Tina Whittle_Tai Randall Mystery 01

by The Dangerous Edge of Things

  “They imported him from Charley Beaumont’s hometown in…” I peered closer at the tombstone. “Tennessee, apparently, not far from South Carolina-Georgia border. Found the remains in a cotton field. The Daughters of the Confederacy contacted Charley about it and here we are.”

  “I thought she was from Miami.”

  “Apparently she has these redneck credentials that she only drags up if it’s politically useful.”

  “Why is it politically useful to drag your dead great-great-grandfather all the way to Atlanta?”

  I pointed at the photograph accompanying the article, a twin of the one in Jake Whitaker’s office, looking once again upon Senator Harrison Adam’s beaming robust face.

  “This, you cannot spin wrong. Somebody’s gonna be pissed at you no matter what opinion you hold about the Confederate flag. But this…” I gestured toward the grave. It was well-manicured and tidy, with tasteful purple irises. “This is history.”

  “It’s a stunt,” Rico replied. He plopped down on a bench and examined his fingernails. “The Beaumonts dug up this man and dragged him from West Bum-Fucked to be buried here, just to get some good press so their boy will get elected.”

  “Looking like.”

  “What could this possibly have to do with the real live dead girl, the one in your brother’s driveway?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’m gonna find out.” I pulled at his elbow. “Come on. I gotta get my car back.”

  ***

  Rico drove me back to Phoenix. He put me out at the main entrance, and I shoved three squares of gum in my mouth. He gave the building the skunk eye, then rejected my invitation to come inside.

  “Just call me later. I’ll have that number looked up by then, unless it’s something tricky.” He examined me over his shades. “You quit smoking again?”

  “Yeah, a week ago. Why?”

  “Because you haven’t lit up once all morning. And you just ground out that gum wrapper with your shoe.”

  I looked down. “Oops.”

  ***

  The parking garage felt more deserted than usual. My footsteps echoed damply, and I didn’t see another person. I spotted Trey’s Ferrari right off—he’d parked it in a faraway corner and left it there, like a cowboy might tether his stallion before heading into the saloon. But no people.

  My car was exactly where I’d left it, next to the elevator. Above it, I saw the empty spot where the security camera had been until someone had smashed it, that someone most probably being Dylan Flint. No security cameras meant no security. My paranoia quotient ratcheted up a few notches.

  I quickened my pace, got out my keys. Suddenly, my little red Echo looked as sweet and welcoming and safe as a fortress.

  I unlocked the door and climbed in. I was fastening my seatbelt when I saw the flyer on the windshield. My first thought was annoyance. My second thought was surprise. And my third thought? There wasn’t one. Fear will do that, short circuit your thoughts.

  Because it wasn’t a flyer. It was a simple round target, black and white and clean as a whistle. Except that the center was a picture of me, with the middle shot clean through. Ragged edges, massive hole, probably something large caliber, something lethal.

  A bull’s eye.

  Chapter 18

  Yvonne pressed her lips so tight her nostrils flared. “You can’t see Mr. Seaver without an appointment.”

  “What if it’s urgent?”

  Her mouth remained immobile. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Just ask, okay? Let him decide.”

  Her expression never changed, but she reached for the telephone with excruciating slowness. As she spoke with Trey, I heard a voice I recognized coming down the hall—Landon. He was dressed in a very nice navy suit, the kind you’d wear to the funeral of someone important you didn’t know well, and he wasn’t alone.

  A woman huddled close. She looked about my age, and she was sobbing. Landon draped his arm around her shoulders and spoke to her in low soothing tones, all the while steering her toward a conference room. He didn’t see me, and I caught only snippets of the conversation, but I did catch one thing clearly—her name was Janie.

  Janie. Now where had I heard that before?

  Just then I heard the ding of the elevator, and Trey got out. He was dressed once again in his black suit and tie combo, and the blue flash was back in his eyes. He reached me just as Landon closed the conference room door.

  “Who was that?” I said.

  “Who was who?”

  As he spoke, I noticed movement over his shoulder. The woman came out of the conference room, still crying. I watched as she ducked down the hall to my left, toward the restrooms. Janie. Aha—my mysterious caller had warned me not to trust Janie.

  Trey eyed me with curiosity. Not yet reading me, but damn close to it.

  I slipped the folded-up target into my tote bag. “How about I meet you in your office?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “But you said—

  “I need to go to the bathroom first, okay?”

  His eyes sharpened. He was on point now, his curiosity quickening into suspicion.

  “Feminine stuff,” I said.

  I could sense the gears clicking and meshing in his brain, but he didn’t argue. It’s a rule: no man, no matter how screwed up, dares to question the phrase “feminine stuff.”

  Even if he suspects you’re being technically truthful, but deliberately evasive.

  ***

  She came out of the stall five minutes after I came in, her face white and her eyes red-rimmed. She was about my age and plump in a cheerleader way—lots of bosom, a generous behind, and curly brown hair clipped back in a high, tight ponytail. In her high school yearbook, she would have been Friendliest, maybe even Cutest. Now she smelled like cigarettes, and despite the denim skirt and matching vest and long-sleeved pink t-shirt, she looked middle-aged and worn out.

  I waited until she’d started washing her hands before I spoke. “Janie?”

  She froze, then reached for a paper towel. “Yes?”

  “I’m Tai Randolph. I’m—”

  “I know who you are. You’re the one who found my sister.” She threw the paper towel in the trash, and I noticed the silver cross, hanging from a chain around her neck, dangling over her heart. She put her hand to it, fingered it nervously. “What do you want?”

  “Can we talk? Not here, of course, and maybe not even now—”

  “Now is fine, if you know someplace I can smoke. I’m dying for a cigarette.”

  “Ummm, hang on a second.”

  I stuck my head out the restroom door. The coast was clear.

  “Follow me,” I said.

  ***

  We sat on the edge of the fountain out back, downwind from the spray. The place smelled like warm concrete and not-too-distant exhaust, but the steady hum of traffic mingled with the sound of splashing water in an oddly harmonious way. Janie tapped out a Virginia Slims and offered the pack to me.

  I shook my head firmly. “I don’t smoke.”

  “Wish I didn’t.” She fished a lighter from her skirt pocket. “Mama says it’s gonna kill me one day. ’Course she told Eliza the same thing, and look what happened.”

  I just nodded. What could you say to that?

  Janie continued. “’Course Eliza didn’t listen to much of nothing. I tried to tell her this was a bad idea.”

  “What was?”

  “Leaving South Carolina. She went from big city to big city, limping home between stops to cry and get money. Atlanta was her latest, like it was some fresh new start, like it was different. And then that damn Bulldog—”

  “Bulldog?”

  “Yeah, that’s what he called himself. Bulldog. Old boyfriend from high school. He’s the one got her into trouble back in Jackson. That’s where we’re from, even if Eliza stopped admitting it.” She frowned, took a long drag on the ciga
rette. “He couldn’t get it in his thick skull that she didn’t want anything to do with him anymore, so he tracked her down here.”

  “What kind of trouble did he get her into?”

  “High school stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  Suspicion flattened her expression, and she kept her eyes focused on the traffic just beyond the shrubbery. “It doesn’t really matter now, does it? All I know is, if there was trouble around Eliza, it would be that creep causing it.”

  “White guy, built like a fire plug, crew cut, beady little eyes? Driving a blue pick-up truck?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. I told the police about him and they said they’d get right on it, but they didn’t seem too interested, if you ask me. I don’t think they care about Eliza one bit. Just another dead girl to them.”

  I wondered how many run-ins she’d had with uninterested officials of one stripe or another. And I understood, but what I really wanted to talk about was Eliza’s life back in South Carolina, especially the trouble Bulldog had supposedly gotten her into, but I sensed that Janie was clamming up on me.

  “You know what?” I said. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that cigarette.”

  She offered the pack and I took one, holding it to my nose. Ah, the crisp warm tang of tobacco, seductive and tantalizing. God, I’d missed it.

  She held out the lighter. “Thought you didn’t smoke?”

  “I don’t.” I fired it up, went easy on the first drag. It was like sucking in the fumes of heaven. “I gave it up a week ago. But I need one right now.”

  “Why?”

  The tip of the cigarette glowed red, grayed to ash. “The thing is, my involvement with your sister’s case is more than the fact that I found her. As it turns out, my brother knew her too. And even though neither of us had anything to do with her death, the cops are still suspicious.”

  Janie nodded. “Go on.”

  “So I understand what it’s like to fight a bunch of nameless, faceless people who don’t know you, who don’t care. I’m not a cop or a reporter or a lawyer. I’m not one of these Phoenix people. All I want is information.”

  “Let me guess,” she said dryly. “You want me to give you some.”

  “I promise I’m not out to ruin her reputation. I just want to know the truth.”

  The cigarette smoke clouded her face in a gray haze. “What makes you think I care about her reputation?”

  That caught me off guard. “I guess I just assumed. If I had a sister—”

  “She wasn’t really my sister, just this brat my older brother dropped off right before he took off with some slut from out of town. Everybody tried to pretend otherwise, you know. Called her my sister. And then last year, the son of a bitch died. And now she’s dead too. So nobody has to pretend anymore, least of all me. I’m an only child now.”

  Janie ground her cigarette out on the pavement, twisting her foot with more effort than purely necessary. “Eliza started off bad, I mean, right off the bat. Spoiled. Whiny. She never worked for a thing her whole damn life. But she was the baby, and she looked just like my stupid brother, so everybody cut her slack all the time. In the meantime, I’m out busting my butt, working to put myself through school, taking care of Mama after Daddy died, ’cause it wasn’t like my brother ever helped, but did anybody ever care? No. ’Cause that’s what I always did.

  “And Eliza goes from one bad relationship to another. I tell her to stay away from the stuff, to stay away from Bulldog, but does she listen? No. She tracks down my brother, and he fills her head full of nonsense about how she’s better than us, and she believes him. She hits the road, and I don’t hear from her again until she’s gotten messed up with these Atlanta people.”

  What Atlanta people? I thought. What stuff? But I didn’t get to ask. Janie was on a roll.

  “So now she’s gone and got herself killed. And what’s Mama tell me? You better keep your sister’s name clean, she says. We don’t need no more trouble. Like it’s my fault all this crap happened in the first place.”

  Janie put her palms flat against her thighs and looked straight at me. “And she’s right, we don’t need no more trouble. And I guess it’s my job to make sure we don’t get any more. But you know that Bible story, the one where the prodigal son runs off and wastes his whole life and then when he comes back, his father throws this big damn party for him while the good son, the one who did stick around, who did do what he was supposed to do, that son gets the shaft. You know that story?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I know that story.”

  She shook her head. The tears were back again. “I always hated that story.”

  Then she wiped her eyes. Her voice hadn’t changed the whole time—it was still rock steady. “And now you want a story too, and I just don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Tell me you’ll help me find out what happened.” I hesitated. “Look, if there’s dirt, it’s gonna come out, and the cops don’t care one way or the other. But I do care, and if you’ll help me, maybe I can find something under the dirt that can spare your family—and my family too—any further grief.”

  She sent this look my way. “Uh huh. Like you care about me. Like you’re not just saying that to get what you want.”

  I started to protest. “I didn’t—”

  She waved me quiet. “Oh, don’t say you didn’t mean it. Of course you did. But you know what? Maybe you’re right.”

  She stood, wrapped her arms around her waist. “Let me think about it. I’ll let you know tomorrow.” She looked off toward the horizon, like she was trying to glimpse South Carolina there. “I just don’t want any of this getting back to Jackson. That’s my home. I don’t deserve to have to deal with it there. I’ve dealt with enough already.”

  I stood too. “Here’s my number,” I said, scribbling on a scrap of paper I found in my pocket. “I’ll do my best, I promise.

  She examined my face. “I guess you will.” She jabbed her chin toward the building. “I gotta get back in there.”

  “Can I ask you one more question?”

  “What?”

  “This Bulldog person. What’s his real name?”

  She told me. I started to write it on my hand, then hesitated..

  “Could you spell that middle part?”

  ***

  Rico called as I made my way back to the lobby. “Got your phone number—it’s a payphone on Cheshire Bridge Road. Looks like it’s next door to a strip club.”

  No surprise there—that area was nothing but naked dancing and sex toy emporiums. “Another question—how hard would it be for a civilian to get juvie info?”

  “You mean stuff that’s been sealed? Depends. You got a Social?”

  “No.”

  “Then it gets trickier, but I’ll try. What’s the name?”

  I told him.

  “Spell that middle part,” he said.

  Chapter 19

  Trey looked up from his paperwork at my knock. I sat in his client chair, facing him, my tote bag in my lap. I realized I was clutching it like a life preserver and released my grip. Trey waited, politely.

  “You wanted to see me,” he finally said.

  “Yes.”

  He waited some more. This was the part where I gave up the goods and threw the whole mess in his lap—the phone call at midnight, the target on my car, the grave in the cemetery, the sister in the courtyard—and let him sort it out. It was what he did. His resumé said so.

  So why wasn’t it coming out of my mouth? I trusted him, didn’t I? I’d said as much to Garrity last night. But then I’d gone snooping, and then I’d found that article, the thing that Garrity wasn’t telling me…

  Trey was patient. He picked up a pen and held it poised over a blank yellow pad. The office was silent.

  I clutched my bag tighter. “There’s something—”

  A knock interrupted me. A woman stood in the doorway, arms folded. “Tai Randolph,” she said. “
They told me you were here.”

  I turned to face her. She was tall and rectangular, like the prow of a dragon ship, an effect intensified by ice-gray eyes and a platinum chignon. Her voice reverberated deep and womanly, and she wore a black pantsuit cut like one of Trey’s. Her nails were a flamboyant extravagance, however, as pink as frozen raspberries.

  Trey stood. “Marisa. I wasn’t expecting you until later.”

  So this was my mysterious benefactor. Up close, she was all artifice—the porcelain skin the result of an expert make-up job, the hair a shimmering monotone, the eye color too perfect to be anything but contacts.

  She gestured my way with a manila folder. “Your brother has mentioned that you were interested in a job here, as one of our research assistants.”

  I noticed my name typed on the label. My dossier, I guessed. “Eric’s sweet. But I’ve got a job.”

  “The gun shop, yes. He mentioned that. We were hoping you would change your mind.”

  She tossed the folder in Trey’s inbox, and he promptly filed it in one of his meticulous drawers. Probably under T for Trouble. Cross-indexed under P for Problem.

  “Eric is a fine employee,” she continued. “We’re very happy to have him here at Phoenix.”

  “Eric is something else, that’s for sure.”

  She smiled without showing her teeth. “I hope he has a long and successful career with us. I really do.”

  I didn’t miss the implication. Apparently the only thing standing in my brother’s way was me, which meant that for his sake, I’d better behave.

  She turned to Trey. “I need to see you when you’re done.”

  “Certainly.”

  “With a full report.”

  “Of course.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder, casually, like a friend might. His expression didn’t soften. They were bookends, these two, equally civilized, equally dangerous. Marisa might sport a French manicure, but she could kill too, without breaking a nail or smearing her lipstick. For all I knew, she was the one sticking threatening notes on my car—it would suit her purposes if I stayed still and scared.