What the Lady Wants Read online

  But first, he had to see her.

  Chapter Seven

  Mae met him at the door, telling herself she was being polite, not overeager. She'd deliberately dressed in an old white T-shirt and jeans, just to show herself that she didn't care what he thought. He was dressed in an old white T-shirt and jeans, too. She wasn't sure what that meant, but she was so glad to see him that she didn't care.

  "Hello, Mabel. Nice T-shirt," he said and she stood back to let him in, enjoying the fact that he was there and kicking herself for enjoying it.

  "What did you find out?" she asked, trailing him into the library.

  Mitch sat down and looked at her with sympathy, and she knew it was going to be bad. "He sold it all. I can't tell you if I tracked down everything until I get a look at your list, but I found where he offloaded most of the stuff you'd mentioned, like the Lempicka and the chess set."

  Mae sank into a chair across from him. "So where's the money?"

  Mitch sighed. "I looked. As far as I can tell, he doesn't have a stash. I even went to Stormy's new place—"

  "Did you?" Mae said coolly.

  "And she didn't know anything either. Which shouldn't have come as a surprise, somehow. Is she naturally dopey or does she have chemical assistance?"

  "So how is Stormy?" Mae asked, steel in her voice.

  "She's fine." Mitch seemed suddenly wary.

  "Really." Mae tightened her lips. "How fine is she?"

  Mitch blinked at her. "What are you talking about?"

  "Don't play dumb." Mae scowled at him. "I've seen your real dumb, and this is not it. How was she in bed?"

  "What?"

  Mae began to tap her foot. "I said, how was she in bed?"

  Mitch tried to look injured and innocent. "I wouldn't know."

  "She didn't make a pass at you?"

  "Of course not." Mitch swallowed.

  "You're lying."

  "Everybody lies. Except me. Can we talk about something else?"

  "No. I'm paying for this information." Mae took a deep breath. "Did you sleep with her?"

  "No." Mitch scowled at her. "Not that it's any of your business, boss, but no, I didn't."

  Mae bunked at him. "You know, I believe you."

  "Thank you."

  She sat back in her chair, irrationally relieved. "So what was the problem? Was it a lousy pass?"

  "No." Mitch surrendered. "It was a great pass. She's a very warm woman."

  "Hot," Mae corrected.

  "Throbbing," Mitch agreed.

  "So what went wrong? Was it because she wasn't a librarian?"

  Mitch shrugged. "I wasn't."

  "Wasn't what? A librarian?"

  "Throbbing." Mitch sank down a little into his seat. "Could we talk about something else?"

  "No. Why weren't you throbbing?"

  "Well, I'm not sure." Mitch's exasperation was apparent. "I think you've made me impotent."

  "Oh." Mae smiled complacently. "That's nice."

  Mitch shot her a nasty look. "My day rate just doubled."

  Mae ignored him. "So she couldn't make you throb, huh?"

  "I was concentrating on my work. Nobody makes me throb when I'm working. I'm a pro." Mae smiled at him, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Forget it, cookie. You're not my type. Now can we get back to Armand?"

  "Sure." Mae felt cheerful for the first time in days. "What do you want?"

  "I want to see that box of Armand's things that Harold brought back from the town house."

  Mae shook her head. "Mitch, there's nothing in there. I looked, Harold looked—"

  "And now I want to look. Do you want to sit here and explain to me why I don't need to look at the box before we go get it, or do you want to just cut to the chase and go get it?"

  Mae sighed. "I'll go get it."

  "Good for you, Mabel." Mitch nodded at her approvingly. "You're learning. Slowly, but you're learning."

  "There's nothing in here," Mitch said fifteen minutes later when they were both sitting on the floor peering into the big cardboard box.

  Mae bit her lip to keep from saying I told you so.

  "A thousand condoms, a hundred Chap Sticks, a bottle of heart pills, a bottle of aspirin, a roll of antacids, three pens and a calculator." Mitch stirred the mess with his finger.

  "You're exaggerating on the condoms and Chap Sticks." Mae watched his hands move the contents of the box. "But there are a lot of them. Why would Armand want so many?"

  "Maybe he was an optimist. Maybe his lips were really dry." He picked up the pill bottle and read the label. "Digoxin." He handed the bottle to Mae. "Do these look right to you?"

  Mae took the bottle and popped the lid off, dumping a few of the white pills onto her palm. "I guess so. I never really paid much attention to them. The color's right."

  Mitch pawed through the box again as she put the lid back on the bottle and tossed it back in. "Ah-ha! What's this?" He held up a small key with a blue plastic head and smiled at it with such delight that Mae was taken aback.

  "It's not a safe-deposit key," Mae said. "Harold checked everywhere. Nobody he asked knew what it was."

  "It's a storage-shed key." Mitch sat back, smug.

  "To the best high-security storage facility in River-bend. It's about two miles from here."

  Mae blinked at him. "And how do you know that?''

  "I'm a detective. I detected it." He stood up. "Come on. This could be it."

  "I don't believe this." Mae sat stubbornly at his feet. "How did you know that?"

  "Fine, sit there." Mitch stepped over her. "I'm going to go find Armand's money, but you'd rather sit on the floor."

  "All right, all right." Mae scrambled to her feet. "I'm coming. But I still don't believe this. You're keeping something from me."

  "I should be so lucky," Mitch said.

  Mitch's gas tank was on empty, so they stopped for gas, and when it turned out that Mitch's wallet was on empty, too, Mae forked over her last twenty.

  "We'd better find the mother lode in this storage shed," she told him. "That's my lunch money for a week."

  "We'll stop at an ATM on the way back. Trust me."

  "Right," Mae said.

  The storage facility, when they got there, was on a back street of one of Riverbend's better areas, tucked in among condos and apartment houses and hidden by trees and shrubs as if it were some less fortunate architectural relative. Mae saw dozens of sheds as they pulled up to the gate, all lined up in little streetlike rows labeled with white signposts, the sheds painted a refined stone blue and topped with white-gabled roofs. They looked like condos for elves.

  "Hey, Mitch, how's it goin'?" the man at the gate said, and Mitch said, "Fine, Albert. What's happening?"

  Albert snorted. "Nothing. That's why you pay us a fortune, so nothing happens to your stuff."

  "Right," Mitch said, and Albert passed him through like a long-lost brother.

  Mae fumed. So Mitch was paying a fortune for an upscale storage shed, was he? All right. That was it Whatever Mitchell Peatwick was, he wasn't a dead broke, deadbeat private eye. He'd lied to her. Well, that's the way it was with men. They always had something they kept from you. Just let them handle it. You didn't need to know.

  Everybody lied.

  She made her voice steely. "He knows you by name?"

  Mitch ignored her and turned down the lane labeled C.

  "The key said K10," Mae pointed out, momentarily distracted.

  "I know."

  "So why—"

  "Because this is where Albert expects me to turn. We are breaking and entering, and I'd like Albert not to get wind of that, okay?"

  Mae leaned against the car door so she could watch him better while he lied to her. "So you turn down C lane because that's where your shed is."

  "Right." Mitch made a right turn at the end of the lane. "Watch for K."

  "It'll be right after J." Mae folded her arms. "If you're so broke, why do you have an extremely expensive storage shed?"