Dead in the Rose City: A Dean Drake Mystery (10 page)

“Who the hell is it?” My sleepy voice
growled.

It was Catherine Sinclair. Her voice sounded
tense. “D.J., you’ve got to help me! Gregory found out about us. He
says he’s going to kill me—and then you!”

“Calm down,” I coaxed her, suddenly fully
awake “How did he find out?”

“I don’t know,” she insisted. “I didn’t
volunteer the information, if that’s what you mean.”

“Why would Sinclair want to kill either of us
when he’s planning to divorce you anyway?” It seemed reasonable to
ask.

In the back of my mind, I could think of at
least one reason. If Sinclair knew about us, then he probably knew
about me. A black man having an affair with a white man’s white
wife was still looked upon by some as unforgivable.

“You fool!” Catherine’s voice wailed.
“Because Gregory’s a bastard and his manly pride has been wounded.
It’s okay for him to take a lover, but for me it’s punishable by
death!”

I could hear short, erratic breaths. She
sounded like she had been drinking.

“What are we going to do?” she asked as if it
would somehow make a difference.

“Where is he now?” I began putting my pants
on.

“Downstairs,” she said in a whisper, “I
think—”

“And you?”

“In the bedroom.” She sighed heavily into the
phone. “He has a gun, D.J. And he knows how to use it!”

There seemed little time to think about this
logically or search for quick fix answers. As I threw on my shirt,
I told her as calmly as I could: “Listen to me, Catherine. Is there
a lock on the bedroom door?” The answer was obvious. A house that
looked like their house probably had locks on the faucets and light
switches, much less every door in the place.

She moaned into the phone.

“Lock the damned door, Catherine! Maybe he
just went to cool off.” Somehow I didn’t really believe that. “I’m
coming over—”

“Hurry—!” she said with desperation, and the
phone went dead as if suddenly given its last rites.

I could only hope that Gregory Sinclair
didn’t do something he would live to regret as I slipped my shoes
on.

The last thing I grabbed before racing out
the door was my gun. I had a feeling I might need it.

* * *

The best and worst possible scenarios played
in my mind as I broke the speed limit across town.

Would my affair with Catherine Ashley
Sinclair cost the sexy blonde her life? Or was Sinclair simply
applying scare tactics to her as leverage to get out of the
marriage without losing anything of value in the process?

I didn’t know what I expected to find when I
arrived at the house. The gate was open and I parked right behind
the Porsche and Mercedes. That meant, at the very least, we were
all due for a confrontation.

The front door was slightly ajar when I
reached it. Entering slowly, I took out the Glock, expecting a
jealous, hypocritical husband to come charging at me like a raging
bull. Instead, I got a potent dose of the trappings of success.
Everything looked either custom made or imported, and very
expensive. Under any other circumstances, I would definitely have
been out of my league.

As it was, I felt some sense of belonging. I
owed that to the lady of the house.

There was no sign of either Sinclair or
Catherine downstairs. An overhead balcony off a massive living room
led to a winding stairwell. No sooner had I begun to mount the
stairs when I heard a female’s piercing scream, followed by a
gunshot.

I accelerated my climb, gun cocked and ready.
Reaching the second floor landing, I listened for any errant
sounds. Suddenly it was strangely and uncomfortably silent, like
being in a mausoleum.

There were at least a half dozen rooms
stretching down a long hall. I called out to Catherine, desperation
in my tone. If she was capable of answering, she either chose not
to or was prevented from doing so.

Between being a cop and private investigator,
I had developed a sixth and seventh sense when something smelled
fishy—or more like a dead rat. I chose to ignore the warning bells
in favor of my concern for Catherine’s safety and well-being.

A sound that resembled heavy footsteps on wet
carpet came from one of the rooms. Knowing I may not have had a
second to lose, I went for it. The door was partially open, as if
beckoning me to come in. Barely allowing myself to suck in a deep
breath, I kicked it wide, following my Glock in and aiming it for
any sign of a possibly armed and dangerous Gregory Sinclair. He was
nowhere to be seen.

My eyes rested on the bed. Catherine, or so I
assumed, was lying there motionless, spread eagle, and stark naked.
Her faced was turned away from me, but her golden hair was a dead
giveaway, no pun intended. I couldn’t tell if she was dead or
alive, but figured that whoever fired that shot had to still be
somewhere in the room.

At that moment, I thought I heard a sound to
my left. I swiveled the gun in that direction. Before I could see
anyone, much less react, I was hit flush on the back of the head
hard enough to make me see my life flash before me. I wilted like a
rose starving for water, fully expecting that I had quite possibly
worked my last case.

I couldn’t help but think of Vanessa King and
what might have been.

Soon painful grogginess gave way to total
blackness.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

There appeared to be life after death as I
opened my eyes with a splitting headache that seemed to echo
throughout my body. Otherwise, I was still in one piece. I was
lying flat on my back and smelled as if I had just taken a bath in
scotch. This alone gave me concern, as I hated the stuff. I was
strictly a beer man, with an occasional glass of wine. Yet my
throat burned as if I’d been force fed the scotch.

A moment or two of regaining my bearings told
me I was on a bed in my birthday suit.
And I wasn’t
alone
.

I first saw her hair, blonde and long, but
not as blonde and not as long as Catherine’s tresses. Then it all
began to come back to me—my last memory before I was put to sleep.
Someone had conked me on the noggin with what felt like a
sledgehammer. And I was sure I knew who it was.
Gregory
Sinclair
.

I stared at the badly bruised, beaten, and
swollen face next to me, and my eyes threatened to pop out. In
spite of being worked over to the point where positive
identification might not come easily, I recognized Catherine Ashley
Sinclair’s features enough to know she wasn’t the woman on the bed.
It took a bit longer before I realized the face, or what had become
of it, was not totally unfamiliar to me.

It was the blonde bimbo who was having an
affair with Gregory Sinclair. Aside from her black and blue face,
she was naked and alabaster white from the neck down. Judging by
the absence of life in her wide-open green-blue eyes, she was
almost certainly dead.

What was his mistress doing here? I wondered.
The obvious and frightening answer was that it was probably for the
same damn reason I was here. Suddenly I began to put two and two
together. It added up to a scenario I didn’t even want to think
about, but knew I had to.

I managed to lift onto my elbows, the
throbbing pain in the back of my head almost too much to bear. Not
to mention the hangover that left me weak and slightly
disoriented.

Why did I get the feeling I was about to
regret the day I ever laid eyes on Catherine Ashley Sinclair?

There was something sticking out of my
bedmate’s bruised, protruding lips, as if put there to silence her.
Just as I had found the strength to investigate further, a voice
that sounded like a sonic boom bellowed:

“Don’t move!”

Before I could, the bed was surrounded by two
uniformed male cops with guns drawn, aimed directly at my face. I
didn’t recognize either man. Since retiring from the force and
going into the private investigation business, my contacts with my
former profession had been largely perfunctory and superficial.
Most of the cops I worked with had retired, committed suicide, or
were too damned inflexible to have much use for an ex-cop.

“Listen...” I moved my mouth, hoping reason
could prevail over circumstances that even I had to admit didn’t
look very good, “this isn’t what it seems—”

“No, you listen, asshole,” said the same
raucous voice. It belonged to a burly cop who looked to be in his
early to mid twenties. “I said don’t move! Not unless you wanna see
me blow your black face off.” He kept the barrel of his gun inches
from my nostrils.

I was no martyr looking to give a racist cop
an excuse to pull the trigger. Though I suspected he would have one
hell of a time explaining why he shot an unarmed, unclothed man at
point blank range.

Use your head
,
D.J. Don’t make any
sudden moves
.
After taking a deep breath, I told the
burly cop in an even voice: “I’m not moving, man. Think you can get
that gun out of my face?”

“Why the hell should I?” he asked
defiantly.

“Because I’m not the bad guy here,” I said
tersely. “My name’s Dean Drake. If you’ll just let me explain, I
think we can straighten this out and all go home to see the sun
rise.” I knew it was never that simple.

“Drake, huh?” the other cop said with a hint
of recognition. He was in his forties, a bit thinner than his
partner, with a horseshoe shaped hairline and brown-gray hair. He
studied me more than I cared for him to and said: “Homicide a few
years back, right?”

Now I felt we were beginning to turn the
corner in sorting out this precarious predicament I’d gotten myself
into. I said proudly: “And before that, I was out on the beat in
blue. Those were the days.”

He now seemed to regard me with a certain
amount of respect, if not admiration.

“I’m Officer William Cornwell,” he said. “And
this is”—he pointed his humped nose—“Officer Rick Muncie.” The
stocky, raw-faced Muncie seemed unimpressed. Cornwell looked at me
almost humorously and said lasciviously: “I’d say you had one hell
of a night, Drake. Heavy on the booze and boobs before you punched
her lights out—”

“If she’s dead,” I said with an edge to my
voice, “I didn’t kill her.”

Muncie felt her neck and confirmed what we
all knew. “She’s dead all right. Looks like she’s been beaten and
strangled.”

I recalled the gunshot I heard before
entering the room. There were no apparent signs that this woman who
I believed was Gregory Sinclair’s now dead mistress, had been
shot.

Could Catherine Sinclair have been the
recipient of a bullet
?
I wondered.
If so, where was
she now?

All of us seemed to zoom in on the dead
woman’s swollen, discolored face. Or, more specifically, her mouth
agape as if she were frozen in time. Using a corner of the
bedspread, Muncie pulled from between her teeth what looked to
be—

“A man’s briefs,” noted Cornwell. Or at least
they used to be before they were stretched out of shape to resemble
more of a saliva and blood-soaked rag.

Muncie glared at me, his gun still
dangerously close, but said to Cornwell: “He must have strangled
her with his own underwear then made her eat what was left of
them.”

The implications were starting to get scary.
My ability to stay cool, calm, and collected with a pounding
headache was being severely tested, and failing fast. “I did not
lay one damned finger on that woman!” My voice rang out at Muncie
in particular. “Even a green assed cop fresh out of the academy
ought to be able to see a setup when it’s staring him right in his
white face!”

Muncie colored indignantly. “Hey, asshole,
keep your mouth shut or I’ll shut it for you!”

Cornwell seemed to come to my defense. “Maybe
he’s right,” he offered his hotheaded partner. “Something
definitely ain’t right about all this.”

I kept up the pressure. “Think about it.
Doesn’t it seem a bit odd that you two would show up here at just
the right time to find me buck naked in bed with a dead woman?”

“That’s enough, Drake!” ordered Cornwell, as
if remembering loyalty to his partner and profession came first. “A
silent alarm tipped us off that there might be trouble at this
address. Looks like we came too late,” he said mournfully, glancing
at the deceased.

I sneered. “Right. Isn’t that always the
case? Do you really think I would kill the lady and decide to take
a nap beside her, waiting to be discovered by you?”

Cornwell put a hand to his face, smoothing
his jaw line while he regarded me. “If you’re innocent, Drake,” he
muttered thoughtfully, “we’ll find out soon enough. In the
meantime, we’re gonna have to take you in on suspicion of
murder.”

Murder
.
The mere word caused
bile to rise to my throat. Though I knew I was one hundred percent
not guilty of killing this woman, I also knew that I’d been
suckered into a tight corner like a rat. For one of the few times
in my life, I felt helpless at the moment to do a damned thing
about it.

Cornwell used a tissue to lift my Glock off
an end table. How it got there was another mystery to me. Next to
it was an empty bottle of scotch, no doubt with my fingerprints all
over it.

He read me my rights, and then said, flashing
crooked, yellow teeth at me: “Look at the bright side, Drake. You
won’t have to go through the humiliation of being frisked by your
ex-colleagues. I think it’s plainly obvious that you can’t possibly
have any weapons on your person.” He then glanced down at my
private-not-so-private parts, and added dryly: “Except for maybe
one—”

The two cops enjoyed a wicked laugh at my
expense. As if the degradation wasn’t enough, I still had to face
up to the fact that I’d been set up and made the fall guy by
Catherine Sinclair—a woman I had made the mistake of sleeping with
twice and allowing myself to trust.