the sidewalk, staring at the house, wondering what to do next. She looked around to see if any neighbors were hanging around to talk to.
None were.
Suddenly a white Tundra pickup swung into the driveway and two people stepped out, a tall attractive man and an athletic African American woman.
They looked like detectives.
Yardley nonchalantly walked over and said, “Did you catch the guy yet?”
The man turned.
He had one blue eye and one green one.
Very sexy.
“Not yet,” he said.
“What’s his name?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Why is he a suspect?”
The man studied her.
“Are you a reporter?” he asked.
“No.”
“So who are you?”
“I’m Yardley.”
“Well, Yardley,” the man said, “the guy’s a suspect because he’d been following one of the victims around. But that’s between you and me. Don’t spread it around.”
“Following which one?”
“The one who lived here,” he said.
“Lindsay Vail?”
The man nodded. “Do you know her?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know she lived here?” he asked.
“No reason.”
“Are you a neighbor?”
“No.”
The man cocked his head and said, “You know something? I’ve been at this detective game a long time and over the years I’ve developed sort of a sixth sense about knowing when someone knows something that might help me. Right now, I’m getting that feeling from you. So, if I’m right, and you know something, I’d love to hear it.”
Yardley stood there.
Not knowing what to say.
“We’re hoping that Lindsay Vail is still alive,” the man added. “The more I know, the better chance she has.” Yardley wanted to blurt out the fact that he was hunting the wrong man, but couldn’t, not without betraying the confidences of her client.
So she turned and walked away.
Three steps later she stopped and twisted around. The man hadn’t moved a muscle.
“I hope you catch him,” she said.
She turned again, then felt something on her shoulder.
A hand.
When she twisted, the man was there. He handed her a business card. “My name’s Nick Teffinger and that’s my card,” he said. “If you think of anything, call me day or night.”
Something in the background caught Yardley’s eye.
The black woman.
She had a cell phone out.
Yardley wasn’t sure but it looked like the woman was using it to take her picture.
9
D alton Wrey had never bound a woman before and was surprised to find that the sight of Lindsay Vail stretched on the rack put a little tingle in his pants. He blindfolded her with three wraps of a long black cloth. After she swore that she couldn’t see a thing and he convinced himself that she wasn’t lying, he removed his ski mask.
Then he studied his captive.
Not in a hurry.
Because she still wore jeans, her upper body seemed all the more naked. He ran a finger gently across her lips. Then it was time to get down to business.
From the trunk of the car, he retrieved a black suitcase, brought it inside, pulled out tattoo equipment and got set up. Before he started he said, “I’m going to put a tattoo on your stomach.”
“No!”
“It’ll probably take about two hours,” he said. “If it gets to be too much, and you need to take a break, just let me know.”
He cleaned the area then applied the pattern to the left of her belly button.
“Okay, here we go.”
10
T effinger had too many things going on in his life to become obsessed with a woman, but obsession wasn’t something that got planned, or pushed aside, or penciled in for a more convenient day. Obsession was more like getting hit in the face with a rock.
There it was.
All of a sudden.
Wham.
Now deal with it.
Right now.
This second.
So he dealt with it by making plans to see Jessie-Rae Oceana this evening. Then he pushed her as far to the back of his mind as he could. Ryan Ripley got pushed there too. And, as much as he wanted to dust off the Whitney White case and find out how she was connected to the voodoo doll, he pushed her back as well.
Lindsay Vail was the one he needed to concentrate on, and he brought her to the forefront.
The case had started off better than any other he’d had in years. Neighbors saw Julie Pratt pull into Lindsay Vail’s driveway, knock on the front door, and then end up running down the street moments later. They saw a man wearing a ski mask stab her twice in the back; the same man who then threw Lindsay Vail’s limp body into the trunk of a car moments later.
The conclusion was inescapable.
The target had been Lindsay Vail.
The other woman, Julie Pratt, interrupted things and paid for it.
Lindsay Vail was probably still alive.
Otherwise, the guy would have just left her in the house.
Unfortunately, he wore the mask.
Teffinger was able to convince every member of the homicide unit to come in Sunday and work the case. By the end of the day, they had recreated Lindsay Vail’s steps over the last three days. They located security cameras that shined on where she had been.
Those cameras showed a man following her.
At three separate locations.
At three separate times.
A pirate.
From the videotapes, they lifted still photos that best showed the man’s face. They got the clearest photo on every local news station Sunday night. They also got it in this morning’s Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post. All they needed now was for someone to recognize him and call with a name, but that hadn’t happened, not this morning, not over the lunch hour and not this afternoon.
Mid-afternoon, Teffinger swung by Sydney’s desk and said, “You want to take a ride?”
“Where?”
“To Lindsay Vail’s place.”
“Why? What’s there?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I need to go.”
“Someone will call, Nick,” she said. “Just relax.”
“Well, no one has yet,” he said. “So I’m going to Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I’m going to Lindsay Vail’s place to figure it out.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I better come with you,” she said. “Otherwise you’re going to get into trouble. I can already tell.”
On the drive over, Teffinger punched the radio buttons until he landed on “Black Velvet.” Then he said, “I met a woman.”
“Here we go—”
“She’s going to be a co-host on Hot Talk with Geneva Vellone,” he said.
“She sounds high maintenance,” Sydney said.
“Actually, she’s very down to earth.”
“Yeah, well, don’t be surprised if you turn out to be a maintenance man.”
“No problem,” Teffinger said. “I already have my wrench ready.”
“When have you not?”
“Brown Eyed Girl” came on the radio just as they pulled into Lindsay Vail’s driveway. An attractive, long-haired blond stood in front of the house. She asked Teffinger a bunch of questions and he motioned for Sydney to take her picture.
Sydney did.
Afterwards Teffinger said, “That woman knows something about the case.”
“You think?”
He nodded.
“Email her picture to me later. Her name’s Yardley.”
Inside the house, they went through the victim’s Rolodex, computer, cell phone and desk, and made a list of every name, both male and female, they could find, together with the person’s address and phone number when available. The plan was to contact every single person, show them the picture of the pirate, and see if they knew who he was.
The list was long.
Most of the names appeared to be clients or client-related.
“Running all th
ese people to ground is going to take forever,” Sydney said.
Teffinger wrinkled his brow.
“Let’s make the clients second priority,” he said. “I don’t think anyone killed her because she messed up their web site.”
They were just about to leave when Teffinger had a brainstorm. “You know what I just realized? We haven’t run across any photo albums or pictures.”
“You’re right.”
“Everyone has pictures,” he said.
They searched the nooks and crannies that they hadn’t already been through and found a shoebox on a shelf in the bedroom closet.
“Bingo.”
The box was filled to the top with loose photographs.
They went through them.
Fast.
Teffinger could feel the pirate’s picture in there somewhere and whistled “Brown Eyed Girl.”
But he was wrong.
It wasn’t there, and he stopped whistling.
11
M onday night, after dark, Yardley sat in the passenger seat of Samantha Dent’s black Honda Accord, three doors down from Aspen’s house—on a stakeout. A black storm fell out of an even blacker sky.
They waited for the mystery man to drive by to see if Aspen Asher—the bait—was home.
So far he hadn’t.
Every pair of headlights that came down the street turned innocently into a driveway.
Samantha turned out to be just as wild as Aspen portrayed her, the Yang part of the Ying, seriously into clubbing. She had no problem telling Yardley that she worked for an escort service, made a minimum three grand a week, and mastered the fine art of deep-throat by age nineteen. She got kinky at times, but only with existing customers who had developed a record of being trustworthy; and only for big bucks. For them, she would be a submissive or a dominant for bondage, spanking, wrestling, face-sitting, cum control and whatever else they wanted, within reason.
She was twenty-three, with black stylish hair, a tight body and a hot face.
Everything about her was built for sex, especially her lips; there was something about those lips.
