“Maybe they had a judge lined up specially for the job?” Sam wondered aloud.
Billie frowned, thinking. Alma’s coffee was bubbling away inside her, and she felt sharp with an almost supernatural clarity. The drugs of the night before were no longer filling her mind with that awful mental fog, but it was more than that. The horrifying jolt she’d woken to was still running across her nerves, electrifying her limbs and keeping her heart moving at an unnatural pace. Now her assistant was watching her face, she noticed. “I don’t know, Sam,” she finally said to him. “At the very least someone wants to warn me off this case, or they want to tie me up with the law so I can’t continue working on it.”
Yes. A warning. A fear tactic. They thought they could scare her away. Well, they didn’t know Billie Walker.
Billie tilted up her chin. “If they think this will put me off, they are dead wrong. I don’t know just what we’re dealing with yet, Sam, but this is a lot more complicated than we thought. There is something far more interesting and a helluva lot more rotten going on.”
When Billie and Sam pulled up in front of Cliffside Flats, the sun was up but most of the residents of Edgecliff were not. Billie could not be sure if anyone was watching, but they made a nice show of their arrival in any event, Sam gallantly pulling up at the curb and walking around to the passenger door of his Ford to help her out with an extended hand.
Soon they saw they were not alone, as a woman who was clearly an early riser—and from the dark looks she was giving Billie, evidently not one to approve of exciting nocturnal activities—walked toward them on the footpath with her miniature schnauzer. She wore a frown as deep as the Grand Canyon. After scowling silently at Billie in her glittering evening clothes, she shook her head and moved along. Sam, it seemed, was not as offensive, as she did not bother to glare in his direction. The diminutive canine took no notice of his master’s moral judgments and Billie did her best to follow his lead. She instead made a good performance of wishing Sam a pleasant day in a formal but lighthearted tone before walking up the sloping path toward the entrance of Cliffside Flats.
“Oh, you forgot something!” she called, turning back dramatically before she reached the front door of the building.
Sam shut down the engine, opened the door, and got out of the automobile. “What is it, Billie?” he called, a little more loudly than necessary.
She sashayed back to the street and handed Sam his handkerchief. “Nice work,” she whispered. “That should do us well. Thank you.” If the cops weren’t there to see her arrival, at least it wouldn’t have been a performance completely without an audience. It was hardly enough to wake the whole neighborhood, but perhaps some of the more nosy residents of Cliffside would be talking about her over their breakfast. She was already a scandal in their eyes anyway. Billie waved as Sam drove off, presumably to get some overdue sleep rather than to change clothes and start canvassing his friends for a motor vehicle to borrow. She took the opportunity to take one more look around the winding main road, wearing a vague, pleasant smile for the benefit of whoever might be watching her. The birds were becoming louder and the sun was already starting to get hot. There weren’t any cops on the street that Billie could detect, not in cop cars in any event, though she didn’t recognize all of the parked motorcars. She thought she spotted a dark head in a parked late-thirties Vauxhall, though it could have been a reflection. She walked back to the front door and slipped inside.
When Billie stepped out of the automatic lift a minute later, the constabulary was already standing outside her door, looking about ready to break in. She did hate to be so terribly right about things. At this early hour she was faced with one plainclothes officer and one uniformed constable, both gaping at her as she approached them in her mother’s finery. It wasn’t the current fashion, wouldn’t have been the current fashion just before the war, either, but few men would know the difference—she hoped.
“Good morning, Officers,” Billie called, swaying over to them, beads flashing. “That’s my door you’re knocking on. How may I help you gentlemen?”
Even after two hours of hellish morning it was still before eight. On a normal Sunday she wouldn’t be awake until at least nine, and certainly she would have expected to rise later than that after a night out.
Billie smiled at the two men—her even, pretty smile with hidden steel behind the ivory. The heavyset constable, with a long brow and a thin face like the wedge of a hatchet, was someone she vaguely recognized, but the other, taller man had not crossed her path before, she felt sure. He had doffed his hat for her as she appeared in the corridor. A gentlemanly type. He was about six feet in stature, broad-shouldered and rangy, and under other circumstances she would have found him fairly handsome, with his strong jaw and honest face. He had pale eyes and paler lashes and his brown hair was shorn in a neat military cut, short except at the top, where it was smoothed down into a side part. His blue suit was nicely fitted but worn. The suit of a man who thought about other things. The silk tie had a bird pattern in burgundy and ivory, with hints of sky blue. Not bad. His fedora had a welt edge and was held in large but elegant hands. Overall, he was neatly put together and perhaps ten years older than Billie. Either that or the little creases by his eyes had been earned in the war and he was in his early thirties yet. Hatchet Face didn’t require much inspection. He was a little over Billie’s height but about three times her girth. Sausage fingers. A face set in a permanent frown. Aged in his twenties, he was a tough-guy underling, eager to prove his mettle. A dime a dozen in this town. She was sure she’d already made his acquaintance on some job or other and had not been impressed.
“Miss Walker? We’re sorry to disturb you, but I see you are already up,” the tall one said without too much sarcasm, which wasadmirable in the circumstances. “I’m afraid we’ll need you to show us your flat.”
“It’sMs.,” Billie said, sliding past him and unlocking her door.
“Pardon?”
“Ms.Walker. Never mind.” Billie stepped into her flat and slid the fox fur off her bare shoulders, noting the way the movement drew their eyes. “May I see your identification please?” she asked, poker-faced. She put one hand out, the other resting on her curved hip.
“Lady, we could have busted your door down if we wanted to,” Hatchet Face piped up impatiently.
“Well, I see you did not. I’m most grateful to you,” Billie replied and smiled again. “Identification, please.”
Both men seemed taken aback, and then the tall one flashed her his wallet without a fuss. She took it, held it, and read.Detective Inspector Hank Cooper.She looked him over, head cocked.
“Hank. Is that American?” she asked.
“My mother was American,” he replied with a crease in his brow, retrieving his wallet. His pale eyes had grown a touch larger. Were they green? Hazel, with shots of green and yellow, Billie decided.
She took her eyes off his and looked at the constable’s ID casually, then handed it back.Constable Dick Dennison.“To what do I owe the honor of this visit, Detective Inspector?” she asked the tall one. She considered slipping those blasted tight shoes off but resisted.
“If you could not touch anything, we shouldn’t take too much of your time,” the inspector said. He was all hard and professional now, as if remembering what he was there for.
“Tea? Coffee?” she offered.
They ignored her and began to look around. The constablewalked into her bedroom. She heard wardrobe doors opening and closing. After a minute he walked back out.
“What brought you here, exactly?” she asked.
“You’ve been out all night?” It was the tall one asking the question.
“I’m afraid so,” she said. It wouldn’t be great for her reputation, but the alternative was less appealing, so to hell with appearances. “I don’t make a habit of it, but I closed an important case last week and it’s taken till now to get the time to celebrate. I was out with my secretary—or I guess you could call him my assistant.”
He absorbed that. It was hard to gauge what he thought of it, now that he’d recovered his professional veneer.
