Exposed by Rage (6 page)

The next morning, Poppy poured a cup of coffee and stared at the computer screen going over more of the financials from the club.  Dylan strolled in from the garage apartment, looking for breakfast.  I didn’t offer to cook.  Neither did Poppy.  Good thing he was a seasoned bachelor and could take care of himself.

My cell phone played a few bars of the Star Spangled Banner.  “Ashley, have you seen Randi?  She didn’t  come home last night.”  Butch’s voice cracked as he spoke.

“Not since I left the club last night.”  Damn, had she run off because of what I’d said to her, or was it something else.  I didn’t want to think it might be related to Jillie’s death.  I hated the suspicion—Randi was a friend—but I just couldn’t ignore the timing.

“Something’s happened.  I know it.”

“Settle down, Butch. Why do you think something’s wrong?”

“We had a fight.  After you left.  She’s been doing things.  We’d been through this before.  She knew better...”

“So, you fought.  Maybe she just went to a girlfriend’s for the night.”

He wasn’t buying it.  I could hear him struggling for breath.

“She...   We...  I called. Everywhere.  Even Trixie.  No one...no one’s seen her.”

“Calm down. You’re going to make yourself sick.  I’ll make a few calls; see what I can find out.  What kind of car was she in?”

“That’s just it.  She wasn’t driving.  I had the truck.”

“Okay, so she was on foot or got a ride from someone.  I’ll be over as soon as I can get there.  In the meantime, think about who she might have gone with.”

Dylan, overhearing my side of the conversation, offered to help.  I asked him to go to the club and get the security tapes from the parking lot.  Go through them.  Let me know what he saw.  He’d met Randi several times before so I didn’t have to waste time giving him a description.

Poppy offered to call the staff who had worked last night.  Make sure Butch hadn’t missed someone.  See if she could put any names to the customers, another avenue to explore.

I called DeMarco on my drive to their apartment. “Randi’s off the grid.  I’m on my way to Butch and Randi’s apartment and I sent Dylan to get the VixSin security tapes.”

“It might be just a pissed off lover telling her friends to lie about where she is.  Not uncommon so let’s not jump to conclusions.”

I couldn’t get Jillie out of my head.  He thought I was overreacting, I hoped he was right.

“Do you want me to meet you there?  We can make this a formal missing person if you want.”

“No, I’ll let you know what I find out after I have a face to face with Butch. 

There were half a dozen people in the apartment when I arrived.  Kitty, and others from the club.  A couple of out of work actors who had been hanging around Trixie’s. A few others I didn’t know, maybe neighbors.  Some were on their cell phones, making calls to friends of Randi.  I was surprised with so little evidence anything was wrong, so many people would bother to offer support.  It told me Randi didn’t normally just disappear on a whim.

I snagged Butch and took him into a quiet corner.  “You really believe something’s happened to her.” 

“Yeah.  I do.  She doesn’t walk out.  Maybe a stroll around the building to cool off, but we never leave a fight unfinished.”

“Have you tried calling her cell phone?”

“Of course,” he snapped.  “You think I’m stupid?  Problem is one of the dancers answered right before you got here.  She left her bag, with her phone in it, in the dressing room.”

Not a good sign. Where does a woman go without her purse?  Her credit cards?  Her phone?  Even if she was angry, ran out with someone, she should have slipped back to get those things by now.  “You look around the place last night?  Ask the customers if anyone saw her?”

“I didn’t know she was gone until close.  Figured she was just lying low in the back with the girls.  No one said anything about her not being in the dressing room.”  Butch’s light complexion began to redden.  Anger, blood pressure, fighting tears, it all showed on his face.

“And you didn’t go to check on her?”

“I didn’t want to make things worse.  It was hard, you talking about maybe closing the club, your friend looking at the books.  Randi...she...”

“I know what she was doing.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his hand across the shiny dome of his head.  “Jillie knew.  She and Randi go way back and Jillie knew sometimes Randi would get carried away buying stuff.  At home and at Vix.  Occasionally she couldn’t cover the personal payments.  A couple of months ago she ’borrowed’ some money from the safe.  She planned to put it back.”

“And you fought about this?”  Embarrassment deepened the red in his face.

“We’d been fighting about it.  She’s trying to stop, even got signed up for a support group, but after you were talking about deserving a job...she just went off.  Blaming me, like I’d gone and told you.”

“Then she storms out of the building?”

“Yes, and I went into the supply room, stocking the shelves, working out the anger.”

I could see it clearly inside my head.  Temper flaring.  Picking up crates.  Muscles flexing.  Shoving bottles and cans on the shelves.  Breaking down boxes.  Cooling off as he worked hard.

Butch and Randi had been together almost as long as I’d been out of Trixie’s house.  If he said this wasn’t a typical reaction to a fight, I had to believe him.  We went through the names of friends they had. He named customers who had been going to the bar for years.  Kitty had brought the booking journal, listing the names and number of expected guests, to the three bachelor onslaughts the previous evening. 

I got the name of the support group Randi joined to help her stop her spending sprees.  Got to love psychology.  They’ve got a group for just about every problem man, or woman, can imagine.   

Poppy was my go-to girl for group invasions.  She could convince you she had any flaw that existed on earth, and get an invitation to join quicker than I could call and get the lowdown on what the group was supposed to cure.  I sent her over to see if she could find someone who had grown close to Randi, and might be hiding her from big, bad Butch. Expectations low on resolving the mystery so easily.

Dylan checked in.  He’d reviewed the tapes.  Randi had stormed out of the club about nine, early for many people to be around.  A guy in a baseball hat and windbreaker stopped and talked to her but then went into the club.  No one else approached in view of the camera and Randi just walk out of the lot and disappeared as she strolled in front of the building next door to VixSin.

The cell chimed out Stars and Stripes.  DeMarco.  My stomach clenched then rolled.  I didn’t know how, or why, but I knew this was going to be bad news.

“Ashley, you still with your friend?  Butch Wal--”

Yeah, it was going to be bad news.

* * * *

Randi looked even worse than Jillie had, and there was evidence she had fought the son on a bitch.  Her front tooth was chipped, and she had defense marks up and down her arms.  However, she hadn’t been killed here.  There was some blood but not enough.  This was nothing more than a dump site.  Now, as far as the killer was concerned, Randi was just another piece of trash.

Randi was behind a dumpster outside an empty warehouse on the southeast side of town.  DeMarco got called as the lead.  When he realized it was Randi, he called me with an invitation to view the scene firsthand.  I appreciated his largesse. 

I wanted to puke my guts out at the hatred demonstrated by the overkill.  Unlike Jillie, Randi’s abdomen was minced, leaving individual organs unidentifiable. The killer may have acted on the moment, finding Randi upset and alone, but the kill was personal.
Very personal. 

DeMarco pulled me aside more gently than he had to as the coroner’s assistant, spread out the black body bag.   Before they moved her, he had them lift her up so I could see her back.  I sat down on my heels to study the brand.  This time you could tell what the bastard burned into her.  A flower.  A lotus flower. 

I felt like I should recognize it.  It should mean something to me.  I must have seen it before, but where? 

DeMarco laid his hand on my shoulder, and told the assistant he could take Randi.  “You sure you believe Butch?  His ‘oh-my-gosh she’s missing’ act?” 

“Yes.  He didn’t do this.  You can cross Kevin and Butch off your list of suspects.  I don’t know who this guy is, but it’s not one of them.”  I wished I felt as confident as I sounded. 

To hate someone as much as these killings indicated, you had to be close.  Had to have spent a lot of time together.  Had to know each other’s secrets.  And, with all that emotion boiling inside of you, you had to have a glacier-cold heart making you capable of destroying another human in this manner.  Could either of them fool me so completely?  I hadn’t seen that degree of artic chill in either one of them.  Their chosen professions demanded some distance and chill factors but not to the degree of murder.

“Okay, for now I’ll believe you, but I’m going to talk to both of them again.”  A uniform officer stepped over to DeMarco, eyeing me, wanting me to move out of hearing range.

I didn’t take offense.  I wouldn’t want an outsider listening in on my report.  I stepped back a few paces and waited until their business was finished. 

“So, where are you going to start?”  DeMarco asked as the young cop walked away.

“I have a couple of places in mind,” I answered, not willing to give him my game plan.  Why?  Maybe it was habit, or maybe I just had a hard time trusting people.  It didn’t matter.  He knew the people I would want to visit, but I didn’t have to give him the line-up. 

Not willing to let me shut him out, he said “I’ll take you home, you can tell me about it on the way.” 

Hard to say no when he’d had an officer pick me up and drop me here.

I must have been feeling weak, because instead of rushing out to confront a few of those I wanted to talk to, I invited DeMarco in.  He’d left Braden in charge of the scene and didn’t appear to be in a rush to start the reports he’d have to do.  That thought made me smile.  For once I wasn’t chained to a desk for seventy-five percent of the investigation.  I could get used to being out of the Army and doing things my own way.  Apparently I had made the decision.  I was retiring. 

“Glad to see the smile.  I know this has been extremely hard on you,” DeMarco said.  “Want to share?”

“I was thinking about Jillie, wanting me to come home.  She kept trying to talk me into leaving the military.  It took her death to accomplish that.”  Hot, wet tears started streaming down my face.  Appalled, I turned away from DeMarco and stumbled toward the bedroom.  He didn’t say anything or try to stop me, but he did follow me. When I didn’t collapse on the bed, he put his arms around me, gave a gentle hug and helped me to sit on the mattress.

Damn.  This was awkward.  The harder I tried to stop crying, the more I leaked tears.  I don’t cry.  I don’t show emotion, especially to guys.  I didn’t want to feel the warmth of his touch and long to put my head on his shoulder.  But I did.  Before I knew what was happening his lips were on mine and I was holding him.  Desperate to keep from drowning.

He pushed back, looking into my eyes.  Reading me like the clichéd open book.  Gently he lowered me and began to unbutton my shirt. 

I returned the favor, stripping him of his shirt and pants.  Savoring every revelation.  The fire of having his naked body against mine made me half-mad as he refused to immediately give me the satisfaction I craved.  Instead he kissed every inch of my body.  Caressed my breasts, sucking and nipping at them.  Each touch of his lips, his mouth, sent an explosion of desire flooding through me and allowed me to forget, just for a moment, about the senseless brutality that had defined my life lately.

I flipped him, placing myself above him, aching to take him.  He was having none of it. Instead I found myself again under his glorious body, as he caught my wrists in one hand, and be began to tease me, torment me with the other. 

My muscles bunched in ecstasy as he sent me into pulsating orgasms.  One, immediately followed by another.   A scream of pleasure escaped me as he released his hold on my wrist, his tongue gliding hotly down my body, between my legs, duplicating the wondrous experience he’d given my breasts.

Tears, this time of joy, leaked from my eyes, as he moved up my body and planted a kiss on my lips. 

My turn
, I thought, but he had other plans.  Flipping me up, sliding into me, he drove into me--deeper and deeper until together we came for a final time.

* * * *

He stayed. Rising before I did, he’d showered and made coffee, bringing me a cup and setting it on the dressing table as I walked out of the shower wrapped in a thick towel.  His lips quirked up in a satisfied smile.

“So do you want to talk about what just happened or…?”  I’d had some time to think while I was in the shower.  Those thoughts that make you a little nervous that the guy will think you’re something you’re not. Like I should have stopped him.  Felt guilty.  Felt anything but the overwhelming desire to touch him, feel his skin on mine, explore him.  The truth is I know sex is often the response to death of friends or family.  A way to announce to the gods that you intend to stay alive.  But I would have been lying if I tried to tell myself this was all this meant.  I wanted him.  I’d wanted him since the moment I met him.  He had crossed my defenses and I would have to deal with that later.

He shook his head with a laugh.  “Not something I need.  I wanted you.  I still want you.  We can work it out from there.  Right now I have to go, those reports won’t wait any longer.”

I didn’t know what would happen next, but I knew we hadn’t had our last encounter.  

* * * *

I didn’t hesitate.  Using my pass code I was in through the gates and parked in front of the house before anyone could rush to greet me.  I was in the hallway before the boy toys had made it to the front of the house.  Mimzi, the boys and a collection of others stood in doorways to several rooms off the hall, staring at me.  They looked unsure, or unwilling to move in my direction or say anything to make me leave.

Two strides and I stood in front of Boy Toy One, more commonly known as Hunk, “Trixie.  Where is she?  And don’t give me that out of town shit.”  The bitch mother had some things to explain.  Her partnership with Jillie in the club I now owned exclusively.  What she knew about Jillie’s desire that I come to Plano.  The meaning of the lotus branded into the back of two women.

“I’m right here,” Trixie said from the door of her office.  “What’s set you on fire?”  I suppose I’d shaken her, it’s not like me to storm in on her.

“We need to talk.  In private.”  I walked over and into the office, standing until she closed the door and joined me by the desk. 

“So, what else has happened?  You aren’t here out of concern for me or my friends.”

“Jillie was your friend. Was Randi one as well?”

“Randi?  Randi from Vix...”

“Yeah.  She’s dead.  The same bastard that killed Jillie.”

“Ash, I...”

“Let’s not play the caring mother card.  I need to know what’s been happening around here.  Jillie was your partner.  Surely you know what was bothering her.  Why she wanted me here.”

Trixie looked away, staring off into space, lost in some thought of her own.

Taking a deep breath, she turned back and looked into my eyes.  “Ashley, Jillie was a good friend of mine.  I loved her like a sister, but she was hiding something from me recently and I’m not sure what it was.”   

“Why would she do that?”

“I think she wasn’t sure she could trust me.” 

“Okay, so what did you do to her?  Try to run her out of the club, steal Kevin from her?”  I wasn’t being fair, but I really didn’t care.  The woman sitting across from me made me cold and unfeeling. Or maybe she made me feel too much.  I
wanted
to find she was involved and make her pay.  Make her pay for how she had made me feel when I was a kid.  How she made me feel I am an unsophisticated fool standing five feet away from her today.

“I didn’t do anything.  Not that I am aware of.  She was here, at the house a month or so ago.  Everything was fine.  A few days later, she was...distant.  I have no idea what happened.”

“Well you’ve never been known as sensitive.  You know, about the feeling of those around you.”

“Ashley, I really don’t think this is the time to go into all that...”

“No, you’re probably right.  I’m not sure there ever will be a time.  So, she was here.  Anyone else here?”

“Of course.  The house is always full of people.”

“So, was there anything unusual?  Different?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t remember.”

“Of course not.”

“Look, Jillie came around and we talked about business.  We sat around the pool, had drinks.  The others were just background.”

Trixie brought her hand up, caressed my face with her fingers.  I brushed them away.

“Ashley, I loved Jillie.  She’s been by friend, my sister since the day we met.  She was younger than me but we clicked.  Grew close.  I miss her.”

“Trixie, this is not about you. If you’re able, take some time and think about the last time Jillie was here.  Make a list of people who were at the house.  I want...no I need to talk to every one of them.  Call me when you have the list, you have my cell number.”  I didn’t wait to hear her answer as I walked back into the hall and out the front door.