Sam Mullone & the Missing Drugs Ch. 03

3. Cherchez la femme

Sam sipped at her takeaway coffee as she stared out of her windscreen at the unremarkable semi-detached house. The car still smelled of the bacon and egg muffin that she'd bought at the cafe earlier, and she opened the window to draw in some of the cool, fresh morning air. Outside, birds sang brightly in the trees over the low background hum of rush-hour traffic.

Terry had called her with the address earlier that morning. He had a cousin who worked at the taxi company who owed him a favour and apparently this was where the taxi driver she'd seen leaving the park yesterday had dropped off his passenger.

Now here Sam was, watching the sun burning off the early morning mist and glistening on the glossy red door of the house as she waited for a glimpse of the elusive blonde. Terry, diligent as always, had also checked the electoral register and found the names of the residents: Becky and Sarah Cook, aged twenty-two and twenty-four respectively. Sam assumed they were sisters.

It was a nice-looking semi-detached house in a good area. The garden at the front looked neatly kept and two small, nearly new hatchbacks crowded the driveway. It certainly didn't look like the kind of place you'd expect to find a drug dealer. Sam sat up a little straighter as a woman exited the front door. She was tall and good-looking, dressed in a smart black pants suit. She ran a hand through her shoulder-length blonde hair and she searched for her car keys in a matching navy handbag, then slipped into the front seat of one of the cars and slipped on a pair of sunglasses.

She did kind of look like the woman in the park yesterday, she was the right height and build, and had the right hair colour, but it was hard to tell if it was definitely her. In fact, she looked more like an estate agent or a receptionist than a drug dealer Sam thought as she watched the woman reverse out of the driveway then disappear down the road. It was hard to tell if she was the younger or older sister without seeing her sibling. Sam was pondering whether to follow her when her mobile rang. It was Terry again.

"Hey, Terry, what's up?" she said, taking a sip of her coffee.

"Hi, so my contact's checked out Alan Hemming's financial records but there's nothing unusual. No big unexplained incomings or outgoings."

"Hmm, okay. Well I guess we keep him in mind but move onto the other names on the list."

"Yes, I've got some information on the second name, Eliza Dixon," he said. "You got a pen?"

"Hang on," Sam said, placing her coffee in the cup holder and taking out her pad. It sounded like Alan Hemmings wasn't a likely candidate for their thief, so she was hoping Terry would turn up something interesting for Eliza. "Okay, fire away."

"So Eliza is thirty-four years old and she's worked at Kleinwert for five years. University educated, has always worked in pharmaceuticals. Like Hemmings, I can't find any evidence of her being in trouble with the police. Um, she's widowed, her husband died two years ago. Suspected heart attack, nothing suspicious according to the report. Currently lives alone at twenty-two Sycamore Road, that's in the suburbs to the west. No financial problems, as far as I can tell."

"So she's not looking like our thief either?"

"Well, you can never tell, but she doesn't have a criminal background."

"Is she blonde? Tall?" Sam asked. Looking up, she spotted another woman coming out of the house.

"Nah, she's a red head, five foot six, so not particularly."

"What about Sarah and Becky Cook? Do they have any connection with Eliza or anyone that works at Kleinwert?"

"Not as far as I can tell, but I'll keep looking for a connection."

"Okay, listen I've got to go, but let me know if you find out anything else."

"Yep, no problem."

Sam followed the bright red hatchback through the town centre. Annoyingly, the two sisters looked similar, both tall-ish and slim with shoulder-length blonde hair. The woman she was following was dressed in a tight, Lycra aquamarine top stretched over black leggings and carrying a rolled-up yoga mat so Sam wasn't surprised to see her pull up at a car park behind a gym. She parked a discrete distance away, then followed her inside.

"Hi, can I help you?" a receptionist said, intercepting her as she tried to follow the woman inside.

"Um yes, I'm thinking of taking yoga classes," Sam said, improvising.

"Oh, OK. Are you a beginner?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's fifteen pounds a session, or a hundred pounds for a course of ten. We've got a class going on now, if you want to take a look."

"Oh really? Yes, if you don't mind."

The receptionist lead her a short way down the corridor to a door that felt warm to the touch.

"This is an intermediate class," she explained as Sam pressed her nose against the little glass window cut into the door. Inside, eight women stretched and posed, contorting their bodies into shapes that Sam suspected she wouldn't be able to attain without a team of personal trainers.

"Oh, I think I know her, isn't that Sarah Cook?" Sam said, figuring she had a fifty-fifty chance.

"No, that's her sister Becky, although it's an easy mistake to make, they look quite similar," the receptionist informed her.

"OK, well, thanks, I'll have a think about classes and let you know," Sam said, as the woman lead her back to her reception.

Sam retreated to her car, writing up notes and checking her mobile until Becky came out of the gym about an hour later. She watched the woman stop to take a call on her mobile, leaning on the red brick wall of the gym near a corner, her blonde hair bright in the sunshine. Sam grabbed her mobile and strode towards the gym, pretending to be on a call herself. She stopped near the blonde, occasionally saying the odd word as she listened into her conversation.

"Yeah, I passed on the stuff yesterday," Becky was saying.

Then there was a pause as the other person said something.

"Yeah, same price as before... yeah...no, I just finished my yoga class...what do you think I'm wearing? You know, my leggings, that aquamarine Lycra top... stop it... you're so bad," she said, lowering her voice and laughing huskily, so that Sam had to lean a little closer to hear.

"I wish you were here too..." she continued, in a throaty voice, "yeah, I wish we could... anyways, I'll see you tomorrow, right? Okay, bye"

Sam turned away, as Becky grabbed her handbag, adjusted the yoga mat under her arm and strode off towards the car park. She jumped as her mobile suddenly started to ring, but Becky was halfway to her car and didn't seem to notice.

"Hello?" she said.

"Hi, it's Alicia, Mr Hibbert's PA from Kleinwert. Bob was just wondering how you were getting on," the voice said.

"Oh, um, fine. We're working our way through that list of employees," Sam replied.

"Okay, it's just that there's a board meeting on Friday, and it would be good if he had something to tell everyone."

"Well, I did warn him this may take a while. I promise we're working as quickly as we can, but you can't investigate these matters overnight, he wants me to be thorough right?" Sam said defensively.

"Of course, of course," she said, gruffly. "Well, Bob said he'd appreciate it if you email him later with an update."

"Right," Sam said to herself as she headed back to her car, and making a mental note that Becky was meeting someone tomorrow evening.

--

Breaking and entering wasn't something Sam did often. Well, not very often. As an ex-policewoman, she was more aware than most just how wrong it was. But there were occasions when it was necessary. Bob had seemed quite desperate to get some results so she'd returned home and dressed in her 'delivery girl' uniform. Shapeless brown cargo pants, sensible black shoes, short-sleeved khaki shirt with a small logo picked out in gold thread and her hair tucked under a matching baseball cap. Clutching a fake parcel, she'd rung the doorbell at the front of twenty-two Sycamore street, and when there was no answer she'd slipped around into the back garden through an unlocked gate.

She tried rapping on the glass door, praying that there wasn't a yappy dog lurking inside. When she was sure that there was no-one at home, she set about picking the lock. It was a skill she'd learned when she was younger, but only used when it was really necessary. Or she was feeling really nosy. She crouched on one knee, keeping the tension on the barrel with a small torque wrench whilst she raked the pick back and forth along the internal tumblers until it suddenly sprung open and she slipped smoothly inside.

She moved quickly and silently through house searching each room as she went. There was nothing of interest in the kitchen, living room or downstairs bathroom so she quickly moved upstairs, glad to be away from the windows facing onto the street. She searched the larger upstairs bathroom and the spare room, before moving onto the main bedroom, which she suspected would be the most likely hiding place.

She pressed herself against the wall and glanced anxiously out of the window as a car slowed down outside but it quickly moved on, parking in front of one of the neighbouring houses. It was quite a feminine bedroom, with lilac walls hung with pictures of wild flowers and bright floral curtains. There was a small vase of flowers and a picture of Eliza in a wedding dress alongside her husband on the nightstand. Sam worked her way through the wardrobes and chests of drawers with a well-practiced efficiency, leaving everything exactly as it was. It wasn't until she got to the small wooden bedside table that she found what se was looking for. A small clear bag containing six of the now-familiar black pills in the top drawer. She grinned triumphantly as she held it up to the light.

"Well, well, Eliza," she muttered, addressing the woman in the picture. "Looks like you're not as innocent as we thought."

--

Back at her small, cluttered office, Sam sat in front of her laptop and carefully constructed an email to Bob Hibbert explaining what she'd found out so far. Although, she'd gathered a lot of information she didn't feel that much closer to finding the culprit. Alan Hemmings didn't look like a likely candidate, although she wouldn't be surprised if he stole a small number of pills for his own use. And she didn't have much confidence about Eliza being the guilty party either. She'd found a small number of pills in her bedroom, but that was all she'd found and there wasn't any obvious connection with Becky or Pirate Bob. Once again, it was more likely they were for Eliza's own use. No, the best lead was the conversation she'd heard Becky having outside the gym. It sounded like she could be the woman from the park, and that she'd be meeting her contact soon and Sam was determined to be there.

With all the skill of an experienced PI, Sam carefully constructed her email using phrases like 'ongoing surveillance', 'thorough background research' and 'promising lead', and hoped it was enough to satisfy him.

--

Eliza smiled as she stirred the ground-up pills into the puttanesca sauce. Initially, she'd tried chopping them up with a kitchen knife but that proved too tricky and she'd nearly lost one of the precious pills under the fridge. After some trial-and-error, she'd resorted to using an old pestle and mortar, eventually managing to grind them up into a fine grey powder. As the sauce was for her and her guest, she'd used two of the little black pills, hoping that the cooking process wouldn't alter their chemical balance.

Her neighbour, Brett, had been over for dinner several times before. At thirty, he was divorced and a few years younger than her, boyishly good-looking with caramel-coloured skin that belied his mixed race parentage. Eliza sometimes found herself staring at him when he was mowing the lawn or washing his car, wondering if his skin had the same even cappuccino tone all over.

Although he'd been over to dinner several times, he'd never spent the night, in fact they'd never done anything more than share a chaste kiss at the end of the evening. He was quite shy and quiet, and Eliza was beginning to wonder if she should take the initiative. After all, at thirty-four she was still attractive, wasn't she?

She glanced at her watch then skipped up the stairs, tugging her old t-shirt up over her head. She pondered her strategy for the evening as she wriggled out of her jeans, revealing her best underwear then stepped into a fitting bottle green dress that hugged her curvy figure. It was one of her most daring dresses, revealing quite a lot of her cleavage, and she hoped that it would send Brett an unambiguous message about her availability. She smiled, blowing a kiss to her reflection as she touched up her crimson lipstick. As the doorbell rang, she took a final look at herself in the mirror, ran a hand through her fiery red tresses and skipped back downstairs.

--

"So, um, thanks for inviting me over" Brett said, between forkfuls of the pasta.

"My pleasure. It just seems silly, you and I both rattling around in our houses, eating dinners for one in front of the TV."

"Yeah, you're right, I'm not much of a cook so this is the best meal I've had in ages, it's delicious."

"Thanks, more wine?" Eliza asked, getting to her feet and bending forward over the table, filling his glass with more Chianti before he had a chance to answer.

"I really shouldn't... but thanks, it really is very good," he said, and Eliza noted the way his dark hazel eyes flicked downwards as her full boobs strained against her tight dress.

"I'll get another bottle," she said skipping off to the kitchen.

She paused in the kitchen, weighing the fresh bottle in her hands as she puzzled over his attitude once more. He was obviously attracted to her, but she already sensed that this was shaping up to be another evening of pleasant conversation but ultimately, disappointment. He really was very polite and reserved, and she wondered if it wasn't just shyness that was holding him back. Perhaps I need to be a bit more assertive she concluded as she headed back.

"Is it hot in here, or is it just me?" he asked, placing his fork in the empty bowl as he finished his pasta.

"No, I don't feel hot. I could open a window," Eliza replied. Outside, it was getting dark now, the amber streetlights glowing against a magenta sky.

"No, no, please, I don't want to make a fuss," he said, tugging at the collar of his stylish grey shirt.

"Are you sure?" she said.

"Yeah, I'm just feeling a little hot and dizzy."

"Why don't you lie down for a bit?" she said, gesturing towards the sofa.

"Oh no, I couldn't impose. Maybe I should just go home," he said.

"Oh, I'm not letting you go in this state! Come on, lie down over here," Eliza said. "I'll get you a glass of water."

"Well, if you insist..." he said, allowing her to lead him into the lounge, then obediently lying on her chocolate brown leather sofa as she disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a glass of water.

"Here you go," Eliza said.

"Thanks," he said taking a sip. "I don't know what's come over me, I just feel light-headed all of a sudden."

Eliza knelt beside the sofa, her dress riding up over her legs, her bare knees sinking into the beige carpet.

"What are you doing?" he asked, glancing at her legs as she unbuttoned his shirt.

"It's okay, I'm trained in first aid," she explained as she undid a few buttons then pressed her fingers against the throbbing vein in his neck. "Your pulse is a little higher than normal."

"Yeah, it feels like my heart's racing," he said, putting the glass down.

"Let me feel," Eliza said, undoing the rest of the buttons, and feeling a little flutter of excitement as she tugged his shirt open revealing his broad chest and slid a hand over his heart, noting how smooth and solid his chest felt. His heart thumped a little harder than normal but not dangerously so.

"Listen, this is silly, it's probably just too much wine on an empty stomach," he said, trying to get up.

"No, just lie there a minute, you do want me to help, don't you?" Eliza insisted, placing a firm hand on his chest.

"Yes, of course, sorry," he said, obediently lying back down.

"You just relax for a minute, concentrate on your breathing," she said, her heart racing a little now as she pretended to 'examine' him, running her hands over the smooth and hairless cappuccino skin of his pectoral muscles, feeling his chest rise and fall. She couldn't resist sliding them lower over his stomach.

"Um, what are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm loosening your clothes, who's the first-aider here, me or you?" Eliza said, as she tugged at his black leather belt.

"Sure, sorry," he said meekly.

"How are you feeling now?" she said, unable to resist 'accidentally' running a hand over his thighs. He was wearing a pair of skinny black jeans, and she couldn't help but notice the solid-looking bulge pressing hotly against his flies.

"Still quite hot," he said.

"Only it looks like you've got some swelling here," Eliza pointed out.

"Oh gosh, how embarrassing! Sorry!" he said, trying to get up again but allowing her to push him back once again.

"Oh, no need to be sorry, I'm going to take it as a compliment," Eliza giggled, amused by his constant need to apologise as she unfastened his jeans.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, I mean..." he said, squirming and blushing furiously as she eagerly tugged at his jeans.

"Well, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't examine that swelling properly," Eliza insisted, brushing his protests and hands aside as she pulled the black denim over his hips, revealing a huge, thick bulge distorting his grey Lycra shorts.

"Oh Brett!" she gasped delightedly. "That's a nasty looking swelling you've got there!"

"Oh gosh!" he said, as she wrapped her fingers around him, exploring the size and hardness of his cock through his tightly stretched pants.

"Mmm, I think I'm going to need to take a closer look," she said, grinning mischievously as she eagerly pulled at his shorts, the anticipation building as she slid them over his slim hips till his obscenely big erection sprung free, nearly poking her in the eye.

"Oh my gosh!" Brett repeated. He seemed as surprised as she was.

"Brett! What a big boy you are," Eliza purred, slowly running a fingertip along his impressive length, as they both admired its remarkable proportions. It was a nice-looking circumcised cock with a deep brown head and a slight upward curve. There'd been a lot of gossip in the lab about the effects it might have on men, but she'd thought it had all been exaggerated. Until now.

She slowly wrapped her fingers around his swollen, fat shaft, squeezing and stroking him as he moaned happily. There was a tense silence broken only by Brett's hoarse breathing as Eliza stroked his taut velvety skin, coaxing a few drops of clear pre-cum from the engorged glans. Eliza was reluctant to take her eyes off his magnificent erection, but when she looked up Brett was still lying prone on the sofa, his eyes closed, his full lips curled into a faint smile as he savoured her touch.

His smile widened as Eliza ran her tongue up the length of his cock, making him gasp by tickling the underside of his glans with the tip. He was so big that she could barely get the top half into her mouth.

"Oh gosh, that's so good," he groaned, as she slowly moved her crimson lips up and down his steely shaft, swirling her tongue around the sensitive head. He ran a hand through her red hair, encouraging her, obviously aroused now as his hips moved restlessly. Eliza was aroused too. She slid a hand between her hot thighs under her dress, using the pads of her fingers to caress herself through her damp panties as she imagined how he'd feel sliding deep inside her until she couldn't stand it any more.