Armed and Fabulous (Lexi Graves Mysteries, 1)

by Camilla Chafer

  Chapter Five

  When we got home, I didn't see anyone watching over our building, but I slept a little better knowing Maddox had someone spot checking my apartment, if not simply observing. After a restless night, filled with nightmares of the murderers opening the closet doors and finding us, I was determined to take the snooping business seriously. The joint taskforce seemed to have nothing, as far as they said, and I had no doubt that they'd picked Green Hand Insurance apart as soon as Maddox placed his call; but I wanted to look over the scene of the crime too.

  Dominic, Dean’s assistant, didn't budge all morning, giving me plenty of time to think about my next move. I knew I needed to get inside Dean's office and take a look around. Even though I wracked my brain, I couldn't work out what was so interesting in the reports I’d written. If, however, I could find out what Dean had been doing in the hours leading up to his death, I might find a clue.

  As soon as I saw Dominic move away from his desk, I picked up a stack of papers and made my way to Dean's office.

  "Hey, Lexi," said Vincent Marciano, the company accountant, his head popping over the cubicle wall as I passed his desk. Vincent was about as far from an Italian stallion as a man could get, but he strove to adopt the swagger and supreme self-confidence that he was every woman's fantasy. Unfortunately, that also made him resistant to subtle brush-offs that fell short of screaming and mace, but since he did co-sign my timecard, I had to be nice.

  "Hey," I said, holding up my papers, deflecting whatever silly comment he was about to make. Vincent was probably harmless and might even have been sweet if he didn't try so hard, but he had an annoying habit of always getting in my way when I was in a hurry. I think he just wanted to talk to me. I hoped it wasn't because he had more than a friendly interest, because there was no way that was happening. I was taught never to be cruel unless necessary and I really didn’t want it to be necessary. "Photocopying," I said, flapping the papers.

  "Waits for no man," Vincent finished, chuckling at his joke.

  "You know it."

  "Want to get coffee after work?" Vincent called after me.

  "No can do," I said, glancing over my shoulder to give him an apologetic smile. "I'm meeting a friend after work." Instead of veering off to the photocopy room, I walked past Dominic's desk and down the short hallway, as if I owned it. Then, with a backwards glance to check that no one was watching, I opened Dean's door and slid inside, shutting it softly behind me.

  I placed the papers on the console by the door and darted forwards. My first stop was Dean's desk. I rifled through the neat stack of paperwork on the desk, noting that it was a smaller pile than two nights ago. None of my reports were in the stack, but there was a bunch of papers from accounts, some memos from the call center below us, and a few spreadsheets. I discounted them all after a quick scan and moved to the orderly line of Post-it notes that spanned the side of the desk, adjacent to Dean's phone. It was the usual stuff—calls to return, questions from Dominic regarding Dean's travel to a conference next week, confirmation of a dinner reservation, a credit card bill. I sneaked a peek. A two hundred and forty-six dollar balance, plus a home address. Nothing stuck out as being out of place or unusual. In fact, as I glanced down, there was no blood stain where Dean lay dead either.

  With a frown, I returned to the desk. A selection of newspapers were folded across the top portion. National titles and the Montgomery Gazette, all new. I knew Dominic placed them there every day because I had to run out to get them a few times when he was too busy. I checked the diary printout that I knew came from Dean's Outlook calendar, also managed by Dominic. It also had today’s date and I guessed Dominic had updated it and left a printout just in case Dean came in. I wondered if Dominic was in the loop on Dean's demise. I guessed not.

  Next, I tried the drawers. The top two were locked so I was surprised when the third one easily slid open. There wasn't much inside. A couple of candy bars, a spare tie and one of those miniature Japanese sand gardens, complete with a tiny rake, that was supposed to help de-stress busy minds.

  The door opened abruptly and I don't know who was more startled. Dominic or I.

  "What are you doing in Mr. Dean's office?" he asked.

  I bent toward the files. "I made a mistake in my file and I wanted to get it before Mr. Dean saw," I lied. "It's the pie charts, you see. I put in the wrong numbers." I grabbed a file and held it up. "Here it is!" I plastered on a grin.

  "Mr. Dean doesn't allow people in his office," said Dominic, crossly, his hands braced on his hips.

  "Yes, sorry. Won't happen again," I said, nudging the drawer closed with my leg as I skirted the desk. I crossed the floor quickly and grabbed my papers from the small table. "I'll be off," I said, walking back to my cubicle without a backward glance, hoping no one besides me could hear how fast my heart was beating. Halfway there, I dropped the file that I swiped into a trash basket under someone else’s desk.

  Maddox caught up with me after lunch (chicken mayo, courtesy of Bob), and isolated us into a meeting room. "I saw you go into Dean's office," he said, folding his arms across his chest. He didn’t look thrilled, but he didn’t look too upset either.

  "I went to get some paperwork," I said. "And Dominic wasn't around."

  He raised his eyebrows at my lie. "Our people went through it already. The files were gone when they arrived."

  I groaned and dropped into a chair. "I saw. None of the files on Dean’s desk were mine. Dominic must have put new ones there. You find out what they’re so interested in yet?"

  "No. Our techs said nothing stood out when they pulled the files from your flash drive and it's not like we can ask Dean."

  "Didn't you bug his phones?" I asked, a light bulb popping on in my head.

  "Sure, but he didn't use his personal cell phone, his BlackBerry or the office phone, so we didn't pick anything up, only what I overheard. The call he got that night went to a burn phone that he concealed. We traced it back, but it was made from a burner too."

  "What about DNA?"

  "Nothing. The killers wore gloves. They were both bald, so no hair. They took the gun with them and we don't have his body to do an autopsy, or run a ballistics report on the bullets. They were extremely careful."

  My head shot up. "You don't know where his body is?"

  "Not yet. We've searched his house, his garage. Nothing. Either he's been dumped somewhere or..."

  "Or what?"

  "Or they've still got him."

  "Eugh!"

  Maddox shrugged. "He'll turn up."

  "So... you have nothing."

  "Not exactly nothing. You were in his office. What did you see?"

  It was my turn to shrug. "Everything looked normal. Fresh newspapers, new diary page and a bunch of sticky notes. I couldn't get in the top two drawers of his desk and there were a few candy bars and things in his bottom drawer. Nothing that said, 'Hey, I'm in the fraud biz!'" I thought about it some more. "Oh, and no blood on the carpet."

  "We already replaced the blood stained section."

  "That's fast. It took my parents' carpet people days.” I shook my head. “Don’t ask. So... I didn't see anything unusual. Is there something I should be looking for?"

  "Not in there."

  "What else am I supposed to do?"

  "Just keep your eyes and ears open," said Maddox. "Don't do anything to attract attention." His eyes flickered to the open top buttons of my shirt. "And don't do anything dangerous."

  "Ten-four," I said.

  "And when your day's over, just go home, like normal."

  Nothing exciting happened all afternoon, which was disappointing, and no one was in a talkative mood, so my snooping went downhill fast. I left right on the dot of home time and drove without incident, my VW having decided to come back to life that morning. Lily hammered on my door five seconds after I kicked off my shoes and I let her in.

  "Okay," she said. "What gives? You were acting really weird last night and I've seen two guys in
your sex-famined apartment in the space of two days."

  “Wait. How do you know about the second one?”

  “I saw him when he left yesterday. Mrs. Crichton next door asked if you were a masseuse and if she could book Mr. Crichton in.”

  "Yuck. Nothing's going on. What did you tell Mrs. Crichton?"

  "I said they must be your brothers.” Lily took my hand, putting on her best pout. “I'm your best friend and I will never forgive you if you don't tell me."

  "Nothing is going on," I protested, but at the same time, I put my finger to my lips and motioned to the floor. Ever since Maddox had mentioned our cell phones were bugged and our work computers were being monitored, I had a sneaking suspicion that he might have installed some kind of bug in my apartment too. It wasn’t so farfetched, coming from a man who drugged me. I walked through the living room, turned on the television and went back to where Lily waited, confusion etched all over her face. "Listen, I'm going to have dinner, maybe a bath, then an early night. Let's talk tomorrow."

  "Sure, sweetie. Maybe you're just tired," she replied, contorting her face into a WTF? expression. I opened the door and we both slipped out. I followed Lily downstairs to her apartment and flopped onto her couch.

  "Okay, my weirdie friend, what was all that about?"

  “I think my apartment is bugged.”

  "No shit? Why?"

  I couldn’t contain it any longer. My subconscious had been nagging me to tell somebody. I told her everything. When it happened, I was determined to tell Lily nothing, especially after the warning I’d received; but since she lived in the same building as I, to my mind, that put her in danger too. Plus, even though Garrett had confirmed Maddox existed—short of running his badge—and that he would help me get the gun permit, I still wasn't okay with the whole “trust no one” thing. I thought I was being realistic about it. If Martin Dean could get shot in the head and chest, then disappear without a trace, it could happen to me too. I wanted someone close to me to know and start looking for me if the worst happened. A very sobering thought for a Friday night.

  "No. Way," she said when I finished explaining. "And I thought I had a rough couple of nights working the door for happy night at Mulligan's last weekend."

  "I don't know why you still work there."

  "No one gets shot in the head there and I get free drinks."

  "Point taken."

  "You should come hang out next Saturday."

  I hated Mulligan's. It was loud and crowded and I always got groped. On the other hand, I liked free drinks, which they always poured with generous measure. "Okay," I agreed.

  "So what's going to happen now? Are you going to keep working at Green Hand?"

  "I guess. No one fired me."

  "Always a plus."

  "And I hate my temp manager."

  "Word. Your boss, Shepherd, Maddox, whatever, is a fox though." Lily snapped open a bag of marshmallows and we sat together, munching on them. "You know what I want to know?"

  "What?"

  "Where Dean's body is."

  "Me too."

  "Do you think it's intact?"

  "Huh?"

  "You know..." Lily mimed chopping her hand up and down across her body.

  "Oh, yuck! I hope so."

  "Why? It's not like he's going to need it."

  "Because it would be gross otherwise."

  "True. Do you have any leads?"

  "No." I thought about the address I saw on the credit card bill folded on Dean's desk. "I have his address," I told her and her eyes widened. For a moment, we just looked at each other. "I think I need to do some investigating."

  "We," Lily corrected. "We are so in this together."

  "We need to do some investigating."

  "Are you serious?" she breathed.

  "Deadly serious."

  "Cagney and Lacey serious?"

  "Castle and Beckett serious."

  "I don't want to be Castle."

  "Hey! Castle is sexy. Besides I'm Beckett."

  "I want to be Beckett!"

  "Rizzoli and Isles?" I countered.

  "So much better. Two hot, clever chicks, who don't need a man."

  Here was the thing: we probably did need a man for this one. Maddox had been trained for this sort of event, and Solomon probably killed people in his sleep. Our training consisted of TV detective shows and overactive imaginations. We weren't exactly what you would call qualified.

  "Do we need to wear disguises?"

  I knocked that one on the head quickly before Lily got any ideas. "Hell to the no."

  "Fine. Tell me the plan."

  "So when I snooped through Martin Dean's office, I didn't find anything. It was as clean as a whistle. Nothing personal like photos or toys except this little sand garden thing.”

  “I really want one of them.”

  “I’ll note it for Christmas. Anyway, I've never seen a desk so tidy." I twisted my mouth in concentration. What was my, er, our plan? "I think we should go to his house."

  "And break in?"

  "No! Investigate, Lily." And break in.

  "Cool. What are we looking for?"

  My shoulders slumped. "I have no idea. Anything that could have targeted Dean?"

  "Like a weapon?"

  "No, the killers took the gun with them. I was thinking more like anything that would show a connection between Dean and those men. Pictures, memos… maybe a diary. Stuff like that." I knew that I was grasping at straws because I couldn't imagine Dean kept a diary about any illicit activities. I could see Dominic doing it for him, but I couldn’t imagine Dominic as an underground crime boss in a fraud ring.

  "Where does he live?"

  "Hyacinth Avenue in Bedford Hills. I got the address from his desk." I even remembered the number.

  Lily dumped the empty packet on the table and grabbed her coat. "Let's go."

  I drove. I almost hoped the traffic would be heavy because my stomach did little flips all the way over there, but traffic was light, and the rush hour was long over by the time we put our plan together.

  "Hey, do the two sexy cop dudes know we're doing this?" asked Lily, peering into the little mirror to swipe on an extra layer of lipstick.

  "Not exactly," I said, adding, "strictly speaking, no. And only one of them is a sexy cop dude."

  "What do we call the other one?"

  I thought about Solomon. How could anyone categorize Solomon?

  "Prince of Sexy Darkness?" suggested Lily.

  "Too much of a mouthful."

  "Huh-huh," giggled Lily and I rolled my eyes. "How do you know they haven't already been through Dean's place?" Her eyes opened wide. "Maybe his body is there."

  I shook my head. "Nope. Maddox said the cops went through the place. No body."

  Lily looked disappointed. "So why are we looking?"

  "We're fresh eyes. We won't look at things the way cops look at things. We might get something that they missed." I sounded a lot like Maddox.

  "Cool."

  We cruised past Dean's house and I parked a block away under the shade of a massive oak tree. If we were lucky, no one would notice my car parked there. If we were really lucky, it wouldn't be covered in bird poop by the time we got back.

  Lily had wrapped herself in a knee-length, black, trenchcoat and slim-fitting black pants as a concession to fashionable burglar chic. Fortunately, I noticed the black beret in her hands and tossed it back into her apartment as we left. Me: I went for a far less conspicuous jeans and fleece, zip-up jacket. I tucked my hair back in a low ponytail that swung as we walked. Walking around my apartment to change was no problem. If it were bugged, they'd expect to hear footsteps. I left my cell phone behind and no one followed us here, so far as I could see from my every-ten-second-mirror-check, so I figured we were safe from prying eyes with regard to law-breaking.

  Martin Dean's house was a large, white, two-story stucco with a detached garage. The front was protected by six-foot tall, iron gates and an equally high bri
ck wall flanked by green shrubbery. I tried the gates, but they were firmly shut. An electronic keypad recessed in the wall offered no clues as to the code. I hadn't seen an automatic gate opener on Dean’s desk, so I figured he must have kept it in his car, wherever that was.

  "Now what?" asked Lily as I shook my head.

  "Let's try around back," I suggested, scanning our surroundings to see how obvious we were being. Fortunately, all the other houses were behind walls and gates too, ensuring we weren't being observed. Favorably for us, the wide road was quiet. Everybody was either working late at the office or settling down to their family dinners, rather than jogging, walking dogs, or whatever the well-to-do folk of Bedford Hills did in the evenings. My stomach rumbled. I wanted dinner too.

  We walked around the side of the property, seeking entry, without any luck. The walls were just as tall here too and smoothly plastered without any footholds. Besides, even if we did scramble up, I had no idea what would meet us on the other side. At the back of the property, we struck gold. The gate seemed to be some sort of service entrance that led to the garage and it was open just wide enough that we could turn sideways, suck in our stomachs and slither through.

  "Nice," said Lily, looking around as we walked cautiously along the path, poised to run should a salivating Doberman suddenly appear.

  On one side of the path was an indoor pool, and a long stretch of neat lawn that separated us. In front was the four-car garage with a pitched roof, and just beyond that, the house.

  We made for the house, ducking across a neat patio with a cluster of furniture covered in tarpaulin. It didn't look like Dean entertained outside very much. A large expanse of glass in sliding panels revealed a living room, complete with a grand piano. I moved past it, careful not to fog up the glass by breathing on it as we headed for the only door.

  "DNA," said Lily, wisely, before scrubbing at the window with her sleeve. At the kitchen door, we paused and I tried the handle. "I knew you were going to break in," she said.

  "It's not a crime if no one sees you do it," I replied.

  "Very true," she agreed.

  "Besides, it's open." The handle turned easily, and without any resistance, the door opened. Also, now that the owner was dead, technically maybe it wasn’t even committing a crime. Besides, how could Dean file a complaint? Through a medium?

  "Prints," said Lily, sliding on a pair of slim leather gloves. I scrabbled in my pockets and found wool mittens, cumbersome, but fingerprint-proof. They would have to do. I pulled them on and wiped the door handle clean.

  "Where to first?"

  "Here, I guess. I keep all my bills and important stuff in a kitchen drawer."

  "Do you?" Lily's brows knitted together.

  "Don't you?"

  "No. I have a box file for tax, a binder for bills, and a shoe box for credit card statements."

  The shoe box was very fitting, seeing as Lily's credit card slid through more shoe stores than not. All the same, I felt a little chagrined that she was apparently a lot neater than I. I resolved to go to the stationery store and buy some binders. Or filch them from the office.

  I opened drawer after drawer, but apparently, Martin Dean was a neat freak too. All I got were knives, forks, and kitchen implements I couldn't even name, never mind own.

  "Maybe he has a study," said Lily, poking her head into the pantry, then pulling out. "This is a big house."

  "Okay, let's look." A thought hit me. "You think it’s theft-alarmed?"

  Lily chewed her lip a moment, looking thoughtful. "Maybe. The door was open. No one leaves a door unlocked, even in a nice area like this."

  "Maybe the police forgot to lock it when they left?" All the same, we agreed it was better to just be quick than get arrested. Leaving the kitchen, and ignoring the breakfast nook, we walked down the hall, taking a few seconds to duck our heads into the living room, then into a formal dining room.

  "This is a really nice house," said Lily. "Imagine having a place this big all to yourself."

  "Your parents' house is this big," I pointed out. I knew their house currently stood empty while Lily's dad was posted abroad, but Lily preferred her own small apartment to living in their sprawling house. Her parents were loaded, but she never got an attitude about it.

  "I know, but it was never really home. They always moved about so much, except for the last few years of school. Oh, here's the study. It's so..."

  "Neat," I finished, taking in the large mahogany desk, inlaid with a leather writing pad. Except, the leather chair behind it wasn't empty.

  It was occupied by Martin Dean.

  Lily screamed and grabbed my arm. I jumped and screamed too. After a moment, we both clapped hands over our mouths and stared, bug-eyed, at my dead boss.

  I moved to take a step closer, but Lily clung onto me. So instead, I strained forward, taking in his ghostly gray pallor and his slack, still-open eyes. He wore the same suit as when I found him dead in the office. He didn't smell good.

  "Is he dead?" asked Lily, her voice shaking.

  "Yes."

  “Still?”

  “Ye-e-es.”

  "Maybe we should call the police?"

  "How could we explain being here?" My heart raced, and I felt the creeping onset of panic.

  "Maybe we came to visit?" she suggested.

  "Maddox said the police swept the place already and there wasn't a body then. They might think we brought it… him." I flapped a hand at Dean. "Let's search and get this over with."

  "You take the desk. I'm not going near a corpse."

  "I don't want to go near a corpse either!"

  "You already found him dead once!"

  And it seemed pretty damn mean that I had to find him dead a second time.

  "Okay, I'll take the desk," I said with a sigh.

  Lily walked shakily over to the bookcases flanking the near side of the room and I crept towards Dean, half expecting him to jump up and shout, "Punk'd!" any moment. I'd probably die of a heart attack if he did that. As it was, he stayed completely dead while I moved towards him, edging my way next to him. A set of drawers occupied each side of the desk. I opened all of them in turn, poking through the papers with my mittened hands. I didn't find any death threats, demands for money, blackmail notes or confessions, which was a trifle disappointing, given that I at least had the corpse. And boy, oh boy, was he too close to me right now. All the time I was going through his drawers, I expected an icy hand to land on my back. Or worse, my ass.

  "Here's something interesting," I said. "It's an address book. Oh, it's new. There's nothing in it. Sorry."

  Lily peered from across the room. "I got nothing," she said. "Lots of books on tax, accountancy and biographies of business leaders. Yawn."

  I moved my attention to the top of the desk, crossing around so I wouldn't have to stand hip to corpse with Dean.

  There was a hole in the desk for power cords, but no laptop or PC, which I found interesting. There was a small, black notebook that I flicked through, but it was a jumble of numbers, and nothing that made any sense. I put it to one side, because it was an oddity and oddities were what undercover operatives look for. A leather pen holder held an assortment of pens and pencils. I fisted them in one hand and shook the pot upside down, but the only things that fell out were a few paper clips and a little notepad. I put the pens and paper clips back, almost screaming in frustration at picking each one up in my wooly, mammoth paws, and picked up the notepad, turning it over. It wasn't a notepad at all, but a little matchbook. It was black with a single flame. No name or phone number. I opened it, just in case something was written inside, but there wasn't.

  "Uh-oh, we've got company," said Lily, flattening herself against the wall. I dropped to the floor, despite the wooden blinds at the window, as the electronic gates swung open and a community security vehicle maneuvered inside.

  "Time to go!" I pocketed the notepad and the matchbook, and we half crawled, half ran for the back door, shutting it behind us jus
t as the doorbell rang.

  "Given that Dean isn't exactly going to answer the door, I think we should run," I said and Lily nodded enthusiastically. We sprinted for the rear exit, arms and legs pumping, nearly getting ourselves stuck in our race to squeeze through the half-open gate at the same time. We slunk around the side of the house and crossed the road, trying not to hurry as we walked back to my car. I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw the security guard standing at Dean's door, before he started to walk around the house.

  "I don't think he saw us," I said, pulling out my key fob and beeping the car open. We slid in on either side and I rested my hands on the wheel for a moment. I pulled my mittens off and stuck them in my pockets.

  "I can't believe we found your boss!" Lily exclaimed. "Do you think we broke the case?"

  Occasionally, Lily wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. "Nope. I just think we found the body."

  "We have to tell someone."

  I nodded. "I know. But I can't tell Maddox without admitting we broke into Dean's house."

  “Won’t he be pleased? You found Dean and he didn’t!”

  I wasn’t sure he would see it that way. “Don’t know,” I said.

  "So leave an anonymous tip. People do it all the time."

  "You'll have to call. I don't want the line picked up by Traci." I wasn't sure if my sister-in-law was even on duty in the dispatch office at the moment, but I didn't want to risk it.

  "Fine. Do you have a burn phone?"

  "No."

  "All undercover agents have a burn phone," protested Lily.

  "I don’t. I have a two-year plan."

  "Never mind. It was just a thought." Lily pulled the seatbelt around her and buckled up. "I know! Swing by my manager's office. He's always got a drawer full of phones people leave at the clubs. We'll use one of those."

  "Cool." I switched the engine on, pulled a three-point turn and drove back the way we came, heading to Lily's manager's office. The lights were off when we got there, after fifteen minutes of speeding, but she let herself in with a key, and turned off the alarm. She rooted around in the lost property box, producing a little cell phone with two bars of battery life remaining. She dialed 911 and placed a call, adopting a weird accent and telling them there was a dead body. When she gave the address, she dropped the 'h' on Hyacinth, and hung up when they asked her for details. Lily tossed the phone back in the lost property box, and reset the code on the door.

  "Didn't sound like Traci," she said as she locked up, pushing the handle to test it.

  "Good. What was up with the Australian accent?"

  "That was British!"

  "Oh!"

  "That was totally Lara Croft."

  "Um, okay."

  We dived back into my car. "What now?" asked Lily as she turned down the collar of her jacket.

  "Pick up a pizza and go home? Spend the evening looking really innocent while bleaching our eyeballs so that I don't see a corpse every time I close my eyes."

  Lily was quiet for a moment, then, "Sounds like a plan."

  Lily dialed, using her own phone this time, and ordered a large margherita, a side of garlic bread, and a tub of ice cream. We picked it up and went home. In Lily's apartment, we finished off an open bottle of red wine and munched on the pizza.

  "You think they found him yet?" she asked, diving in for a third slice.

  "Maybe. Maddox will tell me in the morning if they did."

  "You think he's going to drop by on a Saturday?"

  In all the excitement, I had forgotten it was Friday night and that I wouldn't be in the office in the morning. Normally, it would be a blessed relief. I would go out, shake off the office cobwebs, with my nails painted, wearing a pretty dress and hit the bars with Lily, if she wasn't working, or maybe with Traci or Alice if they could get a pass out. Or I would have a nice night in front of the television, facemask on, nail polish ready and a bunch of snacks by my side. My third option was spending the evening with one of my brothers, or, on rare occasions, babysitting. Serena, funnily enough, never fit into my plans and that was a mutual thing. As it was, I'd veered out of my routine and started the weekend with a B&E after fleeing the scene of a crime. I was fairly certain tampering with a corpse would never stick, seeing as I hadn't even touched Dean.

  But the thought of Maddox dropping by was a little weird, and, if I really thought about it, quite nice. It was sweet that he had checked up on me several times through the past couple of days and even offered to come to my parents’ with me. Although I was still a little cross about the whole drugging thing.

  However, he hadn't mentioned anything about stopping by, but then, I doubt he thought it was necessary as long as someone else was keeping an eye on me. Maybe I was reading too much into it because I liked him. He was good looking, and he had a cool job and danger didn’t scare him. I liked him a whole lot more now than when he was just my new, annoying boss. I'd take an excuse to hang out with him quite happily, so long as the conversation avoided dead things and the possibility of me being next.

  Thinking about Maddox made me think about Solomon. Tall, brooding, quiet Solomon. I wondered how he spent his weekends; if he hung out at home and did normal things. I couldn't imagine him dragging out a lawn mower on a Saturday morning, or tending a garden. I also couldn't imagine him stripping drywall, or painting, or cooking or going shopping at the mall. I was fairly certain he could do all of those things, because men like Solomon could do anything. It just didn't fit with the image in my mind of him disappearing off on some kind of commando mission at the drop of a hat.

  "I don't know," I said. "I guess if Maddox wants me, he'll find me."

  "Hope you're naked when that happens."

  "Lily!" Still, I had a hard time struggling with how that could be a bad idea.

  She stuck out her tongue and changed the subject. "You want to come to my spin class tomorrow to work off the pizza?"

  "Is the hunky instructor going to be there? The one with the dreadlocks?"

  "Anton? Yeah. He's the only reason anyone goes." Lily sighed.

  "Count me in."