“We broke up six months ago. He wants us to start seeing each other again.”
Jase didn’t like the sound of that. He had no hold on Kate, and yet he felt strangely possessive. “That what you want?”
She shook her head. “Not a chance.”
He relaxed. “Good choice. Somehow I can’t see this guy with the girl I danced with at the Sagebrush Saloon.”
“You’re right. We don’t fit. It took me a while to figure that out.”
“He’s a good-looking guy. Probably successful. I can see why he’d appeal to a woman.”
“We’re both business people. That’s what kept us together. But he wasn’t interested in the person I really am.”
But I am,Jase thought. He didn’t say it. They had a murder to solve first. “I talked to Detective Benson and the medical examiner, Dr. Maxwell. I thought you’d want to know what I found out.”
She nodded. “You want a beer or something?”
“A beer sounds good.”
While Kate went into the kitchen, Jase checked out her Uptown, loft-style apartment. Hardwood floors, high ceilings, walls of glass that looked out over the city. The views were spectacular.
“Nice place,” he said as she handed him a Lone Star. But a little too exposed for him. He didn’t like people looking in his windows, even if they were ten stories above the ground. Too many years in the marines, too many guys dead from snipers bullets.
She led him into the living room, and they sat down on a cream sofa trimmed in black in front of a glass-topped coffee table. The place was modern, and it looked expensive, though he knew the building was older, not as high rent as Kate had managed to make the apartment appear.
“You talked to Benson and Dr. Maxwell,” she said, picking up the conversation where they left off. “What did they tell you?”
“You sure you’re ready to hear this, Kate? Because the facts in this case are going to be brutal.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I’ve thought about it. Whatever the facts, they can’t be worse than what I’m imagining. I need to know what happened. I need to know the truth.”
Jase tipped up his beer and took a long swallow, set the bottle down on a black granite coaster. “When I was going over the info, a couple of things stood out to me. First, the body was found in an alley behind a bar called Mean Jack’s. It’s in Old East Dallas. But Benson said she was killed somewhere else.”
“Do they know where?”
“Not yet.” He filled her in on what the police had done so far, which wasn’t all that much. “Second, she was badly beaten, but the actual cause of death was blunt force trauma from a blow to the head. Doc says the weapon could have been a bat or a club of some kind, something like that. That doesn’t sound like a john to me, even one who likes his sex rough. They get their jollies out of beating a woman, but they aren’t usually trying to kill her.”
“So you think there was a different motive? Not just a john who got violent?”
“I think it’s possible. Although it could be the john was a regular. Maybe he got jealous, didn’t like her turning tricks with other men. That kind of thing.” It could have been a lot of things, but he didn’t want to overwhelm her.
“We need to know more about your sister,” he said. “To do that, we need to dig up as much info as we can, then talk to people she might have known or worked with.”
“Other prostitutes, you mean.”
“That’s right. And anyone else who might have known her. But there are things we might be able to learn about her on the internet. Benson mentioned Chrissy had a webpage for Tina Galen. I didn’t press him about it. I figured we could find it ourselves. You got a computer?”
“Of course. It’s in my home office.” She got up from the sofa and led him down the hall. As they passed the master bedroom, Jase glanced inside to see a room filled with pink. Pink draperies, a pink ruffled bedspread piled with pink throw pillows. The dresser was covered with pink knickknacks. There were even a couple of pink stuffed animals on one of the shelves.
“There you are,” he said with a grin. “The Kate I danced with at the saloon. That’s your bedroom, right?”
Kate looked back at him, her face turning a shade that matched the drapes. “So I like pink. So sue me.”
He smiled. “I like it, too, honey. It suits you.”
She looked at him as if he couldn’t have said anything that would please her more. “Andrew hated pink. I redid the bedroom after we broke up.”
Nothing turned him on more than a smart, feminine woman. “That when you got the Camaro?”
