Private Dick Casefile 01 - Lily White Rose Red

it.
    That would just give them another reason to cook my goose.
    I was sitting at my desk with my feet up when they burst in. I’d had just enough time to stuff the chain down inside the collar of my shirt before they didn’t knock.
    “Wow, the top fuzz calling on me. To what do I owe the honor?” I kind of belted that out, I was panting so hard, but my smirk annoyed both Captain Woods and Lieutenant Steele. Score one for the dick, two cops with one flip.
    To my dismay, I saw they’d brought two flatties along. One was a pudgy number I didn’t know, but the other was my old friend Reggie Harding. He was giving me the flat, stony-eyed cop stare, but I knew he would rather have been helping little old ladies across the street than be here rousting me. He held a truncheon in his hand that I didn’t like the look of.
    “A surprise party for me? It’s not even my birthday,” I said.
    Lieutenant Steele looked angry, but Big Billy had a mean smile on his face as he leaned over and slapped my feet off the desk.
    “Stand up, Randall.”
    “Why, is there going to be dancing?”
    Big Billy’s face darkened, while Reggie turned and looked out into the hallway, and I’m sure it wasn’t because he was keeping a Lily White, Rose Red: Grey Randall, Private Dick Casefile #1
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    lookout. Maybe the idea of Big Billy in a clinch with a guy struck him as funny as it did me.
    Lieutenant Steele was unusually quiet.
    Big Billy reached across the desk and grabbed my tie, yanking me to my feet. He loomed over me menacingly.
    “Hey, that’s a new tie,” I protested, trying to pull it out of his hand.
    He shook me like a rat, and I smacked his hand away.
    “Try that again and I’ll run you in for assaulting an officer of the law,” he threatened. “Steele, you’re my witness.” Lieutenant Steele turned his back and said, “Sorry, sir, I was looking the other way.”
    I almost goggled at him. Lieutenant Steele sticking up for me in even that minor a fashion made this a red-letter day. I would have to note it on my calendar and send him some flowers on our anniversary.
    “Garrett, Harding, you saw him.”
    “No sir, sorry sir,” Reggie said.
    I wanted to wink at him to thank him, but I was in enough trouble as it was. No need to deal him in on it.
    “If you wanted my help on a case, Captain Woods, all you had to do was call. I would have come down—” I was cut off short when he shook me again. His manhandling me must have made the chain come out of my shirt, because his gaze dropped, and he snatched the chain off my neck with his other hand.
    “Where did you get this?”
    “I went to a store, paid down my money—” I started.
    “Don’t give me that. This is evidence in a murder. Where is the pendant?”
    “Murder? What murder? I never had—”

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    CATT FORD

    “Don’t play dumb with me, you lousy punk!” Big Billy raised his mitt to smack me across the face and then hesitated. “The chain broke.
    Is it down your shirt?”
    “ You broke it, and there was never any pendant,” I lied, staring him in the eyes.
    He yanked the knot out of my tie and ripped the buttons off my shirt pulling it open. When nothing fell out, he snarled at the two cops,
    “Find it. He didn’t have time to ditch it. Take this place apart while I take him apart.”
    I didn’t much like the sound of that. While I was confident I could have handled him if I’d met him in a dark alley with no witnesses around, he’d already tied my hands by promising to arrest me for assault if I fought back. I looked at Lieutenant Steele. Clearly he didn’t approve of the direction this was going in, but he wasn’t going to help me more than he had already. I didn’t blame him.
    Reggie and Garrett started their search on the file cabinet, carefully keeping their eyes averted from the action.
    “If you tell me what you’re looking for I’ll help you all I can. I always like to support our local boys in blue—” I bent over, gasping for air after Big Billy landed a punch just under my ribs on the right side.
    “You broke into the apartment of a murder victim and stole evidence in an ongoing investigation. That’s obstructing justice. I want it back.”
    I blew air in and out till I could speak again. “I didn’t break in anywhere.”
    “So you admit you were there!” he roared triumphantly.
    “Where?”
    “Don’t play games with me, peeper. You were at Marguerite Saint-Ville’s apartment today.”
    “What little bird told