you must know, I was saving Carlotta from a line of oil hungry hairy chests. And Meg was nice enough to hydrate me once we stepped inside to say hello.” I bite down on my lip a moment. “Oh, all right. I’m here for the Mad Hatter, but only because I’ve seen him coming back to the scene of the crime twice. Noah, I have a feeling he offed Hannah.”
His dimples dig in as he searches my features with those deep green eyes.
“And what were you going to do, Lottie? Arrest him? My God, do you even have Ethel with you?”
I cringe at the thought of my trusty Glock tucked away in Noah’s gun safe at the moment.
“No. But in my defense, I’m not alone. Carlotta and Meg are with me.”
“Meg is working, so in essence you are alone.” He glances to Carlotta. “Sorry,” he says to her.
A body bumps into Noah from behind, inadvertently knocking him my way, and Noah grabs me by the shoulders in an effort to keep from body slamming my belly.
“Sorry,” a deep voice strums from behind, and my eyes grow wide with both fear and elation once I spot that familiar scruffy face with a sleek fedora smashed over his head. “Whoa.” He points to Noah. “No roughing up the ladies,” he says before stalking off deeper into the club.
“That’s him!” I hiss as I lean against Noah. “That’s the Mad Hatter! I have to talk to him,” I say as I try to wrangle free from Noah’s grip.
“Lottie, no.” He pulls me in. “You can’t just go over there and quiz him regarding a homicide. He might decide to kill you next in order to cover his tracks.”
“He’s not going to kill me.”
Speaking of the dead, Barry Honeycutt appears in a spray of orange and yellow miniature stars and strides right past me.
“I’m sorry, Noah. I have to do this.” I bolt deeper into the club and spot the man in the fedora saying something to a waitress before they part ways. According to her eye roll and that lusty gleam in his eyes, he was hoping for something more than just a drink from her. He takes a seat at a small round table near the back, and I plop into the seat across from him without hesitation.
“Excuse me?” He shakes his head as he examines me.
Barry sits in the empty seat to our right and glowers at the guy as if he’s got a horse in this race, and in a way, I guess he does.
“This guy is trouble, Lottie,” Barry grunts. “I think you might be in over your head.”
If only Barry knew how in over my head I’ve been in the last two years, and seeing that I’m still on the right side of the soil says a lot about how careful I can be.
“I need your help,” I whisper to the Mad Hatter in haste.
“My help?” He leans in and squints over at me. He’s handsome, dark hair peering out from around his hat, dark stubble, light eyes with a look of mischief buried in each one, and an attitude or an ego, probably both, exuding from him. “Oh, I see.” He cranes his neck past me. “The old man in the suit who was roughing you up? You want him gone?” He shakes his head. “Typically, I’d say no, but you’re a pretty girl and I don’t like to see pretty girls like you getting roughed up.”
Right. Hot Hannah was plenty pretty, and ironically, he’s the one who did the roughing up.
“Is that something you do?” I try my best to bait him. “You know, rough people up?”
A dark laugh bounces from him. “Oh honey, I can make that man disappear off the face of the earth, and no one would know where to begin to look for him.”
I grimace at the thought. “How much does something like that run?”
Barry inches back. “Lottie.”
I shrug his way. “Asking for a friend.” The truth is, I’m not asking for a friend or myself. I simply want to find an inroad into how and why he killed Hannah. Most importantly for whom.
“Five K, but seeing that I have the menace in my sights”—he cranes his neck again to get a better look at Noah—“I’ll do this one pro bono. What can I say? I’ve got the Christmas spirit a little bit early. Besides, it’s coming up on my busy season, and I’m out of practice. This will help me out,