Whiskey, You're The Devil: An Addison Holmes Mystery (Addison Holmes Mysteries Book 4) (3 page)

“Damn, damn, damn,” I muttered beneath my breath. Blood was smeared on the glass in the shape of a shoe print. Even I was experienced enough to know that it was a lot of blood for someone to have just cut themselves passing through. I stared in through the gaping hole of the door and followed the bloody footprints through the shop.

“Dear God. Please don’t let me find a body.”

“What’s that, Addison?” Rosemarie asked. “You’re mumbling. You’ve really started doing that a lot lately.”

I stared at Rosemarie, and whatever she saw on my face was enough to have her lips clamping together to keep her silence. I still had on my gloves so I pulled open the door and stepped inside. Glass crunched beneath my feet and Rosemarie shuffled in behind me.

“Don’t step in the blood,” I told her, maneuvering her in a wide path.

“Of course not. That’s disgusting.” She stepped gingerly around the bloody footprints and held her purse in a tight grasp close to her chest. “Good grief, I barely slammed the thing. And I only bashed it with my handbag once. They don’t make doors the way they used to. And I didn’t mean for anyone to cut themselves. You think they can charge me for assault along with the vandalism?”

“Hello?” I called out. “Is someone here?”

Other than the broken front door, nothing seemed to be out of place. Videos lined the wall on the far right, costumes and changing areas were in the back, and about six thousand varieties of dildos and anal beads lined the shelves in the middle of the store. Priscilla sure knew her business.

A display of condoms and lubricants sat along the counter next to the register, and I was briefly distracted by the Rough Rider and tingling gel combo pack on sale for $9.99. And maybe I was stalling because the bloody footprints had to originate from somewhere. The closer I got to the counter I realized the blood wasn’t just on the floor. Droplets spattered across the counter and the register in a wide arc. I swallowed once and put my hand on Rosemarie’s arm to keep her from getting any closer.

“Oh, Lord,” she whispered. She started to make the sign of the cross and then she must’ve remembered she was Methodist because she took a step back instead.

I leaned farther over the counter and looked into the open-eyed stare of who I assumed was Priscilla of Priscilla’s Love Shack. Her face was no longer pretty. In fact, it was pretty unrecognizable as human.

“Rosemarie?” I said. “Did you forget to tell me anything else important?”

I didn’t
think
Rosemarie was a cold-blooded killer, but she’d been acting stranger than usual and I wasn’t the best at picking up vibes from potential killers. I’d also just heard her say she wanted to toss Priscilla to the gators.

She swallowed and then swallowed again, and I hoped she wasn’t going to be sick. Cops hated vomit on their crime scenes. Sweat beaded on her upper lip and she nodded once.

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. “It’s okay,” I told her. “You can tell me anything. I’m you’re friend.”

She grasped my hand and squeezed it tightly. “I forgot to turn the Crock-Pot on before I left for school this morning.” And then she fainted in a dead heap at my feet and took me down with her.

Chapter Two

T
HE GOOD NEWS
about having a homicide detective for a boyfriend is that I can call him whenever I manage to stumble over a dead body. The sad thing is I’ve had to do it more than one might think. Crime was rampant in Savannah. And I was a magnet for finding it.

The first responding units showed up about ten minutes after I’d made the call. Nick was about twenty seconds behind them and he still hadn’t managed to find the right words to say. He’d been shaking his head ever since he caught sight of the body, and the little vein in his forehead was bulging.

“Addison—” He’d repeated my name about five times but never managed to get anything else out. I just waited patiently. I knew he’d get where he was going eventually.

Nick was one of those kinds of guys who could stop traffic the minute he walked into a room. He was a couple inches over six feet and movie star handsome. Savannah PD had been using him as the media liaison for several years because the cameras loved him and he had a gift of smoothing out contentious situations—probably due to his wealthy upbringing and having a senator as an uncle.

His hair was black as midnight and he kept it cut short because it had a tendency to curl, and his eyes were the most devastating shade of blue I’d ever seen. His body was whipcord lean and muscled—like a swimmer—and I could attest first hand that he looked amazing without clothes on. He was a damned good cop, and we’d managed to live together for the last couple of months without killing each other, so I took it as a good sign.

I could tell he was really trying to keep hold of his temper, and I grimaced as I overheard one of the other officers refer to me as the girlfriend of death. Probably Nick took a lot of flack for associating with me, but I wasn’t going to dwell on it overmuch. I had lots of positive qualities too. I could make brownies and pies from scratch, I could outshoot most of the cops on the force, and I was always picked first whenever we played Trivial Pursuit in teams due to my degree in history and weird ability to remember random shit. I had a lot of not so great qualities too, but I figured now wasn’t the time to mention them.

Nick fisted his hands just above his duty rig and took a couple of deep breaths. Rosemarie stood off to the side with two other officers while she gave her statement. I shook my head when I heard her beg them not to put her in the same jail cell as Big Bertha and that she wanted her prison virginity to remain intact.

I was almost positive Rosemarie didn’t cause the dents in Priscilla’s face, but I wasn’t ready to swear on a stack of bibles yet. She’d been unstable at best since Leroy went into traction.

“They’re not going to arrest her are they?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “Depends on what the evidence says and if she can come up with an alibi after the ME rules time of death. But she’s going to be busy answering questions for a while, and she’ll be advised not to take any trips out of town. It’s pretty damning that she came back late last night alone and did damage to the property.”

“I’d like to point out that I’m just an innocent bystander.” I held my hands up and tried to give my charming southern smile—the one with a lot of teeth and little substance—but Nick wasn’t having any of it.

“Now’s not a good time to play that card. Did you just hear Ruiz? He called you the girlfriend of death. That’s what every cop in the city calls you.”

“It could be worse.”

“Really? Cause I can’t think of anything. Especially since you’re my girlfriend.”

“Or you could just ignore them,” I said, eyes narrowed. “It’s not like I’m the girlfriend of leprosy or—” I waved my hands around in the air trying to come up with a worse example and then it came to me. “Or your mother for crying out loud.”

Nick’s nostrils flared and he looked down at his feet as he tried to get control of his temper. So probably bringing his mother into it wasn’t the best of ideas, but she really was pretty awful. Of course, now I felt awful for bringing her up when I knew she was a sore spot for Nick.

“I’m going to have an officer get your statement and drive you back to the agency. Try not to find any more bodies between now and when I pick you up for dinner tonight. I don’t want to talk about this. I want to pretend it never happened.”

I was still stuck on the dinner comment when I remembered we were supposed have dinner with my mother, her new husband, and my sister Phoebe. We were eating out, thank God, because my mother could burn water. That didn’t stop her from trying though.

Nick motioned to an officer I’d never met before and he gave me a stern look before heading over to talk to the Medical Examiner who’d just come on scene.

“I’m Officer Locke,” my new babysitter said. He couldn’t have been more than a year or two over twenty. If he’d ever shaved a day in his life I’d have been surprised. His hair was sun bleached blond and his face still had the cherubic softness of youth.

“Addison Holmes,” I said, sticking out my hand for him to shake.

“Nice to meet you,” he nodded. “So you’re the girlfriend of death?”

*

L
OCKE DROVE ME
back to the agency and dropped me at the front door, and I thanked him for the ride and also for driving through to get me coffee to replace the one I’d left in Rosemarie’s Beetle. My dad had been a cop, so I’d learned early on that you could get them to do almost anything involving food or beverages if you offered to pay for it. And I’d really needed the extra caffeine to get me through the rest of the day.

The McClean Detective Agency was located on Telfair Square in a beautiful crumbling brick building of dark red that was overrun with ivy. Black shutters framed all of the windows and the front door was painted black. Tasteful gold lettering that said McClean Detective Agency in the corner of the front plate glass window was the only indication of what went on inside the building.

Kate had started out her career in law enforcement a dozen years ago, but it hadn’t taken her long to realize she didn’t enjoy the red tape and bullshit that went along with the job. So she went out on her own and opened the agency. She had a handful of full time agents—mostly retired cops—but she also employed a lot of off-duty cops part time who were looking to supplement their income. And then there was me. Like I said, the equivalent of a pity fuck.

The temperature had dropped at some point between my blueberry scone and finding Priscilla Loveshack with her face bashed in, and I shivered and pulled my coat tighter around me as I made my way up the steps and opened the door. A warm blast of air enveloped me and I sighed in relief.

Kate was all about class and reputation, and the inside of the agency reflected that. There was only a certain income bracket of people who could afford her services, so the interior of the building made sure they’d feel right at home as soon as they walked through the door. Despite the “old southern money” decorating scheme, she’d also managed to make it feel like a home.

Except for one thing. Lucy Kim sat in the foyer behind a massive U-shaped desk. She was the gatekeeper and personal dragon for anyone wanting to purchase Kate’s services. She did all the initial background checks on the people hiring us, did the billing, kept the office in immaculate shape, and I was pretty sure she fed on the blood of young innocents to keep her youthful glow. I’d tried doing a background check on her once and the only thing that popped up on the page was her name.

Lucy was Asian American and her hair was so black and shiny you could see your reflection in it if you walked behind her. Her eyes were black, her cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, and her lips were perpetually red—probably from her latest feeding. Her stilettos were always sharp and lethal, and I couldn’t think of anyone else in the entire state of Georgia who could wear leather pants without the humidity making her thighs stick together. Lucy was just unnatural.

I’d never heard her speak one word in the months I’d been working for Kate, and it had become a personal mission to get something to come out from between those lips. For all I knew she was hiding a forked tongue.

“Morning, Lucy,” I said, pulling off my winter gear and hanging my coat in the closet. She kept her gaze straight ahead on the computer screen, but I wasn’t deterred. Nothing much discouraged me. At least not for long. And then it hit me. A brilliant idea. I got them every now and then.

“You know I was thinking,” I said, taking a seat in one of the plush chairs across from her desk. “After my P.I. exams tomorrow it would be fun to have a girls’ night out to celebrate. We could go have some margaritas and judge people from an alcoholic haze. It’s been forever since we’ve all gotten together to do something fun.”

In truth it had been never. Lucy didn’t exactly socialize with her coworkers. Kate assured me that Lucy had a skillset that was extremely valuable in the private eye business, but I had yet to see what it was. I also hadn’t managed to get Kate drunk enough to spill the beans, and my curiosity was killing me. Secrets weren’t meant for the South.

Lucy took the file folder that was sitting next to her keyboard and handed it to me without ever looking up from the computer screen. I sighed and took it and then sat there a few extra minutes staring at her in uncomfortable silence just to see if she’d look up. She didn’t.

“So it’s a plan then for tomorrow night,” I said, getting up from the chair. “No need to bring anything. Just your company is enough. Have a wonderful day.”

I remembered my manners and smiled before heading back to the offices. And then I muttered the entire way down the hallway about rudeness and the lack of social skills in some people. I was on a personal mission to break Lucy Kim. I didn’t care if I had to spend years devoted to the task. I would get her to speak to me before it was all over.

My office at the agency was a converted janitor’s closet. The paint was fresh and the carpet was new, and if I stayed at my desk with the door closed for too long I’d get high from the carpet glue fumes. If I laid down on the floor my head would touch one wall and my feet the other. There was barely room for a small desk, a computer, and a printer, but I’d managed to add my own personal touches anyway, mostly because I had an addiction to Pier 1 and I needed some place to go with my animal print fringed floor lamp and red rug since it didn’t really fit in with Nick’s décor.

My office was at the opposite end of the hall from all the other offices, right next to the bathroom and across the hall from the conference room. I veered in the opposite direction and headed towards Kate’s office. She always had coffee and something from the bakery sitting out for potential clients.

I knocked once and stuck my head in the door. “You busy?”

“No. I’ve just decided to throw the stack of files on my desk in the trashcan and pretend they never existed.”

Kate had been my best friend since birth, so we didn’t feel the need to be polite with each other. She was only a couple of inches over five feet, but she was a force to be reckoned with. Her blonde hair was cut chin length and her green eyes dominated her elfin face. She was cute, but it never took people very long to realize she wasn’t someone to mess with. Her body was solid muscle and it was one of my greatest failures as a human being that I’d never convinced her to wear anything other than ugly boxy suits in browns and grays.