The Brush Off (19 page)

I could feel my face burning. Oh, well, an excuse was an excuse. Anything but admitting I stole Ricardo’s key. “How did you guess?”

“Thinking you might run into Lieutenant Scythe, huh?” Trudy winked at Gerald, and I wondered what Big Mouth had told him as he winked back. “Why don’t we stop by Victoria’s Secret and get you one of those padded jobs you can cinch up? I’ve even seen A-cups get cleavage out of one of those.”

“Great idea.” I grabbed for her elbow and hauled her upright. “I can’t wait to get there.”

Trudy knew now I was lying. She looked at me suspiciously. “But—”

“But nothing,” I said as I hustled her to the door.

“I’ve got a man to catch.”

At least, I thought it was a man. The killer, that is.

A
S WE EXITED THE INTERSTATE, WE BEGAN TO SEE
the multimillion-dollar homes dotting the cedar-and-oak covered limestone hills to our right. Trudy and I went over the plan for the tenth time. We were zipping along in her bubble-gum blue Miata convertible because she said that my “old” truck would stand out in this new-money neighborhood, drawing unwanted attention. Mine was the vehicle of a maid or a construction worker, she said. They really got eyeballed. Her little Miata wasn’t a Mercedes, but it might pass for a car one of the poorer residents might buy his children, who, in my opinion, probably deserved more eyeballing than the abovementioned categories, but I wasn’t going to split hairs with Trude. She was doing me a favor.

Trudy had come up with the perfect way to get past the guard gates. She’d called an interior design customer of hers on the excuse that she’d been to an antiques auction preview and thought a piece there would be ideal for them. She just wanted to make sure it fit before she bid on it. Once we measured, we could go on to Ricardo’s house.

“The only hitch is, Reyn,” Trudy explained, “you have to act like you’re my assistant.”

Humph.
“Can’t I just be a friend along for the ride?”

“Um, no. These people are picky about who they let into their home.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have an assistant.”

“Xylophones and Xeroxes, Reyn, why do you have to worry everything to death? They don’t know I don’t have an assistant. I did this house three years ago and have come up in the world since then.”

“How on earth do you remember their décor three years later? Aren’t they going to be suspicious? How are you going to explain seeing some antique and placing it only in their house?”

Trudy shot me a sidelong look that made me nervous. “Their décor is, um, unique. You’ll see. You’ll never forget it, either.”

I doubted that. Décor really wasn’t something that stuck with me, no matter how expensive it was. We turned at the massive stone marker announcing “The Dominion,” passed the expensively verdant golf course with its palatial country club, and neared the guard gate. The waiting line was five deep. We crept along.

“What do they ask for, a complete financial statement before they let you in? The measurements of everyone in the vehicle?”

“Well, if that were the case, it might have helped get us in quicker if you’d agreed to stop at Victoria’s Secret on the way,” she pointed out, looking askance at my chest hidden beneath the ruby rayon. “If they find out you buy your underwear at Dora’s Discount Deals, they probably won’t let us in.”

She grinned. I groused. Finally, she pulled up to the guard’s podium standing in front of a control room that looked like it might pilot the starship
Enterprise.

“We’re going to the Strake home.”

The guard shook her stern head. “I don’t think so.”

Trudy’s mouth dropped open. “What? They called ahead, I’m sure of it.”

The guard pointed at someone in the control room, who dialed a phone. “Mr. George Strait did not call us today about anyone visiting.”

“George Strait lives here?” I blurted out. Normally, I am very cool when it comes to men, with two exceptions: country-western singers and bull riders. I lust after them with no shame. I just hoped I wasn’t salivating.

Trudy waved me silent, throwing me an aggravated look.

“I said,” Trudy enunciated each letter carefully, “Strake, with a
k,
as in
kill
.”

The guard’s eyebrows flew up under her bangs.
Oh, great, Trude.
It was my turn to glare. Between the two of us, we were certainly slipping in unnoticed.

The guard on the phone was turning bright red, apologizing into the receiver to George, I assume. A third guard stepped out of the control room with a clipboard and nodded once.

The guard at the podium was writing down our license-plate number.

“Do you know your way?” she asked.

“Yes,” Trudy began.

I cut her off. “Actually, she’s terrible at directions. If you could just give them to me once, I’ll make sure she doesn’t get lost.”

I was sure the guards didn’t want anyone wandering around lost inside the gates, making the high-priced residents nervous. The guard explained how to get there. She asked for Trudy’s driver’s license and said she could have it back when we left. As we wound our way up the hill, we argued about whether it was my George comment or her kill comment that warranted holding her driver’s license hostage. At any rate, if anything went amiss in the Dominion that day, we were toast.

“Next time, we’re driving your truck,” Trudy muttered.

She pulled up the driveway of a three-story house that looked about a mile high. It was stucco, and it was painted black. Okay, so maybe I would remember some of their décor. As we got out and walked toward the front door, a little white truck with an amber light on the roof and “Security” lettered on the doors passed slowly on the street. I hoped it wouldn’t wait for us. We didn’t have a plan for getting to Ricardo’s house under Rent-a-Cop surveillance. Smoothing down her neon mini-dress, Trudy rang the doorbell. I expected Morticia to answer, but instead, a very ordinary-looking middleaged brunette wearing forty-thousand-dollar diamond earrings greeted us. Her dyed sienna hair was cut to chin length in the latest star style with long, eyelid-dusting bangs. Those bangs told me this woman was bold, liked to make a statement, and thought of herself as sexy. Boy, I was about to find out how right I was.

Mrs. Strake and Trude air-kissed. That phenomenon still amazes me. I can never get my smooch and my cheek approach timed just right. I end up either puckering up right in someone’s face, which sends them reeling backward in abject terror, or actually making contact with their cheek, which, of course, is the biggest no-no because the whole idea behind the air-kissing business is not to touch.

I stuck my hand out so Mrs. Strake and I could shake as Trudy introduced us. That’s when I caught sight of the sculpture in the cavernous foyer. It was a life-size bronze pair of nudes—a man and a woman in the most unusual sexual position I have ever seen. Could she really get her leg up like that and her hands there while he was doing that to her? I cocked my head to the side. It looked like it might hurt unless one was a professional contortionist. Lucinda Strake was trying to peel her fingers away from our shake.
Oops.
I’d been a little distracted. Trudy stabbed a fingernail into the small of my back as we stepped into the foyer. I guess I needed to take this all in stride like the lackey I was pretending to be. Perhaps erotica was décor number 403 taught in interior design school. We passed a mirror. I took a step back. Its frame was wooden, carved with monkeys with very human-looking faces in a hundred different sexual positions. At least, I thought there were a hundred. I didn’t have time to count.

Trudy caught my elbow with her talons and dragged me along with her.

“I still haven’t found anything just right for this space, Trudy,” Lucinda was saying as we neared the double doors to the dining room. Our host kept glancing at me suspiciously. Could it have been my mouth dropping open with each bizarre piece of erotica we encountered? As we passed the dining room, I tried to slow down to fully take in the ten-foot-by-sixteen-foot oil painting on the wall, but Trudy hustled me along so fast all I caught was a flash of tangled legs and bare fanny.

We got to a small room at the end of the hall that I suppose one would refer to as a lounge. Wallpapered in a deep crimson velvety fabric, it had a half dozen of those one-sided lounging chairs that reminded me of Roman orgies and a small built-in bar. The glass table in the center was held up by a metal labyrinth of bodies I resisted looking too closely at. I’d just gotten my mouth to stay closed, after all.

Lucinda and Trudy were standing at an open space on the wall next to the bar, discussing the antique piece in question, which existed only in Trudy’s imagination. I glanced at the highball glasses reflected in the mirror behind the bar. I caught sight of a penis and a pair of breasts. What they were doing, I don’t know. I looked away and tried not to imagine what her dinner guests did on those lounging chairs, sipping out of
those
glasses.

I couldn’t believe my good Catholic friend was behind all this. Wait till I told Mama Tru. On second thought, I thought I’d save it to hold over Trude’s head as potential blackmail material the next time she pissed me off. The thought of blackmail sobered me up. I hadn’t had time to mull over Ricardo’s potential dealmaking. I wouldn’t have bet he’d be so underhanded and dirty, but I wouldn’t have bet he’d be murdered, either.

“This massage table is in very good condition,” Trudy was telling Lucinda. “Eighteenth-century Thai. Apparently, it’s straight out of Bangkok.”

“As long as it fits, you can go as high as forty-two thousand,” Lucinda Strake said.

I coughed. That was the annual salary of one of the richest natives of my hometown. Trudy glared. I cleared my throat.

“Allergies,” I explained with a weak smile.

Trudy snapped her fingers and held open her hand. I wondered if she wanted a low five, then I remembered she’d handed me a tape measure in the car. I took it out of the pocket of my blouse, trying not to smack it into her hand too hard. I was supposed to be subservient. She snapped it open, pulled out a bit of the metal tape, then zinged it shut. What was this? Checking to make sure I hadn’t tampered with the numbers on the inch markers? She dropped it into my hands with her thumb and index finger, then pointed at the wall.
Grrr.
I scuttled as best as my pride would let me over to the wall and measured the height and width of the space, calling out the numbers, which she entered into her PalmPilot. She
hmm
ed and sighed as she reviewed data on the tiny screen, tapping the little wand against the side thoughtfully. Lucinda, her hands clasped in front of her chest, was holding her breath. She blew it out suddenly.

“Okay, go to fifty thousand if you need to.”

Wow, I didn’t know Trude was this good. She’d built the suspense so high without saying a word that the lady was about to hand her a blank check. She even had me on edge, and I knew the piece wasn’t going to fit because it didn’t exist.

“I’m sorry, Lucinda.” Trudy finally shook her head sadly. “This piece is just not going to work.”

“Oh, no.” Lucinda looked like she would cry.

Trudy patted her on the shoulder as we walked back into the hall. “I’ll keep looking.”

“With all this talk, now I’m eager to have this space filled. We’ll double your fee if you find something before the month’s out.”

“I’ll find something,” Trudy promised as she ushered me out the front door.

“She won’t say anything,” Lucinda said with another glance at me. “Will she?”

I bristled. Trudy stuck another fingernail into my back and twisted. “Would I hire someone indiscreet?”

Lucinda smiled gratefully, and I smiled back, teeth clenched. Trudy, feeling I was going to tell her client where to go, quickly air-kissed her and dragged me to the car. I was so mad I almost forgot to look for the security truck. It was gone.

We started down the street and stopped just short of the intersecting street that would take us to Ricardo’s house. Trudy edged the little sports car in front of a thick mountain laurel tree, which would hide the car from the house we were parked in front of. First, she put up the top so we could squeeze into our exercise wear. It involved a lot of grunting, groaning, swearing (only on my part), and looking up and down the street for cars. And just to make my day complete, as Trudy and I were maneuvering the cramped space and trying not to put each others eyes out, I heard a loud rip. Of course it came from my jeans, not hers, which were left without a crotch. Good thing I didn’t need them anymore.

Just as we’d planned, Trudy popped the hood. I got out, glanced around to make sure no one was looking, lifted the hood, pulled the cable loose from the carburetor, and let it hang. I eased the hood shut. Now, if anyone asked us what we were doing there, we could say we had car trouble. And my sister Pecan said all those months chasing Hervey Keil my junior year were a waste of time. She thought I was only watching his butt every time he bent over the hood. Wait till I told her it enhanced my investigative technique.

I cocked my head north, and we started out. I wished we were there already, not so much because I thought someone would stop us on our nefarious mission but because I was wearing spandex. This was Trudy’s idea. She said the only way we wouldn’t be noticed walking in the Dominion was if we were power-walking in overpriced exercise wear. Since I don’t own any, I stuffed my tree-trunk legs (I refer to them as “muscular” in public just to show I don’t have a self-esteem issue) into a pair of Miss Exquisite Hams’ skintight leggings. The fact that she got to wear the black ones and I got the fuchsia just proves life’s not fair.

The road to Ricardo’s house rose at a sixty-degree angle in front of us. As we huffed and puffed our way up, several cars passed, everyone doing double takes—the men at Trudy’s legs, the women at my bravery for wearing pink spandex. Finally, we approached Ricardo’s house, which seemed a lot closer to the intersection when we were driving, and I was surprised to see it looking the same. The first time I’d seen it, the nondescript rock one-story hidden among the oaks had surprised me. His ultra-modern salons screamed so for attention I’d assumed his home would, too. But the better I got to know Ricardo, the more it made sense—the salons were PR, his home was his private enclave. I looked both ways before we power-walked down the driveway and slipped behind the cover of a sago palm to the front door.