Hustle Sweet Love

by Davis, Maggie;

  Last night she’d been carrying the fifteen hundred dollars in her purse, up to the full amount since she’d gotten her paycheck from Fad, intending to make her speech about what had really happened that night in the Tulsa hotel penthouse. She hadn’t been able to do it. Her excuse had been that Michael Echevarria had flown off to Boston before the evening had even begun. But, Lacy admitted, biting her lower lip between her teeth unhappily, she’d had most of the money with her, too, that first Friday evening and hadn’t given it to him then, either. Nor that Saturday morning when she’d left his apartment. What was the matter with her? Did she realize somehow in a murky, subconscious way that if she got things straightened out with Michael, it might change everything completely?

  Like what? Lacy asked herself. Like he’s going to ask you to marry him? Fat chance! He thought she was a toy, a work of art, a slightly over-the-hill but still beautiful twenty-three-year-old ex-model with a shady past who needed all sorts of supervision to keep her in line. She doubted very much that stubborn, hardheaded Michael Echevarria would change his mind about that.

  “Yay! Yah!” a voice from the living room yelled. Lacy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, flung the dishcloth into the sink and strode out of the kitchen into the living room.

  Her very own private detective, Walter Moretti, was standing before the television set with a can of Comet cleanser in one hand and a plastic sponge pad in the other, dripping dirty water onto her newly vacuumed living-room rug. He wore a bath towel around his waist to keep his brown trousers from being spattered, and his coat jacket was off and his shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbows. He looked very different without his trench coat.

  When he saw Lacy, he gulped. “The Seminoles scored,” he said with an apologetic smile. “I got a bet on the game.”

  Lacy was not in a mood to be forgiving. “You get back into the bathroom, you worm,” she told him, pointing her finger in that direction. “And don’t you come out until everything sparkles. Then you can mop the kitchen floor.”

  The private eye retreated, holding the can of Comet cleanser in front of him like a protecting shield. “Miss Kingston,” he cried, “you gotta let me out of your apartment. I’ll lose my license—they’ll put me outta business if I don’t get out of here. I’m not supposed to go past the lobby downstairs. Mr. Echevarria’s orders!”

  “Don’t tell me what you’re not supposed to do,” Lacy cried, snaking her pointed finger at him menacingly as she backed him up, step by step, toward the bathroom. She was tired of hearing about orders from Michael Echevarria. “You weren’t supposed to try to feel me up during the second act of La Bohème, either, you turkey! You were the only person in the audience with a raincoat in your lap. It made the Metropolitan Opera look like a porno-movie theater!”

  “It’s not a raincoat,” Moretti cried, running to the bathroom. He didn’t close the door all the way; one eye peered at her. “It’s not a raincoat, honest Miss Kingston, it’s a trench coat. Like Colombo wore on TV. I always keep it with me.”

  “I’ll just bet you do.” She knew she was taking out her feelings on the private eye, but she told herself he deserved it. “And you fell on top of me in the taxi, you lech! You said it was an accident, but it was no accident when you started grabbing.”

  “I lost my head,” the voice said humbly through the door. “I only sort of rested my hand on your knee at the opera, Miss Kingston. I thought it was my own.”

  “You mean you’re a private detective and you can’t even find your own knee?” Lacy scoffed. “I hope you don’t specialize in missing-person cases!”

  “Miss Kingston, a build like yours oughta be illegal,” he said sulkily. “You obviously don’t know what effect you have on a male’s hormones. Believe me, it’s very upsetting.”

  “It’s not your hormones,” Lacy said, pulling the bathroom door shut before he could remove his fingers. She listed to Moretti’s yelp of pain unsympathetically. “You’re unethical and untrustworthy and a masher. If you don’t do a good job in there, I’m going to tell Mr. Echevarria you tried to attack me in the taxicab when you were supposed to be taking me home from the opera.” Before she turned away she said, “Don’t forget to clean the mirror on the back of the bathroom door.”

  “I haven’t got any Windex,” he sobbed.

  “Under the wash basin in the cabinet,” she told him heartlessly.

  She had just finished scrubbing the last of the breakfast scrambled eggs out of the frying pan when Lacy heard a hammering on her front door loud enough to carry over the sounds of another Seminole touchdown on television. With a sigh she put down the dishcloth and went to see who it was.

  When she opened the door, the tall, beautiful redheaded figure of Candy O’Neill with Sicky-Poo on a leash greeted her.

  “Oh, Lacy, honey,” Candy began at once, “I’ve got a shoot at the military academy at West Point modeling bikinis, the army finally cleared us to pose with the cadets, but only today, just after the game, and the ad-agency crew is going to pick me up in an hour.”

  “Not outdoors,” Lacy murmured, eyeing Sicky-Poo, who was staring down thoughtfully at her living-room carpet. “Candy, it’s November—you’ll freeze to death in swim wear.”

  “Yes, I know,” Candy groaned, “but it’s for the May issue of Bazaar, and they don’t care if it snows. Lacy, I’ve got to do it—I only got the job because Christie Brinkley’s too sunburned from shooting evening gowns on the beach in St. Croix last week. Oh, honey, I need the money! Can you baby-sit Sicky-Poo until tomorrow night?”

  “Oh, no,” Lacy cried. She wanted to help Candy, who still hadn’t gotten over finding Harrison Salstonstall Potts IV with another redhead at the Zebra Lounge disco promotion and fire. But Sicky-Poo was a major undertaking.

  “Who’s that?” Candy Said interestedly as Moretti emerged from the bathroom and stood staring with obvious appreciation at the redheaded model.

  “He does bathrooms,” Lacy said. She didn’t have time to explain. “Gee, Candy, I don’t know. I want to go do my laundry, and you know coin washers make Sicky-Poo nauseous. He will sit in front of them and watch the clothes go around.”

  The words were hardly out of Lacy’s mouth when the Doberman discovered Moretti. It was hate at first sight. With a ferocious, gnashing snarl, the attack dog lunged into the living room, dragging Candy by his leash. As the private eye whirled, making a dash for the bathroom, Sicky-Poo hunched, coughed, and threw up against the door just as it slammed shut.

  “He’s all heart,” Candy gasped, reeling the Doberman back on his chain, “but it affects his stomach. I’ll clean it up, honey, don’t worry.

  “Could I,” she said politely to the closed bathroom door, “borrow your sponge for a moment?”

  “For you, beautiful, anything,” a cautious voice said on the other side. The door opened a crack to let a large hand holding a wet sponge pass through.

  At that moment, Lacy’s telephone began ringing. “Oh, what now?” Lacy cried. To Candy she said, “Yes, go ahead and clean it up. I’ll have to baby-sit Sicky-Poo, I guess. I know how it is, Candy—you’ve helped me out plenty of times.”

  As she started for the living room, Lacy added, “Don’t let that man out of the bathroom. He’s not finished in there.”

  “Oh, do you have a problem, too?” she heard Candy say interestedly through the bathroom door. Lacy raced through the living room to catch the jangling phone.

  She grabbed up the receiver. “Yes, what?” she managed breathlessly.

  It was several seconds before the cool, definitely guarded voice of Michael Echevarria said, “Lacy? Lacy Kingston?”

  “I can’t talk to you,” she cried. “I’m entertaining a Doberman pinscher and friends!”

  She slammed the receiver back in its cradle. But she had only gotten as far as the kitchen when the telephone rang again. She turned and ran back into the living room and snatched it up.

  This was too much, she seethed. He was the one who had made
the rules about no weekends. Obviously he could invade her privacy, but she couldn’t invade his! “How’s the weather in Boston?” she said rudely.

  “Lacy?” His voice held a note of cold command. “Who’s there with you? There’s a man with you, you just said his name.”

  “I’m having friends in,” Lacy snapped. “One of them just threw up on the floor, that’s all. Where are you calling from now—San Francisco, Des Moines? Some other penthouse, some other town? Some other night’s date?”

  There was a longer pause on the other end of the line. “I’ll talk to you later. About the drunk you’re having the party for.” His voice was grim. “This is a violation of our agreement.”

  “The drunk’s name is Sicky-Poo,” she shouted over the sound of Candy’s voice and the Doberman’s barking. “I can’t talk with all of this going on! You’re going to have to wait until Friday night.”

  “No, I’ve had too much damned trouble placing this call,” he growled. “I’m at my country place in Connecticut. My business in Boston”—there was just the slightest hesitation—closed out early. There was no way to save the bank, so I left.

  “I want you,” he said firmly, “to come up here. I want you to spend tonight and tomorrow with me. I’m sending the Rolls down for you.”

  Here it comes, Lacy told herself, staring past the living room into the kitchen, where the famous Virginia Slims poster was prominently displayed in front of the refrigerator. Now we go to weekends in Connecticut taking dinners and breakfasts together, sleeping in the same bed, making love. Next week the lease on the East Side fancy apartment!

  “I’m all tied up,” Lacy said coldly. “Sorry.”

  “We’ll return to New York tomorrow night,” he said as though he hadn’t heard her. “Bring some clothes for horseback riding.”

  “What?” Lacy held her right hand to her ear to shut out Sicky-Poo’s anguished yelps. Moretti was helping Candy clean up the hallway outside the bathroom. The racket of the Bulldogs finally scoring against FSU added to the mayhem. “I can’t hear you!”

  “What the hell is going on down there?” Michael Echevarria’s voice demanded. “Are you in the habit of giving wild parties in the middle of Saturday afternoon? Get that crowd—get those Germans out of there! The Rolls will pick you up at three o’clock. Be there!”

  Lacy gritted her teeth. She had just received a command from the president and chairman of the board. Report to Connecticut, Lacy Kingston, or you’ll get yourself fired.

  “I can’t go to Connecticut,” she yelled over the noise. “You can’t call me up on my days off—you get Friday nights only! You’re the one who said no last-minute substitutions!”

  “Lacy,” the voice on the telephone said warningly, “I want you here.”

  “No! I have to do my laundry. I have my own life to lead—did you ever stop to think of that? No, you didn’t! Well, I have dirty clothes just like anybody else!”

  “Lacy, I want you here. Now, in Connecticut. I regret,” he said huskily, “that I had to leave last night, but I had no choice.”

  Lacy gripped the receiver with both hands, trying to hold onto her resistance. When he talked to her like that, in his low, purring black panther voice, her willpower melted.

  “I have to baby-sit a neighbor’s dog,” Lacy said weakly. “It’s an emergency.” She was thinking that during the visit to Connecticut, perhaps she could finally get around to telling him that she loved him. “I really do have to take my wash to the Laundromat, too.”

  “That’s no problem.” Was that eagerness in his voice? “There are plenty of washers and dryers up here at the house, bring your laundry with you. Hell, bring the dog. Just make sure,” he said quickly, “he rides up in front with Edward. I don’t want dog hairs all over the back seat of the Rolls.”

  “Oh, Michael,” Lacy sighed. There was always a possibility, of course, that once she got the fifteen hundred dollars straightened out and convinced him that she absolutely would not be an assistant editor on Fad magazine and told him that she loved him—that he would say that he couldn’t care less. Total disaster. What was she going to do then? “Michael,” she couldn’t resist asking softly, “did you miss me?”

  There was a silence so deep she could almost hear it whistling over the long distance wires.

  “Yes, I missed you,” he said in a firm, businesslike voice. “Wear some sort of clothes for riding, boots and jeans if you have them. Be in front of your apartment promptly when the Rolls calls for you at three o’clock.”

  With that, he hung up.

  Sixteen

  The long, low Rolls Royce limousine hummed its way up the West Side of Manhattan, through the Cross-Bronx Expressway and then onto the New England Throughway. It was a gray, windy autumn afternoon. Lacy, in Ralph Lauren jeans, Joan and David Western-style boots and a creamy Irish hand-knit sweater was in the front seat, holding the Doberman, with Edward, the chauffeur. Walter Moretti in his trench coat sat in the back seat with a large bundle of dirty laundry. Sicky-Poo had tried to bite the Italian private eye only once since getting in the Rolls and had thrown up on Edward, whom he seemed to like, only twice, and that was apparently due to car sickness. So the seating arrangement with Lacy holding the dog up front had proved to be the wisest way to travel.

  In all, it was a tiresome hour and a half ride from New York City, with the detective complaining that he should have tailed them in his own car and worrying that Mr. Echevarria wouldn’t like them all riding together this way.

  North of Wilton the Rolls turned off the highway into the Connecticut countryside dotted with the low-stonewall-surrounded fields that marked the boundaries of the estates of millionaires. After some miles the Rolls took a winding private road overhung with centuries-old oak trees to a massive iron gate manned by a security guard. The guard promptly telephoned their arrival to the main switchboard of the country home of the president and chairman of the board of Echevarria Enterprises, Inc. He was waiting for them when they finally came in sight of the massive stone English manor house.

  Michael’s tall figure, Lacy saw as they pulled up in front of the steps and right behind a bright-red Ferrari parked in the driveway, was attired in a superb Harris-tweed hacking jacket that snugly followed the width of his shoulders and chest and narrow hips. He had on a black cashmere turtleneck sweater, fawn riding pants and highly polished English riding boots. The gray autumn afternoon light struck his hair, which the wind had ruffled into a few dark, untidy curls, and the planes of his set, carved features. He looked so beautiful standing there in his meticulous riding clothes that Lacy felt a sudden surge of emotion in spite of herself. No wonder her life was in such a mess! No wonder she’d acted like she’d lost her mind ever since she’d met him and done things even she couldn’t explain! What woman, seeing the president and chairman of the board standing there like that, even with that wary look on his face, wouldn’t do the same?

  There was a scowl between his eyes when he saw Walter Moretti sitting in the back seat of the Rolls Royce clutching the bag of laundry.

  “Well, we’re here,” Lacy announced, feeling somewhat nervous. The fifteen hundred dollars, she’d promised herself, and the explanations were definitely going to come up this time. She yanked open the door on the passenger’s side of the limousine.

  Too late, Lacy remembered Sicky-Poo, who promptly jumped his chain as soon as the door opened and propelled himself through midair, snapping and snarling at the tall figure in English riding clothes. The Doberman came down on all fours with a thud and then, overcome with the hostile emotions that his psychiatrist said traumatized his nervous system, hunched, coughed and vomited across the insteps of the impeccably polished leather boots.

  “My God,” Michael Echevarria said, staring at his feet.

  “Don’t move!” Lacy cried, rushing up the steps. “He won’t bite—he just throws up on you!” She immediately tripped over Sicky-Poo and landed in his outstretched arms.

  “Mr. Echevarria,” Wa
lter Moretti shouted, coming up the steps with the bag of laundry gripped to his chest, “I can explain all this. It’s Miss Kingston’s fault. I only did what she told me to do.”

  “Michael,” Lacy murmured breathlessly, looking up into his widened, storm-gray eyes, “I’ll clean off your boots with some of the laundry in the bag, honestly. Just don’t worry about it.”

  He was holding her now, both hands tightly gripping her upper arms, looking down into her face. “It doesn’t matter,” he said with an obvious effort. Edward, the chauffeur, came up to drag Sicky-Poo away by his chain. “You look lovely.” He lifted his hand to touch the shining blond sheath of hair that drifted around her delicately modeled features. “What did you do to your hair?”

  “It’s the way I used to wear it,” Lacy said, shaking her head from side to side so that the long, silvery-gold mass slithered like silk. “My hair’s almost straight, not curly, I changed it when I went into runway modeling.”

  She could tell he liked it. So close to him in his arms, Lacy’s nostrils were filled with the aura of his cologne, some Swedish import, she guessed, sniffing appreciatively. Somewhere inside his chest the black panther’s heart was going, thud, thud, she realized with a little shiver of anticipation.

  “I like it,” he said, still staring. “It makes you look different. More beautiful, if that’s possible.”

  Before Lacy could open her mouth to tell him how much she appreciated that, a handsome medium-sized man in a black three-piece business suit and Yale tie who looked like a movie actor stepped forward. In a swift movement he snapped a color-sample book up to the side of Lacy’s head.

  “Unfortunately your hair’s going to be hard to match, Miss Kingston,” he announced, giving Lacy and the color card a comparative squint. “That blond color’s not Basra Pearl, and it’s not exactly North Sea Champagne, either.” As Michael released her and stepped back, the handsome actor type took Lacy’s hand to shake it. “I’m George Swithins, Miss Kingston, special executive sales from Import Motors, Limited, Greenwich, Connecticut.”