by Eileen Wilks
All of the men were dark-haired, probably Anglos. One of them looked naked, though the table hid his lower half. Maybe he was one of the servers, who were all young, male, and bare from the belly button up. The women were more of a melting pot. She counted three redheads, two African Americans, three blondes, and four women with brown or black hair.
Lily had reached the edge of the dance floor when two of the women stood. The shorter one looked Hispanic, though it was hard to be sure. The pink lighting was flattering but not very bright. She had butt-length hair and large breasts fighting to escape the bodice of her tight red dress. She bent over the man closest to her, the one in the table’s center. He had one of the redheads snuggled up on his other side.
He turned his head. Lily got a glimpse of his face before the woman’s hair fell forward, curtaining what looked like an enthusiastic kiss.
Rule Turner. Even in the dim light, he was easy to ID.
She’d already guessed that the power at that table rested with the man at its center. Bodies tilted subtly his way. Chairs were arranged so the others could see him. And he was the very picture of elegant debauchery, wasn’t he? Sprawled in his chair so comfortably, loose-limbed, his black shirt unbuttoned nearly to the waist. Kissing one woman while he held on to another.
Lily’s lip curled. “Mr. Smith,” she said. He didn’t pause or acknowledge her, so she took a quick step to catch up and put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
And snatched it back immediately, amazed. The buzz had been strong enough to come through his suit. I guess some gnomes really are hostile little perverts, and not shy at all. . . .
“What?” he snapped, turning.
“Is that Rachel Fuentes?” She resisted the urge to rub her palm and nodded at the woman who, having finished kissing Turner, was leaving the table with her friend.
“Yeah.”
She turned to Gonzales. “Keep an eye on her. She’s probably headed for the ladies’ room, but we don’t want to take any chances. If she tries to leave, stop her. Don’t tell her why, don’t answer questions. Bring her to me.”
He nodded and moved away.
“The men at those tables—are they all lupi?”
“They’re the draw, aren’t they? Not that I don’t put on a good show, too. Stay around, and you’ll see.” He winked.
“I’m going to need a place to conduct interviews.”
“I won’t have you hassling my customers.”
She considered the unpleasant little man—if that’s what she should call him. Did male gnomes think of themselves as men? “Are we going to argue about every request I make?”
“Probably.” He turned and walked off.
Lily followed, and got her first close-up look at Rule Turner.
Mixed European heritage, she thought, looking at sculpted cheekbones and a strong, slightly crooked nose. Great teeth, she added when he grinned at something said by the man across from him—a man whose hair halfway hid the silvery numbers of a tattoo, indicating he’d once been registered. Not to mention wicked eyebrows. Lily noticed eyebrows the way some people paid attention to shoulders or lips, and Turner’s were distinctive—dark slashes that mirrored the angle of his cheekbones.
The eyebrows in question lifted quizzically when he noticed them approaching. Then dark eyes met hers, and she stopped thinking altogether.
. . . what? she thought a second later. What the hell was that?
“. . . tongue back in your mouth,” Max was saying. “Got a woman for you, but this one claims to be a detective.” He added something in a language Lily didn’t recognize. One of the men laughed.
Some kind of blood sugar thing, maybe? But she hadn’t gone dizzy or fainted. Just . . . blank.
“Ignore Max,” the bare-chested man said. “He doesn’t have to practice obnoxious—he’s got it down pat.”
Lily gave him a closer look. He was lean, with tousled hair the color of cinnamon and the most stunningly perfect face she’d ever seen on a man or woman. Not to mention an incredible body . . . which she could see a great deal of, though a few details were concealed by the table.
She blinked. “You’re naked.”
“Not quite, darling. G-string. Must keep Max legal.”
It said something about Turner’s presence that she’d noticed this nearly nude Adonis second. “And your name is?”
“Cullen. Come have a seat, love.” He patted his thigh as if he expected her to plop down in his lap. “Rule doesn’t need any more women.”
“And you do?” Turner retorted mildly. His voice was rich and nuanced, like melted chocolate. No registration tattoo, she noted. “But I suspect it’s a moot point. Is this an official visit?”
“I need to ask some questions, Mr. Turner. I’m Detective Yu,” she said, once more holding out her shield.
He barely glanced at it. “I’ll be happy to help,” he murmured, making it sound as if the help he offered was highly personal. “Call me Rule.”
Not in this lifetime. “Do you know Carlos Fuentes?”
One of the women started to laugh but turned it into a cough. Others grinned. “We’re acquainted,” Turner said, unperturbed. “I’ve been seeing his wife, Rachel.”
Candid fellow, wasn’t he? “Are they separated?”
“No, they’re quite happy together.”
“Well, to use ‘seeing’ in a less ambiguous sense, have you seen Carlos tonight?”
“No.” The eyebrows lifted. He glanced at the others. “Anyone?” It appeared, from the murmurs and headshakes, that no one had seen Fuentes. Max went so far as to state that Fuentes hadn’t been in the club.
Turner faced her. “What’s going on?”
“How long have you been here?”
His fingers thrummed once on the table. “I’ll play along a little longer. Then I want some answers. I arrived shortly after nine.”
“And you haven’t left the club since then?”
“No. I believe I can find witnesses to confirm that, if necessary.”
Three of the women spoke at once. “Hold on a second,” Lily said, setting down her backpack so she could get her notebook from it. “I’ll need your names. You first,” she said to the tall, dark-skinned woman closest to her.
She looked alarmed. “Is this really necessary? I don’t want my name in the papers.”
“I don’t have any control over what the papers print, and yes, it is necessary.”
The redhead draped against Turner’s side chuckled. “Come on, Bet, you’re always saying you don’t care what that husband of yours thinks.”
“Ex-husband, as of tomorrow,” the black woman snapped, “and he can eat worms. It’s not him I’m worried about, it’s the partners. They aren’t exactly liberals.”
“All law firms are conservative. It’s the nature of the beast.” The redhead straightened. She had a piquant little face shaped like a cat’s—wide through the forehead and temples, narrowing to a pointy chin. Her hair was cropped extremely short, and gold dangled from her ears. No leather, but her snug white top showed off plenty of creamy skin that suggested she was a natural redhead. “I’ll be happy to testify that Rule’s been here since nine-twenty or so, Detective Yu.”
The slight stress on Lily’s last name caught her attention. “And your name is?”
“Ginger.” A small smile played over her lips. “Ginger Harris.”
Lily froze.
“Didn’t recognize me, did you? Well, it’s been a long time. Imagine you growing up to be a cop. While I . . .” she laughed, high and tinkling. “I became a slut.”
Turner said something. Lily didn’t take it in.
How could she have failed to recognize Ginger’s eyes? The color, the size, the shape . . . they were set wide and so deep that the upper lid almost disappeared. The pupils were a dark amber, like a beer bottle held up to the sun. Her eyebrows were skimpy, like her lashes.
But it had been so long. Lily hadn’t seen those eyes since shortly before her seventh birthda
y . . . except in the occasional nightmare. Ginger’s eyes were just like her sister’s. “You’re wearing contacts,” she said stupidly.
“Lasix surgery, actually. You haven’t changed much, aside from growing a few inches. Still the same sweet, serious little prig you were back then.”
Lily wanted to ask Ginger if her world was divided into prigs and sluts. She wanted to ask about Ginger’s parents, her brother. But there was a dead man on his way to the morgue. She had to be Detective Yu now, not Lily. “I’ll need a current address.”
“If you want to do lunch, sugar, I’ll give you my cell number. Hard to catch me at home.”
“I need your address for my report.”
Ginger made a little moue of distaste. “All work, aren’t you? Oh, all right. I’m at 22129 Thornton, Apartment 133.”
“And now,” Turner said, “we have demonstrated our willingness to cooperate with the police. I’d like to know what investigation we’re cooperating in.”
Lily met his eyes. Nothing happened.
Idiot. Had she really been afraid that something would? Blood sugar, that’s all it had been. She held his gaze for a moment to prove that she could . . . and felt a tug deep in her belly, the liquid roll of desire. Unmistakable. Infuriating.
“Homicide,” she said, and hoped her face was as hard to read as his. “This is a homicide investigation.”
Everyone else reacted. Not Turner. He didn’t shift position by so much as a finger. Rather, he seemed to gather stillness around him like a force field, a quiet whose power lapped out over the others, gradually silencing them. He spoke two words: “Who died?”
“Carlos Fuentes.”
“Jesus!” one of the men exclaimed. “Oh, no, poor Rachel,” came from one of the women. And the naked Adonis—Cullen—looked briefly, intensely relieved.
Turner’s gaze suddenly shifted to behind Lily. “You’ll be kind to Rachel,” he told her, then stood and started around the table.
She turned. Rachel Fuentes was returning.
From a distance, all Lily had seen of the woman were big breasts and magnificent hair. Up close . . . Lily blinked, startled.
According to the gossip columns, Turner had dated some of the most beautiful women in the country. Rachel Fuentes wasn’t one of them.
She was young, not much over twenty. And her hair was indeed lovely, her breasts large, but everything else was average. She carried fifteen extra pounds, and not in the right places. Her face was narrow, her nose large, with a high bridge that made her eyes look too closely set. Still, those eyes were her best feature—large, dark and luminous.
She looked happy. “What, you missed me?” she said when Turner reached her, and looped her arms around his neck.
“There’s a police officer to see you,” he said gently. “She has bad news, querida.”
The happiness drained out, along with much of her color. Lily stepped forward. There was no good way to deliver news like this. “I’m very sorry, Ms. Fuentes. Your husband was killed tonight.”
“Killed?” She shook her head. “No, you must be wrong. He’s at church. There was a rehearsal. He’s a singer. Did you know that? He has a beautiful voice. He . . .” Her face crumpled. “Y-you’re wrong.”
As gently as she could, Lily gave her the basics—the place and manner of death, the identification based on the driver’s license and what was left of the victim’s face.
The fact that he’d been killed by a wolf.
Rachel Fuentes shuddered once. She began to wail. Briefly, Lily met Turner’s eyes. Rachel seemed oblivious to the irony of being comforted by her lover for her husband’s death. Rule Turner wasn’t.
THREE
FOUR hours later, Club Hell was empty of customers and cops. Scents hung heavy in the air, a blurred bouquet impossible to sort when Rule was two-legged—alcohol, fruit, smoke, sweat, humanity. And that damned incense Max was so fond of, that was supposed to represent brimstone.
And her. She’d left an hour ago, but her scent lingered.
Or maybe he was imagining that. Rule sighed, sat in the same chair he’d occupied earlier, and punched in a number he knew better than his own. Max and Cullen were at the bar on the west wall, making busy with drinks to grant him privacy.
After nine rings, a sleepy female voice said, “This had better be important.”
“I need to talk to the Rho, Nettie.”
“I’ll have him call you—after he wakes up. He’s in natural sleep now, but he needs that, too.”
“You misunderstand. I did not ask to speak to my father. Your Lu Nuncio needs to speak to his Rho.”
There was a moment’s silence. “God, you do that well. Too well for my peace of mind. All right, I’ll take the phone to him. But if he has a setback, I’m taking it out of your hide.”
“I hope to have a hide for you to take it out of.”
She muttered something about lupus politics. He heard her movements, then his oldest brother’s voice. Benedict had come down from his mountain in time to save their father’s life, and stayed to guard him.
A moment later his father came on. “Yes?” Isen’s gravelly bass was strong in spite of his condition. But then, he did still have both lungs.
“The husband of a woman I’m involved with was killed tonight. The police believe a lupus did it.”
There was a long pause. “You aren’t under arrest?”
“I’m a suspect, of course. So is every other lupus who was here. I was very cooperative.” He glanced wryly at his bare feet. “They had us strip.”
“What?”
“It was all very respectful.” And it had been fun to see the look on the lovely detective’s face when, complying rather more instantly with her request than she’d intended, he’d started to unzip his pants. She’d stopped him, of course . . . but part of her hadn’t wanted to.
She hadn’t liked that. “I was escorted to the men’s room, where I stood on a sheet of white paper to disrobe. A male sergeant went through my things thoroughly.”
“What were they after?”
“Evidence, I suppose. Though if the killer was in wolf form, I can’t see what they hoped to find. But Detective Yu is no fool. There must be something they thought could link one of us to the scene. Which, by the way, was a playground very near here.”
“What’s he like?”
“She.” Rule took a moment to order his thoughts, filtering out the personal. “Bright. Determined. Probably ambitious. Doesn’t like me much, but she hasn’t made up her mind I’m guilty, either. I have the impression my alibi doesn’t cover the time Fuentes was killed.”
“What alibi?”
“I have numerous witnesses to my whereabouts from nine-thirty on, including several humans, which helps. But I was alone from late afternoon until I left for the club.”
“Hmph. I can get you witnesses for that period easily enough, but they’ll be lupi. Cops and juries don’t trust a lupus’s testimony.”
Rule’s lips twitched. “Maybe they have reason.”
Isen chuckled. “Maybe they do. Okay, here’s what you do. First, find out if it really was a lupus who killed the man. Wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to pin his sins on one of us.”
“That had occurred to me. I’ve spoken to a reporter who’s willing to exchange information, but he doesn’t have anything yet. Given what Cullen told us, though—”
“Which may or may not be true.”
“He was right about the attack on you.”
“But his warning came too late, didn’t it? If he was trying to convince me of his bona fides—calm down, boy. I can practically smell you bristling over the phone. I know he’s your friend, and I’m not discounting what he said. But I’m not swallowing it whole, either. He’s clanless.”
“But not outlaw.”
“A rogue is, by definition, insane.”
There was nothing Rule could say to that. “We know something is cooking.”
“But not what, or who the cooks ar
e.” Isen sounded weary. “Guesses, that’s all we have. I need facts. The cops may stumble across some. I need to know what they find out, and you need to stay out of jail. The obvious solution is for you to seduce that pretty detective.”
Rule felt sucker-punched. It took him a second to get his breath back, and all he could think of to say was, “What makes you think she’s pretty?”
Another deep, rumbling chuckle. “You can hide a lot of things from a lot of people, but I’m not just your Rho, I’m your father. Think I can’t tell when you’re attracted to a woman?”
Isen had more questions and instructions. Rule answered with half his mind. The other half was screaming at him to tell his father he couldn’t seduce Lily Yu for such a reason, that she was . . . she might be . . . might be, he reminded himself. He didn’t know. One whiff wasn’t proof.
“Attraction aside,” he said, “it would help if I could tell her some of our suspicions.”
“Don’t tell her anything,” Isen snapped. “She won’t believe you. It would interfere with gaining her trust.”
“You sound as if Nettie let you out of Sleep too soon.”
“You all think you know more about my body than I do . . . yes, dammit,” he said to Nettie, whose voice Rule could hear in the background. “I know you’ve got a piece of paper saying you do. Think I’m impressed?”
Rule could picture Nettie standing near her patient’s bed, arms crossed. He heard her saying that she did know a lot more about Isen’s body than he did, and he ought to be glad of that, since he was an idiot.
“We think you have no idea of your limits,” Rule told him soothingly, worried by the querulous note in Isen’s voice. His father was not a querulous man. “Besides, I’m scared of Nettie. She’s already threatened me.”
That brought a chuckle, but it lacked strength. “You should be. Damned tyrant . . . no, you will not,” he said, but the last was addressed to Nettie, not his son.
Rule heard both sides of the argument that followed. Nettie won. A few minutes later, she came on the line. “I’ve put him back into Sleep. This time he’s staying under for twenty-four hours.”