Brian Freeman - Immoral

"So go for it."

"Yeah, right. Not so simple. They don't call me Barbed Wire back home for nothing. I've got skeletons in the closet Big, ugly ones."

"You won't scare him off," Maggie said.

"Watch me."

"Do you want to sleep with him?"

"Sure I do, but I'm not going to."

"I thought everyone in Vegas had a great sex life," Maggie said.

"I've got a terrific sex life, but I'm usually alone."

Maggie laughed again, long and hard. "Hey, whatever works. But I can attest that with the right guy, there's no substitute."

Serena scrunched up her face. She wasn't convinced. "I just met him," she repeated.

"Fight it all you want, girl," Maggie said, sighing. "But it pisses me off, you know, that I tried to turn him on for years, and all you had to do was walk off the fucking plane. Your breasts ain't that great."

"Like hell they're not" Serena replied.

When he returned to city hall, Stride didn't know how to read the chemistry in the conference room, except to realize that Maggie and Serena had become fast friends during the course of the afternoon. He draped his wet coat over the back of a chair. With a tired groan, he sat down and put his feet up on the scratched wood of the tabletop.

"FBI," he announced. "Full of Bullshit Ideas."

"It's enough to bask in the reflected glow of their presence," Maggie told him.

Stride nodded. "I'm glad you feel that way. I told K-2 that you could babysit the Feebs next time."

"Thanks a lot," Maggie said.

"What happened with Dan Erickson?" Serena asked.

Stride groaned again and gave them a run-down of Dan's threats.

"I told you he was an asshole," Maggie said.

"And you were right," Stride admitted. He explained to Serena. "Maggie and Dan had a brief fling a few years ago. It ended badly. Something about her burning down Dan's house."

"That's a gross exaggeration," Maggie said. "It was an accidental cigarette burn on a Burberry coat."

"Yes, but you don't smoke," Stride reminded her.

Serena chuckled. "I love you two."

"Did you come up with anything while I was gone?" Stride asked.

"We made some breakthroughs, but on a different case," Maggie said, winking at Serena. Stride noticed that Serena gave Maggie a withering stare, then turned beet red and grabbed a manila folder from the desk and began reading. He noted that the folder was upside down.

"What caser Stride asked.

"A head case, actually. The twisted mind of Jonathan Stride."

Stride smiled. "Do you charge by the hour?"

"You can't afford us."

"Lucky me. In between, did you get any actual police work done while I was arranging lattes for the FBI?"

Serena put the folder down, composed again. "Nothing that gets us any answers. But at least I know the case now."

"All right, let's get back to Rachel's original disappearance," Stride said. "I'm betting if we knew what really happened then, we'd know why she was killed."

"Except we were all wrong three years ago," Maggie said.

"Yes, but we know something now that you didn't know then," Serena pointed out.

"Such as?" Stride asked.

"We know Rachel was really alive."

Stride nodded. He stood up and poured a cup of lukewarm coffee. An air-conditioning vent hummed loudly, blowing cold air on his head. "That's true. All right, what else do we know?"

"We know Rachel was at the barn that night," Maggie said.

"Do we?" Serena asked. "Could the evidence have been planted?"

"What, you think a mysterious stranger came by with an eye dropper and left her blood?" Maggie shook her head. "Rachel was mere-and she was in the back of Graeme's van, too. The fibers from her shirt matched."

"It wasn't just Rachel," Stride reminded her. "We've got Graeme's footprints at the barn, too-don't forget that Remember the shoes he bought and then couldn't produce? To me, that says they were both there. Whatever happened between them, it was enough to spook Rachel and make her ran."

"But we know Graeme didn't kill her," Serena said.

Stride proceeded to explain to Serena his alternate theory about what might have happened between Rachel and Graeme that night at the barn, and how Rachel might have turned to a friend to help her escape.

Serena stared at the ceiling, nodding thoughtfully. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and drank from a can of Diet Coke. "That's not bad. But it leaves us with no obvious motive for anyone from Duluth to kill her three years later."

"Except for Dan," Maggie said, smirking.

"If Rachel ran, who helped her?" Serena asked. "Dayton Tenby? I'm still suspicious of him hunting up and down the Strip for little lost Rachel."

Stride shook his head. "Dayton and Emily were in Minneapolis that Friday night, having an affair."

"Unless Rachel called her mother," Serena said.

"I think Emily is the last person Rachel would have called," Stride said.

Maggie pursed her lips. "This all comes back to Sally. We know she saw Rachel the night she left town. She lied about it from the start And she would have been very unhappy if Rachel came back to Duluth after all these years to say in to Kevin."

Stride pulled out his cell phone. "Sally and Kevin are shacking up in an apartment near the university. I tried to call them earlier, but there was no answer."

He dialed again. After five rings, he was ready to hang up, but then he heard a female voice on the line.

"Hello? Sally?" Stride frowned and listened. "Do you know where she is? I'm a friend, and I need to reach her right away."

He waited for the reply and then hung up with a brief good-bye.

It seems Kevin and Sally are due back later tonight. That was the neighbor who's taking care of their cat. They've been on a cross-country driving trip for the last two weeks. To the Grand Canyon."

"Well, well" Maggie said.

"I-40," Serena added. "Five hours to Vegas."

Cordy enjoyed the envious stares as he and Lavender promenaded through the lobby of the Bellagio, underneath the giant, multicolored glass flowers that decorated the ceiling. As a couple, they were cool and attractive, a perfect fit for the upscale surroundings. Cordy wore a black collarless silk shirt, a gold chain, and a crisply pressed tan linen suit. His shoes were polished to a reflective glow, and a waft of fragrance oozed from his slicked hair. Lavender wore a formfitting red bodysuit, with ovals strategically cut away to reveal generous patches of ebony skin and to confirm for everyone who stared mat she wore neither a bra nor panties. She couldn't have attracted more attention if she were naked.

As they entered the Bellagio's elegant Japanese restaurant, he saw the eyes of a dozen Asian businessmen lock onto Lavender through a cloud of cigarette smoke. She flirted with them as she sat down, confidently staring back.

"What's it like?" Cordy asked.

He didn't say what he meant, but Lavender understood. The attention. The stares. What's it like to trail men's eyes wherever you go?

"I love it," Lavender said. She had a sly smile and a breathy voice, with a hint of the street lingering in her twang. "I'm the queen, baby. I've got the power."

She licked her broad lips with her tongue, and Cordy felt her shoeless foot stroking his ankle under the table. The waiter came over, a wizened, expressionless Japanese man in a starched tuxedo, and Lavender began ordering things he didn't recognize, like ika, maguro , and uni.

"What are we getting?" Cordy asked when the waiter left.

"Tuna. Yellowtail. Squid. Sea urchin. Things like that."

"Sea urchin? I'm going to throw up."

"Trust me," Lavender said.

Cordy jerked his thumb at the Asian businessmen at the other tables. "No offense, Lav, but why work where you do? I mean, shouldn't you be living on an island with one of those guys?"