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“I’m black, gay and named after my mama’s favorite casino, but I’ll be the best damned personal assistant you’ll ever have,” she’d pronounced.
She hadn’t lied. There were days Chantal didn’t know how she’d functioned before Harrah. Harrah was tall and beautiful and the most efficient person Chantal had ever met. Harrah not only kept track of Chantal’s appointments and social engagements, she also kept the house clean and occasionally cooked.
As if conjured up by mere thought, the woman appeared in the office doorway. “Got it?”
Chantal nodded and handed her the list. “Do I have anything on my schedule for today?”
“Nothing,” Harrah replied.
“Once you get the invitations mailed off you can take the rest of the day off. I think I’ll head to the Plaza and work out in the Gym, then go to Mimi’s and get a facial and a massage. I’ve been tense since Saturday.”
Harrah grinned, exposing perfectly straight white teeth. “Kicking his ass would probably do you as much good as a trip to Mimi’s.”
Chantal laughed. “Yeah, but a trip to Mimi’s is a lot less dangerous.”
With plans made for the day, Chantal left her office and headed for her bedroom to change clothes. It had been the master suite that had ultimately sold Chantal on the house.
The room was huge with windows that overlooked the ninth hole. She’d chosen melon tones to decorate: lush cantaloupe and cool honeydew colors that she found sexy yet restful.
In the center of the king-size bed, a large gray cat raised its head and hissed as if to protest her very presence in the room.
She’d found the cat six months ago in a box near the Dumpster behind Big Joey’s Bail Bonds. It had been a miserably bitter January day with snow in the forecast. Chantal had brought the cat home and named it Sam, after her beloved father.
When she’d first found him she’d entertained fantasies of a warm purring fur ball against her chest, a little creature who would coil affectionately around her legs the minute she got home.
She’d obviously been delusional. Savage Sam, as she liked to refer to her roommate, didn’t seem to have an affectionate bone in his body and she had yet to hear him purr.
It took her only minutes to change into workout clothes, pull her shoulder-length blond hair into a ponytail, then grab her gym bag and leave the house. It was a thirty-minute drive to the Plaza, a high-rent, beautiful shopping area of the city.
The gym where Chantal worked out wasn’t an exclusive one and catered only to the serious-minded exercise freaks. The Gym was as simple as its name, a place that smelled of sweat. It definitely wasn’t a place for social gatherings or chitchat.
Power shopping was as close as Chantal had gotten to exercise before going to work for Big Joey. But she’d realized that if she intended to be a successful bounty hunter, she needed to make sure she was in the best physical shape possible.
She worked out for a little over two hours, until her muscles were limp as linguini, then showered and dressed in clean clothes for a trip to one of her most favorite places in the whole world.
Mimi’s was an exclusive club with membership reserved for those people who had the right name, the right connections and the ability to pay exorbitant fees for massages, facials and tanning sessions.
Chantal decided to have a full-body massage. As Mary, the masseuse, worked her magic on her tense muscles, Chantal’s thoughts turned to Luke Coleman.
She still couldn’t believe what he had done Saturday night and wondered if he had been at Ruby’s to score Wesley Baker or if that was one of his usual hangouts?
She knew little about the man, only that he was a loner. He’d worked for Big Joey for the past five years and in that time had garnered a reputation for being tough and having the best street contacts in the business.
“You are one big bundle of tension,” Mary said as she kneaded Chantal’s shoulders. “What have you been doing to yourself?”
“The usual stresses. I’m giving a dinner party next week.”
“Oh honey, no wonder you’re tense. We all know how stressful entertaining can be.”
Chantal didn’t reply. Entertaining was nothing. Stress was watching a Neanderthal saunter away with the criminal she’d collared. It was as if she were a gold miner and had spent hours, days digging for gold. She’d finally uncovered a nugget and some other prospector had reached over her shoulder and stolen it away.
She didn’t care about the fee that she’d have earned for delivering Wesley Baker. Money wasn’t the reason she’d gone into this business in the first place. What bothered her more than anything was Luke’s assessment that she was in over her head.
By the time Mary had worked her magic, Chantal had managed to put Luke Coleman out of her mind. She left Mimi’s feeling rejuvenated. After a fast lunch at a nearby restaurant, she headed for Big Joey’s to see whose mug shot had made it to his wall of shame.
Big Joey’s Bail Bonds was located in downtown Kansas City, three blocks from the city square that held the court house, the police station and various other government buildings.
On top of the flat, one-story business, a neon sign—as gaudy as that on any Vegas casino—flashed, despite the brightness of the afternoon.
At this time of the day the heat radiated up in fierce waves from the blacktop parking lot, intensifying the scent of motor oil and rotting garbage that permeated the area.
Chaos ruled the front office. Chantal had never been in the place when the desk wasn’t littered with mounds of papers and fast-food wrappers, the phones weren’t ringing off the hook and the scent of burnt coffee, sweat and fear didn’t saturate the place.
A large bulletin board sporting mug shots of the people who had jumped bail and not made their court appearances covered one wall. Skips, as they were referred to in the business, were the people Chantal and her fellow bail-enforcement agents hunted.
Monica Hyatt sat behind the only desk in the room and she waggled two fingers in greeting at Chantal as she continued talking into the phone. As usual, she wasn’t the only one in the room.
Two other bounty hunters played cards at a table in the corner and a pizza-delivery boy stood impatiently waiting for somebody to pay him for the pizzas that teetered precariously on the edge of Monica’s desk.
“Hey, Carol,” James Walker, one of the card players, greeted her. “Heard Coleman trumped you Saturday night.” He and Brian Cooke, the other card player, laughed.
“I’m glad you two are so amused,” she replied and walked over to the wall to see if any new photos had been put up since Friday when she’d last been in the office. There were two and she pulled a notepad from her purse and wrote down their names and all the pertinent information about their crimes.
“Honey, I’d never have done anything like that to you,” James said.
Chantal raised one of her blond eyebrows to gaze at the older man. “James, you’d cuff your own mother and bring her in if you thought a fee was involved.”
She turned back to Monica and motioned toward the inner-office door. “Is he in?” she mouthed. Monica nodded and indicated she should go on in. Chantal knocked on the door, then pushed it open.
Big Joey Barlow stood less than five feet tall and weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, but he had the attitude, the aggression and the guts of a man four times his size. The biggest mistake people made with Joey was to underestimate him because of his stature.
“Just turn yourself in, Pete,” Joey said into the phone as he gestured Chantal into a chair in front of his desk. “If I have to send one of my people after you I can’t guarantee things won’t get ugly.”
As Joey alternately cajoled and threatened whoever was on the receiving end of the call, Chantal sank into the chair opposite the desk and waited.
In the eight months that Chantal had been working for Joey she’d found him to be a generous, kind man unless you crossed him, then all bets were off.
“Just get your ass in here,” Joey yelled into the receiver, then slammed it down and grabbed a bottle of antacid tablets from the desktop. He popped two of the chalky tablets into his mouth and chewed feverishly.
“Some days I think I should get out of this business, sell it and spend the rest of my days living on a beach somewhere and sipping drinks with those pretty little umbrellas stuck in them.”
Chantal smiled at her boss. “You’d go crazy with boredom within a month and use one of those umbrella toothpicks to put yourself out of your misery.”
He laughed. “You’re probably right. This business is in my blood.” He reared back in his chair and gazed at her with his intelligent brown eyes. “So, you in here to bitch?”
She frowned. “Why would I bitch?”
“Two words. Luke Coleman.”
Chantal sighed in exasperation. “What did the man do? Take an ad out in the paper?”
“He came in here Saturday night and explained to me what had happened so I’d have a heads-up if you had a beef.”
Chantal bristled with irritation. “I’m not a crybaby or a tattletale. I’d had no intention of even mentioning it to you,” she replied.
“If I thought you were either, I wouldn’t have hired you,” Joey replied.
“I just wanted to check in. I see we’ve got a couple of new glamour shots on the wall.”
“Yeah, mostly penny-ante stuff.” Joey pulled a big cigar from his top desk drawer. He stuck it into his mouth, but didn’t light it. “I’m much more interested in a phone call I got a little while ago from my source close to the DA’s office.”
Chantal leaned forward. “About what?”
Joey frowned and his eyes narrowed, giving him a dangerous look that only a fool would fail to see. “According to my source, Marcus Willowby failed to make his noon check-in with the authorities.”
Chantal checked her watch. “But that was over an hour ago.”
“Nothing official has come down. His lawyer is supposedly on top of it. He’s sure it’s nothing more than a monitor glitch of some kind.”
“You’ll let me know what you find out?”
“Honey, if that pervert tries to skip out on me, I’ll call in every bounty hunter I know, every marker I’m owed, to see that bastard’s balls tied to the highest tree.” There was a soft menace in his tone, a menace that made her believe all the rumors she’d heard about him.
Joey leaned back in his chair and his frown deepened. “I didn’t feel good about this from the very beginning. I should have told them to go to another bail bondsman.”
“Why did they have to use a bail bondsman at all?” she asked. “I thought the Willowbys had more money than Trump.”
“Just because you got a lot of money on paper doesn’t mean you have a lot of ready cash. Willowby was arrested on a Saturday night and apparently he couldn’t get his hands on ready cash right away. He didn’t want to spend a minute in jail so he contacted me. And now this.” He scowled.
“Has any of this made the local news?” she asked as her thoughts shifted to Belinda. If her friend got wind of this, she’d be beyond distraught.
“I don’t know, but I’d doubt it, since nothing official has been announced yet.”
Chantal stood. “I’ve got to run. Let me know as soon as you know anything about Willowby.”
“Will do,” Joey replied.
Minutes later as Chantal drove toward home, she thought of the man who was her boss. Rumor had it that years ago Joey had been engaged to a beautiful woman. A week before their wedding she was killed by a drunk driver who had half a dozen DUI arrests on his record. Joey went crazy. He hunted the man down and three days later beat him to death with his bare hands.
Joey went to prison for ten years. With his physical stature alone, prison should have been hell for the man, but Joey had not only survived, he’d thrived. He’d come out of prison with a zeal to right the wrongs of his past, and thus Big Joey’s Bail Bonds was born.
Before Chantal had gotten into bounty hunting, she, like so many others, had a romanticized view of the business. She’d thought bounty hunters were honorable men fighting for justice and righting the wrongs of an inadequate legal system.
In truth it was a business shadowed with darkness. Perhaps there were some honorable men, but there were also men drawn to bounty hunting by their own propensity for violence and power and control.
By the time she pulled into her driveway her thoughts were back on Belinda. She knew the emotional investment Belinda had in seeing Marcus Willowby tried and convicted for his crimes. She also knew Belinda had no support system other than Chantal.
Belinda was the cliché of the poor little rich girl. She had no siblings and her parents had always been more interested in traveling than in their only daughter. Belinda had been raised by a variety of nannies and had never connected with the people who had given her life.
Sometimes Chantal thought Belinda had been drawn to her because of the relationship Chantal had with her own parents. Katherine and Sam, while he’d been alive, were loving, caring people who always had time for their only child.
Belinda had loved spending time at Chantal’s house when they’d been growing up, and she’d mourned the death of Sam almost as deeply as Chantal and her mother had.
Chantal and Belinda had spent many hours discussing the differences between their parents. Belinda insisted that she thought it was because her parents had been born wealthy and Chantal’s parents had made their money.
Inside the house, Chantal went directly to her office. She sat behind her desk and turned on the television with the remote control. She channel-surfed, seeking any news report on the Willowby trial.
Since the case had gone to the jury late Friday afternoon. Marcus wouldn’t have been required to show up in court today unless a verdict had come down. However, he was required to wear a monitoring device and check in with the authorities at specific predetermined times during the day and evening.
There could be a hundred innocent reasons why he had missed his noon check-in or there could be one reason why he hadn’t…and that was because he’d run.
When she found nothing on the news, she turned on her computer and went to the Web site devoted to the trial. It was run by a group that identified itself only as Women Against Rape and had sprung to life the day after Willowby had been arrested.
The headline across the first page read: Willowby on the Run?
The provocative headline wasn’t substantiated by the blurb beside it, which indicated only that Willowby had missed a check-in and his lawyer had assured the authorities it was some sort of technological glitch. She shut down the computer, picked up the phone and dialed Belinda’s number.
Margaret, the Carlyles’ housekeeper, answered the phone on the second ring. “Hi, Margaret, it’s Chantal. Is Belinda there?”
“Ms. Belinda is resting.”
It wasn’t unusual for Belinda to nap during the day, but Chantal needed to speak to her friend, needed to find out if Belinda had gotten word about Willowby. “Could you get her on the phone? I really need to speak with her.”
“Just a moment.”
Chantal tapped her sculptured nails on the top of her desk as she waited for Belinda, hoping that her friend hadn’t seen the Web site, had no idea that there was even the most remote possibility that Willowby had fled the jurisdiction.
“Ms. Chantal, I can’t get her awake and there’s an empty pill bottle next to her bed.” Margaret’s voice held a frightening urgency.
“Call 911 and tell them to take her to St. Luke’s! I’ll be there as soon as possible.” Damn. The minute Big Joey had told her about Willowby’s missed check-in, she’d been afraid that Belinda might get word of it and do something stupid.
Chantal jumped out of her chair, grabbed her purse and headed for the door.
As she drove to St. Luke’s Hospital, her heart beat a frantic rhythm. This wasn’t the first time Belinda had done something stupid. Twice before she’d taken an overdose of pills.
“Damn it, Belinda,” she murmured. The thought of losing her created an ache inside Chantal’s chest. Belinda was more sister than friend. Belinda was the keeper of secrets, Chantal’s partner in joy and sorrow and she couldn’t imagine not having her best friend in her life.
By the time Chantal arrived at the hospital, Belinda had already been taken into the emergency room. “I’m here for Belinda Carlyle,” Chantal said to the receptionist.
“And you are?”
“Her sister, Chantal.” She knew the only way to get information was to pose as an immediate family member.
“If you’ll just have a seat in the waiting room I’ll let them know you’re here.”
Chantal sank into one of the chairs and tried to still the rapid beat of her heart. Thank God she’d decided to call Belinda. She prayed they had found her in time.
“Nine-hundred-count sheets, anything by Armani, chocolate-covered strawberries.” As the stress built up inside her, she began her mantra beneath her breath.
