Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

peek—perhaps, I thought, questioning whether she had heard anything after all. Her face came into view and her eyes widened with surprise when she saw me, the gun in my left hand trained on her.

“Don’t even try to go back upstairs,” I said.

Loni Markham came the rest of the way down the stairs, resting her hand on the finial atop the railing post at the bottom. The robe she wore was loose enough for the swell of her breasts to be visible but tied enough to hide the specifics of the nudity beneath the terrycloth. She did not try to close or remove the robe. She just stood there, looking at me, hazel eyes dancing, calculating.

“Mr. Rimes, you’re the last person I expected to see here today.” Briefly, she looked down, offering a nervous smile. “I guess I’m the last person you expected to find.” She hugged herself then, peach-colored nails standing out against the blue of the robe. But the gesture came across as pure performance, as did her subsequent attempt to smooth her hair. “I should be embarrassed by all this, but I can’t help feeling a little relieved. Sneaking around isn’t really my thing.” She looked at the nearby sofa. “Do you mind if I sit?”

“Go ahead.”

Now tightening the robe, she sank onto the sofa. The plastic made a burping sound, followed by the brief hiss of air forced out of the cover encasing the cushion. She scooted back against the upright cushion and stretched her arms across the top. The seat hissed again as she made a point of crossing her long legs. She had peach-colored toenails too.

“Mind putting that gun away?” she said. “It’s obvious I’m unarmed.”

“Not just yet,” I said.

“If you’re looking for Tito—”

“Tito’s dead.”

“Oh.” Her eyebrows went up as if she had just heard a neighbor’s dog died and she wasn’t sure how she felt about the dog, or the neighbor. Several seconds passed before she asked the question that would have come to most people the minute they heard the news. “What happened?”

“A car accident.”

“Did he—did he suffer much?”

“I’m pretty sure he died instantly.”

She nodded but still showed no emotion for a man she apparently had been waiting to screw senseless, not even relief that he had been spared pain. “At first I thought maybe you killed him.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. But you’re here, in his house, uninvited and holding a gun on me.” She lowered her hands to her sides, palms down, and leaned forward. “Did somebody tell you about Tito and me? A couple of my friends knew. They encouraged me. They understood when I told them what it’s like to be married to a man so wrapped up in the needs of the spirit that he forgets the needs of the flesh and misses most of the hints.”

“While Tito was so good at catching passes,” I said.

Loni’s smile seemed genuine this time, as radiant as the one I had first seen in her husband’s study. But her eyes were still weighing, assessing, planning. “It seems we’ve come to the point where you must decide what to do. Tell my husband or walk away. You have no authority to do anything else. Either you want money for your silence—or maybe sex. I’m willing to offer either to get back to my life without trouble. Maybe I’d even offer both.”

“This isn’t about your husband.” I sat in a wing chair perpendicular to the sofa. More hissing from plastic. Resting my left arm on my knee, I kept the gun pointed at her.

“Then maybe you’re here to rob the place and I surprised you.”

“Or maybe I’m here to find out why Tito tried to kill me. Why he and Butch Madden were trying so hard to kill Keisha Simpkins when they had a fatal accident.” I made a mental note that Loni’s face showed no surprise at the mention of Keisha’s name, no curiosity at the mention of Butch Madden. “Truth is, you’re far from the last person I expected to find here.”

She shrugged.

“I tell you Tito and Butch tried to kill Keisha and you don’t even blink.

“So?”

“You don’t even ask who this Butch character was.”

She uncrossed her legs. “Maybe I don’t care who he was.”

“Maybe I should call the police. Have them take you in as a material witness.”

“Go ahead. You’re the one who broke in. You’re not a cop. You don’t have a warrant. I have a reason for being here. Clothes in a closet upstairs, toiletries in the bathroom, even a toothbrush with my DNA. What do you have?”

“Your motive for murder.”

“Whatever Tito did or didn’t do has got nothing to do with me.”

“Does it have something to do with your brother Dante?”

Loni’s lips parted in surprise, another glimmer of truth. But she caught herself and closed her mouth quickly. Her brow furrowed and she narrowed her eyes at me.

“Keisha told me one of the men who tried to kill her called the other one Dante.”

“I don’t recall saying I have a brother named Dante,” Loni said. “Even if I do, he can’t be the only one in the world.”

“Murder and attempted murder,” I said. “Your brother forced a heroin overdose on Keisha Simpkins and Odell Williamson because Keisha figured out your foundation was being used as a scheme to make money in real estate development while putting low-income people on the street. Somehow she got hold of documents that laid everything out and she brought them to you, thinking you were the victim. She admired you so much. How could she know then you were behind it all, with a direct connection to FBF Development?”

“So now I’m Donna Corleone?” Loni chuckled. “You don’t know shit.”

“I know it wasn’t enough just to recover the files in a high-tech age. It wasn’t enough to threaten her parents to keep her from talking. To make sure no one got wind of your plan, Keisha had to die. When people die today, most of their documents die with them,