Phantom Evil

Page 34

She slipped past the tarot readers headed for the strip club in back. Luckily, as she did so, her phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID. It was Jackson.
“Where are you?” Jackson asked without greeting her. “I thought you’d be a few minutes—it’s almost an hour.”
“Long story. You’re not going to believe what I have to tell you. But where are you?”
“Watching Lovely Lola Lolita on the pole.”
“Great. I’m downstairs.”
“Okay, I’m coming for you.”
A moment later, he emerged out of the darkened doorway. He offered her a hand. She arched a brow. “It’s not that bad!” he called to her.
“Can’t wait,” she muttered, and went forward to take his hand.
A hostess with enormous breasts and tassels on her nipples was in the shadowed hallway when they entered. She was wearing something like a slinky harem skirt, and she had a smile as big as her breasts. “Welcome back!” she said to Jackson. “And this is your lady! Now I understand how you might want to enjoy our entertainment together!”
Jackson pulled her close. “Oh, yes, there’s just nothing like watching a good dancer together, isn’t that true, sweetheart?”
“Um, sure,” she managed to mutter. When the hostess turned to lead them in, she jabbed him in the ribs.
“Ouch!” Jackson was taken by surprise.
The hostess turned back.
Jackson smiled at her. “Sometimes,” he said, “she likes it a little rough, you know?”
The hostess laughed. “Oh, honey, we see everything here. Come on back in, you two!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Bastard,” Angela whispered, smiling around her clenched teeth. If he wanted to play it this way, she could pitch in easily enough. With her arm slipped around him, she came up on her toes and whispered against his ear, “Is there really anything we’re going to gain by being here? I can leave you on your own, you know. Let you get to know some of the girls up close and personal.” She couldn’t help herself. She nipped his earlobe.
He glared down at her as she slid back down, looking up at him. Then he laughed. “Okay, I deserved that one.”
She wished that she didn’t like him, and his sense of humor, his sense of being, him, quite so much. She had learned about loving and loving could be so much pain.
They were led to a table. It was in the back, and behind Martin DuPre and his group.
Jackson thanked the hostess and they took their seats at a plush, black, circular table.
Angela quickly noted that Martin DuPre and his party were closer to the stage where a scantily clad woman—a very beautiful one—was doing amazing calisthenics on a pole.
“Well. This is really comfortable,” Angela said.
“DuPre and his group have already had about twenty lap dances,” Jackson said.
“And you’ve just been sitting here?” Angela inquired sweetly.
“Hey, I’m working,” he told her. He leaned toward her. “So?”
“So, I honestly think that I did a very good deed—and found out more about Martin DuPre than you did,” she said. “Tell me.”
She quickly gave him a version of her time with Gabby.
He listened with grave intent.
“So,” he said when she had told him about her time with Gabby. “So…Martin DuPre, aide to the senator, is a member of the Church of Christ Arisen. There’s an oxymoron for you.”
“Jackson, I really think that he’s the father of her baby.”
“And you want him to provide child support?” he asked.
“Naturally, he’s going to owe child support,” Angela said indignantly. “But she may not want it. Once Gabby is away from the Church of Christ Arisen, she may discover that she never wants to see anyone who had anything to do with it ever again—even the father of her child. And, after tonight, I think he’s…I think he’s slimy enough to have done anything,” she said.
He didn’t seem to notice the woman on the pole. He was deep in thought. “He’s a slimy bastard. But did he kill Regina Holloway? And if so, how?”
“We both looked at those crime scene photos,” Angela told him heatedly. “She was thrown. Or pushed. There was weight and impetus behind whatever happened.”
“I’m honestly not sure if the senator suspects that DuPre is part of the church that is always spouting against him. And I’m not sure that being a total ass makes a man a murderer.”
“He seems the best suspect to me so far,” Angela told him.
He didn’t reply. A waitress came by. She was almost as scantily clad as the stripper at the pole.
They ordered drinks, and the waitress moved on.
They sat in silence for a moment.
“Jackson?” Angela said.
“Yes?”
“What did you see tonight?” she asked quietly.
She was almost certain that he understood her question from the beginning.
“A lot of lap dances,” he said.
She shook her head. “In my room. Or, really, in Regina’s room.”
He was quiet for a minute, and she thought that he would evade her again.
But he didn’t. He looked at her, blue eyes nearly as dark and compelling as a stygian mystery.
“I saw them,” he told her.
“Them?”
“The children,” he told her.
She felt as if her breath caught, as if her heart stopped for a moment.
“You see…”
“I see what you see, frequently,” he said, and then looked toward the stage again. “I see what we conjure in our minds, what remains behind—what is there, what is heart, what is soul, what remains to help us, when we desperately need help.”
She was almost afraid to speak again.
He had sounded so casual. And yet, he had made an admission she thought that he rarely made.
“There he goes again,” Jackson said softly.
Angela saw that the dancer who had left the stage had approached the group in front of them, and Martin DuPre had his money out. The beautiful stripper walked toward him and took the offered bill. She crawled over his lap. She twisted and shimmied. He didn’t touch her.
“You do know that this is a really weird situation for me?” Angela said to Jackson.
He squeezed her hand across the table.
“Sorry, we can go. I have what I need to know,” he told her.
“The bastard is living a double life. He’s a member of the Church of Christ Arisen, while pretending to be the senator’s staunchest supporter. He’s planning his own political career on the senator’s back. He’s a lecher—a man who wants continual entertainment and stimulation. He’ll leave here—and go seduce another innocent. All in the name of God, of course. How has the senator been so stupid and blind?”
“I don’t know,” Jackson said. “But…I believe the death of his son certainly contributed to the fact that he leaned on others—and never became suspicious of certain behaviors.”
“He’s disgustingly creepy!” Angela said, indicating Martin DuPre, who now had his face buried between the stripper’s breasts.
“That’s more than a boy being a boy,” Jackson said. “How the hell has Martin DuPre gotten away with leading such a double life? Convincing the senator that he’s his most loyal proponent, cutting side deals and being a biggie in a church—and I use that term loosely—that considers the senator’s entire platform to be blasphemy?”
“Jackson, Gabby is afraid of him,” Angela said.
“She was following him—but you think that she’s afraid of him?”
“She wouldn’t tell me who the father was, but, in that conversation, it was apparent. She was afraid. We really have to find out more about that place. And we have to let the senator know that we know all about Martin DuPre,” Angela said.
“Not yet,” Jackson told her.
“What do you mean, not yet?” Angela asked indignantly.
“We have to figure out what the senator knows, what he doesn’t know and if he has been involved in all of this in any way,” Jackson told her.
“I am so confused—how could the senator be involved in a church that protests and pickets his platform?” Angela asked him.
“I don’t think he’s involved in the church. And I think DuPre will be out when the senator finds out that he is. But DuPre is dirty to the core. And whether or not the senator makes use of that, I don’t know. Maybe he managed his gleaming image for so long because he’s had DuPre doing what he can’t be seen doing.”
“Like killing his wife?” Angela asked.
Jackson shrugged. “We know someone was in with her. Someone who had access to the house. Someone who came and went without setting off any kind of alarm,” Jackson said.
She saw him change subtly. There was a slight tensing in his features. “Come closer, hold my hands—whisper to me,” he said.
She frowned, and then saw what he had seen.
They had been noted.
She was grateful for the shadows. She inched closer to Jackson, lowered her head and kept her eyelashes low. Martin DuPre had looked back and seen them.
He forgot about his lap dancer, pushing the stripper away. He rose, thought to excuse himself to his buddies and headed toward them.
“Closer,” Jackson said, his right arm coming tightly around her as he cupped her chin with his left hand, bringing his face just inches from hers. “He’s coming, right?”
“Right.”
“Giggle.”
“What?”
“Giggle.”
She let out a small string of husky laughter.
DuPre actually stopped for a moment. She knew that he was staring at them, even while she murmured something else unintelligible to Jackson. Jackson seemed to sense that DuPre was close behind them, but in the shadows, apparently determining whether to accost them or not.