Limbo (2 page)

It made Dash think of long sweaty nights twisting up a set of sheets with a hot woman.

And how long it’d been since he’d done that.

She finished to wild applause. He expected her to grin and punch the air, or fall into the embrace of the enthusiastic crowd who reached for her as if she was some kind of rock star. Instead she stepped back, a small smile breaking up the serious set to her face before she performed a perfect bow.

She’d done that before.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Jules yelled. ‘Let’s hear it for Joy Valentine, who just about raised the roof!’

More applause drowned out the sudden crunching of gears in Dash’s head. Joy
Valentine?
Peter Valentine’s little sister?

He squinted to get a better look at her but she was already leaving the stage, her face obscured by the perennial lack of light. She was dressed in head to toe black, and he lost her for a moment to the darkness before he located her again heading for the bar. Dash was relieved. If she’d made for the exit he’d have to have followed her and he’d found that wasn’t generally a popular way to introduce himself.

She frowned as she concentrated on making it to the bar without tripping over. The frown was familiar. From what he remembered of Pete’s sister she’d always been a serious little thing. The silent, watchful type, her head in a book, her fingernails painted black.

But then she
had
grown up in a funeral home — an ironic choice for a family of
Valentines
. Dead bodies in the basement were hardly your average upbringing. Unless your parents were serial killers.

As there were only two barstools, she sat on the one next to him but paid him no heed. ‘Tequila please.’

A painful version of
Set Fire To the Rain
played in the background as Charlie poured tequila into a shot glass and sat it down in front of Joy on the bar mat. She picked it up and slammed it back like she needed it in the worst kind of way.

‘Another.’

Charlie poured again and the second one went the way of the first.

Dash noticed the black polish on her fingernails. What the hell? It
was
her. The last time he’d seen her she’d been eight…ten? A kid. And now here she was, in a seedy bar in the Basin.

All grown up.

What must she be now? He did a quick calculation in his head. Twenty-two…three?

She nudged her glass forward for another. Charlie obliged. She sipped this time as she reached for the bowl of bar nuts.

‘Oh I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ he warned. ‘I think they’ve been there for at least a decade.’

She grabbed a handful and threw them back the way she had her drink. ‘Thanks,’ she said, crunching away, still not looking at him. ‘But my constitution doesn’t discriminate on the basis of age.’ She looked at Charlie. ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘I’ll get these.’ Dash threw a twenty on the bar.

She put down her drink and levelled him with a steady glare. He held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘If that’s okay?’

‘Your money,’ she shrugged with what he was pretty sure was practised indifference. ‘As long as you realise I’m not going to fuck you for it later.’

Had Dash been taking a sip of his whiskey about now he’d have spluttered it all over her.

Not
the silent, watchful type anymore then.

Her fierce little face with wispy cropped hair, huge eyes and a pointed little chin gave her a cranky pixie air and he laughed. It came right from his belly and felt so damn good.

He hadn’t belly laughed in a long time. Certainly not with a woman.

‘Something tells me this isn’t the first bar you’ve been in,’ he said.

Another sullen shrug of those slight shoulders. ‘I’ve been in some.’

‘Gigs?’

She nodded and turned back to contemplate her drink, which he figured was her way of shutting down the conversation. But he wasn’t done yet.

‘You’re good,’ he said.

***

Joy stared into the clear liquid in her glass and prayed for patience. As far as come-on lines went she’d had cheesier, but she really wasn’t in the mood tonight.

And even if she had been, old guys weren’t her thing. Sure, he seemed fairly well put together at a cursory glance but she knew her type. She turned her head. ‘Look…mister, my plane got delayed. I’m just here to while away a few hours and then leave. By myself. Capiche?’

He laughed again and Joy frowned. The man was clearly impervious to brush-offs. ‘You’re really not my type,’ she added.

‘Oh? What
is
your type?’

Joy shrugged. ‘Lean, skinny, rocker dudes.’

‘Ah. I definitely
do not
fit that description.’

‘No. You’re more…old, sad dude drinking alone in a bar.’

To her surprise he laughed again, throwing his head back this time and clearly enjoying himself.

He was obviously impervious to insult too.

Which was a good thing. Insulting strange men in bars wasn’t a smart thing to do — some of them didn’t take it so well. She’d learned that the hard way and she cursed her impulsiveness but
jeez-us
, why were some men always on the crack? Why couldn’t a woman just sit at a bar and have a drink for fuck’s sake?

When he finally stopped laughing he stuck out his hand and said, ‘Dashiell Dent.’

Joy ignored the hand as the name from her past left his lips. She stared at him. ‘No shit?
You’re
Dash Dent?’ Because surely there couldn’t possibly be another man in the entire freaking world named that?

She looked at him closer — not an easy feat in the dark bar. He didn’t look like the clean, smooth, twenty-year-old police recruit who had reminded her of RoboCop when she’d been a kid.

His sleek, black buzz-cut had been replaced by a woolly mass of dark hair pushed back haphazardly from his forehead and liberally shot with grey. It looked a little on the knotty side, as if it had been finger-combed about a thousand times over the course of the day. There were lines on his forehead and crow’s feet around his eyes. His nose was badly misshapen from what appeared to be more than one break.

Joy had to look hard through the lack of light and the heavy cover of salt-and-pepper whiskers to find what she was looking for but she finally located the narrow white scar that ran from his right nostril to his top lip.

As a morbid eight-year-old she had found it fascinating as hell. Even more so when he’d told her he’d gotten it from a knife fight with a bank robber. She still remembered her disappointment when her mother had laughed and told her it was a cleft lip.

Before she could check the impulse, she’d leaned in and lifted her index finger, running it across his slightly crooked top lip. His whiskers prickled at the pad as she located the ridge of scar tissue and stroked it lightly. ‘Dashiell Dent,’ she said.

‘The very same.’

He smiled and it narrowed the space for her finger and she finally realised she was touching him inappropriately.

‘Sorry.’ She dropped her hand and shifted back from him.

Dash shrugged off the odd, unexpected moment. ‘What’s Pete up to these days?’

‘He’s still in the family biz.’

‘Thought he was going to try and get back into the force?’

‘He did try…for a while. But he just had to accept his injuries ruled him out of ever being a cop.’

‘How did he take that?’ It would have destroyed Dash back then — he’d wanted it so much. Hell, it had damn near destroyed him six months ago when his seventeen-year career had come to an ignominious end.

‘Nothing ever keeps Pete down for long. Considering he works with dead people he’s perennially chipper.’

Dash laughed. He could tell it annoyed her. ‘What about Samuel and Joshua and your parents?’

‘Yep. All good. All content to take care of the dead in drearytown.
I’m
the only black sheep of the family.’

‘So I see. You’re a singer now? A country singer? Off to Nashville?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve done the circuit here to death. Gigged lots of places…lots of pubs, done backing vocals, been to Tamworth…signed a couple of record deals that never eventuated. Time to try elsewhere.’

‘And what do you parents think about that?’

‘Ahh…they’re waiting for me to come around and realise that this singing nonsense is never going to happen and my place is with them in the business.’

Dash would have to have been deaf not to hear the slight trace of bitterness in her voice. ‘And I take it that’s not going to happen?’

She shook her head vehemently. ‘Dad made me do a beauty therapy course a few years back in exchange for some money to cut a CD. And then he put me to work doing cadaver make-up for him whenever I was home and broke between gigs. I think he hopes I’ll fall in love with it.’

Dash shuddered. ‘Cadaver make-up?’

‘It’s okay. I don’t mind it actually, not that I’d ever tell him that. It’s just…I don’t want to be sitting in a nursing home when I’m ninety wishing I’d done more.’

Dash took a swallow of his whiskey. ‘Fair enough.’

‘What about you?’ She nudged his shoulder with her own. ‘You some hotshot, bigwig copper now?’

‘Ah…no.’ He briefly considered telling her the truth. There was something about a dark bar and shared history that encouraged confidences. But frankly, he was over it all. He was over wallowing in it too.

He reached into his wallet and pulled out his business card. ‘I’m a P.I. now.’

She took the plain white card with the simple black font proclaiming him to be a private investigator, and squinted at it.

‘Get out of town,’ she said turning to look at him, incredulity animating her pixie face. ‘
You’re
a P.I.?’

‘Yup.’

‘
Dashiell
Dent?’ She laughed then and he was reminded of how she sang all rich and husky. ‘Oh my God the
irony
. Had any busty blondes begging you to help them find missing Maltese falcons?’

Dash rolled his eyes. ‘Nope. Unfortunately not that glamourous. My days consist of chasing deadbeat dads, cheating spouses or debt defaulters.’

‘Not very Sam Spade?’

‘No.’ Dash sighed. He missed the adrenaline rush of a true crime.

‘Let me guess. Married, two point four kids, house in the ’burbs?’

‘Do you think I’d be drinking at the Purple
freaking
Parrot on a Wednesday night if I had all that to go back to?’

‘Hey,’ Charlie interjected. Dash ignored him.

Joy shrugged. ‘You could be on the job for all I know.’ She looked around. ‘Are you…incognito?’

Dash snorted. ‘Incognito as
what
?’

She lifted a shoulder. ‘Old, sad, dude drinking alone at a bar?’

Dash laughed despite himself. ‘No. I’m not
incognito
. Nor am I a ’burbs man. I’m divorced with a seven-year-old daughter and I live next door to a brothel.’

‘Shut
up
,’ she exclaimed, looking around again. ‘You live next door to a brothel? You’re kidding, right?’

‘Sadly…no.’

‘Oh I’ve got to see this. Is it far?’

Dash frowned. ‘What? No…two blocks away.’

‘Excellent, drink up. I’ve never seen a real brothel before.’ She threw back her shot. ‘Well come on,’ she said as she placed her empty glass back on the bar. ‘Mush mush.’

‘I’m not taking you to see a brothel for your own amusement.’

Joy rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t want to go
in.
I just want to stare at the outside.’

Dash shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Oh come on, please.’ She grabbed his forearm. ‘For old time’s sake.’

‘Old time’s sake? I don’t think Pete would appreciate me taking his little sister to a brothel.’

She shot him a sardonic look, passing him his drink. ‘I’m not so little anymore.’

Yeah. He could see.

***

‘That’s
it
?’

Joy stood on the opposite side of the street to the rather nondescript, double-storey, windowless building painted a boring shade of olive green. It was L-shaped, allowing a ramp to run up to the recessed front door which was also accessed by a set of concrete steps and a bare metal handrail. There was a driveway just to the right of the building and a sign affixed to the nearby wall indicated the car park lay behind.

If it wasn’t for the ice-pink neon sign mounted above the door proclaiming it to be
Eve’s
and the shiny red neon apple, she’d have taken it for a local tax-department office or an army facility.

‘What did you expect?’

‘I don’t know…a red light? Hookers hanging around outside? Dolly Parton?’

He chuckled. ‘It’s more interesting on the inside.’

‘You’ve been
inside?’

‘Sure. I do security for them in exchange for free rent.’ He shrugged. ‘Eve likes having an ex-cop hanging around.’

Joy raised an eyebrow and wondered just what other freebies
Eve
might be offering
.
Out in the relative light she could see Dash’s lived-in, slightly battered face was that particular brand of ugly-handsome that was endlessly fascinating to some women. The fact that he appeared not to give two shits about it made it even more so.

She’d met a lot of vain men in the music biz.

She nodded at the door to the far left of the building, which was also accessed by some stairs. It had two windows, a large one on the lower level and one about half the size on the storey above. It looked like it might have been an office of the original building once upon a time.

‘That’s your place?’

‘Yep.’

There was some lettering on the window and she squinted to read it across from the street. She laughed when she realised what it was. ‘You’re shitting me? You have your office here too?’

‘Oh…I’m the full cliché.’

‘Man, I have
got
to see this.’

Dash shoved his hands in his pockets as Joy took off across the empty street. A small black backpack occupied the space between her shoulder blades. Below that, black, skinny jeans hugged an exceptionally cute ass.

‘Why?’ he called after her. Mainly to get his mind of that ass. A man could die happy with cheeks like that filling his hands.

He shook his head. You’re going to hell, Dent
. Directly to hell.

‘Are you kidding?’ she asked as she turned around and walked backwards, thankfully relieving him of the way-too-tempting view. ‘I’ve never been in a proper P.I.’s office before. It’s on my bucket list.’