Cindy Dees - Her Secret Spy

He stopped in the doorway. It felt odd to be entering the place he’d been doing surveillance on for weeks.

“Come in. Please.”

Dammit, if he hadn’t detected that hint of fearful pleading in her tone, he’d have refused her. But as it was, he had no choice. He’d promised Bastien, after all. And truth be told, he wasn’t the kind of guy to leave a woman in the lurch.

She wound across the crowded and cluttered space, heading for a narrow staircase near the back of the store. “I’m sorry in advance for the chaos upstairs. I just inherited this place, and it needs a ton of work.”

She said that as if the downstairs wasn’t a colossal, messy hoarder’s wet dream. He hesitated to see what she considered trashed enough to apologize for. He rounded the corner into her second-floor home and stopped cold. It was a war zone.

The place had been stripped down to the lath and plaster wallboards, and in some places down to bare brick. Corroded copper plumbing was exposed, ancient electrical wires hung in dangerous festoons, bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling provided the only light and the floor was scraped boards. The angle of his surveillance cameras on the shop didn’t capture any of this.

“What the hell happened in here?” he blurted.

“The previous owner started renovations, and I haven’t had time to finish them yet,” she threw over her shoulder as she headed over to a corner that contained a 1950s vintage refrigerator with a rusted door, a hot plate on a wooden milk crate and a metal washtub on the floor under two bare faucets.

“Where did the kitchen go?” he asked cautiously.

“In the Dumpster out back. It was disgusting. I tore out what was left.”

“So I gather.” He picked his way around a pile of debris and across a canvas painter’s tarp stretched over the floor. “And your workmen left the construction site like this? Fire them. I know some good contractors—”

“I’m doing the work myself.”

He stared at Lissa as she shed her coat and hung it on an elaborate wood-and-iron coatrack in the corner. In a properly restored home, it would be a lovely piece. In this chaos, it was wildly out of place.

Good Lord. She was even tinier than he’d imagined, a mere slip of a woman. And she was capable of the heavy labor involved in a complete home restoration? Color him impressed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were a contractor.”

“I’m not,” she answered cheerfully. “But how hard can it be? It’s only hammers and nails and saws.”

Oh, my dear God. Was that what she thought? “And you know how to weld copper and run wiring and hang drywall and know the New Orleans building codes, then?” he asked lightly. He’d renovated his condo when he bought it, but he’d paid experienced professionals to do it and it had still been a nightmare. He’d pitched in to help the crew and had learned a ton about construction, but he wouldn’t know where to begin with this disaster.

“No, but I’ll figure it out.”

He managed to get his hanging jaw closed before she turned around, a small bowl of tuna fish and mayonnaise in hand. Other hand on her hip, she asked, “Now where has Mr. Jackson gone off to?”

If he were this Jackson guy, he’d have run away from home and not come back until this place was put back together. Belatedly, Max answered, “Can you call him on his cell phone? Find out where he’s gone? I know some guys who could pick him up and bring him back here.”

Lissa frowned at him as if he’d lost his mind.

Hey. He’d just offered to burn a hard-won favor from his employer for her.

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” she said slowly, as though he were some sort of ignorant child. “Mr. Jackson,” she crooned. “I made you your favorite. Tuna salad.”

Something landed on his shoulder from above, and he dived for the floor, rolling and coming up ready to kill. Jeez. Where had that guy come from? Stunned at the surprise attack, he looked around wildly for his attacker.

Nada. What the hell?

For her part, Lissa laughed and scooped up a...

Son of a bitch.

A cat. Small and black. With one white front paw that looked just like a feline glove. “Mr. Jackson, I presume?” he said drily, lowering his fists to his sides.

“Would you like to pet him? Although I don’t know if he likes men or not. You’re the first one I’ve seen him around. I inherited him with the store.”

“Along with this disaster zone?”

“I prefer to think of it as a project with unlimited potential.”

A cold knot of suspicion started to form in his gut. Had she actually, literally, inherited the place? From whom? And how recently? He’d been under the impression that the store’s namesake would be returning at some point. “Exactly how long ago did you inherit this place?”

“Let’s see. It’s been almost a month.”

He closed his eyes in chagrin as acid frustration ate its way through his gut. A month. The past few weeks of grueling round-the-clock surveillance had been for naught. She wasn’t the person he was supposed to be following. She wouldn’t have any contacts. She was useless to him. Worse, the trail had gone cold, then.

“Who owned this place before you?” he asked in resignation.

“My aunt. Callista Clearmont. She willed it to me right before she died suddenly.”

His one and only link to the next level of hierarchy in the mob he was infiltrating was dead? A stream of violent swearing erupted inside his head.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he murmured automatically. Crap, crap, crap. How was he going to track down Callista Clearmont’s mob connections if the woman was dead? Why hadn’t anyone told him?

Unless the niece had inherited the mob contacts, as well...

Lissa turned away. Her shoulders gave a suspicious heave, and she sniffed loudly. Oh, no. Not more female tears. He had no defense against them. They scared him to death. Frantic to distract her from launching into full-blown waterworks, he asked quickly, “You said she died suddenly?”

His question did the trick. Lissa turned back to face him, another one of those delicate frowns of hers puckering her creamy brow. “She called me. Told me she was going to die any minute and that she’d willed everything she owned to me.”

“Was she sick a long time?”

“Oh, no. She was in perfect health. We all thought she was going to outlive the rest of the family.”

His internal antenna wiggled abruptly. Could it be? Had the mob or one of its enemies killed her? “What were the circumstances of her death, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“She died in her sleep, supposedly. A customer found her after she didn’t come downstairs for an appointment to do a reading.”

“A reading?”

“She was a psychic. I think that customer had asked for a crystal ball scrying. She also read palms very well. The last time I talked to her, she claimed she’d had a vision. That a spirit told her she was going to die within a day or two and to put her affairs in order.”

A spirit, huh? More like a mob informant, perhaps? “Who were your aunt’s clients? Did she keep a list of them?”

“I suppose so. I haven’t found it if she did keep one, though. Her business papers are, well, a little disorganized.”

If the shop downstairs was any indication of how the woman had done business, any kind of organized client list was probably a long shot. With a list, though, he could maybe identify Callista’s mob contact and find the next level of hierarchy in the secretive Russian gang he’d spent the past two years infiltrating.

“Are you hungry?” Lissa asked, startling him out of his train of thought.

“You don’t have to feed me. I’ll grab something on the way home.”