Eeny Meany Miny Die (Cat Sinclair Mysteries) Read online

  "It'll be all right, Darling," he crooned. "Won't it, Corey?"

  Corey sat on the couch, his head hanging low between his shoulders. He rubbed his hands through his hair, but said nothing.

  Taylor appealed to me over Jenny's head. "Can you do anything?"

  "Me?" My head was swirling from too many cocktails and I had to sit down before I toppled. Gina sat beside me. She looked as impeccable as always and only someone who knew her well could tell she'd drunk too much. The trembling hands were a giveaway.

  "You must have contacts in the force," Taylor said.

  I blinked at him and gave him a blank look.

  "You're a cop, aren't you?" he asked.

  "A P.I. How do you know?"

  "We figured it out after Jenny kept inviting you everywhere. We'd suspected she was in some financial trouble a while back, and figured she'd hired you to look into it."

  "Actually, we really are old friends."

  "She never mentioned you before."

  I bit my lip and glanced at her. It felt like a chapter of my life closed with his words, never to be reopened. That wasn't a bad thing, but it did make me a little nostalgic.

  Jenny knelt before me and took both my hands. Her eyes were filled with tears. Her lower lip wobbled. "Please do something, Cat. Talk to the police. Tell them Angel couldn't have done it."

  "What makes you think she didn't do it?" Gina asked. She must have drunk too many cocktails. Gina had turned tact and sympathy into an art form to sell flowers, so to hear her being so blunt was a shock.

  Jenny bristled. "Of course she didn't do it." Her eyes cleared, her focus sharpened, zeroing in on Gina. "She's an angel."

  Gina snorted a laugh. "I get it." When no one responded, she rolled her eyes. "Angel's an angel."

  "Yes. She is."

  "And Frank was an asshole," Taylor added.

  I held up my hands. I'd better get a word in before Gina got herself in more trouble. "No argument from me. But that doesn't mean he deserved to die."

  No one said anything. Gina and I exchanged glances. Riiiight. The Play Group members wouldn't be saying the eulogy at his funeral.

  "Will you speak to your contacts?" Jenny asked, once more clutching my hands like she was drowning and I was a lifesaver. "Tell them she didn't do it. Tell them she couldn't have done it."

  Hell. Why me? "If she's innocent, they'll work it out. I know one of the investigating officers—"

  "Aha!" Taylor' eyes lit up. "I knew you had contacts." He put his arm around Jenny and directed her to sit in another chair before perching on the arm and crossing his long legs. "Don't worry, Petal, your Kitty friend here will work her magic and get Angel out."

  I groaned. "No, you don't understand. I have no influence with the cops." I wouldn't tell them Scarface saw me as a kind of entertainment and Stankovic thought I was a pain in his ass. A girl's gotta keep some professional pride.

  Gina giggled. "You got that right. I mean, she's only solved— Ow! What did you pinch me for?"

  "I'd better get you home," I said. "You've had too much to drink."

  "So have you."

  Yeah, but I wasn't destroying her career. "I'll see what I can find out in the morning," I told them. "But maybe you should call Angel's lawyer."

  Jenny began to cry. Taylor hugged her, but he was crying too. Only Corey remained quiet, calm. He hadn't moved from his position on the couch beside me. His head was still bowed, his fingers buried in his hair. He'd not spoken a word since entering.

  No matter how hard Angel's arrest had hit Taylor and Jenny, it would have hit Corey hardest. If their foot work beneath the dinner table was any indication, he was Angel's lover. The cops already had reason to think she did it. Knowing she wasn't faithful to her husband would just give them one more.

  No wonder Corey was keeping quiet. Too bad they already knew, thanks to me.

  ***

  I'm not a morning person. Getting into the office by nine was a challenge some days, especially after a late night out with Gina. It drove Will nuts. He was a morning person, and a night person. Sometimes I wondered if he slept at all.

  So when my phone rang at seven, I assumed it was him. I didn't look at the screen, just answered it with a barely coherent "Go away, Will" and hung up. I pulled the covers over my head, but it didn't drown out the ring tone.

  I ignored it. The phone kept ringing. And ringing. Fuck. I was fully awake by the fourth ring and able to think clearer. For Will to be calling so early, it had to be important. I answered.

  "If you're not dying, Will Knight, then I'm coming around to hen peck you to death."

  "Cat?" It was Jenny.

  "Sorry, Jen," I said. "I thought it was someone else." I sat up and rubbed my eyes, but the grittiness remained. The headache too, and the furry tongue.

  "Cat, when can you get down to the police station?"

  "Why?"

  "There's been a development. You have to meet us there."

  "Us? Jen, what are you talking about? Why do you need me?"

  "We hired you, remember?"

  Whoa, back up. I'd had a lot to drink the night before, but I was pretty sure I'd kept my dignity and my memory. I didn't remember being hired for anything to do with Angel. "You asked me to talk to the cops today," I told her. "I said I would, but not this early. Jeez, Jen, the birds aren't even up yet."

  "Angel shouldn't spend a minute longer than necessary in jail, Cat. She's…delicate. Besides, she didn't kill Frank."

  "So you keep telling me, but no one's given me any reason to think her innocent." In fact she seemed to have an excess of motives.

  "Just meet us down at the station in an hour. We've got new evidence that will get her released."

  Then why do you need me?

  She hung up before my sentence could fully form in my scrambled brain let alone leave my tongue. I dragged myself out of bed, groaning as the forge in my skull made its presence felt. The rest of my body hurt in sympathy thanks to the previous night's kickboxing class. I made breakfast of dry toast and ate it while texting Will. I told him I was working on Jenny's case, and he sent one back asking why I was up so early. I responded with, I haven't been to bed yet, but I guess the joke got lost in translation because he called.

  "You were out all night?" he asked. "Mid-week? What were you thinking? You're going to be a wreck today."

  I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it. I couldn't believe he was giving me a lecture! I thought we'd moved past that. "I got home about midnight," I told him. "But if I had been out all night, it wouldn't be any of your business."

  Silence.

  Crap. Maybe I'd hurt his feelings. "Will—"

  "I still pay you to work a full day, Cat." It was hard to tell from his voice whether he was okay or not. "Can I expect to see you any time today?"

  "I don't know." I'd been planning to give him a full update on Frank Karvea's death and Angel's arrest, but I didn't think he was in the right mood for me to tell him I was heading down to the police station to talk to Scarface.

  "See you when I see you." He hung up without saying goodbye.

  I threw the phone into my bag and headed for the shower. Had we just had our first fight? I wasn't even sure what it was about. Working with Will had always been a lesson in patience for both of us, but I was beginning to see that sleeping with him required even more. I wasn't sure either of us had enough of it to make our relationship work long-term.

  That thought left me feeling hollow as I drove downtown to where Scarface now worked with Stankovic. It didn't help that it felt like someone had reached into my skull and pinched my brain.

  It was 8:00 a.m. when I parked out front of the bland, cream brick building. Too early to know what kind of weather the day would bring, although there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the leaves on the trees were still. I doubted Scarface or Stankovic would be in so early, but I didn't get a chance to take a nap in the front seat. Jenny tottered over on high heels and tapped on my window. Corey
and Taylor stood behind her, foam cups in their hands.

  I got out and smothered a yawn. Taylor handed me a cup and I gave him a smile as the scent of coffee wrapped me in its alluring embrace.

  "Thought you might need it, Darling," he said. His usual lilting voice sounded rough, like he'd hardly slept. Probably none of them had slept much after Gina and I left. All three wore dark sunglasses, so it was impossible to tell for sure.

  "Did you have a concert today?" I asked.

  "Two," Jen said. "Our PR manager canceled them."

  Taylor sipped his coffee. "Even if Angel is released today, she needs to rest."

  "You're confident your new evidence will release her?" I asked.

  "It better," Corey muttered. The group exchanged glances that I couldn't decipher. It made me feel like an outsider.

  "So tell me why you need me," I said.

  Jenny must have heard the irritated tone in my voice. She gave me a grim smile and hooked her arm through mine. "Last night we asked you to speak to your contacts and find out why the cops arrested Angel, right?"

  "And today?"

  "Today we think we can clear her name. Corey was with her when Frank was killed."

  "Holy shit." I looked at Corey. He lifted one shoulder and nodded. He didn't look guilty or even sheepish like I'd expect a man to be after admitting he'd had an affair with his manager's wife. If anything, he was defiant, daring me to call him on the unethical nature of it. I wasn't going to, but I did wonder what he would have said.

  "So why didn't you tell the cops this earlier? They're not going to be happy when they find out you withheld vital information from them." Not to mention skeptical.

  Corey gave another shrug. "I thought admitting that she and I were…" His cheek twitched, tugging up one corner of his mouth and pulling down his eyelid so that it looked like he was winking. A nervous tic? Was he feeling guilty after all? "I thought it might make matters worse."

  He had a point. The police might see an affair as another motive, not proof of innocence. That's if they believed him in the first place.

  "We convinced him it wouldn't," Jenny said. "We did the right thing, didn't we?"

  I didn't answer straight away. I was trying to think like Scarface and Will, seeing the situation through cop-eyes.

  "I knew it," Corey snapped. He paced around in little circles. I got dizzy watching him. "I knew I shouldn't say anything. Come on, let's go." He strode off, his hands buried in his jeans pockets.

  "Wait!" Jenny teetered after him. Taylor passed her with his long strides and caught his arm.

  I hung back while the three of them spoke in hushed tones, but I tried to read their body language and lips. There were a lot of glances directed at me, some rubbing of jaws and hands thrust on hips, but I gave up trying to decipher what it all meant. Eventually they returned to me.

  "There's something we forgot to tell you," Jenny said, taking my arm again. She removed her sunglasses and I saw that I'd been right. Her eyes were red, the skin beneath dark and puffy. She looked like she hadn't slept all night.

  "Not forgot," Taylor said, glancing at Jenny. "Just…failed to mention."

  "What is it? And what does it have to do with you getting me here at this ungodly hour?"

  Jenny drew in a deep breath. "I saw Angel leave Corey's room at four in the morning. After Frank died."

  I pulled free and stepped back. "Come on, Jen. I wasn't born yesterday."

  "It's true!" She blinked wide-eyed back at me, hurt mingling with the red lines of sleep deprivation.

  "It is true," Taylor said in his gentle, urgent way. "Angel was seen coming out of Corey's room at about four. She had messy hair and was half-naked."

  "That doesn't mean she'd been in his room the entire time," I said. It also didn't mean that Jenny had seen her leave. It was just too neat to be true.

  "You're right," Corey said, standing alongside his colleagues. He was fair to their dark, yet the three of them together made an impenetrable wall that dared anyone to breach it. "The cops will want other evidence before they drop the charges. That's why we're hiring you."

  "Hiring me to do what?"

  "To find that other evidence, of course," Jenny said.

  "Um, wait. I'm not sure I'm qualified."

  "But you made the papers!"

  "You saw that? In L.A.?"

  "No, Silly," Jenny said, bursting my bubble. The waitress at Mama Lina's told me that day we had lunch when you went to the bathroom. She said you solved a murder and an armed robbery that was, like, decades old."

  "Only twelve years. But it had been a big case."

  "See?" said Taylor, pointing his coffee cup at me. "You're definitely the investigator for us. We'll pay you."

  "I'm not cheap." It was hard to keep a straight face and say that.

  "Doesn't matter," Jenny said. "Angel's loaded now she's inherited Frank's money."

  Another strike against her. Did they really think the police would let her go so easily?

  We walked up to the front steps of the station, but I hung back with Jenny. "What about finding your money?" I whispered. "I'm still looking into it, right?"

  She shook her head. "Take Angel's case instead. Clearing her name is more important than finding my money. Besides, I wouldn't want to bring any more trouble to her door."

  "What do you mean?"

  "She inherits Frank's fortune, and his debts. If you prove that Frank stole from me, then she'll have to pay me back, not him. I don't want her to go through that. It's not her fault."

  "Well, okay I guess." I admit that I didn't get it. Not until I exchanged Gina for Angel, and then…yeah.

  Inside, I asked for Detective Harrison Forde, Scarface's real name. The officer on the duty counter pressed his lips together like he was stopping a smirk escaping. I couldn't blame him. Scarface was nothing like the actor who bore his name. He resembled the villain from the movies, not the hero.

  We waited in the stark reception area as the officer called Scarface. Nobody spoke and nobody sat down despite the collection of chairs in one corner. I pretended to read the community notice board while Jen played with her long, sleek ponytail. Taylor flipped through a magazine and Corey leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, and stared down at his Nikes.

  I was grateful when the door opened, breaking the awkward silence. Scarface's gaze settled on me immediately. He didn't look at the others, didn't acknowledge their presence. It was like I was the only one who existed in that room.

  His lips curved into a greeting. "Isn't this a little early for you?"

  "I could ask you the same thing. Did you go home last night?"

  His one good eye twinkled. "Worried about me, Kitten?"

  "Always." I don't know why I was flirting with him. It had nothing to do with my earlier argument with Will. Scarface and I both just liked playing games.

  "This business or pleasure?" he asked, his voice a low hum.

  I jerked my head at the three members of Play Group. "Work."

  He stood very close to me and muttered, "Damn." He looked at them for the first time. Just looked, assessing, but he had the kind of gaze that made even the innocent squirm. It could bore through you and make you think he was reading your soul.

  Jenny nibbled her bottom lip and nudged Corey with her elbow.

  "We need to tell you something," Corey said.

  "Go on," Scarface said.

  "Not here."

  Scarface led us down a windowless corridor painted stark white, past a series of closed doors. The corridor opened up to a large office space with partitions and desks, most of which were empty. A couple of heads looked up from computer screens, then quickly settled back to work. Scarface opened a door with the name plaque Captain Henshaw on it. It was empty.

  He stepped aside to allow Jenny, Taylor, and Corey to enter, but shifted to block me. I cocked my head to the side, but my glare didn't affect him. It had been a good one too. He just smiled.

  "Not you, Kitten," he said
. "Unless you've got something to tell me."

  "I'll wait out here then, shall I?"

  "You do that. I want to talk to you after. In private."

  "Something to look forward to."

  He closed the door, but left the blinds open. I could see through the glass walls, but not hear anything. Scarface stood by the desk and folded his arms across his chest, his usual don't-give-a-damn pose. Jenny and Taylor sat in the only two chairs other than the captain's. Corey remained standing. I watched as he spoke. He was an animated talker, using his hands to express himself. Sometimes he dragged at his hair, other times he wiped his palms down his jeans or picked his nails. It wasn't expansive and exuberant in the way Gina and the Italian half of her family spoke, but it was nevertheless telling. He was nervous.

  When he finished, Scarface said something, but I couldn't make out the words. I really needed to improve my lip-reading skills. Where the others had clear body language, he had none.

  Jenny shot out of her chair. She took a step toward Scarface, but Corey held her back. She leaned forward and poked a finger at Scarface, stopping just short of his chest. Her mouth was twisted in anger, her jaw muscles clenching. I didn't think she was complimenting him on his shirt. It was pretty ballsy of her. Or stupid.

  Scarface didn't say anything. He didn't react, not even flickering an eyelash. His body was relaxed, sleepy almost. He'd faced down way scarier people than Jenny.

  "She's innocent!" I heard her screech. "Let her go!"

  Corey held Jenny with both hands, and Taylor rose from his chair too. Scarface said something. It must have been good news, because Jenny quickly lost all her fight.

  Scarface unfolded his arms and flipped through files on the captain's desk until he found two sheets of paper. He handed one to Jenny and the other to Corey, then passed them pens. They wrote and handed the papers back.

  Scarface opened the door and the Play Group members filed out. I lifted my brows in question.

  "She's going to be released!" Jenny said with a wobbly smile.

  "For now," Taylor added.