Whiskey Rebellion Part 13

"You're a history teacher," he went on. "You should look at this as a way to study this cathedral's past. You could learn something important."

"Uh-huh," I said as we made our way through rows of sarcophagi and plaques. "Remind me to tell you about the time I took a bunch of students on a field trip to the catacombs in Rome. You'll understand why I have a problem with this."

I had a death grip on Nick's hand and jumped when I heard a squeak somewhere ahead of us.

"Relax, honey." Nick pulled me close and rubbed his hands up and down my chilled arms to give me some warmth. "Buildings this old make a lot of noise s.h.i.+fting. Especially this far south where the ground can turn into a marsh at any time.

I nodded my head yes, but my eyes were saying no, no, no. I needed to get the h.e.l.l out of here because I was a minute or so away from hyperventilating and fainting at Nick's feet.

"Addison, look at me," he demanded as I started to wheeze.

I looked up and he held my head still between his hands until I focused on his eyes. They were impossibly blue and filled with understanding, humor and l.u.s.t.

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you. You'll always be safe with me."

Nick decided to take things into his own hands. Suddenly his mouth was on mine and his tongue was becoming much too familiar with my tonsils-not that I was complaining. And to give him credit, it was impossible for my teeth to chatter with his tongue in my mouth.

"What are you doing?" I asked, pulling back.

"What does it look like I'm doing? Don't worry, I'll still take you on that date we talked about."

"Okay. Good. Whatever. Just kiss me again."

Nick hitched me up so I could wrap my legs around his waist, and I moaned as he pressed his hardness against my aching loins. My skirt rucked up around my waist, and I could feel my panties getting wet. I moved against him until he was. .h.i.tting my sweet spot over and over again and I was moments away from the o.r.g.a.s.m of a lifetime.

"Christ, you make me insane," Nick said as he licked into my mouth. He carried me to a wide stone bench that sat in the middle of the aisle and sat down so I straddled his lap.

I pushed Nick's windbreaker off his shoulders and shuddered as he found the front hook to my bra and made fast work of removing it. My s.h.i.+rt was twisted up around my neck and all I cared about was feeling Nick's skin next to mine. I pulled his s.h.i.+rt up and pressed my naked breast to his chest, and both of us groaned at the contact.

"Hurry, hurry," I panted.

He tore his mouth away from mine and fought with the sc.r.a.p of lace that covered my most intimate parts.

"To h.e.l.l with it," he said and tore them from my body.

I fought with his belt buckle and had just gotten it loose when I looked up and saw a statue of a saint staring straight at us.

"OhmiG.o.d, stop. We have to stop," I said, pus.h.i.+ng him back with both hands and jumping off his lap.

"Are you crazy? You can't just say stop. What's wrong with you?"

"We're in a church," I whispered. "I can not have s.e.x in a church. My mother would kill me."

"I won't tell her," he said. "I swear. Now get back over here."

"No, aren't you listening? We're in a church. And all of these saints are staring at us," I said horrified.

"Are you Catholic?" Nick asked.

"No."

"Then it doesn't count. I think I read that somewhere. And technically we're not in a church. We're in a crypt. There's a difference."

"So now we're not only being disrespectful to G.o.d, but to dead people too. Great. We're going to h.e.l.l."

"I promise if you'll come back over here I'll make it worth the trip," he begged.

I looked over Nick's hard body and was sorely tempted. He was laid out on the stone bench like an offering, his chest naked and the bulge behind his zipper swollen to the point that it looked painful. His eyes were clouded with l.u.s.t and his breath was labored. He looked good enough to eat, and I groaned as I argued my wants against my morals.

I didn't have to make a decision because footsteps echoed and a door slammed, and I was so freaked out that someone had just witnessed me commit a mortal sin that I pulled my skirt down and was attempting to get my s.h.i.+rt untangled when a gunshot rang out.

Nick was off the bench in a split second, his weapon drawn and the l.u.s.t in his eyes replaced by a look of such intense hardness that I took a step back in fear. He ran towards the sound of the shot, through the door leading to the cemetery, and left me standing by myself in the middle of a bunch of dead guys.

"Nick!" I screamed and took off after him. I couldn't decide if I was angry with him for leaving me alone or angry that he'd run full speed ahead toward the sound of gunfire.

I burst through the crypt door into the graveyard. The rain was back to torrential downpour status and the dark clouds made it hard to see. I couldn't see Nick, but my adrenaline and fear wouldn't let me do anything but run full speed ahead. My foot caught on a headstone and I went flying. It was fortunate that it was raining because landing on mud was a lot softer than landing on hard-packed dirt. I sprawled in an ungraceful heap on the graves of Dr. and Mrs. Stanley Took and grimaced as I noticed I'd uprooted the flowers that someone had so carefully planted.

"Nick!" I called out again.

I sat in the mud and rain in silence and waited to hear Nick's voice or footsteps or another gunshot. My teeth chattered, there was mud in places best left unmentioned, and I was close to tears with fear that something bad had happened to Nick.

"Addison!"

I heard Nick's bellow and breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't dead and I wasn't alone. Things were suddenly looking up.

I followed the sound of his voice, playing an impromptu game of Marco Polo, until I saw his shadow next to the wrought iron fence that surrounded the cemetery. His gun was still drawn and he was talking on his cell phone requesting an ambulance and back up.

I looked down at his feet and saw the reason. Victor Mooney was lying face down in the mud, the blossoming blood from a gunshot seeping from his back.

"Oh my G.o.d," I said as I took a step back.

Nick hung up the phone and glared at me. "I know you have a hard time thinking before you act, but next time you hear gunshots don't run full speed ahead into the line of fire until I give you the all clear."

"You left me by myself in a room full of dead guys," I screamed at him. "And besides, you ran full speed ahead into the line of fire."

"I'm a cop. I have a gun. That's what I'm supposed to do," he yelled back. "I can't believe this. You've made me so crazy that I'm yelling in a graveyard."

"You feel bad about yelling in a graveyard after you just tried to have s.e.x with me in a church?" I screeched.

Nick closed his eyes and was obviously counting to ten many times over. "Listen to me, Addison. As soon as backup arrives I'm going to have an officer escort you to your car, and then I want you to drive straight to Kate's. Nowhere else. Do you understand?"

"I'm not going to Kate's looking like this," I said. "Why can't I go home?"

"Because you've been receiving photographs and threatening phone calls and a man you were supposed to meet is lying dead at your feet. Call me crazy, but I think you might be in a little bit of danger, and I don't feel comfortable sending you home while I'm occupied with a homicide just to have some whacko waiting for you once you open the door. Just do what I ask for once."

"Fine." I squished my way over to a bench so I could wait for my babysitter to arrive.

I sat in my car with a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and watched the rain pound against the winds.h.i.+eld. I was soaked to the skin, my skirt was ripped, and blood seeped from both knees. There were scratches on my arms and neck, and my face was blotchy and red from crying. Along with the external wounds, I'd lost a good deal of my sensibilities, most of my faith in mankind, and all of my underwear somewhere between a graveyard and a church parking lot.

I hadn't yet found the courage to get out of the car and go into the McClean Detective Agency. I was working my way up to it, but the last time I'd tried to open the door it started to hail and hurricane force winds slammed my door shut. Not to mention the fact that the mud in my crevices was drying at an alarming rate and I might be stuck in this position forever.

I guess I'd been sitting out front too long because I could see several faces inside peeping out the windows at me, and my cell phone rang in the seat beside me.

"Are you coming in or are you just going to sit out there looking pitiful all day?" Kate asked.

"I haven't decided yet. I'm not allowed to go home, but I'm not sure I have the energy to come inside and explain."

"Nick already called and explained, so if you come in I'll give you some clean clothes and the use of our shower with minimal questions."

I sighed into the phone. "That's the second best proposition I've had all day."

I disconnected and put on my raincoat just so it would hide the fact that I wasn't wearing a bra. I slogged my way up to the entrance and pushed against the gla.s.s doors.

Lucy Kim came from behind her desk with a stack of gray warm-ups and a bar of soap. Her legs scissored quickly on black spiked heels as she headed in my direction. Her face was expressionless and her lips were freshly painted red. If the mud hadn't stuck my shoes to the floor I would have backed up because she looked like she wanted to kill someone. Probably me for dripping on the carpet.

She walked past me without saying a word and stopped in front of a white door with an old-fas.h.i.+oned k.n.o.b. She held the door open and stared at me with black eyes so intense that I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if they shot lasers or set things on fire.

I dripped my way over and took the clothes from her. She gave me a firm push with the tip of her finger and slammed the door behind me.

"It was nice talking to you too," I yelled through the door.

The bathroom was s.p.a.cious and old fas.h.i.+oned. It was obviously for employee use as there were little cubbies that lined one wall with names taped to them. I stood on the cold tile and peeled the clothes from my body and then put them in the trash. They were a lost cause-much like my life.

I enjoyed a luxurious half hour under the hot spray and borrowed shampoo from a woman named Susan. I was pretty sure she wouldn't mind. I dried off and dug around in the cabinets until I found a first aid kit. The skin on my palms and knees was rubbed raw from my fall and my arms had scratches on them, so I rubbed on some antibacterial cream so I wouldn't get graveyard germs.

I put on the sweats and decided I was getting much too comfortable going places without underwear. I tried not to think about how I ended up without it, or when Nick was going to try to make me go without it again.

I tidied the bathroom and walked in my sock feet down to Kate's office, feeling like a new woman.

"I was about to come down and make sure you hadn't drowned," Kate said as I plopped face down on the couch in her office.

"It took a while considering some of the places I had mud."

"You've also got a nasty case of whisker burn on your neck. I don't suppose you want to explain that?" Kate asked.

"Let's just say things got complicated before we stumbled over the body."

"You'd better hope your mother never finds out you had s.e.x in a church."

"We didn't have s.e.x," I growled.

"Which would explain why you're in such a good mood."

"No, I'm pretty sure s.e.xual frustration is the least of my problems. I'd say the biggest one is that I keep finding dead bodies."

"You don't think the murders are related, do you?"

"I don't know. Mr. Butler didn't have anything to do with me, but I feel responsible for Mr. Mooney. I guess I should confess that I asked Mr. Mooney to snoop around and keep track of who was going in and out of the Hyatt mansion. And now he's dead. He said he had information for me, so I'm thinking whatever it was made someone nervous enough to kill him."

Kate closed her eyes and looked like she was counting.

"Is there anything else you need to tell me?" she finally asked.

I thought back through the last week and grimaced. There was probably a lot I needed to tell Kate, but none of it would make her feel better, so I decided to keep quiet and shook my head no.

"Well, this is out of our hands now, Addison. It's up to the police to find out who killed Mr. Mooney and if his death had anything to do with your princ.i.p.al's. I guess it's just our luck that f.a.n.n.y Kimble withdrew her offer for us to investigate John Hyatt. We'll let the police do their jobs and you can go back to your normal surveillance routine. At least you should be able to stay out of trouble without stumbling across any more bodies."

I sat and stared at Kate in shock. She'd gone back to reading the papers on her desk. "Kate, I feel responsible for Mr. Mooney's death. I'm not just going to stop investigating things because you or f.a.n.n.y Kimble says so. I've got a stake in this, and I'm going to see it through."

"Addison, listen to me," Kate said deliberately enunciating each word, a sure sign she was about to lose her temper. "If you want to work for me then you will do what I say. Period. I'm worried about you, and this is not something you need to stick your nose into. Lord knows, somebody has to keep you out of trouble."

I was about to interrupt when she held up a hand to silence me.

"I also have a business to worry about. A business with a good reputation. If you can't follow my rules then I will fire you."

My mouth opened and closed like a guppy. "You'd really fire me?" I asked, incredulously.

"In a heartbeat if it meant saving either your life or my business. Do we have an agreement?"

I looked at Kate closely, but she wasn't bluffing. She really would fire me.

"Fine," I said. "But I can't promise that I can stay out of it completely. Nick's already told me he thinks I'm somehow caught in the middle of this mess. All I can do is wait and see if he's right."

"As long as you're not actively seeking trouble out. Now tell me about these pictures you've been getting."

"Geez, does Nick tell you everything? What a blabbermouth."

"He's telling me things that I should have heard from you. I don't like to hear about my employees being stalked, not to mention my best friend."

"I don't know. My gut tells me it's probably Veronica. It wouldn't be the first time she's stooped to such a juvenile level. And the things she said at the Officer's Gala keep replaying in my mind. She really thinks that I've screwed her over, and she's out for revenge."

"Let me do some checking for you. If it's Veronica I can find out, and believe me when I tell you I can put the fear of G.o.d into her."

"Thanks," I said, grateful. "It'll be nice to have one less thing to worry about."

"Just don't let your guard down," she warned. "I feel better that Nick told you to stay with me until he can take over. You can come hang out at my house until he gets done with the preliminary investigation. He'll follow you back home and make sure your apartment is safe. But it could be a little while because he said he was having trouble with Whiskey Bayou's sheriff."

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"Jurisdiction. Nick just called in a Crime Scene Team from Savannah and overrode him in that patient way he has. The sheriff wasn't too happy to have the city boys on his turf."

"Can't blame him. It makes me uncomfortable to have Nick on my turf all the time."

CHAPTER TEN.