Saturday Night Cleaver (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #4) (11 page)

The long walk across the street and up to the front stoop was chilly and more nerve wracking than the hours leading up to a root canal.

Howard pushed the doorbell while I practiced exercises to prevent hyperventilation.

A tall, big-boned man with strawberry-blond hair and freckled cheeks opened the door. “Hello!” he said in a boisterous voice. His smile was genuine. “Are you new?”

“That’s us,” I quipped, “New, new, new.” My voice cracked from nerves and I hoped the man hadn’t noticed.

He lowered his voice to a near-whisper and leaned in as if sharing a secret. “You got the invite?”

Uh oh.

We did not anticipate the need for an invitation. One needed invitations for these things? I gulped. Okie dokie, how could I quip us out of this one?

Luckily, I had a husband with smarts and training from the best of the best, which usually referred to Top Gun School, but in this case referred to the FBI Academy. Smart Hubby Howard pulled the business card out of his back pocket and handed it to the friendly fellow who took the card with a wink and let us pass.

To our right was a massive living room. I mean, massive. You could fit five of my living rooms into that space. The furnishings were right off the cover of House Beautiful, including a shiny black baby grand piano in the back corner.

To the left, another living room. Two living rooms? To be fair, though, this one was smaller and had a television as well as a stereo system Howard would have killed for, I am sure.

Straight ahead through a wide hallway we could see a kitchen island the size of Maui and the hint of a dining room beyond. A few people milled around the kitchen island, preparing plates of food. I did not see Shin Lee anywhere.

For no other reason probably, than that we’re both right handed, Howard and I slipped into the living room on the right and immediately caught the attention of a young couple standing with drinks in their hands. I tried to look down and avoid eye contact, but it was too late. The shortish brunette man smiled broadly and held his hand out for an introductory shake while the woman seemed more bashful.

“Name is Bob,” he said. “This is Betty.”

Betty and Bob? They didn’t look a year over thirty, yet their names were at least sixty years old. “I’m Barb,” I said taking his firm hand with my sweaty one. I cleared my throat. Boy, did I need a glass of water bad. “This is my husband, Howard.”

I’m not sure if it was my imagination run amok, but I sensed Bob sizing me up.
Alright
, he was thinking,
Betty, Bob, and Barb, a threesome of Bs
.

“Barb!” bellowed Bob. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Oh no! He
was
sizing me up. I grabbed Howard for support. This was heading in the wrong direction far too quickly. We needed Shin Lee, not a romp in Pee Wee Bob’s Playhouse.

Bob peeked around as if checking out my rear end. “Where’s the tequila?” he said, grinning.

I thought I might faint when the doorbell rang and a second later the kitchen erupted in joyful shouts of, “Barb! Finally! Barb!”

Spinning toward the door, my eyes landed on a face I never expected to see in a million years. Dandi Booker—all four feet of her. Her dyed blond hair was semi-teased into some style that I assumed was supposed to pass for sexy. It just looked like squirrels had nested there instead. She wore a low-cut dress so brightly orange that it could burn retinas, and she had her boobs all pushed up tight into a vice-like bra to give the illusion of cleavage. Yeah, I thought, when that thing comes off tonight, some man is going to be
very
disappointed.

“Hey, ya’ll!” she cheered, all cheerleaderish. “Ready for some fun and margaritas?” She bounced a few times while lifting a party-sized bottle of tequila high into the air for everyone to see. I nearly expected her to break out into a chant: Give me a T, give me an E, give me a Q...

Bob turned his smile upside down. “You said
you
were Barb.” His tone was accusatory.

“I am,” I said, very confused.

Betty and Bob exchanged disappointed glances and walked off in what I detected was a huff. Our first rejection. I didn’t know if I should be relieved or embarrassed. I thought about sniffing my pits to make sure my deodorant was still working, but reconsidered.

I whispered to Howard. “I know that woman, and her name isn’t Barb.”

“Who is it?”

“That’s the friend-stealer, Dandi Booker. I can’t wait to tell Peggy about this.”

“I thought you didn’t like gossips.”

“That’s not gossiping. That’s telling the truth. I’m here, and so is Dandi, pretending to be someone else—me. If that’s not a good truth to spread, I don’t know what is.”

My phone rang while Howard was rolling his eyes at me. I slipped it from my purse, trying to look casual. “It’s Clarence,” I told Howard.

He pointed. “I’m going to wander into the kitchen. See what shows up there.”

I gave him a thumbs up and answered, moving into the far corner of the room, away from the voices that made it hard to hear. “Clarence, are you there?”

“Yeah. Hey, so we spent all afternoon researching this Saturday Night Fever and eventually Guy wound up on a discussion board and found out all kinds of cool stuff. This club has its own jargon and they refer to their parties as dances and guess what? They’re having one tonight!”

“I know. I’m there right now.”

“Really? So are we.”

The doorbell rang.

“Clarence, what did you say?”

The boisterous, freckled guard who had answered the doorbell yelled out for the house to hear, “Hey! We got two gay guys!”

A resounding round of positive hoots and hollers echoed from every corner of the place.

“They don’t have an invite, should we let ‘em in anyway?”

More hoots and hollers and “Alright!” and “Show ‘em the way!” and “It’s cool to be gay!”

I was hearing this from both the house and the phone in my ear, so I knew the guys at the door were queer, but not gay. Pounding across the never-ending living room to the front door, I spied the long and stringy haired, younger version of Colt smiling proudly next to the pointy-nosed, fedora topped Guy Mertz who looked like a deer wishing he’d been caught in some headlights instead of caught in a possible panty parade.

“What are you doing here?” My tone was possibly a tad too motherly.

“It was his idea.” Clarence pointed to Guy whose complexion had gone from red to green.

“Thought it would make a great story,” stammered Guy whose eyes darted around. “But I’m starting to have second thoughts.”

Clarence was beaming. “We’re their first gay couple.”

“Except you’re not gay,” I reminded him.

He shrugged. “It’s still nice that they don’t discriminate.”

Pointing toward the far corner, I barked an order. “This way.”

Across from the baby grand piano were two chairs. I motioned for them to sit and handed my phone to Clarence. “Here—look at your dad’s last text and try to decipher. I’m getting Guy a glass of water.” I snapped my fingers in front of Guy’s face. “Stay with us. I’m getting you something cool to drink.” He smiled weakly, taking the hat off his head and nervously fiddling with its brim.

Half way to the kitchen I bumped into Dandi Booker. I bumped into her hard, and I’ll admit, I did it on purpose.

“Hey there, girl!” she chirped all Southern-like. She wrapped her hand around my arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Imagine finding a nice girl like you in a place like this.”

“Why are you using my name?”

“What?”

“They called you, Barb. Your name isn’t Barb. My name is Barb.”

“Shh, girl, shh. Didn’t anyone tell you the rules?”

When my face didn’t register understanding, she sighed a deep Scarlett O’Hara sigh. “We don’t use our real names here, for cripes sake. Everyone picks a name—you know a plainish name like Mary, or Sue, or Jane. Only those were already taken, so I took Barbara. Around here, I’m Barbara Haynes. Like the undies, but with a ‘y’ for spice.” She put on a conspiratorial face. “I have to shake it up a teensy bit. It’s just not in me to be all the way plain, you know? You should pick one quick-like. How about...Linda?”

“Barbara isn’t a plainish name,” I countered.

She patted me on the hand. “Oh, Sweetie, it works on you. Don’t worry. How about Linda Miller?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’ll do. Listen, I’m looking for the woman who I think lives here—Shin Lee?”

“You just don’t catch on, do you? Club names, Linda, club names.”

“Let’s put it this way, anyone around that looks like her name could be Shin Lee? Who
lives
here?”

“That’s Cathy Black, only I haven’t seen her pretty little head yet tonight. She might be downstairs.” She passed me a wink. “Some like to get started early, you know.”

I winced as my mind darted toward images her comment conjured. Downstairs was probably where the “dancing” occurred. I couldn’t even watch movies on Cinemax, aka, Skin-amax, so I sure as heck didn’t want to catch the live show. But the fact of the matter was, Colt was in trouble and Shin Lee could be the answer. I asked Dandi-Barb where the stairs were. She pointed to a door off the hallway just past the far end of the kitchen.

More people had arrived, and even the mini-palace was starting to feel crowded. I scooched around and squeezed through small groups of chatty members until I reached the door. Above it was a lit blue and white neon sign that read,
Saturday Night Fever
. Beneath the words hung a pair of kissing lips, just like the business card logo. Man, these people were organized.

Pulling the door open revealed a nice surprise. Shin Lee the crazy Asian lady stood barefoot on the plushy carpeted stairs that did not go straight down, but rather made a bend half-way. She seemed to be talking to someone around the corner, obscured by the wall. Her silky blue and white dress fell just above the knee, but the neckline plunged nearly to her navel.

“You can do it, I know you can,” she cooed in a gentle, very American-sounding voice. “You’re the Master, baby, you’re the Master.”

So, she spoke English after all, that little faker.

Chapter Ten

M
y first impulse was to
run for the hills, fearful I was about to witness a raunchy moment between two thrill-seeking suburbanites. However, my second impulse, which was to open my big fat mouth, overpowered the first, as it often does. “Hey, Miss No-Speak-English! What’s the deal?”

That got her to notice me.

“You’re the lady from this morning,” she said, again, speaking better English than Colin Firth and Lawrence Olivier combined. “What are you doing here?”

With a great deal of courage that surprised the heck out of me, I stomped down the five or six stairs between us, peeked around the corner and said to the man in baggy jeans standing there, “Excuse me, I have some important business to discuss with your...uh... partner.” I grabbed Shin Lee Cathy Black and pulled her up the stairs. “You have some ‘splainin’ to do,” I told her.

“Get your hands off me. I’m not done with him yet.”

“Really do
not
want to know the details, thank you.” I gripped her arm tighter and kept pulling. “What’s with the pretense that you don’t speak English?”

She pulled back, but not hard enough to escape my grasp. “It’s a time saver. I had somewhere to be. And you had a crazy look in your eyes.”

I didn’t know how she could have perceived my look as crazy, but I wasn’t going to go there. “Cheap trick,” I huffed.

“Who are you?” She seemed very angry with me for interrupting her debauched merger.

“Barbara Marr, Colt Baron’s friend. You’d know that if you’d have given me half a second.” I dragged her through the kitchen, into the living room and right up to Clarence and Guy, who were huddled together. Clarence was still holding my cell phone and Guy was scribbling notes on a ninety-nine-cent pocket note pad.

I presented them with a task. “This is Shin Lee, code name, Cathy Black. Don’t let her fool you, she speaks English just fine. We saw her knocking on Colt’s door this morning and we found a business card in his condo with this address on it. We suspect he was working for her since we found pictures of an Asian man on his camera from yesterday morning.” I threw an apologetic glance to Shin Cathy. “Sorry if that sounds like racial profiling.” I pointed to my “gay” friends. “This is Clarence, he’s Colt’s son, and just as worried about him as I am. And this is Guy Mertz. If you watch Channel 10, you’ve probably switched to another station when he came on. Put your hat back on, Guy, so she knows it’s you.”

The three of them were speechless, but Guy slipped his hat on anyway.

“Guy, get as much information from her as you can. I’m going to find Howard. I want to get out of this place before things get too weird.” I was about to leave when I remembered something. “There were also pictures of a blonde in black sweatpants who we think is a woman named Rita Ash.”

Clarence held up the phone for me to see. “Your friend Peggy called.”

I turned on my heels to make an organized sweep for Howard.