reserved spaces.
“Hey.” I grinned, relief washing over me. “That’s Pete’s car. At least one thing is back to normal.”
“Our boss is back at work,” Nina moaned, pulling her key out of the ignition. “Yippee.”
I headed straight for Mr. Sampson’s office when we walked into UDA but stopped short when I got to his closed office door. I knocked timidly, then poked my head in. “Mr. Sampson?”
I pushed the door open when there was no answer and stared at the empty room.
“Sampson’s not in,” Lorraine said from behind me.
I whirled, clutching my heart. “Oh. Lorraine, sorry, you scared me.”
Costineau whined as he circled around her ankles, throwing me dagger glares with his yellow cat eyes.
“I saw that he—at least his car—is here. Do you know where he is?”
Lorraine held the file folders she was clutching close to her chest and pinned me with her stare. Finally, she simply said, “No.”
I strode toward her. “Really, Lorraine? Because this could be really important. I’m worried about Sampson. Did you see anything, anything at all, when you did that scan?”
Lorraine’s eyes shone. “Yes.”
My eyebrows rose in the universal “Well?” fashion.
“I think you need to ask your detective friend.” Lorraine smiled thinly and stepped away, Costineau following after her.
“What does that mean? Ask him what?” I yelled, tailing her.
But Lorraine didn’t turn around. Costineau jumped onto Lorraine’s shoulder and hissed at me as they disappeared down the hall.
By one o’clock I had made eighteen passes in front of Lorraine’s empty desk and listened to Parker’s voice mail greeting twenty-two times. Nina was sitting on the end of my desk, swinging her long legs and sucking on a plasma pop, when I finally got Parker on the line.
“Parker, thank God! I’ve been calling you all day.”
“Sorry,” Parker said, sounding distracted, “I’ve been tied up. What’s going on?”
“Sampson’s car is here. In the UDA parking lot. But Sampson never showed up to work.”
There was a short pause, and then Parker said, “Okay, show me. Meet me in the lot.”
I tightened the belt on my sweater against the damp air while Parker reclined on a white SUV, looking all at once Abercrombie attractive and
“Well?” I asked.
“Well, it looks like the dog drives a nice BMW, while I—a perfect angel—get a 4Runner with a transmission problem.”
“Fabulous. Can you do your male comparisons on your own time? What does the car tell us about where Sampson is?”
“It tells us that Sampson is not here.” I gaped at Parker, and he grinned at me.
“Real smart,” I said.
“Ask a stupid question,” Parker said as he shook his head and sunk down to his knees. Before I could blink he had jimmied the driver’s side door lock.
“Parker!” I hissed as he slid into Mr. Sampson’s front seat. “What are you doing? Get out of there. You’re breaking and entering.”
He grinned up at me and kicked open Mr. Sampson’s glove box. “You call it breaking and entering, I call it being thorough. Besides, I’m a cop. This is totally legal.” He handed me a stack of registration papers. “Here, make yourself useful.”
I slid onto the passenger seat and looked out the front windshield nervously, holding the papers in my lap. “So, I talked to Lorraine today.”
Parker didn’t look up while he rifled. “Oh yeah? What did she have to say?”
“She said to ask you about the scan.”
“What scan?”
I put the papers down and blew out a sigh. “When she scanned the other day, looking for Sampson, remember?”
Parker paused. “Yeah. Didn’t she say she couldn’t find anything?”
“She said that yesterday. Today, she told me to ask you.”
“I have no idea what she meant by that. Look at this.” Parker extracted a glossy postcard and handed it to me. “Looks like Pete Sampson was a VIP guest at the grand opening of Dirt.”
I tucked the postcard back into the glove box. “So?” I asked.
Parker raised his eyebrows, and I rolled my eyes.
“So I guess it’s a good thing we’re headed to Dirt tonight.”
After work Nina and I had dinner together—well, I had two mini cheeseburgers and a half order of fries while Nina pouted her lips and rapped her fingers on the table, grimacing at every bite I took.
“How can you eat that stuff?” she asked me, her cute little ski-jump nose wrinkled.
“Like this,” I said, shoveling in a few more fries. “Look, when I decide to go all liquid, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Can you at least hurry up? Parker is going to be back here at eleven and I want to get to Dirt before they run out of AB neg.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“It’s the Cristal of blood.”
“Delicious,” I said, my burger churning in my stomach. “I’ll go get dressed.”
I stared into my closet, frowning at my collection of smart button-down blouses and Martha Stewart–esque knit twin sets. Not very vamp. After digging for a bit I struggled into the black sheath that I had worn for my Uncle Fernstad’s funeral six years ago.
Hm, must have shrunk in the wash.
I sucked in heavily, slid the slim dress down over my hips, kicked into a pair of Mary Janes and shrugged in the mirror. Not great, but it would do.
“Okay,” I said to Nina, doing a quick spin when I walked into the living room. “Vamp enough?”
Nina tinkled the ice in her cup and licked a drop of blood from her lip. “Not even close.” She wrinkled her nose. “Not even troll worthy.”
I frowned, looking down at myself. “What? It’s black, tight, short …”
“Off-the-rack, dull, linen. You look like you’re going to a funeral.” Her eyes dropped to my ankles. “In sensible shoes.”
I flopped onto the couch. “This is the best I can do. Besides, I’m working, remember? I’m not exactly there for fun, and besides”—I glanced at the remains of Nina’s bloody cocktail—“do I really want to stand out?”
Nina set down her cup and stood up. “Yes, you do. That”—she eyed my ensemble dismissively—“is going to get you eaten. Come with me.” Nina’s cold hand wrapped around mine, and once again, I was shocked by her strength as she pulled me off the couch and behind her to her room.
“Never fear,” she said, kicking open the door. “Haute couture is here.”
Nina’s enormous closet was more organized than most clothing stores with all her pieces grouped by designer, color, and decade. She had an entire wall dedicated to shoes, and I lovingly fingered the butter-soft leather on a pair of high-heeled boots from the Victorian era while Nina zipped past me, draping garments over her arm, holding them up to me and tossing them aside.
“Off,” she said, pointing to my funeral dress. I wriggled out of it while she handed me a delicate slip dress, deep purple and cut on the bias.
“A little skimpy, don’t you think?” I asked, as the fabric swished a few inches below my butt.
Nina bit her lip and headed over to the portion of the room draped in the heavy, jacquard fabrics of the French royals (circa 1700) and found a complicated-looking corset.
“Put this on.”
