“Huh,” I said. “Detective Orlando?”
I reached out my hand to shake his outstretched one, and he smiled in greeting. “You must be Addison Holmes. I talked to your husband this morning.” Then he turned to Scarlet. “And who might you be?”
“You can call me Betty,” Scarlet said. “That was one of my code names during the war. I never tell a handsome man my real name on the first date.”
Detective Orlando’s smile widened and he said, “Very understandable. There are a lot of scoundrels in the world. Please, come have a seat in my cubicle and I’ll try to answer whatever questions you might have.”
“You have nice skin,” Scarlet said. “Nice and smooth. I like a little diversity in my lineup. Are you married?”
“I am,” he said, eyes laughing. “But if I wasn’t, I can assure you I’d be happy to be part of your lineup until you would no doubt break my heart.” He kissed Scarlet’s hand, and I could practically hear her heart flutter.
She gave him a coy look and a wink and then took one of the vacant seats across from his desk.
“Thank you so much for seeing us,” I said. “We’re heading back home this afternoon, and we just learned what happened at the hotel late last night.”
“Yes, it’s been a strange week,” he said. “That’s a nice part of town. Lots of money in the area. Lots of tourism. We keep a high profile so the tourists feel safe. Of course, there’s always evil in the world. You can’t police it all.”
“The man who was shot at, Vince Walker,” I said. “He’s my stepfather and he’s missing. He’s a retired cop, and we think he was looking into an old case that might have gotten him in trouble.”
Orlando’s eyes narrowed sharply. “His case led him here to Miami?” he asked.
“It seems so,” I said. I debated how much to tell him. Between Scarlet and my conversation with Angelica, I was becoming paranoid about who could be trusted. “Do you have any idea who could’ve shot at him?”
Orlando blew out a breath. “Unfortunately, no,” he said. “We got conflicting reports from witnesses on what the vehicle looked like, plus it was dark outside. It looked like a drive-by and that your stepfather was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. How would they have known he’d be sitting there eating dinner?”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “And normally, I’d agree, except someone also tried to run him down that afternoon.”
Orlando nodded. “I asked him about the scrapes and bruises when I questioned him, and he told me about the car incident. There are people who are just that unlucky.”
“He didn’t tell you he was a cop,” I said.
“No, but he didn’t have to,” Orlando said. “I could tell he was either a cop or military. I was leaning toward cop. He never broke a sweat. You can imagine what it was like—people screaming and crying, others running for cover and hiding. But he took cover and managed to give me a very detailed report of what happened. According to Vince, it looked like a black sedan that the shooting came from. And from what I understood, it was a yellow sports car that almost hit him earlier in the day.”
“Did you follow up with Vince?” I asked.
“He gave me his card and number, but he said he was flying out early the next morning to head home. There wasn’t really anything to follow up with, so I didn’t speak to him again. We got camera footage, but it’s just out of range. We collected the slugs from the wall. We interviewed as many witnesses as we could find. There’s really not much else we can do. But I hope you find your stepfather.”
“Me too,” I said. “Thanks for your time.” Scarlet had been eerily quiet during our conversation, and when Orlando went into a coughing fit, I was almost afraid to turn and look at her.
I blew out a sigh of resignation. Scarlet had unzipped the jacket of her tracksuit so her black lacy bra was showing and she was running her finger suggestively across her décolletage.
“Please let me know if you hear anything,” I said, handing him a card of my own. I grabbed Scarlet and pulled her back toward the elevator. I could hear Orlando’s laughter until the elevator doors shut.
“These new push-up bras I got off QVC really do the job,” she said. “Did you see the look on his face? Speechless. I’ve still got it.”
“Yep,” I said. “You haven’t aged a day.”
Chapter Fourteen
I almost kissed the ground when we arrived back in Savannah.
Kate was still hungover and looked like a zombie, and she’d spent the flight with a mask over her eyes to block out the sunlight. Scarlet had talked nonstop the entire way home, regaling some poor man who’d gotten separated from his wife on the flight about her adventures in Miami and how we’d made her leave her Uzi at the front desk of the hotel to hand over to the police.
By the time we got the van and were headed back into the city, I felt like I’d been flying for hours. I just wanted to go home and crawl into bed. But I couldn’t go home, because my home was being torn to pieces by the demolition crew from hell.
Kate and Scarlet both slept on the ride back to Whiskey Bayou. In all honesty, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with Scarlet. There was no way she could stay with us in the little house across from Savage. At least not without the whole neighborhood trying to burn us down because of her snoring.
When we pulled up to Kate’s house, I helped her get inside and left her on the couch with an ice pack and a bottle of aspirin. When I got back out to the van, Scarlet was wide awake, her Madonna wig sticking up on one side from where she’d been
