Axl shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t dig. I felt it was something, when we got together, that she’d want to find her time and her way to lay on me, not me invading her life like that.”
“What?” Boone asked, but he didn’t ask Axl.
He was looking at Auggie.
So Axl looked to Aug.
And when he saw the expression on Auggie’s face, he demanded, “You looked into her?”
“Only to be prepared for this very conversation,” Auggie replied.
Mo crossed his arms on his substantial chest.
Mag blew out an audible breath.
Boone chuckled low.
Axl just stared at his brother.
“So? What’d you find?” Boone pushed.
“I don’t wanna know,” Axl said quickly.
“It was ugly and then it was uglier,” Auggie stated.
Fuck.
“Divorce proceedings are on record,” Auggie kept on. “The custody stuff, the mom testified and Hattie was of an age, she could too. Massive control issues for the dad, and he had them with both the mom and Hattie, which was why the mom left. Mental abuse, both, until the mom left. Physical stuff was only Hattie, and it was minor, even if it wasn’t, but in a way a kid might not think anything of it, except that it seriously sucked, and for Hattie, it was constant. Pinching. Shaking. Shoving. Holding her arm or hand too hard. Pulling her hair. The mom never knew about it, because Hattie didn’t report it. But that escalated to what caused the mom to go balls to the wall to get sole custody of Hattie with only every-other-weekend-Saturday-afternoon visits with the dad. He caught her with a vicious backhand when she fucked up some audition for some high school in Chicago. The mom saw it and Hattie never again stayed for any length of time with her father while she was still a minor.”
Axl dropped his head because he couldn’t hold it up and battle the rage of fire in his chest at the same time.
Yeah.
That was ugly.
And it got uglier.
“That’s tough, brother, but it gets tougher,” Aug said quietly.
Axl lifted his head and stared again at his friend, that burn inching up his throat.
“Not just every competition or recital, but every class, which was every day, including Sunday, he was there. He’d videotape it. And from the ride home to repeated viewings of the video after, he’d dissect every second of what she’d done, highlighting the bad. Making her take notes on what she needed to work on. Report back the next day after practice on how she felt she worked on those points. Sometimes even making her do lines, like ‘I will relax my arm,’ and she’d have to write it five hundred times.”
“You’re fucking joking,” Boone growled.
Aug shook his head. “She said to the judge, that when he’d pinch her or shake her, it was a relief. He’d feel bad about doing that, so for a while, he’d lay off the other stuff.”
“So she was glad he’d physically abuse her so he didn’t mentally destroy her,” Axl stated.
He felt all the men’s eyes on him.
He knew why.
His voice was not right.
The huddle became closer.
“Lock it down, Axe,” Mo murmured.
Axl didn’t take his eyes from Aug and went on, “But he mentally destroyed her.”
“I saw that dance,” Auggie said low. “And, brother, she’s way into you. Watching that, it was like watching her say she wants you so bad, it’s killing her. It fuckin’ hurt watching her dance like that for you. So yeah, she wants you that bad and won’t let herself have you, he mentally destroyed her.”
Axl stepped back.
The men shifted to follow.
He stopped and stated, “I crossed that line to creeper. Could not get a lock on what was goin’ on with her, so I followed her. She has a studio. Not to dance. To create shit. When she left, I let myself in. It’s filled with pieces of substance. No watercolors or delicate sculptures. Big pieces. A couple that are even taller than me. They all gotta weigh hundreds of pounds. Her mediums are concrete and steel, iron and stone, marble. Even the soft stuff is hard or jagged. Like copper wire or aluminum. And you gotta have no heart in your chest if you can look at her shit and not need to fight taking a knee to battle the pain.”
“Fucking hell,” Mag whispered.
“I stood in that space and I got up in her face,” Axl told them.
“You want to be a part of her life, a good one, one of the few,” Boone pointed out. “I don’t condone bein’ a dick to her, but you’re only human, brother. Just give her some breathing room and then go fix it.”
“I’ll talk to Lottie and she’ll talk to her,” Mo offered.
Axl shook his head. “No. No one knows about this. Her art. That space. I already violated it. I don’t want to make that worse.”
Mo nodded his concurrence.
“Boone’s right,” Mag put in. “Give her breathing room and then go and fix it.”
“Not much time,” Boone said. “Just don’t give up.”
“How much of a dick were you to her?” Auggie asked.
“I told her she hurt Lottie and I told her I knew what that dance was about and she blew it, with Lottie and with me,” Axl admitted.
“That doesn’t sound like much of a dick,” Auggie observed. “What you said is the truth.”
“There’s layin’ out the honesty and bein’ an asshole while you lay out the honesty, and I was the second one.”
All the men knew of that distinction, so no one said anything.
“What about Cisco?” Mag asked, bringing them full circle. “Do I need to get Evan on that?”
“Let me talk to Hattie tomorrow,” Axl said.
“It might not be him takin’ it there, making a move on her,” Boone told him. “Told you all, Cisco’s got a thing about the women. He’s taken them on. Feels responsible for them. Probably guilt he scared the shit out of them when he abducted them. But I gotta admit, maybe it’s just that he’s a nuanced guy and he’s a piece of shit out there in the world, but he knows the right way to treat women.”
“The man fired on Axl,” Mag, jerking his head toward Axl, reminded Boone of the firefight Axl had with Cisco’s associates while they were taking Ryn.
“They’re either the worst shots in history, or they had orders not to hit me,” Axl said and all eyes came to him. “There had to be nearly eighty rounds exchanged in that and there was a lot of damage to the vehicles parked in that parking lot, but no one was even grazed.”
“So now you’re on the same bent as Boone that there’s more that makes this guy when he’s picking up Hattie from work at two o’clock in the morning?” Mag demanded.
“I think it’s clear I got more work to do with Hattie and it’s not gonna help me, not even having taken her out to dinner, bein’ that guy who’s an even bigger ass to her, I jump to conclusions about what’s going on with Cisco when, right now, strictly speaking, it’s none of my business. But she knows I want it to be my business, so I ask, and she can decide if she wants to tell.”
“I do not see Hattie with Cisco,” Mo mumbled.
Obviously, Axl didn’t either.
He saw her with him.
He saw all that curly hair of hers on his pillow in the morning and in his lap when she was blowing him.
He saw himself wading in and finding a way to guide her out of her father’s life, no matter what fucked-up reason she was still in it, so he could help her find a road to healing.
And he saw himself finding ways to make her laugh and finding others to give her a life that, the next time she pulled a mold from set concrete, seeing what she wrought might bring joy, not cut you to the quick.
That’s what he saw.
And if once, just once, she gave him a shot to kiss her like he meant it, she might see it too.
“Me either, I barely see her with Axl,” Auggie stated, taking Axl from his thoughts. “She needs an accountant or something. Boring and no drama.”
<
br /> “And I’m drama?” Axl asked.
“Brother, her father’s a top-of-the-heap dick, when I thought yours was. But Don Yates beats out even Sylas Pantera, something that was impossible, until Hattie. So she still deals with Yates’s ass, but this goes the way you want it to, she’s gotta meet your dad, and if you think Sylas won’t bring the drama, you need to wake up. Because I believe in you and I saw Hattie dance that dance. So you’re gonna win that battle, eventually. But with those two in the mix, that’s not even close to winning the war.”
“Way to be a ray of sunshine, Aug,” Boone clipped.
“We’re all thinking it,” Auggie clipped back.
Yeah.
Axl could definitely say that Hattie meeting his dad had crossed his mind more than once.
First, she was a stripper, or had been, Sylas Pantera would look down on that, and it depended on his mood how, or more accurately, when he shared that with her.
Second, Sylas Pantera could find a mood where he felt even a stripper he looked down on was too good for his boy, and he’d find the time to share that too.
Axl sighed.
Then he suggested, “Maybe we should get some work done?”
It would seem they’d have no choice, because the men barely made their various gestures of agreement before the door opened and Hawk walked in.
None of them moved when they saw the look on his face.
He stopped at the bottom level of workstations and shared what he had to share from there.
“Got a call from Mamá.”
“Mamá” would be Mamá Nana. A woman who traded in information. She did it successfully. It did not make her rich, because she was Robin Hood to her community. It did make her respected, in a variety of ways, and not just that she was Robin Hood to her community.
She was an ally of Hawk’s.
And of Cisco’s.
“She wants a meet. Tomorrow,” Hawk went on.
“I thought Boone was Cisco’s handler,” Auggie noted.
“This meet won’t be with Cisco, though Mamá wants him there,” Hawk shared. “It’s gonna be with Lynn Crowley.”
All five of the men immediately went wired.
Lynn Crowley was Tony Crowley’s widow.
And Tony Crowley was the cop who Cisco was framed for killing.
Then, when that frame job went south, what they now knew was a syndicate of dirty cops moved in to clean up that business.
This being staging a murder-suicide of two of their own: Detectives Lance Mueller and Kevin Bogart. Partners as cops, partners in crime, and part of a collective of bad police who the team knew were out there, they just didn’t know who they were or what they were up to.
Mueller left a bogus suicide note that explained why they killed Crowley (who was investigating them) and why he personally killed Bogart (who the note said did the kill on Crowley).
How they knew this was bigger than just Mueller and Bogart was because they had several good cops on their team. One of them was Malik, Elvira’s husband. Malik got his hands on the suicide note, and they had just enough time to have it gone over by an expert to find that it was forged before Malik had to return it.
Also, before whoever was still pulling the strings got to him, the medical examiner who examined the bodies shared that Mueller was so juiced with Rohypnol, even at close range, he in no way could aim to hit Bogart dead center in the heart, because he wouldn’t even have enough faculty to lift the gun to his own head. Both of which happened, shot to the heart took Bogart out, one to the brain took out Mueller.
Though, this was not in the report that was filed.
It was deemed murder-suicide and the case was closed.
Until now, even though the murder of her husband had left her with two kids and pregnant with the third, Lynn Crowley had been adamantly opposed to assisting them in any manner to find out who and what her husband was investigating before he got dead.
This told the team that she was under someone’s thumb.
Now she was reaching out through Mamá Nana.
“And Heidi Mueller,” Hawk finished.
“Holy fuck,” Mag whispered.
Yeah.
That said it all.
Because no one had even thought to go to Heidi Mueller, Lance Mueller’s widow.
Not now.
Maybe not ever.
Because she was a woman who had been through the wringer not only because her husband of nearly two decades was dead, after murdering another man and being a party to having a good cop get killed. She was also under the false impression he’d cheated on her repeatedly by coercing freebies from sex workers.
Rounding this out, the media had had a field day with this and Heidi was the current poster child for “Wronged Woman, You Decide If She Was Just a Huge Idiot or If Her Husband Was That Good at Being a Lying Douchebag.” And considering the word woman denoted she had a vagina, the vast majority of assholes out there considered her an idiot, no matter how massive a lying douchebag her husband was.
Somehow, that was her responsibility and she took that rap.
And the last few weeks, Heidi Mueller had been living heavy with that rap.
“Boone, get on Cisco,” Hawk ordered. “Mamá wants us for lunch tomorrow.”
“On it,” Boone said.
Hawk looked to Mo and then to Axl. “I want you two with Boone and me.”
Axl nodded.
Then to Auggie, Hawk said, “I wanna know anything I don’t already know about Heidi Mueller.”
“You got it,” Auggie replied, shifting to his workstation.
Hawk jerked up his chin then moved to the steps that would take him to his office.
“Is this a break in the case?” Mag murmured to them all.
“Fuck, I hope so,” Boone answered.
Axl did too.
He really did.
Because this needed to be done seeing as they were talking dirty cops and death.
But also, he had something important to concentrate on, that being Hattie, and this bullshit was getting in the way.
CHAPTER FOUR
Whoosh
HATTIE
It was morning and I was sitting out on my side deck in my jammies with a cup of coffee and my phone, scrolling up and down.
Yes, doing this on Axl’s text string.
There had been nothing new.
Not after what happened at my studio two days ago.
Instead, I was scrolling through the old from after he and Ryn saw me lose it while dancing in that studio to when I was dancing to “Shut Up” at Smithie’s.
It started with:
You OK?
And then:
Hattie, just tell me if you’re OK.
I’m OK.
Thanks for asking.
He gave it a couple of days and then:
You want to meet up? No pressure.
Just want to see for myself you’re good.
I’m good.
Right.
You want to meet up?
To that one, I didn’t answer.
Then, the next day:
Time for lunch? Going to Mustard’s.
Mac says you dig it there.
Meet me in an hour?
Lottie was right. I loved Mustard’s Last Stand. It was crazy, but I was a hot dog girl.
I did not reply.
Axl didn’t seem to mind, because that night, I got:
I want to reiterate there’s no pressure.
This isn’t about the fixup. I’m seeing someone.
You don’t have to worry about that.
But even if I don’t know you that well,
I give a shit about you. We’re in the same crew.
So just friends.
And as friends, I’m trying to look out for
you. See for myself if you’re all right.
Make sure you know I’m here to listen
if you want to talk.
I couldn’t ignore that, so I didn’t.
sweet. But I’m not lying when I said
I’m good.
I, of course, was totally lying.
I was so not good.
OK, then you’d be good to hang
with me sometime.
And I was oh-so-totally not good to hang with him sometime.
OK. We’ll set something up.
It’s just that I’m busy right now.
Getting ready for the Revue.
Right. Tell me when it’s a good time.
Will do! ☺
Needless to say, I didn’t tell him when it was a good time.
Onward from that, he asked me a half a dozen times to meet up. Again at Mustard’s. Out for a beer at Lincoln’s Roadhouse. For black bean dip at Reivers.
He also asked if I was around to talk, either on the phone, or he’d come by my place with a bottle of wine and a six-pack.
I either ignored these texts or texted a day or two later, telling him I was sorry for the delay in reply, I’d been busy.
And then came opening night of Smithie’s Revue.
I didn’t even get home before (along with three missed calls I hadn’t picked up) I got:
Babe, WE NEED TO TALK.
Obviously, I totally ignored that.
Though the “babe” part gave me a little shiver.
Which meant, not long later, I got:
Hattie, this is serious. You know it.
You made that clear. And I’m taking
it serious. But so you know, I already
was taking it serious.
We have to talk this out.
I didn’t reply to that either.
Therefore, before I was even awake the next morning (not that I slept great, but I did eventually get to sleep), I had on my phone:
I don’t think you understand where
I’m at. And for me to explain that to you,
it can’t be over a text.
I want to see you, Hattie.
You’re driving me crazy, seems you’re
doing the same to you.
We have to put a stop to this.
Annnnnnd … yes.
I didn’t reply to that either.
Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3) Page 4