The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Brad Magnarella (ink book reader txt) 📖

had collapsed back into his body, claiming him in an instant. He looked like a mummy.

“Any idea who would want him dead?” Vega asked.

I circled the bed, remembering what Arnaud had told me on the pier: Sonny has been involved with many people. And for some, that’s a problem. “The question is why someone would want him dead now.”

“Maybe someone observed our earlier visits,” Vega said.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

I leaned over Sonny’s body. Several small perforations pocked his face. I reached into my coat, pulled out my notepad, and drew the pencil from the spiral binding. With the pencil’s sharpened tip, I probed a perforation on his cheek until I encountered something hard.

“What the hell are you doing?” Vega asked.

I pried a small shot free and placed it in my palm for Vega to see. “Silver ammo,” I said. “I’ll bet you anything it’s the same ammo that did damage to Blondie earlier tonight.”

“The vampire hunters?”

I nodded, thinking of Bullet’s pump-action shotgun. “Did Hoffman know we interviewed Sonny?”

“He knew about our first interview, yeah. I told him before he went off in search of the plans for Ferguson Towers.” Vega’s eyebrows crushed down as she made the connection. “That means he turned around and informed the person who hired the vampire hunters.”

“The client must have thrown in a bonus for Sonny.”

“Kill the hybrid, kill its origin story,” Vega said.

“Tells me someone wants to bury the matter in the worst way.” A disturbing thought came to me. “Did Hoffman know about our trip to the boarding school or to Lady Bastet?”

“I didn’t tell anyone about those.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way.” The world wasn’t going to miss Sonny, but I didn’t want innocents becoming targets. “Let’s head down to Sonny’s office. I want to check out those files.”

“Why? All he has down there are names and tax IDs. They won’t mean anything to us. The whole point of coming here was to get him to identify her.” She shot Sonny’s corpse an exasperated look that seemed to blame him for his own death.

“Well, we won’t know unless we look.”

“What do you know?” I said, stooped in front of the file cabinet drawer labeled 2001.

“What?” Vega came up behind me.

“The entire second half of the year is missing.”

“Probably when Alexandra’s mother started here,” Vega said. “The mysterious client had the vampire hunters grab six months’ worth of hires to bury the name he or she was trying to hide.”

I lifted out the files for the first half of the year.

“What are you doing?” Vega asked.

“Here.” I handed half of the files to her. “Look for any unusual last names. Dancers who would be easy to track down. If they were hired before Alexandra’s mother, they might still have been here when she came on board. They might be able to give us a name. We can show them the photo of Alexandra. Seems she inherited her mother’s good looks. She sure doesn’t resemble Sonny.”

“A blessing for her,” Vega muttered.

We carried the files to Sonny’s desk and set up on either side.

I was halfway through the March hires when a name jumped out at me.

“Hey,” I said. “That dancer who came into the office earlier today. What did Sonny call her?”

Vega grimaced. “You mean besides ‘sugar’? Casey.”

“There’s a Casey right here. And didn’t Sonny say she’d been with him for almost twenty years?”

At that moment, the door to the office opened, and the six-and-a-half-foot bouncer who had admitted us poked his head in. “You two gonna be in here much longer?”

“As long as it takes,” Vega told him.

“It’s just…” The bouncer scratched his curly hair and glanced behind him. “I know you’re police and all, but the boss don’t like people nosing around his stuff. He might smile and play nice when you’re here, but he takes it out on the rest of us when you’re not. He’s got a temper like a pit bull.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem anymore,” I said.

“Where can we find Casey?” Vega asked.

“Casey? She worked a double today. She’s in the dressing room on a smoke break.”

“Can you ask her to come in here?” Vega said.

“I can ask.”

The bouncer disappeared. A minute later, Casey stood in the doorway in a pink silk robe, her red hair pinned up in a messy pile. She placed a hand on a cocked hip, a stench of cigarette smoke and perfume radiating off her.

“What?” she demanded.

Vega gestured to the chair next to mine. “Have a seat.”

“Why?”

“Relax,” Vega said. “We just want to ask you a couple questions.”

Casey shot me a sour smile as she landed in the chair.

“Is your full name Casey Lusk?” Vega asked.

“What if it is?”

“Do you remember when you were hired?”

“No.”

“Does March 2001 ring a bell?”

“Not really.” She crossed her long legs.

“A young woman was hired shortly after you,” Vega said, pulling out Alexandra’s photo and placing it on the desk in front of Casey. “She would have looked like this, but with hair to her waist.”

Casey scowled at the photo.

“You knew her?” I took out my notepad.

“She played little Miss Innocent, but she didn’t fool me. Manipulative piece of trash. Had Sonny wrapped around her pinky finger. She even got him to propose to her.” She let out a sharp laugh. “Can you imagine that? Sonny? Married?”

“Can you give us a name?” I asked.

“Chastity Summers,” Casey said with exaggerated sweetness.

I jotted the name down and looked up to find Vega’s dark eyes staring back at me. I nodded. We might have just connected the final dot. But man, the detective was not looking good. Way too pale.

“Whatever became of Chastity?” Vega asked.

Casey shrugged. “Hell if I know. She was here for about six months and then took off. Sonny moped for the next year. Serves him right, the dumb bastard. Tried to warn him she would rip his heart out.”

“And she never showed up here again?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Do you know anyone who might’ve kept up with her?”

“Kept up with her? We