As we were getting ready to go, Lupe said, “We’re having a beach party for our clients on Saturday. It’s a rare opportunity for them to relax and enjoy themselves. Why don’t you join us?”
“Oh, thanks,” I said, “but I’m not much of a group socializer.”
“Then this is perfect for you. They don’t speak much English, and you don’t speak any Mayan languages, so there’s really no problem, is there?”
Well, when she put it like that, what could I say? Anyway, maybe it would give me a chance to try to interview Gladys’s women friends again, with Lupe’s help. So I agreed to go, and we headed back to Boca.
As we rode back, I got to thinking about the beach party, which got me to thinking about wearing a swimsuit. I realized I was way overdue for a bikini wax. There was no way I could show myself in public in all my hirsute glory. Much as I dreaded the prospect, a visit to Marushka’s was a necessary evil.
I know, some habits die hard, but there was just no skirting the issue. I had to get my bush whacked.
Chapter 18
I WAS ABLE to get an appointment at Marushka’s for the next morning. I sat in the waiting room listening to spa music—you know, the harp, the flute, and the running brook, all together on one track. I guess this was supposed to put me in a state of bliss and make me forget that I was about to have my hair pulled out by its roots. Not likely.
Eventually, Marushka emerged from behind a beaded curtain, accompanied by a whiff of incense. She was a tiny, bent woman with a face wrinkled like a prune. Her head was wrapped in a magenta paisley scarf and large gold hoops hung from her ears.
“Harrrriet! Please come back,” she commanded in her Slavic accent, thick with rolling r’s and clipped vowels. I rose and followed her through the hanging beads. I wasn’t sure if I was getting a bikini wax or a palm reading. Could I get both for the price of one?
We entered the treatment room. She handed me a lengthy list of options.
“Please choose shape,” she said.
I glanced down. The list was headed by the proverbial Brazilian wax, also known as the “Playboy,” it informed me, followed by variations on the theme, including the Crotch Crop, the Muff Mold, the Snatch Slash, the Slit Snip, and the Clit Clip. Each one was extravagantly described in florid prose, like the menu items at those pompous bistros frequented by the snob mob.
“I don’t want anything fancy,” I said tersely. “Just the basics.”
She straightened herself up to her full four foot eight and raised her prominent nose in the air.
“As you wish,” she replied.
Guess I wasn’t brazen enough to suit her artistic sensibilities.
She handed me a pair of paper panties the size of a postage stamp.
“Take off everything, put this on, lie down,” she said tightly. “I go heat vex.”
She left the room. I disrobed and pulled on the skimpy skivvies. Might as well not have bothered.
I was about to lie down on the torture rack when the thought struck me—for once, I was alone in a room where I could actually do some snooping.
I looked around the small room. A corner shelf held some towels, some lotions, and . . . an index card file. I sprung open the lid. It was full of cards organized by alphabetical dividers. A client file! So, old-world Marushka hadn’t gone digital.
I quickly flipped to the W’s. There it was—Tricia Weinstein’s client information. It contained her name, address, phone number, and her waxing shape preferences. She was partial to bunny ears.
Whoa! A sudden dizzy spell came over me. I’d been hit with TMI—too much information.
On the other hand, it was too little. This didn’t really give me any meaningful insight into the woman. But wait, what was this? A section at the bottom of the card was labeled Comments. Underneath that was a scribbled note: “Careful of caesarean scar.” What on earth?
I heard a shuffling outside the room. Marushka was approaching, armed with hot wax.
I hurriedly slipped the card back in, snapped the lid shut and climbed onto the table just as the door opened.
I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, baffled. Why would Tricia have a caesarean scar? She had told me her pregnancy was her first one. Had she been lying? Had she had a child in the past that she didn’t want anyone to know about? lf so, could this have anything to do with Gladys?
I was so preoccupied with these thoughts that I hardly noticed as Marushka applied the wax, topped it with linen strips, and then savagely yanked my hair out.
Chapter 19
AFTER LEAVING Marushka’s, now a hair-free Harriet, I considered what I’d found out about Tricia. What had seemed like a momentous discovery back there in the harrowing confines of the torture chamber now appeared insignificant under less hair-raising circumstances.
So what if Tricia Weinstein had a caesarean scar? So she’d had a baby in her past that she wanted to keep in the past. Granted, this was the twenty-first century, and single mothers were no longer branded with a scarlet letter A, but for someone like Tricia, whose entire raison d’être derived from maintaining an image of perfection, having had a baby and possibly given it up for adoption would probably be viewed as a failure, and hence something to be kept under wraps. In any case, I couldn’t see what it would have to do with the death of her housekeeper. Surely Gladys hadn’t discovered Tricia’s deep dark secret and threatened to reveal it . . . or had she?
I decided I needed to let that thought percolate in my brain for a while to come up with an effective way to follow up on that possibility. In the meantime, I decided to pursue another angle—the truck accident that had killed sixteen Mayan workers shortly before Gladys disappeared. I had to explore the possibility that Gladys had known something about the accident and had been put out of the way.
There was only one known witness to the accident, and that was the sole survivor—the truck driver. If the crash really hadn’t been an accident but something more sinister, then the driver would be the player with the most obvious incentive for eliminating another witness.
As I’d done with Mark Cohen, I decided to pay a surprise visit to the suspect. Okay, so maybe that strategy hadn’t worked so well before, but why should that stop me now?
I rode to my office, where I took out my file on the case and found the newspaper article that I’d printed off the Web. It reported the driver as one George Rodgers of Briny Breezes. I locked up the office, got on my Hog, and rode over to the man’s home.
Briny Breezes is one of the strangest places on earth. It’s a tiny municipality that takes up a quarter-mile stretch of prime oceanfront real estate, wedged between the ritzy enclaves of Ocean Ridge and Gulf Stream. So what’s strange about that, you ask? Here’s what: Briny Breezes is a trailer park.
Don’t ask me how that happened. I don’t know. Don’t ask me how the place has managed not to be bought out by the developers that swarm Florida like flies. And don’t ask me how you get to be a resident there.
I roared down the main drag of Briny Breezes—all four blocks of it—to where it ended, then turned right a block to Rodgers’s place. The front porch had a hell of a view of the Atlantic, if you could actually sit on the porch, that is, which you couldn’t, because it sagged at a thirty-degree angle. Most of its floorboards were rotted out, and it looked to be in imminent danger of collapse.
A license plate tacked up next to the front door assured me that the trailer’s registration was up to date. Well, that made me feel a whole lot better.
I walked up a makeshift ramp and knocked on the screen door, which hung askew off one hinge. I waited a minute, watching a row of sandpipers run onto shore and back out again, following the ocean waves. When no one answered, I knocked again.
“Hold yer horses!” a voice came from within. “I’m comin’! My legs ain’t what they used to be, ya know.”
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The door behind the screen opened inward. I peered in. There was no one there. Oh, great. Some P.I.s get to deal with haunted mansions; I get haunted mobile homes.
“Well?” a voice demanded from the region of my pelvis.
I looked down. I was looking at a guy in his forties, sporting a long gray beard and long gray hair. He was in a wheelchair. Where his legs used to be, there were now stumps.
“Mr. Rodgers?” I asked.
“You’re lookin’ at him—what’s left of him.” He gave a throaty laugh that dissolved into a coughing spasm.
When he’d recovered, I said, “My name is Harriet Horowitz. I’m a private investigator looking into the death of a young Guatemalan woman out in the tomato fields. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“What’s this got to do with me?” he asked.
“She was killed a few days after your truck accident. I was wondering if there might be a connection.”
He laughed and coughed again. “As you can plainly see, honey, I weren’t in no shape to be killin’ nobody after the accident. So you can cross me right off your list of suspects.”
Well, he had a point there.
“Would you mind telling me about the accident?” I asked.
“Ain’t much to tell. But hell, come on in.” He wheeled his chair back from the door. I entered a dark, fake-wood-paneled living room. A window air-conditioning unit wheezed in the background. The furnishings consisted of a seventies-era TV complete with rabbit ears, a plaid couch strategically held together with duct tape, and a chipped coffee table bearing an ashtray overflowing with butts. The decor consisted of a series of studio portraits beginning with an infant who transformed into a little girl, then a young lady, and finally a high school graduate in a cap and gown. My keen investigative acumen led me to deduce that she was Rodgers’s daughter.
“Take a load off,” Rodgers said, motioning to the couch. I sat down. My ass sank practically to the floor. A spring poked me in a most unfortunate part of my anatomy.
“Getcha a beer or coffee or somethin’?” he asked.
“No, thanks,” I replied. “So what can you tell me about the accident?”
“All’s I can tell you is what I tol’ the police. I don’t remember nothin’ about it. I was haulin’ a bunch o’ them workers down from Boynton for the day. It was foggy. I couldn’t see much. Next thing I knowed, I’m lyin’ in a hospital bed and I cain’t feel my legs. I look down, and they ain’t there.
“When they tol’ me all them workers was kilt, well, I jes’ about like to curl up an’ die right then and there. Hell, I ain’t never give a hoot about a bunch o’ illegals, but when it come right down to it, them sixteen dead souls weighed right heavy on my conscience. Only thing kept me goin’ was my baby girl.” He nodded at the photos lining the wall.
“Her mama done left us when she was no more ’an a tyke. Went an’ got her one o’ them sex-change operations. Whatchamacall them people nowadays? Transgentile?”
“Transgender,” I supplied.
“Yeah, whatever. Got her titties lopped off an’ all. Come to think of it, we’d make a pretty good matched set now.” He laughed and coughed. “Anyways, it’s jes’ been me and my little girl all these years. She’s all growed up now, goin’ to the state college over to Tallahassee. Got herself a full scholarship, done her ol’ man real proud.”
There was a scratching at the door, the sound of a key being inserted into the lock.
“That’ll be Wanda,” Rodgers said. “My home health aide. Comes by to help me out ever’ day ’bout this time.”
The door opened, and a woman entered. Long frizzy black hair framed her pale face. Her eyes peered out from behind a pair of large, thick glasses. A set of baggy hospital scrubs drooped over her plump physique. This was not a Boca Babe.
“Hey, George,” she said.
“Hey, Wanda,” he replied.
She looked at me. “Ready for your bath?” she asked. I was about to take offense before I realized she was addressing Rodgers.
“Yeah, in a minute,” he replied. “We was just finishin’ up here. There’s a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen. Help yourself.”
“Okay.” She went through an open doorway into the tiny kitchenette.
“Oh, by the way,” she called across the counter that separated the two rooms, “those old cars we were talkin’ about? I talked to my dealer friend, and he says he’s had some good inventory come in, so he oughta be able to fix you up with something.”
“Thanks, hon,” George said. “Been on the lookout for a used vehicle since my engine give out a couple weeks ago,” he explained to me.
Hmm, that seemed odd. How could he drive? Guess he must have had the car adapted with hand controls.
“Yeah,” I said, “well, look, I’m not going to keep you. So basically, you’re telling me that you have no idea what caused your accident?”
“Yep, that’s the long and short of it. The cops said they thought something must’ve sprung up in the road right in front of the truck. An animal maybe. There’s them Florida panthers out there once in a blue moon. Or it coulda been a car pulled out in front o’ me suddenly. They said I just swerved off the road real sudden, no skid marks or nothin’. Well, whatever it was was long gone by the time the cops got to the scene. And yeah, before you ask, there wasn’t no alcohol or drugs involved. You can bet your bippy they tested me. No way—I do my drinking strictly on my own time. ’Course, I got me plenty o’ that now!” Another laugh and cough.
“And there were no witnesses that you’re aware of?”
“Nope.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for your time.”
I rose from the couch. Or, I attempted to rise. I made it a couple inches but was sucked right back in. I tried again, this time using my arms to push off. Same result. Damn—this couch was the Black Hole of Briny Breezes. No light could escape, much less my ass.
I finally made it on the third try. Man, this was embarrassing. A Krav Maga mistress KO’d by a Killer Couch. Ouch!
“Yeah, so, as I was saying, if you think of anything else, give me a call.” I dug one of my cards out of my back pocket and handed it to him.
“All right, hon,” he said.
I walked out the door, the screen slamming behind me. I took a step onto the porch, and my foot got stuck in one of the spaces between the floorboards. I dragged my foot out, got on my Hog, and roared off with as much dignity as I could muster.
LATER THAT afternoon, I headed over to the Krav Maga center.
I’d actually been avoiding the place for the past couple days, ever since my dream about Lior. In truth, I was kind of embarrassed to see him, even though, of course, he didn’t know anything about the dream. Nonetheless, I felt as if he’d see right through me, all the way down to my hot red bra and thong set, which, of course, I don’t wear for anyone’s pleasure but my own. Like I said before, some habits die hard.
So in class that day, I studiously avoided his gaze. But it was impossible to avoid his hands gripping my arms, his thighs brushing against mine, his breath on my neck. Krav Maga is, after all, about bare-handed contact combat. But that day it seemed more like barely contained combustion.
As soon as class was over, I bolted for the door. I had just about made my escape when I felt Lior’s hand on my shoulder.
“What’s your rush, slick chick?” he asked.
I turned. My head was level with his massive shoulders.
“I’m a busy beaver,” I said. Whoops, maybe that wasn’t the best choice of words. I sneaked a look up at him. Amusement glinted in his black eyes. I quickly averted my gaze. Whoops, that was a mistake, too. The kind of glance that could be taken as a come-on.
What the hell was wrong with me? I was Dirty Harriet, not a flirty coquette, a gumptious gumsh
oe, not a goo-goo eyed girl. The last thing I needed in my life was a sexual distraction, especially with a strutting South Beach club king who actually used terms like slick chick and foxy lady. Please. But he sure did have a great set of pecs, not to mention a great set of buns . . . Oh, hell.
“You know,” Lior was saying, “the gun club is having that mixed-doubles shooting competition coming up. I was thinking we’d make a great team. What do you say?”
Say what? Was this some new tack he was trying to hook up with me?
Lior and I were both regulars at the local shooting range. But it’s not like we’d ever gone there together. I had taken up shooting back in the pre-contemplation stage of my recovery. I was on my way to breaking out of my Boca Babe prison, although I didn’t know that yet. But a definite sense of unease had started to creep in. For one thing, I was getting real sick of spending my days buying up Gucci for my poochie. So I traded in my shopping addiction for a shooting addiction. And yeah, I’d become a damn good shot. After all, you didn’t think that gunning down my husband had been just plain dumb luck, did you?
But the idea of teaming up with Lior was, well, it was tempting. Too tempting. I mean, shooting together meant sharing together, and who knew where that could lead? I couldn’t take the risk. Or could I?
“I’ll think about it. See ya later,” I muttered to his chest and bailed.
“It’ll be my pleasure,” he called after me.
I rode home and spent a quiet evening with Lana, trying not too successfully to banish Lior from my mind. I finally gave up and went to bed.
Late that night, I was awakened from a sound sleep by the phone ringing.
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
“Rodgers here,” the voice at the other end said. I was instantly awake.
“Been thinkin’ ’bout our talk today,” he went on. His words had that slow, deliberate quality characteristic of the habitually inebriated. “You said to call you if I thought of anything. I did, so I am.”
“What is it?”
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