Hell To Pay

“I’m hard to impress,” I said. “You never met my mother…And you should remember that I’m only passing through your life, Eleanor. I have no intention of staying. I have my own life and a woman I share it with. I’m just here to do a job.”

Eleanor put her hand on top of mine again. There was a sense of pressure, not unpleasant, as though she could hold me there by force. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you, John?”

I gently but firmly pulled my hand out from under hers. “You haven’t met my Suzie. Has it ever occurred to you, Eleanor, that what you’re looking for isn’t a man, but another Daddy?”

“I am never that obvious,” said Eleanor, not insulted.

“Or that shallow.”

“I don’t have time for this,” I said, not unkindly. “I have to find Melissa, and I’m on a very tight deadline. I can’t help feeling I’m missing something…I’ve talked to everyone in your family now, except Paul. You said he and Melissa were very close. If I were to go back to the Hall, would you happen to have a spare key to his bedroom?”

“He isn’t there right now,” said Eleanor, looking away for the first time. “He has…friends he goes to see. At this club…He thinks I don’t know. If I tell you where to find him, John, you have to promise me you’ll be gentle with him. Treat him kindly. He is very precious to me.”

“I shall be politeness itself,” I said. “I can be civilised, when I have to be. There just isn’t much call for it, in my line of business.”

“You have to promise me you won’t tell anyone else,” Eleanor insisted. “People wouldn’t understand.”

I put on my most trustworthy face. Eleanor didn’t look entirely convinced, but she finally told me the name of the club, and at once I understood a lot more about Paul Griffin. I knew the club. I’d been there before.

“It’s so good to have had a real conversation, for a change,” said Eleanor, a little wistfully. “To actually talk about something that matters…” She looked out of our booth at the Ladies Who Lunch, and her gaze was not kind. “You have no idea how lonely you can feel, in the middle of a crowd, when you know you have nothing in common with any of them. Some days, I could turn my back on the family and walk away from it all. Make a new life for myself. But I couldn’t leave Paul to my father’s mercies…and besides, I don’t know how to do poor. So I guess I’ll go on being a goldfish in a bowl, swimming round and round, forever. I enjoyed meeting you, John Taylor. You’re…different.”

“Oh yes,” I said. “Really. You have no idea.”

SEVEN - Divas! Las Vegas!

There are all kinds of clubs in Uptown, and Divas! is perhaps the most famous. Certainly the most glamorous, Divas! is where men go to get in touch with their feminine side by dressing up in drag as their favourite female singing sensations. They then cha

I’d been to the club once before, during the Nightingale case, but I was hoping the management had forgotten about that by now. It wasn’t my fault all the tra

I stood outside Divas! and looked the place over. It looked as I remembered it—loud, overstated, and tacky as all hell. That much flashing neon in one place should be declared illegal on mental health grounds. You couldn’t criticise the club’s taste because it gloried in the fact that it didn’t have any, but I still felt the neon figures over the door engaged in what I’d thought at first was a sword-swallowing act was way over the top.

Bright young things and gorgeous young creatures sauntered and sashayed through the main entrance. They came in groups and cliques, in ones and twos, laughing and chattering and arm in arm, their heads held high. This was their place, their dream, their heaven on earth. And this…was Paul Griffin’s club. I wondered what (or who) he’d look like when I finally tracked him down.

I strolled casually towards the main entrance, feeling positively dingy in my plain white trench coat, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t run into anyone who was involved in the previous…unpleasantness. The big and burly bouncer at the door was A

“You are not coming in,” the A

“Then why aren’t you using them?” I asked, reasonably.

The A

“Does that really sound like something you think I’d do?” I said.

“Hell, yes! Whatever happened to Sister Morphine? What happened to Tommy Oblivion? Why have their bodies never been found?”

“Trust me,” I said calmly, “you really don’t want to know. I did what I had to, but I couldn’t save everyone. Now let me in, or I’ll set fire to your wig.”

“Beast!” hissed the A

I pushed open the gold-leaf-decorated double doors and stepped through into the huge ballroom that was the true heart of Divas! I stopped just inside the doors, stu

Gorgeous butterflies in knock-off designer frocks fluttered around the crowded tables on the ballroom floor, crying out loud in excited voices, catcalling and laughing and shrieking with joy. It was all almost too glamorous to bear. The chorus line trotted off-stage to thunderous applause, replaced by a Dolly Parton in hooker chic hand-me-downs, who sang a medley with more enthusiasm than style. I wandered through the tables, nodding appreciatively at some of the more famous façades, but no-one ever smiled back. They all knew me and what had happened here before, and they wanted to make it very clear I was not at all welcome. I get a lot of that. Up on the raised stage, the Dolly gave way to a Mado