Tough Guy: A Hero Club Novel by Jamie Schmidt (the reading list .TXT) 📗

Letting my mind wander, I looked around the condo. It was an expensive setup. I didn’t go much for high fashion, but the place had character. There was marble and stainless steel everywhere, but one whole wall was a window that looked out over the desert and Lake Las Vegas. The manservant in his ridiculous little outfit was back with the drinks almost immediately. I took a sip of my beer. It was lemon free and surprisingly good.

“You must be terribly worried,” Eleanor said, putting a comforting hand over Jackie’s.

“Did Dee ever mention Lisa or Broadway? That was the name Lisa danced under.”

Eleanor snatched her hand back. “Your sister was a stripper?”

She said stripper the same way she’d said hooker. I didn’t like how ashamed Jackie looked. “My girls dance, nothing else,” I said. “Your daughter stayed in the kitchen. She got paid a decent wage, but the dancers make double her salary. Dee wasn’t talented enough to be a dancer, perhaps that’s why—”

Jackie kicked me under the table, and I amended what I was going to say.

“Perhaps she saw a faster way to pay for her Cordon Bleu tuition.”

“You could have paid her better,” Eleanor said, looking down her nose at me.

“You could have paid her tuition.” I circled my beer around, indicating the house.

Eleanor deflated. “I should have. But she’s always been so unfocused. I thought if I made her earn her tuition, she would appreciate it more. I never thought she would sell her body, though.” She gave a bitter laugh. “After all I’ve done to give her the life I never had.”

“Are you sure that’s what she’s doing?” Jackie said. “Maybe she just told you that to make you feel guilty or upset enough so that you would offer to pay the tuition.”

I hid a snort. “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,” I muttered and moved away before I could get another kick. I got beat up less at Dalton’s on frat night.

Eleanor grabbed onto that like it was a lifeline. “You think so?”

“I don’t know,” Jackie said. “I’m just looking for my sister. Did Dee ever mention her?”

“No. She didn’t talk about work a lot. She hated her boss.” Eleanor flicked me a look. “Not you, the chef.”

“Is that why you told him you haven’t seen her in two days?”

Eleanor made a face. “I wasn’t about to tell him that she quit to become a hooker. I still have hope that I can talk her out of this mess and get her back into the kitchen. I just doubt it will be yours after what he put her through.”

“Liu can be a diva,” I admitted. He also didn’t suffer fools and ruled the kitchen like a medieval fiefdom. Dee wasn’t completely incompetent, but she didn’t move as fast as Liu liked. I hadn’t thought there was that much friction between the two, but maybe I didn’t see it because I didn’t want to. “Dee should have come to me if there was a problem,” I grumbled, mostly because I was feeling guilty.

“She didn’t hate her job and, aside from Liu, she liked the people she worked with. They would go out and party after work. I’d catch her coming in at all hours of the morning. It’s possible that she knew your sister.” Eleanor took a long pull of her lemon shandy and slipped the gauzy coverup completely off so she sat there in her bathing suit. It was obvious now that it wasn’t her first drink of the day as she tried to catch my eye. “I hope she didn’t lead Lisa down this path.”

“You said she didn’t talk about work, but you recognized the name of one of my waiters, Zeke. What’s the story with him?” I asked.

“She went out with him a few times. I didn’t like him, but she seemed to have a good time with him. He called the house if she didn’t pick up her phone.” Eleanor rolled her eyes. “I had to have a good talking to him about boundaries and he wised up after that.”

“Did Dee ever mention someone threatening her at work?” Jackie asked.

Eleanor frowned. “Not that she told me, but there are bad elements that hang around clubs like yours.”

I clenched my jaw. “Not my bar.”

She shrugged with one shoulder and patted her turban delicately. “I’m familiar with the area.”

“Not lately.”

Jackie missed with her kick this time too. I was going to spank her ass red if she didn’t stop it. I tried to put that into a glare, but she wasn’t looking at me.

“Would you ask her about that the next time she calls?” Jackie asked. “And ask if she’s seen Lisa?”

“I’ll call her right now,” Eleanor said and pulled the latest iPhone out of the pocket of her coverup. It had sparkles and glitter all over it. I had to look away before I was blinded. “Hello, darling,” she said into the phone after a moment. “Your boss, Miles, came to see me. He’s offering to hire you back at double your salary.”

I choked on my beer. What the fuck?

“I’m sure something could be done about Liu.”

There was a long pause while Eleanor listened. At least Dee was answering her mother’s calls, which was more than I could say for Lisa.

“I didn’t raise you like this, Deidre Marie Jones.”

Jackie raised her eyebrows at me. “She got the full name treatment. That’s how you know it’s serious.”

I kicked her in the shin.

“Ow,” she said, rubbing it.

“How do you like it?”

She stuck her tongue out at me.

“Keep it up,” I warned her in a low voice.

“I don’t care how much you make a night!” Eleanor shrieked, banging her palm on the table so hard the glasses jumped. “I don’t want to know anything about it. I just want you to come home. I’ll pay for Cordon Bleu. You won’t have to go back to that nasty bar.”

“Hey,” I said warningly.

“Dalton’s is a really nice place,” Jackie