A Mighty Fortress (40 page)

“He was a private investigator hired to come looking for you back in May.”

“Big guy? Black hair?” she said reluctantly.

I nodded. “You might’ve seen him riding a Harley.”
 

“Yeah. What about him?”

“This McSwain guy hired him to look for you.”

“No he didn’t. Chad did.”

“Because McSwain wanted you back.”

She sighed. “I told you, I don’t know a McSwain. I’d have to see him to know him.”

I glanced at her again and made sure I was in the slow lane for traffic. Then I asked, “What do you know about Chad’s sex tape business?”

She sighed. “Can we just be quiet for a while?”

“We got a long drive to go. We might as well make the most of it.”
 

I watched her out of the corner of my right eye and took her silence as consent. “So, Chad’s sex tapes…”

“What about them?”

“What do they have to do with this lawsuit?”

“I don’t know about any lawsuit. I know Chad was hoping to use one of the tapes as some kind of publicity stunt. He said he had it all worked out. He thought it’d get national attention for these new videos we were producing.”

“What kind of videos?”

“Some kind of staged voyeurism.” She crossed her legs and seemed to point her hips in my direction. “They were really fun to make.”

“So you’ve seen the videos?”

“Of course.”

“They look professional, like high-definition stuff?”

“As professional as they come.”

I thought of the other video I’d seen, the black-and-white one with McSwain in it. “And I’ve seen a grainy video that looked like it was taken on some kind of old surveillance camera. What’s that about?”

“I have no idea,” she said and leaned her head against the window.

Then I remembered what McSwain had said in his office about being blackmailed. “So these black-and-white videos, would you put it past Chad to be blackmailing people with them?”

She made a frustrated sound. “I have no idea. I don’t ever think about any of that.”

“So you only think about the money?”

I could feel her head turning to face me, but she didn’t say anything.

“Listen,” I said. “The sooner we get this figured out, the sooner I can let you go.”

“Have you considered Don Alexi?”

“Why do you ask?” Suddenly I was having a hard time keeping my eyes on the road.

“He just seems very vindictive. And jealous.”
 

“And what if I told you I didn’t think he did it?”

“I’d ask, why not?”

I glanced at her again. “Just a hunch.”

“Men and their hunches. Whatever you say.” She rested her head against the window.

It was evening now, but the August sun was stubborn in setting, and there were no clouds for it to hide behind in the sky. The wind was blowing crazily, a remnant of the storm that apparently had just passed through Fort Myers. Angie kept her head against the window for a good twenty minutes, and I assumed she’d fallen asleep. But as we neared Charlotte County, she raised her head and asked without warning, “Can I trust you?”
 

I glanced at her again and saw desperation in her jaded eyes. Still, I saw no reason to give her false hope. “You can trust me when I can trust you.”

She sighed and returned her head to the window. I let her sleep during the long, boring stretch of interstate through Charlotte County. All the while I listened to Johnny Cash on shuffle, and munched on the nachos that Angie had decided she didn’t want after all.

We were nearing the exits for Sarasota when she finally sat up again. I asked her if she needed to stop.
 

“No, but I could use a few of those nachos.”

I cleared my throat. “Sorry.” I confessed that I’d eaten them. But they had made me thirsty, and we needed more gas, so I offered to stop again. “I’m pretty sure there’s another Taco Bell at the next exit.”

She didn’t want more nachos, so I settled for the closest gas station. This time I left the pump going while I ran inside and bought myself a Monster energy drink and a water and bag of mixed nuts for her. I kept my eye on her while I was checking out. She didn’t move.

“You sure you don’t have to use the bathroom?” I asked when I got back in the car.

“I’m sure.”

I got back on the interstate and passed her the water and nuts. She opened the bottle and drank without a word. Then she looked at the nuts, sighed, and set them down.

“I love this song,” she said. I’d forgot that I’d left the music playing, but she turned it up. It was “Folsom Prison Blues.”

“So, you like the Man in Black?” I asked.

“Sure, who doesn’t?”

“You think he really believed in a lot of the stuff he sang about?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like the religious stuff?” I asked, curious to hear what she’d have to say about the subject.

“You’d have to ask him,” she said.
 

She reclined her seat again and lay still. I don’t think she went back to sleep, but we both pretended that she had.

We didn’t talk the rest of the way to Tampa. I turned the radio off before we entered Hillsborough County. The Monster had me wired and helped me concentrate on what I’d learned over the last few days and what I needed to do the next few days—assuming we made it that long. As tired as I was when we reached the Dale Mabry exit, I had to pass by my neighborhood in favor of the airport. There, I parked Kiki’s car in the long-term garage a few floors above where my Volvo was parked.
 

“What’s this?” Angie asked when we finally reached the Volvo.

“My car,” I said.

“This pile of crap?”

“This pile of crap.”

It took a moment, but eventually she reached for the door, having seemed to accept the realization that, yes, things
could
get even worse.

It was close to three in the morning when we finally reached my driveway. I was glad there was little chance Hector or any other neighbor would see the barefoot brunette beauty exiting my car in the modest remains of a red cocktail dress.
 

“You live here?” she asked once out of the car.

“Sorry it’s not the Waldorf Astoria.”

“It’s cute,” she said, with much less sarcasm than her comment about my Volvo.
 

I pushed the door open, half expecting to find Giuseppe waiting inside to boast about beating us back to Tampa. Or perhaps to let us know he’d changed his mind about giving us more time to find Scalzo’s killer.

I flipped on the foyer light. There was no sign of Giuseppe, but there was a jumbled mass of blankets on my couch. It started moving, and Val emerged from beneath it and flipped on the lamp. One eye looked sealed shut, the other open but in pain. Her hair was jumbled too, and she wore a gray sleeveless t-shirt over a sports bra.
 

She looked confused, and I could see that the poor girl was slowly realizing that this was not a bad dream. “What’s going on, Milo?” she said, but that was before she saw Angie. When Angie entered the foyer, both of Val’s eyes were wide open, and she repeated herself. “I
said,
what the hell is going on,
Milo
?” Her tone was fiery now. I was about to answer, but first Val demanded, “And who the hell is she?”

“Val, meet Angie. Angie, this is Val.”

Val got up, stalked to the foyer, and looked Angie up and down.

“It’s not what you think,” I said, and regretted it the moment I did.

“And what do I think, Milo?”

I failed again. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Enlighten me, then.”

Angie certainly didn’t help matters when she asked, “Who is this?” This time, her tone was more derisive than when she first saw my car.
 

My eyes pleaded for her to behave. “This is Val. She’s my girlfriend.” Then I looked to Val. “Angie’s in trouble. It’s the case—”

Angie cut me off again: “Tim Tebow here rescued me.”

Val looked to me. “What case, Milo?”

“The Scalzo case. She was the last one to see him alive.”

Angie nodded. “I worked for him.”

“What kind of work?” Val was still directing the questions at me.

“You really want me to answer that?” Angie quipped, whether to me or to Val I couldn’t really tell. Then they both turned to me in unison, like they were expecting wise counsel.
 

Val spoke first. “Is she a call girl, Milo? My God.”
 

Then it was Angie’s turn. “Really, Milo, you can do better than her.”
 

I sighed and stepped in front of Angie, ready to block whatever fury Val was about to unleash on her.

Instead, Val returned to the couch and calmly laced up her cross-trainers. It was only when she’d tied them off that I saw the veins bulging in her forearms—the way they always did when she was trying to control a fit of rage.

Then she flew off the couch and ran out the front door, into the darkness.

I had to hand it to Val: she was quite the sprinter. She’d made it three blocks, a good three-quarters of a mile, before I finally found her keeled over with her hands on her knees, panting. I doubted she’d stopped because she was tired. It was more likely because she didn’t know where to go.

But she kicked it back into overdrive when she saw my car round the corner. I gassed it, passed her, and slammed on the brakes, hoping I’d given her enough room to stop. I didn’t have time to kill the ignition. She was already accelerating in the opposition direction. I gave chase and never would have caught her if she weren’t already gassed.

“Get the hell away from me,” she screamed as I approached.

“Val, please listen to me.”

She punched my injured shoulder, which made me moan. She winced apologetically for a moment when I grabbed my shoulder, but then she turned angry again once she could tell I was okay.

“Val, please. It’s not what you think.”

“I don’t care what it is, it’s wrong, Milo. It’s wrong.”

“Please come back with me. Let me explain. She’s in danger, and I need her help to solve this case.”

Val laughed. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Keep an eye on her. Keep her from flirting with me. Rough her up a little if you need to.”

She glared at me for a beat before she resumed laughing. “Milo, you’re out of your mind. You are
out
of your freaking
mind
. Let me guess: is this why you wanted my dumbass brother to kidnap me and take me to Asheville?”

“I didn’t want him to kidnap you.”

“Well, he thinks you’re off your rocker, and after tonight I do too.”

“Yes, Val, you’re right: I
am
off my rocker. As if you didn’t know that already. Well, now you do. And you know what? You are, too. And I love you for it.”

The moonlight suddenly glowed in her vibrant eyes. “You what?”

“You heard me. I love you for it. You’re the only person in this world who gets me. You’re the only person I really care about. I’m sorry I have problems to work through. I don’t want to hurt you, Val. That’s why I wanted Rico to take you away for a few days. But I don’t want you to think there’s any possibility that anything will ever happen between me and the girl at my house. I do stupid things, but not that stupid.”

I stared at her so hard it hurt. Still, she couldn’t look me in the eyes.

“I promise you, Val.”

For a moment, I thought she was going to speak. Instead, she shook her head, turned, and sprinted away.

“Val!” I cried after her.

She waved once she reached the end of the street.

“Val!” I yelled louder.

But she was gone.

I returned to find my living room empty. My first thought was that Angie had run away, which was actually a momentary relief—at least until I heard the shower running. Then I knocked on the bathroom door to make sure she was in there and the shower wasn’t just a diversion.

“Yeees?” she yelled over the water.

“Just checking,” I said.

The water stopped.
 
“You know, your bathroom is very clean for a guy.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cleaned it. “You can thank Val for that.”

“Val?”

“The woman who just flew out of here like a bat out of hell.”

I endured an awkward moment of silence before the door opened. Next thing I knew, Angie stood in the doorway with a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. She was wearing my Johnny Cash “Man in Black” T-shirt as a nightgown; it was barely long enough to cover half her thighs and seemed to be soaking in a lot of water that the towel had missed.
 

“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked when she saw me checking out her wardrobe. “I don’t have any clothes.”

“Not sure it’s clean.”

“I like the smell,” she said.
 

I shook my head. “We can get you some real clothes when the stores open.” I led her down the hallway to my bedroom and opened the door. The middle dresser drawer was still open. It looked like she’d been through all of them. “I see you’ve met my bedroom. It’s the only bed I have.” I nodded at the bed and saw that Val had also changed the sheets and made the bed. It didn’t feel right giving it to Angie, but I had no choice. “You sleep here tonight.”

“Where are you going to sleep?” she asked.

“On the couch. I sleep there a lot.”

She bit her lower lip nervously. “So what do we have planned for tomorrow? Other than shopping?”

“We’re going to visit McSwain.”

“You think he’s Mr. Silver?”

I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

“What if it’s not him?”

Truth be told, I was more worried about what I’d do if it
was
him. “Then it’s another lead we can eliminate, and we’ll move on to the next one.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled. “I don’t know that I’m up for this.”

I wanted to say I wasn’t either. Instead, I told her we didn’t have a choice.

She surveyed my room, taking extra time to make sure the two windows were locked. “Will you sleep in here?” she asked. “Please? You can have the bed. I’ll make one on the floor.” She smiled faintly, her front teeth gnashing her lower lip.