Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: An Addison Holmes Mystery (Addison Holmes Mysteries Book 5) (3 page)

I was going to have to take responsibility for Scarlet. She was an old woman who was injured. I had no idea where her home was, if she had a car, or if she had someone to take care of her. The only thing I knew with certainty was that I had to keep Scarlet away from my mother. They hated each other with the kind of cold disdain and insults that only Southern women had a talent for.

“Do I want to know whose ear you shot off?” Kate asked.

Scarlet narrowed her eyes. “Armed robber at the gas station. He shot the shit out of their ceiling and scared the bejeezus out of all the poor customers. I couldn’t let that stand with my training, so I took him out. Only problem was I forgot what a kick that gun has. Knocked me right on my keister.”

“Are you living back in Georgia fulltime?” Kate asked. “I didn’t realize you had a conceal carry permit.”

“Don’t need one,” Scarlet said, unconcerned. “I’ve got a universal pass from my days in the OSS.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works,” Kate said. But it was no use. Scarlet was fast asleep. Her hands were crossed over her chest and the only reason I knew she was still alive was because of the gentle snores escaping her mouth.

“How long do you think she’s going to stay there?” Kate asked.

“No telling. If we’re lucky it’ll be a couple of days. Sleeping keeps her out of trouble.”

“Right, well I’ve got an appointment at ten-thirty with a new client. In fact, I need you to be at the meeting. He personally requested you for the job.” Kate looked me up and down, taking in my wardrobe choices of that morning. “You still sleeping in your office?”

“Yep.”

“By your attire I’m assuming you’re not having sex with anyone.”

“I’m on sabbatical. Sex with Nick clouds my judgment. I can’t make rational decisions when he’s naked. That man’s a sex wizard.”

“So instead of having crazy Hogwart’s sex, you’re sleeping like a bag lady in your office and wearing clothes that wouldn’t tempt a nymphomaniac.”

“Stop trying to be logical,” I said, closing my eyes. “I just had to do what felt right. I needed time to think on my decision, and Nick agreed to give me a full month. Didn’t you have cold feet when you and Mike got married?”

“No,” Kate said. “It’s marriage. You either love each other or you don’t.”

“There are a lot of variables. I don’t have the best track record when it comes to marriage.”

“Bullshit,” Kate said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t have the best track record when it comes to
weddings
. Weddings and marriages aren’t the same thing. You’ve never been married, therefore you don’t have a track record. And your track record with weddings sucks because you were engaged to a narcissistic gigolo who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. Karma came and bit him in the ass.”

I had to agree. Karma had been a real bitch to my ex-fiancé.

“What you need is to skip the wedding this time. Just elope. Then you can overcome the fear you have of finding Nick consummating your vows with someone else.”

“I’ve got exactly seven days to make a decision,” I said. “Maybe I should just flip a coin.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t already know what you’re going to tell him. Why are you dragging it out?”

“What’s if it’s the wrong decision?” I said, throwing my hands up in the air. “I don’t need this kind of pressure right now. The stress is affecting me. When I took a shower this morning a clump of my hair came out right in my hand. And I’ve gained ten pounds since I got my P.I. license.”

“You had it to gain,” Kate said. “But you probably shouldn’t eat a whole box of donuts.”

“I only got two,” I said dramatically. “Nick and Rosemarie ate the rest. And marriage is a big deal. Why doesn’t anyone else understand that but me?”

“Because you’re acting like a lunatic. Nick loves you, despite your weirdness. And you love him. Despite the fact that you keep looking for reasons not to. Now go change out of your bag lady clothes and be back here for the ten-thirty. If Nick still seemed interested in marrying you after seeing you dressed like that then you know you have a winner.”

I stuck my tongue out at Kate. She didn’t see it, but it made me feel better.

I
was feeling
a little more stable once I dressed in regular clothes and did something with my hair. I looked at my reflection in the small mirror hanging on the back of my office door and turned my head from side to side. Maybe what I needed was small changes in my life. Like a new hairstyle or color. I’d worn my dark brown hair to the middle of my back since high school. And other than the ill-advised bangs I’d cut myself last year, it hadn’t changed much over the years.

I’d pulled on a pair of black leggings and an oversized angora sweater the color of a good merlot. The weather was supposed to turn nasty by nightfall, so I wore my knee-high leather boots and capped the look off by looping an infinity scarf around my neck. This was the south. We accessorized to go to the grocery store. If my mother had seen me in public in what I’d worn this morning she would’ve had kittens.

Since I’d moved out of Whiskey Bayou and into Savannah, it took a little longer for word of mouth to reach her. My mother’s reach was far and wide. And it always seemed like someone was watching. She had spies everywhere.

I was in better spirits since Kate’s pep talk, so I swiped on some lipstick the same color as my sweater and grabbed an empty notepad before heading to the conference room.

“Hey, Holmes,” Jimmy Royal called out as I passed by.

I stuck my head inside his office and looked around. His space was about five-times the size of mine, which made sense, considering my office had been converted from a janitor’s closet. He’d decorated it with a mixture of sports memorabilia and divorced ex-cop. It wasn’t a good look. But he was a great P.I.

Jimmy was second-in-command at the agency. He was just over six feet tall and thin as a rail. He lived on Chef Boyardee and Cracker Barrel, and I’d never seen him wear anything on his feet but the same pair of cowboy boots. I had no idea how he walked quietly in those when he was on a case. I made noise walking in my bare feet.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I found a lead on that RV you’re looking for. A friend of mine outfits them custom. He said he had a buyer fall through, so he’s got one ready for pick up if you want it.”

“I don’t think I want an RV. Just a van. I’d never be able to park it in the city.”

“This is about the size of a van. They still call it an RV if it’s got all the junk inside it.”

“Oh wow. How far out of my budget is it?”

Jimmy’s eyebrows arched into his receding hairline. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing you caught the Romeo Bandit and received a piece of the reward. You should have enough for both the van and to buy a new outfit and burn whatever you were wearing this morning. I felt my balls draw right up inside my body as soon as I looked at you. So good job on the birth control, if that was your angle.”

My eyes narrowed and my mouth tightened at the corners. “Well, thank God,” I said. “If your balls had been hanging down like a caveman I’m not sure I’d have been able to resist jumping your bones. I guess the universe is safe from more little Jimmy’s running around. How many child support checks are you writing these days?”

“You’re a vicious, mean, devil woman, Addison Holmes. You should’ve been a cop.”

He winked and I took the business card he held out with his friend’s information on it. “Thanks, I’ll give him a call.”

Back when I was teaching, I drove a cherry-red 350Z. But I hadn’t been able to afford the payments after I’d lost my job, so I’d sold it to keep my head above water. My last car had a hole in the floorboard the size of a toddler and the brakes hadn’t worked so well. And when I say not so well, I mean not at all. It’s a miracle I’m still alive.

I’d moved in with Nick shortly after my last car had gone to car heaven, and he’d let me drive the sporty little Audi convertible he used for special occasions. I loved that car. It fit me like a glove and it had been programmed to listen to my voice commands. But because I’m a person of high moral fiber, I’d left the car in the garage and the keys on the hook after the infamous marriage proposal, even though Nick had told me I was more than welcome to keep using it.

I know what you’re thinking. Nick is an amazing guy, and I’m an idiot for not dragging that man to the altar. I agree with you. Mostly. But marriage is a big deal. And it’s especially a big deal for someone who previously had to tell two-hundred guests that her fiancé was boffing a floozy with bigger boobs and fewer brains in the honeymoon limo. It wasn’t one of the high points in my life. In fact, it ranked right up there with wetting my pants on the Jumbotron at a Falcon’s game when I’d been in third grade. They’d showed highlights of that for weeks.

The point is, I’m ninety-nine point nine percent sure Nick would never cheat on me. But it was that point one percent that was making me mainline Blue Bell and Tums on a daily basis.

Since I’d left the Audi parked in Nick’s garage, I’d been without a vehicle. My mother had loaned me her car when I’d been in a pinch, but she drove an exact replica of the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. It wasn’t the best car to go unnoticed in. And it was hell to parallel park in downtown Savannah.

Jimmy Royal had been right about one thing. I’d received a nice fat check for apprehending the Romeo Bandit at the nudist colony last week. The Romeo Bandit had been wanted for the last seventy years, and the reward money had multiplied. Technically, Scarlet had gotten the bulk of the reward, but she’d promised the agency and myself a nice healthy finder’s fee. I’d just deposited my check in the bank the day before.

My first thought had been to use the money to buy a Jeep, but then I started thinking that if I was going to take this job seriously and really be a force to be reckoned with, then I needed to live and breathe being a P.I. Really get in the trenches and be more efficient. The proper vehicle was key.

I started looking at what the other agents all had in common. They were four middle-aged, retired cops with a handful of divorces under their belts, and they were all in pretty good shape. Kate didn’t hire slouches with pot bellies. They were a little quirky and a lot cynical. My dad had been a cop in Savannah for thirty years, so I was experienced in dealing with the eccentricities that cops tended to acquire the longer they were on the job. It used to drive my mother crazy that my dad would always back into his parking spot in the driveway. A lot of other things drove her crazy too, but that was a big one. In fact, they mostly drove each other crazy, but I digress.

The difference between the other P.I.’s at the agency and myself, despite the obvious, was that they were outfitted with the proper equipment. They each owned a non-descript van that made the P.I. life more comfortable. There was nothing like being on a stakeout after drinking a Route 44 limeade from Sonic and not a bathroom in sight. The guys’ advice had been to carry around a bucket in my car for such emergencies, just so I didn’t risk losing my tail if I left to go the bathroom. But there are some things that no Southern woman will ever do. And urinating in a bucket in the back seat of her car is one of those things.

After I’d done a little snooping, I realized that the other P.I.s didn’t pee in a bucket either. They all had working toilets, a mini fridge for snacks, and a microwave in their vehicles. Working toilets and snacks were two of my favorite things, so it only made sense for me to get my own van. And now I had the hookup, thanks to Jimmy Royal.

I was early to the conference room, so I helped myself to the coffee and ignored the cookies that sat in the middle of the long conference table. I was turning over a new leaf starting today. I’d be an adult and give Nick an adult decision. And I’d stop stress eating. Unless it was meatloaf or chicken fried steak. Or a strawberry sundae, which had both fruit and dairy, so was probably considered healthy in some medical circles.

I didn’t have to wait long. I stood as Kate held open the door for a man who was probably in his late forties or early fifties. He was dressed well—expensive loafers and a tailored shirt and slacks. His hair was blond and parted to one side, making him look a little like a Ken doll. The only difference was this guy was missing Ken’s tennis tan and pearly white smile. He was hunched over and moving very slowly. And his face was an odd shade of green and glistened with perspiration, as if every step was a struggle.

If I was a betting woman, I’d say he was an attorney. I hated doing jobs for attorneys. They wanted you to do all the dirty work, and then let you know all the potential lawsuits you might incur if they weren’t satisfied with the job. In fact, Kate had turned down several jobs from high profile attorneys because she’d gotten the gut feeling they’d be more trouble than they were worth. Kate’s gut feelings were legendary.

But this guy didn’t look high profile, at least not at the moment. He looked like he’d been dragged through an alley and left to die. Which made him a little more intriguing, but I was still weary.

“Addison, this is Anthony Dunnegan,” Kate said. “He’s an attorney with Capshaw, Gates, and Dunnegan.”

Ten points for me. I reached out to shake his hand and managed not to grimace when his clammy palm touched mine. “I’m Addison Holmes,” I said. “Kate tells me you’ve got an interesting dilemma.”

Anthony inched his way to the conference table and gingerly sat down. He was looking bad enough that I wondered if he shouldn’t be in a hospital. I looked at Kate, but she shook her head subtly, reading the look of concern on my face. Kate took the seat at the head of the table and passed a file across to me.

“I’m not sure dilemma is the right word, Ms. Holmes. Someone stole one of my kidneys.”

“
I
’m not
sure I understand,” I said. “Did you have it in a cooler?”

Generally, when we got theft cases it was jewelry, art, or in one case, an original replica of the Enterprise from Star Trek. This was my first stolen internal organ.

“No,” Anthony said. “I had it in my body. They kidnapped me, cut me open, and stole my kidney.”

My mouth dropped open and my nose scrunched in horror. “That’s terrible. Is this a new thing?” I asked Kate. “I haven’t heard of a rash of organ thefts in Savannah.” Then I looked back at Anthony. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Believe me, when I woke after the anesthesia wore off, I wished I was dead. I don’t have time for violations of my rights such as this. I’m a very busy man. I want you to find the bastards that did this to me and I’m going to destroy each and every one of them.”

“And stop them from doing this to other people as well,” I said with my Southern smile. The one that was all teeth and no substance. “You’ll be a real hero.”

I must’ve been laying it on too thick because Kate took the reins. “Why don’t you start at the beginning. When did this happen?”

“A week ago yesterday,” he said. “I had a business dinner at The Olde Pink House at six. My clients left a little after seven, and I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet.”

“That’s not a very long business dinner,” I said. “Hardly time to get your food and eat.”

“They had cocktails and appetizers,” he said, giving me a look that said I was being a little impertinent. I got that look a lot. “If you must know, I’ve been facilitating a merger between their company and another for the last two years. It’s very delicate work with a lot of pieces to the puzzle. And they decided they no longer want to go through with the merger. Which as I tried to explain to them, was probably going to get them sued. They’d signed a contract and taken money in good faith. Needless to say, they weren’t happy with my advice and dinner was cut short.”

He twisted his wedding band on his finger over and over again, a nervous gesture that didn’t go unnoticed. He cleared his throat. “With my appetite gone, I moved over to the bar. I had a couple more drinks, and that’s when this woman sat next to me. She didn’t talk to me. Or even look at me, for that matter. But she was one of those women who command attention. I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful, and I’ve been with a
lot
of women.”

My dislike for Anthony Dunnegan was growing by leaps and bounds. “Did you strike up a conversation with her?” I asked.

He leaned back in the conference chair and winced in pain. I was assuming it was from his lack of kidney and not his lack of conscience.

“No, but I slipped my wedding ring off and put it in my pocket, just in case.”

He said it so nonchalantly it took my brain a second to catch up. I was guessing putting his wedding ring in his pocket “just in case” was a pretty common occurrence.

We had all kinds of clients at the McClean Detective Agency. Some of them were the ones being wronged. And sometimes the clients were the ones doing wrong and they just wanted to cover their bases out of sheer paranoia. I’d come to understand why cops didn’t trust anyone. Everyone lied or shaded the truth. About everything.

Kate always said it wasn’t our job to judge, only to do the job we were hired for. I thought that was a big bunch of baloney since this was the South and our favorite pastime was judging. Silently, of course. We weren’t heathens.

“Anyway, this woman strutted up to the bar like she owned it, and shrugged off her fur coat. That sure as hell got everyone’s attention. She was wearing this black dress.” He got a glassy look in his eyes as he brought it back to mind. “It shouldn’t have been a showstopper, because it was long sleeved and stopped just above her knees. She was very voluptuous.” He motioned with his hands. “Like Sofia Vergara. But without the accent. And she had blue eyes. Actually, maybe she looked more like Wonder Woman.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, stopping in my note taking. “Wonder Woman?” I was thinking maybe Anthony Dunnegan was on some heavy drugs. I still didn’t like him, but drugs was a better excuse that plain old asshole.

“Not in costume or anything. That would be ridiculous.” He looked at me as if I was the moron in the room. “Like Wonder Woman in her disguise.”

“Right. Which Wonder Woman? Linda Carter or Gal Gadot?” I asked. And when Anthony and Kate both stared at me blankly it was me who gave them the disbelieving look. “It’s an important distinction for identifying her. 1970s Wonder Woman or today’s Wonder Woman? They’re close, but there are differences. How am I going to find this woman if I can’t recognize her?”

“I did some research on you, Ms. Holmes,” Anthony said.

He was trying to intimidate me, but I’d taught history to a bunch of teenagers. Anthony Dunnegan wasn’t even in the same ballpark as far as intimidation.

“Okay,” I said, unimpressed.

“You’ve got an impressive record in the short time you’ve worked here. And you’re younger and more enthusiastic…hungrier,” he said, giving me a shark’s smile, “than the other agents. You seem to get by on a combination of luck and determination, though it’s nice you’re trying to better yourself by taking classes. Your scores at the firing range were impressive.”

“Thank you,” I said drolly. “Bettering myself is a top priority of mine. I’ve found my Master’s degree really comes in handy while investigating lowlifes.”

His smile widened—a politician’s smile—but his eyes were mean. “You’ve also got a smart mouth and haven’t really learned your place.”

“My place?” I asked.

“Yes, your place when it comes to who is working for whom. And of course, I heard all about how you embarrassed yourself at Charles and Nina Dempsey’s home. Charles and I have been great friends since college.”

“That explains a lot,” I said.

“I even heard their son called off his engagement to you because of the incident. People like you will never belong in that world. But I’ve found you do an excellent job getting the dirty work done if the right carrot is dangled in front of your face.”

I narrowed my eyes. His green pallor and sheen of sweat had thrown me off my game. I was usually pretty good at reading people. And I’d taken his sickness as a sign of weakness, and I’d felt automatic sympathy at his situation. But I could see crystal-clear now. And one thing was for certain. Anthony Dunnegan was a snake. And I sure as heck didn’t want to work for him.

I scooted my chair back to get up, but Kate put a hand on my arm to stop me. I saw Anthony’s vicious grin and knew he thought I was going to be reprimanded.

Kate interrupted before I could say anything that would probably get us sued. “You’ve received the references of this agency, Mr. Dunnegan. We only employee the best. Our client list is selective. Very selective. I took you on due to a referral from Craig Capshaw, who is an exemplary client of this agency. But if you’re going to be a hindrance to my agency and my agents, then you’re welcome to go elsewhere. You’re hiring us to do a job as we see fit, as you’ll remember from the contract you signed. You’ll not give orders or interfere in how we run our cases. I can promise that you won’t wiggle your way out of the penalties of the contract you signed, as it was drawn up by Mr. Capshaw himself, the senior partner at your firm, I believe.”

It was everything I could do to keep the grin off my face and continue looking stern. I was mostly one of those people whose every thought flashed across my face. I’d gotten a lot better at it over the last several months, but I had to concentrate really hard. Kate always told me I looked constipated.

“We’ve got more than enough business on our plates at the moment. We don’t cater to taunts or tantrums. We don’t need you. You need us. And we’re the best. You already know that. You won’t find anyone else who will touch this case. Unless you want to take my original advice and go to the police.”

That was an interesting tidbit of information, I thought. The police would be the first place I’d go if I’d woken up in a similar situation.

Color flushed into Anthony’s face and I thought anger made him look a little healthier. Though it probably wasn’t so good for his blood pressure.

Kate and I waited him out while he got his temper under control. I’d learned a few things after I’d stopped teaching. Teaching was insular. There was a social sphere of protection, especially for women. Things were totally different outside of that sphere of protection.

I had great respect for women who worked in a man’s world. Which was essentially what I’d been thrown into when I’d started working for the agency. I was an attractive, intelligent woman with a good education (I had plenty of faults too, but I didn’t want to delve too deep into those), but there were still times when I had to turn on the Southern charm to get what I wanted. Being direct didn’t work. Not in this part of the country, where men still had definite ideas of a woman’s place. If you were direct in the wrong circles that’s when you got called a bitch, or pushy and opinionated. So I’d mostly taken my mother’s advice and learned to catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But sometimes I wanted to napalm those flies and watch them burn into tiny balls of ash.

I wasn’t going to waste my Southern charm on Anthony Dunnegan. It had already been a long day, and I wasn’t in the mood to placate a man who clearly wanted to put me and Kate in a position where it looked like we needed his business. I was intrigued by the missing kidney. But my curiosity would only go so far. And Kate was nobody’s pushover. She’d been a badass cop. And she scared the crap out of me when she got a certain look in her eyes. She had that look now, and the green in Anthony Dunnegan’s face was starting to make a reappearance.

We sat in a silent showdown for several minutes. I didn’t do well with silence. It made me antsy. Which is probably not the best quality for a private investigator to have. Long stakeouts were like torture for me. I normally filled my time by doing crosswords or trying to teach myself how to knit. I’d found a pattern on Pinterest that looked simple, but I showed it to Kate and she’d started laughing until tears fell down her cheeks. How was I supposed to know it was a penis sock? Who even thought of such a thing? This was Georgia, for Pete’s sake, not the arctic tundra. No man needed to keep his penis that warm in this climate. But it had been easy to knit, so I’d done several of them in different colors. I’d given them as Christmas gifts to the other agents in the office.

I stared at the plate of cookies for a few seconds, debating whether or not it would make us look weak if I grabbed one and shoved it in my mouth. The seconds ticked by with exaggerated slowness.

And then Anthony started talking as if nothing had happened. “She looked more like Gal Gadot. And now that I think about it, she kind of looked like you too,” he said, pointing at me. “But sexier. You’re too cute to have that kind of impact. And it’s hard to see your body in that baggy sweater, but your legs looked good when I came in, so I’m guessing you’re maybe a seven and a half in the body department. Maybe an eight plus if you fixed yourself up a little.”

“Thank you,” I said dryly.

“Maybe you should think about doing up your eyes a bit. Smudging them at the corners like those models in the Victoria’s Secret catalogs. Now that I look at you closer, you could probably be a ten with the right makeup.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

“I need to take my pain meds,” Anthony said. “I need some water.”

Kate got up and brought him back a bottled water from the mini-fridge, and we watched as he pulled a prescription bottle out of his shirt pocket and popped a little white pill in his mouth.

“Are you going to be able to drive home?” Kate asked.

“I’m good,” he said. “I’ve never gotten pulled over for a DWI before. This stuff hardly even affects me anymore. Gotta take double to take the edge off.”

Anthony Dunnegan was a horrible and selfish man. I didn’t normally wish people ill, but I was starting to think him losing a kidney was just karma coming back to haunt him.

“I ordered a third gin and tonic and said fuck it. Drinking was the best option I had at that moment. I really didn’t want to go home, so I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to find a place to sleep it off. If I didn’t end up leaving with the woman beside me then I could make my way to River Street to find a hotel.”

“So how did you go from a third gin and tonic to missing a kidney?” I asked.

“The woman ordered a whiskey and made herself comfortable on the barstool. This woman was class. And she had money. You see a lot of women pretend to have money when they’re out trolling, so they fool guys like me that have money into picking them up for the night. And then they rob you blind.”

I almost asked if he’d had that experience before, but Kate squeezed my thigh. Hard.

“I figured she was either married to or involved with somebody who had the kind of job that might keep them after hours. Like a doctor or politician. And they stood her up for the night. She wasn’t looking around, scoping out anyone she might be interested in at the bar, so I was thinking maybe she actually enjoyed being in a relationship. She seemed preoccupied, and she kept checking her watch. A Rolex. I was going to offer to buy her a drink, but she didn’t even glance my way. I don’t want to brag, but I can usually get the most monogamous woman to stray. I’ll admit, her disinterest stung. I’m an attractive guy. At least a solid nine, though this surgery has knocked me down to a six for the time being. And I’m rich.” He held up his own Rolex and pointed to it, just to make sure we saw it, I guess.

“Besides, she wouldn’t have dressed like that if she didn’t want to be noticed.”

I was starting to get an eye twitch. I could not help this man. He was a horrible human being. Not only was he willing to cheat on his wife, but he was one of those men who thought women deserved what they got if they dressed too sexy. I’d about reached my limit with Anthony Dunnegan.

I squeezed Kate hard on the knee like she’d done to mine. I needed to get out of here. I needed to go back to my office and lay down on the little memory foam mattress I’d squeezed between the two walls. I wasn’t proud of my living arrangements at the moment, but it beat the hell out of living with my mother.