I knew she was a looker from the moment I saw her. Legs long and shapely, her mouth blood red with a cigarette dangling from it, and her glossy dark hair up in victory rolls. She had femme fatale written all over her, but I had one too many fatal femmes.
There was a dead one back in my hotel room, and I needed help to find out who she was and why the body was there. I couldn't go to the police. One of my pals in the department said I should look up Martinez, this detective on the strip. Martinez had the reputation as the best that money could buy.
"I came here for a PI, name of Martinez," I said, thinking she had to be his secretary.
The woman breathed out the smoke from her cigarette like she had all the time in the world. She put out the cigarette in the ash tray on the desk before addressing me. "Jo Martinez. What can I do you for?"
"You? I was expecting a man," I say, admittedly dumbfounded.
"I get that a lot. Mamma named me Josephine, and she's the only one who gets to call me that. Got it?" she said, steel in her gaze.
"Got it," I answer. "I don't know if I can use your services."
"Because I'm a woman?" she challenges.
"Perhaps. This is something of a sensitive nature. I have a dead body in my room, and I don't know how she got there. I didn't kill her. I think someone's trying to set me up," I say.
"And why would anyone want to do that?" she says as she gets closer to me to look me over like she's looking over a steak in a butcher shop.
"Because I have some secrets about the war. I was going to meet with one of my friends to exchange a highly sensitive package. He wasn't in the bar like we agreed on, and when I returned to my room, I had a dead woman," I tell her.
"What do you do, Mr…?"
"Morgan. Henry Morgan. I'm a physician. I was helping with the war effort on the European front," I say truthfully.
"Well, this could be interesting," she says with a slight tilt of her head that could be mistaken for a come hither look. "I think you'd better show me your dead body."
Like it or not, it seems I've just hired Jo Martinez.