Careful What You Kiss For (29 page)

“Shoot.”

“What’s
your
favorite quote?”

With a smile of her own, Patsy replied, “I would always rather be happy than dignified.”

“From
Jane Eyre
.” She liked Patsy, she decided.

“See you tomorrow, Tensley Starbrook.”

“See you tomorrow, Patsy Fowler.”

She had a job. And in case the reverse spell didn’t work, possibly the beginnings of a life AMC.

After Madame Claire.

The club was packed, but Gary wasn’t there. At least Tensley hadn’t seen him yet from her spot behind the bar. A perfect time, she decided, to make another run at getting into his office.

Because no matter what she might tell herself to the contrary, she was not a person who could run from an obligation. She’d told Max she would be his confidential informant and get him the information he needed to put Gary away.

And she would do that. Even if she would never be able to understand why he’d gone behind her back to marry Rhonda the Skank. Of all people.

She spotted her opportunity when Sarah came on stage, whip in hand, and her theme music began pounding in the background. Sarah commanded the attention of every person in the room, drunk or not. They all seemed transfixed.

Another woman was also behind the bar, helping with the rush. Tensley moved next to her. “I’m taking a break,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the music. “Is that okay with you?”

Without missing a beat, the woman motioned for her go ahead and Tensley worked her way through the crowd to the backstage area. She slipped behind the curtain and into the hallway with its now-familiar aroma of perfume, sweat, alcohol and burned coffee. Eau de nude.

No one was in the hall, but there were muffled female voices on the other side of the dressing room door. She hesitated for a moment when she heard what sounded like Tawny’s voice and caught the words, “net profits.” A grin stole over her face. Sarah must have started talking with the other women about their session to go over how much an individual dancer made vs. what Gary made.

Once Tensley had shown Sarah the basics of how to account for expenses and her time, it turned out the dancer wasn’t making as much as she had thought. Gary might be in for a big surprise — women who were tired of being taken advantage of. Funny how that happened.

She walked past the restrooms, ignoring the hand-drawn enhancements to their signs. Still no one around. A turn around the corner and Gary’s office was dead ahead, down the passageway.

Hold on. Was that sounds coming from further down the hall? She stopped, pressing her back to the wall and holding her breath, listening. She must have been mistaken. All she could clearly hear was the music accompanying Sarah’s act.

She kept going until she reached the door to Gary’s office. She put her hand on the knob and turned it, surprised to find it unlocked. The door opened easily and she slipped inside, hailed at once by the smell of dust, alcohol and men’s cologne.
Ugh.
Not a great combination.

A massive oak desk dominated the room, with stacks of paper across its surface. Gary’s chair, made of black leather, was also large, though the guest chair was narrow and small. In the corner, two gray metal filing cabinets stood side by side. Flyers advertising Gary’s Gorgeous Grecians lined the walls, posted at haphazard angles.

There was also a framed photograph of Gary, standing proudly in front of his club, surrounded by dancers wearing bikinis. Tensley averted her eyes before she could see whether she was in the photo. She didn’t want to know.

She didn’t see a single photo of anyone else in the office, not even Razor. But then again, Gary couldn’t be described as a family guy. She wondered what woman had been able to stand him long enough to produce his son. Tensley shuddered.

On tiptoe, she moved to the desk. One stack of papers appeared to be food and liquor receipts. Another had schedules, showing who was working when. She rifled through the first few papers in that stack and found that Gary had drawn a plus sign next to the names of four dancers, including Tawny and Sarah.

There wasn’t a plus sign next to Lila’s name. Nice. Rationally, she knew she shouldn’t be irritated, since she didn’t know what it meant, but
irrationally
, she was perturbed. Milo had said she was the best dancer out there, so why didn’t she rate a plus sign? Damn Gary, anyway.

Still, she took one of the older schedules, figuring maybe he wouldn’t miss one for dates that had already passed and, after folding it carefully, shoved it into a pocket in her skinny jeans. Next, she tried the drawers to Gary’s desk. Locked. Disappointment ran through her.

She paused for a moment to make sure she didn’t hear anyone approaching and then moved to one of the metal file cabinets. Very carefully, she pushed in the button on the handle of the top drawer, hoping against all reason that she’d find it unlocked.

No such luck. She gave it a pull, just in case it was only stuck, but it refused to budge. One by one, she tried the other drawers, finding the same thing. Each was locked. And she didn’t have the first idea about how to break in. A definite speed bump in the path to her getting Max what he needed and getting out of this life. She sighed and then clapped her hand over her mouth, remembering, too late, that she could not make a sound in here.

In fact, she’d already been in Gary’s office longer than was likely safe. Milo would come looking for her any minute. Tensley bent down to look under the desk, hoping Gary had a trashcan. People might lock their cabinets and desks, but they sometimes weren’t very careful about what they put in the trash.

She spied his garbage can, the requisite round metal bin. Dropping to her knees, she crawled under the desk to go through it. Looked like receipts, mostly, for fast food. Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Burger King. And Gary didn’t buy for others, she noted. They were all for one person.

There were a few crumpled notes, with phone numbers written on them. Good. She could have Max check them out. She smoothed and folded them as carefully as she had the schedule. Some discarded, used tissues.
Eww
. She withdrew her hand before she touched them. As she did, she heard a sound on the other side of the wall, to her left. Voices. Headed this way?
Nooo
.

Tensley straightened so fast, she bumped her head on the underside of the desk. She shot out from underneath it, rubbing the sore spot on her head with one hand and shoving the paper notes into her jeans pocket with the other. She had to get out of here before the people attached to those voices made the turn down this hallway.

On the tips of her toes, she propelled herself to the door, turning the handle and opening it without a sound. Then she sucked in a deep breath and poked her head out. No one. Yet. She was out that door, shutting it behind her, and down the opposite end of the hall so fast, she hadn’t even yet allowed herself to breathe when she ducked, yet again, into the supply closet.

If someone found her, it would be better here than in Gary’s office.

She let her breath out slowly and moved to the corner of the room, this time making sure she avoided the shelf where she now knew the liquid soap was kept. Just the thought of that soap sent her back to the time she’d spent in Max’s arms, when he couldn’t even hold on to her because of the soap clinging to her. And the adorable surprised look on his face, the way he’d run his hands along her body and made the most of the fact they’d ended up on the floor.

The passionate love they’d made, the hunger deep inside her he’d satisfied. A hunger she hadn’t allowed herself to realize existed. Longing rippled through her, weakening her knees until she had to hold on to what felt like a stack of boxes against the wall. Some confidential informant she made, she decided. She couldn’t even stand up when she thought about her … confidential cop.

The voices moved closer. Speaking in deep, low tones. Two males. She braced herself again, hoping she could hear from this vantage point when they went into Gary’s office and hoping against all hope that they weren’t headed to the supply room instead.

To her surprise, she heard them go past her door, further down the hall. Then she heard a door open and close somewhere on the other side of the supply room. In the darkness, she tiptoed across the floor and found the wall, pressing her fingertips and her ear against it. At first, she didn’t hear anything. Then she heard muffled voices. A faraway tinkle of female laughter. And the rough voice of a man. The faint notes of music.

No one had said anything about another area, separate from the club. This she had to see. Could be something Max needed to know about.

She cracked the door to the supply room open and peered out. No detectable activity. She opened it a little more. Still nothing. Then she pulled it wide enough to let herself slip through it and closed the door behind her, all without making a sound.

The hall was unoccupied, no one in sight in either direction. A shiver of doubt went through her as she contemplated whether this was the smartest thing to do. Then she told her feet to get moving, before she could second-guess herself.

It grew darker the further down the hallway she moved. She hadn’t realized it went back so far. Then it ended abruptly, with a pile of boxes in the corner, to her left. Strange, because she was pretty sure she could hear
something
coming from behind the wall to her right. That something sounded a lot like the murmur of voices and a faint hum of music. This was where the noise she’d heard earlier was coming from. But how did someone get in there?

Tensley put her hand up to the wall, feeling along the smooth, broad expanse of wood.
There
. A break in the wood. She let her fingers travel along it, halfway down, until it reached what felt like some kind of a handle. Her stomach fluttered. A hidden room in the back of the club. This could be it. Information she could give to Max that might actually help him.

Holding her breath, she slipped her fingers behind it and tentatively, gently pulled. Nothing. The door didn’t open.

She exhaled and dropped her hand. Of course it was locked. If it was anything of significance, Gary wasn’t going to let it be easily accessible.

Much as she hated to admit it, she wasn’t like all those super hero crime fighter types on TV who knew how to slip a lock with a credit card. That kind of thing hadn’t exactly been called for in her life. Until now.

A sound from further down the hall. Footsteps. Tensley’s stomach dropped as she stood in the shadows, frozen in place. She couldn’t get caught again where she wasn’t supposed to be.

Before she had a chance to think about it, she dove for the boxes in the corner, pushing them forward just far enough to hide herself behind them. She curled up as small as she could, hands on her head, afraid to make a sound. And waited.

The footsteps came closer. Tensley peered through a tiny slit between the boxes to see two men. She couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked as though one of them was Milo. Not many people were as large. His heavy step reverberated on the floor beneath her.

What would she do if they saw her? She could think of no good reason, none at all, that would explain why she was hiding behind a pile of boxes in an area of the club she’d been told to stay away from.

Her heart pounded so loud, she was sure they would hear.

Then she saw one person fumble with the door, possibly to unlock it, and it began to swing open. She nudged a box aside by half an inch and saw the two men disappear behind the door. It began to close.

Staying low to the floor, still in her crouched position, Tensley scooted out from behind the boxes to grab the bottom edge of the door before it shut. Then, after a quick look down the hallway to make sure no one was coming, she moved her fingers upward until she could peer around the edge of the door, careful to open it no more than an inch.

Inside, she saw muted lights in different colors and a flash of moving bodies. She snuck the door open a little further. There was a brown chair not far from the door, positioned sideways. In it sat a balding man with sweat glistening on his cheek and upper lip. His eyes were half-closed as one of the dancers from Gary’s club, her back to the customer and her hands on his knees, moved her bottom in a figure eight above his lap. Though Tensley recognized her, she didn’t know her name.

The topless woman appeared to be singing softly with the music in the background as she looked back over her shoulder at the man, hair brushing her bare back. He lifted his hands tentatively, questioning.

Tensley followed his gaze across the room and saw Milo standing, hands folded in front of him. He jerked his head in a nod and the man in the leather chair reached up to cup the dancer’s breasts with his hands. His expression made him look like a kid who had just been handed the keys to a candy store. The dancer moaned. The customer moaned louder.

Whoa
. So illegal, all this touching. And so … yeah, well. She wished she could try something like that out with, she’d go ahead and admit it, Max. She’d never done a lap dance, before, but it didn’t look that difficult. Sort of a balance thing.

Tensley fanned her face with the hand that wasn’t holding the door. Back to police business. What she wouldn’t give to see Max in a uniform. And take it off him.

Further back in the room, she saw a table set up with bottles and glasses, of the good stuff. No wonder Gary had been so angry about his Maker’s Mark. He used it to stock this little side business. As she watched, another dancer from Gary’s poured a drink and moved toward the man, extending it with one hand while the index finger of her other hand pulled her bottom lip down in a pout.

It was Wild Windy, the dancer whose stage name Tensley thought sounded more like a weather report than an enticement. She seemed nice enough, though. She’d showed Tensley how to kick the vending machine the other night, to make it cough up her Diet Coke instead of keeping her money.

The man took the drink without taking his eyes off the dancer in his lap. Windy walked around to the back of him and began whispering in his ear, her bare breasts pressed against him. Then she reached down to unbutton his shirt. The customer now looked as though he’d died and gone to heaven.