Hot Trick (A Detective Shelley Caldwell Novel) Page 11

  Excited, he took her hand and pulled her toward a caged entrance. The building was locked up.

  “What is this place?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The inside was definitely better looking than the outside. Though there was still a lot more work to do—the renovation had been stopped midway—the bones of the interior were promising.

  “The original owner ran out of money to finish the place,” he said, bringing her up to the fourth floor in an elevator using a key. The doors opened directly into the apartment. A spiral metal staircase in the middle of the room led to the smaller top floor, which was meant to be a huge master suite. “But he finished this floor. It’s what sold me.”

  “Sold you. You mean you bought it?”

  “The deal’s not final. I wanted you to see it first. Get your approval.”

  “If you like it, that’s all that matters.”

  “You matter.” Jake wanted it to be their home, the start of their future together.

  The floors were newly sanded, the back wall was exposed brick, and the others were painted a deep maroon to cut down on the reflection of light, the reason he didn’t remove the sunglasses. The big windows faced east with a spectacular city view at night. During the day, the place would need shades or curtains to soften the brightness for his eyes. But when he wasn’t there, Shelley could open them to have as much light as would make her happy. He wanted above all to make the woman he loved happy.

  From behind, he wrapped his arms around her waist and murmured in her ear, “So what do you think?”

  “It’s wonderful.”

  He slid his hands up to cup her breasts. “Then you approve?”

  Her breath caught in her throat and she gasped. “If it’s what you want—”

  “I want you.” He flipped her around to face him, her lushness pressed up against his hardness.

  “You have me, Jake.”

  Not in the way he needed. He scooped the back of her head with one hand and plundered her mouth, piercing it with his tongue in a rhythm that made her breathe faster and squirm against him. Not letting up, he danced her back against the iron staircase and began stripping off her jacket.

  “Jake…an hour…”

  “It won’t take me that long.” He opened her shirt and unhooked her bra to free her breasts. “Not today.”

  He pulled down her slacks and pushed her onto the third step. She unzipped his jeans and stopped him from entering her.

  “Let me,” she whispered.

  Shelley knew how to use her mouth for more than talking. Jake watched as she circled his head with her tongue and then drew him in, inch by inch. Grabbing the metal railings on both sides, he held himself up as she worked him.

  Today he didn’t want to draw out the sex until he thought he would go mad.

  Remembering Shelley had worn Sebastian’s scent, he wanted to bind her to him by leaving his scent on her. Make it so she wouldn’t even notice another man. He couldn’t let another man think she was available, not when he couldn’t live without her.

  So he let himself go, let the tension climb fast and hard, and only when he was ready did he pull out of her mouth and spill himself over her breasts and belly.

  Though he licked and suckled her, he knew that even when she washed up, his scent would linger on her skin.

  Today he marked her as his.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The moment I walked into the office, Norelli said, “Hey, Caldwell, you look like a new woman. Rested. And no sling for the arm. Good. The doc fixed you right up. Aren’t you glad you listened to me for once?”

  Leave it to Norelli to take all the credit. Well, let him. I wasn’t going to tell him about Jake’s methods of making me all squishy and new.

  Realizing Norelli was waiting for an answer, I said, “Yeah, right. The doc gave me a giant horse pill that worked like magic.”

  Jake had worked magic on me too, but I was putting off making any life-changing decisions. As much as I enjoyed the physical aspects of our relationship, the emotional part made me panic.

  Norelli barked a laugh. “We had some magic going on right here last night.”

  “What kind of magic?”

  “The kind where an offender escapes and no one knows nothing.”

  My gut roiled. “Tony Raymer.”

  “You must be psychic.”

  Sort of—at least with my twin—but Norelli didn’t need to know that. “Details?”

  “Poof, he was gone, that’s it. The guard discovered the empty cell when he went to get Tattoo Boy for his chat with the judge.”

  “The cell door?”

  “Locked. Hence…magic.”

  I was really getting a sick feeling here. Once more the supernatural must be involved. “I knew I shouldn’t have left.”

  “What? You were gonna babysit him all night?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then stop trying to take the heat,” Norelli said, giving me a wave like he could take it away. “Leave that to the guy he bribed to set him free. This Jimmy J must have connections everywhere. First the thieves escaping the wagon, now this, right in our midst.”

  Magic…what if it was?

  A little voice in my head told me I’d better find out for sure. And there was only one way I knew how. Silke. I thought to SOS her but then thought again. We needed to do this in person, where I could concentrate on the possibilities. And on her best interests.

  “So what’s the plan for the day?” I asked.

  “Well, we finally got a bead on Fox.”

  “You got to him? What did you find out?”

  “Not yet.” Norelli rubbed his hands together. “I just got an address on him. You can accompany me and see me nail the bastard.”

  “If he’s guilty.”

  Norelli nodded, but he wore that smug expression I hated—the one that told me he was already convinced of his success. I instructed myself to simmer down, to let things play out. I wondered what he would think if I told him Sebastian had planted the suggestion in his mind to go after Fox. He’d never believe me.

  “Let’s get on the road,” he said. “I’m driving.”

  So what else was new?

  Once on our way, he said, “Fox is holed up in a cheap hotel in Humboldt Park, no signs of gainful employment.”

  “Humboldt Park?” I echoed.

  “Yeah, he and Cole are practically neighbors. Fox checked in weeks ago, the day after Sebastian Cole orchestrated his first stunt in Millennium Park.”

  I only vaguely remembered it. “So potentially Fox could have found out about Sebastian’s plans somehow and acted accordingly.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  I tried to get a handle on the idea and just couldn’t manage it. “Fox might have made his living by bilking little old ladies…but murder?”

  “Revenge and greed are the strongest motives for murder. You know that, Caldwell.”

  I had to ask the obvious. “If Fox was out for revenge, why didn’t he simply kill Sebastian?”

  “The Martin woman would have been easier. And maybe he just wanted to see the man who ruined him have his career ruined in return. Maybe he gets off on dipping his toes into other people’s misery.”

  I had to admit Fox’s timing was suspicious. Arriving in Chicago right after Sebastian went public? And the choice of hotel, barely four blocks from Sebastian’s loft. Maybe Norelli was on the right track.

  The Hotel Humboldt was a dump, frequented more often by the hour than by the week. I let Norelli take the lead. He showed the clerk his star and got the room number. We climbed two airless flights of stairs and walked down the hall to the back of the building. No one around but the roaches.

  Norelli banged at the door. “Police. Open up.”

  A muffled voice called out, “Go away. I’m not interested.”

  “You better get interested before I kick down this flimsy panel. We’re here to talk to you about Sebastian Cole.”

&nbs
p; I heard a lock being undone and another. Then we were inside a shabby room reeking with dust. Probably mold too. I decided I didn’t really need to sit.

  “I’m so glad you sought me out, guv’nor,” Fox said to Norelli. “Sebastian has everyone fooled. He uses charm to blind them, but it’s all an act.”

  The pot calling the kettle black, I thought. Edmund Fox was a phony from his dyed black hair to his British accent. Probably in his mid-forties, he’d stuffed his out-of-shape torso into what I thought might be a smoking jacket. Not that I’d ever seen one up-close-and-personal before.

  “Is that why you’re here in Chicago?” Norelli asked. “To expose Sebastian Cole?”

  “My being here is simply a coincidence. I got a lead on a job, and being out of work…”

  “What lead? What job?”

  “A hot new club in Bucktown.” Fox’s mouth went straight. “Unfortunately they weren’t interested. Said they wanted to appeal to a younger audience. So they hired Harry Dawson instead.”

  That got my attention. “Dawson’s in town?”

  “Who’s Dawson?” Norelli asked.

  “Apparently Sebastian’s chief competition.”

  Norelli turned back to Fox. “If you didn’t get the job, why are you still here?”

  “I have no place better to be until I get another lead on work.” Fox sat in an armed chair, the only one in the room, as if it were a throne. “The accommodations here may not be the best, but they won’t bust my budget.”

  “If you’re not working, how can you afford any budget?”

  “I have my ways. Trade secrets.”

  “Like turning lead into gold?” I muttered.

  Norelli flashed me a look. “As long as your ways are legal.” He paused a second, then asked, “How much do you hate Sebastian Cole?”

  “Enough.”

  “Enough to frame him for a crime? Murder?”

  Fox went from puzzled to gleeful. “You think Sebastian is a murderer? Then why is the bastard still walking the streets a free man?”

  “That’s the point,” I said. “We don’t think he murdered anyone. We think he has a copycat.”

  Norelli fixed Fox with an intense stare. “And who better to copy Sebastian Cole than a man who knows his work—another magician.”

  “Wait a minute! You can’t think I had something to do with murdering Julie Martin.”

  “Aha! You know the victim’s name.”

  Fox rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Detective, it was splashed all over the front pages. The media suggested how odd it was that she drowned in the river mere hours after Sebastian’s successful escape.”

  “Because it points to him doesn’t mean Cole did it,” Norelli said. “If he wanted to kill someone, why would he be so obvious as to leave his marker on the job? You see where I’m going with this.”

  “Did he put you up to accusing me?” Fox’s visage darkened. “He has a way of making people do whatever he wants.”

  Didn’t I know it? Even so, I remained silent.

  “I’m sure you’d like me to believe he’s guilty,” Norelli said, “but I’m keeping an open mind.”

  I clenched my jaw as he repeated Sebastian’s suggestion. Fox was exactly right. Not that I was about to confirm as much.

  “While you’re keeping that open mind, don’t rule Sebastian out,” Fox said.

  “I need a motive.”

  The lack of a motive was the main reason I wasn’t after Sebastian myself. He might be manipulative. He might pull dangerous stunts—though when checked out, he actually had a permit for the trunk escape. But he simply had no motive to want Julie Martin dead.

  “Maybe you need to go slumming,” Fox said. “Check out his record. It’s not as clean as you think.”

  That accusation got my undivided attention.

  “He’s been arrested before?”

  “In Vegas. Check it out.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He tried to kill Delano Robichaux.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “I’m beginning to wonder if Cole suckered us,” Norelli said as we drove back to the station.

  “We only have Fox’s word on the situation. Let’s wait to judgment until we find out for ourselves.”

  “But if it’s true—”

  “Doesn’t mean he’s actually a murderer.”

  Though I couldn’t help worrying about it. About Silke’s involvement with Sebastian. I would do the sisterly thing, advise her to quit, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. And maybe I was worrying for nothing.

  I went over the pieces of the case in my head and wondered about the note found on Julie Martin’s laptop.

  “Did we ever find out what the Martin woman was doing the night before she was murdered?” I asked.

  “I have someone on it. So far, nada. No one at her office admits knowing anything. Nothing on her calendars to indicate any kind of appointment.”

  I wouldn’t have expected her to write down an assignation with another man. That’s what the big secret had to be. Why else would she have driven to the south side late at night to keep her husband from finding out?

  “Has anyone gotten to her friends?”

  “The husband was going to fax a list of her close friends today, then drop by her little black book later.”

  The list was waiting when we got back to the office. I divided my time between talking to Julie Martin’s friends and researching Delano Robichaux and his connection to Sebastian. And then I called the Vegas police.

  It took the better part of the afternoon, but I finally pieced it together. One of the Martin woman’s friends had talked. She’d said Julie Martin loved her husband but had made a joke about meeting with another man the night before she died. That Julie had sounded driven, unlike herself, as if the man held some kind of influence over her. She’d described the man as being mysterious and charismatic. No name, but the description fit Sebastian Cole.

  As to the Vegas incident, Sebastian and Robichaux had fought over a woman. A married woman. Both men had been arrested. I asked if they’d looked at Sebastian as a suspect in Robichaux’s eventual murder, but they hadn’t. His demise had been mob related.

  Still, if Sebastian had been the man Julie Martin met…Two incidents involving Sebastian and a married woman. Two murders. Hard to believe there wasn’t some kind of a connection.

  I shared with Norelli and he agreed.

  “What next?” I asked him. My brain had gone temporarily on hold. I couldn’t figure out where to go with what I’d found.

  “I figure I’ll talk to the Martin woman’s neighbors when they get home from work.”

  “Yeah, but someone already did that.”

  “I wanna follow up, though, make sure nothing got missed. A couple of the neighbors weren’t home. Maybe I’ll catch one of them. And then I was going to stake out the funeral parlor, see who shows to pay their last respects.” Norelli picked up a little black book from his desk and flipped it to me, saying, “For you. Martin came through with his wife’s phone book. He put red dots by the close personal friends—some of them were on the fax list—blue dots by business acquaintances. Apparently he didn’t know anything about the others.”

  “I’ll see that it’s taken care of.”

  Norelli nodded. “You get anything—and I mean anything—you call me.”

  “Got it.”

  But I doubted he’d get the information I was going after now, because if magic was involved, I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

  “Hey, what about the laptop?” I asked, stopping Norelli at the door.

  “Dead end. The bastard used an internet café to send that email and paid in cash.”

  “Fingerprints from the car?”

  “Not yet. Though Bobby Rafferty took it to the mayor. I expect results in the next couple of days.”

  A couple of days…nothing in the scheme of the system…forever when you were trying to solve a murder.

  I started making calls bu
t got nowhere. Most people were at work and I had to leave voice-mail messages. When I’d had enough, I gave one of the officers assigned to the case the black book with instructions to pick up where I’d left off. I wanted every single person listed called to see if we could figure out what Julie Martin had been doing the night before her death.

  Then I left the office and stopped halfway to Silke’s place for lunch. I indulged in a big burger and fries and washed it all down with a mocha malt. Sex with Jake always made me ravenous, and I figured I’d already burned the equivalent calories. The thought put a smile on my lips as I got back on the road.

  Silke lived farther north than I did, giving me time to think as I drove. Time to spook myself out. Apparently dealing with real vampires had only been the beginning of my supernatural adventures…

  I knew I ought to share the new developments with Jake—and I would—but Silke was my first concern. And my best source for information. Still, Jake had been born into the supernatural world. The case screamed for his help. Maybe I’d have to involve him after all.

  But as far as my career went, I knew I had to cover. My first run in with a vampire had almost ruined my career.

  Never again.

  I hated the sense of division, hated leading two separate lives. Maybe that was the very reason I’d avoided bringing Jake deeper into my life.

  I was a damn coward.

  I had to find a way to get over it, because I couldn’t imagine a world without Jake. To learn to not fear the L-word. To resolve my issues with my own nature and his.

  And I had to do it before I lost him for good.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Sebastian paced the length of his loft, mentally preparing for that night’s illusion. He stopped at the desk and looked over the photographs he always carried with him, reminders of who he was, where he came from and what he had to do.

  Regret tore through him as he trailed a finger across the photo of his late mother. She’d been everything to him, she’d had no choice in the matter. They’d both been betrayed by the man who was supposed to love them.

  Then his gaze went to the boy—still alive, now a man—the reason Sebastian was in Chicago.