Case 610 Read online

  The Paige Bleu Series

  Case 610

  By

  Shiralyn J. Lee

  Book 6 in the Paige Bleu Series

  Case #6

  Copyright: © Copyright at Shiralyn J. Lee Sept 1st 2015

  Copyright @ Shiralyn J. Lee Sept 1st 2015

  All characters within this story are fictional and bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead and are purely coincidental.

  A Shiralyn J. Lee story created on Sept 1st 2015 this book or any parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the author. Piracy is a crime.

  Shiralyn J. Lee stories are downloadable on reputable sites. If for any reason you are reading this for free from a non-reputable site, then you are viewing an illegal download. Please refrain from doing so.

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  Profile Names

  Paige

  Emily

  Lucy Summers/ Linda Mills

  Kevin Hammond

  Ralf Horton

  Rosa Mendez

  Adam Mills

  Ruby Rose

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter One

  Walking past Mike’s office, I felt a sense of unease, when I saw through the glass partition-wall, that he was in a deep serious conversation with Cheri Bourque. The door was closed and oddly, the two of them ceased to converse, choosing to stare at me, as I continued to walk on to my office.

  Sitting at my desk and scrolling through my emails, Emily wandered into my office. No sooner had she entered that she leaned up against the metal door frame, drumming her fingers playfully on the glass panel, her smile broadening across her face—her eyes sparkling and filled with joy. “Well? Do I look any different?” she asked.

  I stopped typing and raised my eyes—peering over the open laptop screen, to look at her. “No, should you?”

  “Ahh, okay. Well I feel it, and to be honest, I can’t keep it to myself any longer. Richard’s finally leaving his wife. He’s really doing it, Paige, isn’t that wonderful? I’m going to have him all to myself, and no secret rendezvous anymore.”

  I stared at her hard, wondering if he was just playing her, to keep her quiet, until he could find his next excuse not to leave his wife. “So he’s finally made up his mind, has he?”

  “Yes. God, I’m so happy. I actually gave him an ultimatum and told him to choose his wife, or me. He chose me and he’s telling her today. I’m finally going to get sex on tap.”

  “I thought you were already getting that anyway.” I was pleased for her, now that things were moving forward but I still had the urge to give her the ‘mightier-than-thou speech,’ even though I was no innocent when it came to fidelity.

  “Maybe we can arrange a dinner party with you and Kate. I know that you and Richard will hit it off,” she suggested, her eyes filled with vibrancy.

  I rolled my eyes. “I think that we should concentrate on the job, don’t you? Something’s happening between Mike and Cheri. They’re being really secretive.”

  Emily leaned back. Sticking her head out of the doorway, she checked the hall, to see if she could catch them being sneaky in Mike’s office. Just as she was about to turn away, Mike opened his door, and acting like a gentleman, he escorted Cheri to the elevator, where they spoke with hushed voices for a moment, before she stepped in and the doors closed. A frown crossed Mike’s forehead, giving him a look of concern, as he marched back to his office and closed the door behind him.

  “Ooh, I wonder what that was all about.” Emily mocked.

  “Paige! Emily! My office now,” Mike yelled down the hallway.

  “And the master has summoned us,” Emily joked.

  •••

  “Sit down, both of you,” Mike instructed us. “It has been brought to my attention that Cheri Bourque was a little hasty in giving out some private information concerning an internal matter.”

  Emily sat down in the chair in front of his desk. Crossing her legs and folding her arms, she came across quite superior. “Internal, you say?” she asked, tapping her finger on her arm.

  I remained standing behind her.

  He looked directly up at me and I knew that this was about Cheri’s little outburst. Emily then shifted in her seat and turned to focus on me—looking back at Mike and then to me again.

  Picking up on the fact that Emily was thinking this issue was to do with me, I immediately refuted her glare. “No, Emily, it’s not me who’s being investigated, so you can stop glaring at me right now.”

  She unfolded her arms, inquisitively raised her eyebrow and shifted again in her seat. “Is it me? Shit, Mike, what am I being investigated for?”

  Mike shook his head. “Just relax, Emily. It’s not you. I just wanted to make sure that anything that had been discussed, stays private. Cheri told me that she let a few things slip, regretfully. Just make sure that conversations aren’t repeated, please. So, in light of certain information that she has told me, I have had to let her and Jeremy Dorn go. We do not condone sourcing information through any kind of sexual favors, whatsoever. Beside it being immoral, we could have landed ourselves a huge sexual harassment lawsuit.” He plucked his glasses from his face and placed them down on the desk in front of him, then rubbed his hands over his face. “So, moving on to a case that I want the two of you to take. Lucy Summers has been missing for just over a week. She is an actress…”

  “Oh, I thought I recognized her name. She was in a movie that I watched with Richard a few weeks ago. Sex, Ropes and Chains. It was a real eye opener, if you ask me.”

  I cut her a fleeting glance—she was serious. “So, she’s a porn star?” I asked, never having seen her movies, nor heard of her. Mike handed me the file with her information, giving me the opportunity to quickly scan through it. She had an IMDb page, listing many of her movies. It seemed as though she was quite a sort after actress in her field. “So, she’s been missing for a few days? Who reported her missing?”

  Mike stretched over his desk to reach for his laptop and tapped on a key. “Her mother. She was supposed to turn up for dinner with the family but when she failed to show, they assumed that she had a prior engagement. Then, when her mother called her the next day, several times, she didn’t pick up. She’s been calling her for days and still no answer. So she called a few friends who told her that the last they heard, was that she was on her way over to her mother’s house for dinner, she never made it.”

  “Perhaps she just took off somewhere for a while. Maybe a friend’s house, or another acting job that might have come through at the last minute,” I suggested. “I think with her line of work, they could be an easy explanation for her not showing up at her mother’s house.”

  “Well, that’s for you to find out, isn’t it,” Mike answered formally.

  •••

  Walking along the hallway, Emily nudged my arm. “So, do you and Kate ever watch dirty movies?”

  I smiled just to be polite and then entered my office. “I can’t say that either of us have been interested in watching porn movies with straight people in them.”

  “Oh, yes, I suppose it must be different for you.”

  “Can we not talk about our sex lives? I really don’t find it relevant,” I said edgily.

  “You sound as though you’ve got something on your mind. Is everything okay between you and Kate?”

  I sat down at my desk and opened up my laptop. “Keep this to yourself but Kate wants to get married.”

  Emily closed the
door behind her. “Seriously? You mean you actually proposed to her after all this time?”

  A framed photo of Kate faced me on my desk. It was one of my favorites of her, taken just a week after we had met. I glanced at it, then moved my gaze to look at the view through the window. Sighing heavily, I answered, “Not exactly. I told her she can have whatever she wants. Jesus, I feel like I’ve been corned into something that I wasn’t ready for. Not that I don’t love her, because I honestly do, she has this way of twisting my stomach into knots when I’m frustrated at her but at the same time I just want to wrap my arms around her and protect her. It’s just that the timing doesn’t feel right. I’m not sure if I’m actually ready for this.”

  “Are you having doubts about Kate, if you are, then why did you propose?”

  Feeling guilty, I moved Kate’s photo to face away from me. “Look, it’s not that easy to explain. There wasn’t an actual proposal. I love her but I think she wants something from me to justify what happened to her. She wants to get married, except her reasons don’t add up in comparison to someone who is thinking rationally and it’s not like I don’t want to marry her, I just want to not do it right now.”

  “It seems to me that you’ve added extra baggage into your relationship. Jeez, it wasn’t that long ago that you found her cheating with that skanky broad.”

  “As if I need reminding of that!”

  Walking toward me, Emily had a sudden ‘aha’ moment look on her face. She placed the palms of her hands on the desk in front of me and gave one of her superior grins. “It’s Rosa, isn’t it? That woman has managed to somehow bury her claws into you again.”

  Avoiding her comment, I stared hard at the laptop screen, scrolling through Lucy Summers’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, not that I could see any immediate red-flags with her contacts. “Her last posted status was seven days ago. It said that she was on her way to the gym.”

  Stepping away from my desk, Emily walked over to the window and looked down at the street below. “You have a better view from this office than I’ve got from mine. All I can see are the bricks and windows on the next building. I suppose Lucy would need to work out at the gym, with some of the positions that she gets herself into. You should see her thigh muscles.”

  “No thanks!” I closed the laptop—my thoughts were still with Kate and this whole marriage façade. “Let’s take a drive.”

  •••

  We pulled up outside of Gym Utopia, an expensive gym for the elite. It was on the outskirts of the city, a district where the richest of the rich lived and people like us could only dream of owning any of the houses.

  “Shit. This place is just dripping with millionaires,” Emily commented as she climbed out of the vehicle. “Maybe I should have been working out here instead of the crappy gym I go to. I might have snagged myself a rich boyfriend and never have to worry about finances again.”

  “Sometimes, Emily, I have to wonder if you have any morals.”

  She closed the car door and then checked herself out in the wing-mirror. Brushing her forefinger over her teeth to remove the lipstick stain, she then smacked her lips together and pinched her cheeks. “Well I look damn hot now. I’m keeping my options open, just in case Richard falls through with his promise.” A man in his fifties, driving a silver Corvette Sting Ray, pulled up in the parking spot next to us. Emily leaned against the door of my car—her posture seductive but not slutty, she smiled at him. “Well that’s a pretty cool car you’ve got yourself there.”

  For a man of his age, he wasn’t that bad looking, if you liked the silver-hair, blue eyes type. Oh, and you’re straight. “Emily, we have work to do,” I said, keeping my voice to a low tone.

  The man got out of his car and smiling at Emily, who had obviously given him an ego boost, he swooned around to the other side of his car, where she was standing, relaxed and on offer. “So you like sports cars, or older men?” he joked.

  “Well, as it so happens, I seem to like both.” She smiled at him like a desperate tart.

  “Perhaps I could take you for a ride in it some time. That’s if it’s okay with your husband?” He quickly looked down at her hands, searching for a wedding band. “Oh, I see, your fiancé then?”

  “I happen to have neither. Perhaps that could all change in the near future?” She flirted.

  I walked on ahead, as I couldn’t stomach the corny pick-up lines anymore. As I reached the entrance, I turned around, to see that they were exchanging cards and laughing for the most simplistic reasons. “Emily, let’s go,” I called over to her.

  She put his card in her jacket pocket and then brushed her hand down his arm as she said goodbye to him and walked away—a typical Emily move. Catching up to me at the entrance, she glanced back at him and held her hand up to her face, mimicking for him to call her. “In comparison, he makes Richard look like a bum living on the streets. Wow, he’s rich and gorgeous,” she said, checking her reflection out in the glass panel of the entrance door.

  “Keep it in your pants, we’re here on work business, not pick-up business. You need to keep your private life, private.”

  She grabbed my lower arm and stopped me from walking any further. “Hey, just because you’re having bedroom issues, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to. In case you hadn’t noticed, yes, I am in love with Richard but I’ll be damned if I’m going to age like a prune before he eventually decides to leave his wife. I’m not the one who’s committed to a relationship by law, so, until he actually leaves her and proves himself worthy to me, I’m going to live life as a single woman, and if that includes fucking older guys, then so be it.”

  I was stumped. “Okay, maybe I was a little curt with you and I really should mind my own business when it comes to you and Richard. I’m just looking out for you, that’s all.”

  She smiled at me and let go of my arm. “Well, you really do have a heart somewhere in that ice-cold shell of yours.” She smirked at her own remark.

  I rolled my eyes and smirked back at her. “Well, it’s good to know who my true friends are.”

  She smacked my backside playfully and then we continued inside the gym.

  Chapter Two

  We approached the reception desk, showing our badges to the snotty girl sitting behind it.

  “We need to speak to someone in charge,” I told her.

  Arching her eyebrow, she pursed her lips, then picked up the desk-phone. “Kev, there’s two women here to speak with you. Looks like they’re from the FBI.”

  “We are,” Emily whispered to her.

  “Okay, Kev, I’ll tell them.” She put the phone down and then with a forced smile, she looked at me directly in the eyes. “The manager will be right with you.”

  Even though we were dressed in expensive suits, she still had the audacity to look us up and down with an expression of, ‘hell no,’ on her face.

  I turned my back on her and took in the scenery. It was a modern building with high ceilings and white painted walls. Tropical plants in pots, lined one of the walls and plush seating edged another.

  “Snobby bitch,” Emily muttered under her breath as she turned around to join me in looking at the overly luxurious accessories.

  A tall slender man wearing a black V-neck t-shirt and denim jeans, trotted down the curved staircase. He held his hand out to greet us—his shake was firm and almost aggressive. “I’m Kevin Hammond, I actually own this Gym, not that you can tell by looking at my physic,” he joked lightheartedly. “Now, how can I help you?”

  “We’re investigating a missing person’s case. Lucy Summers, she’s one of your members here and her last posting on Facebook, was that she was on her way over here. We don’t know if she made it, or not, so we need to find out from your records whether she did.”

  “Oh, oh, I see. Yes, come with me to my office, I’ll check my records. I don’t actually know my clients personally, I’ve recently taken over ownership of this location, so names and faces aren’t yet familiar to me. Tell me, are you
not able to track her down by her phone beeps, or whatever it is that your lot do?”

  “I’m sure if that was the case, she would have been tracked down by now. This is why we’re here today,” Emily answered him.

  “Quite right. Well, please follow me to my office.”

  We followed him up the staircase.

  •••

  Checking his computer, Kevin brought up Lucy’s account. “What day did you say that she was on her way here?” he asked, scrolling the mouse.

  “I didn’t but her post on her social networks was last Tuesday.”

  “Hmm, that would have been…” he looked at the poster calendar on the wall behind him. “Yes, the eighth. No, she didn’t come in on that date but she was here two days prior to that.”

  I walked around his desk and stood at his side. “Do you mind if I take a look?”

  “No, feel free. There’s not really much else that her records can tell you.”

  Checking her account, it was apparent that she worked out at the gym every other day, so for her to not have shown up in over a week, was cause for concern. “Okay, thank you, Mr. Hammond. Here’s my card. If for any reason you come across any clue to her whereabouts, please don’t hesitate to contact either myself or my partner Emily.”

  •••

  Driving to Lucy’s apartment, I popped a CD into the player. Emily was doing my head in with her incessant chatter about Ralf Horton, the man she’d just met with the Corvette sports car.

  “I’m talking too much, aren’t I?” she asked me.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You’re playing Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. When you need to clear your head, you always seem to play opera music and I know that she’s your favorite.”

  I slammed my hand on the steering wheel and gripped it tight. “I’m so fucking stressed out, Emily. The pit of my stomach is turning every time I think about my life, and yes, if you must know, Rosa has been on my mind. I mean, how dare she just pop back into my life as if nothing over the past few years has happened, and then on top of all that, she has the nerve to try and seduce me.”