Limbo (9 page)

Dash swallowed at the sickening scenario. He’d avoided
those
taskforces during his years on the job because the thought that people like that were out there in a world Katie inhabited made him want to load up his gun.

‘Okay, no more panties.’

She snorted. ‘Not for you anyway.’

Dash shrugged philosophically. That was pretty much par for the course where his sex life was concerned at that moment. ‘The point
is
,’ he continued, ‘you should leave this stuff to the professionals.’

‘So you
are
going to help me?’

Dash gave an emphatic shake of his head and blew on his coffee. ‘I’m busy.’

She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Reading the paper?’

‘I have irons in fires.’

She looked around his empty office pointedly. ‘
This
is irons in fires?’

‘A lot of P.I. work is waiting.’

The look she gave him was one hundred percent sceptical. ‘Fine. I’ll…’

She let the sentence hang for long moments and he could see her brain scrabbling behind those solemn brown eyes for something,
anything
that might sway him. ‘I’ll pay you.’

Dash snorted. ‘I don’t come cheap.’

She glanced around his office again, clearly finding his spartan tastes wanting. ‘So you blow it all on child support? Or booze and bad women?’

‘I’m a guy. We don’t go for prissy or any of that feng shui crap.’

‘Nope. Looks more like sad, divorced guy circa 2011.’

‘It gets the job done. The décor doesn’t matter.’

‘Yeah but what about poor Ralph?’

She looked over his shoulder and Dash turned to eyeball the fish-that-refused-to-die. When he’d been married and it had been their turn on Katie’s class goldfish roster at least one of the little bastards would die. Not so Ralph. He just swam aimlessly around his small bowl in one continuous loop.

Day after day after day for over three years now.

‘He has a seven-second memory. He’s pretty chilled.’

‘Are you kidding? He doesn’t have any memory left. He’s been lulled into a stupor from chasing his tail around the world’s smallest bowl for the few years. He’s not chilled, he’s freaking hypnotised. He needs…greenery or something. Even you have a plant.’

Dash watched Ralph’s current slow revolution. ‘That would probably kill him,’ he mused as he turned back to face Joy. ‘Probably shouldn’t upset his routine.’

She eyed him for long moments, her gaze squarely on his face now. ‘How much do you charge?’

He told her and there was a certain sense of satisfaction as she blinked in a way that told him she was seeing him in a completely new light.

‘You can have the reward money,’ she blurted out, surprising even herself if the angry eyebrow v and the little circle she made with her lips was any indication.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘I thought you didn’t want anything to do with the money?’

Joy sighed. ‘I don’t…’

‘Eve has an opening next door if you need to make a little extra cash.’

‘And you know
this
how?’

He grinned. ‘She always has an opening.’

And then, as if she knew her name was being uttered, the door opened and a woman stepped into the office.

Joy blinked at the Jessica Rabbit vision before her. Tall, blonde and curvy with a nice full mouth that curled up prettily at the ends. She looked like a fifties screen siren in her tight pencil skirt and clingy v-necked sweater.

‘Eve,’ Dash smiled. ‘We were just talking about you.’

Joy stared.
Eve?
This was Eve? This was far from Dolly Parton. This looked like the kind of woman searching for a Maltese Falcon.

Frankly, Eve was hot.

Hell, if she’d been into women, she’d be drooling all over the floor about now. In fact, Eve was the type of woman that other women turned for.

Joy was sure as shit thinking about switching sides.

‘All good I hope,’ she laughed in a sexy vibrato that reminded Joy of smoky clubs and earthy blues.

‘But of course.’

Joy blinked at the grin Dash dazzled Eve’s way. It was all slow and easy, emphasising the fullness of his crooked mouth and those killer dimples. It transformed the ugly-handsome into high-octane, do-me-now sexy.

‘Sorry, I didn’t realise you had a client.’

‘It’s fine,’ he said waving her in. ‘Eve, I’d like you to meet Joy. Joy…Eve. I was on the force with Joy’s older brother Pete back in the day.’

Eve smiled at her and extended her hand and said, ‘Oh hey…you’re Joy from X Factor.’

Joy felt like a gauche fifteen-year-old who hadn’t been through puberty yet as she stood and shook the hand of the most sophisticated woman she’d ever met. ‘The very same,’ she said.

‘I
loved
your voice. That version of ‘Jolene’…’ She ran her palms up and down her upper arms. ‘It gave me honest-to-god goosebumps. I’d buy that in a flash.’

Joy blushed at the warm compliment, struck by how genuine it seemed. ‘Thank you. Unfortunately all it gave the judges was hives.’

Eve laughed and looked at Dash. ‘I like her.’

‘Oh yeah,’ he said looking Joy up and down again in that disparaging way, his gaze lingering on her A cups. Although quite why, when there were an impressive set of double Ds in the same room, Joy wasn’t sure. ‘She’s a real peach.’

‘I was just dropping in to see if you still wanted me to mind Katie Saturday arvo, and what time?’

‘Ah yes…please. My appointment’s at —’ He reached for his phone and swiped the screen a couple of times. ‘Three thirty?’

‘Ok. I’ll be here at three-fifteen. That give you enough time to be where you need to be?’

‘Sure. It’s just at the Purple Parrot.’

‘Excellent.’ Eve smiled warmly again and nodded at Joy. ‘I’ll leave you two to it. It was nice meeting you, Joy,’ she said.

‘Likewise,’ Joy said, and realised she meant it. She wanted to dislike the other woman. After all, was it fair to have so much of the good stuff dished out to one person? But the truth was, she’d been too damn nice to hate.

Dash, who was sitting there grinning like a loon, on the other hand…

The door clicked shut and Joy cocked an eyebrow at him as she reclaimed her seat. ‘You leave your kid with a hooker?’

‘She’s not a hooker,’ he said, unperturbed by her question, his grin broadening. ‘She’s a madam. She manages the place, she doesn’t…’

‘Put out?’ Joy supplied sweetly.

Dash laughed. ‘Yes.’

‘So she…worked her way up the ranks?’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, being a madam isn’t exactly something every little girl aspires to be, right? It’s not like prostitutes have a booth at the careers market, is it? And I would think you’d need to have been in that…industry…to run a successful brothel?’

He leaned forward in his chair. ‘Are you asking me did she
used
to be a prostitute?’

‘No. I’m assuming she probably was.’

He nodded. ‘A long time ago. But she got out. Got married. Became a florist.’

A florist?
‘And then?’

‘She got divorced six years ago around the time of the Ginny Bardan murder.’

Joy crinkled her brow. She didn’t know the case.

‘Ginny was a friend of Eve’s. She was a street prostitute in the Basin. Eve was really pissed and as she still knew a lot of people in the industry and she’s a shrewd business woman she decided to use her divorce-settlement money to open a place that was safe for the workers as well as the clients.’

‘And how did her ex feel about that?’

He chuckled. ‘He was fairly pissed about it. Actually, Tom’s still pissed about it.’

‘And does your wife know?

‘My
ex
wife?’

The emphasis was not lost on Joy. ‘Yes.’

‘About Eve?’ He frowned. ‘She knows I live next door to a brothel if that’s what you mean?’

‘About Eve minding Katie.’

He frowned again. ‘Of course. Liz and Eve have met. I actually think Liz likes Eve a lot more than she ever did me. And Katie
adores
Eve.’

Joy regarded him for long moments as he sipped his coffee. There was obvious affection in his voice. ‘Are you two…screwing?’

Dash almost inhaled his coffee and Joy waited patiently for him to stop choking half to death. He glared at her. ‘And that is your business how?’

‘So you
are
screwing.’

Dash held her gaze for a beat or two then settled back into his chair and raised his mugs to his lips again, but not before she saw a slight quirk to one side of his mouth. ‘No comment. Why do you care, anyway?’

Joy blinked. She didn’t. She
really
didn’t. He was looking at her speculatively as if he was wondering whether she was about to go all bunny-boiler on him.

And it wasn’t like that. At all.

She hadn’t been carrying some torch for him the last few years because they’d gotten naked and done the wild thing together. She’d had a scorchingly hot, gorgeously filthy, horribly messy two-year relationship in the states. She hadn’t been pining over Dash.

She and Dash
hadn’t
been a maybe-he’s-the-one thing. They’d been convenience, a pleasant interlude, a nice way to pass a few hours.

That’s all they’d ever be.

She just couldn’t help but wonder what the hell he’d been messing around with her for when he had a bona fide sex goddesses at his beck and call.

‘I don’t. Just curious I guess…’

‘Oh? Going to write a song about us?’

Joy snorted. ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’

‘I don’t know. Sounds perfect for a country music hit. An ex-cop, a madam…all you’d need is a dead dog, a cheating woman and a broken-down truck and it’s perfect.’

Joy laughed. If she had a buck for everyone who pigeonholed what she sang she wouldn’t have had to humiliate herself on national television. ‘I think we’re off topic.’

‘I think you might be right.’ He drained his coffee. ‘Where were we?’

‘You were going to help me find Isabella Richardson and get Martin off the hook. Pro bono.’

She smiled at him with her best sucking-up face. What the hell — in for a penny, in for a pound.

He chuckled and it did weird things to her insides. ‘I don’t believe I was.’

‘
Please
Dash. For old time’s sake?’ Prior to meeting Eve she may have offered to flash him her tits. But that clearly wasn’t going to work on him in a room still fresh with the memory of her double Ds.

‘We have nothing to go on other than a dead woman’s vague recollections. And that’s assuming I actually believe the whole incident and you weren’t just having some kind of formaldehyde-induced vision.’

‘You don’t believe me? You think I made it up? Or dreamed it on some embalming high?’

Joy held her breath. For some reason it was as important that he believed her over this as it had been that he believed her over the reward money. Maybe if he hadn’t been there with her that Christmas Day all those years ago…

But he had been and she knew he’d seen it too.

‘I believe you.’

‘Thank you.’ There was silence for a few moments. ‘If you don’t want to do it for me then do it for Katie.’

‘What does my daughter have to do with anything?’

‘What if this
was
Katie?’ Joy murmured. ‘If someone had taken Katie and someone else had information that just might lead them to her wouldn’t you want that person to act on that information?’

‘I’d want them to go to the police.’

‘We did that.’

Joy could tell she’d hit a nerve as a battle waged in Dash’s eyes. ‘It’s not Katie,’ he said, stubbornly.

‘No. It’s a one-year-old girl. A baby. Who needs to be with
her
daddy.’

Joy knew then she’d hit the jackpot with the
D
word. She saw him give in the second she’d uttered it.

‘Okay. Fine,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll look into it.’

Joy grinned, suppressing the urge to bounce in her chair or throw her arms around his neck. ‘Where do we go first?’

‘
We
don’t
go
anywhere.’

‘What? You’re just going to sit and
wait
some more?’ She reached across and ruffled the newspaper. ‘Read some more?’

He shot her an exasperated look. ‘Okay. You need to leave now.’

‘I want to help.’

‘You can help by ceasing to be a pain in my ass and taking yourself elsewhere.’

‘What are you going to be doing?’

‘I’m going to be familiarising myself with the case. If that’s okay with you?’

‘By shaking down your snitches?’

Dash threw back his head and laughed and Joy copped an eyeful of whiskery throat. ‘By using this,’ he said, holding up the computer mouse.

‘Okay. What can I do?’

‘Nothing. Go home.
Do not
watch any
Law and Order
. I’ll ring you tomorrow.’

Joy thought about arguing but she figured she’d pushed him enough for one day and he
had
agreed to take the case.

Dashiell Dent was on the case.

And damn if that didn’t do interesting things to her interesting places.

Dash’s mobile rang at one the next morning and he groped for it with a thundering heart.
Katie
.

He squinted at the screen.
Not Katie.
Eve. The sickening spike in his pulse settled. Although Eve wouldn’t exactly be ringing him for a chat at one in the morning. Which could only mean one thing.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed as he swiped his finger across the screen. ‘Eve?’

‘Sorry. I know it’s late but I need a hand over here.’

‘I’ll be there in two.’

Dash hung up and reached for his track pants, which he pulled on over his underwear. He shoved his hand through his hair and put his phone in the back pocket as he slid his feet into a pair of slide thongs. He grabbed his fleecy jumper that hung over the balustrading at the top of the stairs, slipping into it, zipping it up the front over his naked chest as he hit the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he detoured to the kitchen to pick the apartment keys off the bench and was out the door in under a minute.

The cold air hit him with a blast, curling his exposed toes as he hurried to Eve’s. The days might have been beautiful but a winter night in BrisVegas could still freeze the balls off a brass monkey.