The Hinky Bearskin Rug Read online

  The Hinky Bearskin Rug

  Hinky Chicago Book Three

  Jennifer Stevenson

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Edition

  September 17, 2013

  ISBN: 978 1 61138 288 4

  Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Stevenson

  Dedication

  For my babe, Rich

  Chapter One

  Jewel Heiss sat white-knuckled in the back seat of her aged Tercel with her ex-con-artist partner in front and her sex demon at the wheel. It was a steamy Chicago Monday in late summer. They were headed for the Eleventh Ward, responding to a consumer complaint. This one had come down from the Fifth Floor. The complainant had gone to her alderman, and her alderman, knowing what was good for him, had brought it straight to da mayor, and from there it trickled down to Jewel’s Hinky Division.

  Today’s mission was to make the consumer’s problem go away, without publicity. That, and to get out of this car alive.

  Jewel sat in back with the files, so that Clay could take the risk of a head-on with Randy at the wheel. Randy’s model for driving was obviously a Hollywood chase scene. He had flair.

  “Here’s the turn. Jesus, Randy, slow down!”

  Wordlessly, Randy slewed the Tercel into a squealing halt.

  Jewel put a hand on her throat. “That was way too exciting. I hope I didn’t pee my pants.” If it hadn’t been ninety degrees in the shade, she’d have been ice-cold with terror.

  In the rear-view mirror she caught Randy smiling at her. “I’ll wager that you had no notion you could get such performance from this vehicle.”

  “Clay, you’re supposed to teach him how to drive like a normal person, not a cop show rerun.”

  Clay showed her an innocent face over the back of the front seat. “Well, we’re sort of cops.”

  “Sort of! As in, not really. In fact, where traffic is concerned, we’re not cops at all, and we do not get to drive like idiots. Ever.”

  Clay made his pouty lips into an O and twinkled at her through his shaggy blond bangs. “I think he’s doing very well.”

  “It’s sabotage. He’ll be busted and grounded within a week of getting his license. Which we cannot afford.”

  “Getting busted and grounded is the best education for a new driver. Worked for me when I was sixteen,” Clay said. “Hammers home the rules.”

  “Which you ignore for the fun of it,” she said. “The difference being, you were a citizen on a learner’s permit, and Randy can’t even get a learner’s permit until he has an identity. You were going to fake up ID for him, remember?” Jewel hated to think how many laws she was breaking, the longer Randy stayed in her life. “If he gets busted, he’ll be deported.” Did the Immigration and Naturalization Service have a special way of dealing with hinky wetbacks? She shuddered. “He could end up in hinky Guantanamo.” She didn’t know which would be worse. “For nasty experiments.”

  “No, he won’t. He’ll end up in a bed somewhere,” Clay said, which didn’t reassure her at all.

  “I shall be on my guard,” Randy said, his smile gone now. Randy had once been an English lord — pedigree, gold, estates, and all — and then he was turned into a sex demon by a mistress who thought he needed basic nooky training, and then, two hundred years later, he’d turned up in Jewel’s life. Gorgeous, arrogant, now brilliant in bed, dirt broke, and unemployable in the twenty-first century.

  Clay had turned up in her life at the same time. It was a testimony to his con-man skills that he was now her partner and not behind bars. Jewel never worried about Clay.

  But the competition thing worried her.

  It was barely seven o’clock, but the complainant had a funeral to go to that morning, and she’d insisted on speaking to an investigator. Jewel led the team up to the house, a solid red brick two-story bungalow with beautiful stained glass windows in front, and knocked on door.

  “Best behavior,” Jewel said sternly. The door opened. She said, “Mrs. Othmar?”

  A tough-looking old battle-ax in a long black cocktail dress looked her up and down. “I am.”

  “I’m Senior Investigator Heiss with the Chicago Department of Consumer Services. We’re responding to a complaint you made through your alderman.”

  Mrs. Othmar said stuffily, “I made no complaint.”

  Oookay. Jewel backed a step and checked the house number over the door. “Pardon me, ma’am, but it came down to us from the mayor himself. We take your concerns seriously.”

  Mrs. Othmar seemed about to shut the door in their faces and then she didn’t. “Come in.”

  She led Jewel’s team into a dim, cool living room full of antiques. She thawed when she got a load of Randy’s dark blue Armani. “Please sit down.”

  Jewel took a deep breath. “According to our report, you told your alderman that a man from the Department of Inspectional Services came to your door two days ago and asked to see your smoke detectors and electrical boxes. He found something unusual in your basement—”

  “There’s nothing down there,” Mrs. Othmar snapped, and Jewel thought, Uh-huh. Not any more.

  “And when he found it, he told you he would condemn your property if you did not remediate within ten days. He also said that remediation probably wouldn’t work.”

  “He said it would cost ninety thousand dollars!” Mrs. Othmar said indignantly. “That’s ridiculous! Even asbestos remediation doesn’t cost that much.”

  Patiently Jewel resumed, “Then he suggested that since you couldn’t afford remediation and it wouldn’t work anyway, you should sell your property to a man he knew who buys such houses and remediates them on the gamble.”

  “Search my house,” Mrs. Othmar said in a shrill voice. “You won’t find anything.”

  Randy had a faraway expression. Clay tapped his knee and raised his eyebrows. Randy shook his head.

  Jewel said, “That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Othmar. We’ll take your word for it.”

  That made Mrs. Othmar blink.

  My sex demon is a walking hinky detector. He would know if there was anything on the premises.

  “Do you happen to recall the man’s name? The man who visited your home? Or the name of the man he said would buy it?”

  Mrs. Othmar was still blinking. “I think Joseph? Samuel? Something biblical. It was on a patch on his windbreaker. The windbreaker was blue,” she added helpfully.

  “Did he show you any identification?”

  “Naturally. I insisted.” More blinks. “But unfortunately I don’t recall—”

  “How about the guy who buys hinky — who buys houses?”

  “He gave me a card for that man. I’ve been looking for it.”

  Jewel’s hopes collapsed. “If you find it, will you phone me? I’d like to see it.” Mrs. Othmar still seemed upset. “Do you happen to know if he visited any other homes on your block?”

  “I asked around,” Mrs. Othmar said. “He hadn’t. That’s why I complained to my alderman. It was as if he chose me to bilk.” She was plenty mad about that. “He must have expected a fool.”

  “Well, he knows better now,” Jewel said.

  That pleased her. “Of course I complained immediately.”

  It took twenty more minutes to get out of there.

  On the way to the car Jewel said, “She got rid of the pocket zone after she complained and before we got here.”

  “Ten four,” Randy said.

  She socked him on the arm. “I’m cutting off your television privileges until you can drive sanely.” She got them onto Lake Shore Drive. A faint haze of pink smog hung over the Drive, promising a doozy of a morning traffic jam.

  “What is a pocket zone, anyway?” Clay said. “Other than som
ething the city can condemn your house for.”

  “A pocket zone is a little patch of unreality. A — a hinky spot.” She still found it hard to say the word magic.

  “How big a spot?”

  “Depends. They say Pittsburgh started with a pocket zone on a single seat on a commuter train. They don’t know if some guy died there, or if a teenager had her baby there, or what. It spread through the train, and they think somehow the train spread it across the city. Pocket zones formed in places along the rail lines and the expressways. Nobody knows for sure, and the people who know the most are behind the yellow-striped barricades.”

  “That makes it kind of tricky to gather information, doesn’t it?” Clay drawled.

  “Don’t get me started on how the feds ‘fix’ things.”

  “So the city will condemn a place with a pocket zone on it?”

  “First I’ve heard about it. Inspectional Services should have reported it directly to me.” She frowned out the windshield at two teenagers in Grant Park who were holding up lighters and giggling, trying to coax a pigeon to bring a cigarette butt close enough to light it. “But if it’s hinky, it stays hinky, doesn’t it? Randy? You didn’t feel anything on her premises?”

  He shook his head.

  “So somebody has figured out how to, what? Fake a pocket zone? Let’s report to Ed. I need coffee.”

  They were stopped dead at the light at Jackson Boulevard.

  “I thought I was to drive,” Randy whined. “How may I acquire a license without practice?”

  “Oooh, all right.” Out of misguided pity, she switched seats with him. While she made notes on her clipboard, she overheard snatches of conversation from the front seat.

  “Darn, she’s moody. You didn’t stork her, did you?” Clay said to Randy. “Go straight here. You can get off at Randolph.”

  “Give her a slip on the shoulder? No.”

  “You’re awfully positive.”

  “A sex demon knows these things. I see every part of her.”

  “Too much information. Turn right here. Wait, wait! Wait for the light!” The car jerked to a stop. “Now you can go.” The car jerked forward. “Wait for this guy to turn.” The car jerked to a stop again. Clay called from the front seat, “Stay calm back there! We’re just building a little right-of-way awareness!”

  Jewel shut the file, laid it on the car seat beside her, and covered her eyes.

  She wasn’t calm. She was jonesing for coffee, tired, hungry, annoyed, afraid for her life, and, under all of that, horny. Maybe it was because she was sitting in a car with two men she’d had sex with recently. Clay claimed he didn’t want to mess up their work partnership by sleeping with her, but he’d had two shots at it on their last undercover case. He wasn’t bad, either. And he never, ever stopped competing with Randy.

  Randy, of course, did her with mind-blowing magical sex-demon tricks every single night.

  For some reason, dating two guys was exhausting her. Since she’d hit the city she’d dated uncountable men, bedded and dumped them. When that got scary she stopped, and, just when the pressure had built to the internal combustion point, she’d found Randy and rescued him from sexual slavery to a brass bed. And now he was her sex slave. Though Jewel might as well be his slave, since he lived with her, worked with her, and haunted her dreams.

  Add a manipulative sneakypants for a partner. Put them all in a car. Clamp the lid on and shake—

  The car bounced heavily. She bit her tongue. “Ow!”

  “My apologies!” Randy called.

  “Be careful!”

  The car hit a pot hole. Jewel almost swallowed her tongue.

  “My apologies!”

  Chapter Two

  By eight they had made it to the Kraft Building. Jewel left Randy with the car and dragged her butt and her partner into the Department of Consumer Services staff room, only to find every one of her colleagues plastered against the east windows.

  “Gimme the field glasses.”

  “C’mon, I saw them first!”

  “There goes her shirt! Hoo boy!”

  “Me, me, let me see!”

  Clay strolled up to the nearest peeper, who happened to be their boss, and calmly took the field glasses out of his hands. “Where are they?”

  “Hey!” Ed said, turning.

  “Eighth floor of the Darth Vader building,” Digby said, indicating the seventy-story black-glass condo monster across Lake Shore Drive, which had earned its name by looming dark and ugly against the shoreline.

  “Third time this week,” Sayers said.

  “You people are disgusting.” Embarrassed for the anonymous naked people in the Darth Vader window, Jewel turned away.

  She poured herself a cup of stale coffee and took a cinnamon cow plop off the pile of pastry next to the coffeepot. The coffee sucked, as usual, but the plate-sized pastry disk was so sensuously cinnamony, so addictively crumbly and crunchy, it made her swoon.

  “Gimme those.” Ed snatched the field glasses back from Clay and trained them on the black curve of the Darth Vader. “Damn. Those rings in her nipples?”

  “You wouldn’t catch me piercing myself. I fainted when they did my ears,” Britney said.

  “Ouch,” Tookhah agreed.

  “Pussy,” Lolly said.

  “That’s harassment,” Finbow grunted, cupping his hands around his eyes and fogging up the window.

  “Girls can call each other pussy. You gotta watch your mouth,” Merntice said, folding her opera glasses and tucking them in her cardigan.

  “Jewel, you gotta see this,” Jason called.

  Jewel yawned. “I don’t have to watch, Roller Skates. At least I know what sex looks like.”

  “Clay leave you any sleepytime?” Britney said. “Or was it that hunky Englishman?”

  “Hunk,” Jewel said. Clay looked at her with annoyance in his face. “I don’t sleep with my partner,” she added, putting out her tongue at him. Much.

  Ed stuck the field glasses up in the air with both hands. “Jesus mother Mary, don’t you women have any discretion?” He came away from the window, glaring at Clay. “Can’t you do nothin’ about her mouth?”

  Jewel looked at her boss with patience. “You are so lucky I am not recording this conversation.”

  “Get in my office,” Ed said.

  In his office he slapped a file across his desk to Jewel. “That shit out there.” He made an Italian gesture with thumb and two fingers. “Been going on all over town. Some broad from a real estate company complained anonymously over the weekend to three-one-one,” he said, referring to the city’s hot line for consumer concerns. “They had a orgy in her office four days ago. She thinks the boss put Viagra in the coffee urn.”

  Oh, brother. Why did hinky stuff so often come coupled with sex? “This is not my problem.”

  Ed looked at her under his bushy eyebrows. “She says people were flying around the conference room naked.”

  Jewel’s heart sank. “So the boss put Viagra and LSD in the coffee urn.”

  “Nope. Lab test came back negative.”

  “Actually flying,” Jewel said.

  “It’s hinky,” Ed said flatly. “Yours. We wouldn’t of taken the case at all, only the PD was in there that very day for a disorderly. No charges filed.”

  “Why not?” Clay said.

  She said, “Yeah, if the cops thought it was worth coming out for, why didn’t they send the case over at the time? How come I get it stale?”

  “The owners of the company are connected.”

  “Oh, God.” Jewel groaned. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Go in undercover. Sniff around. You find anything beyond this isolated incident, it’s your problem. Otherwise find out who filed the complaint and smooth her down, shut her up.”

  Jewel grumbled under her breath, but she took the file, feeling more cheerful. She’d been undercover twice in the past month and loved every minute of it.

  Ed leaned forward. “Now, what did y
ou get in the Eleventh Ward?”

  “A wash,” Jewel said. “She doesn’t have a pocket zone and she never had a pocket zone and she wouldn’t know a pocket zone if it bit her on her Junior League heinie, but she’s thrilled to be of assistance to the Department.”

  “She give you any names?”

  “Nope.” Jewel tossed aside the orgy file. “What gets me is, it sounds like Inspectional Services really did pay her a visit. And they had the balls to diagnose a pocket zone and threaten to condemn her place within ten days, as if that was, like, Policy, which it totally is not. How come I never heard about it?”

  The Hinky Policy was, “Don’t ask, don’t tell. Cope.” Jewel’s division enforced it.

  Ed said, “They’re in violation of Policy. All hinky investigation should come through your division. Trouble is, nobody talks about the Policy, so it kinda slid by so far.”

  “So it was a scammer with fake pocket zones,” she concluded. “But how can you fake that? And why?”

  “Money.” Clay shot Jewel a keen, blue-eyed glance under his bangs. “Somebody wants to buy that specific property cheap so he can sell it high.”

  Ed grunted. “And it’s a snap it ain’t his first victim. Mrs. Whatserface was just the toughest nut they met so far. If they keep at it, we’ll catch up with ’em.”

  Leafing through the file, Jewel said, “Any feds involved?”

  “Nope. But if we get too many pocket zones, even fake ones, the feds’ll find out, and the whole city could end up with a yellow-striped necktie. That would be bad,” Ed said heavily. “Only last week, they closed off four square blocks of Hollywood, California, best part of the tourist district.”

  Clay’s eyes widened. “That’s expensive real estate.”

  “So this means what?” Jewel said. “Somebody covets Mrs. Othmar’s lobelia bed?”

  “Da mayor wants it worked out on the quiet. Since the key is the hinky stuff, you’re elected.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Let me look into it,” Clay said. “I’m good at following paper trails.”

  Ed nodded. “At’s what I figured. Both of youse can track the pocket zones, and Heiss can take the orgy thing.”