Sizzle and Burn

angled her head at Zack. “You don’t know any professional bodyguards.”
    “Zack is sort of an investigator,” Raine said.
    Zack smiled. “Actually I’m a real investigator.”
    Pandora crossed her arms and looked disgusted. “Not another guy in law enforcement. Thought you learned your lesson with Mitchell.”
    Raine frowned. “I told you, Zack is not a boyfriend.”
    Zack looked at Pandora. “I don’t worry about enforcing laws. I just ask questions and try to get answers.”
    “Yeah?” Pandora did not appear convinced but she shrugged a plump shoulder.
    “Mind if I take a look around the back room?” Zack said to Raine.
    “No.” She went toward the velvet curtain. “Follow me.”
    Pandora gave Zack one last, suspicious glare and then went behind the counter and sat down in front of the computer.
    “By the way, Marie Antoinette called,” she said over her shoulder to Raine. “She rescheduled her fitting for Thursday.”
    “No problem,” Raine said, moving through the curtain.
    Zack followed her. “Marie Antoinette?”
    “Joanne Escott, the mayor of our fair town. She’s getting a costume from us for the annual charity ball I mentioned. She doesn’t know quite how to deal with Pandora so I make it a point to be here when she comes in for her fittings.”
    “Why the Marie Antoinette name?”
    “This year Joanne wanted to wear an elaborate eighteenth-century gown, complete with the big, powdered wig like the costume out front. I told her she’d look like Marie Antoinette and that was probably not the image she wanted to project as mayor. She was very determined. I finally pointed out that if she wore the costume, her critics at the Oriana Journal wouldn’t be able to resist printing a picture of her at the ball with a let ’em eat cake caption.”
    “I assume that observation made her change her mind?”
    “Yes, but unfortunately, I don’t think her second choice was particularly wise, either. Couldn’t talk her out of it, though. She’s going as Cleopatra.”
    “With or without an asp?”
    “Oh, she’ll have one. We here at Incognito pride ourselves on attention to detail. Wouldn’t dream of letting our mayor attend the ball in a half-asped costume.”
    He laughed.
    “Here it is.” She waved an arm. “Our back room.”
    He walked slowly around the space, opening his senses. There was a dressing room and a three-way mirror to his left. The rest of the room was filled with a number of long, rolling carts outfitted with hanging rods. He estimated that there were a couple dozen costumes on each cart. A wide variety of elaborate masks were displayed on several rows of plastic heads arranged on shelves.
    “You keep quite an inventory,” he said.
    “This is a busy time of year for us.”
    “Do you design all of these yourself?”
    “Just some of the creative sketches and ideas. Pandora is the genius when it comes to costume design. When Aunt Vella was alive she did a lot of the masks.”
    He went down an aisle between two of the long costume display carts, picking up nothing but the usual dull static.
    “No hot spots,” he said.
    “Well, that’s good news.”
    He glanced at the door at the back of the room. “I assume that leads out into the alley?”
    “Yes. We keep it locked at all times. There’s a good, solid bolt on the door and an alarm. I’m very aware of the fact that Pandora and I are here alone a lot. We don’t take chances.”
    He nodded, then went to the door and checked it, making sure.
    When he was satisfied they went back out into the front room of the shop. Pandora was hunched over the computer, typing swiftly.
    “Another twenty orders for the new corsets,” she said to Raine, her attention on the screen. “Told you they were going to be hot.”
    Zack glanced at the screen and saw a tight, black vinyl corset. It was displayed with a pair of stiletto-heeled boots and an Egyptian style ankh necklace.
    He looked at Raine. “The online business you mentioned?”
    Her eyes sparkled with laughter. “You know, until I met Pandora I had no idea that the neo-goth market was so huge.”

Thirty-one
    T he interior of the Alley Door was a midnight-dark cave studded with the fragile lights of tiny candles placed on the tables. The lone guitarist on stage was singing about the delights of illicit sex. As far as Raine could tell the entire song was based on a series of metaphors, all of which appeared to be related to shopping in a candy store.
    She toyed with