I sighed. “Do I actually have a choice?”
“Not really.”
So I could either walk away and make Sykes Laffoon angry, which probably wouldn’t work out well for me. Or I could head inside and see what sort of vengeance he wanted to dish out. Neither were good options. Looked like I would just have to go with my gut.
So I tightened my grip on my coffee and slipped inside the limo.
Chapter 14
“Hello, Georgie, and here I’d hoped that you’d gone and gotten yourself a new job,” I said with a smirk.
Georgie shot me a scathing look before slamming the door shut behind me. I sat in the middle of a bench seat. The limo’s interior was trimmed in blue lights that cast a ghoulish halo inside the cabin.
“No, I haven’t gotten a new job,” Georgie replied. “Once you’re in the union, you tend to stay. You know, because of all the job benefits?”
I eyed the half-eaten platter of doughnuts that sat beside him. “You mean perks like coffee breaks every twenty minutes?”
“Shows what you know—we only have coffee breaks every two hours.”
“Do they last twenty minutes?”
His gaze darted to the window. “Maybe.”
That’s what I thought. “Listen, as much as I’d love to sit and chat inside here all day long, I have things to do. Where’s Sykes?”
Georgie thumbed on his cell phone and hit a button. “Yeah. She’s here.”
He hung up and shifted the platter and himself to the left. I crossed my arms and waited.
A moment later, Sykes materialized in front of me. His eyes were red, like he’d been crying. He sniffled quickly and smoothed a hand over his hair. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a silver cigarette case. He took a long brown smoke from inside and snapped the case shut. Sykes let the cigarette dangle from his mouth a moment before shooting Georgie an annoyed look.
“You mind?”
“Oh, sorry, Boss.” Georgie patted his pants. “Where’s that lighter? Here it is.”
He lit Sykes’s cancer stick. When the smoke was rolling thick from the cigarette and I was about to puke from the stench, Sykes sat back and stretched his arms across the back of the bench.
"So, I heard you know all about Crystal.”
I already didn’t like where this was going. “I’m sure you’ve heard all about the premonition.”
“Heard something about it.” He paused to glance at the lit tip of his smoke. “I don’t believe in premonitions.”
“That makes two of us.”
He hiked a brow. “Really? Tell me more.”
I explained what I had seen and how I had seen it. Sykes listened without saying a word. He simply smoked, studying me the entire time.
“So that’s what happened. John and I both saw the murder from another location. But you brought me here because you think that I might’ve had something to do with this mess, is that right?”
He didn’t answer.
So I took my opportunity to lean forward and stare him down. “I’m in this limo because I want to know all about where you were last night, Sykes. You’d been palling around with your niece, a woman that we both know had a reputation. Why don’t you tell me about that?”
Sykes slowly grinned. It was like watching a cobra smile right before it struck. “I loved my niece very much.”
“So did half of the town’s men.”
