Free Bad Bones (Claire Morgan) by Linda Ladd

bad, of sweat and testosterone and the two big bloodhounds lying on the floor beside the door. Something was cooking. Some kind of meat was frying in a skillet, smoky, unappetizing, at least to Claire. The club was comprised of one big room with two round cages inside, both with padded floors and plastic wire sides. Two morons were now inside, practicing their craft by pummeling the hell out of each other sans boxing gloves or shoes. Lord have mercy, and thank God she had been born with a brain.
    “Hope I don’t get blood on my jacket,” Bud said. “I just got it dry cleaned. Twenty bucks and change.”
    Bud worried about such eventualities because there was indeed a lot of blood flying around. Nobody seemed to notice that or the fact that two law enforcement officers had entered the building. All were merrily intent on the bloodletting. If this was practice, Claire would hate to see the real thing. She had a feeling that she was going to have to watch a lot of this stuff before they solved their case. Wonderful.
    “These guys are crazy,” Bud said softly. “I wonder how many of them end up with brain damage. That’s what I’d worry about.”
    “Yeah, you and me both.”
    At one side of the room and behind a long bar made out of carpenter’s trestles and wide wood planks, a man was cooking something in an electric skillet. It smelled like beef steak, maybe, sizzling in serious amounts of lard. The chef was watching the sparring young men, too, incongruously turning the meat with a long fork while wearing an expensive three-piece black suit. He had a white towel over his arm à la the waiters at Two Cedars, the fancy-schmancy restaurant in Black’s Cedar Bend Lodge. When he noticed them, he stared at them a moment and then gave them a big smile. “These guys are always hungry for meat after they fight.”
    Yeah, probably raw hamburger. She was surprised he was cooking it. She glanced at the cages, in one of which was a kid sitting on the other one’s chest, hitting him in the head. She frowned. “Yeah? If they have any teeth left to chew it with.”
    The man laughed, unfortunately not offended. He looked to be around forty years old, graying at the temples with wavy salt-and-pepper locks that hung to his collar. He had a thick accent which indicated that he did not grow up within a thousand miles of mid Missouri. Oh, yeah, he definitely hailed from Brooklyn or the Bronx or Poland, maybe. He wasn’t that bad looking, except that both ears slightly resembled cauliflower blossoms, both in size and color, thus indicating a healthy knowledge of all things brutal. But he was pleasant enough when he said, “What can I do for you officers on this cold bright beautiful day?”
    “How’d you know who we were?” Bud asked, always the curious detective.
    “You got the look.”
    Claire didn’t inquire further, because she didn’t give a damn. She pulled out the chain with her badge and held it up for him. “We’re Canton County Sheriff’s detectives. I’m Detective Morgan. This is Detective Davis.”
    “That can’t be real,” he said and gave her an amused little smirk.
    Claire frowned. She didn’t quite cotton to that remark. “The badges are real all right. We got real weapons, too, if you’d like to see them pointed at you.”
    “I meant that ring you got on. God, it’s the size of a freakin’ Fig Newton. What’s a matter wit’ you, girl? Everybody’s gonna know right off that it’s a fake. It’s goddamn gaudy. You gotta tell your guy to get you somethin’ real instead of that glass trinket so you ain’t embarrassin’ yourself like this in front of people who know the real thing when they see it. Better for you if it’s real, I’m tellin’ you, even if it’s little bitty. You’re hookin’ up with a cheapskate, trust me. That thing must be twenty carats, at the very least, all fake and made outta glass and silver plate, probably.”
    Bud barked out a genuine laugh and then cut it off and