Margot Harris Mystery Series : Box Set 2 (Margot Harris Mystery Series Two - Twisted)
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Another good-sized man who was a little older and wearing a suit that did fit him sat down on the other side. Margot decided she should have been more concerned about Theodore’s phone call.
“I heard you were asking about a friend of mine,” the second man said.
Margot gave him a good going over before she said, “Harry Lee?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Educated guess. Am I wrong?” Margot replied as she moved her purse to her lap and slid her hand inside.
“No, you’re not. You got a name?”
“Didn’t Theo tell you?”
“He said the name on your license was Margot.”
“It’s my license.”
“I’d like you to come with me, Margot. You and I need to have a conversation.”
“We can talk here.”
“I’d prefer somewhere more private.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Maybe I’m not asking.”
“Maybe I don’t care if you're asking or not.”
“Come on, Margot, you don’t want to make a scene in this nice hotel. Follow us out to my car.”
“What makes you think I don’t want to make a scene?”
“Tough chick. I kind of like that,” Harry said as he looked over her head at the bruiser on the other side.
Margot felt a big hand on her shoulder.
“We can play rough if you want, but we both know you don’t want to,” Harry told her.
Margot pulled the mace out of her purse and gave Harry’s thug a faceful before she grabbed the stool he was sitting on and yanked it out from under him. She got to her feet and stomped on the thug’s groin before she pointed the mace in Harry Lee’s direction.
He was standing, but he froze when he saw the wrong end of the tube of mace.
While he was looking at the mace, she reached into her purse with her other hand and took out her gun. She lowered the mace and let Harry get a good look at the wrong end of her gun as well.
“Tell your ape to stay down or I put a bullet in your face and then do the same to him.”
Harry looked past her to see his man had one hand trying to rub the toxic spray off his face and the other on his balls.
“I don’t think he’s going to be a problem.”
From the desk, Theodore called out, “You need to leave or I’m going to call the cops.”
“Shut up, Theo, before I come over there and kick your ass,” Margot ordered.
“Listen to the lady, Theo,” Harry added.
Theo decided to listen.
“You had something to say to me?”
“I’m guessing you know what I wanted to say. It would have been more effective the way I was originally going to say it.”
“Something to the effect of ‘don’t go around asking about Phoebe’?”
“Yeah, considering how this would look, I’d rather my name didn’t come up.”
“Even if it means she goes to prison for a crime she couldn’t have committed?”
“What makes you think she couldn’t have done it?”
“She was with you.”
“Not when the crime took place.”
“She didn’t meet you here?”
“She did, but I was gone by eight-thirty. I had to pick up my kid from basketball practice at nine. People saw me there. Normally, I spend a lot more time with a girl like Phoebe but not two nights ago. Can you lower the gun now? I think you’ve proved your point.”
Margot lowered her gun. “Why would Phoebe tell me different?”
Harry shrugged. “Because she killed her husband?”
“You know, you could have just told me that.”
“Maybe.”
“I only care about you in relation to my client.”
“Okay, since I can’t actually help, can we forget I was involved?”
“If you’re telling the truth, yeah. I’m not looking to trip anybody up.”
“Good, because now that I know you like to play rough, if we have to do this again, it might go differently. Now, I’m going to reach into my jacket pocket and pull out a business card, so don’t shoot me okay?”
“As long as it’s a card.”
Harry handed her the card and said, “If she has an alibi for the rest of the night, go ahead and call me. I may be a bastard, but I’m not going to let her go down on my account. My wife isn’t stupid, so this won’t be that big of news to her. But, as I said, if she doesn’t have another alibi, the last thing I need is cops trying to bring me into this.”
“Alright, I suppose that’s fair. You seem to think she did it, why?”
“She’s fucking crazy, that’s why.”
“You were still seeing her.”
“Yeah, crazy is good for a mistress. After this, though, I figured I was going to break it off. There’s fun crazy then there’s dangerous crazy.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
“You can’t. That’s part of what makes it fun. You seem a little crazy yourself; don’t be afraid to use that number for personal reasons, if the desire strikes you.”
“It won’t. Thanks, Harry.”
“You’re welcome.”
“One more thing, do you remember what she was wearing?”
“Phoebe?”
“Yeah.”
Harry seemed to think about it for a second before he said, “Red lingerie.”
“How about before that?”
“Honestly, I don’t remember. Phoebe in red lingerie is memorable. What she took off to get to that point? Not so much.”
“How about what she put on afterward?”
“She wasn’t wearing anything when I left.”
Margot nodded. Even if he could testify she was wearing something different than the black cocktail dress covered in her husband's blood, he probably wouldn’t. Plus, there had been plenty of time for her to change and then change back if the timeline he gave was correct.
Margot kept the gun in her hand as she put two twenties on the bar. “Get my friends a drink.”
“You don’t have to do that, Margot,” Harry said.
“It’ll give you something to do because if I see you walking out before I leave the parking lot, someone is getting shot.”
“You know, I’m really starting to like you.”
Margot ignored him and walked to the front desk.
“You owe me twenty dollars, Theo.”
“It’s Theodore.”
“My twenty dollars or I break your thumb.”
Theodore reached in his pocket and came up with the twenty she had given him earlier.
Margot took it and asked, “How about you? Do you remember what Phoebe was wearing?”
Theo shrugged. “I don’t know, a short dress of some sort. That’s what she usually wore.”
“Color?”
“I don’t know, black?”
“I wasn’t there, Theo. Was it black or not?”
“I don’t know, it was usually black, but it might not have been.”
“Thanks for nothing, Theo.”
“It’s Theodore.”
“You say that like I care,” Margot told him. She threw one more glance at Harry and his thug, who were both sitting at the bar having a drink, before she went out the door.
Margot kept the twenty in one hand and her gun in the other as she walked out.
An almost impossibly skinny guy who had to look up to meet Margot’s eyes was leaning against a big black Cadillac SUV parked by the door in a spot normally reserved for people checking in. He saw Margot and a confused look came over his face.
He stepped in her path. “Hey, where are you going?”
“None of your business.”
He stayed where he was and looked past her into the hotel. Again, he looked confused. Margot realized this must be Harry Lee’s driver.
“What if I want to make it my business?” he asked her.
“Well, one, you don’t fight in my weight class.”
“And two,” Margot said as she raised the gun enough that he could see it.
The diminutive driver got out of the way.
“Next time we’ll see how well I fight moving up in weight,” he muttered at Margot’s back.
“Careful what you wish for,” Margot said without turning around.
“Keep talking, bitch. The last woman who disrespected wished she hadn’t.”
She kept her pistol in her hand until she reached her car. She drove away with the pistol sitting on the seat and didn’t put it away until she got to Radcliff’s condo.
Chapter 4
Margot waited until they were both naked, satisfied, and exhausted before telling Radcliff about her encounter with Harry Lee and what she learned about Phoebe at the Palms Hotel.
“If you want, I can have somebody pick up Harry and his henchman. Seems like a crime was committed,” Radcliff told her.
“Yeah, by me. I was the one macing people and waving my pistol around. They were up to no good, even though I’m guessing they were just trying to scare me, but it’d be tough to prove.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the kind of arrest that gets to court. I was thinking you decided to try to stay out of the way of organized crime for a while.”
“I was thinking the same thing, which is why you shouldn’t arrest anybody. I don’t think Harry is mad at me, anyway.”
“Why is that?”
“He asked me out.”
“Like a date?”
“More like a rendezvous. I don’t think he’s much for wining and dining his mistresses.”
“Unlike me.”
“I’d like to think I’m just a bit past the mistress phase.”
“You most definitely are.”
“It kind of bugs me though that the guys who like me also have or had a thing for Phoebe.”
‘Why is that?”
“It makes me think I might be more like her than I want to be.”
“You’re not like her. Trust me.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that. The next question is why did Phoebe lie to me? Do you think it’s possible she actually did it?”
“Anything’s possible, but I wouldn't have picked her for that kind of violence. Screw him over in the divorce? Yeah. Maybe even shooting somebody, but that was a brutal scene.”
“Harry Lee thinks she could have.”
“From what I hear, he knows brutal, and he knows the current version of Phoebe better than I do. Maybe I’m the one letting my feelings get the best of me.”
“You still have feelings for her?”
“No, I do like to feel my judgment is better than to be dating murderous psychopaths.”
“You’re dating me.”
“You’re not a murderous psychopath.”
“I killed four people.”
“Every one of them had it coming.”
“Depends on who you ask. The little goth chick in the parking lot has me down as a cartel hitwoman.”
“I wouldn’t worry about her. She’s just looking for some attention.”
Margot sat up and found her phone.
“What are you doing?”
“I just thought I’d check something.”
“Are you going to look up Cassandra’s Coastal Crime Alert?”
Margot didn’t reply as she typed ‘Cassandra’s Coastal Crime Alert’ into the search engine on her phone.
“Is that a yes or no?”
“Shit,” Margot said as she found Cassandra's YouTube channel.
‘What’s wrong?”
“If she wanted attention, she got it. This video has over ten thousand hits and it’s going up.”
“Seriously?”
“Look for yourself.”
Radcliff took the phone and saw the video entitled, ‘Is this disgraced former cop turned sleazy P.I. actually the feared cartel assassin known as the Viuda Negra?’
“Black widow?” Radcliff asked as he spit out the English translation, “Is that really a thing?”
“Ten thousand people think so.”
“Actually, eleven thousand now.”
“Great.”
“Should we watch it?”
“I have a feeling it’s going to take me a step closer to becoming a murderous psychopath, but yeah, I don’t see how I can’t watch it now that I know about it.”
“Should have never looked.”
“I was hoping she had like ten followers. I thought it might make me feel better.”
Radcliff hit play. The video started with still shots of various newspaper articles detailing Cartel killings on both sides of the border while Cassandra talked about a killer known as Viuda Negra.
“I guess her whole ‘newspapers aren’t a thing anymore’ line was bullshit,” Radcliff said as the camera lingered on the gory details of the crimes in the story.
“Yeah, I also noticed the only proof of this Viuda Negra person even existed is her say so. I’d bet she made her up.”
“I suppose I could ask around, but yeah, it sounds like fiction.”
The newspaper articles switched from cartel killing to the shootings Margot was involved in. Cassandra continued to narrate. She strongly rejected the ruling that these shootings were justified and claimed—without proof—that the police were covering up for Margot.
“Does she mean the same police who wanted to throw me in jail? Does she have any idea how hated I am with you guys?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“True, but you’re the exception and it wasn’t that long ago you were slapping bracelets on my wrists and hauling me in for questioning.”
“Fair.”