Josie Lynn stood by the door, watching Drake rifle through Zelda’s closet like a teenage girl trying to choose a dress for the prom.
He pulled out another pair of pants. They were pink leather with silver studding around the pockets and down the leg.
“This is like the fourth pair of pink pants. She’s a dominatrix for God’s sake.” He shoved the pants back into the closet.
Josie Lynn could no longer suppress her amusement. She giggled.
He shot her a look. “What’s so funny?”
“You must be a nightmare to shop with,” she said, shaking her head and laughing again.
He looked grumpy for a moment, then he begrudgingly smiled.
“Well, I don’t usually buy clothing in the tacky section.” He pulled out a pair of silver, almost plastic-looking leggings to demonstrate his issue.
“But you are wandering around with your junk hanging out,” she said. “I think this is a prime example of beggars can’t be choosers.”
He shrugged, still not conceding she might have a point.
She levered herself away from the doorjamb and moved so she could see into the closet a little better, but still left plenty of space between herself and Drake. There were too many things that had happened between them for her to feel comfortable getting too close.
“Why don’t you just hand me something to bring the others?” she suggested. “They need to get Zelda to the hospital.”
Drake glanced at her, and she could tell he was undecided about letting her out of his sight. Clearly his admiration of how she’d wrangled the gator had worn off, and he was back to distrusting her.
“I’m not going to take off,” she assured him. “I have just as much reason to want to find those transvestites as you do.” Probably even more. Her name, her livelihood, everything rested on figuring out what had happened last night.
He nodded, and handed the silver leggings to her, then he grabbed a T-shirt that actually said, DOMMES HAVE IT ALL TIED UP.
She made a face as she took the garments. “Okay, she does have questionable taste.”
“Well, if you knew Saxon—the groom, you’d know that is really true.”
She looked down at the clothes, then asked, “Are you worried about your friend?”
Drake pulled out another pair of pants, these ones white with more metal studding. “Saxon? I’m sure he’ll turn up. This wouldn’t be the first time he’s gone missing. Last year, he disappeared for about a week. Turns out he got lost in Metairie.”
“Metairie—as in the suburb only a few miles from here?”
“That’s the one.”
“How did he manage that? Drugs? Drinking?”
He shook his head. “Nope, he was just going to Walmart. He gets confused sometimes. Well, a lot of the time. So aside from her abominable taste, I guess Zelda is good for him. At least she knows where she is most of the time.”
“Unfortunately, she doesn’t right now,” Josie Lynn said, then held up the clothes. “I better get these to your friends.”
“I’ll be right there,” he told her, his tone harder than it had been, and she realized he still didn’t trust her. And in truth, she supposed she didn’t blame him. If the tables were turned, she would think he looked pretty guilty, too.
So she was going to have to stay with him and figure this mess out. She paused on the way out of the room to snag a thick black belt, with studs of course, that was lying on the dresser.
The hallway was quiet. Waldo lay by the bathroom door, looking rather pathetic tied to the bathroom doorknob with his large snout wrapped in cord.
“Sorry, big guy,” she said on the way by him. “But you do live with a dominatrix. I suspect bondage is kind of par for the course around here.”
Waldo didn’t respond, not even with a blink of his reptilian eyes or a swish of his scaly tail, but Josie Lynn did hear something behind her. Expecting to see Drake already following her, she was surprised to see the hallway and bedroom door empty.
She must have heard Drake moving inside the room. She returned her attention to getting the clothes to Drake’s friends. Everyone seemed pretty confident that Zelda was okay, but they should probably hurry and get her checked out. Who knew what kind of drugs had been slipped in the punch, if that was even what they had been slipped into, and who knew how much Zelda had gotten.
She opened the dungeon door and hurried inside.
DRAKE DUCKED BACK into Zelda’s bedroom before Josie Lynn could see him and paused, listening, hoping she’d continue talking to herself. Or Waldo, as the case may be. Talking sweetly to an alligator like she was talking to the family dog.
He had to admit, she didn’t seem like a hardened criminal. Or a criminal at all. Okay, she could wrestle an alligator, which was thoroughly impressive. And she definitely had no qualms about stating her mind. He was pretty sure neither of those things were on any lists of top traits for criminal offenders. But those two things made her interesting as hell. And very appealing—in this oddly paradoxical way. She was clearly tough, yet she had this sweet, angel face and soft, curvy body.
He just didn’t know. Maybe she wasn’t involved in the events of last night.
And maybe he was just getting suckered in by a lovely face and sexy body. God knows he had an MO for that sort of thing. How many of his worst choices in life were made because he’d fallen for a pretty face?
He looked down at his dick—blessedly flaccid at the moment, and it wasn’t many times in a man’s life that he thought that. But his buddy down there had made far too many of the most important life decisions for him.
“And you are not a good judge of character, my friend,” he informed his penis.
Still, he was having doubts about Josie Lynn’s guilt. He did see her take the money, but she hadn’t denied that fact. And while she did make and have access to the punch, she’d also made a valid point about that, too; dozens of people had had access to it.
He guessed that the only way he was going to figure out the truth was to find the gang of transvestites, and just to be safe, he was going to keep Cupcake with him. He was sure she wouldn’t like it. She’d made it abundantly clear last night and tonight that he was not one of her favorite people. But he couldn’t risk her possibly being a part of this mess and getting away with robbery. So they would go search the French Quarter for clues.
How hard could it be to find five drag queens dressed like Cher?
“SO HOW LONG have you known Drake?” Katie asked as she hefted Zelda’s leg in the air.
Josie Lynn instantly felt her cheeks burn.
“Umm, I just met him last night.” She started to fidget with his pirate shirt, but caught herself.
“Well, welcome to the weird world of The Impalers.”
Josie Lynn frowned at Stella, who struggled to get the silver legging over one of Zelda’s large feet. “The Impalers?”
“Hold her leg still,” Stella told Katie, then answered Josie Lynn, “The Impalers is the name of the band that all of our boys are in. Wyatt, my boyfriend, plays rhythm guitar and tries to sing.” The redhead stopped her exertion to shoot Josie Lynn a conspiratorial smile. “Don’t tell him I said that. He thinks he’s got a great voice.”
Josie Lynn readily nodded, although she wondered when exactly she would ever meet her boyfriend. She didn’t expect to see these people again after tonight.
“And my husband,” Katie said, trying to get a better grip on Zelda’s long leg, “actually can sing. He’s the lead singer.”
