handed it back over to him.
“Satisfied?” my friend asked.
“Satisfied? No, you quite rudely interrupted that,” she quipped. “Oh, but I’m sure you meant the ID. Well, I suppose I don’t doubt you are who you say you are. Now, what is it that you want?”
“We’d like to come in and look around.”
“For what?”
“My wife,” I piped up.
She glanced past Ben at me. “And she would be the murder suspect, correct.”
“Incorrect,” I spat. “She’s…”
“She’s a person of interest,” Ben interjected.
“That is just another way of saying suspect,” she retorted.
“Or witness,” he stressed.
“Which is she then?” She blinked and raised her eyebrows in a mocking expression. “Suspect or witness?”
“Like I said,” my friend spoke with forced clarity. “She is a person of interest.”
“Yes, I figured as much. If you’re going to lie, pick one and stick to it,” she replied haughtily then turned on her heel and started toward the door. “Good evening, gentlemen, now go away.”
Ben reached out quickly and took hold of her arm, spinning her back around to face us but not releasing his grip.
“Listen, I’ve had about enough of this crap outta you wingnuts!” he barked. “Now either we come in with your blessing, or I slap cuffs on you, make a couple of calls, and shut you down for a while.”
“Ooohh, Detective,” she purred. “So forceful. I am sorry, but I’m a top, not a switch. I can, however, introduce you to some submissive women if you’d like. Or would you prefer a male slave?”
“Jeezus!” he spat, quickly releasing her arm as if he thought he was touching something repugnant.
“Lady Vee,” I appealed, trying to defuse the situation. “I understand your reluctance, but all we want to do is go inside and get my wife.”
I was usually the one being reined in by Ben, so this was a bit of a change for me. Given the way I was feeling at the moment, I was surprising myself with my own calm.
“I really don’t need a domestic disturbance in my club,” she replied.
“There won’t be.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she remarked flatly. “If she is inside and you have had to come looking for her, obviously there is an issue.”
“There is,” I agreed. “She’s not answering her cell phone.”
“And perhaps she has a good reason.”
“She does, but not one you would understand.”
“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” she announced. “But, I don’t want you in my club. If you think you need to make calls, Detective, feel free. I’ll make one myself, to my attorney.”
She turned and started toward the door once again, and Ben immediately reached beneath the folds of his coat. A second later I heard the clink of his handcuffs as he extracted them from his belt.
“Hold on,” I said, laying my hand on his arm then I directed myself toward the club owner. “Lady Vee, wait…”
She stopped and turned back toward me as she impatiently snipped, “What is it?”
“If the issue is that you don’t want an incident in your club, how about if you send her out here?”
“And what reason should I give her for sending her out?” she asked.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never kicked anyone out before,” Ben said. “I’m sure you can think of somethin’.”
She stood there with her hand on the door handle, staring back at us. After a brief moment, she released the door and stepped back over to us. “All right. Do you have a picture, so I know who I am looking for?”
I quickly dug in my pocket and extracted my wallet, peeling open the Velcro tab and flipping through the pictures. Landing on the most recent photo of my wife, I turned the billfold around and handed it to her.
She glanced at the image of Felicity for a second then handed the wallet back to me.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t send her out.”
“Why not?” I couldn’t keep the pleading tone out of my voice.
“Because she isn’t here.”
“Bullshit,” Ben snapped as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Her fuckin’ Jeep is parked right over there.”
“Be that as it may,” she replied. “She is not inside my club. She left about thirty or forty minutes ago.”
“Left?”
“Yes, left,” she said, waving her hand out in a sweeping gesture. “As in went away, said goodbye, took her leave…”
“Was anyone with her?” I asked.
“Yes. Mat.”
“Matt who?” Ben asked, reaching for his notebook.
“Not Matt who,” she replied with a shake of her head. “Door Mat. He’s a regular here.”
“Door Mat? Jeezus… So, what’s his real name?”
“I have no idea.”
“You don’t know his real name?”
“No, Detective, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“You gotta be kiddin’ me? He’s a regular and you don’t know his real name?”
“I’ve already told you no twice. This makes three.”
“What about someone else inside? One of your staff? One of the other ‘nameless regulars’ then?”
“I wouldn’t know. We respect our clientele here.”
“Oh yeah? Ya’ coulda fooled me.”
“Privacy, Detective. Their privacy.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
CHAPTER 31:
Ben spent nearly fifteen minutes trying to convince the owner of The Whine Cellar that it would not only be in her best interest, but Door Mat’s as well, if she would allow us to ask those present a few questions. The more information we could gather, the better, but if we at least knew his real name and got a basic description of him, it would be a start. She kept insisting that they wouldn’t have what we were looking for other than the description she had already given us, but eventually she assented to his appeals.
It was obvious that she wasn’t happy about the situation when she ushered us through the door; what we hadn’t expected was that she wasn’t going to give in without some type of retaliation. Upon entering the club, she instantly launched into a swell of histrionics, essentially making a show of stopping the evening’s performance mid- stream.
Since the entertainment was apparently the semi-public flogging of various submissive members of the clientele, the interruption didn’t go over very well with the crowd. Still, with her barking orders, it didn’t take long to clear the centrally located, circular stage. It did, however, take a minute or two for her to quell the catcalls, the loudest of which seemed to be coming from the victims of the whippings. But, I got the impression that she wasn’t really trying that hard.
And still, even after she had everyone’s unfettered attention, she wasn’t finished with her melodramatic display. With a wholly unnecessary flourish, she introduced both of us, immediately tagging Ben as a cop and me as the “submissive husband” of the redhead who had been with Door Mat.
Several voices in the group instantly called out the name “Mistress Miranda”, intermixed with commentaries ranging from “lucky S.O.B.” to “you poor bastard”. Even so, none of them stepped up to take credit for the tidbit of knowledge. Lady Vee had then followed up by asking that anyone with any information on the individual known as
