And as I punched and sweated and kept my fists up, I knew that fighting Danny wasn't the answer. Luckily, there were other ways to fight back.
Chapter Five
After a long shower and a few phone calls to some friends working in the federal government, I was at El Torito Bar and Grill in Brea - just a hop, skip and a jump from my hotel.
I was wearing jeans and a turtle neck sweater. Not because it was cold outside, but because I looked so damn cute in turtle neck sweaters. The stiff-looking man sitting across from me seemed to think so, too. Special Agent Greg Lomax, lead investigator with the FBI, was in full flirt mode, and it was all I could do to keep him on track. Maybe I shouldn't have looked so cute, after all.
Damn my cuteness.
El Torito is loud and open. The loudness and openness was actually of benefit for anyone having a private conversation, which was probably why Greg had chosen it.
Personally, I found the noise level here a bit overwhelming, but then again, I'm also just a sweet and sensitive woman.
It was either that or my supernaturally acute hearing that quite literally picked up every clattering dish, scraping fork, and far ruder sounds best not described. And, of course, picked up the babble of ceaseless conversations. If I wanted to I could generally make out any individual conversation within any room. Handy for a P.I., trust me. Granted, I couldn't hear through walls or anything, but sounds that most people could hear, well, I could just hear that much better.
"Lots of people over at HUD talk very highly of you," he said.
"I gave them the best seven years of my life," I said.
"And then you came down with some sort of, what, rare skin disease or something?"
"Or something," I said.
"Now you work private," he said.
"Yes. A P.I."
"How's that working out?"
"It's good to be my own boss," I said. "Now I give myself weekly pay raises and extra long coffee breaks."
He grinned. "That's cute. Anyway, I was told to tell you what I could. So ask away. If I can't talk about something, or I just don't know the answer, I'll tell you."
We were sitting opposite each other in a far booth in the far corner of the bar. I was sipping some house zinfandel, and he was drinking a Jack and Coke. White wine and water were about the only two liquids I could consume. Well, that and something else.
Just thinking about that something else immediately turned my stomach.
I said, "So do you think the crash was an accident?"
"You get right to the point," he said. "I like that."
"Must be the investigator in me."
He nodded, drank some more Jack and Coke. "No, this wasn't an accident. We know that much."
"How do you know that?"
He smiled. "We just know."
"Okay. So how did the plane crash?"
"All signs point to sabotage."
"Sabotage how?"
He was debating how much to tell me. I could almost see the wheels working behind his flirtatious eyes. No doubt he was computing the amount of information he could still give me and still not give up any real government secrets, and yet leave me satisfied enough to sleep with him tonight. A complex formula for sure.
Men are better at math than they realize.
He said, "Someone planted a small explosive in the rudder gears. The pilot heard the explosion, reported it immediately, and then reported that he had lost all control of the plane. Ten minutes later the plane crashed into the side of the San Bernardino Mountains."
"And everyone on board was killed?"
"Yes. Instantly."
"Is there any reason to believe that these key witnesses were killed to keep them from testifying?"
"There is every reason to believe that. It's the only motive we have." He drank the rest of his Jack and Coke. "Except there's one problem: our number one suspect was in jail at the time of the crash."
The waiter came by and dropped off another drink for Greg. Perhaps the waiters here at El Torito Bar and Grill were psychic. Greg picked up his drink and sipped it.
"It would take a lot of pull to sabotage a military plane," I said.
"Not as much as you might think," said Greg. "This was a DC-12, and the contract the government has with them stipulates that the makers of the planes get to use their own mechanics."
"So the mechanic was a civilian."
"Yes."
"Have you found the mechanic?"
"Yeah," he said. "Dead in his apartment in L.A."
"How did he die?"
"Gunshot in the mouth."
"Suicide?"
"We're working on it."
I followed up with this some more, but Greg seemed to have reached the limit of what he was willing to tell me.
Greg motioned to my half-finished drink. "You going to finish that?"
"Probably not."
"You want to head over to my place and, you know, talk some more about what it's like giving yourself raises?"
I said, "When you say 'talk' don't you really mean boff my brains out?"
He grinned and reddened. I reached over and patted his superheated face.
"You'll just have to give yourself a raise tonight," I said, and left him my card. "Call me if you hear anything new."
"But I live right around the cor - "
"Sorry," I said. "But your calculations were off."
I smiled sweetly and left.
Chapter Six
We were at the beach, sitting on the wooden deck of a lifeguard tower. The sign on the lifeguard tower said no sitting on the wooden deck.
"We're breaking the law," I said.
Kingsley Fulcrum turned his massive head toward the sign above us. As he did so, some of the moonlight caught his cheek bones and strong nose and got lost somewhere in the shaggy curls that hung on his beefy shoulders.
"We are risking much to be here," he said. "If we get caught, our super secret identities may be discovered."
I said, "Especially if I show up invisible in the mug shot."
Kingsley shook his head.
"You vampires are weird," he said.
"This coming from a guy who howls at every full moon."
He chuckled lightly as a small, cold wind scurried over my bare feet. Before us, the dark ocean stretched black and eternal. Small, frothing whitecaps slapped the shore. In the far distance, twinkling on the curve of the horizon, were the many lights of Catalina Island. Between us and Catalina were the much brighter lights of a dozen or so oil rigs. The beach itself was mostly quiet, although two or three couples were currently smooching on blankets here and there. They probably thought they were mostly hidden under the cover of darkness. They probably hadn't accounted for a vampire with built-in night vision watching them. A gyrating couple, about two hundred feet away up the beach, might have been doing the nasty.