Another shot rang out, and while Jeff had loosened his grip a second ago, he now clutched me again. But I wasn’t caring much at the moment. I didn’t want to be in the middle of a firefight.
“You up there!”
It took a second for me to realize one of the cops was shouting up at us.
“Get out of the way!”
Right. Like that would be easy. Didn’t he think we’d be out of the way if we could? And I didn’t much like it that he was alerting those inside the apartment that we were out here, huddled on the ground.
Jeff started shimmying a little away from the apartment door. I had no choice but to shimmy along with him.
It was awkward. I was on my back, Jeff on top of me, and my movements were crablike, while his were similar to a crawl.
It took us ages to move about six inches. We were closer to the railing now, and I could see the cops barricading themselves behind their cruiser doors. One of them had a bullhorn.
“Police! Surrender!”
It was a little like when the wicked witch told Dorothy to surrender by writing it in the sky. It had the same effect, anyway. Nothing.
At least they’d stopped shooting.
Jeff slid off me onto his stomach next to me. I rolled onto my stomach, too, and we watched through the railing as two of the uniforms dashed out from behind their doors and toward the building. We waited for more shots, but none came.
I pulled myself up onto all fours, rocked back onto my heels, and slowly stood, backing up as I did. Jeff was mimicking me.
There was another stairway just a few doors down. We backed up until we reached it, then ran down the stairs two at a time. My heart was pounding again as we reached the bottom, which led into the pool area.
I took a couple of deep breaths, leaning over and putting my hands on my knees. I felt a hand massaging my back.
“You okay, Kavanaugh?”
I nodded and looked up to see Jeff staring at me with a worried expression.
“This was a bad idea,” I said. “I told you we shouldn’t come here.”
He stepped back and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Okay, so it was a bad call. But who knew?”
I was about to give him a smart-aleck comment back when movement to my left caught my eye.
Someone was lowering himself off the corner balcony. He wore a backpack and a baseball cap.
“What the-,” Jeff muttered.
The guy dropped to the ground, rolled over, and landed on his feet in a total James Bond way. The cap had come off, and I saw dark hair, a raised hand like a wave hello.
I took a step on instinct, but he shot off like the Road Runner being chased by Wile E. Coyote.
Jeff was already shouting at the cops.
I was speechless. Because I’d recognized him.
But it wasn’t a him.
It was Charlotte.
Chapter 36
I didn’t wait around to explain; I just ran after Charlotte. My sandals gripped the pavement as I ran across the pool deck, leaping over the diving board. The latch in the fence kept me busy long enough for Jeff to come panting up beside me.
“You should lay off those butts,” I admonished just as the latch let go and the door swung open. I went through, Jeff on my heels.
But when we got to the other side of the fence, we didn’t see anyone except a group of teenagers loping along the sidewalk. Cars whizzed past on the main road, their engines muffling the sound of the fountain in the center of the courtyard.
I turned to Jeff.
“It was Charlotte,” I said softly. “That’s who came over the balcony.”
I looked behind me to see whether any of the cops had come out after us, had seen Charlotte, too, but nothing.
Until another gunshot rang out.
Jeff and I looked at each other. I had been pretty certain that Charlotte was the one doing the shooting, and from the look on Jeff’s face, he’d thought so, too. There was no other reason why she would have made such a dramatic escape from the apartment building. Was there?
“Someone else was in there with her,” Jeff said.
I nodded. “Yeah. But who?”
We started back through the pool area again and saw cops taking the steps two at a time, their guns drawn.
Jeff took hold of my upper arm. “I think we should stay where we are,” he said.
“Sounds fine with me,” I said, noting that he did not let go of my arm. I made a point of looking at his hand and then looking at his face. “Do you mind?” I asked.
He pulled his hand away and rummaged in his breast pocket for his pack of cigarettes. He took it out, and I laughed. It looked as though it had been run over by a steamroller.
“Maybe someone’s telling you something,” I said.
He managed to get a cigarette out of the pack and used his thumb and first finger to try to round it out. He did a fairly good job of it, and then he stuck it in his mouth, using a lighter he took from his jeans pocket to light it.
He sucked on the cigarette, took it out of his mouth, and let out a long cloud of smoke.
I coughed.
“You one of those reformed smokers, Kavanaugh?” he said.
I shook my head. “Never smoked a cigarette in my life,” I said.
“Why am I not surprised?” he said.
We could hear banging on a door and shouting not very far away.
“What do we tell the cops about your employee?” Jeff asked after taking another hit off his butt.
“I’m not sure she’s still my employee,” I admitted. I’d pretty much had it up to here with Charlotte Sampson. She was up to something, something that may have gotten her friend Trevor killed and something that definitely got Wesley Lambert killed. And now she was in Trevor’s apartment, with all that cash, with someone who was shooting at us, at the police.
I just hoped it wasn’t Ace.
The minute I thought that, I stiffened. What if it was Ace?
“Do you have a cell phone on you?” I asked Jeff.
More shouting from above, and now the sound of wood splintering. The cops must be breaking the door down.
Jeff’s gaze was somewhere off behind me, and I realized he was checking whether someone else was going to be coming down that balcony route, like Charlotte had. He didn’t tear his eyes away even while he dug into his pocket and produced a cell phone. He handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, punching in the number of the shop.
“The Painted Lady.” I had never been so happy to hear Bitsy’s voice as I was that minute.
“Bits, it’s Brett.”
“Where are you?”
“That doesn’t matter right now, but what does is where Ace is.”
“Ace is here,” Bitsy said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Do you want to talk to him?”
“Yeah, I do.”
A few seconds passed; then I heard, “Brett?”
“Ace, what’s Charlotte up to?”
“What do you mean?” His tone was defensive, almost icy.
“I’m at Trevor’s apartment building, and she just shimmied down off a back balcony here like she was Spider-Man. This was after I got shot at from inside Trevor’s apartment.”
“Hold on, Brett, what are you talking about?” He sounded genuinely confused. I was glad to hear it.
“Charlotte, your main squeeze, is involved with something that doesn’t seem good for her health or for mine. Where is she hiding out?”
“I… uh… I don’t know. Really, Brett, I don’t. She won’t answer my calls; she’s not at her place. Bitsy told me what went down this morning at that guy’s condo. I’m worried about her.”
“That’s nice, Ace, but I think we all should have maybe listened a little more to that cop who told me she could be in some sort of danger because of her association with Wesley Lambert. Because you know what? She was, and is, but she’s also up to something herself.”
“Brett?” Jeff’s whisper was hurried. My ba
ck was to him, and as I turned around to see what he wanted, a hand came down on mine, the one holding the phone.
But it wasn’t Jeff now.
It was Frank DeBurra. And as he wrenched the phone out of my hand and closed it, he said, “Miss Kavanaugh, I think we have to have a little chat.”
Chapter 37
I looked to Jeff for support, but he just shrugged.
DeBurra nodded. “And your friend, here, is coming with us, too.”
“Hey, I’m just along for the ride,” Jeff said as he tossed his cigarette down and ground it with the heel of his cowboy boot.
“We wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you,” I hissed.
“Isn’t this sweet? A lover’s quarrel.” DeBurra chuckled.
All the muscles in my body tensed up, and I glared at him.
“You’ve got no reason to be angry with me,” DeBurra said. “But I have all the reason to be angry with you. Maybe if you’d stuck around in the hospital and answered my questions, all of this”-he indicated the apartment house-“never would’ve happened.”
“So it’s my fault I got shot at?” I barked.
“Brett, calm down,” Jeff said softly.
I shot him a look. Easy for him to say.
“You’d better listen to your boyfriend,” DeBurra said. “It’s going to be a long night.”
At that moment I realized I wasn’t going home. I wasn’t going to sleep in my comfy bed. I wasn’t going to be able to relax.
I was going to be stuck with DeBurra and Jeff Coleman all night.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, although my gumption was gone.
DeBurra noticed. “Okay, fine. Let’s go.” He herded us out of the pool area, and now we could see the police cruisers and cops milling around.
“Who was it?” I asked. “Who was shooting?”
DeBurra took a deep breath. “He got out the balcony. Someone downstairs said he saw a guy jumping from balcony to balcony and took off.”
“But what about that last shot? The apartment couldn’t have been empty then.”
Jeff’s nudge was too late. I’d spoken too soon.
DeBurra stopped and stared me down. “What do you mean?”
It was time to tell the truth. “We saw it,” I said. “That’s why we ran out to the front courtyard. We saw her drop to the ground and take off. But I don’t know where she went.”
“She?”
“It was Charlotte. Charlotte Sampson. But after she ran off, we heard another shot from up there. So she couldn’t have been alone.”
DeBurra rubbed his jaw thoughtfully and nodded, but he didn’t volunteer any information. All he said was, “If you’d talked to me earlier, maybe we could’ve found her.”
“I really haven’t known where she’s been hiding,” I insisted, then added, “At least we know she’s not sick.”
Sister Mary Eucharista would’ve said that was like making lemonade out of lemons, or something like that. My brain wasn’t working right at the moment.
They put Jeff and me into two different cruisers. He gave me a wink as they escorted him to a car a few feet away.
I fell asleep.
In the interrogation room.
On a stiff, metal chair with my head down on my arms on a stiff, metal table.
I dreamed of Red Rock and my bed, and the soft whirr of a tattoo machine was my white noise.
I’d been at police headquarters for about three hours, interrogated by none other than Detective Frank DeBurra, going over and over and over ad nauseum everything that had happened that day.
Except I left out my first visit to Trevor’s. I didn’t want to get Kyle in trouble, and did it really matter that I’d been there twice? Sure, DeBurra would string me up if he knew, but I kept to pertinent information, like what had happened at that condo this morning and getting shot at with Jeff.
I hadn’t seen Jeff since I’d gotten here.
I hadn’t seen Tim, either.
I wondered whether he was still at the hospital with sexy Dr. Bixby.
A thud jolted me out of my dreams and ramblings. I looked up.
“Why are you keeping me here?” I asked Frank DeBurra, who’d slammed the door. “I’ve answered all your questions. Can’t I go home now?”
He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile; it had an edge to it. An edge that told me not to push it.
I sighed.
“What else do you want to know?” I asked, defeated, laying my head back down on my arms and staring up at him with one eye.
“Do you know where Ace van Nes is?”
My head popped up and I took my elbows off the table. “Ace?”
“Yes, Ace van Nes. I believe he works for you.”
“He’s at the shop,” I said. “I talked to him there earlier.”
“He’s not there now. And Miss Hendricks was not helpful.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I could just imagine what Bitsy had to say to Detective Frank DeBurra.
“You’re with Homeland Security; don’t you know where everyone is at all times?” I asked, my exhaustion turning into sarcasm.
He sighed dramatically. “That’s what Miss Hendricks said, too. Do you have employee training in how to respond to a police officer’s questions?”
“How did you guess?”
“Where is Mr. van Nes?”
“Maybe he’s home.” Ace lived in a condo that he sublet from some guy in a band over in Summerlin. “Don’t you have his phone number? Why don’t you just call him?” I asked.
“You really need to start cooperating.”
I stood up and faced him. “I’ve answered all your questions. I’ve sat here for hours allowing myself to be interrogated by you. I have cooperated thoroughly. Do I need a lawyer?” I paused. “And it’s not my fault my brother had a relationship with your fiancée, so you better get over that, too.”
As if on cue, the door opened, and Tim walked in.
DeBurra jumped back, startled. “Oh, Kavanaugh, it’s you.”
Tim looked from DeBurra to me and back to DeBurra again. “Don’t you think you’ve got enough now? She’s tired. I don’t know how much more you think you’re going to get.”
I wanted to know where he’d been the whole time I’d been in this little room. But at least he was here now, trying to rescue me from the clutches of Inspector Clouseau. I turned a smile on him, but he wasn’t paying attention to me.
DeBurra looked like he was trying to figure out just what to say, how he was going to justify the past three hours. I’d given him everything he wanted in the first hour.
DeBurra licked his lips, then pursed them together as if he were weighing a life-or-death situation. His eyes settled on me in a very unsettling way. Finally, he spoke.
“Your employee Ace van Nes? He’s been dating Charlotte Sampson.”
Even the cops knew. Why was I the last to know?
But he wasn’t waiting for me. He kept going.
“And late today, thirty thousand dollars was deposited in Ace van Nes’s bank account.”
Chapter 38
I couldn’t breathe. Thirty thousand dollars? Ace? He could barely break a thousand on one of those paintings every couple months. And while he made a good living in my shop, he didn’t make that kind of money.
Then I had a flashback. Charlotte was wearing a backpack when she’d jumped off that balcony. She’d been in Trevor’s apartment. Where there was about fifty thousand dollars hidden in Trevor’s boots.
But I hadn’t told DeBurra I’d been there earlier. They didn’t know I knew about the money in the boots.
I’d already been at the station house for three hours. If I suddenly came clean, I was looking at an all-nighter.
But if I didn’t tell them and they found out later that I knew, I’d be in deep crap. DeBurra I could handle, but I wasn’t so sure about Tim.
I sighed. “I was at Trevor McKay’s earlier today.”
They looked at me like I had three heads.
> “We know that, Brett,” Tim said softly.
I shook my head. “No, I was there earlier, with Kyle Albrecht. MissTique. He had a key; we went over there to see if Charlotte was there. She wasn’t, but we found money. A lot of money. In Trevor’s boots. In the bedroom.” I paused for a second. “Actually, Kyle found the money. But we left it there. We didn’t take any of it.”
DeBurra looked like he was going to explode.
I waited for it.
He did not disappoint.
“Did you go back there for the money?” he asked, his face just inches from mine. I could smell burger and onions on his breath.
“No.”
“Why did you go back, then?”
I did not go for the money. But Jeff Coleman did. I couldn’t rat him out, though, because he’d helped me, what with lending me his car and not getting too upset-at least outwardly-when the tires got slashed on my watch.
“I wanted to make sure Charlotte hadn’t gone there after we’d left,” I said, hoping he’d believe me. “I’ve been worried about her all day. She could’ve gotten sick in that condo. She wasn’t decontaminated like the rest of us.” I hoped I wasn’t laying it on too thick.
He stood up straight and stepped back, studying my face. I willed myself to stare back even though I wanted to look away, put my head back down on the table, and go to sleep again.
Finally, after what seemed like hours but was just seconds, he nodded. “Okay. But you have to tell me everything about that visit to the apartment.”
Tim nodded at me, urging me to continue.
I sighed. I knew I’d be stuck here if I told. I might as well just suck it up and tell him everything as quickly as I could. Maybe I could go home and get a couple hours sleep at some point.
Since he already knew about Bitsy rescuing me from the hospital-that conversation lasted much longer than I’d liked-I started with Jeff Coleman’s car and going to Chez Tango and meeting up with Kyle. It didn’t take me long to run through what had happened.
When I was done, I hoped that would be the end of it.
Then DeBurra held up his hand.
“Okay, so you borrowed Coleman’s car. Where is it now?”
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