Bombshell (Devlin Haskell 4) (23 page)

“But still,
they should have taken it easy, no need for that rough shit,” Louie said. H
e was
down
on his knees
behind the marble topped bar, rummaging around in the fridge. “Man, this place is well stocked,” he said standing up, he hel
d a green bottle of some kind of German beer
, opened it and poured it into a chilled glass.

“The SWAT guys might have been
jerks, bu
t they didn’t know it was all prearranged
. Far as they k
new I was a baddy, murdered a woman
, they bagged my pistols. I don’t like it, but you can’t
really
blame them. I can, however
,
blame Elkers.”

“Yea
h, and there he wa
s
tonight
on the news
,
standing in front of your place
taking questions
from those reporters when they hauled you out, cuffed, beautiful, man. And then all those reporters while you’re sitting in the back of the squad car with the shit kicked out of you.
” Louie waddled back to
join me at
the dining ro
om table. “It’s like your buddy
Aa
ron said, the news footage
can
only help us.”

“Now if they can just get the guy who did this.
Think Manning will take much flak on this?”

“Manning? What do you care?”

“I sort of like the guy. He can be a pain in the ass, but he’s a straight shooter, honest.”

“No
,
I don’t think he’ll get much heat,”
Louie gulped
down
a healthy amount of beer. “H
e’ll get some
,
but with
all
the news
footage,
it’s too high profile.
But
I’ll tell ya,
I wouldn’t want to be Elkers tonight.”

“What do you think will happen?
”

“To Elkers?”

I nodded.

“He’s history. It might be the resignation for the good of the department sort of deal or just
a quiet retirement six moths
down the road
,
but
either way
I’d guess
he’s gone. Too bad, it’s a tough way to go
, but no one to blame but his own ego,
”
Louie said then gulped more beer.

“I just want them to get the guy who killed Fiona Simmons
.”

“Yeah,” Louie said, he was up
and
making his way behind the bar, again
. “We need to talk about what you want by way of damages. This all expense paid visit to the hotel is nice, but you got all the cards my friend
with a lot more available
.”

“Louie, I got kicked around a little, I’m not wild about
it,
but in a day or two I should be pretty much back to normal.”

“Yeah
,
whatever normal is in your case.”
He was standing
behind
the marble
topped bar
, watching the
frost melt off the exterior of the
fresh
glass as he poured another beer
.

“Think about this,” he said. “You’ve got the physical beating, plus the damage to your reputation,
reputational damage to
your business,
physical damage to your home
,
and
the
n there are
all the
psychological issues…”

“Psychological
issues
?”

“Believe me
,
Dev, you got ‘em,” he said then drained a thi
rd of his glass
and looked around
. “Hey, t
his joint got an extra bed?”

“Detective Manning,” I said.

“Who’s calling?” I had
the feeling the guy on the other end of the phone
was doing a half d
ozen other things while
talking
to
me.
I could hear
the general hum of conversations
in the background.

“Devlin Haskell,” I said
,
not
really
sur
e
I should
be giving him
my name.

“Just a moment, sir.
”
H
e had sort of snapped to,
or
was
I
just
imagining?
Didn’t matter,
Manning was always good for a ten minute wait before he
bothered to pick
up the phone.

I’d just finished the
order of E
ggs Benedict
plus the side plate of smoked salmon and caviar
that room service had delivered
.
I poured another cup of coffee and
glanced at my watch, nine-fifty in the morning
.
Louie had left an hour earlier
. I had another massage and a spa treatment scheduled for eleven. T
hat left enough t
ime for at least two more
of those really tasty
blueberry muffins.

“This is Detective Manning.”

I checked my watch, it was still nine-fifty.

“Detective Manning, Dev Haskell, didn’t expect you to pick up so fast.”

“How’s it going?”
he asked,
actually
sounding
genuine.

“I’ve got two of the most gorgeous black eyes you’
ve ever seen.”

“How you feeling?”
he said
, quickly moving on from my black eyes.

“I
’ll live. Anything
turn
up
yet
?”

“You mean like a suspect with a note pinned to his coat
that says I’m guilty
?”

“Could it be that easy,” I asked.

“No, we
’
re
sort of in the wai
t-and—
see mode over here
, shining a little light under the occasional rock
.”

Not the answer I was hoping for.

“Anything I can do to help?” I asked.

“Yeah, continue to keep a low profile
, rest up,
take it easy in that hotel
suite
. How’s the food?”

We chatted on for a minute or two about
my E
ggs Benedict and then
absolutely nothing
important
. I had the feeling the guy w
as really trying, but
then
a
nother
look in the bathroom mirror at my two black eyes
, my nose and banged up face
made me think he should.

It was during my late morning massage that I got to thinking about what I could do to
help catch Fiona’s murderer. The
guy obviously was
aware of the Hastings Hustlers schedule,
the various cities where
they were appearing. That
narrowed the field
down
to anyone
in the world
wi
th I
nternet access.

I drifted back to the two cops who transported me yesterday. They tried the anti-woman angle, the religious angle, the stalker angl
e was it one of those? T
he guy
had
clearly
been
stalking
Fiona
, but why?
A
perceived slight? Some flake that
followed her over
here
from
England
? Some sort of Jodie
Foster deal?

The only cameras at the hotel
where Fiona was murdered
were the ones carried by the guests. Late night
hotel
security co
nsisted of a
fifty—
something woman
with a bourbon buzz
at the front desk and the pool maintenance guy.
Fiona had been found in her room with her throat slit.
The stalker seemed to know what hotels the team was going to be staying in. In fact, in the case of
Chicago
and
St. Paul
, he knew the actual room she was in. Twice in
St. Paul
, now that I thought about it, once to fire bomb her and then, well, the second incident
, her murder
.

I felt
the
masseuse kneading my back. He
moved
cautious
ly
arou
nd the ribs on my right side and seemed to kno
w what he was doing. I felt completely relaxed. He had just massaged some sort of hot fragrant oil into my back and was in the process of laying smooth, hot stones along my spine
and shoulders. I had to admit
, this was the life, things
were really go
ing well if you glossed over my
beating. I figured I could milk this luxury hotel stay for at least a good week. But there was a dark cloud, if my past
history served as any sort of lesson
, this was exact
ly
the time
when I
usual
ly screwed things up.

Chap
ter Thirty-Seven

No one was around
w
hen the t
axi dropped me off down the block
behind my parked car. I could see
a white carpenter’s van parked in my driveway,
saw horses supporting a number of different boards.
T
ools were set up across
my front lawn a
nd there was a
guy hammering around my front door frame
. I decided nothing positive could come from poking my nose in
, plus I wasn’t supposed to be here,
so I climbed in my car and drove off. No point in alerting Manning
that I ha
d wandered off the luxury reservation.

I was thinking about the fingers as I drove, they’d been frozen,
which made sense, sort of. Did some guy have
a bucket of them
in a freezer and
he grabbed one whenever needed, a
little different versi
on of giving someone the finger?
That seemed to make a lot more sense than some guy cutting off a fresh finger every time the Hasting
s Hustlers appeared in a new
town.
But then why would he leave one of the things in my garage?

I ended up in the library, doing what I should hav
e done a long time ago. I Googl
ed the
Hastings
Hustlers. From all the searching I did, which was only an hour on the library computer before my time was up, I couldn’t find any mention of fingers sent to anyone on the team. For that matter, I couldn’t find mention of fingers sent to anyone, anyw
here, until the Hustlers arrived in
the
United States
.

There were
, however, three
separate
incidents back in the
UK
of property damage to some of the Hustler’s cars
while the team practiced at night
. One was spray painted, another
had a windshield broken and a
third
had all four
tires
slit
.
All this
occurred
in the two months before they flew over for their fundraising tour.

I drove back to the hot
el to soak in the Jacuzzi and ga
ve Manning a call
. The Jacuzzi was an octagonal affair that would easily fit a half dozen people. It sat in a mirrored room off the bathroom so no matter which direction I looked I could see myself through the steamed up mirrors. The phone was mounted on the wall behind me and I had the Jacuzzi jets
rumbling,
causing the bubble bath to form a mountain of suds.

“Who’s calling?” I thought it was the same guy who’d answered the phone earlier in the morning, but I couldn’t be sure. It still sounded like he was doing a number of
different
things while he answered my call.