“Oh, yes,” I agreed. “What a dear, dear man.”
Side by side and with synchronized precision, they sat on a loveseat and prepared afternoon tea.
“I’m really not one of your girls,” I said, lowering myself on an adjacent chair.
“Of course, you’re not, dear,” the younger sister said. She held out a linen napkin. “Who would suggest such a thing?”
“Cream? Sugar?” the elder sister said, pouring tea into one of the dainty cups. “I’m sorry. We forgot to introduce ourselves. I’m Ada Li. And this is my sister Minna. And you’re Iris Grenadine, reporter with the Chicago Daily Standard, here to ask after a former client of ours.”
“Try one of the éclairs, Miss Grenadine,” Minna said. “Pierre’s specialty.”
I really wasn’t hungry, but to be polite, I took a dainty bite and sipped some tea. “By the way. Do you own a white Plymouth Fury?”
The women stole cautious glances at each other. “Why do you ask?” Ada said.
“Because it’s parked in front of the Harmon Hotel.”
Minna raised her teacup. She blinked at her sister and received tacit permission before saying, “I’m sure Crystal will return it shortly.”
“I’m afraid she won’t be able to,” I said. “Ever.”
The teacup fell from Minna’s hand.
Chapter 22
“THIS IS ... OR rather was, Crystal’s room,” Ada said. The sisters had shown me into a dayroom on the fourth floor. Reflecting the tastes of its former occupant, sequined gowns, exotic daywear, feather boas, and satin nightwear crammed the wardrobe. A handwoven Turkish rug—the correct size for transporting a corpse—adorned the hardwood floor.
“Her real name was Cindy,” I said. “Cynthia Whitehead.”
“We know, dear, but Crystal fit her so much better,” Minna said. “She’s one of our ... was one of our most popular girls.” Tears filled her eyes.
“As I’m sure you have already guessed ...” Ada paused to check with her sister. “Mr. Byrnes met his demise here.”
“He was one of Crystal’s regulars,” Minna added.
“He always paid in advance,” Ada said.
While the sisters rambled, I toured the room, searching behind every nook and investigating every cranny.
“Mr. Byrnes was with our dear Crystal when, well ...” Minna savaged her lower lip and looked to her sister to explain.
“An intruder entered,” Ada finished.
I drew the drapes aside and threw open the window. “Through this fire escape?” I asked.
“It would have been the only way in,” Ada said. “We have tight security measures, as you know.”
I tried the connecting door to the adjacent dayroom. It was locked.
“The murderer hit our dear Crystal from behind,” Minna said.
The ashtray was filled with several filter-tipped stubs banded with lipstick stains.
“And then he shot poor Mr. Byrnes,” Ada said.
“Everyone heard the gunshots,” Minna said. “The killer was gone by the time we arrived.”
“And Mr. Byrnes was extremely dead,” Ada said.
“There was no point in calling for an ambulance,” Minna said.
“Or the police,” Ada said.
“Since they would have only asked questions we couldn’t possibly have answered,” Minna said.
I twisted my head around. “Such as who did it?”
Ada stared out from impenetrable black eyes. Tears, however, once more filled Minna’s eyes. The murder of their Dear Crystal had unnerved at least one of the Li sisters.
“Crystal, poor dear,” Minna said, “was still groggy from the blow on her head and not terribly coherent.”
“We wanted her to see a doctor,” Ada said, “but she refused.”
Wooden panels covered the inner wall next to the door. An oblong mirror was inset into the centermost panel.
“Crystal didn’t actually see the intruder,” Minna emphasized.
“Though she was terrified the killer might have concluded, in time, that she had,” Ada added.
I tapped the tip of my fingernail against the mirror’s reflective surface. Curiously, no gap interceded between my fingernail and its paired image. “And the body?”
Minna scratched the back of her hand. “We couldn’t very well leave Mr. Byrnes lying here, now could we?” Defensiveness had crept into her voice.
I stepped into the corridor and opened an adjacent door. Inside the closet hung stoles, wraps, and coats. I pushed aside the hangers and stepped through. The space was large enough to accommodate two slender women or one large man. I waved at the Li sisters through the two-way mirror. They didn’t wave back.
“So we rolled him up in this rug,” Ada said, her voice muffled, “and conveyed him to the hotel.”
I pressed fingertips along the edges of the two-way mirror.
“The Harmon House is our favorite hotel whenever we stay downtown,” Minna explained with a note of apology.
I found the pressure point. It gave.
“Though we’ll make it a point in future never to stay in room 2201,” Ada said, practicality at the forefront of her mind.
“I see,” I said, pushing open the panel and stepping back into the room.
“The rug has been dry cleaned and the mattress replaced,” Ada said. “But none of the girls want to use this room.”
A timid meow emanated from the wardrobe. I fanned open the double doors. A shorthaired Russian Blue cat wearing an emerald-studded collar was poised like a statuette amid frilly gowns and exotic furs. “Yours?”
“We don’t allow our girls to keep pets,” Minna explained.
Bending down, I tried to coax the cat. “Here, kitty, kitty.” Curious green eyes stared back. Unexpectedly, he yowled, lunged for the bed, bounded off the quilt, and made a flying leap outside. We rushed to the window. The cat scampered down the fire escape and scurried across the street. The sisters were looking in the wrong direction. “She went that way,” I said, pointing.
“They turned their heads in harmony and found him. “Oh,” said Minna. “There he is, poor dear. I hope he’ll be all right.”
“Cats have nine lives,” I said.
“Do they?” Minna said.”
“An old wives’ tale,” I said.
“Ah,” she said.
“And what, may I ask, have you done with Mr. Starr?”
By and by, I opened a door and peaked into one of the dayrooms. It looked like all the others, except for one addition. Stripped to shorts, Starr lay supine on a bed of frilly linens, his arms flung apart and wrists handcuffed to the posts. Extremely uncomfortable, he squirmed and yanked without success. The bracelets jingled. The bedsprings rasped. He jerked his head in my direction and was relieved to see it was only me. Above a gagged mouth that uttered guttural pleas for mercy, his clear green eyes begged for release. I almost felt sorry for the guy.
I spun inside, feeling slightly giddy, somewhat foolish, and completely out of my depth. Dressed in a lacy satin bra, matching panties, sheer stockings, and purple garters—a getup straight from central casting—I posed like a wanton, one hand balanced on hip and the other propped at the back of my neck. My hair was done up, my high heels were escalator high, my boobs were propped up and pushed out, and my ass was more exposed than a baby’s behind. I sang out, “Ta-da!”
Several emotions danced over Starr’s face. Surprise. Embarrassment. Wonder. And finally, veneration. With escalating excitement, he took a survey of the state of my undress, making note of every titillating curve, seductive prominence, bare surface, and hidden cave. The outfit didn’t leave much to the imagination.
I swept across the floor, bringing along the overpowering scent of French perfume. “Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature: for this drivelling love is like a great natural, that runs lolling up and down to hide his ...” I paused for
emphasis. “... bauble in a hole.”
I wriggled up from the foot of the bed, crawling across the slithery sheets using elbows and knees, kittenish and ready to pounce. “Fondling, she saith, since I have hemm’d thee here within the circuit of this ivory pale, I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer.”
He tried to sit up, strived to put up a defense, struggled to squirm away. I stabbed him in the chest one-fingered and sent him crashing onto the flat of his back. The mattress rolled like an ocean wave. I straddled my knees on either side of his torso and propped myself up by the heels of my hands. He fastened his eyes on the two inverted pyramids of Egypt. I felt slightly reckless and a whole lot exposed, but I was drunk with power and having much too much fun. “Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale. Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry, stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.” I toppled onto my side, crutched my head onto a fist, and drummed my fingers on his chest. “You were expecting Monica Seagraves?”
He struggled to break free, but his wrists—bruised and chafed—dangled helplessly from the cuffs.
“You let a girl wearing peek-a-boo lingerie handcuff you, Starr? And gag you? What in the world were you thinking?”
The bracelets scraped and rubbed. His face reddened with exertion. He voiced an angry opinion about his current state of helplessness, most of it unintelligible.
“Starr, Starr, Starr. Face it. You fell for the oldest trick in the oldest book of the oldest profession.”
The metallic ringing subsided. Our eyes met. We were locked in that man-versus-woman struggle that’s been going on for time immemorial. Did he love her? Was she desirable? Would foreplay lead to sex? Was she willing? Would he call her in the morning? Would she answer the phone?
“Okay, you forced it out of me. The body ain’t bad. The chest hair has an interesting pattern. The abs need work. The butt ... now the butt shows real promise. Wish I could see more.” I snapped the waistband of his boxer shorts. “Another time.”
He groaned and took two shaky breaths. Lustful yearning escaped his eyes. I let my fingers drift across his chest. His ravenous stare turned into a tender caress. Tingling crept along my spine, and I ached to be satisfied. The response came as a surprise because, honestly, he wasn’t my type. I went for dark tight-as-a-wire men. The ones quick to laugh but slower to smolder. But here he was, a halfway decent-looking man ... okay, pretty darned cute ... subdued, mute, and ready to dance with a sensual woman wearing scanty underwear. He lifted his head from the pillows. I leaned close and searched his expression. He was as tightly wound up as I was. I tugged the gag loose. We latched lips. Sparklers ignited. Cherry bombs went off. Firecrackers exploded.
The woman part of me wanted to sleep with him. The professional side knew it was a bad idea under any circumstances, but especially in a house of prostitution. I envisioned the headlines. The scandal to follow. My father’s reaction. My editor’s disappointment. The paper’s embarrassment. My career ruined. In the end, none of those reasons mattered. Engaging in an intimate liaison with any man, no matter how much I wanted him and he wanted me, was certain to end in hurt feelings. Mine, not his.
He hadn’t spoken. His eyes begged for release as they had before, but a different kind of release. At last he spoke. “Grenadine. What are you thinking?”
“Leaving you here comes to mind.”
“But you wouldn’t do that.”
I circled a finger through his chest hair. “You think you know me, Richard Starr, but you don’t know dick.” I looked for any hint of mockery in his gaze and didn’t see any. I pressed my lips against his. His lips met mine with more urgency than before. Feelings stirred inside me; feelings that couldn’t be ignored; feelings that said he was a man to trust; other feelings that said very loudly and very clearly that I should steer clear of him. After all, I didn’t know who he worked for or what he wanted. We’d become partners in a cat-and-mouse game but each with a different finale in mind. Teaming up with Starr in a murder investigation was one thing. Teaming up in bed, even for a single rollicking afternoon in a pootang parlor, was another.
“Grenadine,” he said again. “What are you thinking now?”
“I’m thinking you’re a nice guy. I’m thinking you don’t want to hook up with a girl like me. I’m thinking I carry a lot of baggage. I’m thinking what every guy I’ve ever been with eventually thinks, that I’m good for a one-night stand and not much more.”
“You’re thinking too much.”
After shrugging his remark away, I extracted a bobby pin from my hair. His eyes louvered open, at once curious and suspicious. I reached toward the farthest handcuff and jiggered the straight metal piece inside the keyhole. The bracelet fell open. The other handcuff was dispatched with equal ease. He’d become fascinated with the double Twinkies within easy reach of both his hands. I climbed out of bed before he had a chance to scoop up any creamy filling and tossed him his clothes. “If you won’t kiss and tell, I won’t either.”
“I’m not that kind of guy.”
“Honey, every guy is that kind of guy.”
Still ogling my cupcakes, he climbed into his slacks. A jagged scar ran along the inner seam of his left thigh. It looked like a knife wound. He was a man of many mysteries.
“So here’s the scoop according to the Li sisters,” I said, getting down to business. “Crystal White aka Cynthia Kay Whitehead hails from somewhere down Louisiana way. Usual hard-luck story. Drunkard father beat up her no-good mother once a week on payday. Then Daddy started flirting with his sweet young daughter. She ran away from home on her sixteenth birthday and bought a one-way ticket for anywhere but there. Before she could focus on bright lights, big city, Crystal found herself working the streets to keep her new old man in smack. Broke loose from that maggot and freelanced for a while. Picked up a few black eyes for her troubles and eventually landed at the Big Dive. Been here a little under a year. Treated the girls to Cokes and shared her nail polish. Basically, a good kid who wound up in the wrong place with the wrong person at the wrong time.” I studied my fingernails. “Oh, most true; she is a strumpet.”
He zipped up his pants. Sexual playfulness reappeared in his eyes. He was admiring my outfit and the way it didn’t hide anything. He was thinking naughty thoughts, maybe as naughty as mine. We were both seeing the irony of our mutual states of undress and the inconceivability of doing anything remotely carnal in a house of prostitution, as ironic as it seemed.
“What did you find out from Rita Hayworth?”
Tearing his eyesight away from the bikini bottoms and the way they emphasized my thighs, he shrugged into his shirt. “Name’s Lizzy,” he said. “Your Crystal White thought she was being followed. Called Lizzy from the hotel. Figured there’d be safety in numbers. Wanted to talk to you but not around the cops. Followed you to the airport. Even more cops there. Recognized Pennyroyal. A year back, he threw her in the can for solicitation. Lizzy was acting as a decoy. She tried to slip you a message, but it didn’t work out.” He tugged on his socks and shoes.
Now that he was dressed and I was still naked, I became self-conscious. I casually crossed my arms. “And she told you all this because you’re good in bed?”
“She was interrogating me, Grenadine.”
“You’re the P.I.”
“Torturing me.”
“With S & M?”
“Thought maybe I was the killer.”
“A killer in bed?”
“She knew who you were but didn’t know how I fit in. She didn’t trust me.”
“Smart lady.”
“Wanted to know what happened to Crystal.”
“Before or after she gagged you?”
He was tying the knot of his tie and doing a lousy job of it. I reached forward, undid it, and started over. “So are you? The killer?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Crystal didn’t know who the murderer was, but the killer didn’t know that.”
“So he made damn sure she couldn’t finger him.�
� I looped the end of the tie over and under, tucked it in, and pulled it through. He became distracted by the nearness of my heaving chest. He could drool to his heart’s content, but his day of reckoning would come when I’d find out who hired him. “When did Lizzy last see Crystal?”
“At the airport. Didn’t get bailed out until early this morning. She’s worried about her friend. Afraid something bad happened to her. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. You look cold.” He dragged me into his arms and warmed me up. His hug was all business. The sexual tension between us had evaporated. He looked around. “Where’re your clothes? We should get going.”
I didn’t have the opportunity to answer him. With the hammering of footsteps and a draft at my back, a team of uniformed cops crashed through the door, guns drawn. I screeched and pumped my hands skyward. Pennyroyal elbowed his way to the fore. “Oh,” I said. “It’s only you.”
“You’re under arrest!”
“You can’t arrest me.”
To prove he could, Pennyroyal slapped handcuffs around my wrists. “Try and stop me, doll face.”
As their newest sister was led away by a Frenchman in a bad mood, the girls lined up along the balustrades and stared down in shocked amazement. By the time we exited the Big Dive, I was anything but cooperative and Pennyroyal was anything but gentle. “What are you afraid of, Pennyroyal? That I’ll find out you’re a shill for the mayor?” He stuffed me into the back seat of a squad car and whistled for the uniform behind the wheel to take me away. Just before he slammed the door, the cat leapt into my arms.
Chapter 23
THE LOCKUP WAS cold and damp. Chilled to the bone, I was lying on a cot in jail cell number seven of Bloody Maxwell and staring at the water-stained ceiling. A bare light bulb shone into my eyes. The mattress was bare. The floor was damp. The only air circulation came up from the sewers. I gripped my arms for warmth. My goose pimples had goose pimples. “Still there, Starr?”
He was incarcerated across the way and two cells down. He grunted in the affirmative.
The Green-Eyed Dick Page 16
