To the Limit (11 page)

"What look?"

"The one that says you're in a hurry, you have a need to know something, and you're betting your money on good ole Uncle Bud coming through."

"You're right," Eve said, feeling a little guilty because she didn't get down to see him more often. Key West was one of her most favorite spots on earth, and Bud was her favorite uncle. "I
am
hoping you can help me."

He rubbed the flat of his hand over his robust belly. "OK. Who do I gotta kill?"

Eve laughed. God, she loved him. He was as harmless as one of those old roosters wandering the Key West streets. All crow and no go.

"I'm looking for someone. Thought maybe you could put out a few feelers and see if you come up with anything."

He leaned back. Both he and the chair groaned.

"That hip bothering you again?"

He grunted and shifted his weight, wincing as he did. "Piece of advice for you, sweetie. Don't get old. Now who you looking for and why do you think they might be here?"

She gave him the background information on Tiffany Clayborne. "I managed to find out the name of the band she might be with." Didn't feel a twinge of guilt that she hadn't shared that information with Tyler McClain, either. Neither did she feel one bit comfortable with the idea that Tiffany was with them of her own free will. It was just a feeling. More than a hunch. Eve knew Tiff. Yeah, she'd grown a little wild, but she wasn't mean—and taking off like this, worrying everyone ... well, it didn't feel right. Neither did the fact that Eve was still getting out-of-service messages whenever she dialed Tiff's cell phone.

"I called a few local booking agencies in West Palm and got lucky on the fifth hit. Seems the band was booked as a lounge act in Atlantic City, but when I called the casino they were a no-show. The manager was ticked, especially when one of his off-duty dealers spotted the lead singer at the tables at the Taj Mahal. The band had played this same casino before, and this dealer, a rock star wannabe, had struck up a friendship with them."

"Anyway, the manager was more than happy to bitch at length." He'd given her names and descriptions—at least of the leader of Dead Grief, Lance Reno, and the bass player, Abe Gorman. "I took another chance and called the Taj Mahal and sure enough, a Ms. Tiffany Clayborne had been registered, but she'd checked out, purportedly headed for the Keys."

"And you got them to spill all this from one or two phone calls."

Eve grinned. "Yeah. I did." She'd learned the power of a badge and credentials early on in her career at the Secret Service. She'd learned the power of a bluff at the same time. It still amazed her. Even over the phone and without any true misrepresentation, it was exceedingly easy to convince people that (a) you were an important person, (b) they had little choice but to divulge requested information, and (c) they were providing a service of grave significance. It was human nature to want to help. In many cases, that fostered a notion of importance and inclusion—both elements many people were sadly lacking in their lives.

"You know, you're the second person looking for information about that girl."

Eve snapped to attention. "Someone's already been here?"

"A friend of mine from Atlantic City called. Said he was sending a buddy down. An ex-cop turned PI."

Now he really had her interest. "Ex-cop?"

"Yeah." He shuffled around on his paper-strewn desk, came up with a coffee-stained note. "McClain. Tyler McClain. My friend used to work with him in Chicago."

Unbelievable. So, that's where McClain had gone when he'd left West Palm. Chicago. And he'd been a cop. This was also news. Of course, anything about McClain would be news to her. Sure, she'd known he'd gone to college—after all, she ran with the same circle of friends for a while and his name had come up occasionally. But she'd lost track of him after that. Frankly, she hadn't wanted to know where he'd been or what he'd been doing all these years. She'd known only that he wasn't in West Palm, and once he'd left without a long look back, wherever he'd gone couldn't have been far enough.

Unfortunately, now she knew he was back. It was already bordering on too much information.

So, the quintessential bad-to-the-bone bad boy had been a cop. Go figure. Now he was just a jerk. And he was zeroing in on Tiff. At least he was good at what he did. Eve, however, was better.

"You know this McClain guy?" Bud asked.

"Yeah. I guess you could say I do."

"And?"

"And I don't want him to find her just yet," she said, making that decision on the spot. If Tiff was on a fun and games road trip and McClain found her first, he'd take her back to her father. Eve wasn't so sure that was the best place for Tiffany right now. She'd like a chance to talk with her and make things right between them.

If, on the other hand, Tiff was in some kind of trouble ... well, that was another bridge she'd cross when she came to it. If need be, she'd fill McClain in then and use him to help her if she needed help.

Bud pushed out a grunt. "So, you want I should keep this McClain guy in the dark?"

"Yeah."

"You got it. In the meantime, it's not like there are a helluva lot of places to hide down here. I'll make some calls. See if anyone's spotted your girl."

"Thanks, Uncle Bud. I think I'll hoof it around town. Hit as many bars as I can. If I shake the trees hard enough, she might fall out."

"I've got your cell number. Something turns up, I'll call."

Eve stood and walked around behind the desk. She bent down and kissed his cheek, smelling Old Spice and smoke when she hugged him hard. "Quit smoking," she whispered, and kissed him again. "And get that hip checked."

"Go away."

"If McClain shows up—"

She stopped midsentence when the door swung open. And there he stood. Tyler McClain in all his laid-back glory.

She couldn't hide her surprise—or her disgust at seeing him in basically the same stellar form he'd been in yesterday for their meeting with Roger Edwards. The only thing he'd changed was the color palette. Instead of orange, black, and green, his tropical print shirt was blue, gold, and tan. His shorts were olive.

Somebody call the fashion police.

Uncle Bud squinted up at McClain through the cigarette smoke curling toward the ceiling. "This your man?" Bud's gaze drifted from Eve to McClain.

"Yeah," she said grimly. "It's him."

With barely a glance at Eve, McClain extended his hand and a good-ole-boy smile. "Tyler McClain."

When Uncle Bud just stared, McClain withdrew his hand, but the wattage of his smile never dimmed. "Dave sent me."

"Good man, Dave," Bud said with a slow nod before averting his gaze back to Eve. "You want I should call the boys to work him over?"

God love Uncle Bud. It was all she could do to keep from laughing at the shock that literally bled McClain's face of color along with his cockiness. There were no boys. And her uncle wouldn't harm a flea. A rat-bastard, maybe, if she asked him to. Admittedly, it was tempting.

"Nah," she said when she'd figured McClain had sweated enough. "He's harmless."

She squeezed past McClain, then paused to look back over her shoulder when she reached the door. She gave Uncle Bud a pointed look. "See you around."

"Sure thing, sweetie."

"Sweetie?" she heard McClain ask, his voice a little squeaky and not nearly as cocksure as when he'd barged in on them.

She grinned and walked out of the office.

"
Sweetie
?"
Mac repeated as his head swiveled from the tropics version of a Colonel Sanders look-alike to the woman walking away.

"My niece."

Mac's head snapped back to Bud Winchell. "
Niece
?"

The old boy folded his hands together over his rotund middle and gave him a look.

Mac shook his head. Pushed out a disbelieving laugh. "Well, that works out well, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Winchell said with a droll look. "I'd say it does."

Didn't it just beat all? Didn't it just beat fuckin' all?

He'd pinned a chunk of hope on Bud Winchell being his best source on locating Tiff Clayborne well ahead of Ms. Blond, Blue-eyed, and Beautiful. He'd just as well have pinned it to thin air. She'd made this into a fricking contest— and
Uncle
Bud was sure to want to stack the deck in her favor.

Still, Mac gave it the old college try. "So I guess it would be a pretty good bet that I'd be wasting my time asking for professional courtesy."

Bud's mouth folded into a scowl. "Dave said you were a sharp one."

Mac couldn't help it. He laughed again, and this time, he actually found it funny. Hell, it
was
funny, even from his perspective.

The next words out of Winchell's mouth had Mac sobering like a judge in night court.

"If I hear from Evie that you did anything to hurt her," Winchell said, with that slow-paced tropical cadence that spoke of years of laid-back comfort overlying a foundation of steel, "you're fish bait. You understand me, boy?"

Oh yeah. He understood. He understood that this was Winchell's turf, not his. He understood that while the man hadn't been serious about "calling the boys to work him over," he probably did know some "boys." And he could make it real hard on a man who crossed him.

Mac nodded like a good soldier.

"Swell. You have a nice day now," the detective added, and, leaning forward in his creaking chair, gave a dismissive nod toward the door.

Since a nice day was pretty much off the radar screen, Mac decided that what he needed was a nice drink. And he was going to have one, just as soon as he caught up with "the godfather's" niece and figured out a way to convince her to play well with others—specifically with him.

It could work. Stranger things had happened. Some bubba from Arkansas was always being abducted from a 7-Eleven by aliens. Men read
Hustler
for the articles.

So hell, yeah, Mac could bring one short, sexy blue-eyed blond woman around to his way of thinking. And if he could get someone to believe that, he had a spacious high-rise in a quiet, peaceful neighborhood on the Gaza Strip he'd enjoy the hell out of selling them.

Chapter 7

The sun was still burning as hot as a
jalapeno when Mac stepped outside the shop—without a new T-shirt, much to the dismay of the salesclerk. Mac looked up and down the street. Eve couldn't have gotten too far. Hell, the entire key was only two miles by four miles. How far
could
she go?

He hooked a left and started walking down Duval. It shouldn't be too hard to spot her.

Or it wouldn't have been, he amended a couple of hours later, if he hadn't had the good luck to arrive at Key West smack in the middle of spring break. The city was overrun, it seemed, with gorgeous blond coeds. And brunettes and redheads. Tall ones. Short ones. Drunk ones. Lots of drunk ones. And lots of drunk young men hoping to get lucky.

Oh, to be young again. He remembered that age when life was all about partying, drinking, and scoring to a war cry of
"get drunk, get laid."
Eventually, reality had grabbed him by the ass and gotten his attention. That kind of life cost money. Required a job. A "normal" life. And things got a whole lot more serious than this laughing, dancing throng of coeds, sashaying through the streets in their bikini tops and shorts, pouring out of the restaurants and bars, making out in broad daylight and dark corners.

It was close to one of those dark corners where he finally found Eve several hours later.

Sloppy Joe's was a favorite hangout for any kind of crowd, but the party-hardy contingent had turned out in droves today. They hung out of the doors and open-air windows. They littered the sidewalk, drinks and beer bottles in hand, while music flowed into the late afternoon like sunlight and had them dancing in the streets as well as inside the bar. Suntan lotion was the scent of the day.

Barry Cuda and the Sofa Kings were the featured bands according to the board posting both the daily specials and the talent. Sloppy Joe's was clearly the best party in the Conch Republic, and the standing-room-only crowd inside, moving to the music, swaying to the beat, and drowning in their beer, weren't giving a thought to the brain cells they were killing and would sorely miss when they returned to class in a mere few days.