Knock 'em Dead (23 page)

“She was in the park?”

Crazy Frank nodded. “They were together but she gave me the money.”

“A man and a woman?” Crazy Frank seemed confused by my question. I took the nonanswer as a yes. “Was she about this tall?” I asked, raising my hand to approximate Shaylyn’s height. “Dark hair? Pretty?”

“I guess so.”

I wanted to shake a more definitive answer out of him but decided abusing a homeless guy was bad form. “What about the man with her?”

“He was pretty too.”

“C’mon, Frank. You can do better than that,” Liam said, loosening his grip but keeping hold of the guy’s scruffy collar. “Tall, short, black, white?”

“Didn’t get a good look. She just handed me the box and told me to take it across to the mail place.”

“How did you know where to send the box?” Liam asked.

Crazy Frank ran his hand over his beard. “I copied it off the piece of paper she gave me.”

“Do you still have it?” If he did, maybe there would be prints or something to prove Shaylyn was the killer.

“Had to give it back to her. Only way she’d give me the money. A fifty.”

“Do you still have the money?” Liam and Frank looked at me like
I
was the crazy one. Granted, it was a silly question.

“What about the car?” Liam asked.

“Black, maybe blue,” Frank answered after a long pause. “Dark.”

“A Bentley?” I felt a surge of excitement. Shaylyn’s sapphire luxury-mobile could be described as dark, especially by a guy who drank early and often. “Big car? Sleek?”

Crazy Frank shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”

Forget shaking him. I wanted to strangle him. “Maybe it was big, or maybe it was sleek?”

Liam pulled another twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Give me something here, Frank.”

The homeless guy’s glazed eyes fixed on the cash. “It had a sticker.”

“A bumper sticker?” I asked.

“On the front window. A circle,” Frank said, his fingers itching to make a grab for the money. “Some words, an X, and a palm tree.”

“Good job, Frank.” Liam gave him the money and Crazy Frank dashed back toward the soup kitchen.

“Why did you let him go?” I asked. “We should take him to the police and make him tell them his story. It proves Jane didn’t kill Paolo. She was in jail when Shaylyn paid Frank to send me the penis.”

“In case you missed it, Frank didn’t identify Shaylyn. He isn’t a credible witness.”

“But he’s the only one we’ve got.”

Liam pointed toward his car. “To what? There’s no way to verify his story. The cops could easily think Jane or you paid Frank to send the box after the fact just to throw them off track. We’re going to need more than Frank’s word to take to the cops.”

“So the first thing we do is check out the sticker?” I was getting pretty good at this whole investigating thing. “The Bentley is parked at Fantasy Dates. But won’t the police be there?”

“Not by the time we show up.”

It was maybe a fifteen-minute drive. “Are we walking?”

“No. I’ve got to meet a friend first.”

I could feel my heels sinking into the sandy soil as I hurried to keep pace with Liam. Along with ruining my practically new shoes, I was starting to hear the buzz of mosquitoes buzzing in my ears. I was actually looking forward to getting back to the Mustang.

“Who is this friend?”

“Trena.”

He said the single name as if it should have been instantly recognizable. Like Cher or Madonna. “Who is Trena?”

“A tech at the ME’s office. She likes me.”

Bully for her.
I slid into the passenger’s seat, fanning the air around my face in an attempt to keep the insects from tagging along for the ride. As Liam got behind the wheel, his cell rang.

“McGarrity.” After a brief pause, he passed the phone to me.

As I held it to my ear, I could smell the faint scent of his soap before it was obliterated by the stench of fumes as he started the engine. “Hello?”

“God, his voice is hot,” Becky said, sighing heavily.

Imagine him in tight black leather pants.
“You called to tell me that?”

“I called looking for you. Hearing his voice was just a bonus. Why didn’t you charge your phone?”

“I haven’t had a chance. I’ve been meeting Liam’s…
friends
.”

“And?”

I told her about Crazy Frank. “Now we’re off to see someone named Trena from the ME’s office.”

“Why?”

“Apparently that’s classified,” I said. I didn’t like his secrecy. I didn’t like being overruled about taking Frank to the police. I didn’t like not having my own phone. And I didn’t like being in such close proximity to Liam. “How’s Jane?”

“Holding up. Liv and I spent an hour with her.”

“Any word from—”

“Still no Taggert. Still no Shaylyn. Still no Zack. Weird, huh?”

“What if Taggert doesn’t show at the motion hearing in the morning?”

“He’d be an idiot to risk a contempt citation for failing to appear on his own motion.”

“He is an idiot.”

“Not a professional idiot,” Becky countered. “I’ll keep trying to get in touch with him. Call me when you’re on your way home and I’ll meet you there.”

“Sounds good. Make sure Liv keeps looking for Zack and Shaylyn. She knows every waiter, bellman, driver, and concierge in Palm Beach County. They have to be hiding somewhere.”

“Have fun with Liam. See ya later.”

“Bye.” I handed Liam his phone, ignoring the electric charge I felt when his fingers brushed my palm.

“I’ve got feelers out on them too,” he said. “We’ll find them.”

“Before or after they kill someone else?”
Like, um, me?

“You don’t know that they’ve killed anyone.”

It was dark but I glared at him anyway. “Right. They’re just misunderstood. It’s a total coincidence that they had a kinky sex sideline to their business and that Paolo was part of it and then Paolo gets killed and his part gets removed.

“They knew every detail of Jane and Paolo’s date. It’s completely plausible that one or both of them committed the murder, then framed Jane. They knew my name and address from Jane’s application, so all they had to do was find someone like Crazy Frank to deliver the box.”

Liam rubbed his chin. “Why would they kill Paolo?”

“Because they’re evil?”

“Possible. But there’s almost always something that triggers a murder and I’m not seeing one here.”

“Payton said she wouldn’t pay the assessment anymore,” I suggested.

“Which is motive to kill Payton, maybe. Not Paolo. I’m not feeling the Special Assessment thing as motive. A few grand is pocket change to the Kresley Pierponts and Jace Andrews of the world. Not enough to commit murder over.”

“Maybe they killed him when he failed to get more money out of Payton. If Paolo was their muscle—
What
?”

He stopped laughing. “Their muscle? Now you’re off on some Mafia tangent?”

“Excuse me.” God, he was infuriating. “Paolo was—whatever the PC term for the guy who collects the blackmail money is—only he went to Payton and didn’t collect so they killed him.”

“If that’s true, then killing Paolo wouldn’t be a smart move,” Liam said.

“Murder is supposed to be smart?”

“With this kind of preplanning? Yes. If Jane didn’t do it, then someone put a lot of time and thought into this.”

“Jane didn’t do it.”

“I agree.”

“I thought you didn’t care one way or the other.”

“I don’t. But I also don’t know who trashed the Fantasy Dates office. Doesn’t make sense for Zack or Shaylyn to do it and I doubt it’s a coincidence.”

“Someone was looking for something.” I thought for a second. “A home-burned DVD?”

He gave a little shrug as he turned into the parking area behind a nondescript stucco building adjacent to St. Mary’s Hospital.

I glanced around, seeing nothing but a half dozen dark vans parked along the chain-link fence surrounding the lot. “We’re meeting Trena here?” I asked.

“In there,” he said, pointing at the building.

“But that’s—”

“The morgue.”

B
eing a morgue virgin, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect as I followed Liam through metal double doors, and past big toxic-waste warning signs printed in both English and Spanish. Cherry deodorizer tried—and failed—to cover the antiseptic smell that permeated the air. Several thankfully empty gurneys were pushed off to one side of the hallway.

Liam seemed completely at ease while I was replaying every graphic slasher flick I’d ever watched. The alarm on my creepy-meter was ringing loudly in my head. Intellectually I knew the corpses weren’t going to rise and chase me until they caught me and tore me limb from limb, but my imagination was in overdrive. So much so that when a perky brunette poked her head out of one of the doorways, I jumped and made some girly yelping noise.

“Hi, Trena,” Liam greeted. “How’s everything?”

She smiled brightly and batted her big brown eyes up at Liam. It wasn’t flirtatious. More of a brother-sister kinda thing than boyfriend-girlfriend.

“Hi,” she said, leaning around Liam to offer me her hand. “I’m Trena.”

“Finley.”

“Nice to meet you.”

Her handshake was quick and firm. Trena was dressed in Carolina-blue surgical scrubs and a large sweater that threatened to swallow her not-quite-five-foot frame. As she turned back into the room, the soles of her white leather tennis shoes squeaked against the tile floor.

We followed her through what looked a lot like a high school chemistry lab. Several microscopes lined the high Formica counter that ran along both sides of the room. Above and below the counter were cabinets and drawers all labeled in neat, black block printing.

As soon as we pushed through a second set of metal doors, the temperature dropped and I nearly did as well.

There were dead people all over the place. Okay, so maybe I was exaggerating a little. There were five sheet-covered outlines wearing toe tags. Worse still, they were on the stainless steel drain tables I’d only seen on various versions of
CSI
.

Trena went to the next to last table and yanked back the sheet. “Liam McGarrity, meet William Arthur.”

Bile rose in my throat when I saw what was once a human being. “That’s disgusting.”

Trena shot me a sympathetic look. “First time?”

I brought my hand up to cover my nose and mouth and nodded.

“Want to wait in the hallway?” Liam asked.

Hell yes.
“N-no. I’m fine.”

Liam leaned closer to the corpse, near where a large Y incision dissected the torso. “So, did our limo driver blow himself up or did he have help?”

Taking a clipboard from a hook on the edge of the table, Trena licked the tip of her index finger, then flipped through the pages. “Died from impact injuries consistent with an explosion. Burns over a hundred percent of his body. Charring in the trachea and lungs.”

“So, he was alive when the boat caught fire?”

Trena nodded. “In a matter of speaking. See this?” she asked as she pointed toward darker flecks of flesh barely attached to the underlying skeletal structure. “Analysis indicates high levels of gasoline in the tissue. Could have splashed on him during the explosion or could have been poured on him prebarbecue. Not enough tissue to make a definitive determination. Tox screen showed a blood alcohol level of point three.”

“He wasn’t drunk?” I asked.

“No. The alcohol looks like it was just the delivery system.”

“For?” I prompted.

“GHB. There was still a high concentration of it in his stomach contents at autopsy.”

I was
so
sorry I asked. And while unhappy about being unemployed, ecstatic that I didn’t have
her
job.

Trena scanned the last page, then returned the clipboard to its place. “Someone slipped roofies in his Miller Lite. Or he slipped them to himself.”

“Date masturbation?” I asked.

Trena laughed. “What can I tell you?” she asked as she covered the crispy corpse with the sheet. “Some people dose themselves with the stuff. I’m told there’s a real euphoria in the first ten to thirty minutes. As far as your friend here, all I can tell you is that he had it in his system. How it got there is a whole different thing.”

“No other injuries?” Liam asked.

“Minor bruising on the right cheekbone.”

“Like he was punched?” I was thinking of the blood spatter on the floor at Fantasy Dates.

“There wasn’t enough flesh left on the face to be certain.”

I
really
needed to rethink the whole asking-questions part of this thing.

“But it is a possibility,” Trena continued. “I can tell you that the death certificate is going to list this as suspicious, but there’s not enough evidence to work with for the ME to classify it as a homicide.”

“Thanks,” Liam said.

“Not a prob.”

We started to leave—good thing since my stomach was in full revolt—when Trena called, “You wanted to know about that Martinez guy too, right?”

“Yeah. Anything other than…the obvious?”

Trena smiled at me. “Notice how freaked men get when it comes to genital mutilation?”

“It’s a guy thing,” I agreed.

Placing her palms on the edge of one of the empty autopsy tables, Trena hoisted her small frame up until she was comfortably seated with her legs crossed. Actually, I couldn’t imagine being comfortable on something used to dissect people, but I’m picky that way.

“Two different knives used in the attack,” Trena began as if she was composing a grocery list. “No signs of struggle. Blood alcohol level well within the legal limits. Negative for drugs.”

“No GHB?” Liam asked.

She shook her head. “Not at the time of autopsy, but that stuff is stealthy. It leaves the system…” She paused to snap her fingers. “Like that. Only marks on the body were a leaf tattoo on his left shoulder and a small scrape with a rectangular bruise 11.2 by 9.2 centimeters at his temple.”

Liam raked his fingers through his hair. “From?”

Trena shrugged her shoulders. “Got me. Bring me something sharp, small, and roughly one-half-inch rectangular and I’ll tell you if it’s what left the scratch and the bruise.”

Several minutes later I was alone by the chain-link fence sucking in deep gulps of air and doing my best not to puke all over my formerly favorite pair of shoes. Now I’d only associate them with the past few hours. Now they were shelter shoes or morgue shoes—whatever. Bottom line? They’d have to go the way of my jail jammies.

To his credit, Liam wasn’t mocking me. To his discredit, he was leaning against the hood of his car, one foot propped on the chrome bumper, chatting on his cell phone while I was being tormented by skittish lizards and the memory of Fried Guy.

Patrick wouldn’t do this to me. He wasn’t the kind of man to leave me pseudo-lurching in the weeds. Then again, Patrick wasn’t the kind of guy to go sneaking into a morgue after hours either.

No compare and contrast!
I told myself.
Again.

Reaching into my purse, I shoved aside Payton’s porn DVD, found a mint, and popped it in my mouth hoping to relieve the acrid taste of death coating my tongue. It’s amazing to think I’ve spent the last seven years as an estates and trusts paralegal and this is the first time I’ve ever been up close and personal with a body. Not so amazing, I decided as I pushed my hair off my face and tried to fan away some of the perspiration. My job is—
was
to deal with the aftermath of death. Not this.

“Finley?” Liam called. “Gotta go!”

“Let me choke down the last vestiges of stomach acid and I’ll be right with you,” I muttered as I walked back to the Mustang.

“You okay?”

I glared at him. “Just dandy, thanks.”

“Why are you pissed at me?” he asked as we got into the car.

“You could have warned me. A heads-up. A little
something
would have been appreciated. I just wasn’t prepared to see my first real life dead person.”

“Real life dead person?”

I smiled in spite of my annoyance. “You know what I meant.”

“Yeah. Anyway…” He paused to start the pitiful engine, then pointed the sputtering thing toward I-95. “I’ll drop you off, then swing by Fantasy Dates to see if there’s a sticker on the windshield of the Bentley.”

“What should I do?”

“Go home.”

“I can be useful,” I argued.

“Life is all about perception, isn’t it?”

“That was mean.”

“You want to be useful?”

“Yes.”

“Then go home and watch
Payton Does Palm Beach
.”

“You get to revisit a crime scene and I have to watch homemade spank-me porn? How is that fair?”

He laughed, a low, sensual sound that reverberated through the interior of the car and resonated deep inside me. “One of us has to watch it and I have a thing.”

My fists clenched when he said it. I wanted to take the DVD out of my purse and slap it against his forehead. Not because he’d said “thing,” though that did annoy me. And not because he’d placed me in charge of porn viewing; I wasn’t going to get the vapors or anything. No, I was just royally miffed because I figured he was probably on his way to hook up with the not-so-ex Mrs. McGarrity. Correction, I was miffed that I was miffed. There’s something decidedly loathsome about lusting for a guy that is totally wrong for you in every way while you’re in a relationship with someone who’s totally right.

As a human being, I suck.

“You’re quiet,” he commented as we drove over the intracoastal waterway.

“I’m saving my energy for the ‘Payton’s Been a Bad, Bad Girl’ film fest.”

“If it’s going to bother you to watch it, then—”

“It’s not going to bother me,” I insisted. “It’s going to bore me.”

“Not into watching, eh?”

“Not really, no. You?”

“Depends on who and what I’m watching.”

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” he asked as he pulled the Mustang to the curb behind my BMW.

“Give me a simple answer to a simple question.”

He checked his watch, unhooked his seat belt, reached across me, and opened my door. “Let’s get you headed home.”

Wait, did I miss something? I blinked, watching dumbfounded as he stepped out of his car and walked toward mine. Gathering up my purse, my keys, and my dignity, I managed to swallow my irritation. I couldn’t demand explanations; from him, that was too…too
girlfriendish
.

Key at the ready, I clicked the disarm button. The taillights flashed amber and a loud chirp cut through the early-evening quiet.

Liam opened the door but lingered by the side of my car. His presence crowded my space, leaving me only two options. Number one: turn sideways so I could slip behind the wheel without any part of my body touching his. Number two: screw it all and take the half step that would press me firmly against him.

Heat surged through me. Granted, some if it was the humiliating memory of the last time I’d misread the signals and started unbuttoning my blouse. Most of it was pure, unadulterated curiosity. I was drawn to him in a self-destructive way. Kind of like when you know the iron is hot but you touch it anyway just to make sure.

However, I was not going to make an ass of myself a second time. Though my pulse was pounding in my ears and my hormones were positively riveted by his smoky blue-gray eyes, I took the high ground and went with option number one.

Almost.

Liam’s hands closed on my waist and suddenly I found my back against the cold metal of my car and my front pressed against him. His feet were planted shoulder width apart, creating a comfortable cradle for me in the V of his thighs.

His warm, coffee-scented breath washed over my face as my mind tried to process the sudden onslaught of sensations. I didn’t know where to focus first. Everything was coming at me at once—the smoldering, seductive look in his eyes. The hardness of his chest. The solidness of his thighs against mine.

I opened my mouth, hoping something pithy would magically come forth. Some quip that would diffuse the situation and prevent me from doing something really,
really
stupid.

Nada. I was witless, mute, and so incredibly hot I couldn’t stand it. It was a libidinous version of rock-paper-scissors. Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, paper beats rock. Liam was paper. I was…toast.

Mixed metaphors aside, I was transfixed as I focused on his features. The muted glow cast by the streetlamp softened the sharp angles of his face. His fingers splayed slightly, but the deciding vote was cast when the pads of his thumbs started making slow, dizzying little circles just below my rib cage.

Lifting my hands, I tentatively bracketed his waist and waited. And waited. His mouth hovered no more than a whisper above mine.

“Well?”

The corners of Liam’s lips curved into a smile. “Impatient?”

“You started this.”

His fingers stilled but he didn’t let me go.

“My mistake,” he said; his voice was as steady as his gaze.

I, on the other hand, was a quivering blob. Weak in the knees. Had it been physically possible, I would have tossed his tall, dark, handsome,
having-second-thoughts
ass into the backseat of my car. To my credit and surprise, I actually managed to drape myself in a cloak of disinterest. “Then, we’re done here?”

He shook his head. “Oh, we’re definitely not done. But I have a—”

“Thing? Ashley waiting for you, is she?” No, no,
no!
Did I really just make a snarky, jealous reference to his ex? Despite my silent, fervent pleas, the ground did not open and swallow me whole.

Liam stepped back but his hands still gripped my waist. “You’re hardly in a position to offer commentary. As soon as you clean up your own house, you’re welcome to have an opinion.”

My house? I shrugged out of his hold. “Want to tell me what that means?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you, Finley. Subtle doesn’t work on you very well, does it?” Tossing his keys in the air, then catching them, he turned and started back to his car. “Just an FYI, I’m not meeting Ashley,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m going back to Fantasy Dates, then to the mail place to watch the security footage again. That’s how I found Crazy Frank. Now that I know what to look for, I’ll see if a dark car is visible anywhere on the tape. Find the car, find the killer.”