Straight Silver

A strong hand clasped my shoulder and spun me face-to-face with my favorite local law enforcer. Serras’s dark gaze came down hard on the bruised line of flesh across my throat. He shook me a little as he muttered a curse.

Before I could answer, that mouth came down on mine. The kiss was as hard as the man, without a touch of tenderness that would have had me pushing him away and sorely disappointed.

We indulged ourselves for thirty seconds, maybe a minute, his hands fisting into the length of my hair and my body meeting his, sensation for sensation. When it was over, I released him as suddenly as he’d grabbed me. I took a ragged, dissatisfied breath, knowing I would yearn for more for a long time….

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

You won’t be able to resist a single one of our May books. We have a lineup so shiver inducing that you may forget summer’s almost here!

 Executive Bodyguard is the second book in Debra Webb’s exciting new trilogy, THE ENFORCERS. For the thrilling conclusion, be sure you pick up Man of Her Dreams in June.

 Amanda Stevens concludes her MATCHMAKERS UNDERGROUND series with Matters of Seduction. And the Montana McCalls are back, in B.J. Daniels’s Ambushed!

 We also have two special premiers for you. Kathleen Long debuts in Harlequin Intrigue with Silent Warning, a chilling thriller. And LIPSTICK LTD., our special promotion featuring sexy, sassy sleuths, kicks off with Darlene Scalera’s Straight Silver.

 A few of your favorite Harlequin Intrigue authors have some special books you’ll love. Rita Herron’s A Breath Away is available this month from HQN Books. And, in June, Joanna Wayne’s The Gentlemen’s Club is being published by Signature Spotlight.

Harlequin Intrigue brings you the best in breathtaking romantic suspense with six fabulous books to enjoy. Please write to us—we love to hear from our readers.

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

Straight Silver

Darlene Scalera

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Thanks to all, much too numerous to name,

that have taken me here to this tenth book.

With gratitude.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A native New Yorker, Darlene graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University with a degree in public communications. She worked in a variety of fields, including telecommunications and public relations, before devoting herself full-time to fiction writing.

A charter member of the Saratoga Chapter of Romance Writers of America, she served on its board for five years. She is also a member of the Capital Region Chapter of Romance Writers of America. She has presented writing workshops at national and regional writers’ conferences as well as at local universities and colleges.

She lives happily ever after in upstate New York with her husband, Jim, and their two teenage children, J.J. and Ariana. Visit her at www.darlenescalera.com.

Books by Darlene Scalera

HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

739—UNMARKED MAN

848—STRAIGHT SILVER

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Silver LeGrande—Born with a stripper’s name and a brick-house bod to fulfill her certain destiny, she’s left the daily bump and grind to go community college coed. But when someone strangles her former colleague, and no one seems to care, Silver turns from the classroom to the only cop she knows who will give a damn.

Detective Alexi Serras—The last thing he needed was a partner. Especially a five-foot-eleven ex-stripper with a yard of crayon-red hair and attitude to match her assets.

Billie West—Owner of Memphis’s most infamous nightclub, Billie ran a clean joint, keeping the customers and the cops happy. Silver had been her top draw, and Billie had suspected it was only a matter of time before she came back to the club. But neither had imagined the reason would be murder.

Della Devine—By the time she was murdered, she was working the poles in a sleazy operation on the lower side.

Paul Chumsky—Resident pro at a country club for Memphis moneybags, Chumsky had a charm that kept him in the good graces of the club’s male members and in the firm beds of their wives. But the evening before she died he’d spent with Della Devine.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

I should have known better. No one gets away scot-free. Certainly not ex-exotic dancers. Not even ones with fifteen and a half community college credits and a legitimate chauffeur’s license. Auntie always said it had taken four generations of LeGrande women to produce another as tough as my Great-Great-Grandma Bettina “Brass Buttons” Mae. Four generations plus a thick-lipped midway worker from Quebec blind in the right eye, my momma’s weak knees for a foreign accent her legendary downfall. But as the officer pulled back the sheet on Della Devine, I feared not even the blood of four generations of LeGrande women and a one-eyed Canadian carny would save me this time.

Not that I hadn’t seen death. Before my breasts fully developed and my age advanced to legal level, I’d cashiered part-time at the Piggly Wiggly, and I was working on the morning Florence Sutton went in to use the public toilet and never came out. After a period of some patience, her acquaintance, Loris Martin, who the meaner folks in town liked to speculate was Flo’s unnatural lover, alerted the day manager. Fire trucks, police cruiser, ambulance came lights whirling, sirens wailing into the lot. The door was broken down, and there was Flo, dead as the Christmas hog come smoking season. Wilson Bintliff, Tipton County’s most eligible undertaker heard the call over his scanner and arrived in a less flashy but equally timely manner only to stand around with everyone else, tapping his polished Florsheims to the tune of “She’ll Be Coming around the Mountain.” Not much else could be done until the body was pronounced, but seeing it was now lunch hour, which Doc Flaherty and his fleshy nurse, Suzie Toomis, always spent with the answering machine on and their pants off, it was going to be a wait.

The rest room was yellow-taped off but if you snuck in behind the bakery counter and cranked your neck, you could get an eyeful of poor Flo. The more irreverent of us took a peek. Even in death Flo had a way of looking at you as if she’d smelled the silent fart you’d let at last Sunday’s service. Stood to reason the same people who whispered about Flo’s sexual partialities would add this comeuppance was well deserved, but I’d imagined a person had to do a lot more than flare her nostrils extrawide to deserve to pass away with her pantyhose around her knees in the public rest room of the Piggly Wiggly.

I looked down. Della stared straight up at me but saw nothing. Oh girl, what’d you do to deserve this?

“Cleaning lady found her next to the dumpster behind the club where she was working.”

“Billie’s?”

“No, the Oyster Club.”

I raised my gaze to Detective Alexi Serras. The Greek genes in his hard-boned face gave him an edge to stare strongly at any woman and get away with it. Except me. Corpses and cops made me cranky.

“Cleaning woman didn’t recognize her, but–” Serras lifted the middle of the sheet. “The tattoo jogged her memory.”

I looked at the rose-vined double D high on the buttock. Billie herself had had strict policies on body art and piercing along with other excesses of “tastefulness.” She’d approved Della’s choice, although made it well-known that in her opinion tattoos were for sailors and convicts.

“Cleaning woman remembered one of the day girls talking about a new girl at the club, working prime time. Della Devine. You were listed as the emergency contact in her employee file.”

Classic case of the blind leading the blind.

“It’s Della.”

He reached to draw the sheet over her face. I grabbed his wrist. Serras shot me a look that could have curdled cream. I held on. Great-Great-Grandma LeGrande would have been proud.

“Give me a moment, will ya.”

His expression went bland as if to say, “It’s your dime.” I let go of his wrist.

“She was working at the Oyster?” I asked. When I’d hung up my boa, Della had still been at Billie’s.

“For about three months, according to records at the club. When’s the last time you’d seen her?”

“Eight, nine months ago.” As an emergency contact, I stunk.

“How long did you know Ms. Devine?”

He said her name as if it’d been hers since birth. I’d noticed he had uttered my name, too, without the usual smirking skepticism, although in my case he would have been correct. Baptized Silver LeGrande, I was born with a stripper’s name and a body that past puberty clinched my destiny.

“About four years.” I’d been working the circuit seven years when I came to Billie’s. I’d developed a respectable following and feature status. Della had just been promoted from the floor to the poles. As soon as I’d heard the young girl’s tag, I’d known we’d get along fine. Baptismal advantage aside, I liked gals with the brass to call themselves Della Devine.

“We both worked at Billie’s.” The Oyster wasn’t as bad as some joints, but in the hierarchy of strip clubs, it wasn’t even close to Billie’s. Seems like Della had been working her way down the ladder. I looked at her still body. Looked like she’d gotten there.

“You know why she left Billie’s?” Serras asked.

A greenish tint above Della’s eye spoke of an old bruise. The new bruises along her collarbones said she’d struggled. The purple horizontal stripe across her throat said she’d lost.

“No.”

“You’re no longer employed at Billie’s, either?”

I’d left the daily bump and grind about a year ago and gone collegiate. Maybe that’s why Della had decided I could shimmy to an SOS with the best of them. She’d been wrong.

“Career change.”

Not even Della’s two-pack-a-day habit had etched any fine lines in her face yet. The skin was as smooth as a newborn’s butt with only a slight bluish undercast.

I leaned forward, drawn by a mark on Della’s throat more defined than the other signs of struggle.

“You’re no longer in the entertainment industry?”

“I go to community college.” Let Serras stick that in his Krispy Kreme. I moved in closer, outlining the mark without touching it. Force had branded the shape of a double D into the tender flesh of Della’s throat.

“You see this?”

“Double D,” Serras confirmed. “Bartender at the Oyster Club said she had this gold piece she used to slip on her G-string?”

“A gold double D. Kind of like a signature.” I straightened, looked Serras in the eyes. “Called it her lucky charm.”

Serras was clever enough not to raise an eyebrow.

“Did she have any unusual sexual practices?”

He was referring to the horizontal line across Della’s throat. Cut off the oxygen at the moment of climax and achieve the ultimate orgasm. Unless something or someone went wrong. Then it became a matter of finding a plausible explanation for the well-wishers at the wake.

“Scarfing wasn’t her style.”

“You sure?”

I wasn’t sure of anything at this point.

“Maybe it was someone else’s?” Serras ventured.

I narrowed my gaze. “That how you guys are going to write this off?”

Serras’s pupils dilated. He was getting interested now. He said nothing.

“This was more than a night of sexual fun and games gone awry.” I had just finished my second semester of English comp.

He looked at Della on her steel bed.

I waited until he lifted his gaze. I met the black in his eyes. “She was murdered.”

He played it cop cool. “There’ll be an autopsy.”

Way too much information before lunch.

“What about her family? She have anyone in the area?”

“Her younger brother was in the service. Last I knew he was stationed right near here at Fort Grant. She once mentioned a grandmother in Pittsburgh raised her. Never said what happened to her real parents.”

“She didn’t mention anyone else?”

I looked at Della’s pale lips. Most gals were only too happy to give you a blow-by-blow of how they’d been done wrong or hung out to dry–more times than not by their own flesh and blood, but not Della. She didn’t confide much, but she didn’t bitch, either. Grousing was not her style. She had dignity. If Jackie O had been a stripper, she would have been Della Divine.

“No.” I answered Serras.

“What about boyfriends?”

“Sure.”

“Anybody special?”

“Strippers don’t usually go steady.”

“How ’bout friends, enemies? Anyone stand out?”

I shook my head. I’d never have a career as an emergency contact.

“Ms. Devine have any problems with any of the other girls at Billie’s?”

I shook my head again, returning my gaze to the corpse. I remembered a bright blonde with fake breasts, a whole lotta leg and a corn-pone wholesomeness not usually associated with someone from Pittsburgh. Her specialty had been tassels. I felt lousy.

“What was her real name?” I asked Serras.

“Doris Mickel.”

I reached for the sheet and drew it up over her face.

Serras smoothed a wrinkle in the sheet, then slid Della/Doris back before stepping away from her. If he’d been the pencil-pushing type bucking for Administration, I’d have written the gesture off as anal. But it being not even noon yet and already too long a day, I decided to allow myself the delusion this cop might really care what happened to a twenty-seven-year-old stripper with a violet choker and green bruises for eye shadow.

“Got any other thoughts on what happened to her?” I wasn’t deluded enough to think he’d start spouting out theories, but my motto is “You Can’t Fault a Girl for Trying.”

“We’ll be investigating all possibilities.” He gestured for me to precede him out of the morgue.

I didn’t move. “Maybe someone was trying to rob the Oyster and Della got in the way?”

“How ’bout a cup of coffee, Ms. LeGrande?”

It was July in Memphis. Just breathing made you sweat. Officer Serras wanted more than to extend hospitality. I glanced at my Rolex knockoff. I was taking a few summer courses at the college, catching up on credits. “I’ve got Principles of Macroeconomics in ten minutes.”

Serras didn’t crack a smile. Della could have done worse for a homicide detective.

“Was she killed in the club, then dumped out back?” I probed.

This time Serras took my elbow, steering me toward the door.

“We’ll investigate all angles.”

“The bruises on her body, the pooling of blood suggest she was moved from the original crime scene.”

Serras glanced at me. I was bluffing, and he knew it, but it was a good bluff, and I sensed he liked my style.

“There’ll be a preliminary report filed later today. You can give me a call.”

I took his card. “Thanks.” I meant it.

“If you remember anything, think of something that might help us learn who did this to Ms. Devine, you can get in touch with me at that number or leave a message. I’ll get back to you.”

He had used Della’s stage name as if he knew it’d please her. And me. He was right.

He led me up one floor. At the public entrance door, he tapped the card still in my hand.

“If you remember anything—”

I nodded. I knew the routine. You don’t strip for eleven years without participating in a few police procedures. This was the first time it was this personal, though.

I stopped on the way out to hold the door for a young woman coming up the sidewalk pushing a stroller. Serras was heading toward the back of the station house. As a stripper, I’d become a student of the body but I wasn’t even using that excuse this time. I watched him for the pure pleasure. His glutes tightened. His backside became even firmer. Finer. I didn’t know if his cop radar sensed I was watching him or he just wasn’t taking any chances. I did know one thing though. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d see those prime-time buns flex. Like gals called Silver LeGrande and Della Devine, some fates are unavoidable.

Chapter Two

Three miles from campus I pulled a 180 and headed into the heart of the city. Billie’s held center stage in a renovated warehouse two short blocks from Beale Street. Only a small sign near the double doors advertised Adult Entertainment. The club’s owner, Billie West, ran a clean joint. Topless only, no lap dances, no drugs, and Billie never missed a contribution to the Policemen’s Benevolent Association. I parked, went in through the back employees’ entrance. The club wouldn’t be open for hours, but Billie did her paperwork in the afternoon. She didn’t look surprised when I came to the office door. Billie had always expected it was only a matter of time before I’d be back.

“Silver.” She welcomed me in her rich contralto as she enfolded me in the reassurance of two hundred pounds plus. She rocked me a little and was kind enough to let me hang on tight. Billie was a mulatto from New Orleans with golden marcel waves and a variety of lovers. Her mama had sewn the costumes for many of the burlesque stars of Bourbon Street while Billie had listened to the triumphs of “Lottie the Body” and “Tajmah the Jewel of the Nile” and other stories of the glamorous life in the French Quarter clubs. When still on the sweet side of thirty, Billie had convinced one of her boyfriends, an ex-racketeer, to invest in her dream, and Billie’s was born–a nightclub in the forties’ French Quarter style. Billie’s featured an emcee, comics and singers, but it was the girls that brought in the customers.

“So, you finally ready to come back to work? I can start you on the floor, strolling and getting drinks.” Billie smiled, showing a gold cap.

I cocked a hip. “When did I ever wait tables?”

“That’s only ’cause you never could learn to take orders.” Billie’s smile split wider, adding another lush fold to her chin. Billie had caught my show one night in an upstart club in Jackson. I’m five-eleven with a yard of crayon-red hair and miraculously not one freckle plus big breasts that even unsupported still look happy. She promised me one-third more than my current nightly take. By the time we finished, she’d guaranteed double my salary and headliner status. I have the attitude to match my assets. The next night I was on her stage.

“You hear about Della?” It was a rhetorical question. Billie had probably known about the murder before I’d even gotten down to the morgue. Part of being a successful club owner was keeping the cops happy…and vice versa.

The dance in her eyes disappeared. “Bit of bad business, this with Della.”

She reached for a candy from an inlaid bowl on her desk. She pushed the bowl toward me. I shook my head. Normally I ate like a linebacker, but a dead body did wonders to suppress the appetite.

“I didn’t know she’d left the club. You have to let her go?” Della had been known to dabble—coke, crystal meth mostly, but besides a four-day toot when the rest of us girls covered for her, she’d kept her act together and her vices limited to off-club hours. Still, little went on in the club that Billie didn’t know about and would only tolerate to a point.

The huge gold hoops in Billie’s ears jangled as she nodded. “She’d been on a bender since her brother’s death—”

“Her brother’s death?” My breath seemed to go. I sank back into the chair.

Billie reached for another candy, unwrapped the foil slowly and slipped it between her lips. “Ugly incident. Not far from where the child was stationed.” Billie sucked on the candy.

“What happened?”

“Seems he was out with the boys, whooping it up. You know G.I.s, give ’em a weekend pass and they think they’ve got a one-way ticket to Sodom-and-Gomorrah land. When the others decided to call it a night, the boy, Della’s brother, either hadn’t had enough yet or maybe he just got separated from the others. When he was ready to go home, he must have decided to walk back to the base. He either got lost, stumbled and fell or passed out on the train tracks. By the time the conductor saw him, it was too late.”

“He was run over by a train? Lord.” The breath left my body again.

“I turned a blind eye to Della’s behavior the first couple months, but when things began to get worse instead of better, I realized I wasn’t doing the child no favors. I gave her a choice. Get herself into a program and clean herself up or I’d have to let her go. She left. Ended up at the Oyster.” Billie’s nostrils flared wide. I thought of Flo.

“It was the last time I saw her.” Billie tapped an inch-long acrylic fingernail with a crystal in its center on the candy dish’s edge.

“Until today I hadn’t seen her since I’d left the club. She had me listed as an emergency contact at the Oyster. Makes a little more sense now that I know about her brother.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. She always did look up to you. After I confronted her about her drug use, she felt the girls here had betrayed her. You know a junkie.” Billie’s fingernails skimmed the air. “They’ve always got someone else to blame for their own messes.”

“I had to go down this morning, identify the body. A Detective Serras called me.”

Billie brought her hands together, steepled her fingers. “Ahh, Lexi.”

“You know him?”

Billie gave me a tolerant look. “Father was an officer, too. Killed during a robbery attempt. In his own home.”

“His own home?” I echoed.

Billie waited to see if I was finished interrupting. “Royce had just made sergeant then, took the boy under his wing.”

Royce was Royce Ealy, now chief of police with, according to the newspapers, an eye toward running for police commissioner next fall.

“What kind of a cop is he?”

“Some say if it wasn’t for Royce, Serras would have been busted back to flatfoot years ago.”

“Truth or jealousy?”

“Little bit of both. He’s got a reputation as a wild card. Hasn’t learned to play by the rules yet.”

I myself was a work in progress along those lines. Serras and I would have no problems in that area.

“Got busted early on for excessive force. Charges didn’t stick. But be careful, chère, he’s a dangerous man. Not hard to look at.” Billie smiled slim, sly. “You look, chère?”

“I looked.”

Billie released a luxuriant laugh. “You’re still one of my girls, you know that, darlin’?” Billie’s smile disappeared into sadness. “Della was, too. Despite everything. One of my girls ends up like this. I don’t like it.”

“What do you think happened?”

Her eyes on me, Billie reached for another candy. “Drugs, the Oyster Club…”