Free The Night Before by Lisa Jackson Page A

with him?”
    “Not really took up with him, or if she did, it was a fling. She and her husband were separated for a while and Bandeaux was going through a divorce. I doubt that Millie, if she did get together with him, had what he was interested in. Bandeaux liked his women rich, beautiful and willing to go down on him whenever he got the urge.”
    Reed cleared his throat. “How would you know—?”
    “I don’t, okay. But he was a player. Big time. Hung out at the strip clubs. Threw money around. This I do know. Saw him there a couple of times when I worked vice and I was involved in the raids down at the Silk Tassel or Pussies In Booties, those kind of places. Anyway, Josh hooked up with Caitlyn Montgomery and within a couple of months or so, they weren’t only an item, they were married, for Christ’s sake! Millie returned to her husband and kept pretty quiet about it. I figured he dumped her and she was embarrassed, not that she considered herself in love with him or anything. From what I understand old Josh’s charm rubbed off pretty fast once she got to know him. He and the new missus, they had a baby right away and the rest, as they say, is history.”
    Resting one ankle over his opposing knee, Reed said, “I did some checking on the missus. No priors.”
    “So now you think Bandeaux was murdered?”
    “I don’t know. I’m just keeping an open mind.”
    Morrisette chewed her gum a little more loudly. “You? Like hell.”
    “We’ll see what the coroner says after the autopsy. I’m waiting for a report from the crime scene team about the evidence. All I’ve got so far is that the body doesn’t appear to have been moved. He died right in his desk chair. The last person known to have seen him alive was the maid, Ms. Pontiac, when she left for the night, but after that he could have had himself a damned party.”
    “I think it was a private party because of the wineglasses in the dishwasher. Only two. Not forty,” Morrisette mused aloud.
    “So we know he had company. Ms. Pontiac insists she’d cleaned up everything and even emptied the dishwasher before she left.”
    “Any prints on the wineglasses?” Reed asked.
    “Nope. Wiped clean, except for the lipstick smudge.”
    “Why would someone wipe for prints and ignore the lipstick?”
    “Careless or believes no one will be able to trace the smudge to her. There was also what looks like a couple of drops of wine on the carpet in the den. Depending upon how old the stains are, it’s possible that the wine was spilled and the glasses taken to the dishwasher.”
    “A neat killer.”
    “Or visitor. We’re not sure he was murdered,” she reminded him.
    “Yeah, I know.” Reed plucked a piece of lint from his dark sock. “But let’s run with the murder idea for a sec. You have any ideas who might want to see him dead?”
    “At least half of Savannah. To begin with, he went through women like toilet paper. That doesn’t sit well with a lot of us. Then there’s his business partner, Al Fitzgerald. I think Josh pulled a fast one and cut him out of his share of stock in the company. And that’s not his first brush with the law. He’d been involved with some kind of securities scam before, but he lined enough pockets in Atlanta to keep himself out of serious trouble, so he was never prosecuted.” Her eyes narrowed a bit and she chewed her gum more vigorously. “I’m sure the list of people who had Josh Bandeaux on their most-hated list is long and distinguished.”
    “I’d like to see it. Maybe you could come up with a few names.”
    “My pleasure.” Leaning across the desk, narrowly missing her coffee cup with her elbows, Morrisette said, “Wanna hear what I learned about Caitlyn Bandeaux?”
    Reed inclined his head and wondered if Morrisette’s interest in Josh’s not-quite-ex-wife was more than idle interest. “Shoot.”
    “First of all, she’s pretty unstable. She’s got herself a nice long history of ending up in psych wards,