Sprayed Stiff

by Laura Bradley

  “You’re kind of cute as a clown.” He studied my glower. “Athough with that expression on your face, you look more like Curmudgeon Clown.”

  “If you’re finished having your fun with me—”

  Scythe reached over and tickled my ear with his fingertips. “I’m not anywhere near finished having fun with you. I’m here to collect on my deal.”

  What is it with men? I was made up identical to the murder victim—major clue and creepy, besides—and all he could think of was nookie. “I just used the deal to get you over here to see this clue, you bozo.”

  “You’re Bozo,” he returned, then a deep chuckle turned into full-scale laughter again. Tears were forming at the corners of his eyes. I’d seen Scythe always masculine, often sexy, forever intimidating, once vulnerable, but never cute. Right now, all six feet of his muscular frame were vibrating with pent-up giggles, and it was cute. Too bad I was too pissed-off to enjoy it.

  “Scythe, I’m going to wash this clown face off, if you don’t whip out—”

  “Whip out what?” he interrupted eagerly, looking like a puppy hoping for a scrap of dinner.

  “Your camera, you pervert. You did bring it like I told you to?”

  “Well, of course, since I thought we were doing the deal.” He pulled a Nikon with a telephoto lens out of his jacket.

  “Why did you need a telephoto lens for our deal?”

  He just grinned wolfishly.

  Hmm. The deal had been struck months ago between Trudy and Scythe, my best friend apparently pimping me out, albeit in a creative way, for help from the cop in the last murder investigation. I knew the general concept of the deal, but maybe less than I thought I did, I decided as I eyed the long lens nervously.

  “Maybe I don’t know all the details of the deal. Maybe you need to clarify them for me.”

  “You’ll know when you’re ready to go through with it,” Scythe offered with a wry smile. “Which may not be until we are both in a nursing home. Then it will require some Viagra.”

  “It might require some Viagra anyway, Scythe,” I quipped.

  He raised that left eyebrow.

  I raised my right eyebrow.

  “Reyn, why don’t you call me Jackson?”

  “I prefer Scythe.”

  “Why, because it keeps your defenses up?” He took a step toward me. I retreated, bumping into the counter behind me. “Are you afraid—deal or no deal—that if you relaxed your defenses, you would be unable to resist my charm?”

  “What charm?” I jutted my chin up.

  “This charm,” he said, snaking a hand around my waist and pulling me to him.

  His lips just grazed mine before I put my finger on his chest and pushed him away. Boy, did I have willpower or what? “You’re going to compromise the evidence.”

  Heaving a big sigh, he stepped away and grabbed the camera off the kitchen counter. “Why can’t you be like a normal woman and have problems with your own hair instead of a corpse’s, gossip with your girlfriends instead of murder suspects, get your makeup done so you can go on a quiet date instead of to use as evidence in a murder investigation?”

  Why didn’t he just say, Why can’t you be more like Zena?

  I smiled blithely. “If I did that, you wouldn’t find me nearly so interesting.”

  “I wouldn’t find you nearly so aggravating.” He sighed again and snapped a few photos. Then he had me sit in one of the kitchen chairs and close my eyes. I tried to look as dead as I could.

  “That’s good enough,” he barked out gruffly. Gone was the playful man; the all-business cop had taken his place. I wondered what had caused the switch. Had I looked too dead and scared him a little? For some reason, that made me happy. I’m twisted that way.

  Scythe reached under my sink and handed me a roll of paper towels. He sat down at the table. “Take off your clown face while you tell me what rocks you’ve been busy turning over and who crawled out from underneath them.”

  “I did a cut and color this morning,” I began as I wiped at my gooey cheek, smearing the red and white and blue together.

  “So you won’t be bankrupt and dead at the end of the investigation, just dead.”

  “Thanks for your optimism.”

  “It’s called realism, and you need a big dose of it.”

  “Anyway, after that I went to see Shauna Rollins, makeup artist extraordinaire, who has a shop at North New Braunfels and Townley.” I recounted my escapade with Percy’s girlfriend, only altering the story somewhat so I didn’t look so culpable for the mannequin’s demise.

  “You think she was onto you and was destroying the evidence on purpose?”

  “Well, no, because I imagine it would have just bounced off the grass where she was aiming.”

  “And why didn’t it go where she was aiming?”

  “Because I kind of grabbed her arm to save it.”

  Scythe emitted a growly sound and buried his head on his forearm for a moment. He lifted his head and rested his chin on his wrist. “Still, maybe Shauna did whack Wilma just to get the old bat out of the way so she could have Percy, that stud, all to herself.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think she has enough ambition to be that mercenary or enough emotion to be that passionate. Besides, she is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, as Gran used to say. I don’t think she could’ve figured out how to kill her even if she considered it. I don’t think she has a mean bone in her body, besides. Now, I do see her being sweet enough to have helped someone who asked her, and being dumb enough to buy whatever story they concocted to explain why Wilma wasn’t breathing.”

  “Who would that someone be? Percy or Alexandra?”

  Or Percy’s Mexican business associates? Oops, I couldn’t mention them without getting into Annette.

  “Not Lexa.”

  “Of course. How did you find out about Shauna? Maybe Lexa set up the poor girl, coerced her into helping, let her leave her fingerprints all over the place, then got you in and culpable so you would nose around and find Shauna to take the fall. I gotta hand it to her. It’s well thought-out. Neat and tidy. Isn’t Alexandra the one who told you her father was having an affair?”

  “No!”

  “How did you find out, then?”

  Double oops. I was nailed. His laser blues were boring into me from across the table.

  “It came to me in a dream?”

  He shook his head.

  “I smelled her signature cologne on him and put two and two together?”

  His head shook harder. “Can’t smell anything on that man but garlic, remember?”

  “Okay.” I blew out a breath. “I have a confidential source.”

  “They are called informants. Police are the only ones who can use them. When a member of the public uses them and doesn’t give their name, it’s called obstruction of justice, which is a felony. In case you hadn’t noticed lately, you aren’t a cop. Which means I’ll probably have to arrest you. Again.”

  “Look, can’t you use me as an informant mediator?”

  Scythe rubbed his forehead with his palm and made another growling noise.

  “I’ll tell you everything I can, and, in return, I keep the identity of the person secret. How about that?”

  “You tell me everything and the identity of the person, and, in return, I keep you out of jail. How about that?”

  “I’m a person of my word. I guess you’ll just have to cuff me, because I don’t break a promise.”

  He muttered unintelligible words, but then the corners of his mouth turned up for an instant. “That bodes well for our deal.”

  Hmm. Sneaky bastard.

  “All right, Reyn, how about this? You go back to your informant and convince him to come forward with his information on his own. I’ll give you two days. Meanwhile, is there anything you can tell me without implicating this witness?”

  I dismissed the possibility of describing the packages in general and the visits from the south-of-the-border duos. No one k
new about those but Percy and Annette. I thought about the bloody photo. Workers from the store could look into the Dumpster as they were throwing something away and recognize Wilma from the media. It wouldn’t necessarily point the finger at Annette. I gave Scythe the location of the Dumpster and mentioned that he might look for something like a picture frame.

  “And are you checking Percy’s phone records?”

  Scythe nodded grumpily.

  “Okay, pay special attention to calls to or from anywhere south of the border.”

  Scythe growled again and blew out a huge sigh. He ran his hand through his hair. I winced. I’d pretty much gotten to where I could ignore his haircut, but sometimes I couldn’t help noticing it, especially when he ran his best feature through his current worst one. Then he pinned me with his laser blues.

  “Look, Reyn.” He put his hand on my shoulder and played with the tips of my Meg Ryan messy under the wig. “You be careful with this secret informant business. It is always dangerous. If they have a reason to stay anonymous, they have a reason to be desperate. Even trained professionals have trouble with this. I have a death threat against me involving an informant right now.”

  “Really? Another death threat?”

  “What do you mean, another death threat?” He leaned in and turned up the heat of his gaze. “How do you know whether the first one involved an informant or not?”

  Oopsy. “Uh, I don’t, of course. I guess I just assumed it didn’t. I mean, you know how your mind does funny things, and I guess I was frightened on your behalf and—”

  He took his hand off my shoulder and put it on my lips to stop them. He shot me another penetrating look, and I smiled, unconvincingly, I’m sure.

  “I have a date with a Dumpster. Then I’m going to meet the clown queen. Try to behave yourself. Use your best pitch to get the tipster to talk to me, even if it’s just over the phone. I’d feel a helluva lot better if you were out of the mix. I’ll check on you later.”

  Ha, he could try. I was going to make sure Lexa’s boyfriend was on the up-and-up before I mentioned what I knew about him to Scythe.

  You know, a night out on the town isn’t what it used to be. I remember the good old days when my girlfriends and I would decide to paint the town red and our biggest dilemma was having the cash to do anything. Surprisingly, a lot of things in life are free. I hardly ever went out at night anymore, and now that I had to and had rounded up my collection of grown-up friends, we had more serious dilemmas than cash. First, we had to dislodge Rick and Tessa’s two-year-old son from his dad’s femur. We had to convince their worried six-year-old daughter that we weren’t taking a spaceship to populate Mars, which was what Mario, kid idiot that he was, told her for fun. Then we had to talk Trudy out of a mental meltdown because she thought that the lines on her legs from sitting on a chair were the beginnings of varicose veins. Then I had to refuse for the seventeenth time to restyle Mario’s hair to look like a Hispanic Sting. Thankfully, Jon was pretty low-maintenance, standing in a corner of the Ugartes’ house waiting for the chaos to die down. Finally, we had to decide which vehicle to take. It wasn’t easy. The Miata was out of the question, my crew cab would have the six of us entirely too friendly during the hour-and-a-half drive, and the Ugartes had a purple kidmobile, a minivan. Practicality made the decision for us, and we were on our way in a sexy oversize eggplant. Watch out, Sixth Street.

  Being the obvious brain trusts of the pack, Tessa and I claimed the back of the van so we’d be as far from Rick as possible. Rick tended to try out all his new lyrics on captive audiences, especially when he was driving. While there were numerous problems with this, the biggest was that he often got so involved in the singing that he forgot to look at the road. It made for a suspenseful ride for the person in the death seat. It was a damned good thing most other people were defensive drivers. His wife and I knew from experience it was best just to be in a position where one couldn’t watch.

  Trudy and Jon sat in the middle seats, leaving Mario the front. It was for the best, really. Of all of us, Mario was the one who would never notice if Rick nearly side-swiped an old woman sitting at a bus stop or caused a ten-car pileup behind us. My best friend’s husband loved Trudy with his whole heart and was good to her, which made me forgive him for being a total dimwit.

  Rick began to sing, “The armadillo in a stretch limo…” until Mario begged him to do “Reyn on the Run.” Tessa and I rolled our eyes and ignored Rick’s musical take on my last brush with the law. Trudy and Jon were deep into discussion about the interior redesign Trudy was doing for his hair salon chain.

  Tessa turned to me and whispered, “If you need any representation during this fiasco with the Barristers, let me know. We’ll work out a babysitting trade.”

  Ugh. From the way the kids had acted tonight, I thought I’d rather go to jail. Still, I smiled and thanked her. “I almost needed you yesterday about dawn, but they let me go without arraigning me.”

  “Yes, Rick tells me you have a cop on your side. He says he reminds him of Toby Keith. Lucky you.”

  “Why don’t I feel lucky?” I asked.

  “Forget feeling lucky. How about getting lucky?” Trudy threw into the backseat without missing a beat in her own conversation. Elephant ears. Jon slipped me an embarrassed look. What did he have to be embarrassed about? Humph.

  Tessa smiled indulgently but, ever serious about business, returned to her subject. “Well, it’s good to have friends in the local cops, but before this Barrister affair is done, you may need more than just the guys in blue.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Rumors. The legal community is a big hotbed of gossip, and the hottest bed lately is our boy Percy’s.”

  I waved off her intensity. “Oh, I know all about the girlfriend.”

  “Which one?” Tessa asked.

  “Is there more than one current one?”

  “I don’t know about that, just that he’s never at a loss for young female companionship, thanks to the liberal use of his credit card on their behalf. That’s not the gossip, though.”

  “What is, then?”

  “That Percy has been laundering money for some wealthy Mexican ‘businessmen,’ and that the feds just started breathing down Percy’s neck about the funny money.”

  “What kind of businessmen?”

  Tessa took off her glasses and pinned me with her most serious look, the one she reserved for making a point with jurors. “Drug kingpins.”

  Gulp.

  Fourteen

  “WHICH FEDS ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?”

  Tessa shrugged. “There are as many stories as there are lawyers in San Antonio. Some say the IRS got suspicious and is leaning on Percy for unorthodox income. I’ve heard the DEA is setting up some kind of sting to catch the kingpins. Then there’s the one about the FBI putting undercover people in Percy’s office building. All or none may be true.”

  That reminded me about Annette’s mention of Percy using the IRS to get rid of his old girlfriends. At the time I’d thought it a rather callous joke, but maybe the IRS was protecting him in exchange for something he was doing for them. I wondered again about Annette’s motivation in coming to me with all her information. Was she an undercover federal agent? Was she using me to feed the cops false tidbits to send them on wild-goose chases, or to get me to nose around the investigation more for some hidden purpose? Or did she want to tell someone what she knew in case something happened to her—and why would she think something would? Or maybe she was on the take from the drug kingpins and…

  Okay, this speculation was getting way too complicated for me. After all, I couldn’t even keep up with an innocent white lie or two.

  I asked Tessa if she minded if I shared her gossip with the local authorities.

  “Go ahead, I’ll even talk to them, but what I know is twentieth-hand at best and may be completely spurious. Percy is not the favorite of the bar.”

  I extracted my cell phone and dialed Scythe. Amazingly, he pic
ked up on the first ring. He never does that.

  “Hey, Bozo. You know, I’ve been thinking that that makeup and wig paired with just the right bra and panties might be kind of a turn-on.”

  “Charmer, with that kind of comment, you’ll be dead before you ever see your deal.”

  Trudy, talking a mile a minute about drapery fabric, still managed to hear that. She spun around and wiggled her eyebrows at me. Jon’s forehead wrinkled in concern. Geez, love affair by committee. I guess I should invite them on our next date.

  “Reyn, threatening cops is a felony,” Tessa whispered.

  Ack, I was surrounded by a pack of well-intentioned busybodies.

  Scythe’s baritone dropped and smoothed around the edges. “Gosh, and here I thought that telephoto lens had piqued your curiosity….”

  I squirmed in my seat. I hated that he could do that long-distance. Trudy grinned. Jon looked like he might start taking notes. Rick increased the volume of his song right at the part about midnight visits from the police.

  I cleared my throat and raised my voice. “I’m calling about some important business.”

  “I thought what we were talking about was important.”

  Hmm. “I just heard some gossip about Percy Barrister I thought you should be privy to.”

  “Shoot.”

  I recounted what Tessa had told me. He asked to speak to her. From her side of the conversation, it sounded like this gossip was news to Scythe. After a few moments, she passed the phone back to me, covering the mouthpiece as she did so. “He told me to try to talk you into taking a trip to the Bahamas for a few weeks.”

  Getting me out of the way, no doubt, so he and Zena could live happily ever after. I bet she’d wear the clown getup with a push-up and a thong. Humph. “I’m not going to the Bahamas or anywhere,” I informed him as I took the phone back.

  “That’s too bad. I’d hate to lock you up in jail again.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  There was a long stretch of silence in which I thought I’d lost his signal. Finally, he blew out what sounded like a sigh. “Never mind, you’re hopelessly hardheaded.”