SOMETHING WAS wrong—something big. And just when things had been going so swimmingly. Flat and lifeless, riding on an undercurrent of anger, the tone in Jimmy G’s voice gave me a really bad feeling. He hadn’t wanted to talk—not over the phone, anyway. I’d agreed to meet him at the Peppermill in thirty minutes. That gave me time to stop by the office as well as work myself into a lather waiting for the proverbial other shoe to fall.
On autopilot, I launched myself across the casino toward the lobby. Only half-aware, I dodged patrons with an ingrained ease as my thoughts tumbled. With a dread I tried to deny, I knew what had made Jimmy’s voice brittle and hard, as if one blow would break it into a thousand daggers. Only one thing got to the old guard like that. Numbers Neidermeyer was no longer merely an interesting study in homicide.
Now it was personal.
I had no idea how or to whom, although I figured I was about to find out. And I so did not want to know. Genetically, I was only 50 percent old guard, but apparently that was enough to carry the taint—and the burden. One of us hurt, all of us felt the pain—and the responsibility to fix the problem.
Narrowing my eyes, I stopped mid-stride, turned around, and surveyed the path I had taken through the casino. Something had hit my muddled brain, bringing me back. What was it? With the practiced eye of experience, I scanned the crowd. Lost in thought, I jumped at the sound of a voice at my elbow.
“Looking for a good time?” The rich timber and subtle Texas drawl of Paxton Dane, our in-house rep from the Gaming Control Board.
Wavy brown hair worn a trifle long, piercing green eyes the color of Brazilian emeralds, a strong jaw, a warm smile, and broad in all the right places, Dane could have moonlighted as a cover model for bodice-ripper romance novels. For a nanosecond I let my mind wander there, picturing the open, flowing shirt, the tight pants. This was one of the times my whole visual thing was entertaining.
“Private joke?” Stepping in beside me, his eyes briefly met mine. A wry smile lifted the corner of his mouth. Then he, too, cast his eyes over the crowd.
“What?” In addition to animal magnetism, was clairvoyance one of his gifts? I certainly hoped not. A flush warmed my cheeks.
“You had this weird grin. Sorta sexy, I might add.” He clasped his hands behind his back, but didn’t look at me.
Adopting a similar stance, I again turned my eyes back to the crowd, but I was having trouble making my mind follow. Not long ago, Dane had made a play for me, and I’d turned him down. We were still trying to find our way back to comfortable, neutral ground.
Teddie had stolen my heart, but I couldn’t deny there was something between Dane and me. Something we’d have to deal with—eventually. I stuffed that thought, and the feelings niggling at the edge of my consciousness, deep down into what I hoped was an inaccessible place. A simple girl, I didn’t need complications.
“What did you ask me?” I said, trying to refocus.
“I believe I asked if you were looking for a good time?” This time he gave me the full power of his megawatt grin as he glanced down at me.
“Is that what passes for a pickup line in West Texas?” I felt a little off-kilter, I didn’t know exactly why. Of course, I had a lot to be hot and bothered about: Teddie in L.A., Jimmy G and God knows what…Dane looking at me like that. Why did I seem to have a handle on everything, except my libido? Okay, maybe not everything—I was delusional—but even the illusion of control made me feel a bit better.
“I got a smile, didn’t I?” Still Dane didn’t look at me. “If you’re not looking for a good time, what then?”
“Something that’s not right, not normal.”
Dane made a rude sound. “There ain’t much about that crowd a boy from Lubbock would consider ‘normal.’”
One more pass over the crowd and I had it.
“This one’s easy.” I nodded toward the far side of the casino. “When have you ever seen a queue to get into the men’s restroom at a casino?”
A flicker of interest lit his voice. “Can’t say I’ve ever waited in line to take a whizz.”
“My point. Come with me. I may need your help.” I started back across the casino.
“My help?” He was right on my heels. “With what?”
“A coming attraction.”
I didn’t even pause at the entrance to the men’s room. Shouldering men aside, I worked my way up the line. One gallant young man, guilt reddening his features, even held the door open for me.
Dane grabbed my elbow from behind. “What are you doing? You can’t go in there.”
Pulling my arm from his grasp, I forged ahead. Explanations took time, and time was one of the things I didn’t have much of. The other thing I found in short supply at the moment was control over my temper.
The absence of anyone standing at the long row of urinals, and the crowd of guys circling the last stall confirmed my hunch. A glance at me, and, like a flushed covey of quail, men scattered, then flew out the door. The few who had yet to register my presence shifted anxiously from foot to foot in front of the closed door to the last stall. Eyes wide, they, too, drifted away as I pushed to the head of the line and into their consciousness, which I presumed was preoccupied with our coming attraction.
Stopping in front of the last stall, I fisted my hand, and knocked sharply. “Open the door.” My voice didn’t betray my anger. As my mother said, one can catch more bees with honey.
“Yeah, yeah. I paid for the whole enchilada,” a man said, sounding clearly agitated. “Some of us take longer than others.” The latch grated as someone pushed it aside.
I didn’t wait until he opened the door. Instead, I shoved it with my shoulder.
“Hey!” growled the same male voice.
Once inside the tiny space, I found myself face-to-face with a man with dark hair graying at the temples, and angry eyes, busily stuffing himself back into his designer jeans. A woman, her eyes wide, her expression guarded, sat on the closed lid of the toilet.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man growled. As if he knew he couldn’t hide the guilt in his eyes, his gaze drifted from mine as he focused on pulling up his fly. “My lady and I were just having some harmless fun. And, as far as I know, it’s not illegal to have sex in here.”
“Zip it,” I said. That didn’t come out quite the way I had planned, but I refused to smile. “It’s illegal if you’re paying for it. I’m sure a solicitation charge would make interesting reading in the paper back home.”
For a moment I watched him war with himself, letting him stew in his own juices, then I said, “If I could offer you a piece of advice?”
This time, when his eyes met mine, the fight was gone, replaced by a look I knew well—self-preservation, one of the strongest primal emotions.
“Don’t come looking for love in my hotel again.” I stepped aside, and Dane followed my lead, clearing a path for retreat.
“You’re going to let me go?” Surprise and disbelief washed across the john’s face.
“You’ve just been given a get-out-of-jail-free card.” I jerked my head toward the door. “Now beat it, and don’t let me catch you procuring sex in my hotel again. And, just to be clear, even though Bill Clinton doesn’t think so, blow jobs are sex—in my book and in the Nevada Statutes.”
His dignity carefully secured, the man glanced at the woman, gave her a rueful shrug, then bolted.
The woman rose from her throne, not a hint of embarrassment on her face. With blond hair, the dark roots showing, pasty skin, and cheap jewelry, she wore a nice suit, silk camisole, expensive-looking shoes, and a weary expression—the look of an out-of-towner. She’d probably bought her costume at a thrift shop as she hit town. Reaching around me, she gathered her purse from the hook on the back of the door—last season’s Prada.
“I’ve made enough already. All you had to do was ask, and I’d have given you my gig,” she said. Her voice held a hint of the Deep South in it. Pulling herself to her full height, which, even in heels was still a couple inches shy of mine, she moved to shoulder past me.
“I work for this hotel,” I said, my voice flat as I let her move by me. She wasn’t going far—Dane blocked her exit.
His eyes telegraphed his feelings, making it perfectly clear he thought I was an idiot for already letting one of them off with no consequences. At least Dane had the decency to keep his mouth shut and let me handle it my way—more than most men would do—so he got points for that. I gave him a curt nod then shifted my gaze back to the woman now trapped between us.
“You work for this hotel?” she whined, her voice heavy with defeat. “Aw geez, wouldn’t you know it?”
She rooted around in her bag then came up with a wadded-up tissue. In the metal surface of the stall, she checked her reflection, then dabbed at her lipstick where it had smeared around the edges. Rubbing her lips together, she took one last look. Apparently satisfied, she shifted her attention to me, giving me the once-over.
“I shoulda known,” she continued, as if we were really interested. “You see, I had this gypsy lady read my fortune last week.” The woman glanced at me, her eyes the palest shade of blue. “Something about her didn’t seem right—other than her being a gypsy and all—but I gave her the twenty bucks she charged, anyway. Now I know it was a waste. She said my luck was about to turn. Since it hadn’t been so hot, you know, I figured she meant it would get better.”
I gave Dane a wink over the woman’s shoulder. “So what makes you think today isn’t going your way? Your purse looks pretty fat. I don’t know how long you’ve been in here, but if you were about to quit…”
“Yeah, it was goin’ really good.” The whine left the woman’s voice as she relaxed a little. “But, when the guys start lining up like that, I learned they sorta attract attention—the wrong kind of attention.”
“My kind of attention?”
“Yeah.” She pulled a little box of Tic Tacs out of her purse, shook a couple into her hand, then popped them in her mouth as she nodded. “I’m real sorry you made me. This is a class joint; you got classy men here. But I’m not going to waste all my jack on a high-priced room, know what I mean?”
I nodded and thought about telling her that just because a guy had money for a good pipe cleaning didn’t mean he was classy, but in her world it probably did. In my world, classy guys didn’t pay for sex. But as my mother always told me, I’m way too picky.
“You going to give me up?” The woman tried to look disinterested, but her eyes darting between Dane and me betrayed her nervousness.
“Not this time. But, if you come back to this hotel to ply your trade, I’ll have to.” I smiled at the relief that washed over her face. “Let Mr. Dane escort you to the door.”
Dane shot me a quizzical look as he extended his arm to her in a chivalrous gesture, and stepped aside. “Ma’am, would you allow me?”
Gazing up at him, her eyes wide with innocence, she grabbed his arm. “Why, sir, I’d be delighted,” she said, her voice dripping with enough honey to make a true Southern belle proud.
They left me there—alone in the men’s room.
A stickler for manners, Jimmy G would be early. Not wanting to leave him waiting, I needed to hurry. Even though I didn’t have it to spare, I had taken five minutes to swing by the office. Miss Patterson always liked me to transfer the reins of power personally when I was leaving the property.
Dane caught me as I burst out of the stairwell doors into the lobby. “I was coming to find you. You know, your remark about a ‘coming attraction’ was pretty clever.”
“Clever killed the cat.” I shouldered around him and kept moving toward the front entrance. I hoped he got the hint.
No such luck; he fell into step beside me. “No, curiosity killed the cat.”
“Whatever.” I pushed through the outer doors and headed down the drive. Thankfully, the Peppermill was only a short hike. “Look, I’m late for a meeting. Can this wait?”
“I just want to know one thing,” he said, matching me stride for stride. “Then I won’t bother you again…today.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” I turned north when I hit the Strip, and slowed. I was already bumping up against my thirty minutes. A couple more wouldn’t kill Jimmy G. And, to be honest, a few more minutes of blissful ignorance wouldn’t kill me, either. “What do you want to know so all-fired bad that you have to chase me halfway to downtown?”
“Downtown?” He raised one eyebrow at me. “Isn’t that where we are?”
“Downtown.” I pointed to the small mound of shorter buildings to the north. “This section of the Strip is the Center of the Universe.”
“Weird. Back in Texas, the tallest buildings are in downtown.”
“It’s a common mistake.” I turned to go. “Is that really what you wanted to ask me?”
“No.” He put a hand on my arm, holding me there. “I want to know why you didn’t have me turn that girl over to the police?”
I could feel the heat of his hand through the thin fabric of my sweater. Carefully, I removed my arm from his grasp. As the traffic snaked along the Strip behind Dane, and the swarm of people parted to move around us, I gave him the short course on what I’d learned growing up in a whorehouse and working in Vegas.
“Cowboy, folks come here from all over, for a million different reasons. Sometimes they do stuff I can’t begin to understand.” I squinted my eyes against the sun setting behind him, and shadowing his features. “I don’t know anything about that girl—where she came from, why she’s here. For all I know, her old man dumped her, leaving her with three kids at home, and she’s trying to provide for them with no help and a high-school education.”
“I see.” His eyes, intense emerald lights piercing the shadow, captured me.
“Do you?” I ran my hand through my hair and tried to break his gaze, but couldn’t.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice heavy with an emotion I couldn’t read. “Life’s messy.”
What do you know? He really did get it.
As he had said he would, Dane left me, so I continued to the Peppermill alone. He hadn’t even asked where I was going and what I would be doing there—so unlike him. This aberration might have worried me had I not already filled my quota of worries for the day.
A Vegas institution since the dawn of life as we know it, the Peppermill clung resolutely to what had been a prime Strip location just south of the Riviera Hotel and Casino, once the beating heart of the action. Now, with the growth of the megaresorts to the south, the little restaurant found itself barely clinging to the ragged edge of the excitement.
In what could only be described as an interesting effort to compete, the owners had converted the former fifties-style soda fountain by changing the decor to purple and pink with fluorescent lighting in the same color scheme. Then they’d added a lounge—all purple and black—a beckoning cave of iniquity more reminiscent of a seventies nightclub than a place for serious sinners. One addition had been a fire pit where the flame leapt up through water. Patrons could sit on the circular couch surrounding it and watch embedded televisions when they weren’t staring into the fire.
Of course, the hordes of local high-school kids crowding the booths out front did little to enhance the whole lounge thing. With precious few places to go in a city that catered to the over-twenty-one crowd, teens old enough to drive but too young to legally drink flocked to the Peppermill like pilgrims to Mecca. I’d done the same when I was their age.
For all of us raised in Sin City, the Peppermill was a comfortable blast from the past, a place where one could slide into a booth, order a shake, and be serenaded by Elvis, the Beatles, the Monkees—even Herman’s Hermits—while we wallowed in memories.
As I pushed through the glass doors, the familiar smells of hamburgers frying in their own grease, raw onions, and hot fat in the fryer rocketed me back to a simpler time. This had been a nice place to hang with friends, giggle at the first overtures of boys as they preened for my attention, and revel in the youthful assurance that the world held nothing but great things. Unlike my early impressions of the male of the species, I’d been right about my future. While perhaps not exactly as I’d planned it, life had turned out pretty great so far. I only hoped Jimmy G wouldn’t stick too large a pin in my bubble.
Jimmy G waited in the last booth, the whole of the restaurant in front of him and no surprises behind him. He’d scrunched down low, and, if I hadn’t known where to look for him, I might have missed him all together.
“Sorry I’m late. Something came up,” I said, as I slid in across from him. A double-thick chocolate shake sat in front of me, which immediately aroused my suspicions.
“Nothin’ to cry about.” The little man shrugged, not looking the least bit upset.
Okay, first the shake, now not even a veiled hint of impatience…the guy was buttering me up for sure. “What’s your angle, Mr. G?”
As if trying to marshal his thoughts, he didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stared over my shoulder as he crossed his hands on the table. They made a soft sound as he gently patted them, one on top of the other. For the first time, the realization hit me: The spry little man was probably almost as old as the Big Boss, two of a dying breed. And so much Vegas lore would pass with them—a huge loss that no one might notice. There was Mayor Goodman and his proposed Mob Museum…but that wasn’t the history of Vegas I wanted—I wanted the magic. Jimmy G and the Big Boss knew the magic.
I took a sip of my shake and waited. Swirling the rich concoction over my tastebuds, I would have sighed with pleasure had my mouth not been full. How could a benevolent god make things so good for our souls, so bad for our health? If this were a divine test of the strength of my resolve, I would be found woefully lacking. I could live with that.
Finally Jimmy G moved. He tilted to the side, lifting one cheek off the seat, then reached in and tugged his wallet from his pocket. He pulled out a well-fondled picture and pushed it across the table to me—his granddaughter, Gabi.
How old was she now? Nine? Ten? I couldn’t remember and couldn’t tell from the photo. While truly magical, kids served as such harsh markers of the passage of time. It had been a year, no more, since I’d seen her, but it seemed like last week. She’d been just a hardscrabble little girl then. Now I could see the hint of the beauty she would become. Long black ringlets, olive skin, dark eyes that already held a sense of self-possession in their depths, a full mouth quick to grin—she was going to be a real ballbuster. I hoped her father and grandfather were prepared.
I looked up at Jimmy G, but didn’t say anything. As the Big Boss had taught me, these guys get to their points in their own way, in their own time. However, this conversation had sure started down an alley I hadn’t anticipated.
With one finger, he gently pulled the picture back then stared at it for a moment, a grin tickling his lips. “She’s not at all like her mother, you know?” His eyes held a sadness as deep and enduring as a lifetime. They lit on mine, then fluttered back to the photo. “It’s like the Creator gave Gabi not only her allotment of soft edges and feminine wiles but the ones her mother should have gotten as well.”
Warm and soft were not two adjectives anyone would use to describe Glinda Lovato, Gabi’s mother and Jimmy G’s daughter. In fact, most of the appropriate adjectives that sprang to mind weren’t exactly complimentary, so I said nothing. The truth of the matter was I knew Glinda by reputation only. Through the years I’d had a few minor social skirmishes with her, but nothing of any consequence and nothing unusual for two rather opinionated females.
The only real feeling I had for her was pity—pity because her husband’s philandering provided the meat of many a joke about town.
“This little one…” Jimmy G touched the photo, “…is the apple of her father’s eye. She has that man so hornswoggled. Everybody knows it, but the poor schnook has no clue.” Jimmy smiled at the thought.
The picture he’d painted gave me warm fuzzies. I, too, was pretty partial to that special bond between fathers and daughters.
“You know she’s not Daniel’s real daughter?” Jimmy crinkled his brow as he continued examining his granddaughter’s smiling face.
The product of Glinda’s first marital misadventure, Gabi had been only one year old when her mother had married Daniel. “Just because she’s not his biological child doesn’t mean she’s not his real daughter, Jimmy.”
For an instant, his eyes met mine. “Outta everyone, I knew you’d get it.” He flashed me a sad smile that faded like a childhood memory, leaving only a hint of the good times. “The kid would be lost without him, you know? I don’t even want to think about her life if something happened to Daniel.”
“Jimmy, what’s going to happen to Daniel?”
His hand shot across the table, grabbing mine in a viselike grip. Like an electric shock, his intensity, his emotion coursed between us where our flesh met. “I love him like a son, you know.” His voice was raw as his eyes filled with tears. “Glinda…she’s so cold, so harsh, not the daughter a man hopes for. Daniel takes care of me…and Gabi.”
“Jimmy, tell me about Daniel.”
“Word on the street says he was into that oddsmaker big.”
“Numbers Neidermeyer?”
He nodded once.
“So she was running an illegal book,” I said. It wasn’t a question; I already knew the answer. “How big?”
“Six figures big.”
I made a noise my mother and her manners never would have approved of. “That’s ridiculous. Daniel’s been the district attorney for what? Twenty-five years? All that time he’s been so clean he squeaked.”
“I’m tellin’ ya, the street don’t lie.” The little man still gripped my hand so hard my fingers were going numb. “Word is he’s in for 500K, maybe more.”
From the looks of him, Jimmy clearly believed what he was telling me. The problem was the whole thing sounded fantastical, like the script for a bad Al Pacino movie. “Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s assume you’re right.” I extracted my hand from his death grip and rubbed it to reestablish blood flow. “Why now? Why, after all these years, would he do something as stupid and self-destructive as not only placing action with an illegal book but also compounding his problem by allowing himself to get in deep?”
Jimmy, his hands in his lap, his eyes downcast, seemed to shrink into himself as he shook his head. “People do stupid stuff, you know?”
“Maybe so, but DAs with everything to lose and nothing to gain usually don’t self-destruct—at least not quite so spectacularly. And not after twenty-five years on the job.” I pointed to the photo. “And not with a nine-year-old daughter in need of raising.”
A group of kids caught my eye—laughing, the boys teased the girls who blushed, but bantered back. None of them could be older than sixteen or seventeen—such an innocent age, but one filled with self-doubt and angst. I wouldn’t trade problems and emotions with any of those youngsters, not even with Jimmy’s little stink bomb. However, I wouldn’t mind trading skin tone.
“Lucky, girl. Help me. Help Daniel.” Jimmy G’s voice was just above a whisper.
I noticed Jimmy didn’t tell me I owed him, which technically I didn’t—yet. He just asked, friend to friend—the swine. He knew better than I did that nobody turns down a friend in need.
“You got anything to go on?” I asked.
“I can give you a line on Scully Winter.”
Apollo’s chariot had traversed the sky, leaving only the lights of the Strip to hold the darkness at bay by the time Jimmy G and I had said our farewells. On my return trip to the Babylon, I didn’t hurry. Like a rat in a cage, I was a creature of the air-conditioned world, rarely allowed to escape into the cool night air of the high desert. Adopting the same ambling gait of the crowds idling up and down the sidewalks, I soaked up their energy. In desperate need of an attitude adjustment, I tried to see Vegas through their eyes.
Fifteen minutes of moving with the crowd gave me the smile I had lost. Two buff young studs had asked for my number, which did wonders for my ego, if not for theirs when I turned them down. I’d learned the words to the fight song for some university in Texas, and I’d narrowly escaped wearing the dregs of one inebriated fellow’s strawberry daiquiri, which he informed me I could buy by the gallon at a casino at the southern end of the Strip. From all appearances, he’d gone back for seconds…maybe thirds. I smiled at the couples holding hands as they watched the fountains at the Bellagio dance in time to the music.
Vegas was magic. And it was my job to keep it so.
And if our fearless district attorney had gone ’round the bend and tossed Ms. Neidermeyer into the fish tank over a gambling debt? We’d do what we always did: We’d throw him a hell of a send-off party on his way to the slammer.
That farewell gathering might even be better than usual. Nobody in Vegas was going to miss Numbers Neidermeyer.
My smile dimmed a bit as I bid adieu to my drunken escorts and marched up the drive to the Babylon and back into the real world. Maybe no one would mourn Ms. Neidermeyer, but a whole city would miss District Attorney Daniel Lovato. And I shivered at the welcoming committee he would find in the State Pen—he or his office was responsible for almost all of its current residents.
Jimmy G was right about the word on the street usually being accurate. But I just didn’t get it. I must be missing something. I kept adding two and two and getting zero. For the umpteenth time, I went over the facts as I knew them: the illegal bookmaking operation, Numbers’ expertise in the fight game, Daniel naked in the laundry room, Daniel and the missus in the same room with the soon-to-be-deceased, Jeremy’s angry confrontation with the same future corpse, word on the street giving Daniel a possible motive…not much, and not nearly enough.
So far all three of them, the Lovatos and Jeremy, had opportunity, but so far Daniel was the only one with a motive—unsubstantiated, but a motive nonetheless.
What were the three things the cops always looked for? Motive, opportunity…what was the other?
So far afield from my normal areas of expertise, I’d made it through the front doors, up the stairs, and to the door of my office before the third element hit me—means! Absent evidence to the contrary and with precious little to go on, we all, myself included, had been operating under the assumption that the sharks had done the dirty deed. But what if they hadn’t? What if Numbers was the former Ms. Neidermeyer by the time she hit the water?
I burst through the door and came to a halt in front of Miss Patterson, who resolutely manned her desk even though the day had fled and night was gaining momentum. If she was startled by my arrival, she didn’t show it. In fact, she looked dead on her feet. I pointed to her. “Call Romeo. If he’s close, I’d like to see him.”
Miss P nodded and reached for her phone.
“And I need to see or talk to Jeremy, pronto.”
“He’s asleep on your couch,” Miss P said. Using one finger, she traced down her list of important numbers. When she’d found what she wanted, her finger stopped, holding her place on the list. Then she stuffed the receiver to her ear, using her shoulder to hold it there, and dialed with her free hand. Finally she glanced up at me. “He hadn’t had any sleep to speak of, but he was intent on waiting until you got back. Something about a hot trail gone cold?”
Not what I wanted to hear, but I’d be damned before I let my fearless assistant see my deflation. “Put Romeo through when you get him on the line. Then I want you to scrape your hunk off my couch, after I talk to him of course, and both of you go home.” I turned and tiptoed into my office.
As promised, the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock was indeed fast asleep on my couch, all six feet plus a few inches and 225 well-muscled pounds of him.
I eased myself around him and into my desk chair, then leaned back and enjoyed the view. If my thoughts weren’t lascivious—which they weren’t—then no harm, no foul, right? Besides, I felt I deserved a moment of eye candy. The day had served up precious little to enjoy so far, if I excluded Dane.
And a moment was all I got. The phone rang. I jumped. Jeremy bolted to a seated position.
Miss Patterson’s calm voice announced, “Detective Romeo, line one.”
Jeremy looked at me as I reached for the phone as if I had just been teleported from Mars. I watched him regain his surroundings, then punched the button for the appropriate line.
“Romeo? Wherefore art thou?” I said, very pleased with myself.
With not even a chuckle, he gave me his location—two blocks away, which wasn’t as close as it sounded given the traffic building on the strip. I guess he didn’t think I was as cute as I thought I was.
“I need to ask you some questions. Should we do it over the phone, or do you want to come by? Twenty minutes? Yeah, I’ll be here.” I nodded, which was stupid, but a habit. “Okay, make it thirty. See you then. Thanks.” I cradled the phone, then looked at Jeremy.
Before I could drop a bon mot, he started in. “I’m sorry about racking on your couch. I was out of petrol.” He ran a hand through his hair and shot me a dimple or two.
“Someone once told me a sofa in a woman’s office was an invitation.” I announced with a straight face. “Ever since, I’ve been leaving my office unlocked, hoping I’d catch a handsome guy.”
“Sort of a casting couch in reverse?” he bantered back, joining the game. “Have much luck?”
“Not really. In fact, you’re my first, but you’ve given me hope.”
With a groan, Jeremy pushed himself to his feet, took two steps, then sagged into a chair across from me. He looked beat—unbelievably gorgeous, but beat. “Well, it’s just a suggestion, mind you, but if you lose the wall of windows behind the couch, you might have more success.”
“Good point.” With a toe, I pulled out the bottom desk drawer, then put both feet on it as I leaned back in my chair and shut my eyes. “I hear you don’t have good news.”
“Don’t know whether it’s good or bad. I haven’t a clue what to make of it, actually. I’ve never run up against this before.”
“Why don’t you just start at the beginning?”
“Okay. I was skip-tracing the name you gave me, Shelley-Lynne Makepeace. She lived in New Jersey as your guy said, with her grandmother—”
“Grandmother? What about her parents?” My eyes still closed, I put my hands behind my head and let Jeremy’s story wash over me.
“I couldn’t find any mention of her parents, but I did find an uncle.”
“Alive?”
“Amazingly enough, alive and kicking, and willing to talk, although I don’t think he told me everything he knew.” Jeremy’s voice held a glimmer of hope. “I couldn’t get him to open up about the father. But Shelly-Lynne’s mother died when Shelly-Lynne was twelve. All he would tell me was her name was Mary Swearingen. Apparently Makepeace was the grandmother’s second husband’s name. Swearingen was the first husband, Shelly-Lynne’s grandfather, who is dead, by the way, along with the grandmother and her second husband.”
“Convenient.” The way my luck was running, I’d better look twice before I crossed any streets and think seriously before making a commitment to green bananas. Maybe I should try a fortuneteller… “Did the uncle have anything else to offer?”
“He told me if I could find anything on the mother, it would make pretty interesting reading.” Jeremy stopped.
Dropping my arms, I raised my head and looked at him. “And?”
“I found her files, but apparently I didn’t have the right clearances.”
“What?” I shifted my feet to the floor and my butt to the edge of the chair, leaning toward him. He had my full attention now. “Clearances?”
“Apparently the FBI holds the key to the gate. They have sealed her files.”