Bad To The Bone (15 page)

"Exactly." He reached for his drink. "She
thought I was married. And she was pretty pissed when it turned out
I wasn't."

"Why would she think you were married?"

He stared at me. "Think hard, Casey," he
said in a slow voice that made me nervous. "Why would anyone get
that impression? It wouldn't be your fault, now would it? Think
back to the last time you were here at my apartment."

"You're kidding?" I said, not knowing
whether to laugh or be dismayed at having inadvertently helped
Tawny target him. "You mean that time I... ?"

"Yes," he said, glaring. "I mean that
time."

I started to laugh. This made him
madder.

"It's not funny, Casey. It wasn't funny
then, and it isn't funny now."

But it was funny and I laughed even harder.
Almost two years ago, I had barged in on a hot date of Bill's, only
because it was an emergency, understand, and I badly needed his
help. I sent his honey scurrying away by claiming to be his wife.
She was a department employee and had apparently spread the news.
Right to Tawny Bledsoe's ears.

"Whatever happened to that dog-faced woman
anyway?" I asked. "She get transferred into the Canine Unit?"

"You're going to seriously piss me off if
you don't stop laughing," Bill warned. His face was approaching the
shade of his boxer shorts.

Anger always made Bill look more dangerous
and that never failed to turn me on. I glanced down at his stomach
where the muscles converged in a straight line that ran down into
the top of his shorts. For a moment, my mind wandered to what I had
seen in the photographs. Bill caught me wandering.

"I guess there are no secrets between us
now," he said grimly, rising to pour himself another drink.

"None. But we're on the same side. You help
me and I'll help you."

"As if I had a choice," he mumbled. "But I
hope you realize that's exactly what she said to me. What do you
want me to do?"

"I want to know where she's gone," I
explained. "I want to know what my ex-husband has to do with it." I
explained about seeing him earlier that evening. "I need your help
finding out what's going on."

He sat back down beside me and our bodies
brushed. A spark of electricity danced between us. He ignored it,
but I filed it away for future reference.

"Help you how?" he asked glumly.

"I want you to run her phone records and
give me copies," I said. "Maybe she called someone to help her set
this up. And I want you to run her fingerprints nationally to see
if she has a record anywhere. Run my ex-husband's name through the
network while you're at it."

Bill glanced at me in sudden interest. "You
think he's dirty?"

"I think she has some hold over him. And I
want to know what it is." I did not want to share with Bill the
fact that my ex was being pursued by drug dealers. Yet. "Then
there's one other thing."

"Keep it legal. I do have my standards, you
know."

I put my hand on his and he didn't pull it
away. "I want her arrested. She paid me for finding her kid with a
bad check," I explained. “To the tune of a thousand dollars. On a
closed bank account."

"Knowingly?"

I nodded. "She'd closed it a month
before."

"Okay." He thought for a moment. "I can make
a case based on a worthless check charge and obtaining property
under false pretenses."

"Those are only misdemeanors," I
protested.

He shrugged. "It's the best I can do."

"I still want to swear out a warrant," I
decided. "I want it on record. That bitch is fooling the public
into thinking she's as pure as Snow White. I'm going to prove she's
more like Sleazy the Dwarf."

"There was never a dwarf named Sleazy," Bill
said patiently. "You're thinking of Sneezy."

"That, too."

"You'll have to come down to the station and
make a complaint."

"I can't. I have too much other stuff to do.
Can't you just wing it? Call Bobby for details. Do it for me,
please?"

"Do I have a choice?" He pulled the stack of
photos toward him as he sipped his drink. "Who else was as stupid
as I was?"

He began to thumb through the stack, then
held up the photo of the fat man trussed up in black leather. "This
is the chief's right-hand man, you know. He's going to shit when he
sees this."

"No, he isn't," I said. "Because we're
saving it for when we need it."

"We're going to need this?" he asked,
sounding alarmed.

"We're going to need all the help we can get
to bring her down," I explained. "And that may include this guy.
How did Tawny want you to help her when she first tried to
blackmail you?"

"She wanted me to run some people through
the computer using my log-on code so no one would know it was her.
Sort of like you do." I ignored the implication. "Probably hoping
to get something on them. She also wanted me to run some credit
reports on a couple of guys."

"You're kidding?" I said, incredulous.
"Credit reports?"

"What's the big deal about that?" he asked.
"My four-year old nephew could do that using his home
computer."

"Don't you see? She was shopping for a new
husband. She was done with Robert Price and looking for someone who
still had money left to spend on her." I stared at him. "Did she
have you run Boomer Cockshutt through?"

He started to pretend he didn't remember,
saw the look in my eyes and gave up the ruse. "She wanted me to
find out where he kept all his assets, if he had any extra bank
accounts, that sort of thing. I explained that I wasn't married and
didn't care who saw the photos. I also made it clear that I wasn't
interested in having anything more to do with her. She wanted to,
you know."

"Wanted to what?"

"Wanted to see me again." He didn't look as
if he felt complimented.

"Considering all the people she auditioned,
it's pretty impressive that you made the cut."

His brown eyes suddenly looked very tired.
"Cut the crap, Casey. I wouldn't touch that bitch again with a
ten-foot pole."

"It's not quite that long," I pointed out,
using the top photograph as proof.

"I said cut the crap," he warned me
again.

"Okay. I'm sorry. I will. But why didn't she
try and blackmail you using that fairy dust on the mirror as
leverage?"

He shrugged. "I don't think she noticed it,
to tell you the truth. I get the feeling that bump is a regular
fixture in her bedroom. She's a cokehead, Casey. I've seen a
hundred of them in my lifetime. And that woman has a problem with
it."

"Really?" That interested me greatly. It was
the first weak spot of Tawny's I'd discovered. On the other hand,
it did not make me feel any better about the fact that she had her
young daughter with her—or that my ex might be part of it.

As if he could read my mind, Bill looked up
from the stack of photographs. "What the fuck's your ex-husband
doing mixed up with her?"

"I don't know. But I intend to find out.
Recognize anyone else?"

He nodded. "A couple of married guys from
the department. And I see from the redhead that she bats for both
teams. You'd think Tawny could do better than that. That girl's
tits look like sweet potatoes."

"That's what I like about you, Bill. Your
sensitive side."

He shrugged. "Did you think she was a rug
muncher?"

"No. And I still don't. Being a dyke
requires actually caring about someone else. Tawny could give a
shit about anyone but herself. I haven't seen such a bored-looking
lesbian since the last episode of Ellen."

Bill wasn't really listening. He was staring
at the photo of Tawny stretched out on the bed, playacting for the
camera. "Do you really think she had something to do with
Cockshutt's death, Casey? This isn't just some catfight between the
two of you, is it? A female version of dogs pissing to mark their
territory?"

"I think she's guilty, Bill," I said. "And I
think Robert Price is innocent."

"But why? There's no evidence she had
anything to do with it and the evidence against Price is
growing."

"Because of the little things," I explained.
"The more I leam about Tawny, the more I come to see how dangerous
she is—how selfish, how willing to feed on people who aren't as
strong as her, how ruthless she is in getting her own way. And the
more I hear about Robert Price, the more I believe he's a good man
who made a bad mistake when he got involved with Tawny."

"The little things tell you this?" Bill
asked skeptically.

"Yes, they do. It's the little things that
prove what kind of person you are. The choices you make every day,
when no one else is looking. The choices you think don't really
count."

Bill nodded again—as if understanding, but
not yet agreeing—then put his drink down on the table. His
shoulders slumped. "I'm getting too old for this. I can't do it
anymore."

"Looks to me like you can," I said with a
nod toward the photographs.

"Not that. I meant too old to stop her. She
probably did have something to do with Cockshutt's death. But we're
never going to find the evidence to prove it. She'll get away with
it. I can smell it. You don't know how many people really do get
away with murder. And lots of them are dumber than Tawny
Bledsoe."

"Don't say that." I moved closer and put my
hands on his shoulders, probing for tense muscles. "You don't have
to do it alone. We'll stop her together." I massaged his shoulder
blades and he groaned in contentment.

"You can be okay," he admitted.
"Sometimes."

"Just don't tell anyone I'm being nice. I
have a reputation to protect."

"My lips are sealed," he promised. "Now,
could you move a little lower, please?"

I woke up alone in Bill's bed late the next
morning. The sun was shining through a pair of sliding glass doors
that led to a balcony overlooking the tennis courts. I wandered
sleepily to the doors and looked out on a beautiful day. Then I
noticed that Bill kept a single folding chair on the balcony—with
three different grills arranged around it. I had to laugh. Men and
their primordial fascinations. If you light it, they will come.

Though I was alone in the apartment, the
smell of brewing coffee lured me into the kitchen. No note. But a
clean cup lay waiting by the automatic drip machine. How very Bill
Butleresque. Welcome, but not too welcome.

It was almost as typical as him falling
asleep on the couch under the spell of my magic fingers last night.
I'd covered him with a blanket, poured my remaining bourbon down
the sink and helped myself to some Scotch instead. Then I'd
borrowed a T-shirt, a pair of boxer shorts and his bed. I fell
asleep immediately, impressed that his sheets were actually
clean.

My morning got off to a good start when
Bill's refrigerator yielded a box of chocolate-covered doughnuts. I
ate two of them with my first cup of coffee while I enjoyed the
solitude of his bachelor pad. Funny how, after all the years of
pushing and pulling back and forth, I now felt downright at home in
Bill's apartment. Nothing like mutual hatred to bring two people
together.

I called home for my messages and felt
guilty when I found one waiting from Burly. Just my luck. My
boyfriend rouses himself from the depths of depression to call me
for the first time in days and I'm not even there. The time stamp
told me he'd called after midnight. I doubted the nuances of my not
being home had escaped him. There was nothing I could do about it
now.

But I could do something about Tawny
Bledsoe. I borrowed one of Bill's work shirts and some clean socks.
My jeans could be recycled for another day. It was almost noon and
I wondered what the best step to take against Tawny might be.

I sat on the rug in Bill's bedroom, basking
in the sunshine, while I thought it out. If my ex was helping
Tawny, either he was involved willingly or he was being duped.
Knowing Jeff's hormonally induced stupidity, I was willing to give
him the benefit of the doubt: he was an idiot, but not an
accomplice to murder.

I knew Tawny didn't want to be found until
Price had been deemed guilty, so she'd lay low for as long as she
could, using her daughter's safety as an excuse. So why had she
sent Jeff to get the photographs in the safe? And what would she do
when Jeff told her I had been at her house?

Then it hit me: she needed money. The
certainty of my guess came in a flash of recognition, a momentary
bitter kinship with her devious mind. She needed cash to support
both her habits, the shopping and the snorting. But she knew that
I'd tracked down Price at the beach through his credit card use,
meaning she probably wouldn't touch her own cards for fear of
leaving a trail. They were almost maxed out anyway. Plus, she had
no money left in her checking accounts. That meant she had to raise
cash, probably by squeezing her blackmail victims for more bucks.
Conclusion: someone in that pile of pathetically aroused human
beings might know where she was.

I wasn't keen on contacting any of Tawny's
male victims. They'd already been burned by one blond. Why should
they trust another? I'd go for the redhead instead.

Finding her would not be easy. There were
zillions of redheads in the Triangle. It wasn't like I could
capitalize on Bill's theory and walk around with sweet potatoes,
comparing breasts until I stumbled on the right pair. How was I
going to work this one? Another cup of coffee and two more
doughnuts later, I had it: I'd hit every gay bar in a thirty-mile
radius and see if anyone recognized her.

North Carolina may be in the South, but it's
not on the planet Mars. There are plenty of gay bars in the area.
In fact, there are at least ten between Raleigh, Durham and Chapel
Hill. It's the bright lights, big city pull. Not too many gay
people born in the rural South stick around the farm, casting
hopeful glances at their neighbors. Most of them head south to
Atlanta or north to New York. Those who want to stay closer to
home, head for the Research Triangle, a rather appropriate
destination for the women, in particular, when you think about
it.