by Eden Butler
“You’re not a cop anymore?” She relaxed, slid her hands against the armrest. “Simmons cut you loose?”
That name out of her mouth was like a slap. Had he sent her? Was this shit another way for my former sergeant to mess with me? The chair flew back against the wall as I stood up abruptly, hands balled into fists at my side. Before I could blink Sammy was next to me. “What the fuck do you know about him?” I asked, ignoring how loud my voice came out.
Alex’s gaze went to my face and her eyebrows shot up when the clench in my fists got tighter. She looked toward Sammy, maybe hoping he’d enlighten her to my attitude, but then she pursed her lips before saying “I know enough.”
“Listen,” Sammy interrupted with a pat to my shoulder before he stood between me at the desk and the woman still sitting in the chair. “We have to call it in. If Ryan says he saw you trying to rob somebody, then he’s gonna make a call.” My best friend hesitated for a second, looking again between the two of us before he nodded for Nox to open the door. “And I’d advise not talking about shit you are clueless about,” he said to her, leaving us alone.
I stared after Sammy as the door shut, fidgeting with my cell as the app continued to search, not really eager to look at Alex again, not wanting her to see the havoc her offhand comment had stirred up. Stephen Simmons, my former sergeant, was a liar and a dirty cop, neither of which I had known about when I’d joined the Cavanagh P.D. at twenty-three. Before that I’d only ever known him as the guy that my mom’s best friend Dot had married. But over the years, working under him, he’d become a father figure to me. At least until things got twisted.
I’d put my mom’s house up for sale, listing all her antiques with a local dealer who’d posted the items online. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I’d gotten a letter from someone who sure seemed to be Dot—the same Dot who Simmons reported as having committed suicide just three days after my mother’s death.
A little snooping, a little asking around and I realized Simmons had lied to me, lied to everybody. There were discipline records that got buried in Atlanta when he worked there. Seems he liked to rough up subjects. There was the evidence he allegedly tampered with in two cases during his first days in Cavanagh, but those accusations, too, went nowhere. Dot’s death, her file, seemed a little too cut and dry. No real evidence of an actual death other than her empty car being found at the bottom of the river. When I tried getting his side of the story, Simmons blew up at me, suspended me, egged on my temper and I had quit right there on the spot.
But Simmons was six hundred miles away in Tennessee. And yeah, okay, this Alex woman had been in Cavanagh long enough to rob my mom’s house, but that didn’t mean she had any reason for knowing him.
My phone chirped, alerting me to the search results and I sat back down, calmer, bringing me breath into my lungs as I thumbed through the results.
Alex Black, age twenty-four, had been a busy lady. Looking through the list of priors, I should have immediately called NOPD, should have had them cart her away and ease the damn thumping headache that had begun to stretch from the back of my head to my temples. But she’d mentioned Simmons—the one bastard who knew the truth about Dot, likely about what had really happened to my mother all those years ago. Was my mom’s murder simply a robbery gone wrong like the police report concluded, or had Simmons, who’d handled that case, lied about that too? I would have never thought that possible, but then why would Dot supposedly kill herself right after my mom’s murder and then resurface in a vague letter some twelve years later?
I’d had one lead on finding Dot that brought me to New Orleans: tracking down the jewelry box Alex had stolen from me five months ago. Dot had apparently become an antiques dealer in New Orleans, and I was sure the jewelry box had turned up in what I suspected was her antiques storefront. But following up on that lead had landed me in the damn ER with a bullet graze on my shoulder when some guy, Malcolm, who apparently was protecting Dot, handed me my ass.
So here in this tiny Marriott security office, I had to find out what this small-time grifter knew about Simmons, even if I was being selfish and highly unprofessional. I needed answers, something I was pretty sure this woman wouldn’t give me unless I did a little bargaining.
She watched me with a funny look on her face, like she wanted to say something but was scared I’d start yelling again. Finally, when I came to the end of page three of her record, I looked at Alex over my cell and shook my head. She immediately got all nervous and anxious again. “I wasn’t lying. About Simmons.”
Eyes trained on the screen, I tried not to laugh or wonder too much about the “public indecency” charge from last summer.
“Alex Black?” She scowled at me and it wasn’t the least bit threatening. “Fitting.”
“You know what?” she said, coming out of her seat to stare down at me. “You can kiss my ass, detective. I’m Seminole, just like my mom was. Panther clan, motherfucker.”
I nodded, fighting a smile at the red flush on her face. The woman had a temper, no surprise there, but she kept her chin lifted, proud and confident, which I’d not seen from her until that moment. “Should I call dear ole mom and let her know her Panther clan kid is in trouble?” Another glance back to the app, my eyebrows rising at the impressive resume of arrests on her record, “Again?”
“You got a direct line to hell?” she asked, pacing around the room. “That’s probably where she is.”
“I…”
“Yeah, feel like an asshole now, don’t you?” The smug smile returned and a bit of my shame over teasing her lessened. But when she spoke again, her voice was quiet. Not sad, exactly, more defeated. “She died when I was eight. Meth overdose.”
My cell went dark as I laid it on the desk, leaning forward on my elbows. The words felt stuck on my tongue so I just watched the woman hold herself, walk in front of the desk like she was trying to think of the best escape plan. There was something she wasn’t admitting. That wasn’t surprising, sure, but her attitude, her defensive stance, went beyond her being caught trying to gank a wallet. It wasn’t just the prospect of a night in jail that had her restless. Getting dizzy watching her, I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “Then maybe you get why I was so pissed at you taking my shit.”
“What?”
When I pointed to the chair she finally sat, though she kept her arms tight in a curl across her chest. “The only thing you stole was a jewelry box,” I told her, shrugging. “Antique with lots of weird drawers and hidden compartments?”
Alex again narrowed her eyes as though she was riffling through the long list of shit she’d stolen to find the innocuous jewelry box. “Yeah,” she finally said, looking like a light had been switched on in her brain. “I remember that.”
“Well that was my mom’s.” I picked up my phone, moved it between my hands on the desk’s surface. “She’s not here anymore either.”
“I… I know.”
My mouth went slack, and I couldn’t help the immediate straight set of my body as I shifted in my seat. “What?”
“It’s a long damn story.” She wouldn’t look at me, focused instead on a frayed thread at the seam of her sleeve. “But I remember hearing about it. It’s how I know Simmons. Well, one of the ways I know him.”
That made zero sense to me. “My mom’s case?”
“Something like that.”
Who the hell was this woman? She wasn’t from Cavanagh, I’d damn sure have remembered seeing her and God knows she’d been breaking the law for a long time, long enough to have been known to the police. She’d have definitely been in my precinct. But how did she know Simmons, and how could she claim to know about my mother’s case? Something definitely wasn’t right here, and I knew I had to get to the bottom of it before this woman left the office. She could feel the tension, too. She fidgeted in her seat, stretching her neck, rubbing the skin on the back of her knuckles. There was a lot of nervous energy in that small body, a rush of excitement, or anxiety that prevented her fr
om keeping still.
“Listen, it was stupid of me to try to take that guy’s wallet. Sometimes I can’t help myself.” When I stared at her, eyebrow cocked, she lowered her shoulders. “It’s all I’ve ever known, okay? The life, the jobs, the easy marks, that’s all I know. Just like your mom’s jewelry box.”
Alex must have caught the swift movement of irritation on my face because she lifted her hand like she wanted to stop any bitching I might do. “I know how you can get it back if you want it, but you gotta do something for me.”
That quick bubble of laughter was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Why would I make a deal with a criminal?” I waved my phone at her. “A seasoned one at that.”
“Because I know shit about Simmons and I can tell, just from how you say his name that you do too. And I saw the look on your face when you mentioned that jewelry box. I can help you get it back, but I need help.”
“What?” I asked once again leaning back in my chair. “You want me to let you go?”
“Well, yeah.” Eyes moving over the desk, to her license, to the landline phone on the other side, Alex kept her gaze down, as though asking for anyone’s help was a struggle. She got out of that chair, pacing three times before she sat on the desk. “That and something… else.”
My gut tightened as I waited for the bomb to drop. She was a frustrating woman, nothing but trouble. I’d known it the second I laid eyes on her. But past all the attitude and the filthy mouth, she looked worried, a little fearful, something that didn’t really match up with the person she seemed to want everyone to think she was. “What is it?”
Alex moved her chin, pointing to the door before finally looking at me. “You and your men, you’re all big guys…”
“You don’t say?”
“And,” she said, speaking over me, “well, if you were still a cop there’s no way I’d be even talking to you. But since you’re not…”
The mumbling, the slow build up before she got out what she wanted to say, was all too much, too infuriating. “Shit, lady.” I slapped my hand against the desk, not meaning to make her jump when the sound came out loud and piercing. “You gonna hem and haw around this all damn night? Spit it out.”
“Fine,” she said, leaning over the desk towards me and I caught another thick trace of her perfume. It smelled sweet. “I got someone following me.”
“Probably a cop.”
“It’s not a cop.” She got mad then, sitting back and slinging her foot back and forth so that her shoe hit the metal base of the desk. “I know it’s not a cop.”
“How do you know?”
“Cops don’t leave flowers.”
Why the hell would this woman have a problem with getting flowers? Didn’t all women like them? Shit, I had no idea. “So someone’s sweet on you?”
“The ones left on my front stoop were weird enough, but then I found more in the bedroom. And no one has a key to my place. No one. Not even the landlord. I sorta changed the locks the day I moved in and my, um, work associates aren’t the kind of people that you wanna mess with.” She shrugged, dismissing the shifty way she’d handled her landlord. “He hasn’t bothered me once since I moved in. Besides, whoever this is, he broke in. Busted a window.”
My chair squeaked as I shifted, a little more curious than I had the right to be, but hell, a pretty girl, even if she is a thief, and someone breaking into her place? That had the SEAL in me curious. Then again, I thought, watching the way Alex popped her knuckles, how she wouldn’t look away from me as I considered her, maybe this was some sort of karmic payback for the shit she’d done. “Okay so some creeper broke into your place to leave flowers.”
“They also stole some of my, well,” she waved her hand, finally nixing her gawkfest at me to look over my head. “Under things, and I haven’t seen my cat in weeks.”
That didn’t mean a damn thing. Cats in this city? Please. “How close do you live to the Square?” I asked her, resting my fingers against my temple, elbow on the desk.
“Not far. Why?”
She frowned at my shrug, at the way I silently told her she should know better than to worry about some damn cat. “You know how many rats hover around Café Du Monde? Cats all over the place. Yours is probably sniffing for a good meal.”
“No. He wouldn’t… look it isn’t just that. The flowers, my missing thongs, my cat, that’s not the only thing. I… um… I recently left the employment of Mr. Ironside.”
My eyebrows went up then. Timber Ironside ran some of the strip clubs and after-hour joints around most of the French Quarter. He was also a small time drug king, siphoning meth and weed to bar owners who wanted to offer the tourists a little extra something to commemorate their time in the city. Ironside had been a thorn in the police’s side for a good five years now but he wasn’t going anywhere. The club owners loved him, or pretended to. If Alex had worked for him and then left when he didn’t want her to, it made sense that one of his boys could be tailing her on his orders. Ironside’s people were beyond loyal to him—which had me wondering why Alex wasn’t.
“You think he’s got someone scaring you into going back?”
She paused before she spoke and a small wrinkle dented between her eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility.”
That gut feel burned now and part of me believed that Alex was sincere. I’d seen as much fear as I had evil in my line of work. Maybe more. Men who knew they were about to die. Those who understood that telling me or my partners at the precinct anything meant the moment they left the building, their lives would end. But the worst kind of fear, the sort that you never forget seeing, is the haunted look of loss; missing or dead children, crimes left untended—they all caused that same fear that glinted in Alex’s eyes.
But then another, more cynical thought came to me: that this woman had spent her life working the system, using those big, pouty lips and endless dark eyes to get what she wanted. I ended up listening to both instincts—the one that had me itching to protect her, to learn more about what she knew of Simmons, and the one that told me to keep her at a distance.
I stayed neutral, shooting for nonchalance, even knowing that she’d likely not buy it. “And why am I supposed to worry about any of this?”
She frowned and I felt like a dick for stating the obvious. “Because you want that jewelry box back. I know where it is. Ironside has it, hasn’t been able to pawn it because the stuff is hot. And I also happen to know Ironside runs an auction every year for the shit his boys can’t pawn. It’s all stolen goods—and the auction is invite only.” Alex stood up and stepped a few paces away from the desk, letting her hips sway smoothly before she folded her arms and leaned against the wall. I caught myself watching in appreciation despite knowing it was an obvious tactic, then jerked my attention back to what she was saying. “He likes to pretend. He loves kidding himself into thinking he’s more than just some street thug. I can get you into the auction. I have a friend who’s sending out the invites.”
My mother’s jewelry box was worth about ten grand. A pittance, I imagined, to the sort of trinkets that would be up for sale at this auction. But having money didn’t matter to me. Finding the jewelry box wasn’t about reacquiring assets. It was about retrieving my family’s memories. My mother had loved that jewelry box; it reminded her of her grandmother, and of the stories passed down through the generations, stories she had grown up with, I had grown up with. That jewelry box meant family, to a man who had no family left. “And why do I need you to help me get into this auction?”
“Because cop or not,” she said, pushing off the wall, “you still look way too clean. Unless you go by a name they’ll recognize, or have a lot of money to throw around, they won’t let you anywhere near the auction.”
“But you’re a different story?”
She rolled her eyes… again, as if she thought I was simple. “Please. They love me.”
“Sure,” I said, trying not to notice how her perfume moved aro
und the room when the overhead vent clicked on. “They love you so much they’re trying to scare the hell out of you.”
“That’s personal. This is business. Business trumps bullshit.”
There was something behind her words, something Alex kept close to the chest. She’d said the word “personal” like it felt heavy on her tongue but quickly recovered, bringing back the stiff, proud set of her chin. I knew the woman was a liar, I could feel it in my bones, but maybe she had her reasons for bending the truth. I intended to find out what those reasons were. “So if I let you go, you’ll get me into the auction and I find out who’s trying to creep on you?”
“Yeah. That’s the plan.”
My chair squeaked again, the screws rubbing against each other as I swiveled in it once, trying to watch Alex’s face, to see if there were any obvious tells that she was playing me. If there were, she was damn good at hiding them. “I don’t trust you,” I said, needing her to realize she was on notice, that I wasn’t a dumb jackass willing to believe her without question.
“And you shouldn’t.” She didn’t smile when she said that. “I don’t trust any cop, former or otherwise.”
Play it like that, lady.
Before she could run out of the office, I grabbed my cell and snapped a picture of her. She didn’t like that, reached for my phone, but my reflexes were sharp again and I was able to slide back in the chair, laughing at Alex when she let out a colorful litany of foul curses. “What the hell?”
She stopped trying to grab my phone when I stood up, towering over her before I slipped my cell into my jacket pocket and pulled out a business card which she begrudgingly took. “Tomorrow morning at ten, you meet me at our office and I’ll tag along to this friend of your’s place. I wanna be there when you wrangle that invite. If you don’t show,” I tapped my chest, feeling the outline of my phone in the pocket, “I send this picture to my friends at the NOPD with a lead about your sticky fingers at this fundraiser.”
