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“Ask his son,” I replied, turning to go. “Come on,” I said to Bartlett, who, of course, had to have the last word with Pete.
“I’ve got my eye on you. You do not mess around in my town.” Bartlett actually put a finger to his eye and then pointed at Pete while he said that.
Pete looked at me and I thought I saw some sympathy there, which pissed me off.
“Who’s he related to?” Pete asked.
“The mayor,” I said, and went back to the truck, annoyed with everybody, while Bartlett scrambled to catch up.
This day, which had started with so much promise, had quickly turned into one big pile of shit, and it wasn’t even lunch time.
CHAPTER 5
Ipulled off Factory Road and parked my Camry in front of the old cardboard factory beside Cash’s silver piece of conspicuous consumption from BMW. Then I barged inside, mad as hell. I hadn’t slept with the jerk in fifteen years, and he was still using me. When I got inside, a large guy in a white hard hat stopped me before I was halfway across the first room. His arms were covered with tattoos, including one of a wolf’s head.
“Hold it,” he said, stepping in front of me, but I was a woman on a mission.
“Where’s Cash Porter?”
“This is a construction zone,” he said. “Hard hat, or you don’t come in.”
“And I left mine at home,” I said.
“Here you go, Lizzie,” somebody said from behind me, and I turned and there was Cash coming down the stairs, beautiful as ever, holding a pink colored hard hat. “I saw you drive up. I had a feeling you’d be here at some point,” he said, hitting me with that killer smile as he handed it to me.
“And you thought pink was my color?”
“All colors are your color, honey.” He stepped closer.
“Don’t call me honey, and take a step back there, buddy, you are not going to use my name to shill this place.”
He looked confused, but I knew he was faking it. “Use your name?”
“And here’s the room where Lizzie Danger shot Mickey Pitts. And a wax model? No. You will not.No.”
“Okay.” He grinned again, trying to take my arm. “I won’t. Come on, let me show you the place.”
That’s when I realized he’d told Molly that on purpose, knowing I’d come after him. He had that pink hat all ready for me. And I’d fallen for it.
I pulled away. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes, Lizzie, I heard you.” He smiled at me affectionately, and I wanted to smack him. “It was a bad idea anyway. There will be no mention of your name. I promise you, and my foreman is here as a witness. And the wax model thing was a joke.” Cash was dressed all in black because he was still trying to pretend he was in mourning over the death of Lavender Blue. Lavender was no angel, but she didn’t deserve Cash pretending he cared that she was gone now that he had inherited her money.
“You bought this factory?” I said because that really was puzzling.
He shook his head. “It was Lavender’s. Cleve left it to her, and I inherited it. I have big plans. Come on, let me show you the place.”
Cash and big plans. That meant someone was going to get screwed. Just not me anymore.
He said, “Come on, you’re going to love it, it’s your family’s factory,” so I said, “Fine,” and followed him down the hall at the other side of the entrance.
* * *
An hour later,I hated to admit it, but Cash was right. The old factory was fascinating when there wasn’t a psychopath inside waiting to kill you.
First of all, it was beautiful, even romantic in a Gothic kind of way, the old massive iron rafters arching above the equally massive brick walls, everything stained with soot and scorch marks thanks to Mickey Pitts and his penchant for burning down anything to do with the Blue family. The place was huge, three city blocks of big, nineteenth-century industrial rooms and large paned windows. There was an overall feeling of the busy past and the tragic present and the possibly busy future, the sun streaming through the burned-out center part of the roof and illuminating all the destruction below. Cash’s guys had cleared out a lot of the melted, twisted machinery, and most of the dust and ash were gone, but soot stays until it’s scrubbed off, so everything was dingy black. It was the kind of place you could set a novel in. One with vampires and zombies, but vampires and zombies with tragic hearts, yearning for a better world.
I knew Cash had cleared the factory of a lot of stuff because I’d been here before the big sweep, following Mickey Pitts’s trail of red post-it notes in the dust and ash, little squares of vermillion I still saw in my nightmares, but I hadn’t spent much time looking at the architecture before I’d ended up in a badly lit room where I’d shot him. He’d deserved it, so I felt no guilt. He shouldn’t have shot Vince. I take that personally.
