Front Page Fatality (22 page)

“Thank you, but I’ve been dressing myself for quite a while. I can manage.”

He made a big show of turning his back.

“And they wonder why chivalry is dead,” he said. “What were we talking about?”

“Smith.” I kept my eyes on the back of his head as I kicked off my shoes and managed to get clumsily back to my feet. “Who he is and why you want my help.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Well, Miss Clarke, I find that the court of public opinion is far more influential in the actual courts than it should be, most of the time. If you get to the bottom of this and write about it, I get a double bonus: I know who to blame for it, and they’ve been exposed in the press.

“A news story lives forever on the Internet. And if enough people are upset about it, it can’t get swept under any proverbial rugs no matter who’s behind it.
Capisce
?”

I grunted agreement as I wriggled out of the skirt, which was stiff with dried blood, and dropped it on the tile. My silk tank top came off with a little work, and I jerked the gown on and tied it, hobbling to the bed and pulling up the covers.

“All right. I’m decent.”

“Damn.” Joey turned, the grin back in place, and I rolled my eyes. More at myself than at him, though I didn’t want him to know that.

Before I got a chance to reply, the door opened and Dr. Schaefer came in.

“Hello there,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. What did you do?”

“I stumbled into a rusty garden tool and got a nasty cut,” I said, figuring the actual details of my evening would either get the cops called or me a first-class ticket to the psych ward, neither of which sounded like fun.

She eyed the bloody Louboutins and slashed linen skirt.

“Gardening?”

“No, garden tool.” I stressed the last word, dismissing the golf-ball-sized lump on the back of my head, because it was hidden under my hair and I didn’t have a fake explanation for it. “I was on my way out.”

Joey nodded when she looked at him.

“I see.” She pulled the blanket back and examined the cut. “This is going to need a few stitches. When was your last tetanus vaccine?”

Shit. I hated shots. And since I couldn’t remember the last one, I was due.

She bustled off and returned with the nurse and a tray holding two hypodermics and several other pointy medical things.

I took a deep breath and clamped my fingers around the railing on the right side of the bed, studying the cream wallpaper and trying to think of anything but needles and murderers. I felt the doctor remove Joey’s tie from my leg and gripped the rail tighter.

“You all right, Xena?” Joey’s voice was closer and a quick glance revealed that he’d walked to the foot of the bed. He stepped up beside me and leaned his head down, so close I could feel his breath on my ear. “Guns, kidnapping, overgrown maniacs. That doesn’t faze you and this is what gets to you?”

I clenched my teeth and glared at his smirk.

“Shut up,” I said, without moving my jaw.

“No judgment,” he grinned. “Just trying to figure you out.”

“Because I’m such a mystery.” The sarcasm I intended to inflect on the words was lost in a hissing intake of breath when the doctor stabbed my leg with one of the needles.

“Lidocaine,” she said. “It’ll burn a little for a second, but you won’t feel the stitches go in. That hurts a lot worse.”

Apparently “burn a little” meant “set your entire thigh aflame from hip to knee,” but it faded quickly. Feeling odd pressure where the cut should’ve been, I glanced over to see her prodding it, squirting it with first a clear solution, then a rust-colored one. Although it looked disgusting, it didn’t hurt.

“How about that?” I muttered.

She asked about Bob as she scrubbed dried blood off my thigh, and I told her he was stubborn, but improving.

When my wound was decontaminated to her satisfaction, she picked up a pointy doohickey that could only mean she was about to start sewing me up, and I looked away again. Deadened nerves or not, I couldn’t watch that.

Joey could, though. And did, giving me the color commentary as the doctor closed up the unsightly souvenir of my crazy night. Seven stitches. The scar would limit my skirt-length options, but it’d make a respectable war story for the whippersnappers someday.

Dr. Schafer dressed the freshly-sewn cut with loose gauze as the nurse stuck a little round band aid on my arm over the blood drop from the tetanus vaccine. She smiled at my grimace and began cleaning up.

“You should be healed in about ten to fourteen days.” Dr. Schafer pulled her gloves off and tossed them into a bin in the corner, picking up my chart and laying a hand on the doorknob. “Keep it covered until day after tomorrow, then let it air out as much as you can. Clean it with antiseptic solution twice a day, and put some antibiotic ointment on it after you do that.

“Your general practitioner can remove the stitches for you. After it’s healed, make sure you use sunblock every day for six months to minimize the scarring, and if it swells up or gets red or oozes anything, come back here.”

I thanked her as she left, signing a stack of papers for the insurance company while the nurse finished picking up. I handed her the papers, eyeing my bloody skirt with distaste.

“Why don’t I see if we have a pair of scrubs you can wear home?” She asked, following my gaze. She took the paperwork and the tray of pointy things with her and returned shortly with a clean outfit, such that it was. I thanked her.

“Be more careful around your garden tools.” She patted my shoulder and smiled at Joey. “Take good care of her.”

I opened my mouth to tell her I could take care of myself, as evidenced by Burly McGiant the one-eyed cop, then snapped it shut. That’s why I don’t lie. My big mouth tends to get me caught.

I shooed Joey into the hallway and pulled on the pea green PJs before I settled back into the wheelchair and let an orderly push me to the car.

Joey insisted on driving me home, and since asking for help picking up my car would give me a good excuse to catch up with Jenna the next morning, I didn’t argue.

The short trip to my house was mostly silent, me scrutinizing Smith’s photo and trying to place him, and Joey drumming his fingers on the wheel in time to Kenny Chesney.

A Jersey mobster who liked country music. Of all the crazy things about my week, that one might be the most unbelievable.

I looked up as he turned onto my street, still just a nagging familiarity about Smith’s face dancing in the back of my brain. Maybe sleep would float whatever it was to the surface.

“Get your head down,” Joey said in a low voice, throwing an arm behind me and yanking my torso over into his lap.

“Have you lost your mind?” I struggled to sit up, but he was strong. My heart rate took off like Earnhardt roaring out of a pit stop. Dammit, was no one trustworthy?

I didn’t want to die in a Lincoln with Kenny crooning about tequila and toxic love in the background. I shimmied my shoulders, trying to get an arm free to swing at Joey.

“I count three cars that weren’t here earlier, all close to your place. And your lights are on,” he said tightly. “I know this isn’t terribly comfortable, but would you be still?”

I froze. They were in my house? I didn’t feel so ridiculous about having hidden Neal’s folder under the floorboard anymore.

“Darcy.” I swallowed a sob.

“No reason to hurt the dog unless they’re just douchebags,” Joey said, stomping on the accelerator once we passed the house and letting go of me a second later. “I’ll handle that. She likes me. You have to get somewhere safe.”

I told him to take me to a hotel and laughed when he reeled off the name of the poshest place in town.

“You might be able to afford The Jefferson, Captain Armani, but those of us who don’t have unlimited offshore accounts tend more toward Holiday Inn.”

“Fair enough. Where is one? Far from here, preferably, and no using a credit card for that or anything else. We’ll get you some cash.”

Off the grid. Fan-fucking-tastic Friday I was having. At this rate, I’d be hacking off my ponytail and bleaching my hair by Sunday. I glanced at my reflection in the dark window, hoping it didn’t come to that. Brassy hair and washed out skin would make me a shudder-worthy blond.

I directed Joey to a bank and emptied my checking account, which netted me a pitifully small stack of twenties, then navigated to a suburban hotel in my price range, turning to tell him goodnight when he stopped outside the revolving glass door.

“Thanks for your help.” I said. “How do I get in touch with you if I do figure out who this guy is, anyway?”

“I’ll be around,” he said. “And I’ll look for your byline. Try to stay out of trouble.”

“That seems to be difficult for me this week.”

“All you can do is the best you can do.” He smiled, staring at me for a long minute. Not liking where that could go, I kicked the car door open with my good leg and climbed out, watching the taillights until they were out of sight.

17.

Two and two isn’t five

Morning didn’t bring me closer to a match on Brandon Smith, but staring at Google Maps gave me an idea of what might.

Though I didn’t remember exact details—owing to the darkness and the running for my life—the satellite view of the warehouse Smith owned in Richmond looked disturbingly similar to where McClendon had taken me. Which would also give me a reason for Joey’s never-fully-explained cameo in the alley.

What if I’d been a hundred and eighty degrees wrong and this was all a criminal ex-cop who’d hooked up with a crazy patrolman looking for some extra cash?

I ran mentally through Mike’s evidence log, but I didn’t remember McClendon’s name. For the first time, I wondered if Mike had brought me the actual documents, or if the ones I had were doctored versions designed to finger Neal as the bad guy. My stomach wrung like an old dishrag, uncertainty swimming through my head.

I pulled out a notebook and made a list of everything I knew and everything I didn’t. The latter was much longer. And Les’ timer was running out.

“A week of busting my ass, and I still don’t have the first clue,” I said to no one.

As much as I wanted a sounding board, the only people I trusted were Jenna, Bob, and my mother, and I wasn’t about to worry any of them with my near-death experience.

I stared at the lists until the letters blurred, instead, then tossed the notebook to the foot of the bed and sighed. Loads of suspicion, but very little actual fact.

And Brandon Smith’s warehouse was the only place I could think of to find a few facts, whatever they might be.

It was early, and I was willing to gamble cab fare on a hunch McClendon had been so preoccupied with his injuries he’d forgotten about my car. I called a taxi to the hotel and forked over two of my dwindling stash of twenties when we pulled up next to my sporty little SUV. It was still at the coffee shop, my bag resting in the backseat. Hooray for tiny awesomes.

Thanks to the deserted Saturday morning streets, it took less than twenty minutes to get to the warehouse. I circled it three times. The steel double doors that served as the main entrance were on the side of the building that faced the big gravel parking lot.

When I was reasonably sure no one was there, I parked in the alley around back next to a hulking green dumpster. An inspection of its back corner revealed a piece of jagged metal decorated with dried blood and black linen.

Bingo.

In the daylight, without a maniac chasing me, I could see a large bank of windows high on the wall above the dumpster.

I looked around for a stepping stool and spotted a big plastic crate at the far end of the alley. Dragging it over, I slid the side door on the dumpster open and clambered up onto the lid. The four Advil I’d gotten from the hotel desk kept the pain in my leg to a dull ache, though I still leaned heavier on the uninjured one.

Reaching the other side of my perch, I gripped the bottom of the window frame and pressed my nose to the glass, taking a deep breath as the interior of the building came into focus.

Boxes. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of stacked plastic crates like the one I’d used to climb up, their contents not discernible from the outside.

I groaned under my breath as my eyes swept the room again. A whole lot of nothing. Just a massive expanse of concrete floor, white walls, white and gray steel ceiling beams, and boxes.

I stood there for a long minute, contemplating the door, but knowing there was only so far I should push it. There was investigating, and then there was just plain asking to be murdered. Going inside that building looked like an excellent way to jump from one to the other.

Just as I turned to get down, I heard the low purr of an engine.

I froze for a split second, then nearly gave myself whiplash searching for the source of the sound.

Shit.

I started for the edge of the dumpster, but couldn’t help wondering if I’d be able to see what lurked in the mysterious boxes if someone went inside.

The engine shut off, the alley still empty.

I was still out of sight.

“All or nothing,” I whispered, spinning back to the window.
That curiosity that killed the cat is about to help the crooked cops whack the nosy reporter
, the little voice in my head that sounded a lot like my mother warned.
Guns. River. Sleep with the fishes. Anything unclear?

I held my breath as the door on the opposite wall swung outward, and a large man I didn’t recognize walked into the room. It could’ve been Smith. It could’ve just as easily been the tooth fairy for all I could tell from so far away. I tried to focus on his face, looking for the features from the grainy mug shot.

He had a scar on one cheek I could see across the considerable distance, and his dark features looked frozen in a perpetual scowl. He was probably as tall as Parker and maybe even more muscular, sporting an expensive-looking tailored leather jacket in the middle of summer.