“So you think the woman killed Barrett to give Avery that opening?”
“Who knows?” Clint said. “Maybe she did it out of love.”
“Not likely,” Powell said. “See, I know Amanda. She’s been in Sacramento for years. Avery is just her latest conquest.”
“Conquest?” Clint asked.
“She goes through men like—well, I don’t know like what. Avery’s just the next in a long line.”
“He’s kind of young, isn’t he?” Clint asked.
“He’s about twenty-eight,” Powell said. “Who knows how old she is? Could be thirty-eight, could be forty-eight. She’s not talking.”
Clint remembered his night with Amanda. However old she was, it had not diminished her performance in bed at all.
The body was dumped unceremoniously into a buck-board and driven away.
“Did he have family?” Clint asked.
“No,” Powell said. “I don’t know who we’ll have to notify that he’s dead.” He looked at Callahan. “But you’ll come up with someone, I’m sure.”
“Me?”
“Your case, Inspector,” Powell said. “This, and the Julie Silver case. I think they’re connected, so you’ve got both of them.”
“How’s the captain going to feel about that?” Clint asked.
“Oh, he’ll love it,” Powell said. “He’s just waiting for young Charles here to fail.” Powell slapped Callahan on the back. “But I have faith.”
Powell had a cab waiting for him, driven by a uniformed policeman.
“Maybe that’s the job I should have,” Callahan said as his superior rode away.
“What’s that?”
“Driving him around.”
“Nah,” Clint said, “you’re better than that, Charlie.”
“I guess we’ll see about that soon enough.”
THIRTY-THREE
Clint and Callahan discussed their next move in a cab going back to Clint’s hotel.
“We can go back to Avery’s office, grab Amanda and try to prove she killed Barrett,” Clint said, “or we can go down to the docks and see what Barrett’s men know, if anything.”
“I would vote for picking up Amanda,” Callahan said, “except I don’t think that would help us find your friend—or find out what happened to him.”
“Well,” Clint said, “with Julie and Barrett both dead, I’m starting to think that Ted’s dead, too.”
They rode in silence for a while and then Callahan asked, “Just how friendly did you actually get with Amanda anyway?”
“Pretty friendly.”
“I guess you’re lucky she didn’t kill you in your sleep.”
Clint looked at Callahan and said, “Who slept?”
When they got to Clint’s hotel, they immediately went to the bar. Both needed a beer after the day’s events.
“What do we do with the rest of the evening?” Callahan wondered aloud.
“If we go to that Docksider Tavern of Barrett’s, it’s liable to be filled with his men. They won’t take kindly to hearing that he’s dead.”
“Might even take it out on us.”
“Might,” Clint said. “I think we better pass that information on tomorrow.”
“Agreed.”
They clinked their glasses on it. The hotel bar was filling up, and they’d had to stand at the bar with their drinks.
“What about Avery’s place?” Callahan asked.
“Do we know if Amanda has her own? Or does she live there with him?”
“My understanding from the lieutenant was that she has her own home—a house, actually.”
“Hmm . . . Do we know where it is?”
Callahan smiled, reached in his pocket and took out a slip of paper.
“Just so happens we do.”
Clint snatched it from him.
“You stay here,” he said, “or go back to headquarters, or go home yourself.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I think I’ll visit the black widow in her lair,” Clint said. “Might get something out of her.”
“Or she might get you.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“I can’t just do nothing.”
“Do some police work, then,” Clint said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Clint said. “I’m not a policeman. You think of something.”
Callahan opened his mouth to say something, but Clint cut him off. “I know. Find out how many men Barrett had, and how many Avery has. We might as well know what we might be going up against.”
“I can do that.”
“Okay then,” Clint said, “let’s go.”
They finished their beers, went out to the front of the hotel and had the doorman get them each his own cab.
THIRTY-FOUR
Clint had the cab drop him right in front of Amanda’s house in a residential section of Sacramento. It was not yet dark, but Clint thought that after killing Victor Barrett, Amanda may have wanted to go home and put her feet up. After all, if she had also killed Julie and Ted Singleton, she’d been a busy gal.
He went up the walk to the front door and knocked. He had to knock a second time before Amanda finally came to the door and opened it.
“Why am I not surprised?” she asked, smiling at him. “How did you find out where I lived?”
“I asked around.”
He could tell from the puzzled look on her face that she didn’t like that.
“Asked around? Asked who?”
“The police.” He said it with a smile.
“Clint,” she said, slowly, “I think you better come inside.”
She stepped back to allow him to enter, then stuck her head out to have a look before closing the door.
Once they were both inside, she faced him, folding her arms beneath her heavy breasts. She was wearing a simple shirt and skirt, and she was barefoot.
“I think you better tell me what the hell you’re talking about,” she said. “The police told you where I live?”
“That’s right.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because I asked them.”
“And why would you do that?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“Come on, Amanda,” he said. “You know what you did this afternoon.”
“Yes, I do know what I did this afternoon,” she said. “And, apparently, you think you know, too.”
“Well,” he said, “after all, I was there.”
“There . . . where?”
“Well, for starters,” he said, “I was at Avery’s place when you were hiding in the other room.”
“What makes you think I was hiding in the other room?” she asked.
“I could smell your perfume all over the place.”
“That could just mean that I had been there,” she said, “not that I still was.”
“Well then, that part was just a lucky guess.”
“And what else do you think you know?”
“Well, I followed you to a hotel where you met with Victor Barrett for some . . . relaxation?”
“So you know I had sex with Victor,” she said. “Did you tell Avery?”
“I didn’t have a chance to,” he said. “You went in, you came out, we went up and discovered poor Victor, all cut up.”
“Somebody stabbed him to death?”
“As if you didn’t know.”
She dropped her hands to her sides. She was breathing hard, and he could not help but watch the swell of her breasts, remembering how they’d felt in his hands—their heft, the smoothness of her skin, the turgid nipples in his mouth . . .
“You think I did it?”
“Let’s just say the police are fairly sure.”
“Then why are you here and not them?”
“I wanted to give you a chance to explain yourself.”
“Look, Clint,” she said, “Avery could’ve killed Barrett out of jealousy.”
“We left him at his
place when we followed you to that hotel,” Clint said. “We never saw him.”
“He could’ve sent someone.”
“The only person we saw was you.”
“You keep saying ‘we’?” she asked. “Who do you mean?”
“Me and a friend.”
“A friend who’s a policeman?”
“That’s right.”
“All right,” she said, pacing now, “if I killed Victor Barrett, tell me why I did it.”
“To put your boy Avery into the top spot in town,” Clint said. “To help him take over Victor Barrett’s business. To extend your own power.”
“My power?” she asked. “What power is it you think I have?”
“You were bedding both rivals,” he said. “You picked your side and made your move.”
“I was bedding you, too,” she said. “Where is that supposed to lead?”
“I don’t know.”
She stared at him a few moments, then said, “Well, maybe we should find out.”
Abruptly, she pulled her shirt out of her skirt, unbuttoned it and dropped it to the floor. There were those glorious breasts again, nipples already hard, smooth flesh dappled with gooseflesh.
“What do you think?” She cupped her big breasts in her own hands and tweaked the nipples with her thumbs.
He thought that he was only a man, after all.
THIRTY-FIVE
Amanda approached him, still holding her breasts in her hands, as if offering them to him. He reached out for them, replacing her hands with his, and lifted them to his mouth. Once again those thick nipples slipped between his lips, his teeth. He chewed and sucked on them while she moaned and held his head. She reached between them to feel his erection through his trousers. He kissed the slopes of her breasts, her neck, her chin and then her lips. She avidly returned the kisses, her head spinning because her memory had not failed her. She was right in thinking that this was the only real man she’d shared a bed with in months—perhaps years.
And now she would share her bed with him.
“Come with me,” she said, grabbing his hands.
“I’m going to have to keep my gun close, Amanda,” he warned her.
“I’m not going to try to kill you, Clint,” she promised with a chuckle, then added, “At least, not until I’m done with you, and that won’t be for a long, long time.”
He hoped that she was referring to days rather than hours.
Back at his desk—or the desk he shared with two other inspectors—Callahan was collecting the data Clint had suggested. Both Victor Barrett’s organization and Ben Avery’s had too many men in them for just him and Clint to face, no matter what Clint’s reputation was. And with Captain O’Neal steadfastly refusing to give Callahan any men, they were going to have to come up with a plan—one that would keep them alive.
“Heard you’re workin’ with a legend of the Old West these days, Charlie,” one of the other inspectors said as he passed by.
“Yeah,” Callahan started, “it’s pretty—”
“Ain’t that another way of sayin’ you got yourself an old partner?”
The man laughed and walked off.
Idiot, Callahan thought. True, Clint Adams was older than he was, but he was far from old. Working with him had already taught Callahan a lot about dealing with people. This experience would be invaluable to him—unless he ended up losing his job.
Clint Adams was thoroughly enjoying Amanda Tate’s heavy breasts, whether the weight of them was in his hands or on his chest. At the moment they were in his face as she sat astride him and rode him. His penis was buried deep in her steamy depths, and as her big breasts swayed in his face, he’d grab them, suck them, lick them—damn, the woman had the most suckable, chewable nipples he’d ever encountered.
She also gave off a fragrance that was a heady mixture of her natural scent, perfume and sex. And because she had a woman’s body—all breasts and hips and butt—he enjoyed her entire weight on him. As she would lift her hips up off him and then slam them down, engulfing him again in her heat, the bed would actually leap a couple of inches off the floor.
They grunted and groaned together as they fucked with abandon. There was no love involved in this coupling, just lust and—when he thought about the fact that she had probably killed two people, and maybe more—danger.
But at the moment nobody was thinking about killing anybody—unless having sex with her was going to give him a heart attack. She had a prodigious appetite when it came to sex, and it was all he could do to keep up with her.
But he was thinking of death. He was wondering if she enjoyed killing Victor Barrett as much as she had enjoyed having sex with him. This was truly the first time in his life—in his experience with many, many women—that he was with one who might try to kill him when they were done. Amanda was a true black widow.
He felt her slick fluids on his thighs as she continued to ride him, so abruptly he decided to try to assert his superiority. Using all his strength, he heaved himself up and turned the two of them over so that he was on top. He fucked her brutally then, slamming into her again and again, and still she exhorted him to do it harder and harder.
“Give it to me,” she cried, “give it all to me, you bastard . . .”
He braced himself, hand on the bed on either side of her, and tried his best to give it to her harder and harder. Then, at one point, it stopped being about her and started being about him, and his own pleasure, his own release. He grunted and groaned and moaned his way to it until they were both crying out, bucking against each other, scratching and clawing and marking each other . . .
THIRTY-SIX
When they were done, Clint quickly rolled away from her to the side of the bed where his gun was hanging from the bedpost. They were both breathing heavily. He had scratches from her nails on his back and arms, and she had welts from his fingers on her pale skin.
“Are you gonna shoot me?” she asked.
“I’m just being careful,” he said.
She looked like a wild woman, with her black hair a messy fog around her head, her breasts heaving and nostrils flaring. He found himself wishing there was nothing else between them but the sex. It would have been a hell of a way to spend the rest of the day and night.
“Do you really think I killed Victor Barrett?” she asked. “He was my lover.”
“And Ben Avery? Also your lover?”
“Well,” she said, “he’s young and trainable, and sometimes a gal needs a young lover—don’t you think so?”
“I can’t comment on that, but he’s more than your lover, isn’t he?”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s your boss.”
“My boss?”
“And now, thanks to you, he’s ready to take over for Victor Barrett.”
Amanda was laughing too hard to answer.
“What’s so funny?”
“T-that you t-think B-Ben is my b-boss,” she tried to explain. She was laughing so hard her breasts were jiggling.
“Well, if he’s not your boss, then what is he?” Clint asked.
She stopped laughing and looked at him seriously.
“If I tell you, you’ll leave and never come back,” she said. “Or you’ll leave and come with the police—but then it would be my word against yours.”
“Let’s take a chance, Amanda,” Clint said. “How about some truth, for a change?”
“Truth,” she said, tasting the word. She stood up, walked behind a screen and came back out wearing a long, flimsy robe. It covered her, but she might as well have been naked.
“All right,” she said, “let’s try it your way. Some truth. But let’s do it over a drink. Come with me.”
He stood up, pulled on his trousers, strapped on his gunbelt, then carried his boots and shirt as he followed her through the house to another room.
“Have a seat,” she said, indicating a maroon divan in the center of the room. There were other chairs in the room that matched
it, as did the curtains on the windows.
She went to a sideboard and poured them each a brandy, handed him one.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have anything else in the house stronger.”
“This is fine.”
She sat down in one of the other chairs, crossed her fine legs and then adjusted the robe so that it was covering them.
“I’m going to tell you the truth, Clint, because we’re alone, and because I want your respect. I don’t want you thinking of me as a woman who latches onto men.”
“I’m ready to hear it,” he said.
“You can see that Ben Avery is younger than me,” she said. “What you don’t know is how much younger. I’m older than I look. So Ben is significantly younger. As for Victor Barrett, he was older than Ben, but still younger than me.”
“Okay,” Clint said, “I’ll accept all that without asking you how old you are.”
“I’m at the age now where a man—or boy—younger than Ben might not look at me the way men have always looked at me, might not want me the way men always have.”
“I think you’ve got a lot more years of men wanting you, Amanda.”
“You’re sweet,” she said, sipping her drink. “Actually, Clint, I do latch on to men. I find a man I think has some potential, some talent, and I use him.”
“For what?”
“As a front,” she said. “You see, neither Victor nor Ben is smart enough to run any kind of operation. And men don’t believe that a woman could do it.”
“Ah, I think I see where this is going,” he said. “You’re the woman behind the man.”
“Exactly.”
“So it’s only because of you that Victor Barrett was and Ben Avery is in a position of power.”
“Correct.”
“What about Ted Singleton?” he asked.
“I didn’t know him.”
“What?” Clint demanded.
She shrugged. “I just told you I knew him.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“And what about asking me where . . . ‘it’ was?” he asked her. “What was that about?”
She shrugged. She either didn’t know, or she wasn’t going to tell him. Either way, he was done with her.
Two for Trouble Page 9
