Inherit the Dead

didn’t go looking for her.”
    Perry didn’t understand why Randy thought that cleared him of any wrongdoing, but he appeared to believe if Angel had sought him out, he couldn’t be accused of harming her. “Did you join her?” The detective did his best to sound neutral, but the thought of the delicate girl in the picture in his wallet in a liaison with this sex machine in a jumpsuit . . . it made him sick.
    “Sure.” Randy shrugged, a big movement from his broad shoulders. “I needed my chain pulled, you know?” He smirked at the two other men. “I didn’t go back to my place for a week, at least. That Angel knows tricks most pros don’t know.”
    Perry’s fists clenched, a reaction that didn’t go unnoticed by Uncle Dirk or Randy. But his voice came out calm enough when he asked, “So all you did was have sex, for a week?”
    Randy shrugged. His hand played down the front zipper of his overalls. “What can I say, Mr. Detective? I’d bang her in the morning, come to work, go to the motel for lunch, bang her again, and afterwe ate some dinner at night we went another couple of rounds. I got stamina, and I got assets.” Uncle Dirk laughed and reached for a rag to wipe his hands.
    “Did she get any phone calls that you can remember? Mention any plans?”
    Those questions seemed to sober Randy. The facile braggadocio slipped away. “She really missing?” he asked.
    “Yeah, she’s really missing.”
    “She got some phone calls, sure. But she didn’t tell me who she’s talking to, and I didn’t ask. That’s her private shit. I know Lilith called her a couple of times, though, because Angel told Lilith what we were doing when the phone rang. She put in a lot of details. She wanted Lilith to be jealous.” His smile returned.
    “You and Lilith . . . ?” Was Randy lying? Or was Lilith? Perhaps the woman had protested just a bit too much.
    “Every now and then she needs her oil changed,” Randy said. “She gives me a call. We do quality work here at Gil’s Auto.” His leer was automatic.
    Uncle Dirk said suddenly, “You going to tell this guy what happened? Her running out?” He seemed to take a malicious pleasure in that.
    Randy swung to face him, and the warm, oily air in the shop office became tense for a few moments. Then Randy relaxed. And so did Perry, who’d been holding his breath without being aware he was doing so.
    Randy turned away from his uncle and spoke to Perry. “Yeah, okay. If you’re really sure that Angel’s in trouble.”
    Perry felt a frisson of excitement. Maybe now he’d get a piece of information that would lead to discovering the missing heiress.
    “The last night we were together at the motel, a week ago,” Randy began. “She’d picked me up here at work. My truck was runningrough, but Uncle Dirk and me didn’t have time to work on it—we were too busy with jobs that paid.”
    Dirk had poured himself a mug of coffee and was sipping it cautiously. He nodded, as if he was letting Perry know he confirmed Randy’s narrative. He still looked amused. Randy said, “About midnight, she got a phone call. We’d just gotten to sleep, so I didn’t catch everything she said. She went into the bathroom, left the door open just a crack. She sounded really upset.”
    “Do you know who she was talking to?” Perry leaned on the counter, fighting a wave of weariness.
    “Nope,” Randy said. “All I heard was some mumbling, and then she threw her clothes on and left.”
    “When she came back, did she tell you what had happened?”
    “She never came back.”
    There was an uneasy silence until Uncle Dirk said, “And that’s the whole story.”
    “Did you hear from her again?” Perry’s sleepiness had vanished. He was alert now, and more worried about Angelina Loki than he’d been before.
    “Not exactly. After work that day, I went back to the motel and found out she’d gotten all her stuff. Or someone had. When I talked to the asshole who runs it, he said my girlfriend must have been pretty disappointed, to run out on me that way. And I owed him a night’s pay on the room.” That had rankled—it was obvious.
    “You sure you didn’t drive her somewhere yourself that night?” Perry was skeptical about the story’s details. “Or maybe follow her to see what she was up to?”
    “If I’d driven her somewhere, I’d have had to walk back to the damn motel in below-freezing weather. I could have gone home just as easy. Why would I stay there? And I