Whiskey Sour (10 page)

“Bingo,” Savage said softly, leaning closer as the excitement of the chase was closing in. “More than likely Amanda had brought dozens of the gems to be inspected for purchase, but the one beneath her got away from the killer without his notice. Slitting a throat is messy business. Evidence in the room shows the shower was used, so he probably took the time to clean up and redress before he left the hotel room.”

“Geez, that takes balls.”

“And a high degree of sociopathic tendencies.”

“So you’re thinking politician for the culprit?”

“Ha, very funny,” he said.

“I have my moments.”

“So I’ve heard.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?
I only stripped for money that one time. I don’t care what anyone else said.”

“
What? Why did the conversation just take a one-eighty?” He stopped and stared at me for a minute as my words finally penetrated. “You used to be a stripper?”

“I told you. It was just that once, so not really. I wasn’t very good at it. Why are you changing the subject? Weren’t we talking about slitting throats and stolen diamonds?”

“We were, but I’ve been told to lead the investigation elsewhere.”

“Oh, right.”
I scrunched my nose in concentration. “So what are you going to do?”

“Fortunately, private detective agencies don’t fall under the same rules as the federal government.
So you’re going to help me out.”

“Won’t you get in trouble?”

“I’m not much of a rule follower,” he said, smiling.

“I could tell by the socks.”

“You should see my underwear.”

Whoa!
Now that he’d planted the thought in my head I was trying desperately to not imagine what he had on underneath those regulation black pants. I’d just spent five hours having the best sex of my life, and all of a sudden it was raining men. Life was cruel.

“No! I really shouldn’t. See you
r underwear, I mean. I’m kind of in a relationship.” Though come to think of it, Nick and I had never sat down and talked about what kind of relationship we had. “I think,” I added as I pondered the question. I needed to find out. Was this an exclusive relationship? Was he only interested in the sex?

“Let me know when you find out for sure,” Savage said. “You seem kind of conflicted. And Detective Dempsey doesn’t strike me as the type of guy to be patient when it comes to waiting for his woman to make up her mind.”

I
hmmmed
appropriately but didn’t say anything else. I didn’t need to make up my mind. I wanted a relationship with Nick. I was pretty sure. We just didn’t know each other all that well and the physical side of things was a little overpowering at the moment. Maybe I was worried that once the chemistry wore off a little, we wouldn’t be left with very much substance.

Savage sighed and stood up. “Come on. I’ll fill you in on what I want you to do. Have you had lunch?”

I don’t know why those four little words felt like he was asking me the equivalent of dancing naked under the light of a full moon, but it did.

“This isn’t a date, is it?” I asked, shoving the folders into my purse and following
him out of the agency.

“Definitely not.”

I hiked myself up into the monster Expedition, trying to be graceful while keeping my skirt pulled down and the stretchy top of the dress pulled up. I wasn’t having a lot of success and snuck a peek at Savage, but he had his eyes dutifully ahead.

“You’d know if this was a date
,” he continued. “I’d want to start things out slow. Maybe catch a baseball game and a burger on our first date. Mexican food and a movie on our second. The third date would be more romantic. Maybe a candlelight dinner and an art museum. The Georgia Museum of Art is doing the Pharaohs of Egypt exhibit.”

Oh, man. I
loved
that exhibit. This guy played dirty, but I had a stronger constitution than that. I had feelings for Nick. Strong feelings. And I wasn’t a cheater, though that wasn’t going to stop the occasional fantasy from sneaking through. I had to leave room for Johnny Depp.

“Of course, the museum trip might have to wait for our fifth date,” he said, navigating the Expedition through the old Sava
nnah streets with efficiency. “It’s a long drive to Athens. We’d have to make it an overnight trip.”

My skirt was knotted in my hands and my palms were sweaty. This guy was a professional at torture techniques. I hated to see what he was going to do with Natalie Evans if he ever got a hold of her.

“Well,” I chirped. “Tell me what you want me to do about the investigation.”

He laughed and a satisfied grin settled on his face. “First of all, tell me what you found out about Amanda Whitfield. My investigation is being monitored now, so I haven’t been able to dig as deep as I need to.”

“My impression was that Sirin sought her out once she got to college. Amanda was a very intelligent girl and she had the physical characteristics they needed for her to be a successful escort. She made a lot of money working for them, but she all but cut ties with her family. I also have the names of two friends she seemed closer to than anyone else—Becca Gonzales and Andi Bachman—ages twenty-one and nineteen respectively. I need to do a deeper check on both of them and a third friend that was mentioned briefly.”

Savage tapped his fingers in an unknown rhythm on the wheel, his brow furrowed in thought.
He parked the Expedition on Broad Street, and then turned the air conditioning up a notch so it was blasting cold air into our faces.

“That’s the building Sirin owns,” Savage said, pointing to a
six-story square of smooth gray concrete. It looked sterile and modern sandwiched between crumbling buildings that had more history in one square foot than the Sirin building could ever hope to have.

“It lacks character,” I said.

“So do its inhabitants. The top floor is Natalie’s office. I’m not sure what the middle levels are used for. We weren’t able to get very far when we went in to question the staff, but my best guess is they’re used for training the girls and for apartments. It’s hard to know since we don’t have a full employee list. There’s also a full time security team—two by the front entrances and then more on a rotation schedule.”

He pulled a pair of binoculars from beneath the seat and handed them to me. I couldn’t see anything about the building more clearly than I could without the binoculars. The windows were tinted with reflective glass on every floor and a guard stood in front of the door, so I couldn’t even get a tiny glimpse inside.

“Damn, that just makes me more curious,” I said.

“I know the feeling.”

“I’m willing to bet Becca and Andi are also Sirin employees,” I said. “Do you think we can check their financials to see if they look like Amanda’s?”

“You can,” Savage said. “I’m just along for the ride.”

“Maybe you can tell me how to go about investigating while you’re riding along. I’m kind of new at all this. I’m more likely to fall off the bike in the middle of a busy highway and get flattened by a semi.”

“That’s the thing about riding,” he said, arching a dark brow
and giving me a slow smile. “The more you do it the better you’ll be.”

“Jesus, you’re a piece of work, you know that?”

“And here I’ve been on my best behavior with you.”

“Lucky me.” I turned to face him fully, ready to get this all out in the open to save myself the trouble of having to knee him in the balls later. Or worse, having Nick remove them permanently.

“Listen. You’re an attractive guy. You obviously know this because your ego doesn’t have a lot of room left to inflate. Yes, you’re dark and mysterious, you have the body of a god and your socks make you interesting. But there is absolutely no chemistry between us. Not even a twinge on my end of things. The only reason you’re bothering with the full court press is because you and Nick rub each other the wrong way for some reason and you’re trying to make a point. So just stop all the innuendos and lets do what we’re here to do.”

His
face was serious as he gave me a short nod of agreement. “Fine. Nothing but business between us.”

“Fine,” I said, nodding in turn. “Which brings us to another problem. If security at Sirin is that tight and the way they hire their girls that carefully monitored, then there’s no way they’ll even consider hiring me. That plan is not going to work. And thanks for the flattery, but passing as a
nineteen-year-old call girl isn’t in the cards for me. They’d laugh their asses off if I told them that lie.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve already thought of a different plan.”

“Why does that make me nervous?”

“It’s your own fault. You shouldn’t have mentioned your past as a stripper.”

“Dammit, I told you—”

“And just so we’re clear on things—” Savage said,
leaning over and placing his mouth on mine. The zing went straight to my lady bits and sent electricity to every nerve ending I had. He kept his hands to himself, which was a good thing considering the reaction I was having with just a touch of his lips. He was damned thorough, and by the time he pulled away, my eyes were crossed and kneeing him in the balls was the furthest thing from my mind.

“No chemistry, huh?” he asked. “I guess you’re just cold.”

I looked down at my nipples and was surprised to see they hadn’t cut through the windshield. I shot Savage a dirty look and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Don’t do that again,” I said. “Never again.” I nodded my head sharply so he’d know I meant business, and he just smiled and pulled into traffic.

“Never is a long time, sweetheart. Why don’t we start with twenty-four hours and see how it goes?”

It must be my
punishment in life to be attracted to smartasses.

“Never,” I repeated, realizing I was trying to convince myself more than him.

A
gent Savage dropped me off back at the agency, and I practically fell out of the car and hit the ground running before he could find a parking space. He yelled something at my back about being in touch soon and I shot him the finger. I decided to ignore his laughter. Engaging would be a bad idea.

I stormed past a blank-faced Lucy and down the hall towards Kate’s office
, still unsure if I was madder at Savage or myself. I was
not
a cheater. Especially since I knew how it felt to be on the other end. But he hadn’t given me a choice. He’d just taken over and swooped in. Savage was a stealth kisser, and I’d have to be on my guard at all times.

He was a
lso a genius at locking lips—I mean, he was the fucking Stephen Hawking of kissing. No—nevermind—that does not bring an attractive picture to mind. We’ll just say he knows what the hell he’s doing. Just swapping tongues with Savage would be enough to ruin most women. Fortunately, I’d been swapping tongues with Nick too, and I wasn’t so easily swayed.

The sign was gone from outside Jimmy Royal’s door, so I figured he’d received the message I’d sent him loud and clear.
Kate’s office door was wide open so I went in and threw myself face first on her couch.

“How’d it go with Savag
e?” she asked, coming over to take the chair beside me. She was in her Saturday work clothes—jeans and a white t-shirt—and I took a quick glance at the time, wondering what she was still doing in the office. She usually just worked a half-day on Saturdays.

“I don’t want to talk about it,
” I said. I rolled over and up into a sitting position, reaching for the files in my handbag. “I need to get a couple of more background checks.”

“I’ll have to do it. All my agents are busy at the moment, and I’m up to my eyeballs in work. I got a visit from the governor’s aide this afternoon. He’s concerned that our involvement in the investigation for Christian DeLuce would be potentially harmful to such an upstanding citizen as Ms. Evans. He’d hate for my agency’s reputation to be hurt. He suggested we might try another avenue in looking for the gems.”

“Oh, did he?” I asked. “Agent Savage got that memo as well. Only the FBI has been ordered to drop the investigation into Amanda Whitfield’s murder completely. It had nothing to do with Sirin and they have no idea or connection to the diamond found under her body.”

“These guys are really starting to piss me off,” Kate said.

“If you’re backlogged with work, show me how to use the search programs.”

Some of the programs the agency used to do background on people were pretty invasive, so only her agents had clearance
. But Kate’s business was expanding by leaps and bounds, and more often than not, her agents were out of town working cases in different cities because word of mouth about the business had travelled that far. She only had two agents that worked local cases. Nick was one of them, but he had a full time job catching killers, and the other agent had been a cop since Moses was born and wasn’t moving around as good as he used to.

“You know what?” Kate said, standing. “To hell with the rules. Come on. I’ll show you what to do.”

“Wow.” I followed Kate to the office next door. “That governor’s aide must have really pissed you off if you’re breaking the rules. That’s usually my job.”

“Every once in a while, it’s nice to be able to be the person who gets to do whatever the hell they want to.”

“Hello?—” I raised my eyebrows and felt like I’d missed something significant.

“This is Carl Janson’s office. He’s out with a herniated disc for six weeks, so you can use it whenever you need to.”

I wondered briefly if Carl had gotten his decorating ideas from the caveman channel. The walls were white and bare of any decoration. There were no plants or family photos. The only evidence that anyone had ever inhabited the office was a mug with handcuffs on it that said
I’m good at detecting pussy.

“Cozy,” I said.

“I’ve always thought so. And probably if you wash it, Janson will let you use his mug.”

“I’ll pass. I’ve never been that good at
detecting pussy. It would be false advertising.”

Kate sat down behind the computer and turned it on. She pulled out a notepad and pen from the drawer and started writing. “These are the passwords you’ll need. The first one is to login to the computer. The rest are for the different search programs we use. You can just login as me, since you don’t have an account. It’ll raise less questions.”

I leaned across the desk and watched as she typed in passwords. I was pretty technology savvy because of school, so I wasn’t completely lost with what she was doing.

“I’ll use you as an example so you can see how it works,” she said, typing in my name and state.
She showed me how to use clue words to narrow the search, ferreting out social security numbers and bank accounts, and possible relatives, both alive and deceased. It was like separating pieces of a puzzle and putting them back together until you had the final picture.

My mouth dropped open as my entire life was displayed on the page. “What the hell? How is this even possible?”

“Looks like your Banana Republic payment is past due and it’s been more than a year since your last pap smear.”

“This should be illegal. You can do this with anyone? Is nothing sacred anymore?”

“Not much. Certainly not the government’s interest in knowing everything there is to know about anyone. Big Brother is definitely watching. That’s why I only have a cell phone for work, I don’t have a personal email account, I still pay all my bills by check, and I use cash for everything else. I want to be able to disappear if I ever need to.”

“Holy shit. Why would you ever need to?”

“You never know. And probably I’ll never have to find out. The world is supposed to end in a few months anyway.”

“Good point.”

Kate got up and let me have the chair. “Stay as long as you like. I’ll be here for a while, so just ask if you hit a snag.”

I was going to ask Agent Savage if the
re was a way to get rid of my information. Big Brother didn’t need to know that I was late for my pap smear, though that reminded me about Dr. Isobel Lee. I plugged in the information like Kate had showed me. There were a lot of Isobel Lee’s in the state of Georgia. Six of them were doctors—two specializing in gynecology. I dug deeper on both of them and was finally able to narrow it down with financial records. One of the Dr. Lees made significantly more than the other, and the deposits were being made by the same company who’d deposited the money into Amanda Whitfield’s account.

Digging even further into her life, I was able to see that she’d been an infertility specialist at one time, but she had a few marks on her record and had lost funding and credibility because some of her experimental treatments hadn’t turned out well for the patient.

“I guess we know what Sirin is holding over your head,” I murmured. “They’re probably the only place you could get a job.”

She no longer had a private practice and her place of residence was listed as 227
Broad Street in Savannah. I was willing to bet Dr. Lee’s office occupied one of those middle floors of the Sirin building.

I shifted my searching to Becca Gonzales and Andi Bachman, and I occasionally glanced at the phone, cracking my knuckles as I willed it to ring. I hadn’t heard a peep from Nick. Not even a text message.
He was probably armpits deep in dead bodies, but I was pretty sure morning after etiquette at least included a casual hello or a phone call.

Those little insecurities that had plagued me after Greg had thrown me over for Veronica were starting to surface—
Why wasn’t I good enough?
or
Was I that bad in bed?
—the kinds of questions that made women raving lunatics and drove men to drink. I’d never ask the men in my life those questions, because I had pride, but I sure as hell couldn’t keep them from sneaking up on me.

I turned my attention back to the job at hand, putting Nick as far out of my mind as possible.
I was fascinated by the life of ill repute. If I were Natalie Evans, I’d ask for my own reality TV show. There was sex and money and scandal in spades, so they’d make a killing in the ratings.

“Well, holy shit,” I said.

I’d definitely hit the jackpot. And Noelle Price, the fourth friend in the quartet of call girls, was the icing on the cake. Especially since she was dead. I printed all the information out, practically jumping in my flip-flops with excitement. I grabbed all the papers and headed next door to Kate’s office. Her head was buried in paperwork, so she didn’t hear me when I came in.

I glanced up at the clock and saw it was after eight o’clock. Nick still hadn’t called, but I’d passed the point of getting my hopes up where that was concerned. What did have me concerned was that Kate was still in the office when I knew damn good and well she and Mike always reserved Saturday night for their date night.

“Why are you still here? I thought it was date night?” I asked.

Kate looked up briefly, but her face betrayed n
othing. “I have work. Some of us do that for a living.”

“Well, ouch,” I said, heading over to the Keurig to make myself a cup of coffee.

Kate winced. “Sorry. That was out of line. But I’m busy here, Addison. We can gossip later.”

I just doctored my coffee the way I liked it and set the papers I’d brought in aside. We could get to that later. I took the seat across from her desk and just waited, staring patiently at her until she couldn’t stand it anymore. When she finally looked up I was horrified to see the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
Kate
never
cried.

“Jesus, are you okay?” I asked. “You’re not dying or anything are you?” I leaned over the desk and grabbed her hand. “Did you find a lump?”

She shook her head and the tears actually fell. Panic started to build inside of me. Kate was the calm one. The one who always knew what to do in a crisis. This was the equivalent of Diane Sawyer standing on top of her news desk on live television and screaming that the world was about to end.

“We can fix this,” I promised her. “Whatever it is.”

“I think Mike is having an affair,” she said.

My eyes popped open wide at that news. Mike was the last person on
earth I’d ever suspect of having an affair, but Kate was a pretty good judge of character, so if she suspected, then something was probably up.

“Do you need help hiding the body?” I asked. “I’ve always thought the bayou was a good place. Of course, we’d have to weigh him down pretty good so he didn’t churn back to the surface in a bad storm. Sheriff Rafferty would probably suspect you first thing, even though he is dumber than hair.”

Kate gave a watery laugh and reached under a stack of papers for one of the case files she put assignments in. A ball of dread, like weighted lead, gathered in the pit of my stomach when she placed it in front of me.

“All the information is inside,” she said. “Treat it like any other case.”

I wanted to jump out of the chair and say,
hell no
, but I restrained myself because I’d do anything she asked me to help her out. I only hoped she didn’t regret it. I knew from experience it was a lot harder to see first hand than to suspect.

“Oh, Kate. Are you sure?”

“I need the proof. I need to be sure before I can leave him.”

I wanted to ask when things had gotten bad between them. This all seemed rather sudden. But I kept my mouth shut and took the file. “I’ll let you know,” I promised.

“He’s on duty tonight until ten. He’s been working a lot of extra shifts lately,” she said bitterly.

“I’ll take care of it,” I told her.

And if he was cheating on her I still had a tranquilizer gun I could use on him. Probably it’d be a fair deal to let Kate take her vengeance out while he was unconscious. And there’d be less screaming. I wasn’t sure I was built to witness intentional violence. I sometimes wanted to throw up watching old episodes of Nip/Tuck.

Kate
dried her tears abruptly and shuffled me out the door before I had a chance to ask too many questions. I guess she wanted me to go into the case with an open mind. Considering I’d already offered to help her hide the body, I was thinking it was too late. I gave her a quick hug and invited her to stay the night at my house, but she declined, locking the door behind me and heading back to work.

What she and I really needed was a vacation. I needed to whisk her away to the Keys, where she could sip drinks with umbrellas and lay on the beach as she ogled sexy Latin men in Speedos.
Of course, she’d have to pay for it since it was out of my budget at the moment.

I still had some time to kill while I waited for Mike to get off work, so I swung though Dairy Queen and used the spare change I had in the center cons
ole to buy a strawberry sundae. The thing with Kate had kind of thrown me off my stride, and I’d completely forgotten to tell her what I’d found out using the search programs. As much as I hated to admit it, I probably needed to go to Agent Savage with the information. I’d have to make sure to wear my chastity belt and put chicken manure on my lips to keep him far from kissing distance.