Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required

by Jennifer Apodaca

  “Like what?” I made a left turn onto Grand, then a right onto Lincoln. We were heading down toward the lake. Near the bottom of Lincoln, before Riverside Drive, we would take another left into Hugh’s tract. Angel had a few brief minutes to fill me in. “What would Hugh do?”

  Ali stuck her head over Angel’s shoulder and Angel petted her. “I don’t know. My guess would be that his intention was to undo any promotion I did for Tempt-an-Angel Lingerie.”

  “Did he know you were going to Daystar to promote your lingerie?” Did Hugh even know that Angel had a deal with the Silky Men?

  “He knew. I told him that I didn’t have time for his accusations because I had to leave to go to Daystar. Unlike him, I take care of my business and my family.”

  Damn. I knew where this was going. Angel was a smart and independent woman, but like all people, she had needs. She had been married to Hugh for years before finally leaving him. That old need to have him care had surged and . . . “You told him about your mom.”

  Ali licked Angel’s neck, then put her head back on her shoulder. Angel reached across with her right hand to stroke Ali’s head. “I told him. He screamed at me that I was a ballbuster. Said I drove my dad away, and that I drove him into the arms of Brandi and he wasn’t going to let me destroy that, too.”

  “Oh, Angel.” Now I understood her reaction when Linda Simpkins had commented that she’d seen Angel’s ex-husband at Daystar the Friday night before. Hugh, the sniveling rodent, had driven a sharp blade into Angel’s raw wound. God, the thing was, I could see Hugh doing exactly what Angel said—going to Daystar to try to destroy her efforts to get more clients. The man had no finesse, so to him that would seem like a good plan.

  But was that really what had he had ended up doing? “So we need to find out exactly how Mitch knew so much about us—enough to know that telling you he saw a man matching Hugh’s description running from your house would be pushing your run-right-home button.” We would find out soon enough. I turned left onto Hugh’s street, but stopped the Jeep a few houses away from Hugh and Brandi’s place. I looked over at Angel. My beautiful, smart, sexy, and practically fearless best friend was struggling to stay composed. Her face was drawn tight, and her right hand stroked Ali’s head gently. “Now I wish I’d brought Gabe. He’d kick the shit out of Hugh,” I said.

  Her mouth twitched. “That’d be fun. We should save that for a better time. Maybe get some popcorn and a camcorder.”

  I laughed, then got serious. “Tell me everything that happened last night when you came over here.”

  Angel shifted around in her seat to face me. “I parked right across the street from Hugh’s house. It took him about fifteen minutes before he spotted me. He came out of the house and strolled across the street. I got out of my car and demanded to know what he was doing at the casino Friday night.”

  I tapped my finger on the steering wheel. “He told Gabe and me that he was just there drinking ’cause Brandi was gone.”

  Angel nodded. “He tried to tell me that, but I told him that everyone in town knew Brandi had left him because he’s a loser.”

  I stopped tapping my finger and grabbed her arm. “What did he do?”

  “Predictably, he said I was the loser and that he was gonna show me and Brandi. He was gonna be successful. He had friends that I didn’t know about. Brandi was gonna be surprised when she came back.”

  “Friends?” I asked. Who could Hugh have been talking about? Was he mixed up in this whole mess as some kind of revenge on Angel?

  “That’s what I asked him. I demanded to know if he knew Zack Quinn. He swore he didn’t know who I was talking about. I didn’t ask him about Mitch last night, because we didn’t realize he was involved. You hadn’t found the necklace yet, and as far as we knew, Zack was still alive.”

  I nodded. It was true. We had just thought Zack was a crazy stalker or after something we didn’t know about.

  Angel went on, “I told him that if I found out he was behind Zack’s breaking into my house and threatening me, I’d destroy him.” She turned away from me.

  “What did he say?”

  She didn’t move. “He said I was good at that. Look at what I’d done to my family and our marriage.”

  Hugh had to die. I reached past Angel for my purse on the floor of the passenger side.

  “What are you doing?” Angel asked.

  After I got ahold of my purse, I put it on the console between the seats and started digging around for my cell phone. Ali stuck her nose in there to check for beer. “Going to call Gabe. I need his gun to shoot Hugh.”

  She put her hand on my arm. “Sam.”

  I looked up. “You think I’m going to sit back and let him say something like that to you?”

  She smiled. “No. That’s why I hadn’t told you until now.”

  I held her gaze. “Let go of my arm.”

  “Are you going to call Gabe?”

  “No.” I closed my fingers around my stun gun. As much as I wanted to see Hugh suffer, I wanted Gabe to find Mitch St. Claire more. Angel wasn’t safe until Mitch was in jail. Or dead. Whatever worked. I pulled my stun gun out and held it up. “I’ll take care of Hugh myself.” I turned on the stunner. The sizzle popped and crackled.

  “That’ll work,” Angel decided.

  Shutting it off, I said, “Angel, I wish you had told me all this stuff. I didn’t realize you were going into debt to help your mom.”

  “Sam, remember Adam Miller? Remember that I invested in his computer game?”

  I nodded. Adam Miller was the husband of a friend of mine who had been murdered. He was also a computer geek, and Angel had invested in a computer game he had developed. But I didn’t care about Adam right now. I cared about Angel. “What does Adam have to do with any of this?”

  “His game is going to bring in lots of money for me by the end of the year. I’ll be fine.”

  I set the stun gun down on top of my purse and thought for a minute. I knew what it cost Angel to tell me about her fights with Hugh. We didn’t know how deeply he was involved, if he was involved at all. But Angel had been right from the start—it was too coincidental that Hugh had been at the casino when this whole mess started. I reached for her hand. “You’re not fine, but you are not alone either. We’re going to fix this, Angel. And we’re going to start with dumbass Hugh. He may have just gone to the casino with some lame plan to tell everyone bad stuff about your lingerie.” I remembered Gabe’s telling me that Hugh might be more afraid of someone, or something, else than of Gabe. But who? “How far into stupid trouble do you think Hugh would go just to make himself look better? To get even with you?”

  Angel looked through the front windshield toward Hugh’s house. “As far as he could without having to break heads.”

  Damn, that’s what I had thought. “OK, let’s go find out the depth of Hugh’s stupidity. Come on, Ali,” I said as I let go of Angel’s hand and opened my door.

  Hugh answered the door of his town house wearing sagging gray sweatpants and a T-shirt with yellow stains under the arms. Ugh. His face was sweaty red and he was breathing like a wheezy hippo. His face deepened to purple when he saw us on his doorstep. He zeroed in on Angel. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you? That crackpot broad you sent over here ruined everything! I got out of my car with flowers for Brandi and that nut launched herself at me screaming about heart mates. Brandi saw the whole thing!”

  Before Angel could tell Hugh her opinion, I asked, “About Zoë, did she tell you where she’s staying? Give you a phone number? Tell you anything that might help us find her?”

  Hugh turned his gaze to me. “Fuck off.”

  Charming. I whipped my stun gun out of my purse and held it up. “Shall we try it again?” I asked nicely.

  Sweat ran down his high forehead and dripped off his nose. “What’s that thing?”

  “Stun gun.” I wondered if zapping him with all that sweat might create an electric shock that would kill him. “Don’t make
this harder than it has to be. We have to find Zoë.”

  Hugh sneered. “She’s a lunatic. She threw herself at me, yammering about how she’d convinced Samantha Shaw that we were heart mates. By the time I got her off me, Brandi marched up and demanded to know what was going on. Zoë told her that I was some pansy romance writer. Brandi laughed. Laughed!”

  Damn, I thought. Zoë hadn’t told Hugh anything. This was a dead end. I realized that Hugh’s face was getting redder by the second.

  He turned on Angel. “Brandi told me in front of that wacko that I should get some better pick-up lines and went back to her mother’s.” He pointed his finger in Angel’s face. “You are destroying my life and I told the police that when they showed up!”

  A glimmer of hope sprang to life inside me. “The police? Did they talk to Zoë here? Uniforms or a detective?” Maybe Vance had come through after all.

  Hugh didn’t bother looking at me. He kept wagging his finger in Angel’s face. “No, a couple uniforms got here just as Zoë left. I didn’t know the answer to any of their questions. But I told them that you”—he leaned closer into Angel’s face—“are harassing me by sending psychos in that cheesy green Ford Focus.”

  Dead end. Again. Vance had sent out some uniforms just in case Angel and I had told the truth. What had he made of the information that Zoë had been at Hugh’s? Frustration blanked my mind and I wasn’t sure what to focus on next, but Angel was.

  She knocked his hand away from her face. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your whining to the cops. Tell me what you were doing at the casino Friday night or I’ll zap your ass.” She grabbed the stun gun from my hand and turned it on.

  “You bitch.” Hugh backed up and started to swing the door closed in our face. “I’m going to call the—”

  A low growl cut off Hugh’s words.

  Ali pushed past Angel and threw her body into the door, ripping it from Hugh’s hand. The door swung into the wall.

  I caught the door before it could bounce off the wall and hit Ali.

  Hugh backed up into the house, crossing his arms in front of his face.

  Ali froze in the doorway, leaning forward so that she was within biting distance of Hugh’s fat belly. She bared her wicked teeth in a vicious growl.

  He shrank against the wall covered in squares of smoky mirrors. “Get it off me!”

  God, he screamed like a girl. Ali hadn’t even touched him. “Ali, sit.”

  She dropped her butt down where she was and let loose with a final growl. She looked back at me, then turned to fix her pissed-off-dog stare on Hugh. She had a good eighty pounds of quivering German shepherd muscle to back up that stare.

  I stepped into the foyer and put my hand on her head. “Good girl.” Then I looked up at Hugh, determined to find out just how involved he was in this mess. “Tell us what you were doing at the casino.”

  He lowered the arms he had crossed in front of his face. “I told you! I just went to have a drink.”

  Angel was having none of that. “Who did you talk to about me?” She held up the stun gun.

  The high color had drained from Hugh’s face, leaving behind a pale clammy sheen. “No one! Only bar talk. Jeez, turn that thing off!”

  My ears hurt from his screeching. Fury poured over me. “Angel and I found Zack Quinn today. He was shot through the head, murdered. You are in big trouble and you’d better start talking.”

  More sweat broke out on Hugh’s forehead. “I didn’t do anything! It was just talk.”

  Omigod.

  Angel moved the sizzling stunner close to Hugh’s left temple. “Who did you talk to about me? You got one second!”

  He turned his beady eyes on Angel. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  Angel shoved the stun gun to his forehead and zapped him.

  Hugh slammed back against the mirrored wall, his eyes bulging with shock, and then he slid to the floor. He sat there with his legs sprawled, his head bent to the right and his mouth hanging open. Angel stepped back and looked at me. “How long do you think he’ll be out?”

  “Uh . . .” Hell if I knew. I watched Ali pad over and sniff around him. “Five minutes?” I’d stunned Gabe once by accident and he’d been out about two minutes.

  But that was Gabe. A finely built and tuned human body.

  I looked back at Hugh. Ugh. No telling how long it’d take him to recover. “Now what?”

  Angel turned around and looked into the town house. The TV was freeze-framed. “An exercise video?”

  I turned and followed Angel. The living room was a mess and smelled of greasy fast food and sweat. A white bag with grease stains was balled up on the coffee table next to two beers. I glanced up at the TV. Yep, looked like an exercise video. Hugh thought he could work off the fast food and beer, I guess.

  Ali padded up to the coffee table and sniffed. She knocked over one can of beer and watched it roll away, obviously empty. Then she knocked over the second can. About a half cup of beer pooled out. She licked it up.

  “Ali, that’s disgusting,” I told her. Who would drink after Hugh?

  She ignored me and licked up the beer.

  “Ohhh.”

  We all turned to see Hugh roll over onto his arms and legs, then start coughing, gagging, and, finally, heaving up his guts. Half crying, half heaving, Hugh said, “Call 911! I’m dying!”

  I rolled my eyes and then wondered how we were going to get out of the house. We had to pass that . . . mess. My own stomach heaved.

  Especially when I thought of my tendency toward falling into—stop thinking about it!

  Angel picked up a gray-looking towel from the back of the sofa with two fingernails and threw it to Hugh. “Pull yourself together.”

  He sat back on his butt and rubbed his face with the towel. “You assaulted me! I’m calling the cops.”

  Angel walked over and looked down at Hugh. “Who did you talk to about me at the casino?”

  Hugh glared up at her with his small eyes bugging out of his pasty face. “Get out of my way. I’m calling the police.” He groaned and started to get to his feet.

  Angel turned on the stun gun.

  Hugh froze when he heard the sizzle. “Don’t!” He screamed, falling back to his butt and putting both hands up across his face.

  Ali lifted her head from the beer, whirled around, and dropped into a crouch. She growled. The fur along her back rose up in a straight line of anger.

  “Ali, not yet,” I put my hand on the back of her neck. I could feel her muscles were clenched and ready. She really didn’t like Hugh screaming at Angel. Given the things Angel told me that Hugh had said to her recently, I was tempted to let Ali take a bite out of him.

  Except that we were in Hugh’s house, and therefore, it would probably be really hard to justify Ali’s biting him.

  Angel turned off the stun gun. “Start talking.”

  Hugh uncovered his face and slowly got to his feet. “I met a guy in the bar. We were talking and he offered me a job.” He glared at Angel. “He recognized my potential. I have a law degree.”

  I let go of Ali and moved up near Angel. “Your law degree won’t get you out of trouble if you are charged with being an accessory to murder.” Dang, I was impressed that I had remembered that. I was learning a thing or two.

  “Accessory to murder? I didn’t kill anyone!”

  “Zack Quinn is dead, you dumbass,” Angel said. “Murdered. If you assisted the man who murdered him by providing him information, you could be charged as an accessory.”

  I had a feeling Angel and I weren’t getting this exactly right. Hugh should have known that, with his law degree. But Hugh had barely gotten through law school. Angel had helped him with most of his homework. His father, a defense lawyer with a practice in Temecula, may have used his influence to secure passing grades for his lazy dumbass son.

  Hugh’s color went from pasty pale to gray. “I’m calling my lawyer!”

  Angel turned on the stun gun.

  “OK!” H
e leaned over, putting his hands on his thick thighs and panting.

  I tried not to think about how much trouble Angel and I could get into for stun-gunning Hugh in his own house. We had to get all the information we could to save Angel. I got out my mom voice and demanded, “Keep talking.”

  “A man in the bar offered me a job to help him find clients to sell his products.”

  I forgot all about getting into trouble for assaulting Hugh. I looked at Angel.

  She met my gaze for a second, then turned to Hugh. “What products and what was his name?”

  Hugh stood up and said, “Sex toys. His name was Mitch St. Claire, and I told him all about your lingerie business.” Pride filled out his barrel chest. “I get four percent of your sales of his sex toys. I’m making money off your business.”

  “You stupid prick,” Angel said in an even voice. “You don’t know what you’ve gotten involved with.” She closed her eyes for a second as the weight of her worries bowed her shoulders in.

  Color flooded into Hugh’s face. “I know exactly what I’m doing! I’m a businessman. I have a law degree. I am successful.”

  “You’re an idiot.” Angel opened her eyes and straightened her shoulders. “And you may end up a dead idiot. Does Mitch know where you live?”

  Hugh leaned back against the mirrored wall. “What do you mean?”

  My instincts buzzed. Careful to avoid the pile of vomit, I closed the distance between Hugh and me. “He was here, wasn’t he?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.” He didn’t meet my gaze.

  I didn’t believe him for a second. I took a breath, then damn near gagged. God, it reeked in there. Breathing through my mouth, I said, “What did you do?”

  “Nothing!” Hugh’s voice was a whisper now. “I just have to get Brandi back. She thinks I’m a loser.”

  “You are a loser,” Angel said.

  It all began to make a sick kind of sense to me. “Mitch came here looking for Angel, didn’t he?”