The Hinky Bearskin Rug (21 page)

That made her
smile. “Did you do any work this afternoon? I sure earned my paycheck. Wait til
you hear.”

Clay drank
beer and turned over the pizza menu. “You first.”

She told him
how she’d handled Bing Neebly, and what she’d learned. “Now we have a provable
link between the two of them.”

“And this is
good because?” He handed her the pizza menu. “Sausage, ham, and pineapple for
me.”

“Euw!
Pepperoni, sausage, and anchovies for me. It’s good because Bing must have got
those lists for Steven. We have to prove they met at a time when Bing had an
opportunity to leak the sensitive info. What did you get?”

Clay smiled
for the first time. “On the CTA Circle Line project, out of approximately eight
hundred properties the city has bought to demolish to make way for the “L”
tracks, twenty-one properties changed hands within eight months before the city
bought them.”

“Holy crap.
That’s a lot of money.” Jewel took his beer off the coffee table and swigged. “Coincidence?”

“I doubt it.
It’s almost eighteen million dollars.” He paused while she phoned for the
pizza. When she’d hung up he added, “Here’s another little surprise. Follow the
money back far enough, almost all of those sales went to or through the same
blind real estate trust.”

She slumped
onto the sofa, pressing the cold beer to her forehead. “Shoot. We’ll never
crack one of those.”

“Ahem.”

She glanced
up. Clay managed to look modest and smug at the same time. “You cracked it?
How?”

“Not only
that, but the physical side of the trust is managed by Baysdorter Boncil,” he
said, skating over the “how” part, she noticed.

“Wow.” No
wonder Steven was the blue-eyed boy of BB, harassment or no harassment. She
thought of something. “Is Baysdorter Boncil bonded with the city?”

“Yup.”

“As what? You
almost have to have WBE or MBE certification to do that much city business on a
single project these days.”

“What’s WBE?”

“Women’s
Business Enterprise. Or Minority Business Enterprise, MBE. C’mere and rub my
feet and I’ll pay for the pizza.”

“Baysdorter
Boncil is certified WBE,” Clay said, coming to sit on the coffee table across
from her end of the couch.

She frowned. “You’re
kidding. Upper management is all men. Who in hell’s name are they certified
under?”

Clay picked up
her left foot and started rubbing. “Some woman named Sacker.”

Jewel’s mouth
dropped open. “Holy frozen shit dipped in chocolate.”

“You know her?”

Her head fell
back on the sofa. “She’s the office manager at BB. Mistress to old John
Baysdorter — listen to me, I’m calling him ‘old John’ just like everybody over
there. But she sure as hell is
not
the owner.” She smiled unpleasantly. “Well, well, well. I can see I owe Ms.
Sacker another visit. Y’know, for someone in as much deep doodoo as she is, she
sure hasn’t opened her heart to me yet.”

“She will.
Everyone does.”

Everyone but you,
she thought.

Clay’s hands were a miracle on her sore tendons. Jewel
moaned. “Oooh. You’re killing me. I was freakin’ brilliant today. I figured out
that Steven arranged for Bing Neebly to visit the Kraft.” She relaxed on the
sofa and slowly tipped over, groaning like a dog, as Clay massaged her feet.

He said, “What’s
with this guy Steven, anyway? You talk like he’s evil.”

“Oh, he’s hot,
but he has no idea what it’s for. And he’s alpha. He’s packed full of energy.
Okay, he’s kind of mean, and I could tell that even two years ago, that night
in the bar. But you don’t see that kind of — of
vitality
in every man. It’s like a bright light, leaking through
all his cracks.”

“What do you
mean, alpha?” Clay’s hands got rough.

“Ouch. Leader
of the pack. He’s a dominator. I was sort of into that in those days,” she
admitted. “Only I kept getting these utter pricks, and I realized what a bad
idea that was in the long run. Sooner or later, one of them would do me harm.
Steven proved me right there, I guess.”

“You got what
you deserve, then.” His tone made her crane her neck.

“You’re touchy
tonight.”

“A good con
artist doesn’t praise one guy to another unless she has a motive for gain in
mind,” he said primly.

“I’m not
praising him. Like you said, he’s evil. Steven schtupps his office girls to
prove something to himself.”

“So your
motive for gain is?” His blue eyes went crinkly.

Boy, Clay’s
ego was getting as sensitive as Randy’s. “I’m telling my partner about a
suspect.”

The smile came
back into his voice. “That’s kind of weak, but I’ll buy it.”

“Since when do
I have to treat you like a sensitive plant?”

He squeezed
her arch. “Because you want to keep me happy?”

Suddenly she
felt alert. “Do you want to be happy?” She wriggled up on her elbows and looked
straight at him.

He looked at
her across her feet, and a boylike expression of fear and guilt crossed his
face, before the mask of what he liked to call his “Buddha-calm” erased it.

Now what?

“Do you mean
to tell me,” she said, “that now
you’re
gonna be jealous about men I talk to? Because I get enough of that from Randy.”

He didn’t say
anything.

“You are.
You’re jealous.” If it had been Randy, she would have felt exasperated. She
studied Clay’s blank, good-natured face.
Well,
this is a new development.

She lay back
on her back, staring at the ceiling, and he began working his thumbs into the
sole of her left foot.

She shouldn’t
be surprised. They were always competing. Clay gave a good impression of a
passive-aggressive beta male, but around Randy he got territorial.
When he’s around Randy — and me.

Boy, how dumb
could she get?

“You’re too
quiet, Officer. What are you thinking?”

No point
discussing this with him. He wouldn’t tell her the truth. And she wasn’t sure
how she would feel about the truth, whatever that was. In his slippery, ex-con-artist
way, Clay had become a rock in her life, something sane and predictable and
normal in a maelstrom of hinky sex and fierce, gut-tearing jealousy.

Now it turned
out he’d been hiding something big after all.

And she
couldn’t handle it. With Randy making porn, and her insides all stirred up like
this, she just didn’t have room for more confusion.

She said
abruptly, “I’m gonna go turn over my laundry.” She sat up and pulled her feet
out of his grasp. “Tell you what, you can read Randy’s diary. It’s on my
computer in his folder. Maybe it’ll explain some things for you.”

When she had
disappeared into the rear of the apartment, Clay went to her computer, drawn by
horrific fascination. One of his few advantages was that Randy never talked
about his past to Jewel.
If he’s gotten
over that—

He found the
folder. He found the file called “My first month.” He read the file.

Widescreen
dread with shark music slowly filled Clay.
No
wonder Jewel can’t let go of him. I can’t compete with this.

Even more
nervous, he wandered after her and found her in the bedroom, changing the
sheets. “Aw, you didn’t have to do that for me.” He attempted a leer.

She sent him a
not-lewd smile. “Back off, Bowser.”

“Oh, now I’m a
dog?”

“A horndog.”
The smile warmed up.

Was it
sisterly? Or more than that? Clay leaped on the bed on hands and knees and
started howling and barking, bouncing on his knuckles like an over-excited
poodle.

“Hey!” she
protested, laughing. The sheet fell out of her hand. “Down, boy!”

He tumbled headfirst
off the bed, making it funny and clumsy and, still kneeling, snuggled up to
her.

She shrieked
with laughter. “And no leg humping, or I’ll have you neutered!”

He stopped and
looked reproachfully up at her. “You know, some of us have enough inferiority
complex without help from uppity women.”

Her laugh
faded to a shy smile. “You like me uppity?”

Would he be
giving away too much if he said yes?

If he waited,
he might learn how much his answer meant to her.

Her smile
faded, too. “Well, you’re stuck with it,” she said in a small voice.

The hurt in
her face made him want to reach up and touch it. Suddenly he knew that this was
not the night.

He got to his
feet. “I think I should go home now.”

She looked
hurt even worse. He felt like a rat, but what could he do? That diary had
totally unnerved him. He couldn’t compete with Randy’s telepathic lay-dar. He
needed time to think out his strategy. Figure out what Randy’s weaknesses were.

It seemed,
more and more, that Randy had fewer weaknesses than he’d thought.

“I guess
you’re right.” Her face pinched. “Maybe you’d better go home.”

o0o

Immediately,
Clay’s worst fears came true.

She picked up
him and his BB files on Saturday and they spent the whole day tracking the
properties that BB had laundered for the blind trust, marking the map as they
went. It was slow work, made slower by glacial traffic on the east-west
arteries.

Jewel was on
edge all day. By evening, she was thumping the steering wheel. “What is the
matter with this traffic?”

“Cubs game
tonight.” Firecrackers and whistling bottle rockets went off over the street,
and a pigeon, chasing flying sparks, smacked into a streetlight and dropped
onto Jewel’s hood.

Behind the
friendly confines of Wrigley Field, the fans roared. “Sounds like they’re
winning,” she said. “Oh hell, there’s Buzz.” To the indignation of motorists
lined up behind them, she stopped the car right in the intersection, put on her
flashers, and jumped out before Clay could blink.

She ran across
the street toward the ballpark. “Buzz!” he heard her say as she came up to a
skinny kid with a backpack, standing beside a bicycle, talking to some ball
fans.

A moment
later, the kid was skimming away on the bike.

She returned
to the car, cussing, and took the wheel again.

“What’s he
selling today?”

She started
the engine and turned off the flashers. “Saltpetre. What the—? Why saltpetre?”

Clay had to
laugh. “It’s for all those office workers who’ve been eating too much Hoby’s
pastry.”

Her cell phone
rang. “What?” she barked into it.

He sensed her
whole body relax beside him. Her closed fists opened on the wheel. Her voice
changed.

“Hey, where
are you? Oh? Oh.” And just like that she tightened up again. “Really. Where?
What do you mean,
in
the building?”

Pause.

Yup, that was
Randy’s voice quacking on the cell phone.

She said, “I
guess I could. Okay. I’ll be there.” She snapped the phone shut. “Oh, hell.
We’re going to the Artistic Company. Randy’s found the source of the hinky
stuff.”

She was
already swerving across two lanes of Clark Street, turning east onto Addison in
the deepening dusk.

Clay
remembered the pastry shop and, down in the bowels of the printing plant,
Wilma’s shrine, the feel of Wilma’s lips brushing his ear as she promised to
help with his woman trouble in exchange for — for what? When they pulled up at
the Artistic Building he said, “I think I’ll stay in the car.”

“Fine,” Jewel
said. She didn’t even glance at him as she strode inside.

Five minutes
later a closed stretch van and a black Caddy pulled up in front of Jewel’s
Tercel and a guy in a suit and five uniformed men got out and went into the
Artistic.

Clay frowned.
He got out of the Tercel and went to stand in the street, irresolute, watching
the front door.

o0o

At seven
o’clock the front door of the Artistic Building was unlocked, but Harry the
security guy was nowhere in sight. The presses boomed under her feet. Jewel
took the stairs two at a time to the fifth floor.

Randy was
sitting on a folding chair outside the studio. He rose when she entered.

“Okay, what
gives?” she said brusquely to hide the leap her heart gave at the sight of him.
He was wearing tighter jeans than before, and a white dress shirt with the
sleeves rolled up.
He dressed up for me.
Her
insides went hot and runny.

“Thank you for
coming,” he said. She blinked. Randy never said thank you. “Please come this
way.”

He led her to
a board room with a corner window looking down on Washington Boulevard and the
alley. They sat at a conference table opposite one another. She felt odd. In
the dress shirt he looked almost corporate. Like he belonged in a board room.

“I think I
know what’s haunting this building,” he said.

“Haunt.” She
looked over her shoulder. “Is it an it or a person?”