Whiskey Rebellion (Romantic Mystery/Comedy) Book 1 (Addison Holmes Mysteries)

stuff. Tell me what you want me to look for.”
    Nick punched play and the screen split into six boxes, all labeled with which security camera they came from. Nick brought up camera one so it filled the whole screen.
    “We’ve got your ex who arrived alone just after noon. He made himself comfortable in a booth and ordered a drink. He looked back and forth impatiently between his watch and the door for almost half an hour.”
    Nick fast-forwarded a few seconds. “Then we have an unknown woman who showed up at a quarter till one. None of the cameras got a shot of her face. She walked past the bouncer at the door with minimal fuss since she was wearing a table napkin for a skirt and her attributes were shown to their full advantage. She kept her head down all the way to the booth an d slid in next to your ex.”
    “ So Veronica meets Greg at a strip club for a little hanky panky and she’s dressed like a slut. What else is new?”
    “Look carefully at the video. That doesn’t look like the woman I saw last night.”
    I looked at the shadowed photo carefully. “This woman has smaller breasts than Veronica,” I said automatically. And then I gasped because that meant Greg was cheating on Veronica just like he’d cheated on me. “That sorry bastard. At least I can get rid of the guilt that it’s something I did that made him cheat. Apparently he’s just a horn dog.”
    Nick smiled and kept fast-forwarding. “Do you recognize her?”
    I looked closely, but without seeing her face it was hard to be sure. “No, sorry. She just looks kind of generic. She could be a prostitute or someone that Greg met at an insurance convention. Why don’t you ask Greg who she is?”
    “We’d love to, but Greg conveniently went out of town last Sunday and didn’t get back until just before the gala last night. Veronica told us he flew out Sunday morning to a convention in New York, but when we checked the airlines we couldn’t find him on a flight.”
    “Maybe he took the week off to spend with his new honey.”
    “Maybe. Or maybe he was running but had to come back to Whiskey Bayou to tie up a few loose ends. He does have a business here and a few remaining clients. Either way, we’ll find out,” he said. “As you can see, the booth was almost in complete shadow, and they got down to business pretty quickly. None of the floor security could see exactly what the woman was doing, but the security guy manning the cameras got an eyeful.”
    “Holy crap. She was doing that to him in public?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I was completely comfortable watching what basically amounted to porn with Nick. “Okay, maybe you can fast forward som e.”
    “Chicken.” Nick squeezed the back of my neck, and he hit a button so another view came up on screen. “At the same time Greg was getting serviced by the unknown woman, we have your principal getting a lap dance. The girl doing the service had her name legally changed to Destiny Dollar when she turned eighteen two months ago.”
    I watched Destiny writhe and shake around Mr. Butler and wondered how he was able to pay attention to what was going on on stage with all the flesh and feathers in front of him.
    Nick paused the disc. “This is where Butler notices you on stage,” he said with laughter in his voice.
    “This is so embarrassing,” I said unde r my breath. I was grateful Nick didn’t bring up the stage camera. I knew he’d seen it, but I was perfectly content not to relive the event.
    Nick fast-forwarded some more and paused once again. “You’ve left the stage and Destiny can tell she’s lost Butler’s interest, so she takes his money and moves on to another customer. Butler stumbles out of his chair and heads for the bathroom, just past Greg’s table, where Greg’s sitting by himself again. They don’t notice each other, or at least pretend not to. But look here,” Nick said pausing the disc again. “Butler comes out of the hallway where the restrooms are like a bat out of hell. Or like he’s seen something he’s not supposed to. Then he books it out of the front door to the parking lot. Greg looks at his watch again and throws money down on the table before he leaves, the mystery woman is nowhere to be found, and Girard Dupres slips out the back door to the alley. Bernard Butler is killed within the next few minutes and none of these people are accounted for.”
    “Couldn’t it have been a stranger passing through that killed Mr. Butler?” It was