Who Glares Wins (Lexi Graves Mysteries)

by Camilla Chafer

  No boyfriend listed, but there was a name and address for the guy Marissa had been seeing up until a couple of years ago. There was no reason given for the break-up, but Elisabeth noted that Marissa wasn’t upset. Three friends were listed and Elisabeth included their phone numbers and addresses. There was no current employment, which I found odd, because already, I got the impression that Marissa was a grafter. She might not stay in a job long, but she always had one. She couldn't afford not to. Plus, judging by her eclectic work history, she had a lot of transferable skills. She was adaptable to whatever job was available and didn’t seem stuck on any one thing. I peeled off a bright yellow, sticky note, wrote “job?” on it and stuck it to the sheet, with the colored edge sticking out.

  I could see why the police hadn't looked any further. Other than Elisabeth, Marissa didn't have any strong ties to Montgomery. No important job, no nice apartment, no boyfriend. No future to look forward to. Except that last bit was only an assumption. Who knew what hopes and dreams Marissa had?

  Mid-afternoon, just when I was getting bored and half of my colleagues had disappeared, I got a call from Jim, telling me Elisabeth had dropped off an envelope. I collected it, and waited until I was back in my chair before I slid my thumb under the flap and tore it open. The second form was completely filled out, including bank information, the type of car Marissa drove, and the plates.

  Entering the password into my laptop, I called up a couple of programs Solomon installed. One was a credit check agency and I ran background checks on Marissa, first, then on Elisabeth. I knew Elisabeth didn't have a lot of money because she said so, but it never hurt to know what her financial patterns were, especially if we took the case. Solomon didn’t share the business’ financial information with me, but since he’d never taken a pro bono case, I had to assume he wanted to turn a profit.

  The search for Marissa now moved to whether there was anything unusual to flag. Had she taken out a loan? Or gotten a new credit card? Did her spending exceed her income? Was she making payments for anything unusual? Or had she withdrawn all her money recently? Those sorts of things.

  Next, I placed a call to Maddox, my number one police contact, and the man voted most likely—in my head, anyway—to turn my insides mushy. He answered after a couple of rings.

  "This is a nice surprise," he said, in a warm voice. I heard a loud creak and imagined him leaning back in his chair, amidst paperwork that had already passed from one detective to another strewn across an ancient desk, its wood scored over many decades. The steady hum of background chatter filtered down the line.

  "Hi, Adam,” I said, my stomach doing a little flop at the sound of his voice. “It's a work call, sorry."

  "Trade you."

  "Pardon?"

  "You're going to ask me to check on something or do something. I want to trade." I imagined the smile in his eyes.

  "Mmm? You're a terrible snitch. What do you want?" I smiled to myself. No matter how often I bugged Maddox over the past couple of months, he always helped out. Usually with a suggestion, like how to tail someone without being seen, or easy tells for liars. However, I wasn’t going to take his advice on handcuffs again. Sometimes, however, I called him just because I liked hearing his voice. After all, there were plenty of other people I could call at MPD, and we both knew it.

  "Dinner. My place. Tonight."

  That was surprisingly easy. "Done."

  "You can bring the food." Ahh, the catch.

  "Hah. Okay, you got me and it's no problem. What do you want?"

  "You pick. And now you've driven a hard bargain…" Maddox laughed. "What do you want?"

  "Can you run a plate for me?"

  "Any reason why?"

  "A case. I'm not sure yet. I just want to know if the car's been flagged."

  "Sure," he agreed, not bothering to lecture me on the legality, or lack thereof, for a PI to request confidential information from a cop.

  I gave him the plate and hung up when he said he would call me back on my cell phone. I was pretty pleased about tonight’s date, not to mention the forthcoming information. Talking to Maddox was pleasurable and I suspected he knew it.

  Elisabeth and Marissa's financial reports wouldn't be back for a while, so I powered down my laptop and locked it in my desk drawer.

  "I'm out of here," I said, waving to Lucas, computer wonderboy, and Tony Delgado, an ex-military man built like a linebacker, before leaving. I preferred taking the back stairs to walk down to the underground parking lot we shared with the other occupants of the building.

  Solomon was on his way up. I spotted his ultra-short, black hair bobbing up the stairs as he took them two at a time. He came into view only a moment before he saw me.

  "I'm heading out," I told him, as I paused on the small half-landing. Solomon wore his usual thigh-hugging jeans—though I didn’t think he wore them for the effect it had on me, which was somewhere between skipping a heartbeat and drooling—and boots that looked beaten from years of wear. Today, they were paired with a dark knit, v-neck sweater, its narrow incline exposing a black t-shirt with just a hint of dark skin. Over his shoulder, he carried a backpack. I wondered where he'd been the past couple of hours, and if it had anything to do with his conversation with Fletcher. I noticed they both disappeared while I attended to Elisabeth.

  Solomon raised his eyebrows, eyeing me over as he climbed the last two steps, and came to a stop next to me. He was looking down at me expectantly. I waited for him to tell me that it wasn't working out, or that Fletcher was right, and I really wasn't cut out for sleuthing, but he just nodded. The corners of his lips edged into a smile, the kind of smile to make a heart forget its job.

  "I can see that. Working?" Solomon employed everyone on a flexible-hours basis. The idea was simple. Cases like the ones the agency took were not on a nine-to-five daily basis, so neither were we. However, if, for instance, surveillance was needed in the evening, we had to do it, and weekends were never off limits. On the plus side, sleeping in wasn't a problem, and I could take off for a day or two, as long as nothing was happening. Despite my years of office work and keeping regular hours, I liked this new arrangement much better, regardless of the haphazard hours.

  "Checking a few things out. A missing person came in," I told him.

  He grinned, his liquid-chocolate eyes amused. “Case solved.”

  I gave him a little eye roll, not enough to see brain, but enough to show him he wasn’t funny. Even though he was, because I had to nip the insides of my cheeks to stop the smile that nearly appeared.

  "Any red flags?" he continued.

  I shook my head. "None yet. The police aren't interested apparently, but her best friend thinks there's something off. I see no reason for the woman to vanish, and no reason for her not to." I lifted one shoulder in a shrug and let it drop.

  "Bring it to the meeting tomorrow." Solomon's daily office meeting was the time when we talked through various cases and their merits, before deciding on our workloads. It wasn't completely obligatory, but it also wasn't ignored. "I may have something for you as well."

  "Okay. See you tomorrow."

  "Lexi." Solomon nodded and turned away to continue mounting the stairs. I breathed a sigh of relief. Still had a job.

  I clattered down the last flight of stairs hurriedly, before it crossed Solomon’s mind to fire me, and made my way across the lot to my VW. Solomon’s black Lexus LX was parked in the space next to it, looking like the car my car dreamt it could be. I tried not to feel guilty about stretching the truth. It was true that I was going to check on a couple of things. For one, I wanted to run by Marissa's place and see if anything stuck out. Mostly though, I intended to run home, shower, change, and get some food to take to Maddox’s place. Solomon, however, did not need to know that.

  Solomon and I maintain a strictly professional relationship. Not long ago, when we worked our first case together, and before Solomon started his own company, there was some kissing involved—very, very nice kissing
. The type that makes you heat up from inside out, and makes your mind turn to marshmallow fluff, rendering you unable to think of... where was I? Oh, yeah. Solomon even kissed me when he offered me the job, and I kissed him back when I took it.

  Since then, nada. Nothing. Ziparoonie.

  Of course, that could have a lot to do with my seeing Maddox. Maddox and Solomon were colleagues for a short while, working on a joint task force to investigate a multi-million-dollar fraud—a case I ultimately cracked—but I wouldn't call them friends. As far as I knew, they hadn't seen each other since then. Still, even though Solomon didn't press for anything more, and I didn't offer, I considered it more polite not to push my relationship with Maddox in his face. Plus, if I spent all day twirling my hair and giggling about my hot cop boyfriend, I could definitely kiss my job goodbye.

  I buckled up and headed out, pointing the car towards Frederickstown, while trying not to think about Solomon's lips on mine. I took the job because I wanted it, and because Solomon promised to train me, not because he was hotter than a volcano. But every so often, I saw him looking at me in a way that wasn't strictly professional; and every so often, I caught his eye, and held it for a split second longer than I needed to, before looking away. Playing games didn't seem wise, not with my job, and certainly not with a man like Solomon. Definitely not until I found out where things were heading with Maddox. Given my colleagues’ first impressions of me, largely due to my non-PI background and for which, ironically, Solomon decided to employ me, my job felt precarious enough as it was. I did not need to add any emotional entanglements to the issue.

  As I meandered through traffic, my thoughts turned to Maddox. I liked him a lot. It was too early to say whether there was, or would be, love, but I felt a lot of affection for him and received a lot back. So far, our dating life was relaxed, calling each other as and when, with normally not more than a couple of days elapsing. Our relationship had quickly progressed to the sleeping together stage, and was now in regular sleepover territory; but although he'd stayed over at my place, I had yet to stay at his.

  My cheeks flushed and my heart sped up. Possibly that was the invitation for tonight.

  Fabulous.

  I pulled up outside Marissa's apartment building, parking on the street, and shut off the engine. I sat there, just watching for ten minutes, until the heat completely dissipated from the car. No one came in or out, and no cars entered the small lot to the side of the building.

  I checked my file for Elisabeth's description of Marissa's car, but there was no small Honda. I grabbed my purse, made sure my notepad and pen were inside, then walked over to the building. Six names were written against the buzzers on the door and I jotted them down before walking back to my car. I sat a while longer, wondering where Marissa was, then drove home. I was buzzed because tomorrow I might have a case of my own.

  Chapter Two

  An hour later, Lily, my best friend and downstairs neighbor, and I managed to coordinate our exits.

  "On a date?" I asked, taking in her short, black dress and high heels.

  "An early dinner," she said, nodding in the affirmative. She held up a garment bag and pulled a face. "And then I'm working the door at Paradise." We both knew what that meant. Paradise was a fun club with cheap booze and a big dance floor, but something of a meat market. People went there to do two things: get drunk and meet the opposite sex, two activities that went hand-in-hand. Of course, that also meant the patrons got lippy; and Lily, in her job as host and door manager, got to deal with them before siccing the bouncers on them. "You?"

  "Dinner with Maddox at his place, and hopefully, the horizontal tango." I wasn't nearly so well dressed, but after a day in the dress and heels, I was comfortable in jeans and a silky top, the peep-toes back in place. I tossed some extra clothes into a small overnight bag that really could masquerade as an obscenely large purse, just in case I read the signals wrong, and Maddox only intended dinner, not a sleepover.

  "Excellent," said Lily. "Have fun! Do everything I like to do."

  "Even the nasty stuff?"

  "Especially that. Do that twice."

  I stopped by Monty's Slices, the best pizzeria in Montgomery, for a large chicken pizza, and a side of salad, for no other reason than to pretend we had something healthy on our plates. Then I drove the rest of the way to Maddox's.

  Maddox lived in Harbridge, an area realtors liked to call “up and coming,” That meant delis selling foreign cheeses and nice wines sprang up, coffee bars became the norm, and housing prices were starting to soar out of achievable reach. There were smug couples everywhere. I smugly assimilated.

  Halfway between my place and Maddox's, I pulled over and sat for a moment, looking at the dream house I yearned for. It was a buttery-yellow bungalow with a neat little yard out front and mansard windows in the roof. Seeing it en route made the drive both pleasurable and heartbreaking, because I couldn't see how my income could ever stretch to afford it. With a sigh, I pulled out and continued on, the scent of pizza filling my nose.

  Like me, Maddox had an apartment on the second floor, but his place was slightly larger than mine. He bought it when his building went co-op. He buzzed me in and was waiting with the door open while I skipped up the stairs and straight into his arms.

  Maddox is delicious, inside and out. Today, he wore his suit pants and an open-necked, blue shirt, the tie long gone, so he clearly hadn't been off duty long. His jaw was dusted well past a five o'clock shadow, and his hair was cut very short, ridding it of the unruly growth that just added to his sexiness. Inheriting dark-haired genes and a quick wit, his fondness for St. Patrick's Day, is more focused on the beer and less to do with his Irish heritage, one that dates some way back in his family tree. My brothers respected him, my parents thought he was great, and my sister hadn't said anything condescending when they met; so he was doing very well in the boyfriend-stakes too.

  I stood on tiptoes and kissed him a long, long time. "Pizza delivery."

  "The pizza boy at Marcello's never delivers like this."

  "Does he kiss?"

  Maddox pulled a face and pushed the door shut. "No. Why? You looking for a tip?"

  "Bet he doesn't suggest taking his clothes off either." I smirked and sidled past Maddox to lay the box on the small, two-person dining table that occupied a sizable chunk of his kitchen.

  "Are you offering?" Maddox's hands went around my waist, and he kissed me again.

  "I was suggesting you might want to slip into something more naked." I playfully flicked the button of his shirt, then another, and, oh well, the rest too, pushing it back to reveal a firm chest, peppered with fine hair. "Yummy."

  "I've heard you talk that way to pizza. You look at pizza the same way too."

  "Yeah," I agreed, tugging the shirt from his waistband. "There're some things that I really like."

  "I've got something else you'll really like."

  "Naughty." I kissed him again.

  "Not that, but I'll suggest that in, oh, thirty seconds." Maddox winked, his hands sliding under my top. "I ran your plates."

  I raised my eyebrows, and stopped the nibbling on his neck. "And you got something?"

  "If you stop doing that, I won't tell."

  "Fine, but this is purely in the name of work. Just so you know." I nibbled his neck some more, making my way up to his jaw. "Keep talking," I reminded him when a rumbling moan sounded in his throat.

  "The car was impounded ten days ago. It's been sitting in the impound lot ever since."

  "Have I mentioned you're a brilliant detective?" I said, and this time, I got his mouth. He sucked my lower lip, before his tongue searched for mine.

  "I'm good with my hands too," Maddox murmured between kisses.

  "Prove it."

  Maddox swiped the pizza box out of the way, tossing it onto the counter. He proceeded to “prove it” enthusiastically on the kitchen table, with our clothes pooled in a heap on the tile floor.

  Three quarters of a still warm
pizza, and an hour later, he also proved it on the couch, before tucking us under a heavy, wool blanket. My head lay on his bare chest and he stroked my hair. The only light came from the flicker of the television, which was turned down low. I was warm, cozy and very, very relaxed. If I never had to move again, that would just be peachy.

  "Tell me, what’s going on with the owner of this car?" he asked.

  "I hope you weren't thinking about that during sex." I planted a kiss on his chest, about an inch from a small, pert nipple. I licked it and Maddox's hand stopped the stroking and he sighed.

  "No. Just popped into my head."

  "Solomon doesn't want us talking about cases out of the office." He made that very clear the day he assembled the team, introducing us to one another and laying down the rules. Working contacts was fine; discussing our cases, however, Solomon stated plainly, was not.

  "I just gave you vital information." We both knew Maddox was playing with me. He knew I could have gotten the info elsewhere and I said as much. "So it was an excuse to talk to me?" he asked, pretending to be surprised with a mock gasp of astonishment.

  I wiggled my eyebrows at him. "I wanted the info too."

  "You don't need an excuse to talk to me. Just call and say hey."

  "I know." I snuggled in, drawing my feet under the blanket, briefly wondering where my clothes were. Ah, yes, the kitchen floor.

  "Are you staying over?"

  "If that's an invitation, yes."