"Is that what all the decorations are for?" I asked, nodding towards the open boxes stacked behind the bar. I saw streamers, bunting, and flags spilling over the edges.
"Stars and stripes, baby."
"Need any help setting up?" I asked, quickly adding, "I'm not working right now and I hate to be bored, especially with Solomon pulling so many hours getting this base in shape." We shared a smile at my lame ass joke. I hadn't seen a single shapeless person since arriving. Everyone was fit and toned; it was in their blood.
"Sure, any help is appreciated. Come by next week."
"He just wants to look at your legs while you're up on the ladder," said Solomon softly. His voice was even and matter-of-fact, as he watched Kevin move to the other end of the bar to serve a trio of men who just walked through the door.
I looked down at my jeans. They were my favorite. Sculpting and flattering in all the right places. "I have great legs. I'm not sure Kevin can see them from that side of the bar though."
"That explains why he's looking down your top instead."
I looked down again. Yeah, there was some cleavage going on, probably because my shirt had worked an extra button loose. I made a note to repeat the outfit the next time I actually wanted to be hit on. To Solomon, I just grinned. "Thanks for noticing," I quipped. It wasn't like his own open-necked shirt revealing a dark expanse of smooth skin had escaped me. Neither had the way he rolled his shirt sleeves just below the elbow, revealing his muscular forearms. Around one wrist was his watch, and I could see the lick of a tattoo protruding under the cuff. His jeans molded to his legs, a perfect showcase for his confident walk. Far be it from me to mention it though. It wasn't like I was looking. Much. I wondered what it would be like to be with another man. Maddox was fun in bed: playful, elegant, hitting all the right spots... but it had been weeks since we'd been together like that. Would I want someone else taking his place any time soon? Did he feel guilty when he met the other woman?
Solomon watched me, his face blank, his eyes observant, as always. His eyelids lowered slightly as he glanced down, resting his eyes where the fabric parted. "Hard not to," he murmured.
"Try." I worked the button back into its hole.
"Damn shame," said Solomon.
"You'll get over it."
"Your blond friend is disappointed too."
"Oh, c’mon! He can't see down my top from here."
"Yeah.” Solomon grinned. “His hard luck." He finished his beer and looked over his shoulder. "Want to circulate?" he asked, all business mode again.
"Not really. If there's one thing I've learned from Lily’s years of working clubs, it's that the staff are the best people for acquiring information in a bar."
Solomon played with his glass, rocking it from side-to-side gently, a little swish of liquid moving inside, then raising it to Kevin. Down the bar, Kevin nodded. "Then we'll hang here," he said. "Another drink?" he asked, looking at my barely-touched wine.
"Coke, please. I don't think my body can take any more alcohol."
He ran his eyes over my body without being subtle. As his eyes lingered on mine, a ghost of a comment on his lips, I swatted him on the arm, but with a smile. A friendly smile. A “you're my boss” smile. I didn't want to know what he thought my body was capable of, but it was nice to be appreciated nevertheless.
"Put on your game face," said Solomon, swiveling on the stool and turning his body towards the bar. "Let's see what our man, Kevin knows."
Chapter Four
Solomon arranged for us to meet his contact in his office at noon the following day. It gave me enough time to sleep off the last of the hangover, and eat breakfast while discussing the dearth of information we'd gotten at the bar. Then I read through the files in full. So far, we had a sketchy view of Jillian Connor's life and an outline of Sergeant Tate's, as recorded by their employers. Not that any of it made up for getting information from the proverbial horse's mouth, or from Lucas' investigative strikes, back at the agency headquarters.
Captain Mitch McAuley was a tall, imposing man with shoulders that looked like he'd been a linebacker in his youth. His red hair was fading, but his ruddy, Scottish cheeks still held their florid color. His voice was a deep rumble and I could only imagine that when he shouted, people paid attention.
He and Solomon greeted each other warmly. They did some sort of back-slapping, man-hug thing that was politely affectionate, but didn't require anymore contact than necessary. Still, unless we counted the times that Solomon had taken me in his arms and kissed me—and I was still trying to keep my mind off that—it was the first time I'd seen him showing affection to anyone.
"Call me Mitch," he told me as I shook his hand. His second hand closed over mine and he smiled warmly before drawing us into his office. "Can't tell you how glad I am that you're here," he said, mostly to Solomon, while indicating we should sit in the visitor's chairs as he shut the door. I heard the slip of the blinds close behind us, separating us from the small, open-plan office beyond. Mitch was clearly a man who valued his privacy. I wondered what he was risking by asking for outside help. "I take it Solomon explained what's going on here?"
"I did. I'm up to speed on everything you told him."
As Mitch took the chair behind the desk, he nodded, pleased, though his eyes were troubled. "Something's not right. I truly do not believe that Sergeant Tate would murder Jillian," he said, diving straight in.
"Did you know them well?" asked Solomon, which, I assumed, was for my benefit. Somehow, we hadn't gotten around to talking about how Mitch and he knew each other, or why he was reaching out to Solomon above anyone else.
"Tate, since he got off the bus here. And Jillian worked in my office these past eighteen months. A real nice girl she was too. Not often that the temps actually work. Kind of here for the scenery, if you know what I mean, no offense implied, ma'am."
I ignored the “ma'am” bomb and said, "None taken." I noticed what Mitch referred to euphemistically as “the scenery” on our walk over. Frankly, it was hard to concentrate with so many buff bodies all over the place. It was a good job Solomon would be working the gym; otherwise, my eyes would soon be on stalks. Lily would have loved it. "Are there many relationships between civilians and soldiers? Friendships or otherwise?"
"Sure." Mitch shrugged. "Not many female faces on base so the ladies find they have their pick. But the soldiers have leave to go into local towns; so many have girlfriends there, and some even have their wives and families here with them."
"And the female soldiers?"
"Pretty much the same, though there's no fraternizing between ranks. If your cover wasn't as a married couple, well, a pretty lady like you... I'm sure you'd notice the attention," Mitch added, in a way that suggested he noticed what I looked like, but wasn't interested himself. Suited me fine.
Plenty of people think the best cure for a broken heart is to hop off the pity train and find something fun and distracting to ease the pain. I took a long moment to have a good hard think about taking the ring off and announcing myself divorced. Maybe if it hadn't been a couple of days since the abrupt ending of my relationship, I would have. But then there was the job, and this was our cover. Focus was going to be my mantra. I waited for Mitch to continue.
"You two sure you're not together?" he said. "If you don't mind me saying, you look good together."
"No," we both said, my voice a sharp squeak against Solomon’s amused brush-off.
Mitch shrugged. "Now if you're asking me if Sergeant Tate and Jillian knew each other, I'd say yes, in the friendly sense, and no, in the Biblical." He held a hand up for us to wait. "Not that I'm certain. I don’t take much interest in my staff's extracurricular lives."
Solomon nodded and switched topics. "Why are you so sure of Sergeant Tate's innocence?"
"No motive, for one. There's no reason whatsoever for Tate to kill Jillian. Second, I like him. He's not a killer. Strange comment for a solider, I'll grant you that, but I can tell the sort. Tate is
destined for a life on base, or behind a desk, not going special ops. I can see it in his eyes. He'll do what he has to do, but he doesn't get off on the violence." Mitch rolled his head like a boxer, circling his shoulders until they emitted little creaks of protest as he continued. "Tate's a fighter. He's strong, but he's not brutish. His mother was a victim of domestic abuse. I can't see him hurting a defenseless woman."
"Why do you think the military police have determined it’s him? Aside from the blood evidence?" I asked.
"He and Jillian dated a couple times over a month ago. This is an office rumor I overheard," he said, shifting uncomfortably like gossip wasn't his thing. "But there wasn't that spark. The MPs seem to think Tate got rejected, and took it badly. Maybe saw her with someone else, and it sent him into a rage."
"And you don't think so?" said Solomon. He had one leg slung over the other as he leaned back in the chair, his face expressionless, like he was discussing the weather.
"Office rumor suggests no. He wasn't pushy. He didn't ask her out anymore. Plus, Tate is a good looking guy; he could get another girl."
"Sometimes a person only wants one person," I suggested, using my mental eraser to scrub the image of Maddox just as soon as it appeared.
"Maybe so. Can't see it with Tate. They still seemed friendly enough when he dropped by. I saw no signs of jealousy, not that I was particularly looking,” Mitch added.
"Could he have gotten mad enough to beat her to death?" Solomon asked, addressing the elephant in the room.
Mitch shook his head sadly, but this time, he stuck to the facts. "Tate is big and he's strong. He's won prizes for martial arts since he was ten. He has the power."
"But not the motive," I said, coming full circle and considering the intention of the man across the table. "Why do you want to help him?"
Mitch leaned forwards, his freckled forearms resting on the table. "There's a lot of things I can't say no to in this job, but if I see an injustice that I can prevent, you can be damn sure I'm going to work my hardest to prevent it. I don't want Tate convicted of a crime that I don't think he committed."
We nodded, all in agreement there.
"I would like to talk to Tate," said Solomon.
Mitch pinched his lips together and his forehead tightened in a frown. "He's not talking to military police," he said.
"And I want to know why," said Solomon. "He should be protesting his innocence. Even guilty people protest."
Mitch pondered that. "You're thinking he's scared of something?"
Solomon nodded.
"Me too," replied Mitch, his steady nodding starting up again. "I think he's so shit scared, he doesn't know who to trust." They exchanged dark looks. "It'll take some favors, but I think I can get you in there. Just you. I can't think of a good way to get your partner here into a military prison."
I wasn't sure I wanted to go in one either. My only experience of prisons was watching Silence of the Lambs and Prison Break. Neither appealed. "Actually, I'd like to focus on the civilians," I said calmly, saving face. "Is there any way I can get introductions without being too obvious?"
"Well," Mitch started. "A part-time job did just open up in my office." My stomach flipped. I knew exactly what opening he was thinking of. A dead woman's job. "We don’t have a cover for Jillian yet. Think you can handle filing, typing, running errands?" he asked.
"Sure, no problem."
"You'll run into a lot of different people while doing it."
"Great." Hopefully, I'd run into enough to make paper cuts a thing of the past. I turned to Solomon. "I can get a handle on the gossip too, get to know the people who spent the most time with Jillian. The rest of the hours, I can concentrate on other aspects of the case."
Solomon inclined his head in a brief nod, which was probably his equivalent of yelling “Go for it!” He retrained his eyes on his old friend. "We'll want to take a look over the crime scene."
"Sure. It wasn’t preserved," Mitch warned. "In fact, you walked straight over it on the way in and you're not the only ones. A lotta feet've run over this office since it was released. The carpet is new and the walls got repainted. I'm not sure there's anything left to find."
"All the same."
"I'll get Lexi a set of keys. You can poke around together after hours."
Solomon smiled at me. Much as I wanted to roll my eyes back at him, I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of thinking Mitch's words were anything but about the job.
"Just one more thing," I said. "What was Jillian doing here after hours?"
"Beats me," said Mitch as he opened the door. "I was in a meeting elsewhere. She should have gone home with everyone else."
~
Mitch was good to his word, dropping the keys off at the small apartment after hours. "I'd let you look around during the day, but there's a lot of foot traffic through the office, plus the regular workers," he said, hovering in the living room, one hand on the door handle. He seemed ready to leave as soon as he'd said his piece.
"You want to keep it quiet," I said, nodding in understanding as I looked up from the laptop screen I'd been reading for the past hour. "It's no problem."
"No one will know we were there," agreed Solomon.
After giving us the alarm code, Mitch left. Solomon turned back to me and held up the keys, dangling them from one finger. "No time like the present.”
"I'll grab my jacket."
We strolled from the apartment to the office building, just a regular couple on an early evening walk. Civilian workers drove past us on their way to the exit and home. A young family played ball on a strip of grass. A few people smiled or nodded at us, a couple said hello, but other than that, this part of the base was relatively quiet. Of course, the office workers had mostly already gone home and the day’s buzz was winding down. My nerves frizzled with anticipation. A real optimistic part of me hoped for a breakthrough, a tiny clue that was somehow obscured during the shock of finding Jillian Connor’s body. A smaller part of me hoped the paint job was a good one.
The entrance was around the side of the building, the same way we’d entered earlier, meaning we could slip in and out relatively unnoticed. We walked casually along the same path, bordered by thick, green shrubbery. After a quick glance behind us, Solomon opened up the lock, punching in the alarm code on the small beige panel fixed to the wall. I stepped inside after him, looking around. The evening was bright enough that we didn't have to risk putting the lights on. Although the glare from the overhead lights was absent, the room still managed to draw in a good amount of luminescence.
"Jillian was killed over here, by the front desk," said Solomon, pointing to the long wooden counter that divided the reception area from a cluster of desks and Mitch's office beyond. Earlier, I hadn't paid attention. Now, after a long look at the crime scene photos, I could recognize the baseboards, the beige paint, and the office-ready, multi-colored carpet. It looked the same as it ever did, only briefly stained by Jillian's battered, bleeding body.
Solomon stepped past me and opened the entrance door. Still inside the office, he knelt down and inspected the lock, first with his eyes, then running a thumb over the mechanism. He closed, then opened the door, twisting his body so he could run his fingers down the exterior doorjamb. "Mitch says the locks weren't changed, and I don't see any signs of it being picked. It's definitely not broken."
"How would you know if it had been picked?" I asked, moving over to him.
"Sometimes scratches around the keyhole. This type of lock can sometimes be flipped. See here," Solomon ran his thumb over the exterior jamb at lock height. "I didn't see a screwdriver mark on the frame. This type of lock fully and partially locks. If it's partial, you can stick in a screwdriver and flip it."
"So it was unlocked," I said decisively.
Solomon nodded in agreement. "Which means Jillian was expecting someone to come by or..."
"She was waiting for someone," I finished. "Tate?" Whether he was the murderer or not, the blood evi
dence on his clothes proved he was with her at least after her murder. It seemed awfully random that he should happen by after hours, unless he knew Jillian was there.
"Maybe. There's a record of a phone call from Jillian to Tate that afternoon. She could have asked him to stop by. If the MPs know that, and they probably do, that’s an extra mark against Tate."
"We know he definitely saw her because of her blood on his clothes. Could he have come after she died?"
"Yeah. The crime scene photos indicated there was more spray than what I saw on the photos of his clothes. That kind of violence means a lot of blood. What was on his shirt wasn't the right pattern or volume," said Solomon with the authority of someone who was trained in more than just CSI reruns. He got to his feet and closed the door. "She was hit from the front several times. There should have been blood all the way up his shirt and jacket; but instead, it was mostly on the cuffs."
I blanched at the thought of what Jillian went through and hoped Solomon, again, wasn't speaking from experience. He didn’t strike me as violent and I’d never once feared being in his company. Now I thought about it, he’d always behaved in a caring way towards me. When he wasn’t eyeing me like a steak anyway.
I moved into the main office to stand by the only clear desk, which I guessed was formerly Jillian's, and turned to face Solomon. "Stay there," I said, trying to picture the scene. "So, someone comes into the office. Jillian's working late. She gets up from her desk and walks over. She's not afraid."
“Walk out the scene.” Solomon watched me, his hands on his hips. "Why do you think she wasn't afraid?"
"Because she walked over." I crossed the floor, putting myself in Jillian's shoes, imagining her doing the same thing. "If I was afraid, I would have stayed this side of the counter and called for help. I have access to a phone right there, and another one there, or I could shut myself in one of the offices." Instead, I walked through the half-height swinging gate and shut it behind me, walking around to Solomon's side where Jillian was found. As I came to a stop, I realized something else. "Jillian knew the person. She came out from behind the counter to be, I dunno, less formal? Friendly?"
Command Indecision (Lexi Graves Mysteries) Page 5