“I won’t.”
“It happened in a rental car,” she said. “They cleaned it up as good as new and turned it back in.”
Wilde lit a smoke.
“So I guess that means they took Bristol’s body out first.”
“That’s true. They buried him up in the mountains.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know and I don’t want to know,” Secret said.
“That’s pretty intense.”
“Jaden knew a lot of stuff about Bristol,” Secret said. “His firm was bidding for a Hong Kong project. He was strong-armed. He was told to withdraw his bid or else a woman he was seeing would be killed.”
“Strong-armed by who?”
“My guess is River,” she said. “River working for one of the other bidders. Anyway, Bristol was a stubborn man. He didn’t do it. Then it went down. His girl-a woman named Kava Every-was killed. She was dropped off a roof in a red dress.”
“That’s River.”
“River or Gapp,” Secret said. “Anyway, it wasn’t until then that Bristol took it seriously. He withdrew the bid before anyone else got killed.”
“So Waverly almost killed an innocent man.”
“Not entirely,” Secret said. “Bristol killed a woman in Cleveland, a woman named Bobbi Litton. He did it for Jaden. He did it the red-dress way, to make it look like a copycat.”
“Damn.”
“Right, damn,” Secret said. “Anyway, Jaden was indebted to him. When Waverly started closing in on Bristol, Jaden was his spy. She drew Waverly into a trap. The only thing that went wrong is that Bristol turned on Jaden at the last second. If he hadn’t done that, he’d still be alive today.”
“Interesting.”
“Jaden told all this to Waverly after the fact. That’s how I know, she told me.”
Wilde downed his drink and set the empty glass on the table.
“I’m going to get a refill,” he said. “You want another wine?”
She nodded.
“That’d be nice.”
He got up, then leaned down and got his lips close to her ear.
“While I’m gone, I want you to think about whether you have any more secrets to tell me. I want everything on the table.”
She smiled.
“Sure.”
She watched him disappear into the crowd. Then a memory grabbed her, a memory exactly one week old, a memory so vivid and clear that it was as if she was really there.
The night was cool.
She was in Denver to visit with Waverly. They’d been to the El Ray Club and had more alcohol in their guts than was healthy.
The night was over.
They were walking down the street.
“I got to pee,” Waverly said. “Wait here.”
She ducked into an alley.
“Are you really going to do that?”
“Just hold on. I’ll only be a minute.”
“I can’t believe you sometimes.”
It was then that Secret needed a cigarette and needed it now. She checked her purse. It was empty. Waverly didn’t smoke.
Cars were parked on the street, one after another.
Traffic was thin to non-existent.
No one was around.
Secret started checking out the dashboards of the cars on the off chance someone had left a pack sitting around. The fourth car down, she spotted a pack. The door was locked but the window was rolled down a ways. It was tight, but she got her arm in. Then she brought her body all the way against the car to get an extension. The pack was at the end of her fingertips. She couldn’t get it. She pulled her arm out, frustrated, then spotted a rock. She broke the window, reached in and grabbed the pack.
Then she heard a voice.
“Hey, that’s my car!”
She turned.
The words came from a woman.
The woman was alone.
She was drunk.
“I’m just borrowing a smoke,” Secret said. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the window. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Damn right you shouldn’t have done that.”
The woman charged.
Fists flew.
Then a head slammed into the curb.
It was the head of the other woman.
She laid there, sprawled out, not moving.
Waverly ran over.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“She wouldn’t stop, I tried to stop-”
Waverly kneeled down and checked the woman. She felt no pulse. She detected no movement of her chest. She brought her face close to the woman’s mouth and detected no movement of air.
Then she stood up and said, “She’s dead.”
They stood there for a few heartbeats, frozen, then ducked into the alley.
No cars came.
No people came.
They dragged the body into the alley, back far, way into the deepest shadows.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Waverly said. “I have a red dress at home. I’m going to go get it. You stay here. Then we’re going to take her to the roof and drop her off.”
“Why?”
“Because then you didn’t kill her,” she said. “The guy who killed my sister killed her.”
They got the body to the roof, made sure the woman was dead, changed her into the red dress and dropped her off. They disposed of her clothes in a dumpster three blocks away.
“There’s a PI in town by the name of Bryson Wilde,” Waverly said. “Tomorrow, what you need to do is hire him. Pretend you’re a witness to the murder. Pretend that the guy who did the killing may have seen you. Pretend that you’re in danger. Pretend that you want Wilde to find out who the killer is.”
“Why? I don’t get it.”
“Because Wilde will have a pipeline into what the police are finding out,” Waverly said. “If they start getting close, Wilde will know it, then we’ll know it.”
Secret exhaled.
“Okay.”
Wilde emerged from the crowd, set a fresh glass of wine in front of Secret and slid in next to her.
“So, are there any more secrets I should know about?”
She looked like she was in thought.
Then she grabbed Wilde’s hand, brought it under the table and set it on her leg above the knee.
“That’s for you to find out,” she said.
He inched his hand up.
“It looks like I have no alternative but to do a little exploring.”
She opened her legs, just a touch.
“It looks that way.”