The house was huge, more a monument to its former owner’s ego than it had ever been a home. Its front facade looked like a bizarre mating of the Parthenon and a classic redbrick schoolhouse.
Sherlock didn’t understand the appeal of living in a house like that, but he had little in common with its previous owner. Christopher Hughes would have described himself as a visionary. Sherlock knew him to be a lecherous moron, though. To use the foster care system to identify vulnerable girls he could recruit to work in his whorehouses made business sense, but it was repugnant. More than that, it was dangerous. Hughes was lucky the police hadn’t caught him earlier.
That wasn’t Sherlock’s concern that evening, though. He parked his twelve-year-old Mercedes in the circular drive out front and walked to the portico. The front lights popped on. Whether someone had seen him, or whether Christopher Hughes’s ex-wife had installed a motion sensor, he couldn’t say.
Before getting out of the car, he reached to the seat beside him for the hammer and tarp he had purchased earlier that day. This would be a long night. He should have picked up coffee before coming over. As Sherlock walked to the front door, he yawned and set his purchases on the ground before knocking.
Diana Hughes opened the door a few minutes later. She was younger than her ex-husband and better looking. Her straight black hair cascaded down to her shoulders, drawing his attention to her chest and the pink, silk robe she wore. Her hair was still wet from a recent shower, and her cheeks were flushed with heat. Her brown eyes locked on his. Her gaze was probing and intelligent. Why she’d married Christopher Hughes, Sherlock would never know.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I’m James Holmes,” he said. “I’m your ex-husband’s attorney. He’s asked me to come and talk to you.”
She crossed her arms. “I’m not sure how much I have to say to my ex-husband’s attorney, but I hear the state plans to release him from prison soon. Is that your doing?”
“It is,” he said, nodding. “Does that upset you?”
“Christopher deserves to die in prison for the things he’s done.”
“Many people deserve to die in prison,” said Sherlock. “Part of my job is making sure they don’t get their just deserts.”
“And do you like this job?” she asked.
Sherlock allowed his eyes to travel up and down her body. She was a remarkable woman.
“It has its perks.”
Her lips parted as they drew upwards into a demure smile.
“Why are you here, Mr. Holmes?”
“Christopher asked me to come and kill you,” he said, tilting his head to the side. “He wanted you to die screaming.”
She didn’t react for a moment. And then she took a step back. Sherlock took that as an invitation to come inside, where he kicked off his shoes. He had stepped in dog shit outside a detective’s house earlier that day, and Diana wouldn’t have appreciated him tracking dog droppings inside the house.
Polished marble covered the floor while a winding wooden staircase led to the second floor. An elegant bronze chandelier hung from the ceiling, bathing the room in a warm yellow light. Sherlock shut the door behind him, leaving his tools on the porch. They’d be fine for a while.
“How much did Christopher offer you to kill me?”
“Fifty grand,” said Sherlock. “I balked at first, but then he said he wouldn’t mind if I fucked you first.”
She brought her hands to the tie that held her robe shut.
“Is there anything I could do that would persuade you to let me live?” she asked, untying the knot. The robe slipped open, exposing her athletic form.
“I can think of a thing or two,” said Sherlock. He kissed her and felt her body against him.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered as she pulled her lips away from his.
“I’ve missed you, too,” he said, smiling. “Sorry I haven’t been able to come by for a few days. Work’s been keeping me busy.”
She took his hand. “Come on. I want to show you what you’ve been missing.”
She led him upstairs where they made love in her bedroom. Afterwards, as he held her close, she looked at him and sighed, their hands and legs intertwined.
“You are so much better than my ex-husband. I wish I had met you before I met him. Life would have been so different.”
Sherlock looked around the spacious master bedroom. “You might not have had all this.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted all this,” she said, kissing his neck. He thought she wanted another round, but then she pulled her head back. “So what did you leave on the porch?”
He grunted, remembering everything he still had to do that night.
“A hammer. Christopher said he hid money inside the wall in the master bedroom closet.”
She nodded and looked to the closed closet door.
“He started as a builder, you know. He was a finish carpenter when I met him, but he had all these big ideas about opening his own business. When he renovated the closet, I assumed he was feeling nostalgic.”
Sherlock nodded and swung his legs off the side of the bed. “Did you see my pants?”
“They’re in the hallway,” she said, stretching and arching her back. He wanted to make love to her again, but he had work to do first. He swung his legs off the bed and dressed in the hallway. Diana sat up in bed and held the blanket over her chest. “Come back to bed, honey. It’s late.”
“It’s never too late for money, darling,” he said, winking. She rolled her eyes and lay down again as he walked to the front door to retrieve his hammer and tarp. When he returned, Diana was in the restroom, showering. He laid the tarp on the floor and hammered the wall, breaking the drywall. The shower turned off, and Diana’s voice called out.
“Are you breaking the walls open at midnight?”
“Christopher is my client. I have to find out whether he’s lying.”
Instead of answering, she turned the shower back on. Sherlock kept hammering and tearing away sheets of drywall. The tarp caught most of the mess, but he’d still need a Shop-Vac to clean the carpet. If Christopher had hidden a quarter-million cash in the walls, he wouldn’t mind buying one at all.
After opening holes on every wall, he found what he had been looking for: plastic-wrapped straps of cash. He pulled them out. There were five bricks, each of which held twenty-five bundles of fresh twenty-dollar bills.
He carried them into the bedroom and tore open the plastic on two of the bricks. A hundred thousand dollars cash spread over the bed. Another hundred and fifty thousand remained wrapped in plastic.
“Diana,” he called. She came to the bathroom door a moment later with a towel wrapped around her ample chest. Her eyes grew wide.
“That’s a lot of money,” she whispered. “Christopher gave you this money to kill me?”
Sherlock nodded. “Yep.”
She let her towel drop before lying down and pulling the money overtop herself and smiling.
“I feel like we should celebrate.”
“I kind of feel like that, too,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. Once he had removed his clothes, he climbed onto the bed beside her. As they made love on their cash, she bit his ear and moaned.
“When Christopher gets out of prison, you’ve got to kill him.”
He pulled his head away from her. “You want to talk about him now?”
“You’re all I want to talk about,” she said. “But if he’s alive, he won’t let us keep his money.”
Sherlock cupped her cheek with his hand.
“You needn’t worry about him. I’ll never let him hurt you again.”
“Are you going to kill him, then?”
Sherlock shook his head. “No, I’ll let the police do that for me.”