6. Diem

6

Diem

I didn’t know if I wanted to throw him over the desk and fuck the look off his face or toss him out onto the street and tell him to never come back.

The former.

Definitely the former… and he could wear the fedora because holy hell it looked good on him. A little big, but it didn’t matter. I’d already run a new fantasy reel in my mind. Tallus sprawled across the love seat in the other room, naked as the day he was born, except for one thing. No, two things. The fedora and his come-fuck-me glasses. Smooth, flawless skin on display. One knee bent and falling to the side to display the goods. Arms folded behind his head as he gnawed seductively on his bottom lip and peered from under the hat.

Good Christ almighty.

I closed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose, and counted backward from ten as heat climbed my neck. Ten months and the desires were out of control.

This was all going to shit, and Tallus hadn’t been in the office for thirty seconds. The man was my Achilles’ heel. My kryptonite. My glass jaw. Tallus had a stranglehold on me that no one in my thirty-five years had managed to achieve. I was putty in his hands, and he knew it.

Calmer, I exhaled a final breath and opened my eyes. He was still there, a delicious mixture of sin and salvation. Before he arrived, I had every intention of telling him that investigating his whacked-out theory of mind-control murdering psychics was not fucking happening. I had better things to do with my time. My business was not a joke.

But the words fled, and I remained mute as Tallus took control.

He swiveled the chair back and forth. Hands folded, he brought his pointer fingers to his lips and tapped them. The fedora slipped over the brim of his glasses and covered his face. He flicked it up again, revealing the knee-weakening smile I couldn’t get enough of.

I growled.

He smirked. “Okay, Guns. I learned something today, so before you get all Grr, we aren’t doing this because mind control and brainwashing are fake , listen to what I have to say. Kitty has clarified a few things. She explained how mind control and brainwashing aren’t possible.”

He held up a finger, shushing me before I could grunt, “I told you so.”

I snapped my jaw shut as he continued.

“But what mimics and has been confused for mind control and brainwashing in the past is an exceptionally powerful form of manipulation. To me, it all sounds the same. Potato potahto. But Kitty’s, like, a hundred and ninety-billion years old, so I figure she knows a thing or two.”

“You think,” I mumbled.

“Hush. No comments until I’m done.”

I crossed my arms and stood taller, aiming for daunting, imposing, or menacing—I failed at all three. Tallus raked his gaze up and down my body like I was a chocolate-covered dessert he wanted to devour.

The attention made me shuffle and lose the edge I was aiming for.

“Don’t distract me with your bulging biceps, Guns. We both know where my weaknesses lie, and we have work to do. Anyhow. I no longer think Madame Rowena mind-controlled people.”

“Good because—”

“But I do believe”—he held up a finger—“she can manipulate suggestable clients into doing things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. She’s a skilled observer and a predator. Predators know how to seek weak victims. When they find one, they move in for the attack. Her methods are unique and likely rare, but you can’t tell me it’s impossible. You said she had a record that included extortion, fraud, and identity theft. You called her a scam artist. What sort of characteristics does a person like that require?”

Tallus tapped his temple. “The power of manipulation, my dear sweet Diem, and she’s been at it for decades. Our self-proclaimed psychic has perfected the art, so it’s entirely possible she’s using her powers for evil to indirectly murder people.”

With a self-satisfied grin, Tallus displayed his hands in a voilà gesture.

I stared, grinding my teeth as I waited for more.

“The end. I’m done talking. Your turn, big guy.”

I narrowed my eyes, not wanting to agree, not wanting to look at Rowena Fitspatrick’s criminal past, not wanting to realize there might —however slim—be a possibility that Tallus could be right.

Had Tallus’s little speech convinced me Madame Rowena was responsible for two deaths? Not even close.

Did I believe the woman had turned a new leaf and stopped breaking the law after decades of criminal behavior? Also no.

Rowena had likely gotten better at playing the game. She was careful, but old habits die hard, and I would bet a month’s pay she was up to something unsavory—but not murder. Tallus was out of his mind.

I’d taken too long to answer.

Tallus dropped his feet to the ground and balanced his elbows on the desk, cradling his chin in his upturned palms. The fedora slipped, falling over the brim of his glasses and covering his eyes.

My lips twitched as he adjusted it. Tallus might have been aiming for playful and sexy, but the whole act was coming off more in the realm of cute.

I neutralized the expression the instant he could see me again.

“D?”

“What?”

“It’s your turn.”

I frowned. “Turn for what?”

He sighed. “We’ve got to work on the art of conversation. It’s a turn-taking affair. You see how I shared information and then stopped talking? That gap is your cue to chime in with your thoughts, feelings, or opinions. Grunting and growling don’t count. They have to be words. Several in a row, preferably, until they form a sentence or two.” He rolled a hand. “And go.”

The corner of my lips twitched, but I bit the inside of my cheek, refusing to let him see any sign of humor. I wasn’t sure Tallus was fooled.

My opinion was this entire thing was a crock of shit and a waste of time, but instead of telling him as much—again—I said, “One week.”

He tipped his head, conveying confusion.

“You get one week to investigate this bullshit nonsense using whatever resources of mine you require. When nothing turns up—and it won’t because it’s fucking stupid—then you let it go and let me get back to real cases. Ones that pay me. Got it?”

“So you believe it’s possible?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?”

“No.”

“But you’ll help me anyway?”

I gritted my teeth. “Yes. For one week.”

“What’s with the one-week deadlines lately? Okay, deal. After that week, can we still be friends?”

I cracked my knuckles, glanced at the window, then back. “I don’t do friends .”

“Lovers?” He wiggled his brows and almost lost the hat again.

“We’re not—”

“D, we’ve been fucking sporadically for months. Call a spade a spade and move on. Why don’t you do friends? You’re a nice guy with a charming-ish personality.”

“Because… I don’t have a… I’m not… One week, Tallus. Why are you like this?”

He chuckled. “Okay. One week. We won’t be friends after, but we can still hook up whenever the urge strikes, so long as we don’t refer to it as being lovers. Correction. Whenever the urge strikes you since I’m not allowed to initiate booty calls.”

I winced. “Tallus—”

“It’s fine. I have thick skin. Besides, I can always find someone at Gasoline if the mood strikes when you aren’t around.” He shrugged. “Or call Memphis.”

My blood boiled at the suggestion, but before I could retort, Tallus tossed the fedora aside and rooted through a desk drawer until he came up with a notepad. Any hints of flirtatious behavior were gone as he hovered a pen over the paper.

Was he upset? God fucking dammit.

“Tallus—”

“Where should we begin the investigation? I think we should find out if Madame Rowena is still married and where her husband is, or we could try to locate Amber’s brother and get more details about how she was acting before she died. He seemed convinced it was the psychic. We could talk to Allan’s neighbor or family. Thoughts?”

Tallus was skilled at elastic-banding from one topic to the next, always leaving me with whiplash. His slap-in-the-face comment about his sexual prowls was on purpose. The jab about Memphis was meant to sting. It was meant to unbalance me. Piss me off. How many times had he tried to say he and Memphis weren’t fucking around? I still didn’t believe it, but shoving it in my face ignited my rage, and he knew it.

I didn’t own Tallus. We weren’t dating. We owed each other nothing. I was along for the ride until the day he tired of me. When that happened, I would slink back to my hovel and pretend I wasn’t disappointed.

I didn’t know how to address the conundrum of our hookups.

Tallus doodled while I wondered for half a beat if he thought I was using him.

Which I was. Selfishly.

But he’d never turned me away. He’d never asked for more.

Until now. Was that what he was doing? Implying he wanted more from me?

I couldn’t do that. If there was one thing I knew about myself, it was that Diem Krause was not dating material.

“D? Your thoughts are so loud they’re going to give me a migraine. Can you focus?”

The case.

“Rowena got divorced in ninety-one.” I grabbed a chair from the waiting room and pulled it to the desk, sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the seat. “William Hilty went to school and became a licensed psychologist and hypnotherapist. He’s working in an office in East York. No further record. The man doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket.”

“Huh.” Tallus wrote it down. “I wonder if he’s been in contact with his ex-wife.”

“No idea.”

“Should we talk to him?”

“I don’t know. It’s your case, Tallus. I don’t give a fuck. One week.”

He sat a little taller, clearly thrilled at the prospect of leading a case. “So I’m in charge?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I get to boss you around and tell you what to do?”

“No.”

“But you’re helping.”

“For one—”

“Week, yeah, I got it. You’ve driven that point home. In that case, I want to talk to Mackie, Amber’s brother. Can you help me locate an address or phone number?”

With a long-suffering sigh, I pointed to a drawer. “Find the iPad.”

Tallus delivered it reverently into my outstretched hand. “This is going to be so much fun.”

I glared.

He adorned his sultry and mischievous smile and winked.

I opened the iPad and mumbled, “Full name.”

“Mackie Wells.”

“Is Mackie short for something? Like Mackenzie?”

“I don’t know. He wrote the review under Mac, so I don’t think so.”

“Do you know how old he is?”

“No. Younger than Amber. She was eighteen. He’d be a high schooler. Does that help?”

“Yes.”

Tallus waited patiently while I filtered through the various Mackie Wells living in the Greater Toronto Area. It didn’t take long to narrow it down and find the one we sought. Sixteen-year-old Mackie Wells attended Leaside Secondary School off Eglinton Avenue East. He played football for the Leaside Lancers in the fall and swam on their swim team all winter. In the spring, he ran track and field, one of the top kids in his age classification according to the previous years’ statistics. From there, it wasn’t hard to discover a geographical location for where he lived, which turned out to be in an apartment in East York with his mother, Kaitlin Wells. No father was on the lease, so he probably wasn’t in the picture.

I relayed the information to Tallus, who checked the time on his phone. “Should we head over to his house? It’s dinner hour on a school night. He should be home.”

“Keep in mind, he’s a minor. His mother could tell us to fuck off if she doesn’t like the look of us. If she’s not home, we could get in a world of trouble for talking to Mackie behind her back.”

“So what do we do?”

“We do our best not to come across as threatening.”

“You mean you do your best not to come across as threatening. I’m charming. Everyone loves me.”

I narrowed my eyes.

Tallus smirked and stood. “Correction. Everyone but you. Come on, Guns. We’ve done this song and dance once or twice. I’m sure we can find our groove again without getting into trouble.”

“You are the definition of trouble.”

He tossed me the fedora. “And you are the definition of a Negative Nancy. Let’s go.”