Bond, Stephanie - Body Movers 05 (2 page)

for Michael Lane? You did say he’d kil me if he got the

chance. Obviously, you were wrong.”

“Lucky for you,” Maria said pointedly.

“What’s with the masks?” Jack cut in, nodding to the two

colorful masks lying on the floor—a dog and a cat.

Carlotta stooped to retrieve them. “Peter brought them.

He was wearing the dog mask when he came up behind

me. That’s why I used the stun baton—I didn’t realize it

was him.”

Jack frowned. “Why the hel was he wearing a dog mask?”

“It’s a scene in a movie,” Maria said, snapping her fingers.

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Carlotta murmured, fingering the

masks. The scene where Paul and Hol y steal masks from a

toy shop during their day-long love splurge. Her favorite

scene, and Peter had remembered.

Jack looked utterly lost. “Does this have anything to do

with our crime scene?”

Carlotta shook her head and backed away. “I think I’l let

you two do your job. I’l be in my room if you need

anything.”

She turned and walked back down the hall to her

bedroom, thinking of what she needed to pack. Her skin

crawled anew at the thought of Michael strol ing through

their house, ransacking drawers, eating snacks and

watching TV. Had he stood over her while she slept and

considered finishing her off?

She walked into the girlish room that hadn’t changed

much since they’d moved in after her parents had lost

their big home in the exclusive area of Buckhead, after her

father had been fired from his job at an investments firm

where he’d been accused of bilking clients. She hung the

masks on the corner of her dresser mirror, then went over

to the white four-poster bed to pul out a suitcase from

underneath it, then set the bag on top of the coverlet.

She’d be glad to get away from this room, away from this

town house for a while. Staying with Peter would be like

going on vacation…as long as she could keep things

between them from moving along too quickly.

Carlotta removed clothes and shoes from her closet,

packing the suitcase as tightly as she could, wondering

how long she would be away and how this one decision

might change her life forever.

At a rap on the door, she turned to see Jack stick his head

inside. “Can I come in?”

“Sure.” She turned back to her task of removing

underwear from her dresser drawer.

“Going somewhere?” Jack asked.

She folded a pair of red lace panties and set them on top

of the pile of clothes. “Peter invited me to stay with him

for a while, and I accepted.”

Jack picked up the red panties between thumb and finger

to study them. “You’re moving in with Ashford?”

“No,” she corrected, stil folding underwear. “I’m staying

with Peter until things settle down around here.”

“Until I catch The Charmed Kil er?”

She nodded and instinctively wrapped her hand over the

charm bracelet she wore. The charms were supposedly

prophetic, but so far, they’d only proved to be

disconcerting. After all, a kil er was on the loose using the

trinkets as his signature.

Jack pursed his mouth. “I think it’s a good idea.”

She gave a little laugh. “I thought you might since you said

I should marry Peter.”

“That’s not why I think it’s a good idea.” He brought the

panties to his face.

Carlotta snatched them away. “Then why?”

He shrugged, unfazed. “Because I’m sure that palace of his

is a fortress. You’l be safe there. Which means I can

investigate The Charmed Kil er without worrying about

your pretty ass being in harm’s way. I’m sure Ashford wil

keep you busy with polo matches and dinners at the

country club.”

“Does this mean I won’t be seeing you?”

“You’l miss me, huh?” Then he was suddenly serious.

“Carlotta, I’m liaising with the GBI and your name keeps

popping up in the investigation. We’re going to have to get

you cleared, although this new development with Lane is a

big step forward.”

“You think Michael is The Charmed Kil er?”

“We’ll have to double-check the time line, but right now,

he’s the best suspect we have.”

“But Shawna Whitt was murdered before he escaped from

the hospital.”

“We don’t know exactly when Lane escaped, and we stil

don’t know if the Whitt woman was murdered. Since she

was cremated, we may never know.”

“But the charm in her mouth—”

“Could’ve been placed there postmortem. Maybe Lane

broke into her place and scared her so badly she had a

heart attack, then he placed the charm in her mouth. Or

maybe he heard about the death and the charm after he

escaped from the hospital and decided to adopt it as his

signature. Who knows how a crazy man thinks?” Jack wet

his lips. “Al I know is that thinking about Lane being here

in this house when you were asleep makes me a little

insane.”

“But he didn’t kil me, Jack. He had the chance, and he

didn’t kil me.”

“Maybe he tried. We stil don’t have a line on who planted

that bomb under your car. You said yourself that the

Monte Carlo was only here, at Coop’s, and at the mall.

Michael was here and he’s certainly familiar with the mall

parking lot.”

She bit her lip. “Michael isn’t the type to plant a car bomb.

He isn’t technical, or gadgety.”

“You can buy ready-made explosives if you know where to

go.”

She sighed. “Michael is the one person we know wanted

me dead, so maybe he did plant the bomb. But it just

seems like a lot of trouble to go to when he had the

opportunity to off me in my own bed.”

“Can’t argue there,” Jack said, then averted his gaze. She

could tel he had his doubts about Michael being their

man. He pul ed a small notebook from an inside jacket

pocket. “When do you think Lane got in the house?”

“I’m thinking Friday, after you removed the motion

detectors. And I believe he left sometime Sunday or

yesterday.”

“How do you know?”

She didn’t want to tel him about the money that Wesley

had won in a card game. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing

her brother was supposed to be doing while on probation.

“Come on, you said on the phone something about Lane

having ten thousand reasons to leave?”

She closed her eyes briefly. “Wesley had ten thousand

dol ars hidden in his room and realized this morning it was

missing.”

Jack frowned. “Go on.”

“Wes last saw the money Sunday morning, so Michael

must have taken it sometime Sunday or yesterday.”

“So Lane might’ve been gone before you and I came back

here Sunday?”

When Jack had spent the night. She nodded, knowing the

information would ease his conscience—and his ego.

“Have you noticed anything else missing?”

She shook her head, then glanced around her bedroom,

comparing what she saw to the images a person’s

subconscious picks up from of their surroundings every

day. When her gaze landed on her bul etin board, she

stopped and walked closer to study the random

mementos she’d tacked onto the mesh surface—tickets

stubs to shows, things she’d cut out of magazines, and

photos, some of the items so old they were curled around

the edges.

“What?” Jack asked, coming to stand behind her.

“Something is missing.” She stared at the empty spot,

trying to remember what had once been there, then the

answer slid into her mind. “A photo.”

“A photo of who?”

“Of me,” she murmured. “Michael had taken it during a

holiday party at work. He gave it to me.”

“Must’ve wanted a souvenir. Anything else missing?”

She sighed. “Not that I can tel , but who knows.”

Jack made a few notes, then closed the notebook. “Let me

know if you think of anything else. Go to Ashford’s and lay

low. We’re going to have a CSI team go over the entire

town house in case Lane left something here that relates

back to one of the murders. Take only what you need.”

Panic blipped in her chest. If Michael had left something

behind in their house, the Wrens would be even more

closely intertwined with The Charmed Kil er case. And she

didn’t like the idea of the police going through her

personal things.

“And forget about the body-moving business for a while,”

Jack added.

“But Coop—”

“Could stand to take a break himself.”

She blinked, surprised to hear Jack’s concern for Dr.

Cooper Craft, the former M.E. who had been relegated to

moving bodies for the morgue and had hired Wesley to

assist. It was how she’d been drawn into body moving

herself, and how she’d been drawn to Coop, who had been

acting strange lately. “So you do think something’s wrong

with Coop.”

“Nothing an AA meeting can’t fix. Don’t get caught up in

Coop’s problems, darlin’, you’ve got enough of your own.

And keep that stun baton handy.” He wiped his hand over

his mouth, trying to smother a smile. “You got Ashford

good, huh?”

“You don’t have to take so much pleasure in his pain.”

“You’re moving in with the man. Let me have a little fun at

his expense.”

“I’m not moving in with Peter…I’m staying at his house.”

Jack stepped closer and lifted her chin. “In his bed?”

Carlotta’s chest tightened. “What do you care, Jack?”

He leaned his face close to hers. “Because getting you back

home gives me that much more incentive to get The

Charmed Kil er off the streets.” He grabbed the red panties

in her hands, and walked away, holding them high before

shoving them into his jacket pocket with a grin. “I’l hang

on to these for motivation.”

Carlotta shook her head as he disappeared through her

door, confounded as always by the man’s push-pul on her

heart. She had no doubt that Jack would get the maniac

off the streets. Her live-in arrangement with Peter

notwithstanding, she only hoped it was sooner rather than

later.

She glanced around her room with an eye toward what the

police would find that might make her uncomfortable.

Her teenage diaries.

Carlotta moved toward the dresser. She’d found them

when she’d unearthed the charm bracelet that her father

had given her. She couldn’t remember the exact contents

of the diaries, but since they’d encompassed her

burgeoning relationship with Peter and the time

immediately after her parents’ disappearance, she didn’t

want strangers analyzing her personal drama for their own

entertainment.

She pul ed out the diaries—one for each year of high

school—and stowed them under clothes in her suitcase.

When she started to close the dresser drawer, she

suddenly noticed the corner of a file—her father’s client

file that Wesley had stolen from Randolph’s attorney, Liz

Fischer. She didn’t want it to wind up in the wrong hands.

So she slipped in the file, then closed the bag and zipped it

shut. Moving in with Peter was the right decision, Carlotta

told herself. She desperately needed a change of venue.

Carlotta picked up her cel phone to check for messages

and frowned. Meanwhile, where was her brother and why

wasn’t he returning her calls?

2

Wesley was valiantly trying not to throw up. He’d passed

on a drive-through lunch in anticipation of the job that

he’d spent hours working up his nerve for, and it was a

good thing, too.

The severed head at his feet looked like a prop for a

haunted house. The edges of the neck skin were black with

dried blood and curled, like a macabre ruffle. Red and

white strings of sinew dangled out of the gaping hole that

had once connected the head to a torso. The head’s eyes

were partially open, and the skin was dark in places,

hinting of a beating the man had received before he’d

taken his last breath. The sparse, dark hair was a matted

mess, caked with dirt and blood.

Wesley stood holding pliers, giving himself a pep talk.

Mouse had ordered him to remove the head’s teeth,

which would make it harder for the cops to identify the

head if it was found. This wasn’t what Wesley’d had in

mind when he’d agreed to go undercover in The Carver’s

loan-shark organization in exchange for having charges of

attempted body snatching downgraded to a misdemeanor

and additional hours added to his community service. By

offering his services to Mouse to help him col ect on

overdue accounts, he’d hoped to kil two birds with one

stone—fulfil the D.A.’s demands while clearing his own

debt to The Carver. When he’d balked at performing the

grotesque act, Mouse had told him he had Wesley’s jacket

with the dead man’s blood on it. Wesley believed him.

When he’d tried to recover his confiscated jacket from

Mouse’s trunk, he’d found a severed finger inside.

“Just do it,” Mouse yel ed. He stood nearby eating a Big

Mac and fries.

They were on an abandoned construction site in east

Atlanta where the city leaders’ overly optimistic

projections of growth had led to lots of digging, fol owed