“What makes you think he was running a con this time?”
“If you look at his record, sir, you’ll see he’s either been running a con or doing time for one since he hit puberty.”
“We’re compiling a list of his known associates, sir,” Mickey added.
Pryce acknowledged this with a slight nod, his finger hovering over text in the file. His brows rose. “Body piercing?”
Mickey picked at an imaginary piece of lint on the sleeve of his suit. “Yes, sir.”
“This doesn’t track with what I know of the Seymours.”
“Apparently the male Seymours are—different from the women.”
“Really?” Pryce frowned, staring off into space for a long moment while the two men watched uneasily. He finally gave himself a slight shake and directed his cold gaze back towards his detectives. “You got a plan?”
“We’d like to pick Seymour up,” Delaney said.
“Why do I hear a ‘but’ in there?”
“We don’t know exactly where he is,” Mickey admitted. “We have information that he’s in Cleveland—conducting business, but no one seems able to be more specific than that.”
“Not even the girlfriend?”
Mickey flinched at this description of Velma.
“She seems content to maintain a psychic connection with the suspect, sir,” Delaney said dryly.
Pryce’s lips twitched. “You have been having an interesting time, haven’t you?”
Mickey and Delaney exchanged quick looks. They’d left the really good stuff from their meeting with Velma out of the report.
Pryce snapped the file shut and tapped it against his hand. “Well, one thing you can probably be sure of.”
“What’s that, sir?” Mickey asked, suspicious of the sardonic look in Pryce’s eyes.
“With his record of ineptitude, he’s bound to surface soon. Just be ready when he does.” He tossed the file onto Mickey’s desk. “You know the drill. Start with the Cleveland PD. Then head back out to the Seymour’s, see if one of them will cough up an address—any personal details. The press is already turning this into a circus. Let’s wrap it up quickly, okay?”
“What are our chances of getting a warrant to go through his room?” Mickey asked.
“It would be better if we could search the whole house,” Delaney added.
“Did I mention these people have friends in high places? You’d be better off to just request their permission, get them to waive their rights.”
“I hate to tip our hand if they refuse,” Mickey said.
“The Seymours? I doubt they’re that devious, Ross.”
“Not the old ladies, sir, but there’s a niece that’s smarter than she likes to let on. She’s making protective noises. I don’t think she’ll let us search without a warrant.”
Pryce considered this. “I’ll see what I can do. Still have a few favors I can call in. When do you want to do it?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Okay.” Pryce didn’t shrug, he never did, but the “it’s your funeral” was implied by his tone of voice.
Mickey watched Pryce stalk to his office before he asked, “Why do I get the feeling Captain’s laughing at us?”
“Probably because he is.” Delaney looked up from some sheets he was scanning. “Did you get someone to check out our three Arthurs? Before we get too hot after Reggie, we ought to clear them.”
“It’s in the works.”
“Your Uncle Eddie doesn’t make any mention of Reggie Seymour. Didn’t he meet him?”
“When he was questioned, no one knew to ask about him.” Mickey felt a surge of hope. “If anyone can give us the straight scoop on Seymour, it’ll be Eddie.”
“Let’s do it. Be nice to have some nice, real facts to plump up this file.” Delaney grabbed his suit jacket off the back of the chair. “We can get some coffee on the way. Fortify ourselves before we tackle the Seymours again.”
Dante’s current Mardi Gras float was loosely modeled on Persephone emerging from the sea after her long sojourn out of the sun. He was particularly pleased with the visual impact of her large, mostly bare breasts just cresting the wave that mingled with the flow of her long hair down the length of the float.
He made a minor adjustment to a measurement, then looked up as Max came in and cleared his throat.
“What is it, Max?”
“I have some information on Arvin—not much—but it’s a start.”
“Ah.” Dante leaned back. “Took you long enough. Tell me where the bastard is.”
“Thing that’s made it so hard is Arvin Marvin didn’t appear to exist before he met your aunt. Had to be an alias. I put out some feelers. One of Giancarlo’s men remembers seeing a man answering Arvin’s description in Salt Lake City.” Max hesitated. “Seems he was married to twins there. He relieved them of their savings and disappeared about three months ago.”
“He’s a bigamist?” Max shrugged. Dante leaned back in his chair. “Cloris isn’t going to like this.”
Max looked as sympathetic as he was capable.
Dante frowned into the distance. “Keep looking. I don’t want him anymore—at least, not breathing.”
“Yes, Mr. Dante. I’ll arrange the contract. Anyone special you want to do it?”
Dante looked at Max. “Let’s find somebody that knows the bastard. Guy like that must have done time. I could tell he was a screw-up first time I met him. If he hadn’t already married her—” He scowled, his clenched hands breaking in half the pencil he held. One piece flew across the room and hit the wall. It made him feel better. He straightened. “The boys here yet? Got a little job for them to do, too.”
Max signaled them in and retreated to a corner.
The boys, Cain and Abel—though if those were their real names was anybody’s guess—were tall thin twins, with a useful facility for looking like federal agents. Presentable, but with the ability to be vicious, loyal and mildly ambitious, they were intelligent enough to actually get Dante’s jokes. A couple of thugs a wise guy could depend upon.
“You wanted to see us, Mr. Dante?” Abel, the spokesman of the two, asked.
Dante nodded. “Got a little job for you to do. A simple locate and pick up. With kid gloves, boys—for now.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Dante. Who you want us to grab?”
“Ah, that is the problem. She’s a client of Benny’s. You remember the oh-so-dull Benny?” They nodded. “Ask him where she lives, then pick her up, and bring her here so we can have a little chat, do a little business.”
“No problem, Mr. Dante.” As the two men slid out, Cain checked his gun and then stowed it back under his jacket.
Max turned to leave, then hesitated, a slight frown on his face.
“You got a problem, Max?”
“Just seems like small potatoes, Mr. Dante. A scam that nets dollar bills?”
“Normally bills that small wouldn’t interest me, but so many? Where did she get them? And why small bills? Why not an assortment? All these questions I don’t have answers for.” He looked blandly at his henchman. “You know how I hate unanswered questions. They disturb my sleep. Make me cranky. Next thing I know, I want to kill someone. That son-of-a-bitch Ross and his large partner are riding my ass pretty close, Max. Don’t want him to find something to smell.”
“Yes, Mr. Dante.” Max was silent for a moment. “You think she’s running a scam?”
“The idea does rather spring to mind.”
“Pretty penny ante scam when it only nets dollar bills.”
“Our bird is clever enough to start small and works up. Not much in one box, but according to Benny, there’s more where that came from. How much more? Now we can wait patiently for our bird to bring it to us package by package and lose it gambling. Or, we can find out what scam she’s running on my turf. If it’s big enough, I might let her live long enough to cut me in. Any way you slice it, she’s taking money from me.”
“What do you want?”
Eddie asked brusquely. He stood impatiently by his car, looking pointedly at his watch. Edward “Eddie” Ross was as tall as Mickey, but thinner, with just a hint of a stoop starting to curve his shoulders. But age couldn’t blunt his forceful manner or lengthen his patience span.
Mickey shifted uneasily. He was over thirty, not a kid, but he still found it hard to remain cool when Eddie looked at him like that. “We need to ask you some questions. Won’t take long.”
“Gave my statement yesterday to that flunky you sent over here to snoop through my life.”
So that’s what was bothering him. Mickey relaxed. “Come on, Eddie, we could really use your help. We’re trying to find out about a guy named Reggie Seymour. The old ladies say he sometimes stays with them.”
“Reggie?” Eddie relaxed, too, leaning against his car with his arms crossed over his chest. “You think that worthless piece of dirt did the killing?”
“It’s possible,” Mickey admitted. “We don’t have anything solid on him, except a bunco record.”
Eddie nodded as if this made sense. “Only met him once. Sorry piece of work. Probably a punk when he was young. Now a gigolo wannabe. Made my skin crawl, but the ladies—” He shook his head over the gullibility of ladies. “That nutsy neighbor of theirs was fawning all over him.”
Delaney and Mickey exchanged glances. “Sounds like he ran true to type,” Delaney said.
“True to type?” Eddie asked.
“According to the ladies, their family men aren’t—great,” Mickey explained.
“Yeah, real screw-ups,” Delaney added.
“Well, I told you he was an asshole, didn’t I?” He was impatient again, looking at his watch. “Are you through with me? Cause I gotta meet Unabelle. We’re applying for the license today.”
“Just one more question, Eddie, okay? Did he seem capable of violence?”
Eddie hesitated. “Violence? Didn’t they teach you anything at the academy?”
“What?” It was stupid to get defensive.
“Anyone’s capable of violence. If they’re cornered.” He slid in his car and slammed the door. Through the frame of the window he glared at his nephew.
“I knew that.” Mickey looked at Delaney. “We just have to figure out how our John Doe cornered him.”
Eddie nodded agreement, then pulled away with a discreet squeal of tires.
“Eddie seemed a bit on edge,” Delaney commented as they clambered into his car.
“Oh, he was just pissed because I didn’t talk to him myself yesterday.” Mickey didn’t want to talk about Eddie. It made his head ache.
When they got to the house, Luci was helping Boudreaux weed the ground around a bougainvillea. To his relief, neither of them appeared to notice the two detectives. He wasn’t in the mood to spar with Luci right now. Or to get within lust range. Still mute, Louise showed them into the dining room where they found the old ladies knee deep in preparations for the party they were giving for the bride and groom this weekend. It wasn’t easy, he found, to get them to focus on the murder. Or even, he realized, to remember there’d been one.
“Murder?” Miss Theo didn’t look up from her sheaf of lists. “Weena, is dear little Luci done fixing the Nash? This list of errands is getting longer.”
“She’s helping Boudreaux in the garden,” Miss Hermi said, flecks of pink coloring her cheeks. “She said she’d go do the errands right after lunch.”
“The garden?” Theo looked up from her lists.
“I noticed the bougainvillea looks a little tense.”
“Boudreaux—” began Miss Weena.
“—is the one making it tense! You know he never liked it.”
Delaney gave Mickey a panicked look.
“You’re senior,” Mickey said.
Out in the yard, Luci tossed the last weed into a wilting pile and paused to brush stray hairs back from her face, then winced when her wrist reminded her it had been twisted recently. There was something very soothing about having her hands in moist brown soil. All the things that worried at her Seymour imperturbability couldn’t seem to get a foothold on her thinking here, where the present was hard to separate from the past.
She looked at Boudreaux. “I’ve done this before, haven’t I? Worked in the garden with you, I mean?”
Boudreaux nodded, the wrinkles carved into his sun-scorched skin deepened by his delighted grin.
“I can’t believe how much I’d forgotten about this place.” Luci picked up a hand rake and started smoothing the disturbed dirt. And how much I never knew, she added to herself. She gave Boudreaux a speculative glance. Might he know the secret of her paternity? He’d been around at the critical time. It was worth a try—if she still wanted to know?
She raked a little harder. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the past.” Her rake caught on a large clump of dirt. “I know it’s not very Seymour of me.” She whacked the clump with the rake and the clump partially fell apart. “But there’s part of me that’s not Seymour, isn’t there?”
She looked at Boudreaux, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the ground. Luci looked down, too. Amid the broken pieces of the clump of dirt there was a gleam of gold. Luci exchanged a puzzled look with Boudreaux before picking it up. She had to use water from her bottle to wash away the dirt that clung to it before she could see what it was.
“It’s the Seymour family crest,” she said. She frowned. “But the only person who wears it is—”
She looked up at Boudreaux. They both looked at the dirt, then at each other. “Mickey isn’t going to like this.”
Boudreaux muttered an emphatic, mostly incoherent agreement.
Mickey hadn’t expected the interview to go well, but he’d thought it would go. Somehow the tables had been turned. He shuffled his feet and avoided Miss Theo’s gaze. “Your cake, ma’am?”
Delaney rubbed his temple like it pained him. Maybe he won’t be so quick to espouse the cause of eccentrics, Mickey thought with perverse satisfaction. He lowered his head when Miss Theo gave him a severe look.
“My cake. Which has mysteriously disappeared.”
“Oh. That cake.” He gave Delaney a help me look.
He squared his shoulders and stepped into the line of fire. “I’ll dust my men for crumbs, ma’am, but I’m afraid we may have to wait for weight change to find the perpetrator.”
Her smile took them both by surprise and was potent enough to remind Mickey of Luci.
“I can see why Gracie likes you.” Miss Weena and Miss Hermi both giggled their agreement.
“She does?” Delaney said with revealing hope. Not that Mickey hadn’t suspected Delaney was badly smitten. He got a goofy look every time Gracie’s name was mentioned. He gave him a pointed nudge. Delaney started and cleared his throat. Due to his large chest, it was an impressive sound.
All three old ladies looked at him like inquiring birds.
“Yes, dear boy?” Miss Theo asked. Miss Weena patted her bun and then sidled closer to him with a simpering smile.
“About Reggie. We need to find him—”
“Um, I think I know where he is,” Luci said from the doorway.
Mickey hadn’t seen her arrive, so he didn’t get time to prepare himself for the sight of her in her grubby shorts, her skin still dewed from her recent earthy efforts. His throat dried up and closed like a noose drawing tight, leaving Delaney to ask the obvious.
“And that would be?”
“We already told them,” Miss Weena said, “that he’s in Cleveland, Luci dear.”
“Actually...” Luci’s gaze was all sympathy when it met Mickey’s, giving him some warning of impending doom. “I think he’s under the bougainvillea.”
Miss Theo blinked her surprise. “How odd.”
“Not really,” Miss Hermi said, going immediately defensive. “He’s very fond of the bougainvillea.”
Mickey looked at Delaney. “I’ll flip you for who gets to call it in and who has to go look under the bush.”
> Mickey lost the toss. He knew he would. It had been that kind of week, he decided as he followed Luci outside to see Reggie’s remains while Delaney went to call it in.
“How do you know it’s Reggie?” Mickey asked, for something to say rather than a strong desire to know.
“I don’t know. Not for sure.”
Mickey stopped and looked at her. Big mistake. Her grubby, slightly damp tee shirt hugged her breasts. Her shorts hugged her hips and generously left ninety percent of her legs bare. The muggy confines of the garden immediately got several degrees hotter. He tugged at his tie, but that wasn’t what was tightening his throat—and parts much lower.
As if she knew he couldn’t talk and why, she put a bit more distance between them. “I found this.” She extended a grubby hand to him, opening it to show him what looked to be a small piece of jewelry.
Mickey picked it up, his fingers brushing against her palm for a heated moment before he could break the contact. He looked at it for a long moment before his vision cleared enough to start showing him detail.
“Looks like some kind of animal head surrounded by leaves—” he managed to say almost calmly.
“It’s a weasel head. And poison oak.” A brief pause, then she added, “The Seymour family crest.”
Mickey looked at her warily, as his brain pulled up her comments about Reggie from last night. “The family crest? You mean—”
“I’m afraid so.”
He wanted to toss it down and rub his hands down the sides of his pants. He wanted to toss her down, too, and make love to her until his blood quit running hot for her. He did neither. “According to his file he—”
“I know.” She looked down instead of at him. He appreciated her tact.
Mickey swallowed. It had to be asked. “Was it still—”
“No.” She seemed to be looking everywhere but at him as they approached the bougainvillea. “At least, not after I raked—”
He tried not to flinch, but he wasn’t made of stone.
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