Legwork Read online

  Rumor had it that Sandra Douglas Jackson was the one who really ran the family show and had long been the force behind her brother Boyd's success as well. She was small and wiry, with a short-cropped cap of gray hair and a brittle gleam in her eyes. I'm not saying she was the type to run a concentration camp or anything, but I am saying she was the type never to hesitate. She knew what she wanted to do, and she knew what she wanted everyone else to do, and she wasn't shy about letting the world know it. I've met thousands of women like her scattered throughout the South. She could have done a damn sight better job of running things than the men but had never had the chance. Sandy Jackson was Mary Lee without the money, the attractive exterior, or the opportunity. I didn't know her and I didn't want to. I had a feeling she was the reason why old Stoney was such a stiff.

  The call I had been expecting came just after I had showered, inspected my black roots in the mirror, and donned my favorite sheath dress for the day.

  "Casey?" Bill Butler said, his tone businesslike, "I need you downtown this afternoon for questioning. It's official." Translation: five assholes from the SBI were at his elbows, listening in.

  "No problem," I said sweetly. "What time?"

  "Two o'clock?"

  "I'll be there."

  I called Mary Lee's house the second I hung up and got her all-around-secretary, Peggy Francis, on the line. "It's Casey," I told her. "Should I come in or not?"

  "I don't think so," she told me. "The place is crawling with people. Party hacks, the whole campaign team, Hooter and his crew."

  "What about Bradley?"

  "Not yet," Peggy said, disapproval tight in her voice. "I tried reaching him through his office and they say he's unreachable. Mary Lee has no idea where he is."

  "What a creep," I said for about the fiftieth time when it came to Mary Lee's husband. And I'd only known him for a month. Peggy did not reply. "Let me speak to Mary Lee," I demanded, hoping my forcefulness might get me through.

  "She's busy." It was an automatic reflex.

  "Tell her it's me," I promised confidently. "She'll come to the phone."

  It about knocked me over when she did. "What did you find out?" Mary Lee asked. She didn't bother with hello. "Where's Bradley?"

  "Hell if I know," I told her, a little guilty I hadn't done what she'd asked. But shoot, you'd think even the dirtiest dog would come crawling home, tail tucked under, once he found out his wife had been accused of murder.

  "He has to be somewhere. What's his office say?"

  "That he's unreachable." Thank you Peggy Francis. "I'm working on it. In the meantime, I've been poking into Thornton's background."

  "I'm telling you, this is about me, not him."

  "I think it's about both of you," I explained patiently. She had a bit of Louis the XIV in her.

  "If Bradley had anything to do with this, I'm killing him," Mary Lee said.

  "Could you come up with another expression?" I reminded her.

  "Oh, yeah. Right. Listen, I have to go. We're issuing a statement this afternoon and I still haven't written it. The press is unbelievable." She did not seem entirely displeased with the situation. I wasn't surprised. What Mary Lee really craved was attention. She had it in spades now.

  I promised to check in later and rang off, resolving to track down good old Bradley Masters before I went any further.

  I dialed his office and wasted no time when some fresh-voiced Betty Boop soundalike answered and said, "Paradigm Investment Banking Inc." She made "Paradigm" sound like "pair of dimes" which was about all Bradley had to rub together these days in the way of capital. He was not a financial success and only family connections kept him in business.

  "This is Susan Montooth from First Federal. I must speak to Mr. Masters immediately. It's urgent," I lied in my most officious voice.

  "Mr. Masters is out of the office this morning. He will be back by early afternoon."

  "Where is he?" I demanded, hoping to sound as if I would repossess his home at any second. "This is extremely important."

  The lady kept her cool. "He is returning from a business trip abroad, Miss Montooth. May I take a message?"

  I wasn't going to get anything out of her. She sounded like she'd been fielding similar calls from media representatives all morning long.

  But I had an idea. If he was due in the office by early afternoon, he was coming back to town sometime late this morning. And if he'd truly been "abroad," or, at least, far enough away to miss the news about his wife, he was damn sure coming in by plane. The murder had made headlines up and down the eastern seaboard and he'd have called in if he had seen it. Chances were good that he had been out of the states. There was only one airport in the Raleigh/Durham area and only one terminal for international arrivals. I'd find the jerk first. Unless some eager beaver newscaster beat me to it, of course.

  No one beat me to it. When Bradley Masters walked out through the double doors that marked the customs area at Raleigh/Durham Airport, I was the only one waiting for him. I watched him stride down the corridor and thought about what a shame it was that he was such a washout as a person, because he was truly a handsome man. If you go in for the Aryan type, that is. He was tall, his broad shoulders and flat stomach carefully sculpted through regular workouts at the most expensive gym in Raleigh. He still had plenty of blond hair, kept thick by a steady supply of Rogaine which he stored behind a stack of towels in the master bathroom. I knew. I searched the place regularly. His eyes were large and almond-shaped, tinted even bluer by the contacts he wore. And his straight nose and narrow mouth gave him a noble look he did not deserve, considering he had the personality of a weasel.

  He'd apparently had nothing to declare at customs, if you didn't count the large duffel bag in one hand and the college coed in the other. She peeled off like a precision swimmer when she saw me headed toward them. I suspected she'd ducked for cover from a jealous wife many times before.

  "Meet a friend on the plane?" I asked Bradley, grabbing his bag like I was being polite. I really wanted to check the weight. Maybe I could catch him with a couple kilos of cocaine and send him away for decades, saving us all a whole lot of trouble. "Been gone long?"

  "What are you doing here?" he asked sourly. "God, I hope no one sees us together. What's with those roots anyway? Can't afford a bottle of Clairol? And what's with those dresses you wear? You look like a sausage. Plus that heavy eyeliner went out with my grandmother."

  "You don't like the way I look?" I asked innocently.

  "No one I know thinks you look normal," he answered.

  "Maybe that's the point."

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "Where were you?" I stared at his tan. It was deeper than his normal studio tint. "Pretty cushy business trip. She a new secretary or your new jogging partner?" I nodded toward the brunette, who had proved faster than a pro linebacker and was already halfway to the outer doors.

  "Is it any of your business?" he countered.

  I looked his expensive slacks over and shook my head. "Don't you know it's tacky to wear Armani in the Caribbean?"

  I knew by the startled look on his face that I had him. It was more than an educated guess. He was too cheap to take a babe anywhere else.

  "What do you want?" He checked his watch. "My wife send you to follow me around?"

  "Your wife is a prisoner in her own home, under suspicion of murdering Thornton Mitchell."

  That one stopped him. Stone cold dead. "What?" he asked, face perplexed. "What did you just say?"

  His bag felt like it held a pair of swim trunks and little more. I guess he didn't need a lot of clothes for a three-day tumble in the hay. I took advantage of his shock to check the cover of a used airline ticket peeking out of a pocket on the side of the bag. He'd been in Nassau by way of Miami. "I'll tell you about it on the way in," I said. "You'd better head straight home."

  "Of course I'm going to head straight home." He didn't add: "What kind of guy do you think I am?" Which was fortunate,
considering the reply I kept at the ready.

  "Is the press in on it?" he asked suddenly. Like I said, he was a great candidate's husband. "Do they know I've been gone?"

  "Don't know," I said. "It's been pretty confusing. Mary Lee's staying out of sight. She's issuing a statement in a couple of hours." We were on the edge of the parking lot when the coed roared past in a silver Porsche. Funny, it looked just like Bradley's. I put an arm around his waist and looked up at him adoringly. She squealed the tires in rage as she turned a corner and raced away.

  "Get off me!" Bradley demanded, swatting me like I was a fly. "You're a real bitch, Casey."

  "Men like you sometimes think so," I confessed with satisfaction.

  "For god sakes, get me home," he demanded, breaking into a sprint as we both spotted my clunker. "She can't do a press conference without me by her side. It'll look terrible in the papers."

  Like I said—Mary Lee and Bradley made a hell of a pair. Like two actors playing their parts for the camera.

  And that thought set me thinking: two actors, indeed.

  The October day had turned into one of those spectacular Indian summer displays you only find in the Carolinas. The sky was a clear, bright blue with cartoonlike white clouds skittering around on a cool breeze. The air smelled fresh, as if it had been replaced over a clean ocean for my lungs alone. Even the highway looked pristine, its freshly paved surface rimmed by rows of hardwood trees fluttering deep orange and yellow leaves. The ever-present Carolina pines encircled the pockets of color like the green tissue I used to stuff in boxes of grapefruit every winter after school for extra cash.

  Too bad I was stuck in my car with someone I hated, instead of hiking over those peaceful-looking Piedmont hills.

  "So where were you?" I asked Bradley again as we zoomed past a farm truck trundling its way down 1-40 with a load of pumpkins for the yuppie supermarkets in Raleigh.

  "None of your fucking business," he replied, ever the gentleman.

  "Maybe not, but I can guarantee you that I won't be the last person to ask you that question."

  He was silent.

  "This is serious shit," I explained. "The police will want to know where you were."

  "Why the hell would anyone care where I was?" he said bitterly, planting his expensive loafers on my dash simply to annoy me. It worked.

  "Poor Bradley." I clucked my tongue in sympathy. "Forced to work all of what, ten, twenty hours a week? Representing wealthy business owners referred by Mary Lee. Supported in the style to which you have become accustomed by her family's money."

  "Screw you," he mumbled.

  "Some people might appreciate Mary Lee a little bit more," I suggested.

  "Some people don't live with her like I do," he countered. "How would you like being told what to do twenty-four hours a day, your every move analyzed to see what effect it will have on the polls? Meanwhile, the whole state is laughing at me behind my back because my wife wears the pants in the family."

  Knowing Bradley, I suspected the real problem was that Mary Lee wouldn't give him a blowjob. But that would have been rude to point out, so I kept silent. Besides, if he really hated his situation, he could get out of it easily enough.

  "It's your choice to stay," I pointed out.

  "Spare me the marriage counseling," he replied. "I don't notice any rings on your fingers."

  I decided not to show him the one in my navel.

  We rode in silence after that, as I blew through quite a few red lights to get him home in time. It didn't make him any more grateful. When we pulled up to the house, it looked deserted. I had expected the place to be jammed with media cars and television trucks. "Where is everyone?" I asked.

  "I doubt she'll hold the press conference three feet from where the corpse was discovered," Bradley said snidely, climbing out. "It'll be at campaign headquarters."

  Peggy Francis emerged on the front stoop and glared at Bradley. "Hurry up," she called out. "We have to be downtown in fifteen minutes."

  It wasn't until Bradley disappeared inside the house that I realized what he had said. How the hell did he know where the corpse had been? I hadn't said a word about it.

  I couldn't decide if I was disappointed or relieved after I showed up for my appointment downtown where only Bill Butler seemed interested in me. I guess the SBI felt I wasn't important enough. On the other hand, it gave me the perfect opportunity to pump Bill for information—and to bat my eyelashes, of course. I'd worn my contact lenses for the occasion and I considered it a real sacrifice.

  "What's a rude guy like you doing in a nice town like this?" I asked as I took my seat across the conference table from where he sat, looking all spiffy in a black tee shirt and black jacket. The room had been done in early 80's Formica. Very cheerful. The muddy brown of the floor looked particularly fetching as a backdrop for the numerous coffee and grime stains peppering its surface.

  "I moved down from Long Island about three years ago," he told me, sliding a cup of coffee across the table at me without asking how I liked it. It didn't matter. I wasn't planning on drinking it. I'd had the coffee before and damn near needed crowns on my teeth afterward.

  "Why'd you move here?" I asked. I pretended to sip my coffee so I could look at him over the rim of my cup. In daylight he was even more attractive. His face was a little craggy. Sexy creases at the corners of his eyes. A long black mustache that made him look a little like a Mexican bandit.

  "I followed someone down," he said, shuffling a stack of papers into place.

  "Someone like a suspect? A girlfriend? A wife?"

  "You know, Casey, I think you're a little confused. I ask the questions. You give me the answers. Got it?"

  I shrugged. "Where's Shrimpboat Shorty?"

  "He and his fellow agents are off playing in a sandbox," he told me.

  I laughed; he didn't. "You think I'm kidding?" he said. He sighed and pulled a tablet of paper toward him. "Why did Ms. Masters hire you as a bodyguard?" he asked. "I need to know more about the specifics."

  "She'd been moving up in the polls," I explained. "Against all odds, I might add. But when she started moving up, she also started getting these phone calls."

  "Threatening phone calls?" he asked.

  I nodded. "Seriously threatening. The caller knew where she lived, what she wore to bed, stuff like that. And he had a very specific plan for what he'd like to do to her. Weird sexual stuff, mostly. Bondage, that kind of thing. Do you want to hear the details?" I asked hopefully.

  He shook his head. "Why didn't she report him to us?"

  "It's hard enough being a woman and running for office in this state without having the fact that you're vulnerable in certain areas rubbed in the voter's faces."

  "I get it," he said. "What else?"

  "He knew a lot of personal things about her," I continued. "And he had a creepy voice. Raspy, muffled. Very scary. Mary Lee had her secretary tape a few of the calls. The guy was a real sicko."

  "What's wrong with the usual state trooper guard? Or the local guys?" Butler asked. "You told me last night she didn't trust them."

  He had a good memory. "A couple of times, Stoney Maloney brought up some new issues just as Mary Lee was about to release a major statement on the same issues," I explained. "It kept forcing her into reacting, rather than setting the agenda for the campaign. She trusts her staff a lot. They've been with her a long time. But there was a leak somewhere. She decided it was one of her three guards and told them all to get lost. I was the replacement."

  "You replaced three guys?" he asked, his eyebrows raised.

  "I could have replaced more," I confided. "But that's all that were assigned to her."

  He tried to hide his smile and failed. "Did the calls stop?"

  I nodded. "For a while. They've started again. I think it's a manic depressive going through a down cycle or something. Maybe a campaign volunteer."

  "Why did she pick you?" he asked.

  "I'm the only female private ..." I sto
pped in time and rethought my strategy. "I'm the only female bodyguard in the state. She wanted a woman."

  "Why?" he asked, clearly more curious than chauvinistic.

  "Ladies' rooms figured prominently in the creep's scenarios. She was afraid to take a pee alone. My main job for the past month has been to stand outside her stall trying not to listen."

  "I'm sure you're well qualified for the job," he said.

  I ignored his tone. "It's no joke. Do you know how many glasses of iced tea that woman drinks a day? Hell, she hits the can more than a coke addict. And when she pees, she makes Secretariat look like a piker. I swear she has an auxiliary bladder hidden somewhere. The things I could tell you about public restrooms in North Carolina."

  "If only I had the time to listen," he hinted and I fell silent.

  "Who do you think did it?" he asked.

  I felt flattered and immediately wondered if it was a trick. "Someone in Stoney Maloney's campaign springs to mind," I ventured. "Since she was moving up in the polls. Or maybe her husband did it." I hesitated. "They seem like a happy couple on the surface but that's just for the cameras. They hate each other."

  "Of course they do," he agreed. "They're married."

  Aha, he was divorced. It's grand being a detective. You figure out all kinds of stuff about people that way.

  "What about the possibility that she really did do it?" he asked. "And tried to make it look like she was being framed?"

  I considered the idea. "It's possible. Convenient, too. All she had to do was blow the guy away and be so sloppy doing it that everyone thought it was obvious she was being framed."

  He nodded. "That's the idea."

  I shook my head. "No way. What's the motive?"

  "They were having an affair. She broke it off. He threatened to go public."

  I almost barfed in my coffee. "If Mary Lee Masters had an affair it would not have been with that human hot tub. Besides, she's about thirty years and twenty pounds over the limit for Thornton Mitchell. They weren't having an affair." He still looked skeptical.