Undercover in Six Inch Stilettos (13 page)

There was no doubt in her mind what she
should
do. It was just very different from what she
wanted
to do.

“Hi, Mommy. Why are you walking in circles?”

Cyndi stopped at the sound of her daughter’s voice. She spun around, dropping to her knees and holding her arms out. “I was doing a little thinking, baby girl. Did you have a good nap?”

Harper nodded against her chest before jumping out of Cyndi’s arms. “I’m hungry!” she yelled as she sped off in the direction of the kitchen.

The distraction of preparing a quick dinner for the two of them helped calm Cyndi’s racing mind. By the time they had eaten and cleared everything away, she knew what she had to do—wait up for Jason and tell him everything.

It was time to confess to the dancing job, tell him how she had been playing amateur sleuth, and give him the lowdown on the necklace of the dancer.

Jason was predictable. He didn’t like to think that about himself, but it was true. He would take it hard, but he would forgive her eventually for lying about the job.

What he really wasn’t going to like was her idea on how to catch the killer.

Chapter Thirteen

By the time Jason got home at the end of his shift, Cyndi had practically worn a path in the living room carpet. After she put Harper to bed, she had tried to watch television, but nothing could keep her attention. So she mulled the idea over and over in her mind, working out the details and planning the best way to present it to her husband.

The front door opened. Cyndi paced faster, wringing her hands so tightly she lost feeling in her fingertips.

Jason stepped into the living room. “Hey, babe. What are you still doing up?”

Even in her present state of stress, in the middle of the night, he looked damned good in his uniform. Flashes from that afternoon warmed the blood in her veins, giving Cyndi the sudden urge to tear that outfit right off her husband. The necklace talk could wait.

Focus, girl
,
you can do this
. “Umm, honey, we really need to talk about something.”

Her husband studied her intently, concern darkening his blue eyes. “Is everything okay with Harper?”

“She’s fine. This has nothing to do with her.”
At least, not directly anyway.

“Well, let me go change real quick. I’ll be back in a jiffy, and then you can have my undivided attention.”

“All right.” Cyndi nodded as Jason ducked out of the room, fighting the urge to follow him. She continued pacing until he returned in a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt.

“I’m back.” Jason eyed her suspiciously. “What seems to be troubling you so much?”

She stopped walking and looked out the window into the dark night. Taking a deep breath and whispering a quick prayer, Cyndi turned around and blurted out, “I don’t clean offices on Friday nights. I mean, I started out that way, but it didn’t pay much, so I quit after about a month.”

“You took that job four months ago. If you aren’t going to work, then what are you doing every Friday night?” Jason demanded in his cop voice. God, how she hated that tone. It meant she better have one hell of an explanation, and it better be coming soon.

This was going to be much harder than she thought.

“I have been going to work.”

“You just said you quit three months ago.”

“I did. I found another job I like a hell of a lot more than cleaning toilets and floors.”

Jason stared at her. With one eyebrow raised, he waited for her to continue. She took another deep breath and threw everything out on the table.

“I have been dancing. You know I took lessons for years. I am pretty good at it, and the pay is like six times as much as I was making cleaning offices.”

The words fell out in a jumble, fast and furious. Jason didn’t say a word, just stood there with his arms crossed over his chest. Cyndi stood across the room, near the door. She felt like a prisoner waiting to make a jail break as she waited on her husband’s response.

Finally, he spoke, his voice low and quiet. “Dancing?”

“Yes.” She nodded, hoping that he would understand, but knowing he wouldn’t.

“What kind of …?”

She just waited, without saying a word, while he put the facts together.

"Ohhhh…” Jason’s eyes opened wide as understanding hit him. The little vein on the side of his neck popped out against his leftover summer tan. “You are
dancing?
Are you trying to tell me my wife is a stripper? What the
hell
, Cyndi?”

“I don’t take my clothes off. You know that’s against the law in Virginia. I just dance…in a costume.”

“Is there a pole present?” His face turned a decent shade of crimson.

“Well, yeah. But—”

“Holy shit, Cyndi! You dance on a stage with a pole in front of horny men and get
paid
for it. Are you hooking too?” Jason started wearing his own path in the carpet. From where she stood, Cyndi could still see the vein throbbing on the side of his neck.

“No! I’m not a whore, J.J.! I just enjoy the dancing. It’s fun, it’s great exercise, and I am really good at it. I wear a costume! It’s not like I am naked.”

“Is that what you wear?” He demanded, nodding toward her sweatshirt and jeans.

“Well, no. I mean, come on, Jason, you know what I wear.”

“I can’t say that I do. Apparently there is an awful lot about my wife of over ten years that I don’t know.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?” His eyes narrowed as that vein continued to jump out of his skin. “I should be
happy
that my wife is a prostitute? I’m a damned
cop,
Cyndi!”

“I am not a prostitute!” she shouted, and then clamped her mouth shut, waiting to see if she had woken Harper. Cyndi glared at Jason, but he refused eye contact. The vein was pulsing steadily and forcefully. She had no idea how she was going to fix this.

“I don’t even know how to process this.” Jason walked over to the window and studied his reflection in the glass. “What will the guys say? How am I supposed to explain this at the precinct?”

“Why do you have to explain anything? I am not breaking any laws.”

“Cyndi…” he growled as he turned to face her.

She threw her hands on her hips indignantly. “Well, I’m not!”

“Like it or not, your behavior reflects on me. As a cop’s wife you need to live to a different standard. Dammit, Cyndi! You
know
that! You’ve been doing this a long time!”

“That standard is to uphold the law. I am not breaking any. Whatever else I do with my life is my business, not the police department’s!”

“I know you don’t really think like that. You understand how the media works—how the community will talk. I’ll lose respect.”

“Whose respect? Hookers? Drug dealers? They don’t respect you! They fear what you can do to their businesses, but that’s about it, Jason!” she huffed.

Her husband paced the room again. “You know that there is a certain expectation…”

“Wait. Just wait here. I want to show you something.” Cyndi ran down the hall to the pantry and grabbed the oatmeal container off the bottom shelf in the back. Returning to the living room, she opened up the canister and dumped several thousand dollars in tens and twenties on the sofa. “I make a lot of money. Over three hundred bucks a night.”

Jason stared at the bills scattered over the cushions. “And horny men fondle you for it, then you come home and let me touch you after they have had their hands all over you.”

“Seriously, J.J., you ought to know me better than that. Sugar Shakers is a gentlemanly establishment. There is a strict no-touching rule, and no one, I repeat,
no one
gets naked or fondles anything! Except maybe Johnny the bartender…he might be fondling the citrus fruits behind the bar.”

Her attempt at humor fell on Jason’s deaf ears.

“Sugar Shakers? You’ve been dancing
there?
I’m sure your mom and dad would be so pleased to hear you are putting your years of dance lessons to good use.”

Cyndi put her hands on her hips defiantly. “This is exactly why I didn’t tell you in the first place. I like what I do there. The people are nice, and I have four hours every week that are all mine. I love being home with our daughter, but once in a while, I need to do something for me.”

“And prancing around half-naked on a stage in a dingy bar is what you need to do to satisfy that need? A manicure wouldn’t cut it, Cyndi?” Jason hid his anger with sarcasm. She recognized his M.O. instantly. Unfortunately, he was about to get angrier.

“At this point, the fact that I work there is irrelevant. I only told you that first because it directly relates to an active investigation in the police department.”

“What investigation?” Jason demanded.

“You remember the purse I gave you?”

“The one with the blood on it from that runaway?”

“Yes.” Cyndi wrung her hands as she started pacing again. “She was a dancer at Shakers. She went by the name Jade. The night she disappeared I thought I saw someone coming out of the alley on my way home. I think she was taken, and the person who took her has his eye on me too.”

They both stopped pacing and stood barely three feet from each other. “Has his eye on you? How do you know this?”

“He—I am presuming it is a man—has reached out to me a couple of times. Left me some instructions to stop asking questions.”

“Instructions?”

“Yes. I started looking into Jade’s disappearance. I talked to the people I work with to see if anyone had any idea about what could have happened to her. I guess the killer got a little put out by that. He left me notes on my windshield advising me to stop.”

“Do you still have these notes?” Jason’s face wasn’t nearly as flushed, and the vein in his neck had slipped back in between his skin and muscles. Little by little, he switched over to cop mode. Cyndi had retrieved the notes from her car earlier, put them in a Ziploc bag, and stashed them under a pillow on the sofa. Fishing them out, she handed the papers to Jason, who studied them through the plastic with a frown.

“You should have given these to me.”

“I know. I just didn’t think anyone would believe that someone had hurt Jade because she was a runaway. I wanted some concrete evidence. Like the tire iron.”

Jason’s head snapped up. “Tire iron?”

Cyndi nodded. “Yes. The one that we found by my car yesterday.”

“What does that have to do with anything? The slashed tire was vandalism.”

Not exactly, but she would get to that.

“When I went to work on Friday night—” Jason scowled when she said “work,” but at least his face wasn’t an angry red anymore, “—there was a long line, so I had to go in by the alley door. I scared Roxy, and she almost hit me with it. When she set the tire iron down by the wall of the building, I thought I saw something strange on it in the light of the street light. I was going to grab it after work and give it to you in case it was somehow connected to Jade’s disappearance, but when I went back for it, it was gone.”

“Who’s Roxy?”

“Another dancer. She has been there forever, showed me the ropes.”

“Poles and ropes…” Jason muttered, the vein in his neck started making an appearance again.

“It’s not that big of a deal, J.J.”

“Right.” He glared at her. “Maybe this Roxy left it here?”

“Now why would she do that? I would know it was her. She’s not stupid. And why slash my tire?”

“To send a message?”

“I don’t know. Do you have another explanation?”

“Possibly.” Cyndi pulled the necklace out of her pocket and handed it to Jason. He held it up, the tiny dancer pirouetting on the chain.

“What does Harper’s necklace have to do with any of this?”

“The slashed tire was a distraction.”

“A distraction?”

“After you left, I went into Harper’s room, and the window was open. I asked her why, and she said a man who knows me told her to open it, and he gave her that.”

Jason’s face flushed a deep crimson. She could almost see the smoke rising from his ears as he boiled over. “A man came to her window and gave her this? What have you done, Cyndi?”

“What have I done?” she shouted back. “I didn’t invite him here!”

“You may as well have!” Jason was pacing again, the little dancer swinging violently in his clenched fist. “You put our daughter in danger because you had some perverted need to strut your stuff in front of a bunch of pigs! I spend my life trying to protect you and Harper from creeps like that, and you offer them lemonade and a sandwich!”

“Calm down, J.J.! I didn’t invite anyone here. No one knows where we live.”

“
Someone
does!”

“Not anyone I work with. I am not a complete idiot.”

“No. Not an idiot, but apparently a liar and maybe a bit of a slut.”

“That’s not fair, J.J.”

“I don’t care about fair.” Jason dropped the necklace in the pocket of his shorts. “I care about our daughter, and my wife putting herself in danger. Don’t you think that if you couldn’t tell me about that job then it probably wasn’t such a great idea to have it in the first place?”

Cyndi threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “I don’t know! I guess so. But the truth is, as much as I love you, all your rules and tactical plans get so overwhelming sometimes.”

Jason stepped in front of her and looked her straight in the eye. “You thought it was okay to lie to me because my keeping you and our daughter safe is overwhelming?”

“Well, sort of. Yes.”

“What the hell? I can’t talk about this anymore!” He marched down the hall and grabbed the keys to the car off the table. “I’m going out!” The slam of the front door echoed through the house as she heard Harper cry out from her bedroom. Cyndi peered out into the dark as the red glow of Jason’s taillights disappeared around the corner.