Armed and Fabulous (Lexi Graves Mysteries, 1)

by Camilla Chafer

  Chapter Eleven

  It wasn't easy to concentrate on work with the pressure of Solomon's kiss burning my lips, while Maddox smoldered only a few desks away. Maddox struck me as a straight talking type, so when he said nothing about Lily's and my drunken shenanigans the night before, I assumed Solomon simply hadn't told him. A large part of me was quite relieved. However, Maddox also didn't mention our future date. I spent a good few hours having an internal dialog about whether it was just a joke to him, after Vincent's invitation, or he simply didn’t have the time to do anything about it.

  Several times, I hovered the mouse pointer over the IM box, and several times I stopped, telling myself that not only was Maddox my boss here, and sort of my boss on the taskforce—though, come to think of it, I seemed to have unwittingly taken a volunteer position—I had kissed his colleague. I also didn't want to come off as needy. Kissing Solomon—what was I thinking? What was I doing enjoying it? What was I doing analyzing it endlessly when what I clearly needed was a cold shower, not to mention some serious gossip time with Lily?

  "You're looking very serious today.”

  I jumped at the sound of Maddox's voice. Tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear, I looked up. "I'm very busy," I said, trying not to sound too surly as guilt prodded me. I had kissed him, and then kissed his colleague. Big oops.

  "Do you have time for lunch?"

  Duh. I always had time for lunch. "I guess," I said, looking forlornly at the stack of typing Dominic delegated to me. Seems like he was taking Dean's apparent absence as his opportunity to catch up. I just couldn't get motivated about it.

  "It'll be here when you get back," said Maddox, apparently deciding I had some newfound work ethic. I did too, but not for this job.

  "That's what I was afraid of."

  I grabbed my purse and followed Maddox out, walking abreast across the park to the cafe. We got sandwiches and drinks, Maddox’s treat, and we took a booth in the corner.

  "This is going to start office rumors," I said.

  "Eating sandwiches or… this?" Maddox's hand landed on my leg and slid a little further up, sending tingles through my spine.

  A smile played on my lips. Perhaps the ‘d’ word was back on? "Definitely that."

  "I was going to kiss you, but Anne just walked in and she would probably combust."

  After what I'd seen last night, I doubted a kiss would even raise Anne’s eyebrows.

  "Raincheck," I said, just in case he thought I was passing. Flirting away my lunch hour seemed like a lot of fun, but I had to get serious. I dropped my voice, "So what's happening with you-know-what?" I was going to say “case,” but that sounded too ominous. I knew Maddox was concerned about public conversation, what with the walls having ears and not knowing whom to suspect. Somehow, I didn't believe that there were no suspects at all. I wondered just how much he held back from me.

  "I'll tell you while we walk back." Maddox demolished his sandwich and unscrewed the cap of his mineral water. "In short, not a lot."

  "Is that good or bad?"

  "Neither, so far."

  I ate my sandwich quickly and we gave our table up to a pair of hovering office workers; then walked slowly back to Green Hand.

  "We got the coroner's report back on Tanya Henderson, aka Tallulah. We got her ID from a wallet in the jacket she checked. The shot killed her, obviously, and there weren't any defensive wounds. No epithelials or other trace evidence."

  "She didn't see it coming until it was too late," I concluded and Maddox nodded. "Does that mean she knew her killer? Possibly trusted him?"

  "It's a possibility that she felt certain nothing was going to happen to her. Or maybe she thought she was too valuable to off. We're checking into her history."

  "Did you check her keys?" I asked. "It was odd that one wasn't on the key ring."

  "Everything is being checked. Your lead on the call center was good."

  "Thank you."

  "We have a couple of people looking into what was set up there, but so far, it looks shady. I hope it's the key to blowing open the fraud case."

  "I thought you had a bunch of information." I was fishing and he knew it.

  "Some. Enough to show fraud, but not enough to find the perps, or how they are getting away with it. We always knew there was an inside man, and everything points to Dean. His mortgage, his expensive tastes and habits, the low pension pot all gave him motive to go for a big time payoff from the company he dedicated his life to. He had access to every part of the building and could feasibly have set up a fake office for claims. But without him, we don't have a lot to go on. If he were alive, we could have threatened prosecution and flipped him, like I tried to do the night he died. As it is, we need the rest of the team now. And the money," he finished.

  "Do you have any ideas who they could be?"

  "None. They might work for the company, or maybe not. It's a complicated thing. We're lucky to have the FBI involved. Their pockets are deeper than ours when it comes to surveillance for a case like this."

  I'd heard plenty of times how badly the cutbacks had hit Montgomery. It wasn't just the PD that suffered, but every peripheral service connected to them. Victim support barely supported itself now. Only cut and dried cases were welcome at the precinct; every other resource was stretched beyond capacity. There were plenty of petty crimes that didn't get more than a cursory glance before being filed “unsolved.” They simply didn't have the manpower to pursue everything.

  "Hurrah for the spooks," I said.

  "That’s CIA,” corrected Maddox. “I looked for you yesterday. You leave early?"

  "Who me? No."

  "Didn't think so.” He laughed. I felt certain my timecard would be signed. “Do anything good?"

  "Hung out with Lily. You?"

  "Hung out with the team."

  "Bet I had more fun." I wasn’t sure last night counted as fun. One day, I hoped to look back on it and laugh, or preferably, wipe it from my memory. I wasn't sure about the bit with Solomon. I wasn’t sure Maddox skirted the truth just as much as I had.

  "I can't gamble on a bet I'll lose." We neared Green Hand and Maddox slowed his pace, forcing me to match him. "I want you to be careful, Lexi. Two people are dead. Two people that we know of," he emphasized. "The information you got already is good, but I don't want you asking the wrong person the wrong question. Saturday night could have been a lot worse." Maddox really didn't need to spell it out. A minute earlier and we might have been staring down the barrel of a gun.

  "Are you saying I'm off the case?"

  "I think it's for the best. I don't want you to get hurt."

  "Keep my pretty little mind on typing and filing, huh?" I said, struggling to keep my cool. The only good leads he'd gotten so far had come from me, as far as I could see. "Got it." I heard a huff of annoyance from Maddox as I stalked off, but I didn't turn back or even think about apologizing. So I was good enough to kiss, but not good enough to work with?

  It was petty, but I ignored Maddox for the rest of the afternoon. As soon as I finished Dominic's work overflow, I grabbed my purse, dumped the files on Dominic's desk and left.

  I had to admit I was pretty cross at Maddox. I'd essentially provided him with a bunch of clues, ruined my good taste in fashion with hooker heels, stumbled on two corpses, and there was the small matter of the blood-stained dress, heels and purse that disappeared from my apartment the night Maddox drugged me. I really liked that dress and I was full on “say no to drugs.” If he thought he could leave me out of the investigation, he was wrong. It had already become very personal.

  By the time I got home, I had devised a plan. I went up to my apartment first and poured a glass of water, then pulled the phone book out, flipping through the pages until I found what I wanted. I drank the water, stuffed the phone book back under the couch, and clattered down the stairs to knock on Lily's door. Passing me yesterday's newspaper, she sat down. "Do you want to go to the movies Wednesday?" she asked. "That new comedy is
out. I just checked."

  "Sounds good." I needed a laugh without the danger of kissing a man. An annoying little voice in my head nagged as to whether I was maybe overreacting a little since I enjoyed kissing Solomon. Perhaps, just maybe, I was having a guilt attack. I told the little voice to shut up.

  "Did you see the headline? There's been another hit-and-run. Mayor Mathis. Just got hit when he was taking an evening stroll and the driver sped off. That's the second one in a week! What's wrong with this town?"

  It struck me that a lot wrong was wrong with this town. My boss was dead, his girlfriend, Tallulah, aka Tanya Henderson, was dead and there was a huge stash of stolen money out there somewhere. Of course, I didn't say that. Instead, I just replied incredulously, "He was going for an evening stroll?"

  "Yeah. Says here. He went out for a stroll after dinner and was struck. Some neighbors found him in the road."

  "That's rough," I said, trying not to imagine Mayor Mathis squished all over the road.

  "Tell me about it. You try and look after yourself, keeping fit, and what does someone do? Run you over, that's what! You want to go spin on Saturday again? Anton will be there."

  "Yes, definitely. You think Mayor Mathis was trying to keep fit?" That struck me as funny. The last time I'd seen Mayor Mathis, he'd been cutting the ribbon of the new public library and his stomach hung pretty far over his pants. I doubt whether he'd ever seen a gym, but I’d bet he'd certainly seen more than his fair share of donuts.

  Lily looked at me as I struggled to keep a straight face. "Maybe he turned over a new leaf. Like a mid-life crisis or something."

  "I guess." It could happen to anyone. I'd already experienced my share of crises and none of them had been mid-life. I could only hope the universe wasn't waiting to whack me with a doozy. I'd take a mid-life sports car though. Not Vincent's Spyder, but maybe a cute little convertible. I shook the daydream from my head and got back on task. "I want to visit Tallulah's family," I told Lily.

  "How come?" she asked.

  "Maybe they know something."

  "Awesome," said Lily. "We know nothing."

  "Exactly."

  "Where does she live?"

  "I checked the phone book and there are three T. Hendersons in Montgomery."

  “Did Hot and Hotter asker you to do this?” she asked.

  “Which is which?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Guess not, and no, they didn’t. Maddox wants me off the case.”

  “Huh,” said Lily. “Do we still like him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “There’s nothing wrong in calling to pay condolences to Tallulah’s family,” decided Lily. “It was sad.”

  “It was,” I agreed. “It was really sad.”

  "Let's call them first." Lily got her phone book and flipped through to the Hendersons, checking them off with a Sharpie. She dialed the first number and asked to speak to Miss Henderson, waited for the answer, said goodbye and put the phone down. "Miss is a Mr. Thomas Henderson," she explained.

  The third call was the charm. "That was Tanya's sister. She told me her sister had just died and she was sorting through her things."

  "Let's go over and talk to the sister. Maybe they were close?"

  "Okay, and we have to go to my sister's baby shower afterwards." I looked down at my work clothes. I still passed as smart and neat. Clean, too. And, to my relief, I was hangover free.

  Lily saw me looking at her sweater and jeans and took the hint. "I'll change."

  Tanya Henderson lived in an apartment block on South Street in Frederickstown. The area, named after Montgomery's first mayor, was a melting pot of small, one-family homes, apartment buildings and independent businesses. It sprang up to house the overflow of a population boom in Montgomery more than forty years ago, but had quickly gone to the dogs. Its biggest problem was no one thought ahead far enough to connect the public transport system to the area. By the time they did, the commuters had moved out and the area had fallen to ghettoization.

  It wasn't the nicest of neighborhoods, being mainly poor. The whole South Street block looked like it needed a coat of paint and landscaping around the communal gardens, but it wasn't the worst neighborhood either. My car—which had mysteriously appeared in my parking space sometime during the night—would most certainly be here when I got back, so I parked on the street and we walked over to Tanya Henderson’s apartment.

  "So, what are we looking for?" asked Lily. She pulled her sunglasses down her nose and looked at me expectantly, with the air of someone who trusted someone else to know what she was doing.

  "I don't know yet."

  "What are we going to say?"

  "We'll say we're friends from the club and we heard what happened."

  "Plausible," agreed Lily.

  I located the button for 3B and pressed it. A moment later, a woman's voice called, "Hello?"

  "Hi! This is... Jennifer and... Alison,” I said, picking the first names to pop into my head. If the cops asked later, not that I could fathom why they would, she wouldn’t have our real names. I was probably over thinking it, I decided. “We're friends of Tanya's."

  "Come up," said the voice and the door buzzed open. The elevator was out of order so we climbed the two flights to the third floor. Someone had tried to jazz up the communal space outside Tanya's apartment with a little console table that held a plastic plant with a framed print above. A woman waited in the doorway for us. She was in her thirties and had waist-length, brown hair.

  "I'm Tara, Tanya's sister. You heard what happened?" she said without preamble.

  I nodded. "We're very sorry for your loss."

  "Thank you. She was only twenty-eight, you know. Too young. What can I do for you?"

  "I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. About Tanya. We were pretty concerned about her."

  "Me too. Listen, come on in. We can talk while I sort through her things. The landlord wants everything out by the weekend. Harsh, right?"

  "Totally."

  Tanya Henderson had tried to make the best of her apartment. It was neat, although a little on the sparse side. She attempted to make it more cheerful by using bright throws and pillows. A modern art print had been tacked above a fake fireplace. I couldn't connect it with the red head in the tight leather dress. I couldn't picture Martin Dean in it either. It was a far cry from Bedford Hills and the grand piano.

  "Did Tanya live here alone?" I asked.

  "Yeah. Thought you knew that?"

  "I did. I just thought she'd been seeing someone. Thought maybe he'd moved in."

  "She didn't mention it to me. And she wasn't real sharey, you know, about the guys she was seeing."

  "She was seeing more than one?"

  "Well, you know about the clubs she went to." Tara moved around us to lift a carton off the small two-seat sofa and invited us to sit.

  "You mean Flames?" said Lily. "We go there."

  "Then you know monogamy isn't on top of the list. Tanya had a guy who took her there. I think he used to help her out with money and he was into all that weird shit. Sorry. I'm sure it's not weird to you at all, but the public spanking stuff? I just don't get it."

  "No offense taken. Do you know this guy?"

  "I think his name is Dean something? Like two first names, maybe. Tanya mentioned him a couple of times when he sent her presents. She seemed to really like him. I saw him once, dropping her off, but I never met him. Not the best looking guy, if you know what I mean. Plus, he was too old for her."

  "Was she dating him for the money? He was loaded, right?" I watched her.

  "Yeah," said Tara, with a shrug. "He was, but Tanya, she wasn't a gold-digger, ya know. She didn't ask him for stuff. She didn't have a lot either, but she always worked when she could and paid her own way. This Dean treated her nicely. She said he was respectful."

  "Did she ever bring him home to meet your folks?"

  "Hell, no. I don't think they had a relationship like that, any
way. Tanya never said he was her boyfriend; and he had twenty years on her, at least. Maybe even thirty! She said he worked a lot and liked her companionship, that she was... What was it? Oh yeah—uncomplicated, whatever the hell that means." Tara shrugged and pulled a couple of paperbacks off a small side table, tossing them into a box marked “charity.” "She used to go over to his place, too. Said it was really nice. Big. He had a thing for vintage cars and took her out in one once. She said it was amazing. She felt like a Hollywood screen siren in it."

  "He's missing," I said.

  "No shit? You think he was the bastard who did this to my sister?" Tara didn’t question how we knew that, much to my relief.

  "No, like you said, I think he really liked her."

  "Then he got her mixed up in something?"

  "Maybe."

  "I told Tanya, seeing older guys was fine. Plenty of women do that, but these guys, they don't marry women who go to clubs like Flames. They get them in trouble and split. Again, no offense intended. But she said she wasn't after him for a ring."

  "Had they known each other very long?" Lily asked.

  Tara looked up at her. "A couple of years. I don't know where they met."

  "Did Tanya seem worried about anything before she..." I paused. It seemed too soon to say the word “died.”

  "Before she was killed?" Tara asked bluntly. She was putting on a tough act, but nothing could disguise the red rims around her eyes. "Now I think about it, yeah, she did seem worried about something. She was real edgy."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Jumpy. Always looking over her shoulder. She mentioned taking a vacation too. Even bought a guidebook."

  "That wasn't like her?"

  "No, she always wanted to travel, we both did, but never have. This guy of hers, the one you say is missing, he bought her tickets to Paris. They were going to go there at the end of the month."

  "Sounds romantic."

  "Sure does. She said she might never come back." Tara stopped folding the throw she pulled off the floor and placed it in the carton. "Hey, do you want any of her stuff? Most of it is going to Goodwill."

  "No, but thanks for the offer." I stood, and Lily followed. "Oh, there was one more thing. Tanya mentioned she'd been keeping something for Dean. Do you know what it was? It might have been a key or something?"

  "No, she didn't say anything about a key, but she didn't tell me everything."

  "No problem. Thanks for your time."

  "Tanya's funeral is next week. It'll be in the newspaper. You're welcome to come by."

  "Thanks."

  Tara saw us to the door, and just as we were leaving, she said. "The tickets for Paris are here and they're in Tanya's name. What do you think I should do with them? Should I wait and give them to her guy?"

  "No," I said. "Use them." Martin Dean would never need them.

  "I can't imagine dating someone twenty years older than me," I said to Lily as we walked down the stairs.

  "I did. Once."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah. He was lovely. Very nice, mature, good in the sack."

  "You never said. What went wrong?"

  "I kept imagining ten, twenty years down the road, I would still be pretty young and he would just be getting fatter and asking me to get his slippers."

  "It might not have been like that."

  "I know, but the fear was there anyway. Plus, I didn't want to look like a gold-digger."

  "I would never think you were a gold-digger."

  "Everyone else would. If he was poor, but smart and handsome, people wouldn't care. Throw rich in and everyone's got an opinion."

  I thought that was a good point, even though Lily’s parents were loaded. "You think Tanya really liked Dean?"

  "She was planning to go away with him. Plus, look at where she lived. She wasn't milking him for money or jewelry and stuff like that." The door banged shut behind us and we moved to the curb.

  "Maybe it was the spanking."

  "You are so fixated on the spanking. Did Maddox spank you in the club?"

  "No!"

  Lily smirked. "Maybe he should have."

  "I'm going to spank you over the hood of my car."

  "Take pictures and send them to Officer Tasty."

  "Eugh!" I got in the car, trying not to think too much about that. "You know this wasn't a total waste of time," I said, sliding my key into the ignition and checking my mirrors.

  "Why's that?"

  "Because we found out Dean was planning on leaving the country. Maybe he was going to take his cut and go."

  "And not come back," finished Lily. "Dude was going on the lam."