Who Glares Wins (Lexi Graves Mysteries)

Who Glares
W
ins

Lexi Graves Mysteries, Book 2

Camilla Chafer

Who Glares Wins

Copyright: Camilla Chafer

Published:
July
2012

ISBN:
978-0-9569086-9-8

Publisher: Audacious

The right of Camilla Chafer to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

Visit the author online at
www.camillachafer.com
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Other books:

Lexi Graves Mysteries
:

Armed & Fabulous

Who Glares Wins

Command Indecision

Stella Mayweather Series (Urban Fantasy)
:

Illicit Magic

Unruly Magic

Devious Magic

Magic Rising

Who Glares Wins

Only a few weeks into her new job as a private investigator
,
Lexi Graves thinks she may have bitten off more than she can chew with her first solo cases.

In between going undercover as a plush pony
at a “Bronie” conference
and following her cheating brother-in-law, she’s got a saboteur
-
turned
-
killer to catch and a missing woman to find. Two of her cases may be connected, but how? There’s no short list of suspects to investigate
,
but
the closer
Lexi
gets to
the killer,
the more
her life is put in jeopardy.
Trying to avoid
being framed for a murder she didn’t commit, Lexi knows her luck is running out.

To make matters worse
,
her boyfriend, sexy
d
etective
,
Adam Maddox, thinks she’s out of the PI game faster than she got into it
.
H
er boss, the mysterious Solomon,
meanwhile
,
hopes
to get her between the sheets by night
,
as well as solving cases by day, and Lexi’s "just say no" resolve might not be as
fortified
as she
believes
.

All she wants is
to be taken
seriously and there’s only one way she can do that—solve the case
s
,
no matter what
.

Chapter One

Only t
wo months into my new job at the Solomon Agency
,
and I had the awful feeling I
might have
bitten off more than I c
ould
chew.
It wasn't the shooting practice—I was good at that—or the stakeouts, which weren’t nearly as exciting as
in
the movies; no,
it was
n’t
that
at all.
My problem was
I was fairly sure my
new
colleagues
—
a coterie of ex-detectives, seasoned agency men, and one former criminal
—
didn’t
tak
e
me seriously.

My boyfriend certainly didn't
regard
my new career seriously, that was for sure. No, Detective Adam Maddox thought it was
“
cute
”
that I was now a woman
crime-
fight
er
, and put it all down to
an addiction to the
adrenaline rush from my
most
recent brush with death
.
Vincent Marciano, company accountant and serial killer
,
was
now
behind bars,
and
everyone thought I should get over
all
the excitement. Everyone, that is, except my boss
,
John Solomon
. Quite
possibly the only bad guy on the good guys
’
side
,
I liked him
a whole lot
.

A
fter retiring from whatever
he was
doing for the government
, and
my decision
not to return to temping hell, Solomon offered me a job at his new agency
. If he thought I could be
come
a
card-carrying
,
licensed
private investigator, I was
going to damn
ed
well try my best, supportive colleagues or not.

Solomon was
currently
ensconced
in his office, a small glass-
walled corner, off the
larger space
I shared with four other men
.
We were all
on the second floor of a
mostly
unoccupied building in downtown Montgomery. With
Solomon
was Steve Fletcher
,
and
since
the door hadn’t shut fully
,
I could just hear their conversation. Given its direction, all I could hope was that my cheeks weren’t turning pink from mortification.

My colleagues came
with a shared lifetime of
A
rmy, police
, national security,
and, in
Lucas
“Don’t
-
call
-
me
-
by
-
my
-
surname
-
eve
r
”
Given's case, nefarious
computer
skills
.
I
also
suspected
,
some jail time
with him, al
though he’d stopped twitching so frequently
. I
, meanwhile,
brought to the table brilliant administration skills, a good eye for body
language, a mind fit for crime-
solving and, today, the cutest polka dot
,
peep-toe pumps known to woman.

Given the glances I
received,
first
from Fletcher, then Solomon, I figured they weren't talking about my excellent taste in footwear. Every so often
,
I caught the phrase
“
not ready
”
and
“
not enough training
”
and
“
are you serious?
”
from Fletcher. Fletcher was a hard nut and the word
“
crack
”
wasn't in his vocabulary
;
unless you counted single
-
handedly
busting
a Mexican cocaine cartel
,
while
taking two bullets in the leg. He walked with a limp and a scowl. He was a few years older than
I
and had seen things I
hope
d
never
to see. He seemed to like reminding me of
tha
t, too.
Well
,
he could bite me!

Solomon turned away and picked up his cell phone, tapping a few keys before returning it to his desk. A moment later
,
my phone vibrated. I picked it up, wrenching my sneaky peripheral vision away from my whiny colleague and blinked at the message.

Did you just mouth “bite me”?

I looked up
, gaping
at Solomon,
while knitting
my eyebrows together just so. One corner of his mouth lifted into a knowing smile. I
inhaled my gasp
and dropped my gaze to the paperwork amassed on my desk, my eyes wide.

Unable to resist my
curiosity at how he felt about biting me, I peeked a glance
through my perfectly mascara’d lashes
. I
saw that Solomon hadn’t looked away
,
and
his eyebrows
were
slightly raised.
He commented softly on Fletcher’s reticence
and shook his head,
witho
ut taking his eyes
off
me,
but
his face reveal
ed
nothing.
I
fought
the urge to send a cheeky wink in his direction
,
and instead
,
grabbed the
desk
phone
just as it started to ring
. I had to
shift slightly in my seat
to keep
Solomon
out of
my line of sight.

"Hello?"

"This is Jim on front desk,” came the cigarette-s
moking
voice of our receptionist slash security guard
. H
is voice sound
ed
like
crunching
gravel
. “
Your appointment just arrived."

"Thanks. I'll be right down."

I
slipped my feet back into the peep
-
toes, smoothed my dress, and left the office with my head held high and my back ra
m
r
od
-
straight
. I was
determined not to give Fletcher the satisfaction of seeing
how his words
stung
me. Taking
the elevator down one fl
oor to the small
,
sparse
ly furnished
entrance lobby,
I noticed
the walls
had
recently
been
painted a soft gray and the wooden floor
was
buffed to gleaming.
I
looked around. There was only one person waiting and she looked up when I entered
. She
glanced over,
taking me in from head to polka-
dotted toe
,
then looked down at the magazine
she held
open in her hands
.
H
er black hair
fell
around her chin to frame
her
sweetheart face
.

"That her?
”
I mouthed to Jim
,
and he nodded. I took a moment to look her over before I approached. Elisabeth Fong was dressed for business in a neat
,
black suit, the skirt exactly
to
her knee
. S
he
had it
accessorized
with low-heeled
,
black Mary Janes, a white top
,
and a large black purse
with a discreet logo
. The
suit was off the rack
,
but the
purs
e was very nice
,
and I suspected
she must have
saved for it and used it every day
, taking
visible
pride in her professional attire
. Her hair was
cut into a sharp bob
, straight and jet
-
black
,
and her lips
bore
a liberal application of
pink
gloss, the only makeup she wore. She was neat, orderly
,
and
guaranteed not to
stand out in a crowd.
Judging by
the circles under her eyes,
however,
s
he looked like she hadn't been sleeping
too
well.

I walked over to her and inclined my head. "Elisabeth Fong?"

She looked up
, blinked,
eyeing
me over again,
and
paus
ed
on my pink shift dress. I resisted the urge to smooth the imaginary creases out and wait
ed
for her to respond
.

"Yes," said Elisabeth Fong
;
then, "
i
s he ready for me?"

I frowned.
"He?"

"Lex Graves?"

This was the third time since
starting
this job that this happened.
From the periphery of my sight,
I noticed Jim heard
;
but he just shook his head
and
focused on the worn paperback in his hands
,
saying nothing
. I would
have
put money on it that he'
d set a few people straight too, without saying a thing to me.
"Lexi Graves," I corrected her.

"Oh." Elisabeth blinked back
in
surprise.

"Why don't you follow me?" I stepped back and waited for her to rise, then beckoned her to follow me into one of the meeting rooms off the lobby. Most private investigators saw clients in their offices, but Solomon preferred that we kept our office space separate from where we met potential clients.
That was probably a good thing, given that our shared
desk space
didn’t offer much privacy
;
and the boardroom
required
a walk between the desks, something that made clients uncomfortable. When people hired a private investigator, they usually wanted to keep their business quiet
,
I
soon discovered
. Elisabeth would be no different. Whatever
managed to bring
her here was troubling her.

I swiped my keycard into
a
corridor that took us
down to
the first floor of the agency
,
and showed her into the
main
meeting room. It
was an anonymous s
pace,
only
a
nondescript
round table
with four chairs
, the furniture
being one of the perks of
the building
. A phone
used for
conference calls sat on top
,
and there was a
laptop
connection too.
The blinds were
usually
closed, which was fine by me because this side of the building had a
lovely
view of the dumpsters
. B
ut soft light filtered through the plastic slats
, giving
the client nothing to
view
,
and
nothing
from
which they could make
any
assumptions. The
y
didn’t know
if we were busy or quiet, neat or untidy. They couldn't make any
suppositions whatsoever,
personal or business
-related
. I suspected that was
Solomon’s plan, given that the agency was as
new as
my tenure.