Buried Leads (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery)

by Walker, LynDee

  “I’m not asking you to open a file. I just think you should consider the possibility that you’ve got the wrong guy. He might be an asshole, and he might be a criminal. I don’t know what you’ve got on him with the cigarette case, but think about it, Kyle: what does contraband tobacco carry? Five years? If he’s not a murderer, he doesn’t deserve to be called one.”

  “I’ve been doing this for a while now, Nicey,” he said, softening his voice. “If he wasn’t a murderer, he’d give us the gun.”

  “I think you’re wrong.” I sounded petulant, and I wasn’t proud of it, but I couldn’t really tell him why, either. I wasn’t sure I knew myself. “But I’m not going to convince you of that, am I?”

  “Not based on your gut, you’re not,” he said.

  “Thanks for coming to meet me.” I stood.

  “Have dinner with me tomorrow night,” he said, getting to his feet and gesturing for me to walk ahead of him to the door.

  “I have work to do,” I said.

  “Come on, Nicey, don’t be that way. I’ll buy. Anywhere you want to go. I still need you to show me where they have good food around here.”

  He pushed the door open and I walked through it, sighing as I looked back at him. He was a good friend to have. And he did fill out those khakis nicely.

  “Bring me what you have on Billings,” I said.

  “Do what?”

  “I’ll have dinner with you, but I want copies of your file,” I said. “I won’t run it, and no one will know I have it. I’ll even give them back. I can’t shake this feeling, though. So prove me wrong. Let me see what you’ve got.”

  He stood on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop, shading his eyes and staring at me for a long minute.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said. “How can I be sure you won’t throw away my career for a scoop?”

  “You can’t,” I said. “But you want me to believe you. Believe me.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”

  “I’ll be ready for some after-dinner reading.”

  I unlocked the car, annoyed that I’d spent a half hour and had nothing on my new murder victim to show for it.

  I climbed behind the wheel and dug my Blackberry out. I had four texts and three missed calls from Bob.

  I clicked the messages open.

  “Your dead girl was a prostitute. Channel Four just blew the top off a college call girl ring. Where the hell are you?”

  Double shit. Charlie had dropped the noon time slot into conversation twice. I should have known she was lying. And Bob hated nothing worse than losing to the TV folks on a big story.

  16.

  Taking a beating

  “Tell me one more time why you were busy with the ATF and a murder case the CA himself is calling a slam dunk while Charlie Lewis was digging up a call girl ring that makes sorority row look like the goddamned Chicken Ranch?” Bob’s face was nearly purple, and despite cringing because his anger was almost never directed at me, I worried about his blood pressure and his heart.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wondering how Charlie had known that and whether she was closer on my heels than I wanted to think. I dismissed the thought quicker than I usually would, largely because Charlie was the least of my problems. “I didn’t know.”

  “Except that we pay you to know,” Bob practically roared. “Dammit, Nichelle! Do you have any idea how stupid it makes me look when I spend months—months—going to bat for you with the suits upstairs and you turn right around and drop a ball the size of Mercury? Les was practically glowing when Andrews gave him the go-ahead to send Shelby over to the campus to knock on doors. They even made Parker go with her because he knows so many people on the faculty over there.”

  I closed my eyes for a long minute, inhaling for a ten count.

  “Bob, I’m working on something,” I said, holding my voice in check and hoping it would calm him down. “When have I ever let you down?”

  “Today.” He sat back in the chair and sighed. “This morning, you let me down. If Charlie knows it, you could know it, too. Nobody in this town is better at covering cops than you are, kiddo. But you’re only as good as what you’re getting for me next, and you know it. You’re not the only one Les is gunning for.”

  I nodded. The Telegraph was Bob’s entire reason for getting up the morning, but he lived under constant threat of being forced out by Les, who was as smarmy and backstabbing as they come. I couldn’t imagine the newsroom without Bob, and it wouldn’t be a place I wanted to work.

  “I’ll apologize to Andrews myself,” I said. “But you have to believe me. Grayson is crooked. And I am this close,” I said, holding up my thumb and index finger, barely touching them together, “to finding something that pulls all this together. The girl, too, possibly.”

  “No.” Bob shook his head and leveled a don’t-fuck-with-me-on-this glare at me. “Ted Grayson is a politician. Rick Andrews, who happens to be the publisher of this newspaper, is one of his biggest campaign contributors, which you would know if you’d asked our actual politics reporter for information about him. You will back off of Grayson this minute. You will throw yourself into the call girl scandal and find me something that will redeem us both for today. You will work with Shelby for the duration of the story, since she’s already been assigned to it. And you will not put another toe out of line, or Shelby Taylor will be my new courts reporter. Are we clear?”

  I returned the stare, biting my lip to stave off the pricking in the backs of my eyes that meant tears were threatening.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get to work.” He turned to his computer screen and flipped it on, dismissing me.

  I walked out of his office and saw the back of Les’ balding head bobbing through the cubicles toward the break room, but managed to keep myself from chasing him down and delivering a swift ap-chagi to his ass. I couldn’t even tell if I was madder that he was still trying to help Shelby get my job or that he was after Bob’s. I could probably go somewhere else, but Bob... If Les managed to convince Andrews that Bob wasn’t still at the top of his game, he’d be pushed into retirement. I didn’t think Bob would last long without the newspaper.

  I limped to my desk, determined to dig up something on the call girl ring. Shelby could run around RAU banging on doors with Parker all day long, and she could sleep her way into my byline, but she didn’t have my connections. I snatched up the phone, feeling stupid for not figuring it out sooner. Lakshmi had told me she was a grad student there, for Christ’s sake. Apparently, so was Allison. She also worked for Grayson’s campaign, which tied him to it at least marginally. But was her earnest admiration of the senator professional, or had she fallen for her client?

  I called Aaron first, and left him a message begging for any five minutes he had that day.

  Next, I dialed the head of security at the campus, who, not surprisingly, was in a meeting. But he’d always seemed to like me well enough, and he was an old-school guy who preferred print to TV.

  I called Evans at the FBI next. He answered.

  “Are you the only law enforcement agency in town who isn’t working on the call girl thing?” I asked.

  “Not federal jurisdiction, as far as I can see, but it is quite a story,” he said. “What can I do for you today, Miss Clarke?”

  “Why did you call to tip me off about Billings’s arrest?” I asked.

  “I thought you’d be interested in it,” he said. “You called me asking for information about the dead lobbyist and bribery investigations.”

  “You know about the bribes, right?” I asked, tired of skirting the issue and in desperate need of an answer. Though I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it if I got it. Bob and I had a special bond, but he didn’t love anything more than he loved the paper. He would absolutely hand Shelby my job
if something I did put his in jeopardy.

  “What do you know?” Evans asked.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I said. “You’re on Grayson, Kyle Miller at the ATF is on Billings. Got it. But there’s something here that ties the two of them together, and it has to do with these two corpses.”

  “Which two corpses? The lobbyist and the call girl? What’s the girl got to do with anything?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me that.” I sighed. “Look, I don’t have a positive I.D., but I’m nearly a hundred percent sure that she’s an intern on the Grayson campaign, and she tipped me off about the bribes, though she didn’t realize she was doing it. I also hear there’s a good chance Grayson’s name might be in the call girls’ little black book. And he’s in the middle of a fight for his career. That’s entirely too coincidental, don’t you think?”

  “Where’d you get that?” Evans asked, his voice suddenly tight. “About Grayson and the call girl?”

  “I pieced it together from a couple of interviews.”

  I didn’t know if Grayson was sleeping with Allison or Lakshmi or both, and I wasn’t sure I could trust anything, given that my earnest-campaign-worker source had turned out to be a prostitute. And was now dead. The only person I knew hadn’t done it was Lucinda Eckersly, because if she strangled a young, athletic girl, I’d deliver my beat to Shelby on a platter and probably never get out of bed again.

  Evans was silent for a long minute.

  “Let me see what I can find,” he said. “I won’t talk to another reporter before I talk to you, but this could take a while.”

  Thanking him for his time, I hung up. Fabulous. Except I didn’t have a while.

  “Dammit.” I grabbed my bag and hurried to the elevator, ignoring my ankle and trying to remember if I had any Advil stashed in the car.

  “Where are you off to?” Eunice asked as I stepped onto the elevator. “I thought Bob was going to bust something when he couldn’t find you this morning.”

  “I’ve got to save my job from Shelby Taylor,” I said. “And somewhere around here, there’s a murderer who needs catching.”

  “You leave the murderers to the police, huh, sugar?” she called as the doors closed and saved me from having to reply.

  “They think they’ve got him already,” I muttered, pulling my Blackberry out of my pocket and tapping out a text to Parker. I paused to send it as I pulled the car out of the garage and got my signal back.

  “Keep Shelby away from the math building.”

  There was a call girl in the statistics department I wanted to get some answers from. My phone binged.

  “Chasing her up and down Greek row,” his reply read. “This is bullshit. She’s waving her press badge under their noses. No one’s talking.”

  “Let her go,” I tapped back. “Sorry you’re wasting your day. I’ll fill you in later.”

  “Better be a hell of a story. You can buy drinks.”

  “Capital Ale @ 7. Bring Mel.”

  If I didn’t find something by the time Charlie went on the air again at six, I’d be toasting my new job at the copy desk—or my outright unemployment.

  I scanned the office directory in the math building for the professor Lakshmi had mentioned, hoping he’d know where I could find her. Three-oh-six. Stairs. Yay.

  My ankle protested the whole way up, but I found the office, door ajar.

  I tapped lightly.

  “Come in,” a gruff man’s voice called.

  I poked my head around the doorframe, smiling at the gray-haired, tweed-clad man I assumed was Professor Gaskins.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for a student of yours, actually, and I could swear she told me she works in your office,” I fibbed. “Lakshmi?”

  He smiled. “She’s my teaching assistant. One of the most brilliant grad students I’ve ever taught.”

  “Do you know where I might be able to find her?” I asked. “It’s kind of important that I talk to her.”

  “She usually teaches a freshman course for me this time of day,” he said. “Something tells me it might not be packed today, though. It’s downstairs in the auditorium.”

  “Thanks.”

  I limped back and opened the lecture hall door, Lakshmi’s sweet-as-bells voice ringing clear in the empty hallway. She smiled confused recognition as I slipped into a seat in the back. There were three students down front, all boys, hanging on her every word.

  “Well,” she said. “I think that’s enough for today, guys. I’ll see you Thursday.”

  “Do you remember me?” I asked once we were alone and face to face.

  “From the card game, right?” she asked. “I didn’t know you were a student here.”

  “I’m not.” I held her gaze. “I’m a reporter at the Telegraph, and I’m working on a story about the call girl who was found in the dumpster outside this morning. I think you might be able to tell me something about that.”

  Her expression faltered for a split second before she stretched her lips into a thin line and started gathering up her books. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do,” I said. “I heard your friend the other night making some rather snide comments about your companion and how much he was paying you. I think other people are paying you, too. And I think some of the same people might have been involved with the victim of last night’s murder. How do you know you’re not next?” Nothing like a healthy dose of terror to make people spill their guts. “I won’t use your name. But if the cops get to whoever’s behind this, you might live to get your Master’s. Talk to me.”

  Lakshmi shoved the books into a canvas bag and sighed, her eyes on the desk. When she looked up at me, they were full of tears.

  “My dad left the government to work in experimental energy. His company went under two years ago,” she said. “I would have gotten kicked out of school because we couldn’t pay the tuition. He made too much the year before for me to qualify for any aid, and they didn’t care that he’d lost everything. Allison offered me a way to stay on campus. She made it sound like fun, and the money was amazing.”

  “She was in charge?”

  “I don’t think so, really. She was president of the Delta Kappas when we were undergrads. I took her the money at the end of the night. But I got the idea she was fronting for someone.”

  I pulled out a notebook and jotted that down.

  “Was Senator Grayson a client?”

  Lakshmi nodded. “My client, for a while. Allison thought it was funny, because of my major.”

  “So you were the only girl Grayson saw?”

  “A lot of the clients had certain girls they liked, and they liked the girls to be ‘theirs,’ too, so we had to be careful about what we said.

  “Some of the guys are real bigshots. But either they were old and bald and wanted a young, pretty girl on their arm for some function, or they had wives who weren’t into the same things they were in the bedroom. Mostly, I got those guys.”

  “Ted Grayson?” I guessed.

  “He likes his women bound, gagged, and in a little bit of pain, for the most part.”

  My eyebrows went up.

  “Pain?”

  “Not torture, or even really heavy masochism,” she said. “But he likes to pull hair, hit you, push you around. Pretty tame stuff, on the whole, but still nothing he wanted anyone to know. He pays a pretty penny to have that secret kept.”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand a night,” she said. “I kept three, took two to Allison. I don’t know where any of it went after that.”

  I nodded and kept scribbling. Two thousand dollars a night and multiple girls, it sounded like. So what the hell was with the fake diamonds?

&n
bsp; “How often did you see Grayson?” I asked.

  “Once a week or so,” she said. “Until he got tired of me. I don’t miss him. He was creepy. Treated me like I was his property. About the only thing he ever did talk to me about was how beautiful a prize I was, and how I had to stay ‘unspoiled’ for him.”

  I jotted her words down, but the other half of my brain was spinning through the numbers. Twenty thousand dollars a month wouldn’t exactly be easy to hide. So Grayson sold his vote to the devil to feed his sexual fantasies. And Allison knew this, yet still worked in his campaign office. Blackmail? Was that why she was dead?

  “You don’t happen to know who got Grayson as a client after you, do you?” I asked.

  “I think Allison did.” Lakshmi shook her head. “You don’t think Ted has anything to do with her death, do you?”

  “She was strangled,” I said, another thought popping through my head. “Did he go for the bedroom asphyxiation bit?”

  “Not with me,” Lakshmi said. “But I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.”

  I scribbled. Holy shit.

  “What am I going to do?” Lakshmi dropped her head into her hands and sobbed, and I wasn’t sure she was even talking to me. “I was getting out. My parents are back on their feet and I don’t need the cash anymore, and I was going to cut ties with the whole thing after Christmas. Now my whole life is ruined.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you’re a confidential source,” I said. “I’m not the only reporter in town who knows Allison was a prostitute, but if I were you? I’d get suddenly ill, take the rest of the semester off, and hope no one turns your name in. Allison’s dead, right? Lay low for a while. It might have the bonus effect of keeping you alive.”

  She nodded. “What’s one semester?”

  “Not much compared to a lifetime,” I said. “Thanks, Lakshmi. I wasn’t kidding when I said I liked you. Good luck.”