A Taste Of The Nightlife Part 22

"Can I see his bedroom?"

Doug waved me past with the Mountain Dew can. I nodded my thanks and walked into Chet's room.

It was not entirely a sty. The bed was unmade, but the sheets were clean. The hamper was full, but nothing overflowed onto the industrial beige carpet. One of the two dressers had its drawers pulled out. I recognized a couple of Chet's sweaters and his BYT ME BEATMAN T-s.h.i.+rt.

He's not dead. My hand wrapped tight around his cell phone. He's running. He thought somebody might be able to trace him on the cell, so he left it. He didn't think about how much information it's got in it. Or maybe he did. Maybe he wants me to be able to figure it out. Maybe he's counting on me being able to help him.

Maybe this is about you finding out I don't need you. . . . I tried not to hear his voice echoing in my head, and failed.

"Anything?" Doug yawned like he was calling down moose from Vermont.

"Not really." At least I didn't think so. I poked through the drawers. It looked like stuff was missing, but that was all I could tell. Some empty hangers dangled in the closet, but the dark blazers and white b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rts that he wore when he was running the front of the house at Nightlife were all still there.

"Thanks, Doug." I pushed quickly past him.

"Yeah, well. Listen, Charlotte . . ." I stopped in the middle of the living room and squeezed the cell phone hard.

"Chet's a good guy," Doug said. "I hope he's okay."

"Me too." I couldn't get the words out in more than a whisper. "I'll take care of the rent, okay?"

"Don't worry about it," he said. "We've got a week."

"Thanks." I squeezed the phone again. "I'll let you know what's going on once I know."

"Cool."

I walked out thinking I owed Doug another shot at dinner. I'd even spring for the catsup.

Chet's block of Bleecker, though, was mostly a night street. First thing in the morning, it was just me, the autumn leaves and some restless fast-food wrappers on the sidewalk. The pigeons hadn't come off the ledges yet, and the cars lumbered down the street like they hadn't had enough caffeine. Another couple blocks, and I was into the student area surrounding Was.h.i.+ngton Square. Hip young things strolled past, hanging on to their backpacks and texting the entire world. I glimpsed the name on a diner as I threaded my way between them, and a memory jogged loose.

Friends wherever you go.

I scurried across the street and through the door of a long, low dining room done up in rattan and gla.s.s. Big windows let in the sun and an espresso machine the size of a VW bus waited up front for carry-out customers. The pa.s.s-through to the kitchen was large enough that I could see the head line cook, and when she turned around to slide a steaming omelet onto a pristine white plate, she could see me.

"Charlotte!"

"How's it going, Nicki?"

The hostess in obligatory black jeans and T-s.h.i.+rt smiled and let me by. Nicola Papandreos and I clasped hands through the pa.s.s. We had worked the line together at Caliente. It was my first serious restaurant job in New York and Nicki'd helped me navigate that particular minefield. But I had my executive and owner ambitions, and she said she just wanted to cook, so we went separate our ways.

"It's good." Nicki reached for a squeeze bottle and laced hot sauce across the omelet. "Better than it's been for you." She had no idea, but I managed to keep my answer down to an eye roll. "Word's out that they're letting you open again, though?"

"Fingers crossed." A server shouldered past, gave us both dirty looks and pulled three loaded plates off the pa.s.s. "Listen, Nick, I'm dying here. Can you . . . ?"

"Sit." She pointed me toward a table by the window. "Breakfast's on its way. Coffee?"

"You're a G.o.ddess."

I slid into a table by the window where I could see the front door, the kitchen door and who was going past outside. I also took a moment to hate the fact that I was thinking like this. A server brought me coffee and I downed a big slug too fast, letting the burn clear my mind.

I pulled out Chet's cell and cradled it in my hand for a long moment. Then I called up his texts, rearranged them so they'd read in the right order and scrolled through the ones from last Sat.u.r.day, before this whole debacle began.

My mind tried to shut down again, to s.h.i.+eld itself from comprehending what my eyes read.

Set for Sat. ?

Not loving this. What about CCC?

Can't play this out longer.

I bit my lip hard and brought up the recent calls. All of them had NYC area codes or no area code at all. I scrolled down. Last week my brother had been making a whole lot of calls over to Connecticut. That'd be the spa. There was also a number in New Jersey.

I touched the Jersey number and held the phone to my ear as it rang.

Outside, a black-and-white police cruiser rolled up the street, followed closely by a beige Crown Vic. The cruiser stopped at the corner light, which put the Crown Vic almost level with my window. I blinked hard, sure I was imagining things, then scrunched back into my booth.

Linus O'Grady was driving that Crown Vic.

Chet's phone stopped ringing and clicked over to voice mail.

"Leave a message," said a woman's voice that I'd first heard last Sat.u.r.day night. "I will call you back."

I dropped the phone like I'd been burned. It clattered on the cement floor, and I stared at it, heart pounding, lungs heaving. It beeped and the call cut out.

Robert had been wrong about Chet knowing the lady who'd walked in with Marcus the Nebbish. Chet had called Pamela Maddox at least ten times since Dylan Maddox turned up dead in Nightlife. Now Chet had vanished. Linus O'Grady was outside, and despite all the warnings from Brendan and Anatole, who were way more used to dealing with Badness than I was, I had left a bucket of human blood sitting in my walk-in.

There are times when overreacting is the only option.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed up Chet's phone and dialed.

"Maddox," Brendan picked up after the second ring.

"It's Charlotte. Get down to Vieux Cafe on East Eleventh and ask the head line cook, Nicki Papandreos, for the phone."

"What . . . ?" But I hung up and jumped out of my seat, dodging little tables and skinny waitstaff to the pa.s.s-through.

"Nicki." I grabbed her hand and slapped the phone into it. "Hang on to this until Brendan Maddox asks for it. Got that? Brendan Maddox, n.o.body else."

"What-"

"Sorry. Need to be elsewhere." I bolted out the door.

I wasn't trying to run away. Not really. I just didn't want what was coming next to happen in Nicki's place.

I only made it half a block. The black-and-white and the Crown Vic waited for me at the curb, just like in the movies. And just like in the movies, Linus O'Grady stepped out of the Crown Vic, right into my path.

"Charlotte Caine, you are under arrest."

"What's the charge?" But I already knew.

"The murder of Dylan Maddox."

21.

Like all the other police procedures I'd had close encounters with recently, getting arrested was nothing like I thought it would be. After I got my rights read to me, there was no snide commentary, let alone any witty conversation with O'Grady. It all happened so fast, we barely even stopped traffic. Two uniformed officers (apparently taking people in is not something actual detectives do) handcuffed me, sat me in the backseat of the black-and-white and drove me to the Sixth Precinct. In handcuffs. They walked me up to the big desk. In handcuffs. The bored lieutenant with a comb-over and a serious doughnut-belly looked me up and down.

"Whaddaya got, kid?" he demanded of my escort. They told him. Details were written down and I was put in the holding cell.

nctdid take away the handcuffs at this point. In fact, they took away my purse and everything I had in my pockets, which wasn't much, but did include my phone. They also took all my hairpins. So I had a tangled ma.s.s of blond hair falling down around my shoulders, getting in my eyes and my mouth and everything else it could find. I felt like a Nordic Medusa.

Oh, and they don't do the ink-and-roll thing to get your fingerprints anymore. There's a nice clean screen that lights up when they hold your hand down on it.

There was, however, a strip search. And there was a rubber glove involved. And that is absolutely all you're going to hear about it.

Afterward I got a whole bunch of receipts for the stuff they'd taken away.

Eventually, the same uniformed officers who'd put me in the cell came back, with the handcuffs and put me back in the same black-and-white cruiser car, which still smelled like coffee and disinfectant. They didn't talk to me and I didn't talk to them as we drove through the city once more lit up in her nighttime splendor. I had no trouble recognizing the meatpacking district when we got to it, or the headquarters of the Paranormal Squad.

This time I got walked to the bas.e.m.e.nt and all my paperwork got handed over to another bored lieutenant. This one was a gray-haired lady who looked like she could be somebody's grandma when she was off duty. But not the nice kind. The kind that pinches your cheek too hard and orders you to stand up straight all the time.

I got searched again.

Finally, they put me in an interrogation room, which was clearly for "special" cases. It had polished stainless-steel walls where it didn't have one-way mirrors. There were pressure plates on the floor. Before my arresting officer took the handcuffs off again, I was put in a wooden chair at a wooden table. The two dead bolts on the steel door were black iron, and when I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling I saw three prominent old-fas.h.i.+oned sprinkler nozzles protruding from the ceiling. I was willing to bet they had five or six local priests in to say the blessings on whatever came out of those.

They'd taken my watch, so I had no idea how long I sat there. I just knew it was cold. They'd taken my jacket when they took away my purse and phone, so I had on only the plain green T-s.h.i.+rt I'd worn under my chef's coat. I watched all the variations of my own reflection in the steel walls and thought about how I didn't know where Chet was. He'd run away. He'd run away and left his phone and key behind. Phone, key, sister and a bucket of blood. He had Pamela Maddox's phone number, something her security consultant cousin hadn't been able to track down.

But all I could really think about was that this once he must have really told me the truth. This scam, with Ilona, Marcus and the rest of the wacky gang, it really was his scam.

My baby brother, all grown up.

But that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was that there were only a few people who could have gotten the human blood into the walk-in, because whoever'd done it would have needed a key. Unless they'd managed it on the day we were feeding people out the back door. And that would eliminate all the nightbloods. I felt a surge of hope. It couldn't have been Chet who smuggled in the blood. It couldn't have been.

Except it could, because Chet had a key. Except it couldn't, because Nightlife had been police-sealed and watched and there was no time for him to get the blood in between when we were rking and the little chat Brendan, Anatole and I had with Taylor Watts. I'd been in Nightlife that whole time.

Which brought us back to daybloods; the Maddoxes, Bert Shelby and Taylor Watts.

The smell of metal polish worked its way down my throat. I needed to pee and my heel started to tap nervously on the floor from the strain of sitting still and looking calm for whoever watched from behind the mirror.

As if this were the signal, the door opened to let Linus O'Grady in. "Okay, Sergeant," he said to my bored uniformed escort. Bored Uniform nodded and left. Then it was just him and me.

Linus didn't look so little anymore. His bulk filled that cramped, s.h.i.+ny room and his spaniel eyes took on a German shepherd quality, the professional, bomb-sniffing kind. He slapped his folder down and planted his hands on the chipped and splintering table. I hadn't really looked at his hands before. They were big, callused paws with scarred knuckles. He'd hit things with those hands. A lot.

"You have officially blown all your chances with me, Charlotte Caine." O'Grady's words were quiet and cold. "I trusted you. I said to myself, anybody who can make a lasagna like that, she's got heart. Real pa.s.sion. Plus, she's smart. She wouldn't jeopardize her life's work."

Don't say anything. They'd allowed me a phone call before they put me in the first holding cell, and I'd called the apartment because it was the only number I could remember without my cell. Fortunately, it was Trish who answered. We had a very short conversation, but even so, I'd lost count of how many times she told me not to say anything. I clamped my mouth shut now.

O'Grady shoved a piece of paper toward me. It was covered in black-and-white lines and lots of tiny print. "This is a DNA a.n.a.lysis of a five-gallon bucket from your freezer, Chef Caine. Labeled 'ox blood'. Except it's not ox blood. It's Dylan Maddox's blood mixed with cow blood. Nice touch, that, by the way. Must have killed you to dilute the merchandise."

I didn't do anything.

"Where's your brother, Chef Caine?"

I don't know.

"Did he hold Maddox down for you? Is that what happened? He holds your victim down over the bucket while you get him twice in the neck with one of those big kitchen syringes and let the blood drain out. The walk-in would be a perfect place to do it too. No way to hear the screams. Did you drain him out into the ox blood, or did you dump that in on top?"

No. That's not what happened. I don't know what happened. I didn't do anything.

"What I don't get is why you dropped the body in the foyer. Why didn't you cut it up? Or at least dump it in the river. We wouldn't have found it for weeks, if ever. Did you get interrupted by somebody? Like maybe Brendan Maddox?"

"I didn't do anything!" My chair banged against the metal floor as it toppled backward. "You actually think Brendan caught me draining his drunk cousin and didn't do anything about it?"

I was on my feet, leaning across the table, nose to nose with Detective O'Grady. He smiled, a thin, satisfied smile.

"Where's your brother, Ms. Caine?" Little Linus asked calmly. "Why'd he leave you holding the bag and me looking at Brendan Maddox for a suspect?"

I opened my mouth, and closed it again. All my protests banged against my skull, demanding to be let out, along with days' worth of guilt, fear and anger.

"Detective?"

Slowly, Linus turned his head. Bored Uniform was leaning in the door I hadn't even heard open.

"What?" O'Grady didn't say it out loud, but he managed to leave "this better be good" hanging in the air.

"Her lawyer's here, Detective."

My lawyer?

"h.e.l.lo, Detective O'Grady. Good to see you again so soon." Rafe Wallace, the man Trish called the best paranormal lawyer in the city, walked into the room.

I stumbled backward, because relief sucked the last of my strength out of me. Rafe Wallace was a tall, immaculately dressed man with deep black skin, the barest hint of a Jamaican accent and salt-and-pepper dreadlocks pulled into a neat ponytail.

O'Grady sighed and gave me a look that said he was conceding the point, but just this once. "You taking on this whole family, Rafe?"

"Liberty and justice for all, Detective." Wallace dropped his briefcase onto the table, picked up the chair I'd knocked over, and motioned for me to sit down. As I did, we locked gazes.

Shut up, his dark eyes commanded me.

Yes, sir. I studied my hands in my lap. My recent bout of cooking had seriously marred the effects of Jess's manicure. The green pepper stains weren't helping.

Apparently satisfied with my show of submission, Rafe Wallace opened his briefcase and pulled out his own folder, plus a legal pad. "Detective O'Grady, two days ago my client was feeding the hungry on the streets of our fair city, and now you have her in jail. Why is that?"