Crazy Cool (14 page)

Well, that was a new and unpleasant twist.

“What about the pyro part?”

“Yeah,” she said after a moment. “I can see him liking the drama of starting fires, big fires, especially with explosions, but he’s no murderer, not by a long shot. He’s too self-absorbed. I can’t imagine him being interested enough in anyone else to go to the bother of killing them. You know he’s doing me a big favor seeing me this morning. God knows what he’s going to think when I drag you in with me.”

“He told you he was doing you a favor?” She’d done a good job on the phone this morning, played it perfectly, despite the fact that she’d been holding her head with one hand and the telephone receiver away from her ear with the other. She hadn’t said much when it was all over, just handed him back the sheet with times, addresses, and meeting places written in the margins by the prom boys’ names.

He’d been impressed.

“Sure did. He’s just so,
so
busy, but it was just so
sweet
of me to call, and we were
such
old friends, so he was just going to
push
his schedule and make room for little old me, because it was just so
awful
about Ted.”

The news had broken all over the morning papers. There had even been pictures of the fireworks exploding over the Botanic Gardens. Nothing had been mentioned about the quality of the kill shots: perfect, two hits, dead center between the eyes. To his relief, Katya’s name hadn’t been mentioned, either, but he’d still called Lieutenant Bradley and gotten a couple of undercover cops to be at the show, to keep their eyes open and make sure nothing bad happened.

“As far as I know, he’s the only one with a motive for wanting to hurt me,” she continued, “or ruin me, if that’s what this is all about.”

He quirked a brow in her direction. “What motive?”

“He wanted to be prom queen that year. It just ate at him all night long when I won.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope.” She leaned forward to pop open Roxanne’s glove box.

Hell. Hawkins felt like he was sliding toward the bottom of the social misfit barrel, a place he’d had more than enough of in prison, but he couldn’t fault his guide. She was nailing these guys for him, giving him information it would take Lieutenant Bradley weeks to uncover.

She started rustling through the stash of pharmaceuticals she’d put in the glove compartment. She had all the legal painkillers out of his bathroom, and all the antacids, the combination painkiller/antacids, three herbal supplements guaranteed to cure what ailed her, and a bottle of B vitamins she was sure would set her right—if she could just get enough of all of it down, and keep it down. She’d also brought a box of crackers she’d set on the dash, an orange she was sure would rehydrate her as well as give her immune system a much-needed boost, and two bottles of mineral water she’d found in his refrigerator.

It had been like watching a general prepare for war this morning. She’d commandeered his loft, his phone, and every ounce of his attention. It was hard to keep his eyes off her. Hell. It was impossible. He’d had about twelve hours to get used to the idea of having her around, and he was starting to like it way too much, starting to forget that she was at the top of his “Ten Most Wanted” list for having fucked up his life.

So he just had to be careful, he told himself, just a little more careful.

F
IRST
Tim McGowan and now Bobby Hughes, Katya thought, rummaging through a few things she’d stashed in Roxanne’s glove compartment. From Dudley Do-right to Psycho-boy.

“So do you think Bobby Hughes wanted the prom queen thing badly enough to nurse a grudge for all this time?” Hawkins asked from the driver’s side of the car.

“Absolutely,” she said without hesitation. She found the orange among all the stuff she’d brought with her from Hawkins’s kitchen and his medicine cabinet in hopes something would help ease her amazing hangover. It had been a solid seven on the Richter scale when they’d left Steele Street, but Tim’s beautiful, wildly rambunctious, and unbelievably loud kids had pushed it toward a ten. “Nursing grudges is what Bobby always did. He made sure he was the strangest ranger at Wellon Academy, then spent all his time complaining that people treated him like he was strange. There was no winning with Bobby. Never was. He hated his mother for being a flamboyant alcoholic and his dad for being a straitlaced stockbroker. Even though a lot of us Wellon kids lived around the Denver Country Club, we avoided going to the Hughes’s, at least us girls did. The guys went there to get drunk. There was always plenty of booze, and Bobby’s mom didn’t like to drink alone. Rumor had it that some of the Wellon boys even slept with her.”

“Ted Garraty, maybe? Or Jonathan Traynor?” he asked after a short pause.

She looked up from her orange, startled.

“I guess . . . I guess that might be a motive for murder, but it was just a rumor, one of those kids’ things that go around a school. I can guarantee you Jonathan never slept with her. As far as Ted, his name was never mentioned, that I remember.”

“What about the other boys from prom night?”

She hated to think about it, let alone admit it, but a couple of those boys’ names had been linked to Theresa Hughes.

“Stuart Davis practically lived at the Hughes house that summer. His mother taught at Wellon, so he was at the academy on a community scholarship.”

“He’s the ex-Ranger we don’t have a current address for, right?”

“Right,” she said, peeling the orange. “All you’ve got listed on the printout is the date of his discharge a few months ago.”

“Any of the others?”

There were only three left, and one of them she was absolutely sure had not been involved with Bobby’s mother.

“Greg Ashe did not hang out at Bobby’s house, ever. He was homophobic, probably still is.” She looked around for a place to put her orange peels and decided on the shifter console. There was a small, scooped-out part, and if she was careful, she could just fit the peels into it. His car was very clean on the inside, and the last thing she wanted to do was make a mess. “Albert Thorpe might have spent some time there. He liked to party, and Bobby’s was a party house. Philip Cunningham, definitely. He was probably the only one at Wellon who actually liked Bobby, who thought he was funny instead of just weird.”

“Don’t we have an appointment with Cunningham after Hughes?” he asked.

“Cunningham and Ashe together,” she confirmed. “They’re partners in a construction company, and we see Albert tomorrow.”

“So who do you think stole your tiara?”

He was in investigator mode. She could tell by the tone of his voice—flat and cool, with just a slight edge.

“I don’t know. Anybody could have picked it up. I remember it falling off in the parking lot, before I ran into the alley.”

“What about the piece of your dress? Who all was in on that?”

Her glance strayed to the orange in her hand. She was trying, really she was. It wasn’t easy dealing with everything that had happened last night at the Gardens and having to relive everything that had happened that summer. The dress had been so beautiful, so perfect, and by the end of prom night it had been ruined, parts of it cut off, parts of it stained with her blood. What had started as a not very funny joke had so quickly gotten out of hand.

Souvenirs from the prom queen, they’d been shouting. Then Jonathan had pulled out a pocketknife and everything had gone wrong.

She’d been angry and telling all of them to leave her alone, but they’d all kept pulling and tugging at her, trying to cut off a piece of tulle—everyone except Tim. He’d pushed his way to the front and tried to shove people away, and then all hell had broken loose. Everyone had suddenly been fighting and she’d gotten cut, badly.

“They were all in on it,” she said. “Except Tim McGowan, but I don’t know how many of them actually got a piece of the dress. It was a little crazy.”

After Jonathan’s murder, the police had impounded the dress, and it had come out at Hawkins’s trial how cut up it had been. She didn’t remember the knife moving that fast, especially not after it had sliced into her arm, just above her elbow.

Like the tiara, none of the boys had admitted to having a piece of her dress. But neither had they admitted to assaulting her. Just a little fun getting out of hand, they’d all said. And chasing her into the alley? Well, they’d known they couldn’t let her run around lower downtown alone at night. It wasn’t safe, and hadn’t they all been proved right? Some low-life guy in a fast car had literally roared up and snatched her away, practically kidnapped her.

They’d been worried sick about her, especially Jonathan, they’d said—and Jonathan had ended up dead, killed by the same greasy street boy who had stolen his girl.

A very impolite word crossed her mind at the memory. What a bunch of liars. She knew what she’d felt. She’d known she was in danger, real danger, and if it hadn’t been for Hawkins saving her . . .

She looked at the partially peeled orange in her hand, then blew out a short breath and tossed it back into the open glove compartment.

“You’re on the wrong track here.” She’d thought it over, had been thinking it over since they’d headed out to Tim’s place. “This doesn’t have a damn thing to do with my dress, or my tiara, or those photographs, or with Bobby Hughes wanting to be prom queen.”

She looked over and caught his gaze for a second.

“How so?” He downshifted for another red light and brought the car to a stop.

“I’m an easy target,” she began. “If someone wanted to blackmail me, they could have done it a long time ago, and if someone wanted to scare me, they wouldn’t need to kill anybody to do it, but . . .”

“But?” he prompted when she paused.

She shrugged and glanced up. “But you’re not an easy target. Anyone who wants to come after you is going to have to work real hard, and if they want to scare you, it’s probably going to take more than killing Ted Garraty. So maybe we need to be watching your back instead of worrying about my old prom dress.”

He didn’t answer at first, just held her gaze for a long moment, then looked away.

“Even if you’re right, we need to talk to these guys.”

She was right, and he knew it, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

“I suppose,” she agreed reluctantly. She didn’t want to talk to the rest of the Prom King boys. Tim was a friend. They’d kept in touch—not regularly, but every now and then. It had been easy to talk to him, and nice to finally meet the group of wild Indians he called his children. Jonathan had been a friend, too: dear, sweet, overwhelmed, and underloved Jonathan. He’d never meant to hurt her that night. But the rest of the boys—there had been some real malice in the incident. It had all happened so fast, though, she’d never been able to pinpoint exactly where it had come from.

Just thinking about it was enough to make her headache worse. She reached for the box of crackers she’d put on the dash. Maybe eating a little something would make her feel better.

The light changed, and he shifted the car back into gear.

“You loved that dress,” he said after a couple of minutes of silence.

Yes, she silently agreed. She really had loved that dress.

C
HAPTER

14

B
Y THE TIME
they got to The Painted Pony, she was covered in cracker crumbs, and Hawkins’s plan to be more careful was starting to include things like “carefully brushing her off,” and “carefully taking her home,” where he could “carefully kiss her mouth” and “carefully take her clothes off.”

He was insane, and it was ridiculous, and it wasn’t doing a damn thing to improve his mood, which had been a little tense from the get-go this morning.

He pulled to a stop in front of the Pony and looked at her. She’d still been a little green around the gills at Tim McGowan’s, but the ride back into the city, the crackers, the vitamins she’d taken, the half bottle of mineral water, and the orange she’d finally gotten down were starting to work. Though she was far from perky, she was edging toward normal.

“This place is disgusting,” she said, looking out the window at the strip club and taking a bite out of another cracker. Like all the other clubs along Colfax Avenue, the Pony looked a lot worse for wear in broad daylight. At night, its flaws would be camouflaged with flashing lights—kind of like the strippers themselves.

She took another bite, turning in her seat, and he watched a small avalanche of crumbs tumble off her dress onto the seat and the floor. Roxanne was as dusted in crumbs as she was, and he was trying not to let it get under his skin. Unlike Kid, who used his cars as combination garbage trucks and auxiliary refrigerators, he kept Roxanne clean, very clean, paying Skeeter a hundred bucks a month to detail the Challenger.

By the time he was finished hauling Bad Luck “The Slayer” around, it was going to cost him at least two hundred. There were orange peels stuck in the console, and one of the bags of herbal supplement—last year’s Christmas present from Skeeter, along with the chamomile tea he’d tried to get down Katya this morning—was scattering itself all over the place.

One look at the leaves, twigs, and seeds inside had only reconfirmed his decision not to use it. Not Bad Luck, though. She’d taken one look at the bag, read the ingredients, and shaken half of it into her bottle of mineral water. The other half was now pretty well distributed over the dash, and every time he made a turn, a bit more of it sifted down to the floorboards.

She was an amazing slob, but he’d known that from their time together in the Brown Palace. Any hope that she might have outgrown her less-than-tidy ways had been shot to hell when he’d gone into the bathroom while she was making her phone calls.

Armageddon. Ragnarok. Doomsday. His bathroom had rivaled all of them. Oddly enough, he didn’t mind it in the bathroom. Those memories were too sweet.

But his car was different. He liked his cars clean, all of his cars, but especially Roxanne. She was classic muscle, customized, one of a kind after all the work he and Skeeter had put into her—and Bad Luck was turning her into a Dumpster.

A small price to pay for her cooperation, he told himself, but it still grated across his nerves when she popped the last of the cracker in her mouth and proceeded to brush herself off in the car . . .
in the car!

It was all he could do not to grab her hands and say, “Come on outside, baby, and let’s brush you off in the parking lot.”

But he knew if he touched her, the last thing he was going to care about was cracker crumbs.

“Okay,” she said, still brush, brush, brushing. “If we’ve got to do this, let’s get it over with.”

Great idea, he thought, but he still didn’t move. All he could do was sit there in stunned amazement and watch the crumbs fly around inside the car and settle on his shirt, on his jeans, and in his lap—and she didn’t have a clue. There she was on her side, grooming herself for her next big entrance and destroying him in the process. A couple more minutes and he’d be completely
en croûte
.

When she finally finished and reached for her door handle, he got out of the car and brushed himself off . . .
in the parking lot.
Cripes, what was so hard about that?

Predictably, when he rounded Roxanne, the first thing he noticed was that Kat had crumbs on her butt. In his own defense, he told himself it wasn’t just because the first thing he did was look at her ass. He’d noticed the crumbs because they really stood out on a red dress.

“You have crumbs on your butt,” he said.

She immediately stopped and did that twisty-turn, hip-shot stance thing she’d done in Doc Blake’s last night, trying to see her behind while she brushed it off. She did a pretty good job, too, only missing a few.

Rather than make a big deal out of it, he stepped forward, all chivalry and good intentions to finish up for her. But while he was brushing off her butt, she reached up and slid her hand through his hair, and suddenly there they were, with him standing too close and her half turned toward him.

“You’ve—uh—got some crumbs. . . .”

In his hair, right. He should have known, but in a real testament to his powers of prescience, he didn’t give a damn about the crumbs anymore. They could have been standing in a hundred-pound sack of them, and he wouldn’t have cared, because he could smell her lipstick: bubblegum.

Yeah, he was that close, with his hand on her butt and her hand in his hair, and everything else in the world begging the question: “How much would it cost him to kiss her?”

Five percent of his self-respect?

Ten percent of his eternal soul?

And did he really care?

Bubblegum lipstick—soft, pink, sweet, and on those lips. Just how much of a test was this supposed to be? he wondered.

He felt her breath on his mouth and started bending his head toward her.

“You . . . uh, we can’t,” she said, her voice as soft as her lips looked and without an ounce of conviction in it.

No, of course he couldn’t, he thought, stopping his descent, but keeping his hand on her ass, because it just felt too incredibly good to give up. Kissing her wasn’t in his plan. It didn’t make sense. It was the first step on the road to perdition.

Or maybe the second, because the hand-on-the-ass thing sure felt like it could take him straight to hell.

“We’re—uh—in a parking lot.” Her voice slipped down to a whisper.

Actually, if that was the problem, there was no problem, because he could kiss her in a parking lot. He could kiss her anywhere, in a box or on a fox, in the rain, on a train. He could kiss her anywhere she and Dr. Seuss could dream up.

He thought kissing was great fun. He thought this lovely limbo he and Kat were in, half wrapped around each other but barely touching, was great fun, too, but he wanted to jack it up a bit, take it to the next level, and the next level after that, and the one after that.

She was right. Maybe he couldn’t kiss her in a parking lot. Maybe he couldn’t just kiss her.

So he backed off, carefully lifted his hand off her butt—no wandering—and stepped away.

He should have thanked her for saving his life.

“Close call” was the best he could come up with.

“Damn close,” she agreed, completely avoiding his gaze, her attention all on straightening her dress.

Twenty-four hours ago, he would have bet a million dollars that he would not have reacted to her, but here he was, reacting all over the place to every single breath she took.

Fucking unbelievable.

Once they got inside the club, he had to admit she’d been right. The Painted Pony was disgusting, worse than disgusting. It smelled of stale cigarettes, spilled booze, and a few other things Hawkins didn’t want to think about too much. He’d been in a lot worse places, but he didn’t think the American Princess had.

The lights were low inside, but they weren’t low enough to hide Bobba-Ramma’s inch-thick eyeliner and false eyelashes, his bad dermabrasion job and the shaking of his hands, or the tracks up his arms.

But Kat had been right about him, too. He was no murderer. Like Manny the Mooch, Bobba-Ramma didn’t have enough brain cells left to plan a homicide, let alone double-tap a guy between the eyes. He’d been partying way too hard over the years, done way too many lines, and was an alcoholic to boot, if whiskey on the rocks for breakfast was any indication.

“Ohh, yes. Poor Teddy-bear,” Bobba-Ramma tsk-tsked.

“Teddy-bear?” she asked, and Hawkins had to give her credit. She knew her job was to chat Bobby-boy up, while his job was to look like a mean son of a bitch.

From the nervous glances Bobba-Ramma kept casting in his direction, he was doing a damn good job of it.

“Teddy,” Bobba-Ramma said. “Teddy-bear Garraty. That’s what we
all
called him.” His eyes darted to the stage, where a young man in a pink negligee and a pout was shrugging his shoulders.

An annoyed expression tightened the club owner’s face, and he waved the young man back with a couple of angry flaps of his hand.

“I guess I don’t remember that,” she said.

“Go, Luke,
go
. Find it,” Bobba-Ramma snapped at the young man, then rolled his pale blue eyes back at her. “No, no. Not all of you, from back then. All of us here, at The Painted Pony. He was a true,
true
friend to all of us.”

And there was a motive for blackmail, if Hawkins had ever heard one. Anyone on the Denver Social Register who was a true,
true
friend to the likes of Bobba-Ramma and his Pony boys and girls was a mark just looking to get taken for a load of cash—but not necessarily murdered.

“Oh,” was all Katya said, having a little trouble running with that information.

“Can I trust you?” Bobba-Ramma asked, leaning closer over the table, apparently oblivious to the fact that for every centimeter he moved forward, Kat shied away two.

“Of course,” she said, looking like she could fall over any second.

“We do special revues for special clients . . . very special clients.” Bobba-Ramma leaned even closer, and Kat just had to endure. There was no place left for her to go without toppling over. “They’re by invitation only, and we serve dinner and everything for five hundred dollars a plate. They’re all the rage, really, and Teddy-bear was a founding member. He’d been to one in Chicago, and thought Denver should have its own special show. Other clubs are trying to steal the idea, but nobody has better boys and girls than the Pony.” A claim that had the unfortunate effect of making him smile, or maybe grimace was a better word.

“I’m sure,” she agreed weakly. Bobby-boy’s teeth were a definite shade of green, as if he had an algae problem, like maybe his tank needed cleaning—with a fire hose.

“I don’t know
what
we’ll do without him,” the club owner said. “Teddy-bear was more than just a member, he was a sponsor, and a truly fine revue needs sponsors. They’re
very
artistic. Oh!” He brought his hand up to his cheek. “
You’re
into art, aren’t you? A gallery or something?”

Subtlety was not Bobba-Ramma’s strong point. Hawkins could see what was coming next, and he was duly amazed that a guy on estrogen had enough balls left to do it.

“With Teddy-bear gone, there
is
a spot open for the next revue.” He tucked a strand of stringy blond hair behind his ear, looking coy. “I’d be happy to let you come on a trial basis the first time, see if you like it.”

Well, that did it for Hawkins. The guy was totally insane. Women who looked like Katya Dekker did not ever,
ever,
show up at private “revues.”

“I could even give you a discount,” the club owner said, sweetening the pot. “Teddy-bear gave me a small deposit last night to secure his place, and I could put that money toward your account.”

Bingo.

Hawkins leaned forward on the table. “Did Garraty talk to anyone else while he was here?”

“Well, he was in quite a rush, actually. We barely had time to chat ourselves. Then Stuart just
barged
in on our conversation.
No
tact whatsoever. You can take the boy out of the suburbs, but you
cannot
take the suburbs out of the boy.” Bobba-Ramma had clearly been offended.

“Stuart?” Katya asked. “Do you mean Stuart Davis?”

“The bruiser himself.”

“What did Stuart and Ted talk about?” Hawkins asked.

“I don’t know, I was busy with—Oh, Luke,” Bobba-Ramma crooned, distracted by the young man in the pink negligee sashaying victoriously across the room. “You found it.”

Luke was carrying a tiara, and if a sallow-faced, washed-up scarecrow could glow, Bobba-Ramma was doing it.

“You remember, don’t you, Katya?” he said, breathless, his gaze fixed on the younger man and the prize. “Prom night?”

Good God, the guy
was
totally insane, Hawkins thought. How could she forget her prom night?

“
I
had the votes, but they gave the crown to you? Remember?”

Insane and delusional.

“Yes,” she said, surprising him.

The club owner’s smile turned slyly winsome. “It was a travesty, but I survived. I could have been the first prom queen queen in the history of Wellon Academy, but they lacked the vision,” he said, taking the tiara from Luke and fitting it to his greasy locks.