"I don"t have any brothers," Lulu replied. "My sisters took their husbands" names. I just wanted to keep the Oxleys around at least so long as I"m alive."
"You work at the Aphrodisiac, don"t you?" asked King.
She looked a little startled. "That"s right, how"d you know?" She suddenly smiled. "Don"t tell me you been there."
King smiled back. "Once. Years ago."
"When I first went to work there, it was more a wh.o.r.ehouse than anything else. It was called the Love Shack back then, you know, after the B-52"s song. But I saw a lot more potential than that. Over the years we"ve turned it into a nice club. Okay, we still have the dancers and stuff, but that"s only in one section, the original part of the place. Junior did a lot of the new construction work. You should see some of the millwork in there now, wood columns, nice moldings, cla.s.sy drapes and wallpaper. We got a real nice restaurant, with linen and china, a billiards room and a place to play cards, a movie theater and a first-cla.s.s bar with a special ventilated place so the men can smoke cigars; and we just started a club for local businesspeople. You know, a place to come and network. We got Internet access, a business center. Revenue up eighty-six percent over last year, and last year was the best year we"d had in the last ten. And I"ve been pushing to change the name to something a little more . . ."
"Tasteful?" said Mich.e.l.le.
"Yeah," said Lulu. "I own a piece of the place, so that"s me and Junior"s retirement. I want it to be as profitable as possible. I got the costs in line, manageable debt levels and strong cash flow with little direct compet.i.tion, and our target demographic is golden: male high income earners who don"t care how much they spend. You should see our EBITDA level compared to what it was."
"You sound like quite the businesswoman," said Mich.e.l.le.
"Didn"t start out that way. I didn"t even finish high school. My daddy had an aneurysm when I was only sixteen. Dropped out to help nurse him. Guess I wasn"t much of a nurse; he died anyway. But then I married Junior, went back and got my GED and took business courses at the community college. I started working at the Love Shack part-time. As a waitress," she added quickly. "I don"t have the necessary physical equipment to be one of the dancers. Worked my way up, learned the business, and there you are."
"And one of your dancers was just killed," said King.
Lulu stiffened. "How"d you know about that?"
"We"re sort of informal consultants to Chief Williams," explained King.
"She was one of ourformer dancers," corrected Lulu. dancers," corrected Lulu.
"Did you know her?" asked Mich.e.l.le.
"Not really. We got lots of dancers come through. Most don"t stay all that long, nature of the business. And we play it by the rules. We don"t allow anything but the dancing. We"re not looking to lose our license to operate because some girl wants to make some cash on the side by spreading her legs."
"Did Rhonda Tyler want to do that? Is that why she left?" asked Mich.e.l.le.
"I already told the police all this. Is there some reason I got to tell you too?"
"No reason at all," said King.
"Good, "cause I got enough on my mind without worrying why some gal got herself killed."
"I doubt she intended that to happen," said Mich.e.l.le.
"Honey," said Lulu, "I been in this business long enough and seen enough that nothing-and I mean nothing-would surprise me anymore."
"I was thinking the same thing," said King.
As they drove off, Lulu watched them and then went inside the trailer.
Mich.e.l.le eyed her movements in the side mirror. "She says she didn"t really know the woman, and yet she was able to ID her off an artist"s composite sketch, and she knew about the crotch tattoo? Come on, I"d call that a little inconsistent."
"Could be," said King.
"And while Junior may be too dumb to know what to do with bearer bonds and jewelry, I think his wife is plenty sharp enough to sell that stuff and make some decent returns."
"If that turns out to be correct, our client is guilty."
Mich.e.l.le shrugged. "Those are the breaks sometimes. What next?"
"We track down who installed those secret drawers in the Battles" closets. We check out the alibis of Junior"s friends, and we fill in Harry on what we"ve done so far."
"And we wait for the next murder to happen," added Mich.e.l.le, sighing.
CHAPTER 22.
DIANE HINSON LEFT HER DOWNTOWNlaw firm as she nearly always did, at seven in the evening. She climbed into her late-model Chrysler Sebring and drove off. She picked up some carry-out dinner at a local restaurant, drove to her gated community, waved to the elderly guard inside-who carried no weapon and could have been easily overpowered by a couple of husky twelve-year-olds-and proceeded to her townhouse situated at the end of a pipestem street.
Things had been going well for Hinson this year. A newly minted partner at Goodrich, Browder and Knight, Wrightsburg"s second largest law firm, she"d finally met a man she thought might be the one, a six-foot-three accountant four years her junior who liked to white-water raft and could beat her occasionally on the tennis court. She felt that any day he might pop the question, and her answer would be an immediate yes. She"d also brought a new client into the firm with billings well into the six figures that would add significantly to her personal income. She was thinking of moving into a single-family house. To do so with a ring on her finger and a husband to grow old with would be a dream come true for the thirty-three-year-old lawyer.
She parked her car in her garage and went inside. She placed her dinner in the microwave, changed into her running clothes and headed out. Three miles and a little over twenty minutes later she arrived back a little sweaty but barely short of breath. A decent middle-distance runner in college and dedicated amateur tennis player, she"d kept in excellent shape over the years.
She showered, ate her meal, caught a TV show she"d been looking forward to seeing, and received a phone call from her accountant beau, who was in Houston on a corporate audit. After some breathy promises of truly memorable s.e.x once he returned home, she hung up, watched the late news, noted it was nearly midnight and turned off the TV. She stripped down to her panties in the bathroom, pulled on a long T-shirt she kept hanging on the door there and headed to bed.
She sensed the presence behind her, but before she could scream, the gloved hand closed around her neck, cutting off her wind and with it her voice. A very strong arm encircled her body, pinning both her limbs to her sides. Stunned, Hinson found herself being shoved facedown on the floor, unable to move or scream as a gag was placed in her mouth and her hands bound behind her with telephone cord.
As a criminal lawyer she"d defended accused rapists, getting some men off who should have gone to jail. She"d considered those professional victories. Lying facedown on the floor with a crushing weight on top of her, she steeled herself to be raped. With suffocating dread she knew that at any moment her underwear would be pulled down and the humiliating and painful violation would commence. Nauseous with fear, she told herself not to resist, let him have his way, and possibly she would survive this. She hadn"t seen his face. She couldn"t possibly identify him. He would have no reason to kill her. "Please," she tried to say through the gag, "don"t hurt me."
Her plea went unheeded.
The knife plunged into her back, grazed the left side of her heart, was pulled free and plunged in again, tearing a two-inch gash in her left lung and slicing into her aorta on the way out. By the time it was over, a dozen wounds mottled her back. However, Diane Hinson was dead by the fourth.
The man in the black hood bent over her, careful not to step in the pool of blood forming on the carpet, and turned Hinson over on her back. He lifted her T-shirt, took a Sharpie pen from his pocket and drew a symbol on her flat belly. He made the same symbol on the wall behind her bed. He drew it large, since he didn"t want anyone to miss it. The police could be such imbeciles.
He went back to the body and carefully unhooked the woman"s anklet, the one he"d admired in the shopping mall parking lot, and placed it in his pocket.
He left the knife by the dead woman"s side; it couldn"t lead back to him. He"d pulled it from her kitchen drawer when he"d entered the house earlier. He"d been hidden behind the bushes in the darkness next to her garage door waiting for her to come home. When she opened the garage, he waited until she had gotten out of the car and gone inside. Most people closed the garage door on their way inside the house using the remote b.u.t.ton near the door leading into the house. She"d never seen him slip inside.
He untied her hands and wedged her arm against a partially opened bureau drawer. He"d observed at the shopping mall that she wore a watch, so he hadn"t bothered to bring one. He set the watch hands to where he wanted them and pulled out the stem, freezing it at that number on the dial. He said no prayer over the body. Yet he did mumble something about this being a lesson to keep one"s ATM receipts.
He methodically went through the room looking for potential evidence of his presence but found none. Fingerprints and palmprints were out of the question. Not only had he worn gloves but he"d glued felt pads to each of his fingertips and palms. He slipped a small, handheld vacuum out of his coat pocket and ran it over the floor and under the bed where he"d been hiding. He did the same in the coat closet where he"d initially hidden, and continued that process on the stairs and finally the garage.
After that he took off his hood, slipped on a beard and hat and left out the back door. He made his way to his car, which he"d parked on a side road outside of the fancy gated community with its elderly, weaponless security guard. The VW started up. He drove fast but within the legal speed limit. He had another letter to write. And he knew exactly what he wanted to say.
CHAPTER 23.
SEAN KING WOKE EARLY ON THEforty-foot houseboat that was parked at his dock. The rented houseboatwas home, at least until he could finish building a new house to replace the one that had disappeared into a man-made crater. He donned a wet suit, drew a quick breath and then dove headfirst into the water. After a spirited swim of several hundred yards he returned to the houseboat and embarked on a two-mile trek in his Loon kayak. His partner"s energetic ways were rubbing off on him, he had to grudgingly admit. home, at least until he could finish building a new house to replace the one that had disappeared into a man-made crater. He donned a wet suit, drew a quick breath and then dove headfirst into the water. After a spirited swim of several hundred yards he returned to the houseboat and embarked on a two-mile trek in his Loon kayak. His partner"s energetic ways were rubbing off on him, he had to grudgingly admit.
As he was paddling through the water thinking this, he looked up and saw her. He wasn"t surprised, even at this hour. He often wondered if she ever slept. Could it be that his partner was really a vampire who happened to have no problem with sunlight?
Mich.e.l.le was in her scull rowing with a skill, strength and intensity that King could only dream about. She was moving so fast that anyone unacquainted with the woman would have a.s.sumed her craft was under motor power.
He called out to her, his words carrying far over the calm waters.
"Time for coffee, or are you heading for the Atlantic this morning?"
She smiled, waved and headed over.
They drew their crafts up to his dock and secured them.
On the houseboat King fixed coffee while Mich.e.l.le took out an energy bar from her f.a.n.n.y pack and started to devour it. She looked around the well-organized interior.
"You know, this boat"s almost bigger than my cottage," she observed between bites.
"And it"s far neater, I know," he said, pouring out juice and coffee.
It had been two days since their interview with Lulu and Junior. They"d reported back to Harry Carrick, who seemed pleased with their progress but had in turn informed them that the grand jury had, not surprisingly, indicted his client. They"d tracked down the man who had installed the secret drawers in the Battles" closets. He was elderly, retired, and seemed to have no earthly reason to break into his former clients" home. That had seemed a dead end until King asked him when Robert Battle had asked for his secret drawer to be installed.
The old man had looked a little uncomfortable at that. "Don"t like keeping secrets from folks," he had said. "Mrs. Battle is a fine lady, none finer in my mind."
"So Mr. Battle didn"t want her to know about it?" prompted Mich.e.l.le when the old man seemed disinclined to continue.
"Sneaking in and out when she wasn"t there, didn"t like it, no, sir," he said, avoiding directly answering her question.
"Any idea why Mr. Battle wanted that drawer installed?" asked King.
"Didn"t ask because it wasn"t my place to," he said stubbornly.
"Around what time period was that?" Mich.e.l.le inquired.
The man took a minute to consider this. "Must"ve been about five or so years ago. Put Mrs. Battle"s drawer in a few years before that."
King mused for a moment and then said, "And Mr. Battle knew about his wife"s hidden drawer?"
"Don"t know if he did or not. Hear he"s near death"s door."
"You never know with a man like that," replied King.
They"d checked out the alibis of all of Junior"s friends. The men were either in a bar drinking at the time or sleeping with their wives, girlfriends or mistresses. The ladies could have been lying, of course, but it might be hard to break their testimony without a lot of digging, and in each case King had sensed they were telling the truth. Anyway, none of Junior"s friends seemed remotely capable of carrying off such a burglary and setting up Junior so cleverly in the process. Their expertise seemed limited to driving nails, drinking beer and bedding women.
"Are you going to live on this houseboat the whole time while you"re rebuilding?" asked Mich.e.l.le.
"I don"t have much choice."
"My cottage has an extra bedroom."
"Thanks, but I don"t think my neatness gene could survive."
"I"ve gotten better."
"Better! The last time I was there you had everything from water skis to shotguns piled on a card table in your dining room, a stack of dirty laundry in the kitchensink and unwashed dishes on a chair in the living room. You served dinner on paper plates on a and unwashed dishes on a chair in the living room. You served dinner on paper plates on awakeboard resting on two chairs-a first for me, I a.s.sure you." resting on two chairs-a first for me, I a.s.sure you."
"Well," she said in a hurt tone, "I thought you"d appreciate that I cooked for you. Do you know how many cans I had to open?"
"I"m sure it was a true ordeal."
He was about to say something else when his cell phone rang. It was Todd Williams. The conversation was brief, but when King clicked off, he looked badly shaken.
"Another murder?" asked Mich.e.l.le as she set down her coffee and looked at him.
"Yes."
"Who was it?"
"Somebody I happened to know," he said.
CHAPTER 24.
THE BRUTAL MURDER OF DIANEHinson had not set very well in her posh, gated and supposedly safe community. When Mich.e.l.le and King arrived there, a small yet vocal crowd of angry folks had surrounded several beleaguered men in suits representing the management of the upscale compound. Also in the middle of this siege was an elderly security guard who appeared so distraught he looked ready to cry.
Police cars and other emergency vehicles lined the pipestem road to Hinson"s home, and a yellow police tape barrier stretched across the small strip of gra.s.s in front of the home, not that many people were inclined to take a peek. Uniformed officers came and went through the front door and garage. King pulled to a stop and he and Mich.e.l.le got out.
Chief Williams waved to them from the front stoop. They hurried to meet him and then all three went inside.
If possible, Todd Williams looked even more miserable than he had at the morgue. Gravity seemed to be sucking the lawman right into the earth. "d.a.m.n," he said. "What I did to deserve this, I don"t know."
"There"s been a positive ID on Hinson?" asked King.
"Yeah, it"s her. Why, do you know the lady?"
"It"s a small town, we"re both lawyers."
"Did you know her well?"
"Not enough to be any help with the investigation. Who found her?"