Chapter 15: I’m a Private Eye

Forgive me if I’m a little suspicious of private investigators. It’s what I do for a living. I’m not impressed.

I’m feeling better, though I’m still pretty fuzzy about what happened Saturday night. I don’t even remember who I met. If I hadn’t written down all that drivel in the middle of the night, I’d have no idea. I almost deleted it when I read it because it didn’t make sense. I’m glad I didn’t. I wrote down what I needed to know.

Quid pro quo

I woke up this morning in the little bed upstairs with Cinnamon cuddled up next to me. We were packed in with a pile of blankets on top of us. You’d think neither one of us generates any body heat. Well, I know for certain she does. She started out on the floor beside the bed, having refused to leave me alone last night. She fixed soup when we got home from the hospital, made me tea, sat with me, talked with me, and then dragged a bunch of blankets in and lay down on the floor. Sometime during the night, I had nightmares—screaming. I-don’t-know-who-I-am nightmares. Bald-fright wig nightmares. Please-don’t-hurt-me nightmares.

She soothed me, calmed me, and held me until I sobbed myself back to sleep. Then she stayed there in bed with me the rest of the night. So that was over. We both referred to it as the night we slept with each other. I needed to remember I’m her boss. Hell, maybe I’d make her my partner.

We had to come up with a cover story for why she was with me. We decided we needed something reliable, so I called up Simon. He’s still in town, still staying at the hotel. Cinnamon says he’s been talking to Jordan on a regular basis, but Jordan won’t tell her what’s up. So, Simon became an old friend. We met during a business deal in Cleveland years ago. I was working at a company he acquired and handled the transfer. When I called and told him I needed and assistant, he recommended Cinnamon, who he heard was recently out of work. Adequate cover. When the nosy neighbors came over and asked how I got an assistant—and told me all about how they would have helped me all I needed—I gave them a story with a reference to an exec who was way out of their class. That should shut them up.

Cinnamon and I did a walkthrough of the house and I noticed there were things subtly out of place. I hadn’t started packing the books in the living room yet but there were several moved from the shelf to the table. And the living room webcam was gone. I had to make sure of that one. It could have been moved or replaced and I wanted to be sure nothing was recording me. Cinnamon picked up a bug sweeper from the local I Spy store. We went over every room in the house to find out if anything other than the computers was running. Everything came out clean, so I guessed that guy—Devo??—wanted to remove something he considered incriminating. He became suspect number one. Rick and Susan were suspects two and three but not necessarily in that order. I had a feeling I met someone else at the bar who might be on my list if I could remember who I met.

I had papers to file with the state so I could get access to Georgia’s bank accounts and Lars recommended a probate lawyer who I called. Cinnamon started packing up the dining room and screeched when she opened the drawer of the sideboard. More stuff. I don’t even know what to call it, though Cinnamon gave me a pretty good catalog rundown of what was there. A full vinyl suit, complete with head mask, ball gag, talc, various bindings, half a dozen different kinds of whips, a breather tube, and a large vinyl bag. I couldn’t believe what I heard when Cinnamon explained what it was for. The submissive gets in the bag with her air tube sticking out a sealed opening. The bag is zipped shut and the air is pumped out of it. Cinnamon guessed the dining table was used as the display area where the dom could handle the sub, whip her or him through the suit, even pinch he air tubes closed to cause panic. From where the camera was located, voyeurs could watch everything without ever seeing the face of the dom. This was beginning to get to me.

“Cinnamon,” I said at last. “You know so much about this. You didn’t ever ... I mean ... How do you know?”

“Sugar, I was a bad girl before I found the Condo,” she said, “but I wasn’t that bad. Still, you’d hear things up there. Some of the girls were pros who sold any experience those guys wanted. Most of us were companions ... a lot of flirting but not much action. A few were mistresses. But everybody talked. I heard you and Jordan came up with enough financial information on the directors to put them all away if you wanted to. I’ll tell you what you found was nothing compared to what the girls knew. Some of those guys were seriously nasty sons-of-bitches.”

“Were you pressured to have sex with those old men?”