Binding the Shadows
Page 45

“Hate her already. Will rip her eyes out if we see her inside. Just a warning.”
“Mmm, catfight.”
“Rawrr.”
He chuckled. “Have I told you lately that you’re my favorite person?”
I smiled as he drove toward the building, swerving through empty parking spaces to avoid speed bumps before pulling into a spot near the entrance. Freshly planted yellow and purple petunias lined the sidewalk. I skirted around a misfiring automatic sprinkler and spotted a white van with a Morella Channel 5 logo driving away from the condos. “Father Carrow wasn’t lying,” I remarked, pointing it out to Lon.
“Everyone loves a winner.” He typed in another code and held the door open for me.
The lobby, if you could call it that, was a single room ringed with four elevators. A lush cluster of palms and tropical plants anchored the middle of the room below a skylight. Opera floated from hidden speakers. We took an elevator up to the top floor, then stepped out into a chandelier-lit corridor with two apartments. Lon strode to a door flanked by an umbrella stand and pressed a gently chiming doorbell.
Bass-heavy music thumped through the walls. Lon cocked a brow. Yeah, it didn’t sound good to me, either. This might’ve been a bad idea. After a few seconds, a voice crackled from a small speaker near the doorframe. “Yes?”
“It’s Lon Butler.”
There was a short pause, then the sound of a lock turning. The door flew open to reveal a very tan, very blond man, maybe a few years older than Lon. Long navy board shorts hung to his knees. An unbuttoned short sleeve shirt flapped open to a broad chest dusted with graying blond hair. Mr. Little clearly spent a lot of time at the gym doing ab workouts. He was also in the middle of hosting a party, it seemed. A girl in a bathing suit walked past a doorway behind him, and I could hear distant laughter from somewhere deeper inside.
“Butler,” he said enthusiastically as some obnoxious Top Forty club music filled the air. “How the hell are you?”
“Not as good as you, apparently.”
Mr. Little looked me up and down. A slow, lecherous grin spread across his face. “Please, come on in and join the party.” He closed the door behind me and locked it. “I’m Peter, by the way.”
“Cady,” I replied, looking around. His condo had blinding white-on-white walls, furniture, rugs, floor, occasionally broken up by a startling accent color, a shade of turquoise blue that matched both his halo and his too-blue eyes.
“Don’t even think about it or I’ll fucking punch your teeth in.”
I twisted around to look at Lon. His eyes were narrowed to slits. A proprietary grip on my wrist tugged me closer to his side.
Peter held up his hands. “Whoa, calm down. I wasn’t—” He glanced at me, then gave Lon a sheepish smile. “Okay, I was, but . . . Dammit, Butler. I forgot how much I hate your knack.”
Feminine voices tinkled from another room.
Peter glanced over his shoulder and shrugged. “I’ve got my hands full anyway.” He shouted over the music at the girl in the bikini. When she came over, he whispered something into her ear. She looked at Lon and smiled, then nodded at Peter and meandered off somewhere. What the hell was that all about? I glanced at Lon for guidance, but he had a funny look on his face. That better not have been that hobag, Megan Pierce.
“You two heading out or coming from somewhere?” Peter asked, gesturing for us to come farther inside. The volume of the thumpy dance music lowered.
“David Merrimoth’s funeral,” Lon answered as we followed Peter into a sunken living room capped by a wide, white fireplace. Sunlight spilled through long windows. How in the world he lived in a sterile place like this was beyond me. But when I looked closer, I noticed a lot of clothes scattered around. Mostly women’s clothes.
“Oh, the funeral. That was today?” Peter said, flopping down on a sofa. His shirt fell open a few more inches. Four empty wine glasses sat on a glass coffee table next to a wine bottle. Where was the party? I briefly saw a figure move through a hallway at the back of the room, and thought I heard talking in what seemed to be the kitchen, but I didn’t see anyone.
Peter sniffled and wiped his nose. “I meant to attend, but . . .”
Lon perched on white leather loveseat across from him. “I guess I’d forget too if I’d just won fifty million dollars.”
An enormous shit-eating grin lit up Peter’s face. “I still can’t believe it.” He puckered his lips and exhaled a long, slow breath. “They don’t give you the money right away, you know. Have to deal with lawyers and accountants. More red tape than I ever saw on city council.”
“Rumor has it that this is your third win.”
Peter dialed down his smile. “Wishing you could trade knacks with me?”
“No, just wondering why you haven’t won the lottery before.”
He shrugged. “Never really tried.”
“You have a luck knack and never played the lottery before?” I said. “That would probably be the first thing I did.” I was sitting on something. Rising up slightly, I pulled out a pair of purple panties from beneath my ass. And immediately chucked them on the floor. God only knows whose crack they’d been up.
Peter didn’t seem to notice. “Maybe I played it a few times when I was younger. Won bits here and there, I don’t know.”
“But suddenly you win three times in a month?” Lon said.