Tulips for Tonica by RaeLynn Blue

Chapter One
     
    “How can you be content to be in the world like tulips in a garden, to make a fine show, and be good for nothing?” —Mary Astell
     
     
    Rain splashed down in big droplets, splatting so hard against the pavement that Tonica Faye heard the splat amplified across the other noises saturating downtown Greensboro. As the downpour intensified, she skirted around domed trashcans, hid behind thick telephone poles, and huddled alongside sporadic crowds of people vacating the shops. With the collar of her ebony raincoat turned up, Tonica suppressed a shiver as a trickle of rain infiltrated her coat. It slipped down her back, cold and wet. She narrowed her eyes, peering through the squall at her objective—Carte Seay.
    Handsome, sexy, and a snake, Carte Seay had been known for his taste for the ladies. Nearly six feet tall, athletic build with the best pair of hardened thighs Tonica had ever seen, Carte’s body made women, judges, prosecutors and gay males alike swoon, salivate and submit requests for private counsel. A woman reputed to be one of Carte’s ex-girlfriends, Shae Williams, demanded to prove via paternity test that Carte had fathered her two boys. Carte had denounced in the media and through his five lawyer-mouthpieces that he hadn’t fathered the children because he never had sex with Shae. The woman hired a local investigative firm, Stevens & Eaton Detective Agency, to try to snag the man’s DNA. Hence the reason why in this horrible shower, Tonica, who worked for Stevens & Eaton, was walking behind the best criminal attorney in Guilford County.
    Why Carte didn’t just take the test puzzled her.
    Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket, and she glanced around, taking in the gloomy, rain-drenched surroundings before removing it from her pocket. She slipped across the soaked sidewalk to the mouth of a narrow alley between Joaquin’s Hot Tamales and the Smokin’ Lizard Tobacco Store.
    “Yeah,” she answered, whispering into the phone.
    “How’s it going?” Olivia Eaton, co-owner of the detective agency, asked.
    “Really? You called me off a tail to ask me how it was going?” Tonica wiped the precipitation streaming down her face and hunched against the wall, trying to stay somewhat dry.
    Olivia Eaton and her boyfriend, a former police officer, Hal Stevens, worked in partnership. At first, Tonica thought she’d been lucky to be hired as a new recruit. She’d just gotten her private investigator’s license and her B.A. in Criminology when Olivia came to their college looking for a new PI for her budding agency, just two short years ago. Now, at 26, she felt more confident in herself and her career path.
    “Yes, rookie, I did,” Olivia said, her voice hard. “What’s your location?”
    “I’m on West Market Street. Carte just disappeared into a restaurant.”
    “Okay, give it a rest and head on back.”
    “What?”  Tonica’s knuckles ached. She’d gripped the phone so hard, they hurt. Releasing her death grip, she took in a deep breath. “I’ve been soaked chasing him, following him for most of the day and now you want me to just quit and come back to the office? He’s going into a restaurant! A perfect opportunity to get his spit in a cup. What the hell, Olive?”
    “First off, you don’t get to call me Olive. We’re not sleeping together, and you’re not a six foot tall, brunette white man named Hal. Secondly, like I said, rookie , you follow my lead or you go find another place to work. I hear Burger King’s hiring.”
    “Fine, whatever,” Tonica said, too pissed off to trust herself to say more. Ever since she blew the tail last week on a suspected wife-beater, Olivia hadn’t trusted Tonica to do much of anything on her own. With Hal working undercover on another case, Olivia’s quick-fire temper escalated from occasionally pissed to pissed-all-the-time.
    With the flip of her phone, Tonica ended the annoying call and sighed. Fuck . She was so soaked, her feet