“Hello. I’m Ms. Daisy. Please follow me.”
Julia felt as if she were in some kind of Tom Cruise spy movie. She stepped out into a hallway and watched Will come out behind her doing a James Bond impression, casing the room as if they were about to be attacked by the aforementioned Mongol horsemen at any moment. Charming Ms. Daisy was also in character. Judging by her attire, she was modeling herself on Daisy Duke of Jessica Simpson fame: wavy bleached blond hair, long tanned legs, red spike heels, and impossibly white teeth. Her short shorts were denim and even shorter than required to work there, and she had on a halter top at least two sizes too small. Will Brannock seemed to notice. Will Brannock seemed to like what he saw.
Will spoke first, all business after his first thorough appraisal. “Hello, Ms. Daisy. We’d like to speak with Ginger, if she’s available.”
“Yeah, I know. She’s waiting in the back.”
“Are you employed here, too?” Julia asked her.
Ms. Daisy laughed, a little trill that sounded like a robin in a Disney movie. “Oh no, I’m not an escort. Donatella says I’m too young and flighty for our wealthy clientele, but Ginger’s teaching me to be like her.”
“What do you do here then?”
“I answer the phone and take appointments.” She looked funny for a moment, then added, “Everything’s on the up-and-up here, you know. Purely legal. No laws are being broken or nothing.”
“Of course,” said Will.
Yeah, of course, thought Julia.
They followed behind Daisy Mae, who did a sort of prissy sashay down the white-carpeted, wainscoted hallway. Oh yes, Ginger was working her charm school on Daisy, all right. Upstairs, though, it looked like an elegant and lovely apartment with taupe walls and white woodwork. Track lighting on the ceiling shone down on various reproductions of modern art with all its cubes and staring eyes and misplaced body parts. No photographs of Ginger and her clients having a good party, though.
“Here you go, Officers,” said Ms. Daisy.
Again Will stood back, plenty polite today, it seemed. Julia had a feeling that behind that charming smile of his, he was planning an FBI raid on the Elite girls in a couple of hours. On the other hand, he was being quite a gentleman now that they were inside. Julia preferred gentlemen, so it was fine by her.
As it turned out, in person Ginger was long and lean and beautiful and glamorous. She was reclining on a dark green velvet settee in front of a barred window, probably so the sunlight would turn her hair into that fiery red-gold corona for her visitors. She was a looker, all right. When they approached her, she unwound some very long bare legs and stood up. She had on a short black skirt and an emerald-green blouse that would have been alluring if it wasn’t completely see-through. She was barefoot, but a pair of purple bejeweled sandals was lying beside her lounging couch.
“Hello, I’m Ginger Jones. Donatella said you wanted to talk with me.”
Will said, “That’s right. I’m Special Agent Will Brannock and this is Detective Julia Cass.”
They both flipped open their badges and proved it.
“I know who you are,” she said offhandedly. “I had nothing to do with Lucien’s death, if that’s what you’re here about. He was alive when I left. Look on his surveillance cameras if you don’t believe me.”
“Mind if we sit down?” Julia asked courteously.
“Please do,” Ginger said just as courteously, if not more so. She gestured at the matching couch across from her. They sat, and Ginger made no secret of her interest in Will and lack of interest in Julia. She watched him out of big, exotically lined blue eyes. Julia waited for her to bat them provocatively, but Ginger just stared at him as if he were a tall hot fudge sundae, waiting and drooling and moistening her already übermoist red lips.
Will was not returning the lust, thank goodness. “Thank you for seeing us, Ms. Jones. We believe you’re the last person to see Judge Lockhart alive. We need you to tell us everything you can about the time you spent there.”
Ginger’s smooth brow furrowed, but most prettily. “I’m so sorry this happened to poor Lucien. He was a super-nice man who treated me with respect. We were friends. He tipped me good money.”
But of course, he did, Julia thought, but she said, “Is he a frequent customer of yours?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
That ma’am made Julia feel a bit long in the tooth, but maybe Ginger Jones was just a very polite type of gal. “How often?”
Will leaned back, apparently interested in letting Julia conduct the interview. Julia was pleased to oblige.
Ginger replied, “Oh, once every couple of weeks, depending on what was going on with him. He was a busy man.”
“Did he act any differently this time? Get any calls or uninvited visitors? Act nervous?”
Shaking her head, Ginger gave a little shrug. “Not really. We had dinner. Talked. You know, a regular evening. We didn’t go out, though. We stayed at his house in Woodstone Circle the whole night.”
“Do you usually go out?” Will interjected.
“Not really. Sometimes he arranged a private room in a restaurant or hotel where we would meet. He was considerate of his wife in that way.”
Yeah, real considerate, Julia thought.
“What about his wife? Was she aware of his relationship with you?”
“Uh-uh. He was careful. Said she was very jealous and would freak out if she caught him.”
“Do you think she knew?”
“I can’t imagine how she didn’t. Their maid was there every time I came and went.”
“Maria?”
“That’s right. She sometimes cooked dinner for us. She makes wonderful fajitas.”
Ginger didn’t look like a woman who succumbed to fajitas very often, or any other kind of nourishment. She looked to be around five foot ten and weighed maybe a hundred and ten pounds, tops. Runway material.
Brannock leaned forward, voice intense. “Did the judge ever tell you that he’d been threatened?”
Flipping her long, coppery hair around like she had a hornet caught in it, Ginger answered, “Oh yes, all the time. Bad guys were always threatening to get him for throwing them in jail. I never thought they would, though. Is that what happened? Somebody paid him back?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Julia informed her, still courteous. “Now, Ms. Jones, I’m going to be perfectly frank here. We know what you do. We know it’s against the law. We’re not here about that right now, but it could come to that if you don’t tell us exactly what we need to know. What do you know about Judge Lockhart that will help us find his killer?”
Ginger looked at Julia, then at an expressionless Will Brannock, then down at her hands. “He was into some kinky stuff. Nothing really dangerous but not the run-of-the-mill stuff, you know.”
Will and Julia waited. Julia had found that sometimes staying quiet and staring silently at the witness opened them up to dialogue more than badgering did. Of course, badgering had its place, too.
“He liked to handcuff me to the bed, tickle me, you know, with feathers and little fuzzy tassels.”
Julia glanced at Will. He remained stone-faced. So she did, too.
“And sometimes he wanted me to dress up like Cinderella. Go figure.”
“Right,” Julia said. “What time did you arrive?”
“Eleven thirty.”
“And you left at?”
“Four thirty.”
That all checked out with the cameras. “What was he doing when you left?”
“He had put on his bathing suit and was going to swim laps. He swam laps for exercise. He did sixty laps every morning. He was in pretty good shape for his age.”
“Did you see Maria last night?” Julia asked.
“She cooked dinner before I got there. It was beef stew and sweet corn bread. Blackberry cobbler for dessert. Lucien loved all that kind of stuff.”
Will asked, “After dinner did you see her?”
Gin
ger shook her head. “No. I guess she cleaned up the kitchen and then she went to her room out back. She has a little kid. He’s a cute little thing. Sometimes the judge lets him swim in the pool with us.”
Now that was an interesting development. “Who’s the boy’s father?”
“I have no idea. The judge never said. I think he took Maria in after she got in trouble about something in his courtroom. He was good about things like that. Real nice to people down on their luck. He helped me out once when I needed some quick cash.”
Will glanced at Julia. She got his message loud and clear, leaned back, and let him take over the interview.
“Okay, Ginger. Tell me this. Did he mention anything or anyone who might have wanted to do him harm? Any specific defendant that had it in for him?”
“Like I said, he told me he had lots of enemies who didn’t like his judgments. He usually just laughed it off. He was well protected for the most part—the dogs and the gate and the cameras. I guess he wasn’t as safe as he thought.”
“We didn’t see any dogs on the premises.”
“That’s right. He told me they were with his wife in Louisiana.”
Ginger ran her fingers through her hair. She certainly looked good for having had such a long night over in Charlotte. She carefully avoided their eyes, which told Julia right off that she knew more than she was letting on. She was probably debating whether or not to tell them.
Julia said, “If I were you, I’d go ahead and tell us whatever it is you’re trying to hide right now.”
Will and Ginger both looked at her.
Ginger did some sexy shrugging with her shoulders. “Oh, okay, he did mention that he’d had a stalker of sorts, somebody who was angry about one of his rulings.”
“Who?”
“I don’t remember the name. He didn’t really go into it much. Just said he’d caught him following him a couple of times, but that it hadn’t really amounted to anything. He didn’t seem scared or anything.”
“You do know it’s very important for you to remember the name, don’t you?” Will suggested, still being a gent.
That was the understatement of the year, but something told Julia that if Ginger knew, she’d tell them. Especially Will. Yes, whether Will knew it or not, his charmometer was turned on high and working big-time with Ginger.
“I know,” Ginger said, leaning toward Will, and oh-so-earnest now. “Maybe if you give me your card, I can call you if I remember something.”
Whether Will caught her meaning or not, Julia did. He retrieved a card and handed it to her without a boatload of urging. Ginger tucked it down the front of her blouse as an exclamation point to her Will-Brannock-come-and-get-it invitation. She smiled at him. Julia could almost read the card through the sheer fabric of Ginger’s blouse.
They spent another thirty minutes with her, trying to exact more information, but she didn’t give them anything else. She didn’t remember if the judge told her what kind of car the stalker had, if it was a man or a woman, if it was recently or ten years ago. Maybe the judge had been tickling her too hard with Maria Bota’s feather duster. Whatever, Julia didn’t think Ginger had anything to do with the murder. Unless she had a jealous boyfriend, which she’d denied, and which her plain as day, mucho obnoxious flirtation with Will Brannock rather negated.
Chapter 5
Outside, in front of the battered black door, Will paused and looked down at Julia. “Well, what do you think of Ms. Ginger’s story?”
“I hate to admit it,” Julia replied, “but I think she likes you better than me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Umm, let me see. Maybe the drool wetting the front of her peek-a-boo blouse?”
“Oh, come on, Julia.”
Before she could answer, Will felt his phone vibrate inside his breast pocket and quickly pulled it out.
Julia said, “Don’t tell me. It’s Ginger, missing you already.”
Ignoring that, he listened intently as they started across the empty street. As Julia rounded the front of the Hummer, he opened his door and braced a hand on the top. “Guess what? Iris Lockhart is home from her mama’s house in the French Quarter and ready for us to interview her.”
“Great,” said Julia, stepping up and sliding into the passenger seat.
They took off and found their way with all due haste to Woodstone Circle.
Stopped at a red light, Will decided to give credit where credit was due. “You’re extremely good at interrogation. I’m impressed.”
Julia looked at him in surprise.
He shrugged and said, “I call a spade a spade. You did a good job with her. You got more out of her than I could have.”
“Thanks, but I rather doubt that. Not judging by the way she was admiring your manliness. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to know much, except that you were going to be her favorite next client.”
“It’s not me. She’s an escort. That’s what they do.”
Julia didn’t respond. A block later, she said, “Do you really think Iris Lockhart is totally ignorant of her husband’s infidelities? His fun times seemed pretty in-your-face to me.”
“Yeah, I suspect she knows exactly what’s going on. Some women will accept infidelity. Some won’t.” Will waited for a pickup truck to get out of his way, then took a right onto a down ramp. “Maybe she’s hiding her head in the sand?”
“Or just an innocent little trusting soul?”
Will glanced at her. “Is there such a thing anymore?”
“That’s a little cynical.”
“I’ve been in this business a long time.” Will glanced both ways and took another right. “Are you telling me you’re not cynical after so many years working homicide?”
“I try not to be,” Julia admitted. “Sometimes it’s hard not to be, you know. I’ll give you that. I’ve seen too many things I don’t like to think about.”
Will turned in time to catch the telling expression on Julia Cass’s face. It was fleeting, but he saw enough to clue him in. She’d experienced something pretty bad in her past. He wondered what it was, and then he wondered if he really wanted to know. God knew he’d seen enough terrible things with his own two eyes. A mental picture of his little brother flitted across his mind, but he forced that awful memory down and locked it away, as he’d done a million times before. He no longer allowed himself to think about what had happened. He had a feeling that’s exactly what Julia was doing, too. Right now. Apparently they both had their demons, but what experienced law enforcement officer didn’t?
Twenty minutes later, they pulled up in the driveway of the judge’s big Scarlett O’Hara house. The crime scene crew was long gone, but the yellow police tape was still up. A white stretch limo sat under the porte cochere at the side door. The trunk was open, and a white-uniformed chauffeur was retrieving matching white luggage. A butler was waiting to carry it inside. There was no sign of Mrs. Lockhart.
Will found himself eager to interview the woman. He had a feeling that she just might know something that would give them the lead they needed. As he’d told Julia, she was a better investigator than he had expected. Why he hadn’t had much confidence in her abilities puzzled him now. He guessed it was her youth, but then again, she wasn’t that much younger than he was. Three or four years, at the most. He should have known she’d be good, with J.D. for a big brother.
Maybe it was the antagonism she’d shown him at first. She hadn’t been exactly fall-all-over-him friendly when he first met her, but she’d loosened up quickly enough. She’d been serious today, but so had he. This crime was committed by a seriously disturbed psychopath. They had to find him before he did it again, because he was going to do it again. They were working together now, and they’d have to cooperate to get the job done. That’s what was important to him at the moment. It seemed that was what was important to Julia, too.
“You want me to question Iris Lockhart?” he asked. “Or do you want to do it?”
“It’s up t
o you. You’re the boss.” She smiled, and he marveled at how pretty she was. And those dimples. “You certainly do seem to have a way with the ladies.”
Will studied her face a moment, looking for sarcasm, but couldn’t see it. But he had a feeling she was jabbing him, just a little. She wasn’t going to forget Pam Ford, not anytime soon.
“I’ll start us off,” he said. “Jump in whenever you want. We’ll share. Just like with Ginger.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that. What do you know about the wife?”
“Not much. I’ve seen her on television with her husband a couple of times. She looked like a nice enough lady. She didn’t say much, just stood there behind him and smiled.”
“Don’t they all?”
A short time later, Will knew he was dead wrong about the nice lady thing. Iris Lockhart was not a nice lady. Farthest thing from it. From the minute she entered the spacious room where they’d been deposited by an equally haughty butler, Iris looked down her long, aristocratic nose at them like they were two bedbugs crawling out of her thousand-thread-count sheets. Julia didn’t look exactly pleased at the woman’s demeanor. He had a feeling that Julia was not the kind of woman who’d just stand there and let somebody put her down. If and when Iris made the mistake of overdoing her obvious disdain for police officers, he might just enjoy sitting back and watching the fireworks.
At the moment, Iris Lockhart sat across from them in her giant, overdecorated, plush Lockhart living room. All white or off-white everything: chairs, walls, couches, fireplace, Iris’s hair, Iris’s skin, Iris’s snowy linen pantsuit that probably cost at least a thousand dollars. Hell, he and Julia were the only spots of color in the whole damn place, meaning his blue tie and Julia’s black pants. They sat side by side on a camelback cream brocade sofa that looked like nobody had pressed down on its springs since 1952. On her own spotless chaise longue, Iris cuddled ad nauseam her three miniature Pomeranians, all with lots of fluffy white hair and manicured poufs on their tails. The air-conditioning was set to about twenty degrees, the room icier than an Alaskan glacier, and Iris had ordered the gas logs turned on. She cooed at her canine babies for at least five or six minutes before she put cold blue eyes on Will and said, “Okay, what can I do for you, Officer?”
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