Sarah Booth Delaney 13.50 - Shorty Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  “I’ve discovered that Roscoe has comedic abilities,” Harold said. “I’m thinking of David Letterman.”

  Harold had taken the evil little canine after his owner had been sentenced to prison during a prior case. I would forever be grateful, but it was clear that Roscoe had brought a level of joy to Harold’s life—a fair exchange.

  I kissed Graf’s cheek and let my hand drift across his forehead to check for an elevated temperature. He felt fine and he looked better than he had in a week.

  “Any luck with Lovey?” he asked.

  “She’s not the brightest lamp on the street.” I relayed her Facebook postings.

  “Why would someone who thinks she’s being stalked post everything she intends to do? It’s like an invitation to follow her.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said.

  “Lovey Jensen isn’t stupid.” Graf shifted in the bed. His leg was elevated, making it difficult to maneuver, but he wasn’t a whiner. “A friend of mine worked in the porn industry, and he said Lovey took a filmmaker to the cleaners.”

  “And she convinced Curtis Jensen to marry her,” Harold pointed out. “Word at the bank is there wasn’t a pre-nup, either.” He rubbed his right eyebrow. “Not to plant any nefarious ideas, but Curtis Jensen is worth a lot more dead than he is alive, and I’ll bet Lovey is heir to all of it.”

  “You think this whole stalker thing is a scam?” I’d had a sense something was off, right from the start, but this was devious. And far smarter than I’d given Lovey credit to be. I’d let my stereotyping get in the way of my investigating.

  “It’s the perfect way to set up an alibi,” Harold pointed out.

  “You two are a big help.” I kissed Harold’s cheek and planted a good one on Graf’s lips. I was lucky in love and lucky in friends. Now I was about to get lucky in turning the tables on one Lovey Jensen.

  * * *

  “Pilates will do you some good.” Jitty drifted out of my closet in a get-up that would have scared ten years off my life had I not been expecting her. Her blond hair was combed four inches high straight up off her forehead. Her features were flattened by the horrific war paint she’d donned, and her outfit looked like she was an invader from a dystopian society that liked chains, leather, and spandex.

  “I’m not going to work out. I’m going to spy on Lovey.”

  “Better get in the back of the class, ‘cause if you start spinnin’ and twirlin’ that butt, you gonna do some damage.”

  “Who, or what, are you dressed as?”

  “Famous Japanese female wrestler. Known for her savagery and for winning.”

  “I’ve seen the Glamorous Ladies of Wrestling or whatever they’re called. Some of them are pretty. Why not be one of the pretty ones?” I pulled my workout clothes on and picked up my purse. Graf had been fed and coffeed and was in the hands of the physical therapist. It was best for me to leave anyway. PT made him bearish, and not in a good way.

  “Winning is all that matters, Sarah Booth.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “That’s the antithesis of what Mama and Daddy believed.”

  “Beware. If you go into the ring with compassion in your heart, you’ll end up a grease spot on the mat.” She made a fearsome face and let out a high-pitched screech that had Sweetie Pie rushing into my room on the hunt for banshees. Graf couldn’t hear her, thank goodness, but my ears were on the verge of bleeding.

  I tied my shoes and stood, ready to take the argument to her corner, but as usual, she was gone. I hustled to Alysa’s Pilates Studio to keep an eye on Lovey. Whatever she was up to, I was determined to find out.

  And I didn’t have long to wait. The class was only in the warm-up phase when the power to the studio went out. We were in an interior room with no windows, only mirrors. Pitch black. I moved instinctively toward the front of the room where Lovey had been—only to hear an earth-shattering scream. I wanted to clap my hands over my already abused ears, but I rushed toward the scream just in time to smack into a figure clad in a trench coat. Without thinking, I snatched the fedora off the person’s head and delivered a kick to the gut that had nothing to do with the finesse of training and everything to do with cold, hard fear.

  The figure grunted and then I heard the door slam. Panic broke out in the room, and sobbing. When the lights came on, Lovey was crumpled on the floor. A long, ugly gash on her thigh was bleeding. Maybe she wasn’t faking after all.

  I dialed 911 and then Tinkie. A trip to the hospital was on my agenda. When I helped Lovey to her feet and began the journey to my car, I was surprised at the TV cameras outside the studio. I pushed past them and had Lovey on Doc Sawyer’s exam table in less than fifteen minutes.

  Half an hour later, Doc motioned me into his office. “Care for a cup of coffee?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I was in the mood to live dangerously. Doc’s coffee might possibly be the cure for cancer, or the cause of it. I’d never seen java so black and thick. “How badly is she hurt?”

  “Really just a scratch. I used some glue to pull the skin together. It probably won’t even scar.”

  “But there was a lot of blood.”

  “Surface capillaries. She was lucky. The blade never went deeper than an eighth of an inch.”

  “Thanks, Doc. She said she was calling Curtis to pick her up and I need to run over to Coleman’s.” I had the fedora. With any luck at all, Coleman might be able to pick up some DNA to identify the attacker—if there was a match in the CODIS files.

  I dropped off the fedora at the S.O. and Deputy DeWayne Dattilo assured me he’d take samples and get them to the lab. Tinkie was waiting outside when I left the building.

  “The news coverage made me think Lovey was near death. Every news station in Memphis had a live crew here. And the Jackson stations, too.”

  “Don’t you find that a little strange?” A very bad idea was beginning to take shape in my mind.

  Tinkie paused. “How did they get here so fast? They were waiting.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What is Lovey up to?” Tinkie narrowed her eyes. “We’re being used.”

  “She was perfectly willing to cough up a big retainer fee because she fears she’s being stalked, yet she posts her schedule to Facebook every day. She’s attacked at Pilates, and the TV cameras are there to cover it.”

  “This is a publicity stunt.” Tinkie put the name to the action.

  “The question is why?”

  “I know where to start looking for that answer.” Tinkie whipped out her cell phone and in a moment was talking to the assignment editor at WKIT in Memphis. “I see,” she said about ten times. “Thanks, Bitsy. That’s exactly what I needed to know.”

  When she hung up, she motioned me to the passenger seat of the Cadillac. “Let’s talk and drive. The TV station got an anonymous tip at six a.m. that an attempt on Lovey Jensen’s life would be made this morning. The station called Lovey, who laughed it off but managed to give them her schedule. Lovey is in this up to her eyeballs.”

  “Again, why? What is she gaining from this?”

  “Maybe she’s going to kill Curtis and claim self-defense,” she suggested.

  “Not the most original maneuver. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman married to a rich man tried to turn the death of a spouse into profit. The battered-woman defense often works, too, if the defense lawyer paints a sympathetic-enough picture.”

  “Some men just need killing,” Tinkie said. “I’ll bet living with him is hell. He married her because she was hot stuff in porn flicks. The reality of a flesh-and-blood woman and not some sexually wild celluloid image might have left him abusive.”

  Tinkie sounded like a witness for the defense. “This is all supposition. Curtis and Lovey may be happy as pigs in mud.”

  “She did a porno involving mud wrestling. I looked up her entire history on IMDB. It was called Mudslide Delight.”

  “Anything else you’d care to disclose about Lovey’s past?”

  “She did anoth
er film where she was a Southern belle married to a cruel slave owner. Her drawl was enough for justifiable homicide. The title was The Master of Discipline. I call it Fifty Shades of P.U.”

  “Enough!”

  “Her biggest seller was Dapper Diaper Diablo about a Latin dictator who smells of sulfur and likes to pretend he’s a baby.”

  “Tinkie, stop it or I’m getting out of the car and I’ll walk.”

  “But my all-time favorite was Sweet Cheeks.”

  I groaned and put my hands over my ears. It was too damn hot to walk, but she was pushing me hard. “I wonder who carries the insurance policies on the Jensens.”

  “Harold would probably know.”

  “And he can’t really tell us. The bank can’t disclose personal info like that.”

  “Of course he can’t outright tell us,” Tinkie said as she dialed him. “Harold, who in town is most likely to write big, big life insurance policies?” After a moment she thanked him and hung up. “It’s Too Tall Walter at Destiny Mutual. I think I can find out what I need to know from him and he won’t even realize he’s spilled the beans. Why don’t you check on Graf, and we’ll meet at Dahlia House after lunch.”

  “Shouldn’t one of us watch Lovey?”

  “Why? She had her moment of drama this morning. Now if we could put some cameras and a bug in the Jensen household, we might get down to the bottom of this.”

  She dropped me at my car and I returned to Dahlia House to make lunch for Graf. The physical therapist had put him through his paces, and he patted the bed for me to crawl in. I did so gently. He was doing great, and while Doc had warned me that he would inevitably slip into depression as he realized how long and hard his recovery would be, for the moment he was in good spirits.

  “Why don’t we make a porno, Sarah Booth?”

  I knew he was teasing, but the idea still made me blush. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’d love to see Lovey’s contracts. The porn industry is lucrative for the filmmakers, but often the stars are screwed, pun intended.”

  “But she’s out of that business. She’s a respectable wife now.”

  “Depends on her contracts,” Graf said. “She was a money maker. Someone could be putting the heat on her to do another film. You know, scare tactics.”

  “Which might explain the cheesy trench coat and fedora of the character Tinkie and I saw. Now that you bring up the point, he looked like a porn film version of a noir detective.”

  “That’s a great film idea. Private Dick. An excellent play on words.”

  “Stop it! Or I’m going to lock Tinkie in this room with you and the two of you can kill yourselves coming up with horrid titles.”

  After lunch, his eyelids began to droop and I left the phone beside him on the bed. The afternoon nurse was on the way to Dahlia House. It wasn’t that I minded caring for Graf. Not at all. But it hurt his pride for me to see him so helpless. Professional staff eased some of that for him. Soon he’d be getting around on his own for baths and such and then I’d shower him with attention, pun intended again.

  Tinkie called as I was cruising down the drive. “Both Jensens took out huge life insurance policies on each other.”

  “A good ruse, if one intends to knock the other off.”

  “Exactly. Maybe Curtis is planning to kill her.”

  I relayed what Graf had come up with, which sent Tinkie into another round of porn titles. “Enough!”

  “What’s our next move?”

  “That guy in the trench coat is flesh and blood. Coleman is investigating the incident at the Pilates class. He’s taking this seriously now, at least. But we have enough to draw some conclusions.” At least I did.

  “You think she’s working with our trench-coated friend?”

  “I do. Too coincidental. He’s slipping around her house, showing up at a Pilates class to attack her, but he does no serious injury. I think Lovey has set this up, and I think Curtis is in it with her.”

  “What’s the gain?”

  That was the million-dollar question. Topped only by this one: How were Tinkie and I going to find out?

  “I say we ambush the stalker and force him to talk.”

  It wasn’t the prettiest solution, but it was the quickest. I doubted we could break Lovey or Curtis. They had more to lose. But if Tink and I were correct, Mr. Trench Coat was a hired gun paid to make it seem Lovey was in danger.

  “What’s on Lovey’s agenda?” I asked Tinkie.

  “According to Facebook, she’s going to be at the Delta Consortium Ball. Oscar will be there, too.”

  “And so will you,” I said. “And Cece.” The soiree would be grist for her pages in the newspaper, which would put her in a position to help us as she often did. “I’ll be the outside man. We’re going to nail Mr. Trench Coat and find out who’s behind all of this.”

  * * *

  The Club, Sunflower County’s fancy golf, tennis, and social mecca, was alight with flickering gas lamps as I slipped along the shrubbery for a vantage point. I was positive Mr. Trench Coat would show and make another “attempt” on Lovey’s life. Why was I so positive? The battery of television trucks. They had enough lights and cameras going to make it seem like the LA launch of a blockbuster film. The Club literally had rolled out a red carpet for this event, and Lovey was taking full advantage of it. She pranced and preened while Curtis stood by, her escort and prince.

  Lovey wasn’t the only movie star in attendance. Friends of Morgan Freeman had arrived, as well as some Nashville stars. It was the fete of the year in the Delta.

  As more and more people entered The Club, I began to have doubts about my plan. If Lovey had instigated another public attack, the red carpet would have been the place to do it, with cameras rolling. Now, folks were strolling through the double doors into the building. Even Lovey had gone inside. An interior attack would be much more difficult for a slash and run. Maybe I’d miscalculated and sent the troops to a non-battle.

  Just as I was about to yield to defeat, I saw movement near the door. Almost on cue, Lovey came out, dug in her purse for a cigarette, and lit up. The camera crews were about to pack it up, but two reporters moved forward to interview Lovey—just as Mr. Trench Coat rushed out of the shrubs. Since I’d snatched his fedora during the pilates encounter he now wore a ski mask.

  I blew the coach’s whistle I’d bought just for this purpose, and Coleman loosed the hounds. Literally. Sweetie was primed with the scent from the fedora I’d snatched and Roscoe and Chablis were simply following Sweetie’s lead. The dogs bounded out of the tree line and Mr. Trench Coat never had a chance. Sweetie took him down in a flying leap. Chablis, with her little under-bite, caught hold of his bottom lip and gnawed away. Roscoe cocked a back leg and let fly on the man’s shoe while Sweetie tugged at the top of the ski mask, until she snatched it free.

  Coleman, DeWayne and I rushed forward. The man, and he was a handsome character with a thin mustache and oiled hair like a 1940s villain, had the wind knocked out of him. He gasped and fish-flopped on the grass. It wasn’t until Coleman came over with a flashlight that I realized who he was. None other than Curtis Jenkins. He’d dyed his hair, darkened his fair skin to olive, glued on a fake mustache, and otherwise assumed the role of dark and dapper noir villain. For better or worse, the whole take down was captured by the TV crews. Lovey was going to get publicity, but maybe not the kind she’d intended.

  Tinkie, Cece, and Oscar came out of the party to witness the final scene as Coleman thrust Curtis into the back of a cruiser and I, once again, found myself as escort to the hospital for Lovey, who had banged her elbow.

  “So it was Curtis all along.” Tinkie put her hands on her hips. “I hope Coleman arrests them and puts them behind bars for a decade.

  “You can’t arrest me,” Curtis yelled at Coleman, playing to the camera. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Terrorizing your wife opens the door to a number of felony charges,” Coleman said.

  “It was a
n act.” Curtis had regained his wind and was more than ready to talk. “It’s for our new reality TV show, Living Dangerously, from porn star to society belle. Lovey is going to be a sensation, and we can use the show to promote the causes of ROVE. Domestic discipline, morals, the whole she-bang.”

  “I am not believing this steaming pile of—” Cece decided action was better than words and began snapping photos of Lovey sitting on the steps and Curtis cuffed in the back of a patrol car.

  To my complete disgust, they both began to pose for the camera.

  “We’re on the schedule for Friday nights at 9 a.m., BLEK cable channel. We’re going to be stars,” Curtis said. “Tell the news crews to follow us to the jail. That’ll be excellent footage. Nothing better than jailhouse scenes. Victims of the justice system.”

  Coleman looked at DeWayne, cocked his head in imitation of a red-haired TV detective, and said, “Take him.” He slid on a pair of sunglasses.

  I shook my head. “At least you didn’t say, ‘Book him, Dano.’”

  “Next time,” he promised as he removed the shades. “I think I could make a passable TV lawman.”

  “Can you charge him with anything?” I asked.

  “Wasting the taxpayers money, maybe. But doubtful. Just make sure the check you received from them clears.”

  “Oh, it’ll clear,” Lovey said as she came up and put her arm around me, mugging for the cameras. Coleman maneuvered her into the back seat beside Curtis.

  She never stopped talking. “I think Sarah Booth and Tinkie should be part of the show. You could be my security, you know. Maybe ink a few tats, get a body builder working with you to muscle up your arms. Tinkie’s more refined. She could be the comic relief. And those dogs! They are certainly worthy of their own show. I can see it now, Canine Commandos.”

  Coleman slapped the top of the cruiser and DeWayne drove the Jensens to jail. They wouldn’t be there long, and they wouldn’t learn anything from the experience, but for the next few hours, the streets of Zinnia would be safe from them.

  * * *

  “I hear someone’s gonna be on a TV show.”

  Jitty had slipped up behind me—again. “That’s a malicious rumor.”