Dead in the Rose City: A Dean Drake Mystery (4 page)

I had to admit that he had a point. So I said
hopefully: “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Big Al gave me a supportive pat on the
shoulder and left with a nice looking Latino woman. I did not feel
particularly lucky tonight, except for the fact that I had avoided
serious bodily harm in Nightmares.

I glanced over at the blonde bombshell and
was surprised to see she had already discovered me. She offered me
a tantalizing smile and I reciprocated unevenly, in case it was
someone else who held her attention.

After mulling it over with the rest of my
drink and deciding the lady was not waiting for Mr. Right to show
up, present company excluded, I figured what the hell. I flagged
down a waitress to offer her a refill of whatever she was drinking,
courtesy of the gentleman sitting two tables over.

But she declined, got up, and left as if she
suddenly realized she had no business being there or perhaps had
already completed it. She never once looked my way as she sauntered
towards the door and exited.

I let out an expletive or two, suddenly
wishing I had a hole to could crawl into. That old saying
immediately came to mind:
If it seemed too good to be true, it
probably was.
At least that was the case for me tonight.

I had an urge to follow blondie, but decided
it was best to leave well enough alone. Tonight, I would let the
sweet sounds of jazz be my lady. I called it quits after the set
ended, slightly intoxicated, but still in control of my
faculties.

Outside, I breathed in the warm air for a
moment or two, before beginning the quarter of a mile walk to my
apartment. I had only covered half a block when a bright red
Porsche pulled up alongside the curb and a sexy voice said: “Can I
give you a lift somewhere?”

Upon closer inspection, I realized the person
behind the wheel was none other than the sexy blonde bombshell from
the club. If I hadn’t believed in fairy tales before, I was
beginning to now.

She leaned across the front seat, her chest
flirting with me, opened the door, and said: “Get in.”

It was an offer too tempting to refuse on
this warm—and getting warmer by the second—night.

“Where to?” she asked without looking at
me.

“Straight ahead.”

She no longer wore the hat. Her lemon-colored
hair seemed to glow in the dark, as did that tight red dress.
Whatever perfume she was wearing filled the air with something
delightfully appealing.

If I hadn’t known better, I would think I was
being picked up. Coming from the macho brotherhood of the police
academy, it had taken me a while to catch up with the times of
liberation and equality when it came to sexual aggression.
Fortunately, I was a quick learner.

“Who are you?” it seemed time to ask.

“My name’s Catherine Ashley Sinclair,” she
said, the words rolling off her tongue with a slightly Southern
tilt.

“Dean Jeremy Drake,” I followed. “You can
call me D.J.”

“Nice to meet you, D.J.” She gave a rich,
melodious laugh.

I studied her sculptured profile. “Do you
always give men you don’t know rides, Catherine?” The question was
one of pure curiosity. “Especially when they tried to buy you a
drink and were dumped on.”

She fluttered her long lashes at me. “I saw
you. I liked you. I didn’t need to go through the BS of pretending
to get to know each other.”

“So you waited for me outside?” I was left
scratching my head.

“Why not?”

We stopped in front of my building. “So where
do we go from here?” I hesitated to ask, reluctant to see this
fairy tale come to an end prematurely.

She ran a silky smooth hand down the side of
my face and said without preamble: “How about to bed?”

The lady certainly didn’t pull any punches.
This wouldn’t be my first time being with a white woman. If I
learned one thing from my parents, it was that there was no such
thing as racial incompatibility when it came to sex.

But there were other considerations. I didn’t
consider myself especially promiscuous, not these AIDS days. But my
sex drive was about as strong as a twenty-year-old’s. Okay, a
forty-one-year-old who had never lost the desire to be with a
beautiful woman. That, combined with being a bit tipsy and
currently unattached, made it a done deal.

* * *

I hadn’t exactly prepared the place for
company, but had the feeling she wouldn’t mind dirty sheets.

“Would you like a drink or something?” I
asked Catherine Ashley Sinclair, gazing into eyes so blue they
appeared to be violet.

She licked her full, glossy red lips, smiled,
and said: “Nothing to drink, but I would like
something
—”
She kicked off her high heels and unzipped her dress. In slow
motion it sank down her perfectly curved and angled, very naked,
tall, tanned body. Her eyes danced at me provocatively. “That’s
assuming you like what you see.”

It would have been damned hard not to. The
woman had a body to die for, and knew it. Like a man on a mission,
I held her cheeks and put my mouth to hers. It turned into a
passionate kiss, neither of us backing off in the slightest.

She finally did, looked me ravenously in the
eye, and lowered to her knees. There, she methodically unbuckled my
pants, yanked them down and took me in her mouth, all without
missing a beat. To say it—she—felt good would be an understatement.
But the better part of me refused to have this fantasy end only
half completed.

I brought Catherine Ashley Sinclair back to
her feet and scooped her up in my arms in one motion. We made our
way to the bedroom where I tossed her on the bed, dirty sheets and
all. It took me only a second to whip a condom out of the
nightstand, put it on, and join the lady who had my full and
undivided attention.

For the next hour, we made love as if there
were no tomorrow. Or yesterday. I felt as if I had been reborn. Or
maybe given a new lease on life. This was a woman who demanded
every bit as much as she gave, and then some.

When it was over, I was one exhausted, but
contented man. I was not looking ahead, only basking in the glow of
one night to remember and cherish.

Somewhere between the oohs and aahs of
orgasm, I must have told Catherine Ashley Sinclair I was a private
eye, for as we unraveled from each other’s limbs, she said to me
casually: “I’d like to hire you—”

At first I thought she meant as a boy toy.
“I’m afraid my services as a lover are not for sale.”

“I want to hire you as a private
investigator.”

I sat up, intrigued and surprised. “Since
when?”

She tilted her head slightly. “Since I
overheard someone at Jasmine’s say that you were a private
investigator.”

I rubbed my nose with annoyance. I never
liked mixing business with pleasure and definitely not tonight.
“You picked one hell of a way to solicit my professional
services.”

Catherine shrugged her beautiful pink
shoulder. “I got your attention, didn’t I?”

I looked at her naked body. “Yes, I’d say you
definitely got my attention.” There had to be more to this
seduction than attention grabbing. “So why come on to me? I don’t
require my clients to sleep with me before I take on their
cases.”

She seemed unaffected by this. “Maybe I
wanted to see what you were made of. Maybe you turned me on. Does
it really matter?” She rolled off the bed, giving me a bird’s-eye
view of her shapely, firm ass.

I was now feeling more than a little
unsettled, and perhaps inadequate. It would get worse before it got
better. Leaning on my elbows, I asked the logical question: “Why do
you want to hire me?”

She drove fingers through her thick mane like
she was searching for something, and said evenly, without giving me
the benefit of her stunning blue eyes: “I think my husband is
cheating on me. I’d like
you
to prove it—”

I thought I had heard it all, or at least
most of it. But this strange bit of irony nearly left me
speechless. If I hadn’t detected a strong note of sincerity in her
voice, I might have broken into a boisterous laugh. Instead, I was
deadly serious when I said: “You’re joking, right?” The joke was
not that she was married, though not many married women ended up in
my bed that I was aware of, but that she had a problem with an
unfaithful spouse, considering the present circumstances.

Catherine painted my face in even strokes
with her eyes. “This is no joke,” she stated firmly. “I’m very
serious.” She placed her hands on curvaceous hips, teasing me with
that gorgeous frontal view of her full breasts. “I mean, this is
what you do for a living, isn’t it?”

She was serious, I decided. That didn’t make
the situation any easier to swallow. I sighed. “Lady, I do a lot of
things in my line of work. That doesn’t mean I’ll do anything—for
anyone
.
” I found myself fumbling with the covers as if I had
nothing better to do with my hands. “Are you saying you want me to
get the kind of proof on your husband that we just
experienced?”

Color stole into her cheeks. “That’s exactly
what I’m saying.”

That cliché about the pot calling the kettle
black or in this case, white, immediately came to mind. Whatever
she was up to, I wasn’t buying it. “You picked the wrong man for
the job.” I got up and went for my clothes, scattered about the
floor like leaves.

“I picked the right man,” Catherine insisted,
coming over to me and dribbling her fingers across my chest. “What
happened between us in a moment of passion has absolutely nothing
to do with me and my husband.”

“If you say so,” I muttered sourly, grabbing
her fingers, which had suddenly become more irritating than
pleasing. “And it was more like an hour of passion.”

Who the hell was I to tell her how to
conduct her life?
Whatever was going on between this lady and
her husband was between them, as long as she didn’t put me in the
middle. A part of me knew she already had and I was still trying to
figure out why.

Catherine sucked in a deep breath and said:
“Maybe I should explain—”

I was all ears as I watched her sinuously
pull the dress over her body and zip it, as if performing in a
Broadway show.

She flipped her hair back haphazardly. “My
husband is a very wealthy man and also quite a bit older than me.
We signed a prenuptial agreement before we married three years ago,
giving me a generous sum in the event of a divorce. Last week, I
overheard him asking his attorney if the terms of the agreement
could be renegotiated, giving me less.” She sighed exaggeratedly.
“I don’t want a divorce, but it seems as though he does.”

I stared at her. “And you want to make sure
if it comes down to that, you’ll get every cent coming to you.”

She batted her lashes. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Only if I deserved it.” I wasn’t usually
this flippant and judgmental with potential clients. But I usually
hadn’t just slept with them either.

Catherine hit me with a look of indignation.
“Whether you choose to believe it or not, I love my husband very
much!”

I couldn’t help but laugh in stark disbelief.
“Lady, if you call making love to another man that you just met
loving your husband, that’s your business—not mine.”

“I have never been unfaithful to my husband,”
she insisted, “until now. But the same is not true for him.” She
sat on the bed and began to whimper like a child who had just been
told she wasn’t getting a Barbie doll for Christmas after all. “I
just accepted his affairs as part of the package because I loved
him and wanted to make our marriage work—no matter what!” She
dabbed convincingly at her eyes and gazed up at me. “I guess when I
heard him talking to his lawyer, I felt used and humiliated;
betrayed that he should think me such a fool. All I could think of
was getting revenge.”

“So you seduced me to get back at him?” I
uttered, feeling a certain sense of betrayal myself.

“It started out that way,” she admitted, “but
it ended up being more than that.”

I knew it didn’t make one damned bit of
difference one way or another. She was a married woman and I was a
single man. There was no future here. And, based on what I now knew
about her, there should never have been a past. “What makes you so
sure your husband has been cheating on you?” I asked, not sure I
even cared.

“He told me,” Catherine surprised me by
saying matter-of-factly. “He said it had nothing to do with me or
how he felt about me, but that he could never be faithful to just
one woman.”

“And you accepted that?” A doubtful thread
stitched my brows.

“What choice did I have?” she whimpered. “I
didn’t want to lose him.”

“You mean his money, don’t you?”

“That’s not fair,” she whined.

“Life isn’t fair,” I said sadly, suddenly in
need of a drink. Somehow I found it hard to accept that any man
would need more woman than this blonde, blue-eyed beauty with an
insatiable sex drive.

I pressed on for more feedback, though having
serious reservations about taking on another case—this one in
particular. I asked, while slipping into my leather boots: “Other
than the call to his lawyer, has your husband given you any other
reason to believe he wants out of the marriage, short of telling
you face to face?”

“Yes.” Her nostrils flared. “He hasn’t been
in my bed for the last six months.”

Was he out of his mind?
I wondered
incredulously, and conceded to the embittered would-be client: “I’d
say you definitely have a problem.”

That could certainly explain her need for me
tonight. Sexual repression had a way of making most normal people
horny. Myself included. I was still left with a sour taste in my
mouth. Knowing that I had been nothing more than a sex object in
her eyes was a wound to my normally powerful male ego.