by Nicole Kurtz
I took out the pug into my left hand as the doorbell blared once more. I nodded to Jane and she pressed the release.
The doors slid back to reveal…
Mayor Christensen.
“Aunt Belle,” Jane said stonily. “What are you doing here?”
She lowered her knife and stuck it back into its holder. I lowered my gun and sighed.
“I came to see about Cybil,” she said sweetly. She wore a navy suit with a skirt that stopped above her knees with matching pumps.
“Did hell freeze over?” I mumbled as I went back to the stool, slapped the gun onto the counter. I drank a big gulp of beer from Jane’s open bottle, trying not to spill any of it. Drinking with my left hand wasn’t nearly as smooth as using my right.
Mayor Christensen pretended not to hear me and answered Jane instead. “I heard Captain Hanson drove her home. Surely you did not disobey my orders and discuss- -uh, well, you know.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m investigating a death of your daughter. Remember.”
Mayor Christensen pressed her lips firmly together. “Well, I thought you should know that I am hosting a charity benefit tomorrow night, here in the ballroom to raise money for recovering Zenith addicts. Here are your invitations.”
She tossed two electronic badges that read “Mandy’s Memorial Fund.
“Here is a guest list. I thought you would want to review it. Everyone will be there,” Mayor Christensen said. “I trust the conversation you and I had would remain a private matter.”
Jane grunted in disgust. Without looking back she disappeared into the bedroom and almost immediately the noise of the telemonitor could be heard. The 24 hour new broadcast’s jingle flowed into the outer room.
“For now,” I said, my eyes level with the mayor.
“Well,” she said, her voice slightly quivering. “I-I will see you there.”
Jane came back into the kitchenette area once she heard the doors click closed. She sat back down at the table, picked up her laptop and opened the file. Her back to me, she drank beer and scanned the files without comment. The telemonitor’s volume pumped news stories into the kitchenette area.
“You want to talk about it?” I asked, getting her another beer from the mini fridge.
“No,” Jane said, her voice low with an undercurrent of hurt.
Leaving Jane to it, I went into the bedroom and lay down. I stared up at the ceiling trying to picture why Mayor Christensen was having a benefit for her dead daughter. She said it was to raise money for recovering Zenith addicts, but the good mayor had said that Amanda didn’t engage in drugs. Coincidence that the charity cause was Zenith users? Why not alcohol or some incurable disease?
I scanned the list of guests.
The fundraiser list held all of Memphis’s upper echelon citizens and several regulators including Nathan and Derrick. Funny, Mayor Christensen said she hated Nathan, so why allow him into a private party? The mayor may be holding back more important information. I didn’t want to think she’d be stupid enough to anger Jane and jeopardize the case to find Amanda’s murderer, but then…
I yawned, still feeling the after effects of the drugs to repair my muscles. My eyes closed and I slept until I heard…
“Gotcha!” Jane shouted from the kitchen.
I hurried into the kitchenette and found Jane hunched over her laptop, an ashtray stuffed with cigarette butts at her elbow. She mumbled to herself as she scanned the file’s entries.
“What?” I asked, my eyes roaming over the figures and entries on the laptop screen.
Jane smirked. “He has been getting a regular deposit of ten thousand SE currancy, starting in January a year and a half ago.” She pointed to a highlighted entry. “See this is the same account number that the funds comes from. It’s identical to the other deposits after January’s. Unless he has other accounts under different names, this is his only income.”
I could see that Nathan was very frugal. He hardly removed any of the hush money, a few fifty extractions here and there, but nothing excessive to arouse the suspicions of the quadrant revenue division.
“Here,” Jane said as she clicked another button, “is a month after he gets the regulator job in October.”
“No entries of ten thousand dollar deposits.”
Jane shook her head no. “That’s because he started getting a salary.” She scrolled downward and highlighted a deposit. The first in a few weeks according to his account.
“A much larger one.”
There, highlighted by Jane, were deposits by the Memphis Quadrant Treasury from October to March. If multiplied by twelve months, Nathan was being paid a sum of fifty-two thousand dollars.
Jane whistled.
“More than I make,” she said with a quick glance at me. “No wonder he left Hanson alone. This was easily five times more than his previous take.”
“Yeah,” I said breathlessly. “So it would seem that Hanson was telling us the truth.”
Jane nodded. “Don’t mean he still isn’t a slimy creep.”
“About the fundraiser tomorrow night, Nathan and Derrick are on your aunt’s list,” I said, swiftly changing the subject away from Hanson.
“Nathan?” Jane frowned. “Aunt Belle hates him.”
“Seems that Mr. Martindale may have found himself a new blackmail victim,” I said as I climbed onto the stool beside Jane. “She may be keeping it from us.”
Jane’s eyes narrowed to slits as she dug into her pocket for a cigarette. “Figures.”
“But most importantly,” I said with a grin. “What are we going to wear?”
“Are we ready to go?” I asked from the kitchenette. Monday’s afternoon had been filled with reviewing of notes, scanning through Nathan’s bank statements and paying bills for my apartment, office and other utilities in D.C. This only made me homesick and renewed my desire to finish and solve this case.
The clock read seven p.m. and the charity fundraiser was slated to begin any minute. Already the parking lot outside Roger’s was filling with expensive cargo crafts, wautos and even a few aerocycles. The night’s sky seemed to be dressed for the fundraiser because even it was absent of clouds and a few brightly twinkling stars could be seen, like diamonds tossed in its hair.
Jane walked out from the bedroom, sporting her jeans and long-sleeved tee-shirt.
“What’s this we stuff?” she scoffed. “I’m not going.”
“You leaving me to go at it solo?”
She nodded. “I’ve got a date tonight.”
“A date? Jane, we’re working a case here!” I said, my hands on my hips.
“You’re always saying that I don’t have a personal life. Now that I’ve got one, you’re yelling at me. It’ll be a bore and I’m sure it ain’t nuthin you haven’t done before.”
“Who could you possibly know here?” I asked, exasperated. “We’re in Memphis.”
“Her name is Susan and we’re going to go dancing and later to dinner at someplace on the west side. This isn’t my first time to Memphis, Cybil, my aunt lives here,” Jane said breezily.
I’ve known for some time that Jane’s sexual preferences wavered between the sexes, landing on the one she favored that particular night. Most often it was women. She has kept her private life private and she didn’t share much of it.
“All right,” I said defeated again by her verbal argument. “I’ll see you later.”
I watched her leave and headed out myself. The hallway that led to Roger’s Meeting rooms and the ballroom had been sprayed with scented air fresheners, something floral and gagging. Once I got inside the ballroom, I noted that the ballroom’s air contained some misty, scented perfume and it made my nose itch. All around Memphis’s wealthiest and most powerful people mingled, drank slivers of champagne from flutes and opened their wallets. Several beefy security guards and chunky robot guards prowled the area, looking for anyone suspicious.
They kept their eyes on me.
I wore my newly purchase
d black dress pants and a silk red blouse. My braids had been pulled up into a ponytail and wrapped around in a bun. Jane placed sparkly barrettes in it to make me look more glamorous. I wore a black suit jacket. Even though it added to the over all polish of my outfit, I only wore it so that no one would see my gun.
My feet ached. New shoes, courtesy of Nero’s, pinched, but still I circled around the crowd, mingling, smiling although not many knew who I was. The lure of the free buffet pulled me toward it and I had reached down to take a carrot stick when I heard someone laugh.
I looked down the buffet to see Mayor Christensen laughing with a very nice looking man and woman. The couple wore a lot of diamonds. The lights glistened against the rocks that littered around the woman’s neck. She seemed to smile, but it never really seemed real to me. Fake, maybe like those diamonds.
“Mr. and Mrs. Harvey,” said Captain Hanson as he picked up several carrots sticks. “They own several stores, including Nero’s and Marco’s clothing stores. Big contributors to her campaign. Mr. Harvey,” Hanson pointed with his pinky finger, “wants to be appointed as the ambassador to the northeast quadrant when Annabelle wins the governor’s election.”
“Really?” I said and bit into my stick. I crunched and watched the mayor move away from the Harveys and work the crowd. “She’s damn good.”
Hanson nodded, his lips curved into a smirk grin. “Only on the surface, sweetheart. Only on the surface.”
I moved away from Hanson to do some working of my own. The robot guards drifted along behind me, as if I couldn’t see them tailing me. I had already shown my pass once, and yet they continued to follow.
The section by the stage seemed empty and I walked closer to the audio speakers. Music, supplied by a robotic deejay swirled from four boxy speakers that were taller than it. I leaned back against the stage, watched and listened. I noticed that Hanson and Christensen made sure not to bump into each other or circulate in the same groups.
A temporary lapse in the music revealed the loud guffaws and murmurings of conversations. I thought back to my situation with Trey. How many of these events did he attend as an undercover working with the Raymen Cartel? It was rumored that the cartel had their tentacles into everything from politics to prostitution. I looked around, trying to guess which person worked for the Cartel.
“You still hangin’ ‘round this fuckin’ city?” asked a raspy voice.
I looked to my right and caught sight of Nathan Martindale strolling toward me. Dressed in a charcoal gray suit and black shirt, he seemed in good spirits. Minus the cast, his right arm held a slender glass of champagne. He leaned beside me. He smiled, sparkling, white teeth and a pound of charm.
My right hand shot a spasm but I still couldn’t close it fully. The muscles pulled tight when I tried, but locked out full mobility. Damn.
“Yes,” I shouted over the beginnings chords of a waltz. “Surprised to see you here.”
Seems Nathan had dipped into his hush money because his black leather loafers alone cost more than my retainer. Either that or my suspicion that he was blackmailing Christensen was dead on.
He smiled. “Funny thing…”
The rest of his conversation was drowned in a bath of trumpets so I never got what was funny.
Tired of shouting, I strolled away from the stage and he followed. The ballroom’s side entrance lay in partial shadows. A few feet away, several solo people held up the wall.
“Tell me. How does one go from being a petty Zenith dealer to an undercover reg?” I asked smoothly. “Without going to the academy?”
He lowered his head, his mop of curls cascading forward. With a laugh, he said, “Nuthin’ a secret in this town. Who you been talkin’ to babe?”
My eyes briefly connected to his as he tossed his back his head, still laughing.
I didn’t see what was so funny and I had a sneaky feeling he was high.
“No. In fact, I know Amanda wasn’t your girlfriend and I also know your dirty black secret for soliciting funds from fellow guests.” I gestured around with my hand to the crowd at the buffet table, which included Hanson.
He stopped laughing and his voice became pitiless. “So what? He’s a freakin’ child molester. Pervet. Freak.”
I shrugged, thinking so are you.
“…he’s what? Twice Mandy’s age?” Nathan was saying. “Guy’s a fuckin’ sham. All good and regulation bound, but can’t follow the shit himself. Fuckin’ hypocrite.”
“The real molester is the guy who raped and killed her,” I said.
Nathan’s rant wavered and he paled. “S-she was r-raped?”
“Brutally,” I said, watching him closely for he seemed genuinely surprised at that tidbit, but surely he’d looked into Amanda’s autopsy report.
“You said sex with her was better than Zenith. Was that because you liked it rough? Play acting a little rape scene with her that got out of control? Or maybe you didn’t have sex with her at all and her constant flirting became too much for you? You lost it and killed her.”
His mouth moved but no sound came out. With a rough cough to clear his throat, he said hoarsely, “Mandy loved me.”
“Yeah, you say that now. And how convenient she’s not here to dispute it,” I said back, my voice low and bitter.
“That old idiot was her money bag!” Nathan shouted, his jaw rigid with anger. He drew several quick looks from a couple of aging wallflowers. His eyes held unshed tears.
He took in a deep sip of air and ran his fingers through his hair, snaring some of them on his tangles. He let out his breath, slow and deliberate. Lowering his voice he said, “I was her true love. We did have sex and I didn’t kill or rape her. I-I loved her.”
His face was damp from sweat and he rubbed it vigorously.
Nerves?
“You know, Nat old boy, that doesn’t add up. Amanda came from money. Why would she need his money?” Amanda didn’t strike me as greedy, but…
I was painfully aware that both of us were avoiding saying Hanson’s name.
Nathan leaned in to me. He smelled of honeysuckles and mint. “See, I got news for you, inspector, her mother cut her off.”
“Why?”
Despite this surreal conversation, I felt somewhat sorry for him.
“Becuz. Mandy was still on it,” he snapped.
“Zenith.”
“You got it,” he said with a terrible twisting grin on his face. “For real? She was raped? You ain’t makin’ it up or nuthin?”
“You’re a big time regulator now. Check her autopsy report,” I said as I walked away.
Across the room, I saw Mayor Christensen’s eyes peer in my direction, despite her flashy smile. When she saw me walk away from Nathan, she excused herself from a trio of gawky women with bluish-tinted hair and jeweled glasses.
We met at the buffet, which had cleared out and was temporarily deserted. Most of the food looked like dyed paste, but my tiny plate filled up quickly. Hunger is the best spice and I was starving.
“You are associating with scum,” Mayor Christensen hissed through her plastered on smile. She gracefully sipped from her glass and glanced around, nodding at guests…smiling.
“You invited him,” I said carefully while staring away from her. “That’s not all you’ve been doing with –uh- what did you call him? Scum?”
She stiffened as she looked around widely. “I have no idea of what you’re talking about.”
“Sure?” I said, studying her reaction. “I mean, Jane could come and ask you about your relationship with scumboy over there. I don’t think she’ll be very nice about it, though. Considering how you’ve kept important info from us before.”
I looked directly at her. Her Afro, fluffy and glittery, sparkled under the track lights. She placed her drink on the table; nodded in my general direction and drifted off to some other cluster of elite guests.
Did I hit a nerve?
That’s two for two tonight.
I took my miniature platter a fe
w feet from the buffet when my eyes landed on Derrick. He sat moodily across the room in a section of small tables set up for those who didn’t like to eat while standing. A cigarette rested in an ashtray, its smoke spiraling toward the ceiling. Both of his boots rested on the table’s clean surface. He drew several frowns from other guests passing by, and I noticed he sneered at Hanson when he strolled by with three other people.
Hanson didn’t seem to notice.
Suddenly, Nathan plopped down into the seat beside him, his face contorted in fury. Nathan clapped Derrick on the shoulder so hard, Derrick nearly toppled over. He removed his feet, rotated his chair to face Nathan’s and leaned into to listen. Whatever they discussed, Nathan wasn’t happy about it. And soon, neither was Derrick. His scowl distorted his face and he pounded his knee as he spoke.
After a few minutes, Nathan caught me looking and the two got up from the tables. I watched them stalk out of the party.
The next few hours dwindled down to dust and guests began filing out in drunken clusters of people.
As people left, Jane came in, her eyes bright. “So? Learn anything new?”
“Tell you later,” I said, my feet screaming to be released from my shoes. “How was your date?”
“Tell you later,” she said with a small grin.
Hanson nodded in our direction before exiting through the front doors.
Alone.
The blare of the telemonitor woke me with a start. Groggy from too much champagne, I fumbled to a sitting position and yawned. Tuesday’s morning was underway. I awaited my eyes to adjust to the screen’s glare and then I caught the time at the bottom of the monitor.
Seven thirty.
“Jane, do you have any idea-”
“Shush!”
Already awake and fully dressed in noir jeans and another tee shirt, Jane sat Indian style on her bed. Her eyes reflected the telemonitor’s images. “I want to hear the news.”
I hated sharing a room with her, for this very reason alone.
“This is Roberta Rodriguez with your early morning news,” said the beautiful news anchor. Her curly locks spiraled down her back and some was artfully tossed over her shoulder. She wore a navy suit with pinstripes, her lips a glossy burgundy.