Bargain Hunting (19 page)

I clasped my hands and placed them in my lap as I met Tony’s inquisitive stare. “Izzy has an invitation to the dance.”

Tony’s expression instantly changed and he turned on his daughter. “We’ve been over this. You’re too young to date.”

“Which is why,” I interrupted. “She’s come up with a compromise.”

“I did?” She looked at me, then with self-assurance said, “I did.”

“Instead of a date, Izzy is going to ride to and from the dance with parents as chaperones. The boy who asked her is only fourteen, so you don’t need to worry.”

“Who is this boy?” Tony asked, his tone flat.

“His name is Cole Gentry. He’s in my bio class and all we want to do is hang out.”

“See?” I said. “It’s really not a big deal. All we’re talking about is them riding to and from together. Other than that, they’ll be chaperoned at school, just as they would be if they arrived separately.”

“Please, Daddy?” Izzy went over and stood in front of him. “It’s just hanging out. No sex or anything.”

I cringed.

“Well, that’s a rousing endorsement,” Tony said. “You’re too young to date.”

“Which is why I’m just asking to take a baby step. Ya know, kinda ease you into it.”

Tony rubbed his face. “I want to meet his parents before Saturday.”

“Done,” Izzy practically squealed.

“And don’t think I won’t be dusting you for fingerprints when you get home.”

Izzy grabbed him around the neck and gave him a big squeeze. “You’re the best dad ever.”

I stood, figuring my job was done. “Not so fast,” Tony said. “Izzy, take your shoes upstairs and play with them or something.”

She took her bag, but stopped long enough to give me a hug. “You rock,” she whispered.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Tony said, “Are you going to come clean now?”

“About what?”

He leaned forward, bracketing his hands on his knees. “Are you going to sit there and tell me you haven’t been working on Liam’s case?”

“Sounds like a plan,” I joked, hoping to keep things on the light side.

“You really have a problem with authority, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as taking initiative.”

“Murder cases aren’t a game, Finley.”

“No, they’re a puzzle. I’m good at puzzles.”

“You’re also good at getting yourself in over your head.”

I thought for a minute, then came clean. I told him everything I’d done as well as my theories on the case. “I haven’t gone near any bad guys.”

“Keep it that way,” he said firmly. “But keep digging. Just don’t let it consume you. Victor and Ellen won’t like it if you shirk your other responsibilities.”

“I won’t.” At least not any more than I normally shirk my responsibilities.

“I wanted to hire an investigator for this case.”

“Who?”

“Liam shot me down. He’s hell bent on doing this himself. The two of you are a lot alike. Work with him, but keep your distance at the first sign of trouble.”

“I’ve already gotten the first sign of trouble,” I said, explaining the threatening and untraceable e-mail.

He rubbed his hands together. “Then maybe you should hang back on this one.”

“I can’t,” I confessed. “Please don’t ask me to.”

“For now, you stay behind the scenes. Let Liam do his thing.”

I felt a little better as I drove home. At least I wasn’t going behind Tony’s back, but I still felt like he and Liam were tying my hands. As I pulled into my driveway, the floodlights didn’t come on. Maybe the motion sensors were burned out or something. But in the illumination of my headlights, I saw Liam before I saw his Mustang parked at the far end of the drive.

He was sitting on the step, holding a longneck bottle of beer. He stood as I got out of my car. “How was your dinner date?” he asked.

“Great. Good company. Wonderful food.”

“Really?” he asked. “What’d you talk about?”

“The pitfalls of dating. Current events. That sort of thing.” It was true. Izzy caught me up on all her school gossip and we did discuss her dating dilemma.

“Doesn’t sound very romantic.”

“Well, it wasn’t Thai chicken,” I returned with a touch of attitude.

“I happen to love Thai chicken and Ashley makes a great Thai chicken.”

“Good for you and Ashley.”

“Of course,” he began as I came within arm’s reach. “I also like Italian.”

“Good for you.”

“No, good for you. I’m sure you and Izzy had a great evening.”

How did he know these things?

I was pondering that question when he took me in his arms.

When one door closes, you usually get your fingers stuck in it.

“Ready to get to
work?” he asked against my ear.

I had to defuse the situation, so I snaked my hand between us and checked my watch. “It’s nearly ten. I’m off the clock.”

“Tony told me about your theories.”

I stepped around him and placed my key in the lock. “Well, if you’re here to mock me, good night.”

He stood pressed against me. I could feel the outline of his body and my mind was starting to turn into lust mush. He was so close. All I had to do was turn around and do the only thing I really wanted to do. Kiss him. With tongue. Followed by a quick call to the paramedics after we ripped open his wounds.

I practically raced into the house, chased by Liam’s soft laughter. By habit, I turned on the coffeepot after I put my purse and my briefcase on the sofa. Liam was still standing in the doorway.

“Are you coming or going?” I asked.

“I’d like to go over a few things with you, if that’s okay?”

“Sure. Like what?”

“Lemme get some stuff out of my car.” He started to walk away, then reached in his pocket and pulled out a receipt and three twenty-dollar bills. “Ashley and I returned the rental at the kiosk. Here’s the receipt and the money to cover it.”

I would have told him to forget it, but since Ashley was his accomplice, I gladly accepted the cash. He returned a few seconds later with his arms loaded down by four big file boxes. Immediately I took the top one, stunned by how heavy it was. “You have stitches, you shouldn’t be carrying stuff this heavy. Let’s put them down here,” I instructed as I placed them parallel to the coffee table.

“What is all this?”

“My case files from the gang unit. I always made a habit of making copies for myself.”

“Maybe the real killer’s identity is in one of those boxes,” I said with renewed excitement. “Give me a second to change and we can start going through them.”

“Want some help?” he asked softly.

“Nope. Been dressing myself since I was three.”

What was the appropriate attire for hunting suspects? I needed casual. Nothing said casual louder than a pair of yoga pants and lord knew I didn’t wear them for yoga. I opted for a simple white, short-sleeved blouse and left my feet bare.

When I returned, Liam looked up and gave me a once-over that felt a lot like being caressed. I was tingling from head to toe and wondering how I was going to keep my mind on the task at hand rather than the promise of great sex.

“There’s another possible explanation for Stan and José dying seven days apart.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“Someone is after the whole unit. Maybe all of us are targets.”

The thought sent a chill through me. “The Latin Bandits?”

“We confiscated more than two million in drugs, cash, and weapons at that raid. That’s a lot of reasons to want us all dead. I just can’t figure out why now. Why wait five years for retribution?”

I took my laptop out of my briefcase and fired it up. “Do you have the names of the defendants?”

Liam listed names while I checked their status in the criminal justice system. One had been shanked the first week of his incarceration. Died in the infirmary. Two others were on work release, and the fourth, the ringleader, was still locked up.

“So we concentrate on the ones out on work release?” I asked.

“Maybe. But we can’t take Jimmy Santos out of the running. It’s pretty easy to order a hit from prison if you know what you’re doing. He was the jefe and he got the most severe sentence.”

“Should we alert the rest of your unit?”

“We shouldn’t. You should. Can you do it on Dane-Leiberman stationery?”

I thought about it for a minute. “Why not? Tony won’t mind.”
I hope.
“I’ll just tell him I thought he might call them as witnesses if it turns out the Latin Bandits are behind the killings. That I’ve served Liam up some reasonable doubt.”

“I still think you’re way off base about it being one of my
guys,” Liam said with a certain sadness in his tone. “I never saw anything out of the ordinary. And besides, they all would have been conspirators, plus the gun cage guy, plus the property clerk. I just wasn’t important enough for that to be an issue.”

“Nothing about that night sticks out?”

He raked his hands through his hair. “It was OT for me.”

“Overtime?”

“Yeah. Ashley and I were saving to rent salon space so she could start her own business. I was forever pulling OT just for the cash.”

“So no one knew you’d be at the scene that night?”

“No, the duty roster goes up on Wednesdays. The bust was on a Friday.”

My mind was racing as myriad thoughts tried to come together in some sort of cohesive fashion. “So anyone could have gone into the gun lockup between Wednesday and Friday and taken your gun.”

Liam let out a heavy sigh. “In theory. But the cage guy knows just about everyone, so it would have been impossible for a civilian to remove the gun. And someone would have to have had access to the sign-in and -out sheet since they presented testimony to the grand jury that I was the one who did it. They had the records to back up what they were saying.”

“Could someone have been in cahoots with the Latin Bandits?”

“Anything is possible,” he said as he drained his coffee and then asked me for a beer. “Except we didn’t know we were hitting the Bandits until Friday, just before the operation started. Only Armando Calderone knew. He was running point.”

“Did he have anything against you? Something personal?”

“No.”

“So if the cops are off the hook, for now, who did have it in for you?”

He shook his head vehemently. “I’ve asked myself that same question a million times. Nothing was out of order that night. Well, except for the kid getting shot.”

I sat sideways and tucked my feet beneath me, then straddled my laptop against my knees. I couldn’t resist, I went directly to eBay. Twenty-seven minutes and counting and I was still the high bidder. As a precaution, I upped my minimum another five hundred but didn’t place the bid. No, I would hold it with less than thirty seconds to go just in case I was up against a seasoned player.

I happily noted that I’d won three of the five links, so I went through PayPal and dispatched payment rather quickly.

“How long does it take that thing to boot?” Liam asked, irritated.

“I just had to do some housekeeping. The IT guys had it for a day, remember?” And I could multitask, a skill I’d perfected at Dane-Leiberman.

“Where do you want to start? Cops or robbers?”

“What kind of information can you get?”

I twisted my hair and threw it over my shoulder. “From here? I can get the basics. Personal, criminal history—though not in detail—financials, and work history. I’ll need to be at my desk to run full credit and background.”

“Start with Jimmy Santos,” Liam instructed. “He was pretty pissed when he lost cash, drugs, and dope in the raid.”

“About how much did he lose?” I asked.

“The dope alone was worth about million on the street. The guns,” he paused and stroked the sexy stubble on his chin. “Maybe a couple hundred grand. I think the final count on the cash was around fifty thousand.”

“Who does the count?” I asked.

“The initial count is done at the scene, then it’s bagged and tagged and turned over to CSI.”

“So if some of the money went missing, no one but the thief would know, right?”

“There’s always at least two guys doing the counting, so that’s highly unlikely.”

So much for that theory.
Back to the Latin Bandits. I tapped my pen on the edge of my laptop until Liam placed his palm over it to silence it.

Liam removed my laptop and set it on the table as he moved close to me.

“No,” I protested halfheartedly.

Liam’s lips brushed against the sensitive skin just below my earlobe. The feel of his feather-light kisses drew my stomach into a tight ball of anticipation. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on the glorious sensations. His grip tightened as his tongue traced a path up to my ear. My breath caught when Liam teasingly nibbled the edge of my lobe.

His hands traveled up and rested against my rib cage. I swallowed the moan rumbling in my throat. I was aware of everything—his fingers; the feel of his solid body molded against mine; the magical kisses.

“You smell wonderful,” he said against my superheated skin.

“Liam,” I said, whispering his name. It was the best I could muster over the lump of desire clogging my throat. “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”