Buried Leads (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery) (18 page)

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I will tomorrow if it gets worse, but I think some ice will be okay for tonight.”

“What are you going to do with those stamps?” he asked tightly, laying an arm along the top of my seat as he turned to back the car up.

“Stamps?” I asked, playing dumb.

“The tax stamps you found in the file,” he said.

Pay dirt. I reached into my pocket and patted the slip, sure it meant Grayson was going down, but unsure exactly why that was.

“What’s Grayson doing with them?” I blurted the question, but after I said it I wondered if he was distracted or annoyed enough to fire an answer back.

Joey kept silent, studying the road as he turned up Monument toward my house. Fine. I could figure that out for myself.

I stared at his jawline, trying not to imagine what the faint stubble there would feel like under my fingers as hard as I was trying not to care if he was caught up in whatever dirty dealings Grayson was doing. His arm had felt so natural around my waist, warmth lingering there even with the cool leather of the seat against my back.

But the truth was my goal, no matter what. Right?

He stopped in my driveway and shut off the engine, turning to face me.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” he asked.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Billings is no angel.”

“But he’s not a murderer, is he?” Resting an elbow on the console, I twisted in the seat, trying to configure my throbbing ankle into a more comfortable position.

“No. But these are not nice people, Miss Clarke.”

“Nichelle, for the eleven thousandth time. And I’ve held my own so far.” I didn’t move my eyes from his, though I’d always been hesitant to hold his gaze for long in close quarters.

“You’re flirting with danger.” He leaned closer, his eyelids simmering.

“I’m well aware of that.” My breath stopped. My sexy mobster friend was about to kiss me.

At least, I hoped he was. Because I was sure as hell going to kiss him, criminal status be damned.

It was fast and slow all at the same time. I wasn’t sure who kissed who, only that suddenly his lips were on mine, and what he did or didn’t do outside of that didn’t matter one little bit.

I wouldn’t even admit to Jenna how many times I’d fantasized about this moment, and the reality was so much better: sweet, rich, and forbidden. Like eating an entire box of Godiva white raspberry truffles when you’re supposed to be on a diet. And surprisingly—Joey was an intimidating, do-as-I-say guy—his mouth was soft against mine. Hesitant. His palm cradled my cheek the way a collector might hold a Fabergé egg.

I curled my fingers into his thick, dark hair and pulled him closer, parting my lips and pressing them harder against his.

He swept the tip of his tongue along the line of my lower lip and I gasped, dropping my hands to clutch his shoulders, certain I was about to melt into a puddle on the black leather seat.

Oh. My. God.

He tightened his arm, his hand between my shoulder blades pulling me to him, but kept the kiss gentle. My ribs protested melding with the console, but I didn’t care. Electricity skated up my spine with every thump of my heart and flick of his tongue.

When I pulled away, his fingertips lingered on my jaw, his thumb streaking sparks across my cheekbone as he stroked it with the lightest touch.

It took everything in me to refrain from inviting him in. I leaned away instead, opening the car door.

“Goodnight, Joey,” I whispered. “Please, please, if you’re involved in whatever Grayson’s doing, disappear before I find out.”

“I have no intention of going anywhere, Nichelle,” he said. I wanted to believe it was an answer, not an argument. “Sweet dreams.”

I eased out of the car, gripping the top edge of the door as I tested my ankle. It hurt, but the kiss was working like morphine. I could feel the pain, but I truly did not give one damn.

I watched as he backed out of the drive, then turned for the door when he flickered the high beams at me.

I took Darcy out back and leaned on the wall as I threw her squirrel, then checked her food bowl, tucking the stamps into my utensil drawer as I limped through the kitchen. Dropping clothes on my way into the bathroom, I pulled a clean t-shirt from the dryer on my way out. I needed to ice my ankle, but I was too drained. It would still be swollen in the morning.

What kind of worms am I going to find in this can? I wondered, trying to think about anything but Joey’s toe-curling sweet kiss. As if that were even possible. Folding the cloud-soft duvet back, I climbed into my big cherry four-poster, Joey’s jawline waiting on the backs of my eyelids.

15.

Bringing out the dead

Sleep was fitful, thanks to my ankle and a drawn-out dream that would’ve made a porn star blush. By the time first light peeped through my shades, I was ready to hobble to the kitchen for some coffee and an ice pack.

A little rummaging in the far reaches of my linen closet produced an ace bandage I’d used on a sprained knee that had ended my brief Venus Williams phase. I wrapped my ankle tightly, dropping a few ice cubes in a Ziploc and propping my foot on a stack of throw pillows while I sipped a homemade white mocha.

I picked up the stamps by the edges and studied them in the lamplight. The paper was an odd, linen-type adhesive variety, and the strip was scored for easy tearing. The mark itself was a curlicue design with an alphanumeric code printed underneath, and “Commonwealth of Virginia” printed across the top in bitsy letters.

Grayson was definitely dirty. Joey’s cryptic non-information and the paper in my hand proved that much.

“Are they fakes?” I wondered aloud, trying to remember exactly what Kyle had told me about the huge case he was working on. “Why would Grayson have fake state tax stamps if he’s taking bribes to keep the federal taxes lower?”

Darcy yipped from her bed in the corner, and I looked over at her.

“What do you think, girl? How did the senator get ahold of these?”

I laid them on the table and picked up my coffee, still thinking about Grayson. All the work he’d done at the state level for tighter regulations and banning smoking in public places didn’t jive with any of this. And how did the dead guy fit in?

Hold on. The dead guy.

I snatched the stamps off the table and peered at the edge. Not paper, exactly, but like paper. With an odd sheen because of the adhesive.

“Ten to one the scrap I found near the body is this same kind of paper, Darcy,” I said, knocking the ice to the floor in my haste to get to my feet. I grabbed my Blackberry and pulled up the photos I’d taken at the scene, but I couldn’t tell anything definitive from them. It looked promising, though. “I wonder what Kyle’s up to this morning.”

I limped to the bathroom, the ice, the bandage, and a double dose of Advil keeping the throbbing to a minimum.

Scrubbing my face with a wet cloth, I smiled at the determined flash in the violet eyes that stared back at me from the mirror. If the paper had come from the stamps, Kyle would have to at least acknowledge the possibility that he was wrong. I brushed my teeth and twisted my hair up into a messy bun, finger-combing a few strands around my face. A touch of makeup, and I debated which shoes would accommodate my bandaged foot.

I settled on a pair of Tory Burch pumps I’d picked up at a Salvation Army sale in July because I couldn’t pass up the price even if they were a half-size too big. Stuffing Kleenex in the toe of the right one, I slipped it on my uninjured foot and paired the turquoise suede shoes with cream slacks and a canary wrap sweater. Professional, but cute enough to hold Kyle’s attention.

I walked gingerly until I got the hang of slightly limping in heels, then climbed in the car and flipped on my scanner.

“Female, approximately twenty-two years old. Forensics is picking through the dumpster now.”

A body.

Between the math building and the student union at RAU.

Having just covered a horrific murder case involving students there over the spring and summer, my stomach turned at the idea of another dead coed. Writing about murder is hard enough without tragically young victims.

I started the engine, fishing for my Blackberry to call Bob.

“I’m really not trying to piss you off, Chief,” I said when he picked up. “But I’m going to be late. There’s a dead girl in a dumpster at RAU this morning.”

“Really?” He was the only person in the world who could sound perky in response that statement and not come off as a creep. “Shot? Stabbed?”

“Don’t know. They’re not saying much on the scanner and I’m still in the car. But I’m on my way over there to see what I can see.”

“Stay with it as long as you have to,” he said. “Good thing I’m not the only person you’re standing up.”

“I’d never—” I began, but stopped when I remembered that I was supposed to go to the courthouse at eight-thirty. “Shit. The jewelry store hearing.”

“Ding ding ding! It was in your copy last night. Early hearing. Any big reason you need to be there?” He meant was there any reason for him to send someone else; in this case “someone else” would likely be Shelby Taylor.

“Not really. I just wanted to get a look at the guy,” I lied. I wanted much more than a look at William Eckersly. “It’s just a bond hearing.”

“I can send photo,” he said. “It won’t hurt to have a shot of that guy in a courtroom on file. Let me see if we’ve got anyone available.”

“Thanks, Chief.” I clicked off the call, thinking he had no clue just how handy that picture might be.

I turned onto the campus, a half-dozen RPD cars, an ambulance, and forensics, coroner’s, and TV vans making it even more difficult than usual to find a parking place.

Finally double-parking next to the Channel Four van, I hurried around the student union to a sidewalk overlooking a picturesque courtyard. Students stood clustered in groups, whispering and staring at a large blue dumpster. A thirty-foot radius was blocked off by crime scene tape, the grass between the sidewalk and the dumpster hidden beneath the feet of more than fifty reporters, cops, medical examiners, and suit-and-tie university administrators.

I found Aaron at the center of a circle of microphones, giving the first media briefing of the day.

“...pending notification of next of kin,” he was saying when I walked up, and I dug for a notebook and pen. “The remains were discovered when a university employee came outside to dump the garbage early this morning.”

I scribbled, looking around for a traumatized janitor while Aaron talked about the forensics team’s deconstruction of the dumpster’s contents.

When he offered a thank you and turned back toward the crime scene tape, I spotted a woman sitting by herself on the back steps of the union building, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, her RAU-gold apron barely visible as she hunched over.

“Late to the party this morning, Clarke,” Charlie Lewis purred from behind my left shoulder, and I shifted my attention to a group of students standing on the opposite side of the sidewalk for her benefit, not wanting to clue her in to the possibility that the woman who’d found the dead girl might be available for an interview.

“Some of us need our beauty sleep,” I grinned, turning to face her. “We don’t all fall out of bed HD-ready like you do, Charlie.”

She rolled her green eyes and shook her head, her perfectly-coiffed bob not swaying. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” she said. “I have a lead on this girl you won’t believe. And you can see it at noon with everyone else.”

“Fabulous. That gives me plenty of time to run down something better before press time,” I said, watching Aaron over her shoulder. He cut the tape and motioned for the crowd to stay put. They were moving the body.

“Speaking of,” I said, stepping around her. “Excuse me for a second.”

I hobbled quickly to the back end of the coroner’s van, craning my neck for a glimpse of the stretcher. Peering at corpses wasn’t my favorite thing about my job, but was sometimes a necessary evil. Without a name to attach to the story, I needed to be able to describe the victim.

I saw dark hair, matted and strewn with something that looked like shredded lettuce.

Then the medical examiners lifted the gurney and the early-morning sunlight flashed off a large bracelet on her wrist. Who kills a coed and doesn’t steal her oversized bling?

Wait—a big flashy bracelet. Like the one Eckersly bought his girlfriend?

I elbowed past the cameraman from Channel Ten, not caring about catching a glare and a muttered curse in reply. I managed to get a good look at the victim’s face.

Holy shit.

Allison. The girl from the campaign office.

“No.” The word popped out before I could stop it and I bit my tongue, staring at the paramedic who’d stepped up to the back of the ambulance and obstructed my view like his midsection might suddenly sprout a window.

I closed my eyes, trying to erase the image of the girl’s expressionless face from the backs of my eyelids. I’d only met her the one time. Maybe I was wrong. But my gut said I wasn’t. Why was a Grayson campaign intern dead in a RAU dumpster?

I spun on my heel and winced when my ankle protested, steadying myself for a second and starting back toward the steps where I’d seen the woman I suspected had found the body.

When she wasn’t there, I sighed, but then saw her white and gold baseball cap disappearing through a door further down the side of the building. I hobbled faster, trying to catch up.

Checking over my shoulder, I could see Charlie with her mic in a medical examiner’s face. Channel Ten was talking to the kids gathered on the quad. I pulled the door open and ducked inside, finding myself in a large room with a fireplace on one wall and several groupings of overstuffed furniture that had probably survived the Reagan era. I saw the woman huddled in a ball in the corner of a sofa next to the fireplace.

I slowed my steps as I approached her, experience telling me she might startle easily after such a traumatic experience.

“Hi,” I said, my press credentials in my hand, but dangling at my side. “I’m Nichelle. That was a pretty terrible thing to see. Did you find her?”

Upon closer inspection, I put her age closer to the girl in the dumpster’s than my own. Jesus. She was probably a student, too, doing work-study at the union.

She didn’t answer me at first, hugging her knees with her legs crossed at the ankle, whimpering so softly I wasn’t sure if I imagined it.

“I just opened the door to put the bags in,” she said. “I can’t reach the lid. And her hand fell out. Her hand. I touched it and she was so cold. I screamed and screamed, and someone came to call the police. She was so pale. They pulled her out. Her neck had a funny bruise. Just a purple line. She wasn’t even wearing a coat. Just her tank top and jeans and that tacky bracelet. And it was cold this morning. So cold.” She stopped and let her head drop to her knees. “I wish I could reach the lid.”

“The bracelet was a little on the gaudy side,” I said, wondering if she’d gotten a good look at it and making a note to ask Aaron about the bruising around the victim’s neck.

“The bracelet didn’t go,” she mumbled. “Why would a girl that classy wear fake diamonds?” 

“Fake?” I eased myself down onto the edge of the sofa. My ankle wasn’t complaining much, but it needed a rest.

“As a Rolex hanging in a trenchcoat,” she looked up.

“You’re sure?”

“My father has worked for the Rothschild family for almost thirty years. That bracelet was fake. What does it matter? Her arm fell out of the dumpster! Right in my face. Someone killed her. Maybe right here on campus.”

She resumed rocking and whimpering, and I pondered that. Eckersly hadn’t given her a fake bracelet, so scratch that. But why would a girl like Allison have a gaudy fake tennis bracelet on? Did someone kill her for the bracelet and leave it when they got a better look at it? I shoved the thought aside. I was more likely to get a personal one-of-a-kind masterpiece from Christian Louboutin himself than that was to be true. Way too coincidental.

I asked for the girl’s name and jotted it down, not sure I’d need it. She’d been through enough for one day. Most of what she’d told me I’d have to confirm elsewhere. It had been chilly that morning, which meant a scantily-clad corpse would be cold no matter if it had been in the dumpster thirty minutes or twelve hours. I’d have to wait for the autopsy report to get time of death.

I thanked her and headed back outside, nearly walking into Charlie when I opened the door.

“There you are!” she practically shouted. “Would you mind moving your heap out of my way? Some of us have actual work to do today.”

Oops. I’d figured she’d hang around for a while getting extra footage.

“Sorry, Charlie.” I hobbled toward my car. Her camera guy was in the van’s driver’s seat, and he looked irritated, too.

“What were you doing in there?” She kept pace with me, arching an eyebrow at my limp, but not asking about it.

“Bathroom,” I said.

“Bullshit.” She laughed. “You are a lousy liar, Clarke. But keep all the secrets you want. You’ve got nothing on me today. Just don’t miss the noon broadcast.”

“We’ll see.” I knew Allison worked for the Grayson campaign already, but I wasn’t telling her that. And I had bigger things to worry about if Charlie was onto the senator. Shit.

I peeled out of the parking space. I’d have to be in the office in front of a TV at noon. Just in case.

Checking the clock, I knew I had better than three hours to get the body discovery ready to go on the website. What else could I find out in the meantime? The dead girl was connected to Grayson, and Grayson was connected to Kyle’s case. I was sure of it.