The Dangerous Edge of Things - By Tina Whittle Page 0,46
a U-turn. I didn’t protest. Dylan Flint wasn’t showing, and I didn’t really want to go snooping. All I wanted to do was go home.
Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have one, not yet anyway.
***
The first thing I did when I got back to the Ritz was take a bath. A long one. I draped a washcloth on my face and ran the water as hot as I could. The bathroom filled with steam and all I could hear was the rhythmic plop plop of the water dripping from the faucet.
My brother was still in the Bahamas. Of course I had other concerns, namely that Dylan Flint was stalking me. And that a convicted criminal had been stalking Eliza and possibly my brother and was now MIA, which meant he was probably stalking me too. Janie had dumped about two pounds of backstory in my lap, along with a mess of inconsistencies, and some unknown woman was making creepy phone calls outside a strip club. And the Beaumonts—the freaking Beaumonts—with their cheese straws and press conferences and conveniently Confederate kinfolk. And then there was Garrity, and Trey, and Marisa, and Landon, and some redhead named Gabriella…
I turned off the water with my toe and sank under the surface.
***
The call came thirty minutes later, just as I was toweling off. I was expecting Rico. I got surprised.
It was my mystery caller again. “We need to talk. Meet me at the Waffle House out front of Boomer’s. Midnight. And come alone.”
I made a noise. “Look, I don’t know what kind of idiot you think I am, but I don’t show up at midnight when some stranger tells me to ‘come alone.’”
“Bring a friend then, just no cops. I smell a cop, you’ll never see me.”
“No cops. Just a friend.”
“Midnight,” she said, and hung up.
My phone said it was five-thirty. I dialed Rico’s number. He answered on the first ring. “What’s up?”
“Hello, friend.”
Chapter 24
Rico wore a red flannel shirt and Doc Martens, and he’d turned his baseball cap around the right way for a change. No medallions. He kept the nose ring though.
I shook my head. “This is your idea of blending in with the Waffle House crowd?”
He shrugged. “I do the best I can.”
Across the parking lot, Boomer’s Adult Entertainment Emporium indeed boomed. I could hear its thumping rhythm even over the prehistoric grind of the eighteen-wheelers constantly coming and going. Rico held the door at the Waffle House, and we went inside. It smelled of cigarettes and syrup and hot strong coffee. A booth of upstanding male citizens gave me The Look as we passed, and I pulled my jacket tight in front.
“Don’t bother,” Rico whispered. “They’re not looking at your chest, they’re deciding you’re a race traitor. Here, let’s take this booth. It’s by the exit.”
I sat down, grabbed the least sticky menu. “It could be my chest, you know.”
The waitress took our order, giving Rico a slow smile in the process. He returned it with equal smolder. I kicked him under the table.
“What is up with you? You’re not turning hetero on me, are you? Because you can’t do that, you know. I can’t be a girl detective without a gay best friend.”
“Nancy Drew didn’t have no gay best friend.” He looked around the restaurant, then leaned across the table. “Where’s your mystery chick?”
“She said she’d find us.”
He stirred his coffee. It was only a prop to him, just like the pecan waffle he’d ordered and then ignored. I pulled out my cigarettes, then put them back and got a piece of gum instead.
Rico jutted his chin. “Don’t look now, but I bet that’s your girl.”
I looked anyway. A young woman walked to the cash register and ordered a coffee to go. She looked barely twenty, a tawny-skinned creature with a mane of ebony hair almost to her butt. She carried herself like a dancer—head up, stomach in—and her body was lush and full, with a thrust of cleavage. She slanted her gaze our way.
“Uh huh,” Rico said. “Bingo.”
The woman sat down next to me without a word of greeting. I recognized her as the woman who’d been lying by the pool when Trey and I had visited Beau Elan. She looked very different now, with tight shiny clothes and heavy but expert make-up. She also smelled of strawberries.
Definitely the stripper friend, I decided. For some reason, all strippers smelled like strawberries.
“No cops?” she said. Her voice held a slightly Hispanic lilt.