The Brush Off

by Laura Bradley

  Trudy did it for me. “We’re trying to find out who killed Ricardo,” she said to steer the subject away from emotions to action. Every now and then, I was glad I dragged her along.

  “Really?” Gerald moved his hands to his knees and leaned forward. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “I’d call it defensive,” Trudy put in smartly. “Since they really think Reyn did it.”

  Oh, good, Trude. Now Gerald was really going to want to slip me the key so I could cover up my murder tracks. My gratitude toward her dissolved.

  “Why? What evidence do they have besides the obvious motive of—”

  “Professional jealousy? None, really.”

  Gerald looked terribly confused now. “But you weren’t jealous.”

  “How right you are. Besides which, they’d have to draw a list of the hundreds of salon owners who were professionally jealous of Ricardo.”

  “But don’t the police know that you—”

  “Used to work for Ricardo? Of course, that’s why I’m first on the list.”

  He opened his mouth, but I jumped in before he could say anything more.

  “Gerald, did Ricardo ever mention pudding to you?”

  “Pudding?” Poor man’s head was about to start spinning on his shoulders, I was jerking him in so many different directions. He glanced at the bottle of Mylanta on the kitchen counter we could just see through the doorway. “What flavor?”

  “Any flavor.”

  Gerald shook his head, completely dumbfounded by my nonsensical line of questioning. “I don’t recall him ever eating pudding or talking about it.”

  “How about political races?”

  “Pudding in political races?”

  “No, just any political races.”

  Gerald paused to think. I appreciated that. Maybe I should do more of it. The pausing, that is. Suddenly, he brightened. “As a matter of fact, lately he’d been a little worked up over the race for the state representative’s position that’s going to open now that Juan Sifuentes announced he’s going to resign due to illness. It surprised me, because Ricardo never really cared about politics. As a small-businessman, he donated to some races when his customers or acquaintances were running, but it was very hands-off. He’d tell me to send a modest check here or there. He’d attend the parties for his own PR but he never actively campaigned for anyone.”

  “What makes you think this state rep’s race was different?”

  “He just talked about it a lot. Asked me and people around the salon questions, like what kind of person they’d vote for. Now that you’re making me think about it, he tried to make it sound casual, but there was something urgent underlying it all.”

  “Who’s running in that race?”

  “I don’t think anyone has declared yet.”

  “None of his clients was getting ready to run, were they?” I racked my brain for anyone on the list who might be a potential candidate.

  “Not that I know of. But you know, Reyn, Ricardo kept his client list private. No one really knew it. They went in and out the back door and often were there after hours.”

  We three sat in silence for a moment, not knowing what all that meant, if anything.

  “Did Ricardo ever mention two big mistakes he made in his life?”

  Gerald laughed at that. “Ricardo didn’t have any flaws, much less did he ever make a mistake.”

  I smiled. That was the Ricardo we knew and loved. Gerald clearly wasn’t Ricardo’s confidant, but I remembered what Janice said about mi cara and thought I’d give it a shot. “Gerald, did Ricardo have any woman who was special to him?”

  Gerald didn’t even pause. “Not ever. He dated, as you know, but he never got serious with any woman. If she tried to, that was the end of her.”

  “You don’t think that he might have been secretive about a woman, taking her only to out-of-the-way places and his home? He could’ve been in a passionate affair and no one would know?”

  “No. He dated, sure, lots. But there was no special woman now. I think he gave his heart away a long, long time ago and never got it back. Never wanted it back, really.”

  “Why do you think this?”

  He shrugged. “An impression. An instinct.”

  “Or experience,” Trudy put in after remaining uncharacteristically silent through my interrogation. Now she smiled gently at Gerald. “You know because you gave your heart away a long time ago, too, didn’t you?”

  Oh, my Lord, now my romantic friend was going to turn this into True Confessions. Gag.

  “Maybe,” he answered, reclasping his hands at his knees.

  I had to get out of there before they got too mushy. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, and they barely noticed. After I’d washed up in the bathroom that was tiled from floor to ceiling in 1970s avocado green, I ambled through the kitchen, taking my time to avoid the lovey-dovey conversation. The kitchen was extremely organized; even the sugar, coffee, and flour canisters were labeled. Each copper canister was marked with electrical tape regarding its fullness level. It made my cozy kitchen seem haphazard and cluttered. In my peripheral vision, I took in the keys on a rack by the garage door, a rack for baseball caps, and a rack for umbrellas. Keys? I felt temptation drawing me to the wall. If the flour was labeled, wouldn’t he label keys, too? The concept seemed foreign to me. I had reams of keys, and if I didn’t know what they went to, well, too bad. Sometimes when I had to let myself into my sister’s house, I had to try a dozen different keys first.

  I listened for their conversation and heard that he went to the same church and saw his long-held love and her family of four every Sunday. What torture. Why do that to yourself, Gerald? How would I know, I’d never been in love, and from the sounds of it, I didn’t want to be.

  Those keys were calling me from the rack. I ambled back there and looked from afar. I saw each key had a colored tag. Maybe they were just color-coded, with Gerald being the only one who could break the code. I squinted. I saw words. I took a step forward. I saw “Broadway salon,” “Thousand Oaks salon,” “1604 salon” on red tags. “Ricardo’s office” was attached to a silver tag. Hmm. I looked for another silver tag. Bingo. “Ricardo’s house, back door.” My fingers wiggled. This had to be a sign. It was meant to be.

  Should I?

  This way, Gerald wouldn’t be implicated if we were caught, I reasoned. I was doing a humanitarian thing by borrowing the key.

  Okay. I snatched it and tucked it into the front pocket of my blouse, buttoning it carefully.

  They were quiet in the living room. Uh-oh. I walked back into the room, probably too quickly. They both looked up.

  “What took you so long?” Trudy asked.

  “Just giving y’all time for your love talk. You know I don’t know anything about that stuff.”

  They shared a wiggly eyebrow look.

  “What?” I demanded. They both shook their heads in pity. I cleared my throat. “We’ll let you get back to work, Gerald.”

  Trudy was looking at my chest. She cocked her head. “Reyn, why are you lopsided?”

  Big mouth. My hands flew to the pockets that did ride right over my barely-B-cups. “Uh…”

  “Did you just stuff your bra?” Trudy asked, voice of experience, apparently, although why she’d ever have to stuff hers with the puppies she possessed, I had no idea.

  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 s
aid 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.

  seventeen

  AS 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.