by Nikki Duncan
As closely as she’d needed to guard her identity and goals, she’d needed help in testing the waters of the crowd. Trusting her instincts, she’d enlisted Jane Ann to help win the bid in Channing’s name, explaining only that he’d lived his life in pursuit of helping others. A win would honor his memory while generously contributing to her son’s preferred charity.
When the winners had been announced, she’d studied the faces of the crowd. Most reactions had been bland curiosity when Channing hadn’t stepped forward to claim his prize. Deeper recognition and perhaps fearful doubt had flashed across a few faces. She’d recognized only one of them.
It was six-thirty and the sun was rising when she walked into the kitchen of Madame V’s mansion. Madame V sat at the table rap-tapping her pristinely manicured nails on the cherry wood. “I did not expect you this early.”
“Mr. Lawson chose to stay in an executive apartment in the building.” Regurgitated repulsion rose in Kami’s throat as she faced the woman somehow involved in acts more duplicitous than selling sex, but she maintained a blank mask and moved to the table. “He only went to sleep a short while ago.” She pulled the brush from her purse and set it on the table. She’d pulled as much hair as possible out of the bristles on the drive. “I thought it would be best for appearances all around if I slipped away unnoticed. If my actions have caused any upset, I apologize.”
Madame V pursed her lips and stared unblinkingly for several humming heartbeats. “Go to bed.”
Those three words were delivered with the pissed-off-I-said-go-to-your-room tone of a mother. The difference was, Madame V didn’t dismiss her in the name of discipline to teach an errant child. The tone said she simply had no purpose to serve at the moment.
Kami made a quick escape to the stairs and her room for a shower.
Breck was likely awake and had possibly found that she’d taken his brush. She shouldn’t have left that note, and had in fact considered going back to rip it up. She’d passed the point of refusing her role or assignment when she’d stripped for him.
She wanted to crawl into the bed in her designated room and sleep for ten hours straight, but her brain and body hummed. She needed to figure out what was going on inside Elegant Entertainment, including what they were doing with DNA.
She paced. Her toes dug into the thick weave of the carpeting, but did nothing to soothe her as it sometimes did.
Channing had seen an Elegant Entertainment escort a few days before his death, but all she had to go on was the one mention in his date book to L at Elegant Entertainment. So far she’d met only a Lola and a Lynette, but they avoided speaking to her. If either of them had been involved with Channing they weren’t likely to tell her.
She’d gone to his lab and asked around. No one had seen him with an unknown woman and none of the women she’d met had shown up on the surveillance videos. It wasn’t coincidental that the one woman Channing had presumably met with, an EE escort he wouldn’t have called on since he’d had no functions to attend, couldn’t be identified. There was more to the story. Something that stroked deep inside with the certainty his death had somehow been coerced or staged to look like suicide.
A man didn’t make dinner reservations and buy theater tickets less than an hour before he hung himself from the ceiling piping in his lab.
But how had it been managed? How had he been killed without a shred of evidence that foul play was involved?
Dread skittered down Kami’s spine. Breck’s hairbrush played in somehow. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Talking to yourself?” Ava asked from the doorway. “I agree. Plus it makes you look crazy.”
Ava sauntered across the room in a giant Florida Panthers hockey sweater and red pompom socks and dropped onto the bed in a perfect sex-kitten pose that had surely been practiced. Who moved like that naturally?
“I’ll try to stop.” As comfortable as the sweater probably was, Kami preferred the closer fit of her boy shorts and tank tops. She sat on the end of the bed and settled in for what would be a long visit if Ava wasn’t interrupted by someone.
“Good. You have enough enemies around here without appearing touched in the head.” Ava was the one girl who’d been nice to Kami since she’d moved in. Then again, Ava had only been one of Madame V’s girls a week or so longer than Kami. The other girls didn’t like her either.
“So, what doesn’t make sense?”
“Nothing.” Nothing she would talk about in the mansion anyway. “I’ve noticed the frost in the air around here. Why are the other girls so distant?”
“Distant? That’s a nice way to put it.” She grabbed a pillow and fluffed it behind her. “We’re the newbies here. Every time Madame V hires a new girl, their profits shrink.”
“And yet everyone was gone last night on a job. It doesn’t seem business is hurting.”
“That’s beside the point.” Ava waved her hand to indicate the room. “You landed a super big fish last night, you scored this room and they’re placing bets on how soon you’ll split.”
“Um, like the assignment or the room was my choosing. And they’re betting on me? Tell me you’re kidding.”
Ava shook her head. “I overheard the girls talking. It seems they were good friends with Lori, the girl who had this room before you. You have a classiness that she had. She was a favorite with the big customers.”
“What happened to her?” Lori could be the L in Channing’s date book.
“Good question.” Ava glanced around the room and leaned forward as if preparing to reveal a great secret. “About a week before I got here, she disappeared along with all of her stuff. Like she’d been erased.”
“And they think I’m going to up and leave too?” Which she would, but that was beside the point. “Besides, I’d think they’d see her leaving as a good thing—less competition. It’s not like the customers know I exist.”
“Less competition for the rich johns is good, but they can’t help worry about how she vanished right before you showed up. They aren’t convinced you and I aren’t undercover cops.”
“Right.” How could they suspect her of being there to investigate them? Again, they were sort of right, but she’d done nothing more than move in, endure Madame V’s training and go on one assignment—Breck.
Her body heated at the thought of him. Tingles ran up the side of her neck where he’d kissed her so many times. She shook off the recollections and hoped her body would forget too. He set a high standard for other men.
“Stranger things have happened.”
“I’m not an undercover cop. I couldn’t face myself if I set out each day to deceive people by pretending to be their friend just so I could lock them up.”
Ava creased her brows. “Isn’t that what we do as escorts? Hell, actors and actresses do the same in every role they take on. Not the locking them up part, but pretending to be someone else to satisfy a need in another. We just make more money than cops.”
“You make it sound so basic. So one-dimensional.” Uncomfortable truth rang in Ava’s words. Kami’d pretended every time she stepped onto a stage for the entertainment of others. She’d pretended to be someone else when interviewing for her current position. She’d pretended last night to suit Breck’s desires. Each role was different, but all employed deception.
Her family’s predictions had come true. By refusing to join other society women in the business of shopping and organizing fundraisers, she’d settled for a life of prostitution for money. Of course, they’d meant it in terms of her needing to work for money.
“It is.”
“No.” At Breck’s fundraiser, Kami had been faced with wealthy people who prided themselves on flaunting their riches. They were one-dimensional, with no concept of hardships, personal loss or hard work. “We are multi-faceted. We’ve chosen a profession that’s, let’s face it, difficult at the best of times. We have to know how to protect ourselves sexually, physically and emotionally while at the same time being well-versed in wha
tever interests the client.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way. It does explain why escort services are on the rise these days.”
“See?” And how lucky was she that Ava had been dissuaded from thinking she was there for more than a job?
“Speaking of client interests… Tell me about Mr. CEO’s disco stick.”
“What?” Kami jerked upright in shock. She’d heard a lot of purple prose in the theater, but never had she heard anyone refer to a penis as a disco stick. Though come to think of it…
“You did ride his disco stick. Didn’t you? Tell me you did.”
“Ava!”
“Come on.” Ava laughed uproariously. “I was there. I saw your guy and I’m betting that unlike mine he doesn’t have a willie the size of a Vienna sausage.” She held up her pinkie and frowned. “I deserve an Oscar for that performance.”
“It couldn’t be that bad.”
“Please. You know those finger condoms doctors use?” She shook her head and waved her hands emphatically. “I moved once. It fell out. His balls were bigger than his dick.”
“Steroids?”
“Pfft. I’m not sure he’s ever worked out. He’s ropey thin.”
“Oh, honey. That’s very…sad.” Kami laughed with Ava over her shocking misfortune.
“It is. So tell me your guy was better.” Ava scooted forward on the mattress. Her sweater rose up her legs.
“He was great.”
“Seriously? Tall, dark hair, kind and humorous eyes. Tell me how amazing he was. Let me live vicariously through you.” Ava wiggled into a presumably more comfortable position. “Leave no throbbing, pulsating details about your CEO out.”
My CEO? Never. Throbbing? Pulsating? Well, there had been plenty of both. Regardless, she was not sharing all of the juicy details. They were hers. But talking about Breck a little bit wouldn’t be a hardship. It was a safe way to relive the night and get him out of her system once and for all. Maybe.
“I’ll talk, but I want food.”
“Great. I can always go for food, and I know this awesome spot down by the pond.” Ava jumped off the bed. “It’s perfect for girl talk.”
Twenty minutes later, Kami and Ava lay on the warm grass in the early morning sunshine with their bare feet in the edge of the pond. A box of powdered donuts and a gallon of chocolate milk sat between them. Kami stretched her arms over her head, closed her eyes and inhaled the serenade of simple scents and sounds.
The slight breeze offered little relief from the morning humidity which promised to thicken into a suffocating sheet of stickiness a little later, but she didn’t care. She hadn’t been outdoors in so long she’d forgotten how quickly it relaxed her. Granted, the relaxation could also be thanks to the walk, fresh air, junk food and funny company. Either way, Kami enjoyed the chance to unwind. It was a break she hadn’t realized she needed as desperately as she did.
She’d always been able to get pleasure and relaxation from small things like a great song or an afternoon curled up with a book. Thinking about it… Last night with Breck had given her that same kind of pleasure, the type she enjoyed now with the soft blades of grass tickling her skin and the fragrance of orange blossoms floating on the air.
“I get the distinct impression that you’re leaving out the really juicy details of last night, Kami.”
She laughed and turned her head toward Ava. “Trust me, the juiciest details are not great.”
“What do you mean?”
Kami considered keeping the details to herself, but it was the perfect opening to bring up Channing. Ava hadn’t been one of Madame V’s girls much longer than she had, but there was a chance that she’d heard something about him or L. Decided, and leaving the personal details out, she gave Ava the cliff notes version of her suspicion that something was off within Elegant Entertainment.
“Why do you think Madame V wants a client’s DNA?” Ava propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at Kami. Rapt excitement at the idea of a scandal glimmered in her eyes. “Did she say that’s what she was after?”
The super-sweet donuts that had tasted so great going down roiled in Kami’s stomach. “No, but why else would she want his hairbrush?”
“Good point.”
If she’d endangered Breck by taking his brush, had L done the same to Channing? Some of his research had been centered around DNA alteration and advancement. Was it too far-reaching to hope Madame V’s demand that she return with Breck’s DNA be somehow related to Channing’s suicide? Was it unreasonable to consider, since blackmail over DNA seemed unfeasible, that she had connections capable of more sinister experiments? “But what? What the hell would they want with Channing?” Or Breck?
“Channing?”
“What?” Kami shook her head and reprimanded herself for letting the personal information slip. Now that she had, this was her chance to see if Ava knew anything and while she didn’t mind people knowing she knew Channing she didn’t want to tip her hand too early or seem to care too much. Probably too late for that. “He was my step-brother.” And best friend.
“Was?”
“He died. Killed himself according to the overworked and no doubt underpaid take-it-all-at-face-value cops.” She understood why the local cops refused to entertain the possibility that Channing’s death had been forced. She’d been the one to find him, and at first glance it appeared as a clear-cut suicide.
The image of his slightly stretched neck and bulging eyes slammed into her mind. She shuddered and shoved the memory into the gaping void in her soul his death had left.
“You think differently.” Ava turned to her side and faced Kami.
She cleared her throat of remorse. “Channing was the one person in my family who understood me. He encouraged me to follow my heart and stop trying to force myself into the square holes of my family.”
Ava flicked Kami’s streak of red hair and grinned. “I see how that turned out.”
“Clearly. After a year, my father divorced Sandy, Channing’s mother, and got back together with mine for the second time in what has been five rounds so far.” Marry. Divorce. Marry Mom. Divorce. Marry another. Divorce. Marry Mom. And on and on. “Of course, Channing and his mom got the best end of the deal. They got away.” Kami fingered the lock of hair. “Channing wasn’t blood. My father had no fiscal responsibilities for him, so severing them from our lives was easy. For him.”
“You couldn’t.”
“Let Channing go? Not for anything.” Tears filled her eyes. “You’d think I was sneaking off to have sex with random guys. When Mom and Dad found out that I’d been seeing Channing on the way home from school, they made arrangements to ship me to a boarding school.”
Her lungs constricted with the remembered pain and betrayal. She hadn’t thought back to that time since she’d won her independence. Kami sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I heard my father on the phone one afternoon booking my flight. A brochure to the school was on the foyer table. My mother was packing my clothes. They hadn’t planned on telling me anything.”
She didn’t know why she was spilling her past to Ava. It had no bearing on her efforts to prove Channing had somehow been forced to take his own life.
“Did you confront them?”
“My father, yes. He shouted. I refused to go. He knocked me down the stairs.”
Ava lurched forward. “Kami, no.”
“Yeah. Dad was—is a world-class asshole with a one-track mind.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to Channing’s.” Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She’d thought she was finished crying over the disappointments of a teenage girl. “His mother helped me find an attorney to take my case. We went to court to get my emancipation. I’m still not sure what pissed Dad off more. That he had to pay for all of the attorney and court fees, or that I won my freedom. I lived with Channing and his mother until I graduated college.”
And thanks to the trust fund that the judge had rewarded
her full access to, she’d been able to attend the top school of the arts in Florida. It might not be the best move to tell a fellow call girl her family history, but if Kami had learned anything in life it was who to trust. Ava wasn’t like everyone else in the mansion. Like Jane Ann, she was genuine. And if the revelations came back to bite her in the butt…well, she’d know who to go to.
“Sounds like you were lucky to have them.”
“I was. They’re both gone now, but I’ll never forget them or the life they gave me. I only ever felt like I could be myself with them. Channing was my biggest fan and supporter. Maybe because he was gay, or maybe because he was just awesome, he never judged me. He never tried to change me.” No one else in her life had given her any indication they could be as loyal as Channing. As accepting.
Jane Ann and Leon seemed that way. Maybe Breck. Hopefully Ava, assuming she wouldn’t let feelings of betrayal get in the way when Kami left.
“He understood you.”
“When no one else would even try. I know—knew him as well as I know myself. Maybe better.” Swallowing back the threatening tears, she shook off the melancholy. She’d grieved for Channing, but apparently hadn’t fully appreciated what she’d had with him.
After a shaky breath she turned to Ava, desperately needing her to believe the same thing of Channing. “He wouldn’t have killed himself. I know it in my heart.”
Ava scooted over and wrapped an arm around Kami’s shoulders. “Then we find a way to prove it.”
We? As in Ava was willing to help? Before Kami could allow herself to believe that, she had to let Ava in on some of her suspicions. “I would love the help, but there’s more to it.”
“So tell me how I can help.”
Nothing ever came so simply. There was always a rickety trap door ready to snap beneath the weight of faith. “You don’t even know any of the details.”
Ava’s perfectly shaped brow popped up. “Now I’m more intrigued.” Ava brushed Kami’s hair off her forehead and held her gaze. “He’s lucky to have you in his corner, so if he didn’t kill himself, we figure out how he was killed in a way that left the cops completely uninterested. Tell me what you know about his death.”