I grimaced. “Where’s the crime scene?”
She reluctantly released Morales’s hand and turned toward me. “Your other colleague is already up there dusting for prints.”
Morales shot her a smile that had a little too much dimple to be professional. “Can you show us the way, ma’am?”
“Of course. This way, please.” With that she turned and sashayed back toward the elevators. I couldn’t keep my eyes from wandering to the black ruffles and the twin red seams that licked her legs from ankle to ass.
An elbow nudged my ribs. I glanced up to see Morales shooting me a pair of raised brows, as if to ask what the story was. I shrugged and shook my head. I wasn’t about to explain my history with Shayla King right in front of the bitch. There’d be time enough for that later. For now, I needed to focus on the case.
“Ready?” Shayla called in a syrupy voice from the elevators. Gregor stood in the rear of the car like a statue.
“To the sex chambers,” I said under my breath.
Morales’s smile was back. “Oh goody.”
Chapter Five
Once we were in the elevator, Morales started in. “On which floor did the robbery occur?”
Priestess Shayla turned toward him, which meant her back was to me. “The fourth.” She turned to me. “So, Kate, you talked to John lately?”
My jaw clenched so hard I think I felt a couple of teeth crack. “No.” I tried to talk to John Volos as rarely as possible.
She pouted. “That’s too bad. He really was so upset after you left.” A dramatic pause. “Luckily I was there to console him.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, keeping my tone bored. “How much did he pay you to be his consolation prize?”
“John Volos doesn’t have to pay for sex.” She laughed. “Unless you count all the orgasms he gave me.”
A warm hand touched mine—a gentle reminder from Morales to keep my cool.
I pushed a hot breath through my nostrils. “Did the intruder come through the lobby?”
She pulled back and pressed her lips together like she was savoring the flavor of victory. “All of our visitors who registered at the desk last night have been cleared.”
“Cleared how?” Morales asked.
“We have security cameras in all of the treatment rooms. We were able to trace when each client entered and left the rooms, as well as when they exited the front doors, since there’s only one entrance and exit. Everyone who arrived through the front door last night also left through it, and they did it without any detours to the fourth floor. In addition, the camera in the foyer shows the floor readout on top of the elevator. Not once last night did it go to the top floor.”
My eyebrows shot up and I glanced at Morales, who was frowning. “Roof?” he asked.
She nodded. “We believe so. All of the buildings on this block are connected. It would not be difficult for a person to jump from roof to roof.”
“How do you know they didn’t go to another floor and just take the steps to the fourth?” I asked.
At that point we’d almost reached the third floor. Shayla stepped forward quickly and punched the button. The elevator doors didn’t open. “All the floors require special key and code to access.” She held up a key card and slid it into the slot. She turned her back, and the keypad beeped as she entered numbers. Two seconds later the doors whooshed open.
The elevators opened to a dark hallway lit only by dim red lights. It stretched out from the elevator like a long throat. Several doors led off the center hall. We stepped out of the car at Shayla’s insistence. “It is possible without a key card. But you cannot enter the fourth floor without one. Which is why we think they entered from the roof.”
She beckoned us with a hand as she started down the hallway. About halfway down, a door opened. Another woman in the skull makeup emerged. She had long blond hair, but instead of a corset she wore only a thin silk robe bearing a red hexagram in the center of a spiral. The spiral represented the kundalini energy of the root chakra. The hexagram, however, is an alchemical symbol for the unification of opposites—a nod to Aphrodite’s dual nature.
When the whore saw us, she hesitated in the doorway.
Shayla backtracked. “It’s okay, Priestess Fiona. They’re here to find the thief who threatened the sanctity of our temple.”
The woman instantly bowed her head and pointed her gaze to the floor. With a quick nod, she ducked back inside the room. But not before I caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man getting pegged by another skull-faced priestess wearing a strap-on. By the time the door shut, I felt like I’d been punched in the face.
“What’s wrong, Detective?” Shayla said, laughter slithering through her words.
I shook my head. She thought I was being a prude, but the sex hadn’t shocked me. Any innocence I’d come to the force with—which wasn’t much—had dissolved within a week on the job. Working the Cauldron was a crash course in all the depraved shit humans do to one another. But I was fine letting Shayla believe I was a prude. Because the alternative was to admit that the scene I’d just witnessed brought back a memory from my childhood. One I’d forgotten—or suppressed.
A different door had opened at the wrong moment. A different woman, one I knew all too well, in memento mori makeup had engaged in a sexual act with a different man I didn’t know. That time, the woman had quickly pushed the man’s face away from her crotch. The candles the priestess had lit for the ritual glistened off the wetness on his face. As I stood in shock, staring up at them, my mother strode to the door in the nude and slammed the door in my face.
I’d been five years old at the time.
Just like that door slamming twenty-two years earlier, I shut down the memory. I’d come to terms with my mother’s profession a long time ago—long before she’d died, even. The memory was only coming up now because we were in a temple similar to the one where she worked.
“Prospero?” Morales nudged me.
I looked up. The teasing smile I expected wasn’t there. Instead his stubbled face held an expression of genuine concern. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I guess I had, in a way. “Yeah, I’m good.” I looked over at Shayla. “Where are the stairs?”
Her smug look made me want to punch that makeup off her face. She thought she’d somehow discovered a weakness. She was wrong, though. Weakness came from shame, and I was not ashamed of my mom or my past.