by Nora Kane
“Unless she’s paying.”
“I suppose, if it matters, I can find out who paid.”
“It doesn’t unless we need to prove she was there.”
“I’ve got that covered. I already got a few pictures, though I didn’t get a good shot of him.”
“Probably just as well. Whoever he is, the last thing he needs is to get on a guy like Stone’s bad side. I don’t want to be responsible for getting some poor sap killed.”
“Messing around with another man’s wife is what’s going to get him killed, if it comes to that. We’re just the messenger.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to be the messenger for that kind of business. I told him we’d find out what she’s doing and that’s it.”
“Fair enough, you want me to keep at it?”
“I can take over if you’re tired, but yeah. I don’t think Stone is worried about his wife having a drink with somebody. For all we know, it could be her brother or something.”
“Watching them, I wouldn’t bet on it being her brother. I’m good to stay on her. How dirty do you want to play this?”
“Get them entering somewhere together, preferably his place or a motel. Mark the time and get her coming out. That ought to be enough. No need to go all peeping tom on them.”
“What if I like to play peeping tom?”
“Do it on someone else’s dime.”
“Alright, did you take care of business?”
“Half of it. I’m on my way to talk to my sister.”
“So, the easy part is done.”
“Yeah.”
“You know you’re not going to be able to fix this, right? If it’s not Randy, it’ll be someone else who likes to beat on her. It’s like they can smell each other. You should know that.”
“It’s still my sister. I’ve got to try.”
“I know. I’ll call you after Katrina and the mystery man do the deed.”
Margot wasn’t surprised when her sister didn’t answer the door. She was clearly home but she ignored her texts and calls as well.
Just like their mom when this kind of thing happened, she’d be mad as hell at first but within twenty-four hours she’d convince herself that she must have done something to deserve it. Just like mom, eventually, she’d find a man who would take it to the point of no return.
Despite the seeming inevitability of the situation, Margot wasn’t going to stop trying. Even if her sister hated her for it.
She pounded harder.
“Come on, Melanie, open the door or I’ll assume you’re hurt in there and kick it in.”
Melanie kept the chain on as she opened the door a crack. Her eye was black, but the swelling had gone down enough she could open it.
“You can see I’m still alive and well. Now go away.”
“You’re alive. You don’t look well. Randy’s not going to be calling and for the sake of your face, don’t call him.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me.”
“Your eye says different.”
Melanie closed the door. Margot considered pounding on it again, but this was about as close to a civil conversation as they were going to get.
Margot went back home and poured herself some whiskey over ice and waited for a call from Mal that never came.
Chapter 4
Today…
“You could help yourself by telling us where to find Mal,” Ames said to her from across the table.
They were in an interrogation room, the same one she was in when they questioned her about Mal. That was before she decided to quit the force before they fired her. Unlike that time, they had her shackled to the iron ring welded to the table.
Margot said nothing. It was easy to stay quiet since she didn’t know where Mal was. The last time she had talked to him, he was watching the recently deceased Katrina Stone drinking with an unknown man at Lefty’s place. The police being unable to find him worried her. His disappearing act meant he was either guilty or in trouble. Maybe both.
“I bet you’re wondering how we knew Stone hired you to follow his wife. Go ahead and ask,” Ames continued.
Margot ignored him. She did want to know. It was a cash transaction other than the hard copy contract he signed there was no record of their agreement. She, however, didn’t want to engage him in conversation until her lawyer got there. She never liked Ames, but she knew he was good.
“You know this whole silence thing makes you look guilty.”
“I don’t give a damn how I look,” she said.
“You know him better than anybody, you have to know when we pick up Mal he’s going to pin this on you. Right?”
Margot didn’t say anything.
“You do know we can’t help you later if you don’t help us know,” Ames' partner, Detective Radcliff piped in.
Margot shook her head and looked at Ames, “He’s not serious, is he? You two haven’t helped anyone since you got out of uniform.”
“We solve murders, we speak for the dead. I consider that helping.”
“Yeah, well, I’m still alive, so we both know you’re not here to do me any favors.”
“Try me.”
Margot held up her shackled wrist. “Let me go home.”
“Keep up this attitude and it’s never going to happen.”
There was a knock at the door and a trim man in an expensive suit let himself in.
“How’s my favorite P.I.?” he said to Margot.
“I’ve been better. How’s my favorite lawyer?”
“I can’t complain, though I probably still will,” he replied. He looked at the two detectives. “My name's Benton. Ms. Harris is my client.”
“I’m Detective Rad…”
“I don’t care,” Benton interrupted, “can we make this short? You’ve arrested my client for no reason other than to do some fishing. You can charge her with something or let her walk out with me right now. There is no third option.”
“You walk out of here now and I can’t help you…”
“You were never going to help her in the first place,” Benton said to Radcliff. “What part of ‘can we make this short’ did you miss?”
Ames unlocked the handcuff. Margot stood up and followed Benton out of the interrogation room.
“I’m always glad to see you, Margot. You’re going to owe me for this.”
“I figured. Can I work it off?”
“Of course. Is this something that’s going to be ongoing? Do I need to clear some space on the calendar?”
“Hopefully not. I can honestly say I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Benton nodded and then laughed, “When did that matter?”
“Matters to me.”
They stepped out of the station and Benton pointed at the cherry-red Porsche convertible parked in the front. “I suppose you want a ride?”
“You suppose correctly.”
They were on the road when Margot asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Mal?”
“No, is he involved in this?”
“I honestly don’t know. He was supposed to call me last night and I never heard from him. The police think so.”
“If he thought he needed a lawyer, I’m sure I would have heard from him.”
“I guess that’s a good thing.”
Margot wasn’t sure it actually was. If he wasn’t in legal trouble, that meant he could be in a whole different brand of trouble.
Benton pulled up to her apartment complex, “Do you want me to come in and hang out for a while? I know you’re not the average client but getting the Gestapo treatment can shake a person up.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Okay, if you need anything, feel free to call. Even if it’s just somebody to drink with.”
“Are those drinking hours billable?”
“Normally. This car won’t pay for itself, but in your case, yeah. Just keep the legal talk to a minimum.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”
M
argot trudged up the stairs to her place on the second floor. At one time the place had a slither of beach view, but a new condominium development took care of that. She stepped inside and noticed the kitchen light was on. She knew she had turned off all the lights before they arrested her. She wished she had her purse and the small arsenal she kept inside, but it was on the dining room table. It wasn’t that far, only a small living room between her and her weapons, but if someone was inside waiting for her—hiding in the place's only bedroom perhaps—they’d intercept her before she made it.
She shut the door quietly so if there was someone still there, they might not know she was home and then ran for the purse. She got there without a problem. She pulled out the short-barreled pistol and the telescoping baton and then moved on to the bedroom.
The bedroom was clear, but Mal was laying on the floor in the bathroom.
When Margot reached him she could see the lower half of his shirt was covered in blood and his skin color wasn’t quite right. She put down the baton and pulled up the corner of his shirt and saw he’d put some gauze and tape over some kind of wound. Whatever the wound was, it was still bleeding. Neither the tape nor gauze was white anymore.
“Can you hear me, Mal?” she asked, but he didn’t answer.
Margot put down the gun and took her phone out of her back pocket. She’d hit the nine and the one when Mal sat up and said, “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? You need a hospital.”
“Then after that, I go to jail. Then after that, someone shanks me and I die.”
“If I don’t make this call, you’re going to die anyway.”
“If I’ve got to go, I’d rather die on your bathroom floor than county lock-up.”
“I’d rather you didn’t die at all.”
“Yeah, me too, which is why you’re going to stitch me up. The bullet went straight through. If it hit anything vital, we wouldn’t be talking. It hit me in the love handle, nothing there but fat. If I’d stuck to my diet and got to the gym more this month, he would have missed me altogether.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“I’m sure I don’t want to go to a hospital.”
“Okay, why do you think you’ll go to jail? What did you do?”
“All I did was get shot.”
“I know the cops hate you, but getting shot isn’t a crime, not even for you.”
“It is when the bullet comes from a murdered woman’s gun.”
Chapter 5
Margot stepped back and admired her work. She wasn’t a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, but she did a decent job sewing Mal’s wound shut. The exit wound was messier and took a few more stitches, but after she was done, Mal wasn’t leaking anymore.
“What would you have done if I didn’t know how to do this?” she asked him.
He looked over the stitches, “Probably bled a lot more. You never told me where you learned this shit.”
“No, I didn’t,” Margot replied. She never planned too either.
Mal let it go, he had a pretty good idea. Her mom was a nurse, but she didn’t like to go to hospitals either. He figured Margot’s mom had taught her oldest daughter some things so she could get treated for her wounds at home where she didn’t have to explain how she got them.
“How did you get into my house?” Margot asked as she cleaned the area around the wound one more time and got ready to tape some clean gauze over the wound.
“You gave me a key, remember?”
“Yeah, I do remember. I also remember asking for it back when I caught you with that cocktail waitress.”
“I might have made a copy, you know, in case I lost the one you gave me.”
“I’m going to need that one too.”
“Why? It’s not like I abused having the extra key.”
“Dying in my place with a dead woman's bullet hole in your belly while Ames is trying to pin the dead woman’s murder on me would certainly constitute abuse.”
“But I didn’t die.”
“If Benton had an afternoon court date, you sure as hell would have.”
“You say that like you don’t know how to get rid of a body.”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t and if you know, don’t tell me.”
“You’d have figured it out.”
“How about instead of discussing how to commit felonies, you explain how you got capped with a dead woman’s gun? Last I heard she was having drinks at Lefty’s with some guy.”
“Yeah, they had dinner too. They took their time, but when they left, I figured I’d be tailing them both to some motel but they drove off separate ways.”
“That’s weird.”
“That’s what I thought, but maybe they were just friends. Anyway, I stuck with her. It was a long shot, but maybe after a nice platonic dinner with Mr. Friendzone she met someone else to do some dirty deeds. When she went home I was kind of disappointed until I remembered you bill by the day.”
“True. Maybe the Stone marriage isn’t in as much trouble as Mr. Stone thinks it is.”
“Never considered that. I did think either Mr. Friendzone and or Mr. Dirty Deeds might just be meeting her at her place so I decided to stick around for a few minutes. I was parked across from her house when she decided to take a walk on the beach.”
“Ames said she was found on the beach.”
“Yeah.”
“You saw it?”
“Kind of, it was dark. I was lucky to spot her. I was thinking it must be nice to walk out your back door and go to your own private beach when I saw a car pull in her driveway. If I hadn’t been watching the driveway, half-expecting somebody to pull in, I may have missed them since they rolled up with the headlights off.”
“That certainly sounds suspicious.”
“For sure, but it could have been her lover being extra cautious, which might be prudent considering who her husband is. Turning off the headlights is easy. Brake lights, however, are hard—or at least they’re hard to turn back on—so the flash of red as the car came to a stop convinced me I wasn’t seeing things. When the door opened no lights came on. Mrs. Stone’s late-night caller took his stealth seriously.
I didn’t get a good look at him as he went around the car and headed for the beach. I considered getting the license plate, but the man wasn’t the job. I kind of wish I had now, but given the way things went down, it was probably a dead end. Anyway, at this point, I’m starting to wonder if this guy's intentions aren’t very good.”
“I’d say they weren’t.”
“Yeah, it’s obvious now, but while it was happening I wasn’t sure. By the time I decided to head down to the beach, it was too late. I was going down there figuring to catch two people fucking. I was trying to be sneaky to get some pictures when I should have been running down with my gun drawn. By the time I figured out what really just happened, he was prying something out of her hand. I didn’t know it was her gun until he started shooting at me.”