Hound Dog Blues (24 page)

Then she thought about the necklace Morgan was supposed to have “found” in Yogi’s workshop, and it began to seem more likely. A queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach made her glad she hadn’t eaten yet. Jeez, she really didn’t want it to be him. Disappointment left a bad taste in her mouth.

Oh God
—she’d told him everything she knew. Had he even passed it on to Bobby? If he was crooked, he hadn’t. If he was clean, he had. One way to find out.

Still feeling shaky, she punched in Bobby’s number, but he wasn’t at his desk. She tried his cell phone next, but she had to leave a message there, too. Damn. Of all times for him to be out of reach, it had to be now.

She ordered another iced latte and kept her eyes on Dan McGuinness’ pub and the men at the atrium table. Her phone rang just when she was contemplating confronting Jett herself, and it was Bobby.

“What’s up?”

“I’m at Peabody Place watching
Jett
drink a beer with the guy who was in Mrs. Trumble’s driveway right before she was killed. How coincidental is that?”

“Shit, Harley, you’re always in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Not exactly the reaction she’d hoped for. “Look, Bobby, doesn’t it seem funny to you that Jett just
happened
to be there the night I got hit? And just
happened
to be the one to find me? And just
happened
to find the necklace in Yogi’s workshop?”

“I hope you’re not saying what it sounds like you’re saying. Dammit, Harley, stick to what you do best, driving drunks around, and leave police work to the police. You’re gonna end up in a cell or a coffin if you keep this up.”

Then he hung up on her. She stared at her cell phone in disbelief. He’d sounded really irritated and not at all interested. And he hadn’t even let her tell him what she suspected. That was so—Bobby. He really carried that macho thing too far.

Why hadn’t he even asked
how
she knew the guy who’d been in Mrs. Trumble’s driveway? He hadn’t seemed the least bit curious. That wasn’t like Bobby. In fact, it was so not like Bobby she began to think maybe Morgan had already passed on the information she’d given him. That made her feel a little better. It’d mean he wasn’t dirty after all.

Across the atrium, Morgan and the guy she thought of as Lincoln stood up. They were leaving. She’d follow them, see how chummy they were, see if they did anything too suspicious. It shouldn’t really matter if Morgan was a dirty cop, but on a personal level it mattered. That was crazy. Why did she care?

The two men walked out together, exiting on Second Street. It was broad daylight, with no shadows to hide in, so she hung back, staying out of sight. Wasn’t it risky for them to be seen together if they were involved in something illegal? Yet they stood on the curb within sight of anyone passing by, looking like tourists. Maybe that was the intention. Hiding in plain sight.

Then Morgan went one way, Lincoln the other, and she stood uncertainly. Which one to follow? She decided on Lincoln before he got too far away; he was least likely to recognize her. It occurred to her as she tried to be inconspicuous that it was a very good chance this guy’s name was Norville Bates, owner of the NuVo Rich warehouse and the black Lincoln. He looked too old to be Trumble’s nephew. And if Mrs. Shipley was right, Archie didn’t have a car that nice, though he might have access to it.

Heat came up off the sidewalks, mixing with car exhaust to create a thick stew. She should have worn shorts. It was going to be a hot day, a west wind sweeping clouds and dust and probably rain across the river from Arkansas before nightfall. It’d already been a wetter than usual spring and promised to be a soggy summer. That’d be a break from thermometer smashing temps. One good thing about Memphis weather—it was consistent in its inconsistence. Summer was usually hotter than hell and had little resemblance to spring, but the winters were bearable.

Bates—if that was him—crossed the street and headed toward The Peabody Hotel. She trailed behind, keeping him in sight but not too close. She really wasn’t bad at this kind of stuff. It wasn’t so hard.

She hurried to keep up once he got to the valet parking area outside The Peabody, and followed him down an alley that cut behind the service entrance and convention area. A huge gray Dumpster that smelled of unsavory debris squatted close to the opened door, and a delivery truck had backed close to the ramp. Bates disappeared somewhere between.

Damn. Had he gone inside the back way? Gotten in the truck? She went up and down the smelly alley a few times, gagging a little. Jeez, the stuff people threw away. A pair of ladies bikini panties lay near the curb in the alley. Anyone desperate enough to get it on in an alley like this one had to be really horny. She didn’t want to even consider other reasons they may be there.

A man in a tan uniform emerged from the hotel pushing a dolly. She asked him if he’d seen a man about six feet tall, wearing a sport jacket, blue shirt, and khaki pants, but he hadn’t. It wasn’t too big a surprise. Bates had given her the slip. Dammit.

Glumly, she clomped back down the slanted concrete ramp and went around the front of the truck. An arm snaked out to grab her around the waist and yanked her back against the metal side of the gray Dumpster. Her head jerked backward. She fumbled for the can of Mace attached to her belt loop, but her wrist was grabbed and held.

“Oh no, don’t even think about it. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Mike Morgan. She tried to glare at him when he moved in front of her, but his arm pressed across her chest to hold her back against the Dumpster so tightly she couldn’t maneuver. Just where the hell had he come from?

“At the moment,” she got out, “I’m just focusing on trying to breathe.”

The pressure on her chest eased, but his grip on her arm didn’t. He looked mad. His eyes had gone that dark blue that was almost black, and a muscle flexed in his jaw. Oops. She wasn’t so sure anymore that he was a good cop.

Self-preservation kicked in.

“What a surprise seeing you here, of all places, in an alley behind The Peabody. Taking a shortcut? That’s what I was doing, but this is the service entrance and it sure does stink back here, doesn’t it? Yep. Smells really bad. Excuse me, but you’re holding my arm a little tight there, Mac, and it’s cutting off my circulation.”

He let go and took a step back but still barred her flight. He must really be using the set of weights in his back bedroom. His tee shirt stretched taut across his shoulders and chest, biceps bulging out of the sleeves. It was intimidating. So was his furious expression.

“Why are you following me?”

“Following you?” She gave him her most innocent look, a wide-eyed stare and slow blink, and let her mouth open a little as if shocked at even the mere suggestion. “Following you? Why on earth would you think I’m following you?”

“Because you sat in Starbucks watching me for half an hour, then followed us out. Got a good reason for that?”

Yes, but not one he’d want to hear, she was sure.

“Believe it or not, there are such things as coincidences,
Bruno
.” She injected righteous indignation into her tone, careful not to overdo it. “I’m working. I just left a group of rowdy, randy corporate jerks at the entrance to the barbecue, and I’m really not in any mood to listen to twenty questions from you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find my way into the hotel by way of a door that has security.”

She left in what she hoped passed for a huff, though she wasn’t even sure what a huff really was, and she knew he watched her until she reached the mouth of the alley. When she turned the corner and glanced back, he was gone. Thank God.

Not that she had any illusions he’d bought her excuse for one minute, but at least he hadn’t gotten nasty about it. Too nasty, anyway. Her wrist still hurt where he’d grabbed it to keep her from using pepper spray on him. That would have been interesting. Good thing for him that his reflexes were sharp. He could have been in real trouble.

She went back to the lobby bar and this time ordered a Bloody Mary. Juice was good for the nerves. The vodka was just a perk. She chewed on the celery stalk and considered getting another drink before deciding against it. She still had to drive, and if Bailey had been frequenting the beer stands, she’d probably end up having to hose down the van interior as well.

Ordinarily, she would run a few personal errands or read a good book while waiting, but the traffic was too bad to leave and she wasn’t in the mood to read about stalwart Scottish heroes and spunky heroines at the moment. She went across the lobby to the gift shop and bought an
Enquirer
and a few duck-shaped mints. Everything at The Peabody focused on ducks, from decor to food. However, duck was not offered on any of the menus in the hotel restaurants. She completely understood. It would never do to have guests look at the ducks swimming in the lobby fountain as if they were lobsters in a tank. That might lead to fowl play. She actually smiled at her own pun and thought appreciatively about the amazing properties of tomato juice and vodka.

After lunch, she’d make a few calls, see if she could get anything new about Yogi and Diva out of Eric, and check on Cami to see if she was up to some more snooping later on. Bobby didn’t believe her, and she no longer trusted Morgan. Maybe this time she’d see if she could talk Tootsie into joining them. He was thin, but he was wiry, and besides, some of those cross-dressers could be pretty vicious. Not that she thought Tootsie was too brutal, but a man in his position had to know a lot about self-defense. Some of the “good ole boys” a.k.a. rednecks, took perverse pleasure in victimizing guys like Tootsie.

Her budget didn’t stretch to affording lunch at The Peabody, so she decided to go down to the barbecue and see if her friend Butch still worked security. He’d not only get her in, he’d feed her, too. She and Butch went way back, almost as long as her friendship with Bobby and Cami. He was a couple of years older and hadn’t gone to St. Ann’s, but he’d lived in the neighborhood as a kid and hung around with all of them. Now he owned a security company and provided guards for city functions as well as private companies, an endeavor completely at odds with an adolescence spent driving his parents nuts. He had grown past all that, it seemed, now married with three kids and a house in the suburbs. Butch still liked to keep his hand in the daily operations, though, and loved attending the barbecue. He even had his own booth in the barbecue contest, the Porky Pigs or some other ludicrous name. She’d find him.

Gray clouds banked ominously across the river, stacking up over Arkansas rice and cotton fields. Flat land stretched from the Mississippi to Crowley’s Ridge and the foothills of the Ozarks. In West Memphis, Arkansas, where gambling was legal at the dog track, Memphis residents could win or lose their grocery money every week during the racing season if they didn’t feel like the long drive to Tunica and the casinos in Mississippi. Tennessee had finally passed legislation permitting a state lottery, but being in the Bible Belt, they’d had to fight every inch of the way to legalize it.

The smell of hickory smoked pit barbecue hung heavy in the air, reaching from the foot of Beale Street and Riverside Drive all the way up to Second. Harley ended up in a long line slowed by extra security measures. No purse or backpack went unchecked, anything over a certain size or even slightly suspicious was rejected. No coolers, no food, not even umbrellas were allowed.

She flashed her ID and asked for Butch, and with the help of Abraham Lincoln’s face on a bill, was escorted directly to his booth.

“Harley-hoo.” Big and bear-like, he engulfed her in a hug, smelling of sauce, spices, and roast pork. He wore asbestos oven mitts on both hands and a plastic pig snout atop his head. His face was flushed from a surplus of beer and standing over a metal drum filled with hot coals and hog halves. He looked really happy to see her. “Get yourself a beer out of that cooler and sample some of the best pulled pork you’ll ever put in your mouth, girl.”

She opted for just the pork. There was nothing like Memphis barbecue. Methods and recipes were closely guarded secrets of the couple hundred teams competing for the trophy and prize money, and presentation played a huge part. Teams from all over the country came every year to cook pork. They took it pretty seriously, but managed to have fun along the way. It was obvious Butch was getting into the having fun part.