Craving

by Kristina Meister

  I felt the tug of the guard’s interest and caught his wave with my eye. “You can go up. He’s cancelled his meeting.”

  Unger’s brows drew together in that quintessential cop-sign for powerful interest. “Well, I’ll have to thank him for that.”

  “Anything for the authorities,” the man said with a smile, apparently oblivious that it sounded scornful. He set two visitors’ badges on the counter and we clipped them to our shirts.

  We made our way to the elevator and were interred inside its metal body for what seemed like an eternity. Not even its music calmed me. Unconsciously, my feet shifted; I put my arms around myself and felt goose bumps, and for some reason, felt as if I were being watched. I looked up at the security camera and narrowed my eyes at the guard who was probably looking down my blouse even then.

  “You feeling okay?” Unger asked casually, so casually it sounded anything but. I knew what he really meant. He meant to ask if I was going to collapse in a prophetic seizure.

  “Yes. This place just gives me the creeps.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied with a shake of my head. “Just a gut thing; isn’t that what you detectives say? Something about it’s freaking me out.”

  He turned and leaned against the rail. “It’s to be expected. It’s where your sister spent her days. You’re dealing with a very stressful thing. You have to let time close the wound.”

  I nodded, but didn’t feel like healing. The more I thought about it, the less her death made any sense. Even if it had been her choice, there had to be a reason why it was now, and not back in high school when she’d been at her worst.

  Everything means something.

  I closed my eyes until the final ding and the scraping of the door announced us.

  Positioned on the top floor, this office was decidedly modern, but also quite comfortable and lacking the entrance’s severity. Clean lines, bright contrasting colors, acrylic, wood laminate, art, and a sense of fun. The secretary facing us appeared cheerful and my foreboding seemed to slip away. Within seconds, I was certain my cover was complete, that I was an actress of the first order, and that whomever Mr. Moksha was, he would absolutely delight at meeting me and answering my questions; then, I remembered the look on the guard’s face, his furious conversation, and knew she was part of a huge illusion.

  Before we could even speak to the set of white teeth in front of us, a large door in the wooden wall opened and a man came toward us. He wore an impeccable suit of white linen and a red shirt, was well-tanned, and greeted Unger with a curious smile that lit up his whole face.

  “Detective Matthew Unger! So you’ve thought of more things to ask me?”

  He wagged Unger’s hand up and down in both of his, grinning as the surprised detective tried to state his case. But even as Moksha smiled, he was watching. His eyes slid to mine by way of the sleeve of my silk blouse, and for a moment, I felt my face flush.

  “Who is this?” he said in an appreciative voice of the softest tenor.

  “My associate, Ms. Blake,” Unger said, but as Moksha passed him to gather my thin fingers in his strangely warm hands, my cohort began to frown almost protectively.

  Something in Moksha’s smile was canine. “Ms. Blake,” he murmured as if he wanted to remember the name forever. “Welcome. What do you do for the department? You’re not a detective, surely?” He tilted his head over his shoulder at Unger, but his greedy eyes never left my face. “You’re much too lovely.”

  I’m not an unattractive woman. I have what my mother always called a “regal” face, which I took to mean the kind of face you’d want a dominatrix to have. I have always tried very hard to keep my posture tall, dress for success, and at any cost, maintain the upper hand. Years of fighting peoples’ impressions, I’m sure, but though I was stern, it did not necessarily intimidate men. I had been known to receive advances.

  However, I was never a creature of sensual appetites, one of the oft lamented “irreconcilable differences,” and I had a way of giving pick-up-liners the cold shoulder that made certain I left every bar completely sober. This man, though, disgusted me in a thoroughly new way.

  The longer his hand stayed on me, the more my skin crawled, and looking into his dark brown eyes, set in that sun-kissed face, I began to feel nauseous. The sharpness I saw there was stifling. He was struggling to appraise me from the inside out, and as he gripped my hand, I worried he would have a full accounting in moments. But before my vision could darken, he released me and stepped back, still smiling almost sardonically. My skin burned.

  “Isn’t it a bit fifties to assume a pretty woman can’t be intelligent too?” I threatened with a sweet smile.

  “She’s a forensic specialist,” Unger intervened.

  Moksha nodded, but didn’t turn away. It seemed his eyes widened a bit.

  “In what?” he replied in curt civility.

  “Records,” Unger said uncomfortably. “Would you mind if we went into your office?”

  The spell seemed to break then, and finally, the caster turned away. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. However intense his examination, in a moment, Moksha had lost interest. He was in the door and seated at his desk so quickly, I barely had time to look around before I was forced to pay attention again.

  Just as the floor contrasted from the lobby, this office differed from all that I had seen thus far from AMRTA. Deep reds, dark woods, foreign sculptures from a mixture of tribal backgrounds, thick fabrics, and even a fireplace; it could have been cut from a castle, if not for the oddly bright lighting. I looked up, and instead of a chandelier, found a ceiling of glass and the noonday sun.

  “So what may I do for you, Detective?” He didn’t wait to hear an answer, but instead, snapped his cuffs and folded his hands on the desk. “I told you all I really know about Eva Pierce. I didn’t know her that well.”

  Unger opened his notebook. “Yes, I know, but recently, we’ve discovered a few new details that spark some interest.”

  Moksha’s face did not change. Even an honest man’s would have moved, made some kind of expression, but he seemed to have turned to ambivalent stone.

  “It appears Ms. Pierce was making a considerable amount of money.”

  “I should think so,” Moksha replied, somehow managing to barely move a muscle. “We’re very generous to our employees. After all, they’re our lifeblood.”

  It almost seemed like a joke, and in its flippancy, I saw a lie. He was too composed, too refined and practiced.

  There had to be a way that I could force something from him without jeopardizing our cover. I took a seat in a soft red chair and crossed my legs, satisfied that his eyes followed the path of one white knee moving over the other.

  “What exactly did she do here?” Unger asked quietly, proving himself a very observant man, his sideways glare nearly burning a hole in my arm.

  “She was our chief record-keeper, as I’m sure I told you before,” Moksha replied, once again tracing my lines to find my face. For once, I was glad to make use of the supposed “feminine wiles.”

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  Moksha finally relaxed a little, though it was the relaxation of a giant cat just before it leapt out at some unsuspecting prey. He was unabashedly smiling at me, objectifying me that easily.

  Record-keeper, my ass.

  Eva was so much my opposite, it was almost uncanny; light and sentimental where I was dark and uncompromising, withdrawn and uncertain where I was intrusive and focused. Her girlish looks, her curly, light hair, her expressive mouth and eyes; there was no way a man of taste would pass her up. Vulnerability was her charm and her weakness. It may have even killed her.

  “It means that she kept our records, of course.”

  Some part of me chilled. I leaned forward just enough to tempt him to glance at my cleavage. His eyes hardened a bit. He was avoiding answering the obvious question, even as he was enjoying my company. It should have been an even trade, and I was
feeling more annoyed with each passing moment.

  “How well do you usually treat your employees?” I interrupted. “Give us a number.”

  His head slowly tilted, and I was so lost in his subtle astonishment, that I did not even try to see what my words had done to Unger’s train of thought.

  “We follow competitive hiring practices. Sometimes we pay more than we should, but it is worth every penny.”

  “How much was she making here?” I pressed as pleasantly as I could, while attempting to maintain the advantage.

  He leaned back and nearly laughed at me. Stopping himself just in time, he reached out and touched the intercom on his desk. “Katherine, will you photocopy Eva Pierce’s personnel file and all our records concerning her pay, if you please?” He let the button go, not even glancing at the machine or the door to make certain the girl had received her instructions. He was confidently stripping me with his eyes and getting away with it.

  “What was the nature of your relationship with Ms. Pierce?” Unger let fly. Without a single beat skipped, Moksha replied.

  “Professional. She was a very efficient and organized person. I believe she loved her file room. I almost think she found the records to be her friends.” He seemed to think that amusing, but why, I couldn’t say.

  “I just find it odd that the CEO of a company would know the head of records,” Unger continued stoically. “I also find it strange that when I asked to talk to the people who might know about her work, I was referred only to you. Can you explain that?”

  He didn’t even bother to say “of course.” It was written on his self-assured face. “When we hired her, I made certain I was hiring someone whom I could rely upon for the type of comprehensive research I required. We acquire a few odd antiques here and there, something she specialized in, and off and on, we needed a polyglot for confidential reasons.”

  “Odd antiques?” I frowned, never having recalled that Eva had a love for the past. “What kind of antiques? And what languages specifically?”

  The eyes gave a slow blink. “I’m afraid I can’t go into any more detail. Suffice to say”—he shrugged—“she was also very charming, intelligent, and easy to like or want to know better.”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  His smile suddenly swept off his face and I was left in the cold light of the sun, alone.

  “I’m not sure what you’re insinuating. Eva Pierce was a colleague, a valued employee. I have no need to acquire women here. I can do that in much more intimate settings.”

  I was shunned and couldn’t have cared less. “Then you have no idea why she’d be receiving ten thousand dollars a week for the last year or so, or who might have given it to her?”

  He scowled for an instant and slowly shook his head. “Perhaps she was embezzling; I’ll have our accountants check on it.”

  Before I could retort, Unger’s stern rejoinder put me back in mind of our scenario. “You mentioned that she went out a lot. How would you know that?”

  “Exhaustion in meetings, old eye makeup, frequent headaches,” Moksha said with a derisive smile.

  “But she never mentioned who her friends were.”

  He sighed and spun in his chair until he could get to his feet, obviously bored with us. “Try around the water cooler.” The corner of his mouth gave a snide twitch. “I have postponed a meeting; are we finished?”

  “No,” I interjected. Before he could escape or stand at the door in polite dismissal, I rose and stood in front of him. “Why would she jump off that building, why not here, a place she knew?”

  He crossed his arms, and with his face out of Unger’s view slowly began to sneer. A cloud moved across the sun, streaming over his features. For a moment he had no shadow, and all his darkness was on his face.

  “Perhaps she knew better than to make a mess for me,” he said. “Katherine will see you out.”

  Chapter 6

  We were rushed from the building and a thick file was dropped in Unger’s hands. Beside the car, I lost my temper and caught his elbow.

  “What the hell?” I demanded. “He all but admitted he hated her guts! What if he’s the reason she jumped?”

  He looked at me, and though his eyes said he was in complete agreement, it was clear there was nothing he could do about it. “Corporations like this have vicious public relations policies. They all walk a fine line between countless insider trading rules or environmental agreements and criminality. If we start knocking down walls asking questions for one suicide, they’ll have my badge.”

  I glared at him.

  “Ms. Pierce.” He sighed and looked around. “I wanted to help give you some answers, but the truth is, I don’t think there are any. I’ll go through this file, but I’m not sure we’re going to find anything.”

  I knew he was right. The logical part of my brain was sure that he would find nothing but a sterling employment record, decent pay, and not a trace of embezzlement. Eva predicted her death because she knew what she was going to do and I was just grieving. I knew it, but I still couldn’t let it be.

  “Unger . . . Matthew, there has to be something. She wouldn’t just do this. She had to have a reason. She had to feel like there was nothing else. Otherwise, there’s no point!”

  He tossed the folder into his back seat and put his hand on my shoulder. “Ms. Pierce, sometimes people don’t have a point, and that’s the point.”

  While I stood there refusing to cry in his presence, he got into his car and drove away. After he was gone, I stared at the entrance to the lot in dejection, until the town car pulled in and parked in front of it. As I stood behind my car and watched, Moksha swept out of the building, a look of harassed outrage on his face. He got into the back of the car and it pulled out of the lot in a considerable hurry.

  I got in and pulled out behind it. Maybe I wasn’t a detective, but I’d yelled at enough detective movies to know how a tail worked. Two cars back, not too aggressive or safe, I drove like someone who had somewhere to be. Never mind that I wasn’t sure where the somewhere actually was.

  I thought they might take him to the airport, to jump into a private jet, or to his opulent, high-rise condo, or something equally rich and spectacular, but instead the sleek car made its way across the city toward the river. I slowed down, and when the car pulled from the busy avenue into a narrow access street between two warehouses, I pulled over and put it in park.

  “Where is he going?”

  I sat there for a few moments, debating. I ticked reasons off on my fingers, wished I had binoculars, a camera, or a trench coat, and finally, pounded the steering wheel in frustration. Making up my mind, I ran across the street and stood behind a dumpster, trying to ignore the wretched smell. The town car sat idling in front of an open metal doorway. Above the door was a darkened neon sign in a font that I could not quite read.

  A nightclub?

  For fifteen minutes, I waited behind the putrid dumpster, sure that whatever Moksha was doing, it would only take him a few minutes, or the car would have been parked. Just as I was regretting my choice of shoes and promising to never again consume any kind of meat product, Moksha exited the building with a woman in a blue silk dress. They seemed to be arguing, though I couldn’t hear anything that was said. He stood very close to her, his dark eyes pummeling hers with questions. His lips barely moved, though he looked fierce, like he might lean forward and tear out her throat with his teeth. For a moment I pitied her, until he pushed past her and she turned.

  She was beautiful, with luminous pale skin, long auburn hair in a wavy, forties style, and it was clear if he struck her, she would’ve fought right back. Her majestic face glared after him and as he pulled away in his fancy car, she crossed her arms and tilted up her chin. In her eyes was the pure, unadulterated disgust of a duchess.

  Moksha with his rich corporation, his flagrant disrespect, and a smile that oozed nouveau riche, for some reason couldn’t hold a candle to her imperial, nonchalant elegance. She leaned against the
door frame, slowly blinking her false eyelashes, until her glance found me.

  My heart jumped. I had to make a choice. Sensible, happily-married-to-a-cheating-loser Lilith would have pretended to be looking for something in the dumpster that she might have accidentally dropped while pulling a double shift in the meat packing plant, or whatever, but pretend-forensic specialist Cassandra Blake already had one stiletto heel knee-deep in the proverbial mire. I stepped out, and as the car pulled past me, dark reflections smoothing over its tinted windows, I gave it a stoic glance, as if I had backup waiting, and walked toward the entrance.

  I didn’t turn around, though I could feel myself being watched. Moksha knew he’d led me there. He knew I was about to question the woman. He knew he was under investigation. The car seemed to hesitate, but as I reached the door, it pulled out and disappeared. The woman looked after it in contempt, and though I thought she’d vanish inside and lock the door, she waited for me to find her, almost as if proving a point to the sleaze inside the car.

  My mind went over the things they always said in cop shows.

  “Hello, ma’am,” I began, “my name is Cassandra Blake.”

  Close up, she looked like a porcelain statue, a marble sculpture wearing lipstick, and her face never changed, even as her emerald-green eyes rolled to follow me.

  I had to be careful about what I said. As angry as I was about Unger refusing to do anything else, I didn’t want to get him fired. If this woman and Moksha compared notes, a few well-treated lawyers might make a few well-timed calls.

  “Is this a night club?”

  One manicured fingernail, painted to match the dress, uncurled and pointed upward at the sign. But the writing was still unintelligible, and not because I was at an angle. It was a symbol and I didn’t know what it meant. I looked at her and it was clear that those who didn’t know, would never know.

  “Strange place for it, isn’t it, next to a meat packing plant?”