by Kit Frazier
“Well, it looks like our new friend Bug is taking good care of the place,” I said.
Mia nodded. “When is Scooter getting out of stir?”
“Cantu said they’re putting him on Prozac and turning him loose on condition he gets some help,” I said, trying the front door. “I wonder if the back door is open.”
Mia narrowed her eyes. “You’re not trying to get out of your date tonight…”
“Me?” I said. “Never.”
Navigating the boxwood bushes that lined the outerwalls of the limestone-bricked building, I made my way around to the back and tried the door. Locked. I jiggled a few windows and was considering climbing over the bushes and accidentally breaking one with a rock when Mia’s cell phone chirped.
“It’s for you,” she said.
Rats. I took the phone and winced when I heard Tanner’s voice roaring through the receiver.
“MacKinnon! You were supposed to get Shiner those notes on Barnes. There are only two newspapers in this town and you’ve already screwed one. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal,” I said, staring at the glossy pane of The Blue Parrot’s unbroken window.
Mia cocked her head. “What did he want?”
“My head on a platter,” I said.
“Aren’t we going to check on Scooter?”
“Later.” I handed Mia her phone on the way back to the Beetle.
At home, I pulled the public records and the LexisNexis printouts on Scooter and Selena and the Bug out of my purse and tucked them into the big book about suicide. I stuck the book next to my computer where I could get to it later.
Going over my notes, I sat down at my desk and pecked out an outline on what I knew, what I supposed, and what was still anyone’s guess on whatever kind of mess it was that Scooter had stumbled into. Muse sat on the desk, watching the words as they appeared on screen. I got to the part about Doc Smit and stopped.
While it was true when the Bug said there weren’t many vets in Austin who took in exotic animals, I knew there were at least two in West Austin, about sixty miles closer to the Bug’s Paradise Cove home than a vet in Bastrop.
“Anything about this bother you, Muse?”
She stared at me with her round, yellow eyes.
“Yeah, me too,” I said, reaching for the small Bastrop phone book.
I flipped through pages, looking for a Doctor Smit and found squat.
Shelving the phone book, I dialed information.
“Dr. Henry Smit on Hwy. 29?” the operator repeated, then plugged me through to the automated voice that gave me the number and connected me.
A woman answered the phone, “Hello?”
I was expecting a veterinary clinic and her informal greeting threw me, but I recovered quickly and said, “May I speak with Doctor Smit?”
There was a long silence. “What do you want?”
The Bug said some of Scooter’s animals were in bad shape, and I wanted to ask the Bastrop vet what kind of bad shape, and a couple of general questions about Scooter and the Bug, but I got the feeling a direct question like that would earn me a dial tone.
Racking my brain, I thought of Mia’s cat, Phil, who Mia and some of her more militant animal-rights-friends had rescued from an animal testing lab. Though he was healthy now, the cat was alarmingly skinny and so neurotic he compulsively sucked his own tail “til it was bald.
“Um, I have a cat who’s got some problems,” I said, hoping to make an appointment.
“We’re not accepting new clients,” she said, and hung up. I stared at the buzzing receiver in my hand.
“Well, Muse. Isn’t that curious?”
She yawned and blinked at me. “Right,” I said. “Let’s call your vet and see if she knows anything about the mysterious Dr. Henry Smit.”
I dialed Dr. Emily Madison’s office, told the tech who I was and she put me right through.
“Hey, Dr. Em,” I said when she answered.
“Cauley?” she said. “What’s the matter. Did Muse pee in the ficus again?”
I smiled. “No more than usual, but this isn’t about Muse. I’m working on something on animal rehab and wondered if you knew anything about a Doctor Henry Smit in Bastrop.”
“You mean Dr. Mengele?” she practically growled.
“Excuse me?”
“He’s a butcher.” A butcher? I shook my head and wasn’t sure what to ask next, but it didn’t matter because Dr. Em was on a roll. “He does a lot of controversial procedures most Austin vets won’t touch.”
“Like what?” I said, my mind reeling.
“Well, like cutting a dog’s vocal chords to prevent barking.”
“Jeez!” I swore, and felt my whole body recoil. “Any reason somebody with abused animals would take them to this particular vet?”
She snorted. “Sure. Because Smit’s notorious for not reporting animal abuse and neglect. Even when it’s bad enough for criminal charges. The Veterinary Practitioners Board has been after his license for years, but it’s hard to yank a license if it interferes with the practitioner’s livelihood.” She paused. “Cauley, what’s going on?”
I blew out a breath. I’d known Scooter since we were kids, and I couldn’t imagine him using a veterinarian with shady credentials. “I don’t know yet. If I have any more questions can I call you?”
She said I could, we said our goodbyes and I sat, staring at my computer screen, which glowed the outline on the Bug. I wasn’t sure where this notorious Bastrop veterinarian fit into the outline, so I’d leave that out. For now.
I dropped back down in front of my computer and worked on the outline, sketching out the connection between Scooter and Buggess, Buggess and Van Gogh, Buggess and the Bastrop vet, Dr. Smit.
“Who says I can’t investigate?” I said to the cat, and logged online and e-mailed my notes to Tanner and tagged it with subject header that read:
How’s this for an obituary writer?
Then I dialed Cantu. “You by the fax?”
“What have you got?”
“Maybe nothing. I’m sending you an e-mail and faxing a couple of notes now. You know anything about a Dr. Smit, some kind of veterinarian out in Bastrop?”
“No. Should I?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He came up in a conversation today and I wondered if you’d ever run into him. I’m faxing you the notes I took. You get Scooter’s old arrest record?”
“Yeah, I pulled them.”
“That arrest…was it because of Selena?”
Cantu sighed. “I figured you’d ask that. I talked to the arresting officer, and yes, it was something about Selena.”
“I owe you,” I said. Thanking him profusely, I disconnected. I e-mailed my notes on Buggess and the conversation I’d had with Dr. Em about Dr. Smit to Cantu and tried not to get excited when he faxed me Scooter’s arrest record. I smiled. Quid pro quo.
Settling back down at the computer, I browsed the report Cantu had faxed. At seventeen, Scooter’d been in a fight over a girl after a football game. That figured. The only thing that could incite good-natured Scooter to criminal activity was Selena.
Muse hopped down from the desk and circled my legs as I tucked the arrest record in with the other files and glanced over at Aunt Kat’s old Regulator clock.
“Good grief, cat, do you know how late it is? I’m supposed to have a date!”
By the time I hit the shower, I was running abysmally late. I was rushing around the house in a towel when a knock sounded at the door.
“Well, crap,” I muttered. The knocking quickly turned into a pounding. I wasn’t dressed and my house was a wreck.
The dishwasher was full so I shoved the dirty dishes from the sink into the oven. In the bedroom, I kicked a pile of clothes under the bed. I hate having my house a mess, but I’m pretty single-minded, and when my head gets into something, everything else pretty much goes to hell.
The banging got louder and I yelled, “I’m coming, Mia!”
M
y wet hair was wrapped in a white towel, my wet body swathed in a big Turkish robe Aunt Kat had sent me from her research trip for The Turk and The Temptress. “You’re on time,” I said, swinging open the door.
“Of course I’m on time, what are you talking about,” Mia said, Brynn following her in.
“Hello, Cauley,” Brynn said. She strolled in like she always does like all eyes are on her, which they usually are. Brynn Rosen is a preternaturally beautiful advertising executive with bronze hair and bronze eyes and a vocabulary like whorehouse madam. Brynn, Mia and I had been suitemates at the University of Texas before I dropped out to put Dr. Dick through medical school. The day I broke the news, I thought Brynn was going to accidentally back over Dr. Dick several times in the student parking lot with her zippy little Miata. Sometimes I wish she had.
“Remie said to tell you she would have been here, but one of her kids got meningitis,” Mia said.
“Great,” I said. Ought to make for an interesting week at work. “Why aren’t you out with Roger?”
“Put him on hold,” Mia said.
“I brought essentials,” Brynn announced, dumping two shopping bags onto the counter next to Muse. Brynn arranged a plate of tortilla chips around a bowl of chorizo and set to work on some exceptional Mexican Martinis. I accepted a glass and headed back to my bedroom to dry hair.
Brynn and Mia followed as Muse hopped down, circling their legs, bitching her little cat blues all the way down the hall and into the bedroom.
“I hear Rob Ryder’s on the market again,” Brynn said, draping herself over the chair near the vanity.
“You don’t want Ryder,” I said. “He’s a News Boy. The man would bundle up all his ex-girlfriends and sell them to the Taliban if he thought it would get him a good story,” I said. “What happened to your new guy?”
“Archived,” she said. “And it’s not like I want Ryder forever. I’ll put him back when I’m done.”
Mia brandished a big embroidered bag and a stack of Chic magazines. “This is going to be so much fun. What’s your new guy like?”
“He’s not my new guy. He called me out of the blue.” I shrugged. “I haven’t seen him since high school. For all I know he could be an axe murderer. There were rumors his family was ‘
“Rumors! Ts, ts. You’re such a pessimist,” Mia said, thumbing through a magazine.
I’m a pessimist? Easy for her to say. She hadn’t been run into a river by an earless, homicidal maniac.
“Here. I brought this for you,” Mia said, and handed me a dog-earred a page in the latest edition of Chic.
“It says here if you want to have a successful relationship, you gotta know what you’re looking for,” Mia said. “You know. Like a list of requirements.”
I snorted. “We’re taking relationship advice from a magazine devoted to attracting a man, trapping said man, and lulling him into a stupor in the sack?”
“Now, Cauley. Mia’s got a point,” Brynn said. “So far your only requirement seems to be Must be a Mammal.”
“Hey,” I said. “They’ve all walked upright.”
Brynn shook her head. “Listen honey, you have got to get yourself some standards. In my case, that means Fat Stock Portfolio and Stuffed Jock.”
Mia looked mortified. “Don’t listen to Brynn. What you need is someone who’s sweet and sensitive. You know, like Roger.”
Brynn and I exchanged cynical glances. The only sensitive bone Corporate Raider Roger had in his body was below his belt.
“Look, y’all,” I said. “I’m not like you. I’ve never expected fireworks. I just want someone I can spoil a little, someone who’ll spoil me back. Someone who’ll take out the trash, change the light bulbs and kill the bugs.”
Someone dependable, smart and funny. Someone warm and safe to snuggle up to at night…
“Oh for fucks sake,” Brynn said, “You get someone with a good balance sheet and you can buy the rest.”
Sighing, I pulled a blue cotton sheath from my closet and tossed it onto the bed.
“You’re not going to wear that, are you?” Brynn said, looking like someone had wafted a three-day-old catfish carcass under her nose.
“I happen to think I look pretty good in that dress,” I said.
“Pretty good and drop-dead-gorgeous are at least an hour of makeup and a pair of Prada apart,” Brynn said, and pushed me into the chair in front of the vanity. “And we have got to do something about this hair.”
“Let me,” Mia said, flipping open a magazine. She took my brush and began back-combing my hair.
“Not so big,” I said.
“There’s no such thing as too big,” Mia said. She teased and pouffed and spritzed and sprayed until I could feel a hole opening in the ozone above me.
Mia stood back to admire her work, then hopped up on the counter in front of me brandishing eye shadow and boob glitter.
My heart sank. “I don’t wear makeup.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Brynn said. “There’s no such thing as natural beauty.”
“True beauty comes from the inside,” Mia said wisely.
“Oh, hell. That’s just something the parents of ugly babies say.” Brynn pulled a handful of Miracle Bras from a shopping bag.
“Here,” Brynn said, tossing uber-padded bras at us. “I got the Miracle Bra campaign and I need field testing. Go forth. Improve your attributes.”
“You got any other campaigns going on?” Mia wanted to know, arranging the bra cup on her head like a jaunty little cap before dabbing a brush into a pot of eye shadow that was two shades too dark for me.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Brynn said. “Rave Ribbed Condoms.”
Great. Brynn would be picking our brains for a month on the commendable qualities of contoured condoms. Not that there was anything in my life worthy of a report.
Ducking the trajectory of Mia’s makeup brush, I lost the robe and packed myself into the monster bra Brynn had tossed me.
“Not like that,” Brynn said. She pulled something at the back of the bra and before I knew it, my attributes were glittered and padded and strapped so high I could eat hors d’oeuvres off them.
My friends had taken turns with the makeup, leaving me with more foundation than face, and the ton-and-a-half of mascara they’d applied to my lashes made the bruises around my eyes look even darker. I was about to say something pithy when I heard the front door fly open.
“Let’s get ready to rumble!” Shiner’s voice boomed down the hall. He appeared around the corner bearing a big white deli package.
I smiled. “Shiner to the rescue and he brought reinforcements.”
“Holy shit!” Beckett Gage, one of the neighbors I actually like, walked in behind Shiner, brandishing a big shopping bag.
Beckett is lethally beautiful with dark hair and summer blue eyes, and he stood just outside my bedroom door, Muse draped around his neck.
“Good gawd, Cauley,” Beckett said. “What have you done?”
“Help!” I said to Beckett, trying to appear both attractive and pitiful no easy feat when your breasts are glittered and strapped up to your chin.
Muse hopped to the vanity as Beckett lifted a lock of my lacquered hair and sighed. “All right. Everybody out.” He turned back toward me and reached into the shopping bag and I heard the crinkle of dry cleaner’s plastic. He swished a clingy slip of scarlet beneath my nose.
“Fuck-me red,” he said, grinning a drop-dead grin.
I smiled. “How did you know?”
Beckett shook his head. “You haven’t been over to model new clothes in six months.”
Running the clingy fabric through my fingers, I said, “Antoine won’t mind me wearing his clothes?”
“Gowns he shares. Don’t touch his shoes.”
In my peripheral vision I saw Muse nearly climbing Shiner’s leg. “Shiner, what is that?” I said, staring at the white package in his hand.
“Ham. For sandwiches. I knew Brynn was bringing yard clippings,
so I brought some stuff we can actually eat.”
Beckett rolled his eyes and took the pins out of my hair. “Now,” he said. “Let’s get that dress off you.”
Shiner had a choking fit and excused himself to the kitchen, Mia trotting along behind him. Brynn went on a mission for more wine, and within moments, I smelled burning rubber drifting in from the kitchen.
“Don’t turn on the oven!” I yelled.
“Too late,” Shiner yelled back. I heard dishes clattering onto the kitchen floor. “Ouch!” he yelled. “Don’t worry. We got it under control.”
Less than thirty minutes later, my house was spotless, my friends were snacking on spinach quesadillas and ham sandwiches, drinking some tasty Mexican martinis and watching The Maltese Falcon, where a bunch of bottom-dwelling socialites were trying desperately to get their sticky fingers on a statue they thought was worth dying for. Or at least killing for.
Beckett had managed to get the glitter out of my cleavage and the bruises on my face were barely visible beneath his artfully applied makeup. He’d tamed and trimmed my hair into a shiny chignon and I’d shimmied into the slut-red dress. We were arguing about whether or not I was going to wear pantyhose when he whirled me toward the mirror. I stared at my reflection.
I was pretty sure I wouldn’t send Kate Hudson into a jealous rage, but not bad. We moved our makeover into the living room, where Humphrey Bogart was squaring off on Mary Astor in perfect shades of noir.
“I can’t believe Bogey’s going to turn the love of his life over the police,” Mia said, refilling her martini glass. “He doesn’t even know if she’s going to get hanged or what.”
I shrugged. “She killed his partner. Who knows what else she’d do?”
“Well, I think he’s stupid for falling for her in the first place,” Brynn drawled. “I mean, look at her. She’s not even that pretty.”
“Yeah, but she looks like she’d be a pretty wild ride,” Shiner said around a mouthful of ham sandwich. Mia hit him with a couch pillow.
“Oh, come on. You’ve never fallen for someone who was so bad for you they could have ended life as you know it?” I said.
“I know I’d commit a felony for Bogart,” said Beckett, and I smiled.