The Best of Sisters in Crime (14 page)

“Oh, my lord,”
whispered Marjorie. “Hank really is going to kill me if I have to call him for
bail.”

Anne yanked her
thoughts to the present moment and turned to the stage. A young man had
appeared, dressed in a police uniform. His face was stern as he slapped a billy
club across his palm. She felt as if it were slamming against her abdomen. Had
Paul found the note and realized what she had arranged for the lovebirds?

“I should arrest
all of you,” he said, scowling as his eyes flitted around the room. “Run you
in. book you, and take you to a cold, dark cell. Fling you across the cot and
interrogate you until you beg for mercy. Is that what you want me to do?”

“No,” screamed a
voice from the crowd. “Take it off!”

His mouth
softened; dimples appeared in his cheeks. “Is that what you want me to do?” he
demanded of the crowd.

“Take it off!”

Like a prairie dog,
the emcee popped up on the platform at the back of the stage. “Do you want
Policeman Dick to take it off? You’ll have to tell him what you want!”

“Take—it—off!”
the crowd howled in unified frenzy.

The music began
to pulsate as the young man toyed with the top button of his shirt, his hips
synchronized with the beat. The crowd roared their approval. Sylvia leaned
forward and said, “You turned absolutely white, Anne. Did you think he was a
real cop?”

Anne kept her
eyes on the man in the middle of the stage. “Don’t be absurd, Sylvia. I don’t
have a guilty conscience,” she said distractedly. The first button was undone,
and the graceful fingers had moved down one tantalizing inch. A few curly chest
hairs were visible now; she felt a sudden urge to dash onto the stage and brush
her hand across them. “Is he going to take it all off?”

“I can’t believe
you said that,” Bitsy sniffed. “I think this is disgusting.”

Anne had
expected to feel the same way, but now, with the darling young blond man who
looked so wholesome, so boyish and innocent and pleased with the response from
the crowd—it wasn’t disgusting. It was very, very interesting.

Marjorie put her
cup down, her eyes wide and her mouth slightly agape. “I don’t think it’s
disgusting,” she said in a hollow voice.

Bitsy leaned
back in the chair and crossed her arms. “The three of you are slobbering like
dogs.”

Anne barely
heard the condemnation from across the table. Policeman Dick was easing out of
his shirt, letting each sleeve slide down his arm so slowly she could feel the
ripple of his biceps, the hard turn of his elbows, the soft skin of his
forearm, the mounded base of his hand, the long, delicate fingers. She heard
herself exhale as the khaki shirt fell to the floor.

His hips still
moving with the music, the man flexed his arms and turned slowly so the women
could appreciate his flat stomach and broad shoulders. He swaggered across the
stage to Anne’s table and curled his hands behind Sylvia’s neck.

“Unbuckle my
belt or I’ll run you in,” he said, smiling to take the menace from his
facetious threat. He noticed Anne’s stunned expression and winked at her,
sharing the joke in an oddly private message.

“You can run me
in anytime you want!” Sylvia smirked as she fumbled with the buckle of his
belt. Beside her, Bitsy was almost invisible below the table. Her face was
stony, and her mouth a pinched ring of scandalized disapproval.

When the buckle
was freed, the man backed away to tease the crowd with his jutting pelvis and
bare chest. His trousers began to slide down his hips. Again Anne could feel
his skin, now so taut with smooth, muscular slopes. It’s been such a long time,
she thought, panicked by the intensity of her reaction. If only Paul hadn’t
lost interest when he began the affair with Sylvia. . . . It was his fault she
was responding like a silly, breathless, hormone-driven adolescent.

The uniform was
off now; only a small triangle of khaki fabric acknowledged the limits of
legality. The young man— Policeman Dick, she amended with a faint smile—began
to dance with increased insistence, turning often so that all the women could
have an equal opportunity to admire that which deserved admiration. The colored
lights flashed across his body in silken hues, shadows to be stroked to find
their depth.

As he moved
toward the table, Sylvia creased a dollar bill and waved it over Anne’s head. “Over
here!” she called.

Perplexed, Anne
frowned across the table. When Sylvia grinned and pointed, she turned back to
see the young man dancing directly in front of her. Blue eyes crinkled in
amusement. The dimples back again. And the wondrously unclad body, close enough
that she could see the faint sheen of sweat. Feathery blond hair. Muscles that
swooped like snow-covered hills. Hard thighs. The mysterious khaki bulge.

Despite the sudden
grip of numbness, a wave of Novocain that flooded her chest and froze her
lungs, she felt the dollar bill in her hand. The man slowly pulled her to her
feet. All around them, women were bellowing in approval, their hands banging
the tabletops and their feet pounding the floor. The music seemed to grow
louder, a primitive command from a wild and unknown place. The young man curled
a finger for Anne to move closer to him. Then, before she could consider her
actions, she found herself sliding the bill under the narrow strap that
supported his only item of clothing. Her fingers brushed his skin. A baby’s
skin.

He leaned down
and caught her head in his hands. His deliberate kiss caught her by surprise,
stunned her into acquiescence, and then, as his lips lingered, into
unintentional cooperation. When she felt as if she were losing herself in a
tunnel of heat, he eased away and met her eyes. After another disturbing wink,
he danced away to collect the dollar bills that now waved like pennants all
over the room.

“Sit down!”
Bitsy snapped. “Everyone’s staring at you. I want you to know that I am simply
disgusted with you, Anne. And both of you too,” she added to Sylvia and
Marjorie. “I’ve had more of this than I can bear. I’m going home.”

Anne wiggled her
hand in farewell, but she could not unlock her eyes from the young blond
dancer. Coals had been lit deep within her; they flamed and glowed, painfully.
Her body ached for him. And he seemed to remain aware of her even as he
accepted dollars and gave kisses to the screaming women crowding the edge of
the stage.

Then, with a
dimpled smile and a wink she felt was hers, he left the stage. The emcee
introduced a dark-haired young man in a sequined cape, who began to produce
gyrations with his hips as he paraded around the stage.

Anne looked at
the dressing-room door in one corner of the room. “Will he be back?” she asked
Sylvia.

“Probably. I
could see you liked what you saw, Anne. You’d better not tell Paul too much
about this when he gets home Sunday. He may not approve of his wife kissing a
male stripper.”

Marjorie sighed.
“What was it like, Anne?”

“Just a kiss.”
But such a kiss. Soft lips and a faint hint of after-shave. A kiss more
innocent than a high-school sweetheart’s, but promising more than any boy could
offer. A cherub without a robe. Every mother’s son, every woman’s lover. The
ache increased until she felt as if she might slip into a fantasy of such
erotic delight that she would never willingly return.

“Looks like our
Annie is in love,” Sylvia said. She pulled out another dollar bill and waved it
over Marjorie’s head. “Let’s see if we can share the good fortune.”

While Marjorie
laughingly protested and tried to hide, Anne forced herself to watch the man on
stage, who was nearing the same state of undress his predecessor had achieved.
It did nothing to distract her from the memory of the kiss. She was startled
when a waiter tapped her on the shoulder and handed her a folded note. He
nodded in the direction of the dressing-room door and left.

Would she wait
for “D” after the show?

There was a bit
more, but she could hardly see the written letters. Would she? Did she dare?
Anne Carter, wife of a lawyer, respected librarian at the neighborhood
elementary school, gracious hostess for countless cocktail parties and elegant
buffets designed to charm Paul’s clients, was hardly the sort to hang around
stage doors for male . . . dancers, dimples or not. She had never. . . done
such a thing. It was . . . unthinkable. She simply . . . couldn’t.

Men continued to
dance on the stage. Dollars were waved; women were kissed and convinced not to
pull too strenuously on the elastic straps that kept the show marginally legal.

Anne watched it
all, sipping beer that had no taste, clapping to music that had no beat,
hearing catcalls that had no meaning. Could she be in the blond man’s arms
while her husband and his mistress unwittingly poisoned themselves with the
bottle she had left at the cabin?

Dick appeared
during the second half of the show, this time dressed in tight pants and a shirt
with flowing sleeves. As he danced at the table next to hers, Anne caught his
questioning smile. She nodded. There really was no choice.

She survived the
rest of the show, counting the minutes until the room would clear and he would
emerge from the dressing room. At last, after a finale of flesh, the emcee
thanked the crowd and told them when his show would return to the Happy Hour
Saloon. Once the stage was empty, most of the women started for the exits,
babbling excitedly about the relative merits of each performer.

“Hank’s going to
kill me,” Marjorie said happily, then pulled herself out of her chair and left.

Anne glanced at
Sylvia. “Don’t you have a date?” she asked. At a cabin, with a bottle of Scotch
and a husband who had strayed too far to ever merit forgiveness. She wanted it
to be done.

“I do, and here
he comes,” Sylvia said, putting her cigarette case in her purse. “But what
about you? This is hardly the place for librarians to sit alone and drink beer.”

“He’s here?” He
couldn’t be here—he was at the cabin.

Sylvia waved to
a man waiting near the door. “My accountant, actually. I’ve been after him
since April, because he saved me an absolute fortune on my taxes this year. If
he can get me a refund next year, I may break down and marry him.”

“Your accountant?”

“Somebody has to
do my taxes. What’s wrong with you?”

“I thought—I
thought you and Paul—” Anne gasped through a suddenly constricted throat.

“Not me, Annie.
Your husband’s attractive, but he’s more interested in the younger set. Or
those who teach them.” Sylvia looked at the chair beside her, where Bitsy had
sat until she had made the indignant exit. “You’d better ask Paul about his
late nights at the office. I didn’t want to say anything, but Bitsy’s been
awfully concerned the last few months about your schedule.”

“Bitsy?” All she
could manage was a croak. It couldn’t be; the suicide note named Sylvia—not
Bitsy. Her literary masterpiece would fool no one, not with the wrong name. The
police would realize Paul hadn’t written it. They would show it to her, ask her
if she had been to the cabin lately, demand to know if she had taken
barbiturates from Sylvia’s purse and left the empty vial under the note in the
night-table drawer. She hadn’t worried about fingerprints, or mud on her tires,
or any such trivial details. The investigation wouldn’t have gone that far. The
plan was too good.

She searched
wildly for a way to prove Sylvia wrong, to catch her in some horridly devious
lie. “But you had dinner with him!”

“He wanted to
ask me how I thought you’d react to a divorce,” Sylvia said gently. “He made me
swear not to mention it to you. It’s been Bitsy all along.”

“No, it can’t
be. It can’t be Bitsy.” She rubbed her face, unable to believe it. “You’re
lying.”

“Sorry to be the
one to tell you,” Sylvia said as she stood up. “I have to run; my gentleman
friend’s waiting to hear about the strippers. Don’t stay here too long.”

As Sylvia left,
Anne felt her stomach grow cold with fear. Bitsy had left more than an hour
ago, no doubt on her way to the rendezvous Anne herself had suggested. There
was no way to telephone Paul, to tell him that the Scotch was filled with
barbiturates, that she would no longer contest a divorce if he would quietly
pour the bottle down the drain and tear up the damning suicide note.

Perhaps she
could drive up there in time to stop them from consuming too much of the
Scotch. The two wouldn’t start on the bottle immediately. Surely they’d spend a
few minutes greeting each other, and Bitsy would relish telling Paul all the
details of the vulgarity to which she’d been exposed. Tell him how his wife had
actually kissed a stripper. Offer righteous comments about the cheapness of the
bar and the ill-bred behavior of the spectators.

Yes, she had
time to rush to the cabin and prevent the Scotch from carrying out its lethal
assignment. If she left at once. She grabbed her purse and shoved back her
chair. She had enough gas in her car; the route to the cabin was still fresh in
her mind. She’d have to confront the two and admit what she’d done, but maybe—

“I’m glad you
waited for me,” a voice murmured in her ear. A hand touched her elbow and
pulled her back down to her chair. “You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen,
with your lovely dark hair and little-girl eyes.”