Sacred (Kenzie & Gennaro 3)

“What about her?”

“Everything about her.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, and looked through the bars of the railing at the bay below, at the three bridges cut across the placid water, each one fracturing and distorting the shafts of moonlight. “What do we know about Desiree?”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Right. How do we know that?”

“Oh, jeez,” she said. “You’re turning Jesuit on me again, aren’t you?”

“Humor me. How do we know Desiree is beautiful?”

“From pictures. From even a short glimpse on the bridge last night.”

“Right. Our knowledge, seen by our own eyes, based on our personal experience and contact with the subject and that one aspect of her. And that’s it.”

“Come again?”

“She’s a beautiful woman. That’s all we know about her, because that’s the only thing we ourselves can testify to about her. Everything else we know about her is hearsay. Her father tells us one thing, but he feels completely different. Doesn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So is what he originally told us true?”

“About the depression, you mean?”

“About everything. Lurch says she’s a beautiful, wonderful creature. But Lurch works for Trevor, so we can pretty much figure he was full of shit.”

Her eyes were lighting up now. She sat forward. “And Jay, Jay was obviously wrong when he told us she was dead.”

“Exactly.”

“So all his perceptions about her could have been wrong.”

“Or blinded by love or infatuation.”

“Hey,” she said.

“What?”

“If Desiree didn’t die, whose body was that with Jay’s sweatshirt and a shotgun blast to the face?”

I grabbed the phone from the room, brought it out to the balcony, and called Devin Amronklin.

“You know any cops in Clearwater?” I asked him.

“I might know someone who knows someone.”

“Can you see if they’ve ID’d a female shooting victim found in the Ambassador Hotel four days ago?”

“Give me your number.”

I did, and Angie and I turned our seats until they were facing each other.

“Assume Desiree’s not all sweetness and light,” I said.

“Let’s assume even worse,” she said. “Let’s assume she’s her father’s child and the acorn never falls far from the tree. What if she put Price up to the robbery?”

“How’d she know the money was even there?”

“I don’t know. We’ll deal with that one later. So she puts Price up to the robbery…”

“But Price figured after a while, ‘Hey, she’s a bad seed. She’ll screw me over as soon as she gets the chance,’ so he ditches her.”

“And takes the money. But she wanted it back.”

“But didn’t know where he hid it.”

“And Jay comes along.”

“A perfect foil to put some pressure on Price,” I said.

“Then Desiree figures out where the money is. But she’s got a problem. If she just steals it, not only will her father be looking for her, but so will Price and Jay.”

“So she has to get dead,” I said.

“And she knows Jay will settle up with Price.”

“And probably go to jail for it.”

“Could she be that devious?” Angie said.

I shrugged. “Why not?”

“So she’s dead,” Angie said. “And so’s Price. And then Jay. So, why show herself to us?”

I didn’t have an answer to that.

Neither did Angie.

But Desiree did.

She stepped out onto the balcony with a gun in her hand and said, “Because I need your help.”

30

“Nice gun,” I said. “Did you pick it because it matches your outfit, or was it the other way around?”

She came out onto the patio, the gun shaking slightly in her hand, pointing somewhere into the space between Angie’s nose and my mouth.

“Look,” Desiree said, “in case you can’t tell, I’m nervous, and I don’t know who to trust, and I need your help, but I’m not sure about you.”

“Like father like daughter,” Angie said.

I slapped her knee. “Stole my line.”

“What?” Desiree said.

Angie took a sip of her beer, watched Desiree. “Your father, Miss Stone, had us kidnapped so he could talk to us. Now you’re pointing a gun at us, ostensibly for the same reason.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“We don’t like guns,” I said. “The Weeble would tell you that if he was still alive.”

“Who?” She stepped gingerly around the back of my chair.

“Graham Clifton,” Angie said. “We called him the Weeble.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” I turned my head as she edged along the balcony rail, finally came to a stop about six feet from our chairs, the gun still pointing at a space between us.

And good God, was she beautiful. I’ve dated some beautiful women in my time. Women who based their worth on their external perfection because the world judged them by pretty much the same standard. Lithe or lush, tall or petite, achingly attractive women around whom men forgot how to speak.

But none of them could come within a country mile of Desiree’s radiance. Her physical perfection was palpable. Her skin seemed to have been lathered onto bones that were both delicate and pronounced. Her breasts, unencumbered by a bra, swelled against the thin material of her dress with every shallow breath she took, and the dress itself, a simple, unstructured peach cotton affair designed to be functional and loose, couldn’t do much to hide the tight cords of her abdomen, or the gracefully hard cut of muscle in her thighs.

Her jade eyes sparkled, and seemed twice as bright because they were sheened with a dewy nervousness and set back against the sunset glow of her skin.

She wasn’t unaware of her effect, either. During our entire conversation, she’d glance back and forth at Angie when speaking to her, her eyes skipping across her face. But when she spoke to me, she’d bore into me with those eyes, lean forward almost imperceptibly.

“Miss Stone,” I said, “put the gun down.”

“I can’t. I don’t…I mean, I’m not sure—”

“Put it down or shoot us,” Angie said. “You have five seconds.”