Chapter 5
“Let’s grab lunch,” Wil said as we walked out of Les Vêtements.
“Sure, I can always eat.”
Wil chuckled and steered me into Bistro Atlantique, the fancy bistro next door.
“My, are you trying to impress me?” I asked. “I’d have been happy with a burger.”
After we were seated and the waiter took our order, Wil told him, “Would you please tell Monsieur Ricard that I would like to speak with him?”
“Oh, you know the owner?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, I know his younger sister, but Ricard is on the list of Morgan’s friends.”
“Next door to Boulanger?”
“And probably financed the same way.”
Ricard came out while we waited for our meal. Wil showed his ID and asked if we could speak with him privately after we ate.
Forty minutes later, Pau Ricard showed us into his office.
“A terrible thing,” he said, shaking his head. “Who would want to kill such a kind and generous man as Joseph?”
“We were hoping you might help us gain some insight into that,” Wil responded. “When did you see him last?”
Ricard shrugged. “From what I heard on the news, he had dinner here the night before he was killed.”
“Alone?”
With a sly smile, Ricard said, “Joseph rarely went out alone. Even if it had nothing to do with business, sometimes he would dine with one of his business associates, or even one of his employees.”
“And that night?”
“He was with Leslie Desroches, one of his jewelry designers.”
“What time did he leave?”
Again, a shrug. “Sometime between nine and ten. They spent forty-five minutes, maybe an hour, conversing over coffee and cognac after dinner.”
“An amiable conversation?” I asked.
“It appeared so.”
“Do you know if Monsieur Morgan was romantically involved with Leslie Desroches?”
“I think, perhaps at one time. Now, I think it was over. But Mademoiselle Desroches is very talented, and I know Joseph valued her skills very highly. He never let business interfere with pleasure, but he also never allowed personal considerations to interfere with business.”
“Do you know how to find Mademoiselle Desroches?” Wil asked.
Ricard checked his phone, then gave Wil a number. “That is her sister, Eileen. I know Leslie only through Joseph.”
We drove to Safari that evening. Judging by all the neon and the number of people going in and out, it was very popular and very large. Wil pulled into a parking space in their lot and turned off the car.
“Good. Let me go in and ask the questions, okay?”
He turned to me and jumped in his seat. “Damn! Warn me before you do things like that!”
I gave him my best toothy alluring grin. “Don’t you think I’ll fit in better this way?” I had morphed into a half-lycan hooker I once met. Becca was stunning, with long silver hair and fine, short, silver-gray fur covering most of her body except her face, hands, throat, chest and abdomen, her skin there being very white. I wore a bright red sleeveless mid-thigh dress with a deep V-cut bodice that showed the curves of my upper pair of breasts and hints of the lower two pair. I thought the dog collar ringed with rhinestones was a nice touch.
“Or do you think this would be better?” I morphed into a snake girl, covered with light-brown scales over most of my body and very fine silvery scales on my face and front side. I skipped any sort of clothing just for effect. Wil sucked air, and his eyes got very wide. “Morgan isn’t the first man I’ve tracked with a mutie fetish,” I said. “It helps me blend into the crowd when I don’t look so human.”
“I, uh, yeah.” Wil licked his lips. “Well, I think the lycan thing is good.”
I morphed back into Becca, leaned over, and kissed him. “If you hear gunshots, wait by the front door to cover my escape.”
“Your pistol is silenced,” he said.
“Yes, so if you hear anything, you’ll know it’s not me doing the shooting. Right?”
“Try and stay out of trouble.”
“Me? I never go looking for trouble.”
I hopped out of the car and stalked down the sidewalk to the entrance, glad that the six-inch heels were part of the illusion and not something I actually had to walk in.
It was immediately apparent that Safari wasn’t a hooker hangout, although I was sure there were plenty of men and women there trying to make a living. The clientele was definitely well-off and well-dressed, both those who looked totally human as well as the obvious mutants. As I suspected, normal-looking women, as well as men, were there searching for an exotic experience. And there was no doubt as to what kind of experiences people were seeking. I was sure a picture of Safari sat next to the definition of meat-market bar in the dictionary. The club didn’t even bother with a live band, just recorded music.
The mutants were on the prowl for each other as well. A guy that could have been related to my snake girl persona was making out with a girl who looked as though she might be a lycan-vampire mix. A tall part-troll girl was sitting at a table talking to a guy whose mutations were unclassifiable. Part lycan, part troll perhaps? The thing about all the genetic manipulations, and the natural and artificially induced mutations, was that we were all still human, and unless one of the parties was sterile, we could interbreed, though many vampire crosses died in infancy.
I wondered at Morgan and Savatier paying for girls. Neither was so old, fat, or ugly that they couldn’t pick someone up just by acting rich. Maybe they were in a hurry and preferred not to play the romance game.
I got hit on three times before I got to the bar and ordered a drink. Such times always made me think of Nellie and what she put up with on a daily basis. The girl couldn’t even go to the store without fielding half a dozen propositions. No wonder she even did her grocery shopping online.
Pulling out my phone and handing it to the vampire bartender along with a tip that was double the price of the drink, I asked, “Do you recognize either of these gentlemen? I was told by a friend that they’re very generous and I should look them up.”
He leered at me and looked at the pictures of Morgan and Savatier. “Yeah, they come in here fairly regularly, sometimes together, but usually alone.”
“Mmm. Are either of them here tonight?”
“Haven’t seen them.”
I held out my payment card again and gave him another twenty. “I heard they were in here a week ago Saturday night.”
He thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah. Left with a couple of chicks.”
I raised an eyebrow and held out the card again. “Happen to know who?”
The girls Morgan and Savatier had picked up were in the club, but not together. One was a lycan, the other was a girl with troll blood who stood about six-foot-eight, with bluish skin, black hair, and a pair of boobs the size of bowling balls. The troll girl definitely would have had the strength to skewer Morgan, and probably the lycan would, too, but Savatier said Morgan left his place alone.
I sauntered up to the lycan girl, held out a payment card, and asked, “May I buy a little bit of your time?”
She looked me up and down suspiciously. “What kind of time you talkin about, Sugar?”
“Just five minutes. Tell me about one of your dates.” I showed her Morgan’s and Savatier’s pictures. Her eyes widened, and she started to bolt. Morgan’s picture had been all over the news, and she obviously knew he was dead. I grabbed her arm and shoved a pistol barrel in her ribs.
“Now, hold out your phone,” I said.
She did, her hand shaking so hard it was difficult to press my payment card to it and transfer a hundred credits. Her eyes widened when she saw the amount, and then she turned her face to me.
“I’m not trying to jam you up, I just want some information. I don’t even want to know your name. Just answer my questions, and we’ll go our separate way
s.”
She nodded.
“Now, you went home with these men, right? What time was that?”
“Yeah, me and another girl. Early, maybe seven-thirty. They were in a hurry, but they paid good.”
“Okay, then what?”
“They had us do each other, then they shared us. Pretty standard stuff, except for the other girl.”
“Not lycan,” I said.
Her lip wrinkled in disgust. “No. Not lycan, barely human.” I thought that was a little prejudiced. I had seen the other girl, and to my eyes she looked more human than the lycan.
“Go on.”
“Well, then that guy,” she pointed to Morgan, “got a call and said he had to leave. So, he packed up. We stayed with the other guy for another hour, then he sent the troll girl home and paid me another five hundred to do some things to him. When I got out of there, it was almost sunrise.”
I didn’t want to know about Savatier’s kinks, so I didn’t ask. Growing up in a brothel, I heard a lot of stories I wished I could unhear. Me? I was pretty vanilla, and thankfully, so were Wil and Nellie.
“What time did the first guy leave?”
“Early. Musta been around ten o’clock.”
“How did he leave? Did he call a car or something?”
“Oh, hell no. He had a big limo. It was waiting for him at the club, and it waited for him at the other guy’s apartment.”
“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” I put the gun back in my purse. “Have a good evening.”
I thought about the timeline as I walked through the crowd. I discovered Morgan’s body about one o’clock in the morning, and my estimate was that he’d been dead for two hours. I saw the aircar take off around midnight. So, Morgan went home, met someone, and died almost immediately. Or maybe he met his killer before and took him to the apartment. In any case, it was quickly decided. No futzing around. Get to the apartment, kill Morgan with the spear, force the chauffeur into the aircar, blow his brains out, and send the car into the river.
The speed of the thing made me rethink whether it was planned. The chauffeur was shot in the back of the head. Why not shoot Morgan? The spear still struck me as a weapon of opportunity. A weapon of rage.
I slid into Wil’s car and morphed back to my real self as he drove off.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“Yeah. Did you find Morgan’s phone?”
“As a matter of fact, no. Why?”
“Savatier left a few things out. Morgan got a phone call and left in a hurry. The hooker said that was around ten o’clock, and he left alone.”
“That early?”
I chuckled. “According to her, they left Safari around seven-thirty. Remember you asking Savatier what they did at the end of the night? I figure they left the charity bash, went straight to Safari, and picked up a couple of girls as quickly as they could. The hooker said that Savatier is extra kinky, and with the length of his and Morgan’s relationship, I would guess that was part of their bond.”
Wil nodded. “The girls. Mutants?”
“A lycan and a girl who’s part troll. They weren’t looking for the girl next door. The thing is, Wil, that lycan girl said she stayed with Savatier until dawn. That’s a pretty tight alibi.”
Wil made a call and had one of his people check Morgan’s phone records. He listened for a moment, then hung up.
“Morgan got a call at nine fifty-two that lasted three minutes. The same number called again at ten twenty.”
“And?”
“Burner phone, a twenty-credit pre-paid phone. It wasn’t used before and hasn’t been used since.”
“I’m thinking more and more this was pre-meditated,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
Chapter 6
The last of Morgan’s friends we planned to talk to was Teddy Smith. Savatier first told us about him, and both Boulanger and Ricard mentioned him also. Savatier told us Smith was a childhood playmate of Morgan’s. Boulanger and Ricard told us Smith did odd jobs—the implication was dirty jobs—for Morgan. I thought about the assassinations. Smith would be a good intermediary between the rich man and the criminal class.
Wil asked his Chamber investigators to look the man up, and they came back with a load of information. Smith had been busted several times and convicted twice—once for theft and once for assault. His background was lower-middle class, and he ostensibly made his living as a gambler and a courier.
We were told to look for him at Casino Royale, a second-tier place in the north part of the city near the docks. We drove over there, and I sat outside watching the patrons for a while, then morphed back into my Becca persona. Lower heels, a slightly longer skirt, and not showing as much boob changed my look from hooker to party girl.
There was no way to disguise Wil, so we entered the club separately.
I found Smith at a medium-stakes poker table. I was rather surprised that no one we talked to had mentioned that Smith was a vampire. After watching him for a while, I wanted to play cards with him. He wasn’t doing very well, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Based on what we knew, an overabundance of money had never been one of his problems, so I was puzzled.
Wil stood on the other side of me, behind another table with another set of players. After watching Smith a little longer, I was convinced at what I was seeing. I pulled out my phone and called Wil.
“He plays like he’s nouveau riche,” I said.
“Just what I was thinking. Playing with house money,” Wil replied
“The house would fire him. Should we wait until he blows his whole stack of chips, or pull him out of there while he still has bus money?”
“Let him go a little longer. I want to know if anyone else is watching him.”
“Ah. Good thinking. I’ll do a little circulating.”
Twenty minutes later, I hadn’t spotted anyone who seemed to be paying Smith any attention. I went to the ladies’ room and came back out as a fifty-something matronly sort of woman and watched some more. As far as I could tell, the only people watching Teddy Smith were those salivating about getting a seat at the table with him. By my count, he had won two out of twenty hands, and both of those pots were small.
I wandered behind him just as a new hand was dealt and glanced at his cards. Full house, fours over jacks. Shocked, I backed off and watched him play. He discarded one of the fours and one of the jacks. The two cards he drew were tens. He folded.
I called Wil again. “He’s sandbagging. I don’t know what his angle is, but he just threw away a winning hand.”
“I don’t get it,” Wil said. “Just in the time we’ve been watching him, he’s lost about six thousand credits.”
There had to be something else going on. I started paying attention to Smith’s cards. Two hands later he was dealt three queens. He tossed two of them and played the hand with a pair of sixes and queen high.
None of the other players at the table seemed to pay any attention to his ineptitude. One guy was winning big, and when I turned my attention to him, things began to clarify. He regularly locked eyes with the dealer and with Smith. I never did figure out the signals they were using, but the three of them were engaged in funneling money in one direction.
I went to the ladies’ room again and resumed my Becca persona, then walked over to Smith’s table. Leaning over, I whispered in his ear.
“Mr. Smith, I would like to speak with you about Joseph Morgan. Excuse yourself quietly, or I’ll blow the whistle on the game you’re playing with the dealer and Mr. Big Winner.”
He glanced up at me, eyes wide. I smiled, showing my werewolf teeth. He looked down at his hand—two pair, fives and nines—and folded.
“I need to get some air,” he said, pushing his chips into a cloth bag and standing. The dealer and Big Winner looked shocked and alarmed.
“Come along, darling,” I said, hooking my arm through his, “I’ve got something I know you’ll just love.”
He tried to pull away from me. “Wait
a minute—” I stuck my pistol in his ribs and he shut up.
Wil met us outside.
“Mr. Smith, the dealer, and another gentleman were signaling cards to each other,” I said. “I assume they planned to split the proceeds at the end of the night.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Wil said, pulling out his ID. Smith turned even whiter than Becca’s belly. “Theodore Smith? I’m investigating the death of Joseph Morgan. Where were you the night of September fourteen?”
Smith stammered and stalled. I couldn’t believe someone could look so guilty. Even a ten-year-old caught red-handed could think up an alibi better than what Smith was doing.
I glanced at Wil. “Can I kill him now?” I asked. “You said I could kill the guy who killed my honey.”
“Well, we don’t really know if he was in it alone,” Wil said.
“No,” Smith finally said. “I, well, I was here part of the night. Then I went home.”
“So, you don’t really have an alibi,” Wil said.
“No, but why would I kill Joe? He was my best friend. Hell, he was my meal ticket. I’d have to be crazy to kill him.”
We questioned him for another ten minutes, and all we got was the run around. When we got back in the car, Wil asked, “What do you think?”
“He’s right at the top of my list,” I said.
“I don’t think he’d have the balls to do it,” Wil said.
“That’s why I like him for it. Scare a man like that, and he’s likely to lash out. It wouldn’t even have to be physical fear. If Morgan said he was going to cut him off, or hang him out to dry for something, that could push him over the edge.”
The suspects just kept coming. Wil called me mid-morning the following day while Nellie and I were in the middle of getting our nails done. Well, she was getting a mani-pedi so she would look even more beautiful, and I was getting some color applied to my closely trimmed nails out of boredom.
Diamonds and Blood (Chameleon Assassin Book 5) Page 4
