KILLER DATE (SCANDALS) (4 page)

Jenny nodded and dumped the contents of the envelope on the table and starting counting.

Liberty was sitting in her office with her foot propped up on a chair.  A bright purple cast inscribed with a dozen or more names and a few caricatures encased her foot, leaving just her toes sticking out.

“How’s the ankle today?” he asked her.

“It’s itching like crazy,” Liberty replied.  “I don’t know if I can take four more weeks of this.”

“I have a saw if you want me to break you out,” I offered with a grin.  “There’s hardly any blood on it.”

“If that’s the one you use to saw women in half, I think I’ll pass.  You might not know when to stop.”

“So, how’s the research coming?”

“I’m not finding much.  It’s a new technology, and they’re still working through the regulations.”

“We’re in the conference room if you want to come down and tell us what you’ve found.  Need any help?”

“You could carry my laptop.  I can get around pretty well on my crutches, but I haven’t figured out how to carry things.”  She closed her laptop, then pulled herself up and balanced on a pair of aluminum crutches. 

I picked up the laptop.  “I’m going to see if Tulsa can join us.  Meet you in the conference room.”  I headed to the end of the hall where Tulsa’s office was located while Liberty shuffled
toward the conference room with a click-click-click of her crutches.

I stopped in
Tulsa’s doorway, and she looked up.  She and I had the most similar backgrounds, and yet I knew less about her than anyone else.  She was a foster-system drop out and had a chip on her shoulder the size of Ohio.  But she was hell on wheels with anything to do with computers. 

“Did you find anything?” she asked.

“Nothing concrete.  But there are a few things that don’t make sense.”  I held out the photo of Angela and the mystery man.  “What do you know about facial recognition?”

“Christopher showed me how to use the program, but I haven’t actually done one yet.”  She took the photo.  “Let me give it a shot.”

“Great.  We’re down in the conference room if you get a hit.”

She looked at the photo of the attractive couple, but clearly her focus was on the bare-chested man.  “Nice abs.”

“Focus…on the face,” I reprimanded her with a laugh.

“Right.”
  Tulsa’s agreement was tempered with just a hint of a smile.

I retraced my steps up the hall to the conference room.  There were several stacks of hundred dollar bills in front of Jenny.

“$5,600,” Jenny told me before I could ask.

“I was pretty close,” Dallas reminded them. 
“Too many poker games in the frat house.”

I whistled.  “That’s high stakes for college kids
.”

“For some of them,
it’s chump change.  UT attracts some big money.”

“If it had been in chips, I could have given you a quick count,” I told him.  “I’ve dealt a few thousand games in between magic gigs.”  I set the laptop in front of Liberty who had settled on the seat in the opposite corner so she could prop her leg up on an empty chair.  She opened the screen of the small computer and started clicking the keys.  It was amazing how quickly she was picking up modern electronics, especially when you considered that she had grown up on a commune without electricity or television, much less computer and cell phones.

“Here’s what I have so far on what it takes to be a tat-removal expert in Texas,” she said.  “According to the Texas Department of Health website, you have to use an FDA approved machine and a licensed medical doctor either needs to be present during the removal or one has to sign off that you don’t need to have one there.”

“I’m thinking that’s most of the time,” I commented.  “If a doctor has to decide between hanging around for hours for a few hundred dollars while some dumb shit gets his ex-girlfriend’s name zapped off or getting paid while he’s out playing golf…it’s a no-brainer.”

Liberty nodded her agreement as she continued, “You have to register the machine and pay $230 for a two-year license.  And oh yeah…they
suggest
you get malpractice insurance.  That’s about it, and you’re legal.”

Jenny looked dumbfounded.  “I can’t believe Angie went through all that…and I never knew anything about it.”

“Is she generally a rule-follower?” Dallas asked.

“Last week, I would have said absolutely.  She wasn’t raised to cut corners and disobey laws.”  Jenny cradled her face in her hands
with her elbows propped on the table.  “Today…I’m not so sure.”

Everyone in the room was silent.  I stared at the piles of money, then back to Jenny who was in a state of shock.  My hands itched to distract her with a card trick or to make a fuzzy baby bunny appear.  Who could resist bunnies?  I could make a horse disappear or turn a dove into a bouquet of roses, but I had no idea how to make her sadness and disappointment go away.

Abruptly, she pushed her chair back.  “You guys have been really nice.  I hope you find out more from the photo or Angie’s computer.”

“We’ll let you know as soon as we do,” I assured her.

Dallas gathered the money into one stack and replaced it in the envelope before handing it her.  She stuffed it in her purse as if she was repelled to even have it in her possession.  “Thanks for your help.”  Her gaze swept around the room, but ended on me.  There were dark circles under her big green eyes, and she looked like she hadn’t slept since her sister went missing.

“I’ll walk you out,” I said and hurried to open the conference door for her.  We
stopped in the lobby.  “Listen…Jenny…we’ll do everything we can to find out what happened to her…okay?”

She
forced a smile.  She was about to speak when the sound of a popular Taylor Swift song came from her purse.  She jumped and started scrambling through the small bag to find it.  Finally, she pulled the plain black cell phone out and punched the answer button as a shaky smile broke though. “It’s Angie.”

CHAPTER TWO

“Can you put it on speaker?” I asked.

Jenny
pushed the button and held the phone in front of her.  The phone was not equipped with a
FaceTime
function, but I could see a thumbnail photo of her sister on the screen.  Jenny was staring so hard at the picture, I thought it might burst into flames.

“W
here are you and why haven’t you called me back?” Jenny demanded.  “I’ve been calling for days.  You missed your classes and…”

I put
both hands up in an attempt to calm her.

“I’m sorry Jen…
” 
Angie’s voice came through broken and crackly.
“…didn’t mean to leave…tried to call, but things are really messed up right now.  I’m okay…really I am.  I’ll explain it all when I get back…tomorrow I’ll try to call…after things calm down here…”

“Where are you?  I can come by and…”

There was the rumble of another voice in the background, but the words weren’t clear.

“
…really Mi…?”
Angie’s voice was muffled as if she was turning away from the phone, then grew stronger as she returned her attention to Jenny.
“I’ve got to go.  See you soon…I love you, Jen…bye…”

The phone went dead.

“There, you see…Angie is still alive,” I announced unnecessarily.  Part of me was happy that her sister was safe, but another part of me was sorry that the case was over so quickly and Jenny would be going back to her pre-school/bartender life, and I’d probably never see her again.  That thought really bummed me out.

“She didn’t sound right…did she?”
Jenny asked with a frown.

I had expected a lot more celebration tha
n I was seeing.  “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard her, so I really don’t know…she seemed awfully rushed.”

“
There was someone with her.  She started to say a name. 
Mi
something.”

“
That doesn’t really narrow it down much.  I couldn’t even tell if the other voice was male or female.  Until we get a photo match with a name, we’d only be guessing.”

“So what do we
do now?”  The fear in her eyes had been replaced by confusion. 

“
I’m afraid until we go through her stuff or she calls you back, not much.”

“What about the police? 
Can they trace the call?”

“No…now that you’ve talked to her and she’s
okay, it only confirms their earlier assumption that she’s a free-will run-away.”

Slowly Jenny shook her head.  “I don’t think it’s that black and white.”

“Nothing ever is.  We’ll keep looking into it and see if something pops up.”  I didn’t really know if that was how things worked in the agency once it was clear there was no real crime, but I knew I’d do everything possible to follow through for her.  She didn’t deserve this.  She had given up so much to raise her sister, and the ungrateful little snot had just zipped off without a second thought. “Let’s talk tomorrow morning.  Call me if you hear anything before then, okay?”

Jenny inhaled deeply and
exhaled with a little whoosh. She took the business card out of her pocket. “Okay. Can I reach you at this number?”

I took the card from her and wrote my number on the back.  “This is my personal cell
…24/7…just call me…”

“Thanks
, Reno.”  She awkwardly held out her hand. 

What I wanted was to pull her into my arms and comfort her with a hug.  Or maybe I just wanted to feel
that beautiful body pressed against mine.  Now wasn’t the time for me to get philosophical.  I knew with Pam sitting at the desk and our internal cameras on us that anything too touchy-feely would be frowned on, so I took her small hand in mine and squeezed it rather than give it an impersonal shake.  “I’ll get the door for you.”

I
held open the heavy metal door with the bullet-proof glass panel the agency had installed after a bomb blew out the last one.  Jenny brushed past me so close that I could smell the lemony freshness of her skin.  I watched as she got into her little Honda, started the engine and drove away…hopefully, not out of my life forever. 

As I walked back inside and through the lobby
, I didn’t even glance at Pam.  The door locked behind me, and I slowly returned to the conference room.  I felt really bad that Jenny’s situation wasn’t completely resolved, and that I hadn’t been able to help her.  I wanted to keep going on the case, but I was afraid that once everyone found out about the phone call, they’d all want to move onto something else.  Jenny had a gut feeling, and maybe I was picking up on that, but I believed there was more to it than what we knew.  I just had to convince the others.

“She seems nice,
” Tulsa commented.

A compliment, however
generic, from Tulsa was a very rare occurrence.  She was so outwardly binary that she was as close to a human robot…or was it a genius…that I had ever met.  Not a bad person, just more CPU than female.

“
Her sister called.”

That go
t everyone’s attention as all eyes focused on me.

“After she left the room?
” Tulsa frowned, trying to piece together the data.

“Her sister?
  The infamous missing Angela?” Dallas snorted, a little exasperated that he had wasted his morning.

“
Was she okay?  What did she say?” Liberty asked with genuine concern.

“She sounded stressed out and in a hurry…
but she’s alive and seemed happy enough. Jenny put the call on speaker.  I heard it all, but the reception was poor.”  I repeated what I had heard to the best of my memory.  “She didn’t sound worried, but whoever she was with was obviously trying to hurry her.  I don’t know if she meant she’d call again tomorrow or would be home tomorrow.”

“Did she run off with
the abs guy?” Tulsa asked.

“She didn’t stay on the phone long enough to explain.  Someone in the background seemed to be in a big hurry.”

We were silent for a few moments, digesting the conflicting information we had received during the last few hours.  Finally, Tulsa snapped her laptop shut.

“So, I guess that means the case is over…,” she commented as she stood.

“Before it even got started,” I finished for her. The rush of disappointment I felt had to be because we’d lost a client.  Yeah, that’s all it was.

Dallas stood.  “
Which also means, no income.”  He gave me a disapproving glance.  “Actually, we lost money on that one.”

“You noticed that, did you?” I asked, amused.  Someone needed to buy Dallas a sense of humor for his birthday.

“I don’t know how you did it, but it doesn’t take an economics major to figure out that if we give away hundred dollar bills to all our potential clients, we’re not going to keep the doors open.”

“She needed it,” I added.

Dallas snorted.

“
Well, I don’t know about you all, but I can’t wait to meet our landlord,” Tulsa broke up the growing tension.

Liberty hobbled to her feet. 
“Who do you think it is?  Elvis?  Sinatra?”

“Neither of them…
,” I told her.

“Ah.”  Her expression showed her disappointment.  “Are you sure?”

I bit back a grin.  “Pretty sure.”  With anyone else I would have come back with a sarcastic remark, but with Liberty, we had to cut her some slack.  She was still catching up on her lost years where the only music she heard was at least fifty years old and with no electricity, there had been no TMZ to keep her up to date on celebrity gossip…and deaths.

We checked out with Pam and headed in our separate vehicle
s except for Liberty who rode with Tulsa toward the mansion on Lake Travis.

We walked into the study
at the lake house as a group and slid to a stop so abruptly we bumped into each other like cartoon ducks.

There was only one person in the room other than Killeen and Christopher.  The tall, attractive man in his mid-forties was familiar to us all
…well probably not Liberty.  It wasn’t because any of us had ever met him, but because he was on every music awards show since we were in diapers, and his face had been on the covers of fanzines almost as often as a Kardashian.  His hair was cut relatively short and combed into a spiky faux-hawk that made him look years younger.  He was dressed, head-to-toe, in black leather except for a white satin t-shirt.

“Hey everyone, this is
Nigel St. James,” Christopher made the introductions.  “These are the rest of Roger’s kids.  That’s Liberty on crutches…Tulsa…Dallas…and Reno.”

We all smiled and shook his hand as our names were called.  I didn’t know about anyone else, but I was speechless…a condition that didn’t happen to me often. 
It was friggin’ Nigel St. James….the planet’s biggest international rock star with over eighty million album sales.  I was a big fan of his music…and his impressive marital conquests.  Five wives, each one younger and prettier than the last.  You had to admire a man with that kind of charisma and stamina. 

“
So sorry to hear about Roger,” Nigel told us.  Somehow everything he said in his crisp British accent sounded elegant and interesting.  “He was a great musician and a good friend.  I’d been trying for years to get him back on the road with me.”

“He talked about it, but just didn’t want to put himself out th
ere again,” Christopher replied.  “Too many temptations.”

“Are you talking drugs or chicks?” Nigel
asked.  “I heard the story about how you all were named after the towns where he…er…hooked up with your mothers.”

“Yeah, we’re still working our way through all that,” Killeen told him.  “This whole thing has been quite a shock.”

“I can imagine.”  Nigel grimaced.  “I’m surprised that no groupie surprises have shown up on my doorstep.”  His gaze focused on me.  “Leather pants in Austin are killer, aren’t they?”

I looked back at Nigel’s black leather pants and grinned.  “I got by with it in Vegas because everything is air conditioned, and I rarely went outside.  But here…I think I’m going to have to sacrifice fashion for survival.”

“Yeah, I’m going to change into jeans as soon as I get to the hotel.”

“You’re not staying here?” Liberty asked.  “This place is beautiful…and it’s yours.”

Nigel chuckled.  “After all these years on the road, I prefer hotels.  I have houses in L.A., London and Miami, and when I stay there, I feel like that little kid from
Home Alone
.  They’re too big and quiet.”

“Time for wife #
6?” I joked and everyone focused on me with shocked expressions.  I was suddenly reminded that if we pissed this guy off, we’d all be homeless.  “I mean…”

Nigel’s deep laugh filled the room.  “I don’t think I can afford another one.  But then, that’s what I said before I married Tanya…and Charlize...and Zoey.  Oh hell, we all know it’s only a matter of time.”

John arrived with a tray of iced tea and fresh lemonade and enough glasses for everyone.  He was definitely one of the nicer perks of living in the mansion.  He set the tray on a large Texas-shaped coffee table that had been carved out of a slice of an old oak tree that had once grown on this property.  It made an impressive centerpiece for the room with a comfortable grouping of couches and chairs around it.  John poured everyone a drink of their choice, then returned with a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. 

“Thanks, John,” Christopher said. 

“Are you in between tour stops?” I asked, curious why he had dropped by.  If we were about to be evicted, I wanted as much notice as possible.  The real estate market in Austin was really tight right now, and there wasn’t much to choose from.  “I just moved here from Vegas.  I tried to get in to see your shows, but I couldn’t afford the tickets.”

“
I’m in the middle of a tour, but I took a detour to talk to you kids.”

We exchanged worried looks, waiting for the eviction notice.  None of us had ever lived in such an amazing place and being able to spend so much time together had helped us form a tight bond more quickly than if we all went home to different places each night.  Even Christopher had sold his house and moved in with us…well, specifically he moved in with Killeen, but the result was the same.