Red Sole Clues Read Online Free PDF Page A

say hello?” he asked. “No small talk? No quick bite to eat to catch up? We haven’t seen each other in weeks. I thought we were friends.”
    “We are,” I said, feeling a little guilty. I’d pretty much avoided all men for the last three weeks. And Savage was definitely a man.
    “Good, let’s have lunch.”
    I looked over at Scarlet and smiled. “My aunt is in town. I’d have to bring her with me.”
    There was silence on the other end and then a sigh. “Is this a lunch I’m probably going to regret?”
    “Most definitely. But don’t worry. I already told her you were gay.”
    Another few seconds of silence followed and I had a feeling Savage was weighing the pros and cons of friendship with me. I had that effect on a lot of people.
    “Why do you need information on the Romeo Bandit?”
    I wasn’t about to take the chance of turning information over to the FBI and losing the reward. But at the same time I needed Savage’s help. Knowledge was power.
    “One of my old students is doing a report on the Romeo Bandit. There’s not a lot of information in the database on him.”
    More silence. “That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.”
    I sighed and flopped back on the couch.
    “But because we’re friends, let me look up the file and I’ll tell you what I can. You’re going to owe me big time though.”
    “Owe you how?” I asked.
    “I’ll think of something good.”
    His voice had lowered and I could hear the bad boy in it, just waiting to debauch a good girl like me. This was my problem with Savage. I was pretty sure there was a bad girl somewhere deep inside of me that wanted to be debauched. I had to stay away from Savage at all costs.
    “Crap,” I muttered under my breath.
    “I heard that,” he said.
    I heard the clack of the keyboard as he typed and waited patiently for information. Mostly I was trying not to think about what the next forty-eight hours of my life were going to be like. If I was lucky, I might get hit by a plane before I had to see any old people naked.
    “Okay, here we go,” he said. And then he whistled long and low. “This is way before my time, but this guy was a badass. And I don’t mean that in a complimentary way. One of the most successful bank robbers in history. He robbed a total of thirty-one banks between 1939 and 1945. He murdered twenty-two people in cold blood and left a long-stemmed red rose as a calling card. He was called the Romeo Bandit because he liked to seduce female employees of the bank sometime before he robbed them. Several of the women that admitted to sleeping with him mentioned an unusual tattoo on his arm.”
    “What happened after 1945?” I asked.
    “He vanished off the face of the earth. There were no other robberies listed after that date. It could’ve had something to do with the war being over, or he could’ve died. No one knows. There’s a million-dollar reward for his capture, though I’d have to say if he wasn’t dead by now then he’s probably pretty close to it.”
    “Hmm,” I said. “Any idea about his true identity?”
    “We have a list of the aliases he used over the six years he robbed banks. He never used the same name twice. We have several witness descriptions, and his appearance changed from time to time. Sometimes he had a mustache. Sometimes his hair was graying at the temples. They were all subtle differences. But judging from the statements of the women he seduced, they were literally so enamored with him that they didn’t even think twice about his motives. He got away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold.”
    “Maybe he just knew when to quit and retired,” I said.
    “Maybe,” Savage said skeptically. “Anything else you need?”
    “Do you have a description of the tattoo?”
    “I’ve got several renderings taken from witness statements. They’re all very similar. The women he seduced spent a lot of time looking at that tattoo.”
    “Can you send me a copy of one of the