Chapter 9
EPOV
I couldn't believe my eyes when Bella darted into my headlight beams like a startled deer. Before I could do more than slam on my brakes – running over a client was not something that was generally conductive to repeat business – she was yanking open the passenger door and flinging herself into the seat.
"Go, go, go." she said urgently, slamming her door. "You'll lose him." Royce's Mercedes was, indeed, disappearing around the corner.
"What the…." Shit, I had two choices. One, I could sit here and reason with Bella or two lose the man I wanted in the worst way, to follow. Against my better judgment I lifted my foot off the brake and headed out after Royce. I looked over at Bella and she was clicking her seatbelt and settling in.
"This was not part of the plan."
"Screw the plan." Bella said sounding breathless. "He's my husband, I'm paying to have him followed, and that means that I get to go along if I want to." The Mercedes was about three blocks away easing through Summerville's side streets toward the expressway.
"Oh yeah? And what surveillance handbook did you read?"
"He didn't notice me last time and I was in the Jaguar."
"You got lucky." She was wearing some kind of perfume; her hair was down, her eyes huge with excitement, glinting at me in the faint light from the dash. Her lips – those beautiful soft lips that kissed my check earlier in the day were parted as she breathed. Her dress stopped about mid-thigh clung to every curve on the way down. I did not need this. It was distracting to say the least. She was distracting.
"I'll stay out of your way, I promise. You won't even know I'm here." I snorted at the impossibility of that.
"This is not happening again. I follow your husband, you stay home. I bring you a full report and pictures, if warranted. You pay me. Got it?"
"If I'm paying, I get to do it anyway I want."
"Not if you're paying me."
"If you don't like it, you can quit. Just turn around, take me back home, and quit. I can always follow Royce on my own."
She had me there. No way in hell was I going to quit. I wanted to get the goods on Royce too badly for too long – and now there was Bella's well-being to consider too.
Although thinking of Bella as anything other than Royce's wife was a truly dumb idea.
"You pull this again and I will quit." Of course I knew that my not immediately turning around the threat was lost. And I watched as a small smile curved her moth and she realized she'd won.
"I wont be any trouble, you'll see." I had to fight not to roll my eyes. "Where's Josephine?" she glanced in the back seat.
"The only creature that could possibly be more in the way than you on a job like this is Josephine. I left her at home." In the bathroom actually. This time I take care to tie the (new) shower curtain out of reach. With the rug stuffed into the cabinet under the sink along with the toilet paper. All other toiletries had been placed in the medicine cabinet, there was no possible damage she could do. At least I hoped.
Bella leaned forward suddenly. "He's changing lanes. He must be getting ready to get off. There – see?" We had reached Charleston, and the Mercedes was indeed, pulling into the right lane. Traffic was fairly heavy. It was a Saturday night in July, after all, and there were plenty of tourists. I wasn't too worried about being spotted. Yet. It was when I had to get out of the Blazer and follow Royce with Royce's extremely noticeable wife in tow that the situation was going to deteriorate into a farce.
"I see." As I pulled into the same lane and followed him off the exit. It was only as we passed into a much better lit area that I noticed what she was wearing. She caught me staring at her with an eyebrow raised.
"Did you have to wear red? You'll definitely stand out in that."
"It wasn't intentional. I just threw on the first thing I grabbed out of the closet." I should be thankful that she was dressed at all, I mumbled to myself but clearly she heard it anyway.
"Don't be bitchy Edward." She said with a smile that was going to be my undoing. I was a sucker for that kind of smile. Well a sucker in general for letting what should have been a fairly simple thing – get more information on Royce, check it out, see if it led anywhere I might be interested in following – get so involved. If I had an ounce of sense, I'd turn around this minute and take her back home, give her the name of a couple other private investigators she could contact, and be done with her.
But even at the thought I knew I wasn't going to do it, so I gave up thinking for the moment and concentrated on keeping the Mercedes in sight as we left the expressway and made our way thought Charleston's crowded warren of streets.
"He's going to the same place. I knew it." Bella leaned forward again.
"If he's meeting someone, they probably have a regular place to be together." I glanced over at Bella.
"Why don't you let me take you home? I'll follow him – alone – the next time he goes out. One thing I don't need – and you don't need either, if you just had the sense to know it – is you creating a scene when we catch up to Royce and his cutie." Bella looked at me and the sudden glint in her eye surprised me.
"I'm not going to make a scene. I just have to know. Royce and I have been married eight years. That means something to me. I don't even think I love him anymore, but the fact that we are married means something to me. I just can't walk out without seeing with my own two eyes that he's cheating. Can you understand that?"
Meeting her gaze I had found a new reason to want to stick it to Royce. A man who could cheat on a wife like this didn't deserve to keep her – but then, that was Royce. He always had been sure he could have his cake and eat it too.
"What I understand is that I'm nuts for not turning around right now and driving you home." I said and she made a face at me. As I turned a corner I realized we are on the street where I first ran into Bella the night before. The pink pussycat was three blocks down on the left. Would Caius be there again, blissfully ignorant that he had been busted by his wife? Probably. It has been my experience that people stayed true to their patterns.
There were approximately four dozen bars, strip joints, massage parlors, and porn shops crowded into a six block square. When I had been a cop, this area had been known as no-mans-land. Robberies, shootings, assaults, and various other crimes happened down here in multiple numbers every single weekend night when the weather was good. And in Charleston the weather was almost always good.
"I can't see him." Bella had one leg beneath her now, peering through the windshield at the press of cars. The street was congested with traffic; the sidewalks were thick with pedestrians looking for a walk on the wild side as part of their vacation.
"I can." No need to add that, if I did lose sight of the Mercedes, I could always follow its progress on the handy-dandy little device, stored at the moment in the console between the seats. That, plus the tiny transmitter I'd had the forethought to slip under the Mercedes' bumper not long after I'd dropped Bella off at her store earlier, made this particular part of tonight's surveillance not a problem.
"What's he doing?" Bella's voice was urgent.
"Parking. Sit tight. I would pull in right behind him, but no point in letting him spot us first thing." That bit of sarcasm earned me a withering look. I couldn't help but smile a little as I drove past the lot where the Mercedes had turned in.
Truth was, I'd made up my mind. As far as keeping Royce under surveillance was concerned, tonight I was going to have to write off as a loss. The situation, if it played out the way it very well could, had the potential to get explosive, and nobody needed that, least of all Bella.
The thing to do was to take Bella on a nice tour of some of the area's establishments – not the hole in the wall dives – but the more mainstream bars, then proclaim Royce lost, and return her home again safe and sound with the clear understanding that I would do the job on my own another day.
An alley up the street led to an out of the way parking lot that was used mainly by clients of the rent-a-room by-the-hour hookers. The lot was dark, its patrons were as bent on secrecy as I was, and the chance of encountering Royce in it were near zero.
"He'll be long gone by the time we get back to where he parked." Bella said while giving me an impatient look that said 'some private eye you are' .I had to try very hard not to grin. Now that the evening's agenda had changed, I was starting to enjoy myself.
"I have an idea where he's headed." Actually, I didn't – this whole area seemed out of character for Royce- but I did have a good idea of where Royce wasn't headed, and under the circumstance that worked just as well.
"You do?" she sounded impressed, I noted as I parked the car.
"That's what us PI's do." Clearly she was in no mood to appreciate subtle humor as she was already reaching for the door handle as I turned off the ignition.
"Whoa. Slow down a minute."
"What?" she glanced at me, impatience coming through loud and clear.
"We're going to have to make some adjustments here. Unless your husband's a blind man." There was always the possibility, however remote, that we might encounter Royce on the street.
"What kind of adjustments?" I reached into the back, groped around the footwell behind her seat, and came up with the Angie wig, right where it had landed the night before.
"What…..?" She looked down at the hunk of hair like it might bite her.
"Don't you want to find out for yourself if blondes really do have more fun?" I grinned. She didn't.
"You're kidding right?"
"Nope, put it on." She looked revolted before pulling the visor down to see in the mirror.
"I look ridiculous."
"As long as you don't look like Bella King we're in business." I flipped the visor closed and reached over opening the door for her. "Let's go."
Before we were able to make our way to the sidewalk a couple of guys stepped out from the shadows and Bella reached for my arm. "The punks that stole my car looked just like that." She whispered.
"They all look just like that." I answered as they gave Bella a leering look before walking by. And then her hand slid down my arm and over my wrist before putting her hand in mine all the while trailing fire every millimeter of the way. My fingers closed around hers automatically.
Soon we were caught up in a river of people walking down the main street. Bella was up on her tiptoes craning her head this way and that.
"I don't see Royce anywhere." She was keeping her balance by resting the hand that wasn't clutching mine flat in the center of my chest.
"I know where to look." We started walking and now her fingers were entwined with mine. I wasn't even looking for Royce and if we ran into him now it would be pure bad luck. I decided to head towards one of the more mainstream girly bars on the strip.
If he was meeting with a lady on the sly, Sweetwater's was the one place he wouldn't go. It was both too raunchy and too public for a lying, cheating, pseudo family man and pillar of the community like Royce.
"You really think he's here?" Bella asked as we went inside after I paid our cover charge. The question should have been hushed but had to be almost shouted to be heard over the pounding music.
"Maybe."
The warehouse sized front room was aglow with a disorienting purple light. The reflecting walls were the silver of aluminum foil. Pairs of woman, naked except for swirls of glitter paint decorating their already decorative bodies, danced back to back in Plexiglas cages about seven feet about the floor.
The hostess, a red-head in a silver thong and glow in the dark pasties, met us at the door and led us toward a purple leather banquette that stretched most of the length of the wall. Small rectangular tables stood in front of the banquette at approximately four foot intervals, leaving just enough room for a couple behind each table.
The hostess indicated our table; there was a lap dance to the left and some groping to the right of us. I let Bella slide in first, her eyes as big as saucers while she looked around.
"What can I get you?" when we were both seated a silver-thonged waitress had appeared, smiling at me rather than Bella, and bent deliberately close as she waited for my answer.
"Heineken." I answered glancing at Bella.
"White wine." The waitress smirked, and gave Bella a pitying glance before turning on her heel.
"Holy shit, there's Royce."
What? I managed not to say that out loud but whipped around in the direction Bella was looking.
There was Royce alright, dark suit, slicked back hair, wire-rimmed glasses, headed straight toward us with the red-headed hostess all smiles as she said something to him over her shoulder and two women, both lookers in thongs hanging on either arm.
It was all I could do to keep my jaw from dropping in amazement. Had the prescient SOB somehow gotten the drop on us?
"Holy shit" Bella said again, her hand flying to her mouth.
Holy Shit indeed.
But Royce didn't appear to have any idea that anybody who shouldn't be, was present – and I meant to keep it that way. I reached for Bella – her eyes big and locked on Royce – and slid both arms around her waist. Time for damage control. Fast.
"Climb up on my lap." I blocked her view of Royce. Bella's face was just inches away now. I had to ignore my body's immediate response, and to respond to this unforeseen emergency like the professional I was.
Bella did as she was told and climbed on my lap straddling me in a remarkably good imitation of the base position of the undulating lap dancer on her left. My self control did a kamikaze dive and suddenly Royce's presence became the least of my problems.