Legwork (6 page)

“Of course I’m going to head straight home.” He didn’t add: “What kind of guy do you think I am?” Which was fortunate, considering the reply I kept at the ready.

“Is the press in on it?” he asked suddenly. Like I said, he was a great candidate’s husband.
“Do they know I’ve been gone?”

“Don’t know,” I said.
“It’s been pretty confusing.
Mary Lee’s staying out of sight.
She’s issuing a statement in a couple of hours.” We were on the edge of the parking lot when the coed roared past in a silver Porsche.
Funny, it looked just like Bradley’s.
I put an arm around his waist and looked up at him adoringly.
She squealed the tires in rage as she turned a corner and raced away.

“Get off me!” Bradley demanded, swatting me like I was a fly.
“You’re a real bitch, Casey.”

“Men like you sometimes think so,” I confessed with satisfaction.

“For god sakes, get me home,” he demanded, breaking into a sprint as we both spotted my clunker.
“She can’t do a press conference without me by her side.
It’ll look terrible in the papers.”

Like I said—Mary Lee and Bradley made a hell of a pair.
Like two actors playing their parts for the camera.

And that thought set me thinking: two actors, indeed.

The October day had turned into one of those spectacular Indian summer displays you only find in the Carolinas.
The sky was a clear, bright blue with cartoonlike white clouds skittering around on a cool breeze.
The air smelled fresh, as if it had been replaced over a clean ocean for my lungs alone.
Even the highway looked pristine, its freshly paved surface rimmed by rows of hardwood trees fluttering deep orange and yellow leaves.
The ever-present Carolina pines encircled the pockets of color like the green tissue I used to stuff in boxes of grapefruit every winter after school for extra cash.

Too bad I was stuck in my car with someone I hated, instead of hiking over those peaceful-looking Piedmont hills.

“So where were you?” I asked Bradley again as we zoomed past a farm truck trundling its way down 1-40 with a load of pumpkins for the yuppie supermarkets in Raleigh.

“None of your fucking business,” he replied, ever the gentleman.

“Maybe not, but I can guarantee you that I won’t be the last person to ask you that question.”

He was silent.

“This is serious shit,” I explained.
“The police will want to know where you were.”

“Why the hell would anyone care where I was?” he said bitterly, planting his expensive loafers on my dash simply to annoy me.
It worked.

“Poor Bradley.” I clucked my tongue in sympathy.
“Forced to work all of what, ten, twenty hours a week? Representing wealthy business owners referred by Mary Lee. Supported in the style to which you have become accustomed by her family’s money.”

“Screw you,” he mumbled.

“Some people might appreciate Mary Lee a little bit more,” I suggested.

“Some people don’t live with her like I do,” he countered.
“How would you like being told what to do twenty-four hours a day, your every move analyzed to see what effect it will have on the polls?
Meanwhile, the whole state is laughing at me behind my back because my wife wears the pants in the family.”

Knowing Bradley, I suspected the real problem was that Mary Lee wouldn’t give him a blowjob.
But that would have been rude to point out, so I kept silent.
Besides, if he really hated his situation, he could get out of it easily enough.

“It’s your choice to stay,” I pointed out.

“Spare me the marriage counseling,” he replied.
“I don’t notice any rings on your fingers.”

I decided not to show him the one in my navel.

We rode in silence after that, as I blew through quite a few red lights to get him home in time.
It didn’t make him any more grateful.
When we pulled up to the house, it looked deserted.
I had expected the place to be jammed with media cars and television trucks.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“I doubt she’ll hold the press conference three feet from where the corpse was discovered,” Bradley said snidely, climbing out.
“It’ll be at campaign headquarters.”

Peggy Francis emerged on the front stoop and glared at Bradley.
“Hurry up,” she called out.
“We have to be downtown in fifteen minutes.”

It wasn’t until Bradley disappeared inside the house that I realized what he had said.
How the hell did he know where the corpse had been?
I hadn’t said a word about it.

I couldn’t decide if I was disappointed or relieved after I showed up for my appointment downtown where only Bill Butler seemed interested in me.
I guess the SBI felt I wasn’t important enough.
On the other hand, it gave me the perfect opportunity to pump Bill for information—and to bat my eyelashes, of course.
I’d worn my contact lenses for the occasion and I considered it a real sacrifice.

“What’s a rude guy like you doing in a nice town like this?” I asked as I took my seat across the conference table from where he sat, looking all spiffy in a black tee shirt and black jacket.
The room had been done in early 80’s Formica. Very cheerful.
The muddy brown of the floor looked particularly fetching as a backdrop for the numerous coffee and grime stains peppering its surface.

“I moved down from Long Island about three years ago,” he told me, sliding a cup of coffee across the table at me without asking how I liked it.
It didn’t matter.
I wasn’t planning on drinking it.
I’d had the coffee before and damn near needed crowns on my teeth afterward.

“Why’d you move here?” I asked.
I pretended to sip my coffee so I could look at him over the rim of my cup.
In daylight he was even more attractive.
His face was a little craggy. Sexy creases at the corners of his eyes.
A long black mustache that made him look a little like a Mexican bandit.

“I followed someone down,” he said, shuffling a stack of papers into place.

“Someone like a suspect?
A girlfriend?
A wife?”

“You know, Casey, I think you’re a little confused.
I ask the questions.
You give me the answers.
Got it?”

I shrugged.
“Where’s Shrimpboat Shorty?”

“He and his fellow agents are off playing in a sandbox,” he told me.

I laughed; he didn’t.
“You think I’m kidding?” he said.
He sighed and pulled a tablet of paper toward him.
“Why did Ms.
Masters hire you as a bodyguard?” he asked.
“I need to know more about the specifics.”

“She’d been moving up in the polls,” I explained.
“Against all odds, I might add.
But when she started moving up, she also started getting these phone calls.”

“Threatening phone calls?” he asked.

I nodded.
“Seriously threatening.
The caller knew where she lived, what she wore to bed, stuff like that.
And he had a very specific plan for what he’d like to do to her.
Weird sexual stuff, mostly.
Bondage, that kind of thing.
Do you want to hear the details?” I asked hopefully.

He shook his head.
“Why didn’t she report him to us?”

“It’s hard enough being a woman and running for office in this state without having the fact that you’re vulnerable in certain areas rubbed in the voter’s faces.”

“I get it,” he said.
“What else?”

“He knew a lot of personal things about her,” I continued.
“And he had a creepy voice.
Raspy, muffled.
Very scary.
Mary Lee had her secretary tape a few of the calls.
The guy was a real sicko.”

“What’s wrong with the usual state trooper guard?
Or the local guys?” Butler asked.
“You told me last night she didn’t trust them.”

He had a good memory.
“A couple of times, Stoney Maloney brought up some new issues just as Mary Lee was about to release a major statement on the same issues,” I explained.
“It kept forcing her into reacting, rather than setting the agenda for the campaign.
She trusts her staff a lot.
They’ve been with her a long time.
But there was a leak somewhere.
She decided it was one of her three guards and told them all to get lost.
I was the replacement.”

“You replaced three guys?” he asked, his eyebrows raised.

“I could have replaced more,” I confided. “But that’s all that were assigned to her.”

He tried to hide his smile and failed.
“Did the calls stop?”

I nodded.
“For a while.
They’ve started again.
I think it’s a manic depressive going through a down cycle or something.
Maybe a campaign volunteer.”

“Why did she pick you?” he asked.

“I’m the only female private …” I stopped in time and rethought my strategy.
“I’m the only female bodyguard in the state.
She wanted a woman.”

“Why?” he asked, clearly more curious than chauvinistic.

“Ladies’ rooms figured prominently in the creep’s scenarios.
She was afraid to take a pee alone.
My main job for the past month has been to stand outside her stall trying not to listen.”

“I’m sure you’re well qualified for the job,” he said.

I ignored his tone.
“It’s no joke.
Do you know how many glasses of iced tea that woman drinks a day?
Hell, she hits the can more than a coke addict.
And when she pees, she makes Secretariat look like a piker.
I swear she has an auxiliary bladder hidden somewhere.
The things I could tell you about public restrooms in North Carolina.”

“If only I had the time to listen,” he hinted and I fell silent.

“Who do you think did it?” he asked.

I felt flattered and immediately wondered if it was a trick.
“Someone in Stoney Maloney’s campaign springs to mind,” I ventured.
“Since she was moving up in the polls.
Or maybe her husband did it.” I hesitated.
“They seem like a happy couple on the surface but that’s just for the cameras.
They hate each other.”

“Of course they do,” he agreed.
“They’re married.”

Aha, he was divorced.
It’s grand being a detective.
You figure out all kinds of stuff about people that way.

“What about the possibility that she really did do it?” he asked.
“And tried to make it look like she was being framed?”

I considered the idea.
“It’s possible. Convenient, too.
All she had to do was blow the guy away and be so sloppy doing it that everyone thought it was obvious she was being framed.”

He nodded.
“That’s the idea.”

I shook my head.
“No way.
What’s the motive?”

“They were having an affair.
She broke it off.
He threatened to go public.”

I almost barfed in my coffee.
“If Mary Lee Masters had an affair it would not have been with that human hot tub.
Besides, she’s about thirty years and twenty pounds over the limit for Thornton Mitchell.
They weren’t having an affair.” He still looked skeptical.

“Bill,” I promised, “trust me on this one. She wouldn’t jeopardize a lifetime of public service by having an affair with someone who looked like a badly aging Engelbert Humperdinck.”

“That bad?” he asked.

“That bad,” I emphasized.

He sighed and drummed his fingers on the table, his eyes searching the green paint peeling off the grimy walls for clues.
I waited.
If you had to wait, Bill Butler was a nice diversion.

“Look, Casey,” he finally said.
“I don’t know how you fit into this, but I think you’re clean.”

“You say the sweetest things,” I told him.

“I didn’t say you were perfect,” he pointed out.
“But I asked around and, while I’ve noticed that no one around here has actually seen a P.I.‘s license with your name on it, they all seem to think you’re competent.”

“I have a license with my name on it,” I said indignantly.

“Oh, I have no doubt of that,” he said, his tone hard to read.

“My boss has been officially hired by Mary Lee Masters to look into the murder,” I explained.
This was only a half lie.
Bobby D.
had been hired, but I would be the one to do the looking.
“I just help him out with the paperwork, bodyguarding stuff.
Office administration.
You know.”