Desired by a Dangerous Man

by Cleo Peitsche

  “JD’s paintings are missing,” I called out as I climbed the steps to the loft.

  There wasn’t much up top, just sheets and pillows, some scattered books, mostly biographies, and stacks of papers. I sighed. What was the point of taking all the furniture but leaving everything else? I picked up a tome on Churchill and flipped through it. It seemed like it had never been opened before.

  “Hi,” Rob said, and I made my way toward the edge of the loft, which was a short wall, painted a cheery fuchsia. Resting my weight on the wall’s top, I leaned out.

  A tall, egg-shaped man with curly hair stood just inside the door holding a clipboard. He was saying something to Rob, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  Not wanting to miss the conversation, I headed back toward the steps. Just as I was about to descend, a stack of business cards caught my attention. Something to go through later. I hurried to the door.

  “The first fifteen were the easiest,” the man was saying.

  I thought he was talking about doing time because Rob looked a bit freaked out.

  “Hi,” I said.

  The man shoved his hand at me, his fingers stiff, his thumb strangely cocked forward.

  “This is Enzo,” Rob said. “He recently lost three hundred pounds.”

  “Ah…” I shook Enzo’s hand.

  “I’ll never be in as good shape as this guy,” Enzo said, shaking the clipboard at Rob, “but I’m happy with my results. Whenever I meet someone who’s in shape, I ask for tips.” He tapped the side of his nose.

  “That makes sense.” I liked Enzo. He talked a lot. If I’d been chasing a bounty, I’d have been mentally counting the money already. “You live on the premises, I assume?”

  Enzo shook his head. “I’m in one of the smaller reconstructions,” he said. “You’re in pretty good shape, too. What’s your secret?”

  “Chasing criminals. Where’s the furniture?”

  “Criminals?” His smile got wide. “Are you cops?”

  “We don’t have much time,” I said. “The sooner we get finished, the more time we’ll have to chat about other things.”

  Enzo nodded. “I moved the furniture to our storage space.” He winced. “Technically we were supposed to wait until next week, but the guys who help me are back in school and I couldn’t do it on my own.” He eyed Rob’s arms. “If I had biceps like yours—”

  “Why was he moving?” Rob interrupted. I could tell the attention was making him uncomfortable.

  “JD broke his lease,” Enzo said. “We’ve got new tenants moving in for October, and we’d negotiated to let them in a few weeks early. JD was thrilled because it was less rent for him to pay. He was a good tenant. Got along well with everyone, kept his place clean.”

  Excitement started to warm my fingers, my toes, my ears. “Why did he break his lease?”

  “He was moving up to San Francisco,” Enzo said. “He was a good guy. Always paid his rent on time.”

  “Why was he moving?” Rob and I asked, practically in unison. He didn’t look at me, but I knew he was thinking the same thing—twin moment.

  Enzo started to speak, then frowned. “A relationship, maybe.”

  “Maybe?” I asked.

  “It’s just a guess,” Enzo said. “Why else would someone change cities? JD was very social. He traveled a lot. When he was in town, he always had visitors.”

  I stared at him, trying to figure out if he was naive or merely being diplomatic.

  “I’d like to see the furniture,” Rob said. He pulled out his cell phone, and I nodded; he would take photos of anything interesting, and in the meantime I could continue sifting through JD’s stuff, hoping to find flecks of gold.

  They went out, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  I found a crumpled white bag that wasn’t fatally compromised by grease stains and climbed back up to the loft.

  The amazing thing, I thought as I filled the bag, was that these businessmen would give their cards to someone like JD. It was like begging to get a call from the cops one day. Except the cops hadn’t found them, had they?

  There were several dozen cards in total, and I had to assume these were JD’s regulars.

  While I was up in the loft, I looked around for video tapes. JD liked to tape himself having sex with his clients. Having sex, covered in paint, against canvas.

  I thought back to Rob waving his cell phone at me. Maybe JD didn’t use a dedicated video camera.

  Or maybe all that was kept in the studio portion of the loft.

  Wanting to be finished with the bedroom, I pawed through the papers and books. There wasn’t anything useful.

  I folded down the top of the paper bag and flip-rolled the bottom portion, then jammed it into the waistband of my jeans and carefully made my way back downstairs. This time, I headed for the studio, which was connected to the kitchen.

  It was strange, I thought, that JD didn’t have much in the way of electronics. No coffee maker, microwave or television that I’d seen. Maybe all that had been removed along with the furniture, or maybe he was some kind of minimalist when it came to technology.

  There weren’t any paintings, just as I’d noted earlier. However, leaning up against a brick wall and between two large, white-sashed windows, was a beautiful set of artistic nude photographs, each one about four-by-six feet. They looked pricey, but for all I knew, they were gifts from a fellow artist.

  Or a trade. Art for art. Or art for sex, or drugs…

  It was a world so far outside of my personal experience.

  The nudes were all men. Some were lithe, almost delicate, and others were powerful, their bulging muscles casting shadows that created beautiful lines.

  I certainly didn’t recognize any of the men.

  Sighing, I moved over to the kitchen, then the dining area. I didn’t find anything useful.

  I poked my head into the bathroom but saw that the cabinets were open. Someone had gone through, knocking over bottles. I went into the room and squatted, taking a look under the sink.

  Cleaning supplies.

  On an impulse, I thrust my hand up and ran my fingers along the hidden inner lip. I didn’t find anything, but I could tell by the scuffed surface in one corner that JD had surely used the area as a hiding place.

  Growing up with a renowned bounty hunter for a father, Rob and I had quickly learned that to keep our secrets, we needed to be inventive.

  The first rule: keep something hidden in an obvious place. It allowed Dad to think he knew what we were up to.

  The second rule: make sure the real hiding place is never found.

  Under the sink was the obvious hiding place, and while I couldn’t know if JD had removed what was there or if someone else—Enzo and his college helpers, or perhaps even the murderer—had helped themselves.

  I yanked my phone out of my pocket and dialed Rob.

  He answered on the second ring.

  “Look for hiding places,” I said.

  “Of course.” He didn’t say it sarcastically. He hung up.

  Would JD have chosen two hiding places in the same room? If I were him, and if I could have found somewhere secure in the vicinity, I would have. After all, people tended to stop searching for stuff once they thought they’d found it. It was the corollary to the quip about how lost things were always in the last place you looked.

  So I searched the toilet tank. Prodded my fingers into the tiles, along the baseboard, looking for a loose section.

  Then I tried the light fixtures.

  Everything was tight, seemed sealed, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. After all, a turn of the wrench was a small price to pay for privacy.

  Sighing, I settled back on the tile floor, the side of the bathtub slightly chilly through the back of my shirt. If Rob and I dismantled the entire apartment but didn’t find anything, I was going to be pissed as hell.

  From where I was sitting, I had nothing to stare at but pristine white wall. I wondered what the rent was on a place
like this.

  My gaze drifted higher, to the chrome towel holder. It didn’t quite fit the rest of the decor. It was too… too something. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Maybe too practical? Not stylish enough?

  I practically jumped to my feet. During my first inspection, I’d given the rack a firm tug, but I hadn’t expected to find anything there. You didn’t want to go messing with something that had to bear weight… too much of a risk that someone would innocently break it.

  Closer inspection showed that the bar was screwed into two extensions bolted into the wall.

  So I unscrewed them. It wasn’t easy, and sweat made my fingers slide on the material, but eventually the bar wiggled loose.

  The interior was hollow, but I heard something metallic clanking inside. I slid the bar down.

  Inside was a small silver key, the kind used to open a large mailbox or perhaps a padlock to a shed. Something of that size.

  I slid it into my pocket and poked around, looking for something more. But that was it. No piece of paper to explain what the key opened.

  And what did it open? Speculation ran wild through my mind. Blackmail? A stash of drugs or money?

  I used the heel of my hand to scratch at my chin. What would the proper procedure be in that case? Hand it over to Sara, probably, but I didn’t see her as being the type to be happy about getting drugs.

  A low, steady bass began to vibrate through the bathroom’s side wall. I put the towel rack back together and went to introduce myself to JD’s neighbors.

  Chapter 10

  A counter-culture type with spiky gray hair opened the door. She probably wasn’t even old enough to drink, but the piercings and tattoos visible through her almost translucent white tank top gave me a pretty good idea that she did whatever she felt like.

  I reassessed her hair color as silver, not gray. I wondered what mix of chemicals it took to achieve it.

  She stared at me, her brown eyes unimpressed, one eyebrow lifted.

  I decided not to pull my badge. She seemed like the type to whip it out of my hand and scrutinize it, then tell me to go to hell.

  “You want something?” she asked. It was difficult to hear her over the blasting music.

  Her demeanor was straight from the trailer park or the ghetto, but the way she said it? I had her number. Spoiled rich girl, rebelling against her family’s expectations. She probably complained about being oppressed while her parents paid the rent.

  I smiled. “Hi. I’m Audrey. I’m investigating JD’s murder.”

  Her eyebrow lowered, and I couldn’t help but get the impression that I reminded her of someone. A therapist her parents made her talk to, perhaps.

  “I’ll need five minutes of your time.” My phrasing was deliberate; if I’d asked for help, she would have simply said no.

  And, in fact, it seemed she might do that anyway. But then she stepped back, holding the door wide.

  Her apartment was filled with designer furniture. Ugly and uncomfortable, but expensive. Two skinny girls and an even skinnier guy sat on a sectional sofa.

  But the enormous painting above the sofa, a high-def photograph of a woman’s hairy pussy, kept pulling at my eyes. It was impossible not to stare at it.

  A flicker of amusement went through the silver-haired girl’s eyes. Then she turned away. A push of a button and the music went quiet. “She wants to know about JD,” she announced into the silence.

  The people on the sofa didn’t react. Neither did the enormous vagina.

  “Nice guy,” the skinny boy said. “Shame what happened to him.”

  “His ex’s new boyfriend did it,” one of the girls said, and I looked at her sharply. “It was on the news,” she explained, her face coloring slightly.

  “I’m not a cop,” I said. “I’m a PI hired by the family.”

  The silver-haired girl sat carefully on the edge of the sofa, tucking one leg gracefully underneath her. “He’d been seeing some guy on the quiet,” she said. “I saw photos. And video.” She didn’t even blush.

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “Not by name, but I’d recognize him.”

  “Real good-looking guy,” the boy said, and the smile that spread across his face underscored this point more than a thousand adjectives ever could.

  Congressman Leon Bowlst, I assumed. He had the face and body to make men and women swoon.

  “But you didn’t know his name?”

  They all shook their heads. It was like they shared a brain. They were only about five years younger than I was, but they seemed so sheltered and pampered, they might as well have been children.

  I thought about pulling out my phone, finding a candid photo of Bowlst. Something where he wasn’t wearing a suit and might not be identifiable. But it seemed too risky, at least at this stage. That Bowlst had been seeing JD was already established, but I didn’t want to kickstart the rumor mill.

  “Do you know why he was moving?” I asked.

  The silver-haired girl’s features tightened. “I don’t think so.”

  “This month,” I said.

  “I hadn’t known that.” She seemed… a little offended. Perhaps she demanded absolute loyalty from her acquaintances.

  “Were you close?”

  “Apparently not close enough,” she muttered. Then she tossed her head. “San Francisco?”

  I nodded, and the stormy look on her face cleared. I waited for her to volunteer what had just occurred to her.

  “That guy he was fucking,” she said. “He had family up there. He told JD to come up, but JD told me it would have made him feel cheap.” She turned a piercing look my way. “Did he suffer?”

  I blinked at the sudden question, then shook my head. “No.” It wasn’t strictly true. Getting stabbed dozens of times had to be an awful way to go, but suffering was relative. One of my grandparents had slowly wasted away, and those last few weeks had been brutal. The agony JD had experienced couldn’t have lasted longer than ten or fifteen minutes.

  The two girls were playing with their phones. “Did either of you know JD?” I asked.

  One of them looked up. She shrugged. “A little. We saw him around. He…” She looked down, but not before I caught the almost guilty smile.

  “I know he was naughty,” I said. “I told you, I’m not with the cops. All we want is to find out who killed him.”

  “He shared,” she said.

  “If he was going to San Francisco, he was getting out of that,” the silver-haired girl said, leaning forward.

  “Yeah,” the boy said. “He’d been slowing things down lately.” He grinned. “Or so I’d heard.”

  The others nodded.

  “Any problems with any of his friends, any violence, any stalkers or threats?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “Well, I didn’t like his boyfriend,” the silver-haired girl said. “He had all these demands. At first, I thought it might be good for JD to have to follow some rules, but the guy was just controlling.”

  My ears perked up. “What kinds of demands?” I asked.

  “What he should wear, who he should talk to, how he should act. He’s married, you know.”

  “I have a photo,” I said. I slid the phone out of my pocket and tried to go online, but I wasn’t getting a strong enough signal—probably all that brick surrounding me.

  Then I remembered that I’d downloaded some photos of Bowlst touring a factory with Sara’s husband. Out of context, no one would realize that Bowlst was a politician.

  I pulled up a photo and held it out for the silver-haired girl to inspect.

  “That’s definitely him,” she said, taking my phone. The others practically pulled it out of her hands, trying to get a look. “He had these shockingly pretty eyes. They should have named a nail polish after them,” she said, deadpan.

  I stared at her. It wasn’t possible that she’d guessed that, which meant she knew who Bowlst was. So why hadn’t she just said so?

  “Thank you,”
I said, recovering my phone. “That was very helpful.”

  After swapping phone numbers with the silver-haired girl and her guests, I headed back over to JD’s former apartment.

  The door was closed, but Rob swung it open almost before I’d even knocked.

  He glared. “I came back here and found the door open and no sister.”

  I glared right back. “You can’t have been here long. I was only gone for ten minutes.”

  “Then I missed you by nine. I went out to the car, I tried calling—”

  “I was talking to the neighbors,” I said, jerking my head toward the wall. “Reception in this building is spotty. Did you find anything or not?”

  He squinted, and I knew he was trying to decide if he felt like reaming me out. Apparently he concluded it wasn’t worth the effort. “Not directly. The furniture was of two qualities: cheap or expensive, and the expensive stuff looks new.”

  “The neighbor confirmed that he was dating Bowlst. That’s surely who he was moving north for. Oh!” I pulled the key out of my pocket. “I found this hidden in the bathroom. I haven’t had time to go through the rest of the place.”

  Rob took it and held it up to the light. “It goes to a padlock,” he said.

  “How do you know?” I tried to snatch it back, but he held it out of my reach.

  He gestured at the stack of paper near the door. “It’s just a guess, but he did rent out a storage space about a month ago. Lucky us, because the gate code is written at the top of the lease.”

  Finally, a break. “Is the storage unit close by?”

  “It’s in the city, so it can’t be that far.”

  Chapter 11

  Rob and I continued going through JD’s place.

  JD had been relatively clean, but dust had accumulated under the furniture. I found myself sneezing, and my hands were getting itchy.

  We were reasonably thorough, but after two more hours of searching in vain, both of us were ready to move on.

  My phone rang as we were walking back to the convertible. The number was blocked, but I tossed the keys to Rob as I answered.

  “Hi, baby.” Corbin’s rich, deep voice rumbled through the earpiece, giving me chills from head to toe.