Sprayed Stiff

by Laura Bradley

  Finally he broke the silence, his tone hard again, back to business. “Look. Reyn, I’ll send my bodyguard over to watch your house so the reporters don’t give you too hard a time.”

  “What about your death threats?”

  “It turns out they might’ve been a hoax. The one who we thought started it insists she was set up. I believe her.”

  Well, of course you do! With legs up to here and boobs out to there, who wouldn’t believe Zena Zolliope?

  He continued, unaware of my internal commentary, “The captain has assigned a detective to find out who started it. Don’t worry. We’ll get her.”

  Oops.

  Eighteen

  I SHOULD’VE READ A ROMANCE. Instead, I picked up my favorite book of all time, Gone With the Wind, and started to read it again. I’d long admired Scarlett because she was strong and independent and went after what she wanted. I liked to think of myself that way. Of course, she also fell for the testosterone, and there was no happy ending. I wasn’t sure what I would learn, reading it for the twentieth time.

  I thought it had something to do with hardheaded survival. I wasn’t sure Scythe would have approved.

  I’d turned down the volume on my answering machine because it was making me crazy and put my cell phone under the couch pillow. When I finally took a break from reading, both my mailboxes were, thank goodness, full. I listened to all of the messages, deleting none because I didn’t want to make room for more. Most were, not surprisingly, from the media. I was tempted to return the call from the stringer for my favorite magazine, People, but I resisted. I knew from experience that anonymity was underrated.

  Charlotte had called, in conspiratorial tones telling me that she’d talked to “our friend” and that it was unlikely “our friend” would take my advice. She asked me to let her know when I had another job for her, signing off with “Holmes on the case.” I imagined Charlotte running out to buy a trench coat and deerstalker hat for her next assignment.

  “Miss Sawyer,” began the next message in a cellophane tenor that sounded familiar the way all broadcast voices do, “I have something of yours you might want back. It’s brown and has four legs. Call me if you are interested in a trade.” He left a number.

  My stomach clutched. I ran to the kitchen window and peeked through the blinds to inventory my girls. Black and yellow, no chocolate. Beau and Char were posted at the fence, wagging their tails and barking. What a mixed message. Great watchdogs they were, to let one of their own get snatched. I knocked on the window to make sure Cab wasn’t napping against the house or under a bush. Her mother and sister came running, but no Cab.

  Damn. Someone had kidnapped my dog.

  I grabbed the phone and dialed.

  “I’m glad you value your pooch.”

  “What do you want?”

  “An exclusive interview. Or I cancel your canine.”

  I felt like I was in a bad B movie. “Who are you?”

  “Come on, now, if I’m smart enough to figure out your prized possession, don’t you think I’m smart enough not to answer that question?”

  I held my tongue. I didn’t want my dog beaten to death with a microphone.

  “So, meet me, alone, under the bridge at Woman Hollering Creek and Windy Road in a half hour. Or else.”

  “Hey, what about the reporters staking out my house? I can’t make myself invisible, you know.”

  “Lose ’em. I hear you’re good at that. With men, anyway.”

  A journalistic comedian. This just kept getting better and better.

  After I’d tried calling every friend I thought I had to tell them I was heading directly into danger and got nothing but “Leave a message,” I didn’t have long to get to the rendezvous spot in the country northeast of the city limits. For the record, my call to Scythe went straight to voice mail, which meant he was probably talking to Zena about their next date. Being the sap I am, I left a message anyway. Quickly, I threw on underwear, jeans, and the Wolverine work boots, camo T-shirt, and camo cap my brother Dallas had given me for Christmas one year. Dallas probably was hoping the ensemble would attract a hunter for me to date so he’d have someone to go to his deer lease with. That’s how my brother gave gifts—hoping they would indirectly benefit him. Who would’ve guessed they would help in this situation? Maybe I’d get the chance to sneak up on the creep through the bushes and nab my dog back without giving the interview.

  Journalists made me nervous because many of them manipulated the two things I had in abundance—honesty and emotion. As I approached the bridge, I counseled myself to lie and detach myself from the murder mess my friend had gotten me into.

  It had been embarrassingly easy to get by the phalanx of reporters, who just waved without mobbing me as I backed my truck out of my driveway. That made me very suspicious, but perhaps I was just paranoid. Maybe the story had cooled, and they were the B-team assigned to find something for filler. After all, I didn’t see Phil Wimplepool anywhere.

  I rounded the corner and saw a beat-up sedan under the bridge. There were no bushes or foliage around that could camouflage me for sneaking up. For a second, I battled panic that the real killer had lured me into a trap. But then I realized he would have no reason to come after me now, not with the police trying so hard to wrap up the damned cases and tie them around Percy and Lexa’s necks. I supposed it could be a crony of Wretched Roadkill trying to eliminate a witness, but they’d be more likely to take care of Rick before they took care of me. After all, he had touched the weed and actually knew what drugs looked like, not like a piss-poor ignoramus like me. Rick was alive and well; I’d seen him building a deck on the back of his house when I’d left. Tessa had given him a list of home improvement projects that would keep him entirely too busy for the next decade to be led astray, if he was so inclined.

  So I guessed the man sitting behind the wheel was really a reporter.

  I parked next to the sedan, and the guy cranked his window down. I didn’t know what kind of reporter he was, but he had a face for radio, that was for sure. He was an indeterminate age somewhere between mid-forties and seventy, had long, brown Willie Nelson hair held back in a ponytail, and wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a quick smile that I answered with a smile. What? I couldn’t believe I instinctively liked the guy—after all, he’d nabbed my dog.

  “Where is Cabernet?”

  “Hey, honey, I don’t have any wine on me. I thought we were doing business. Of course, after we wrap that up, if you’d like, I know a nice biker bar not far from here. I’m not sure they have wine, but they have a great brew—”

  “Cabernet is my dog.”

  “Oh, the dog.” He cocked his head to the rear of the old Ford. “She’s in back.”

  I looked at the trunk in horror, jumping out of my truck. “She’s in the trunk?” I ran over and started pounding on the metal. “Cab, don’t be scared. I’m here now. Are you suffocating?”

  “Ma’am, ma’am. The dog’s in the backseat. I’d never put an animal in the trunk. What do you take me for?”

  I rushed to the rear window and looked in. Cab was stretched out on the floorboards, a huge, meaty bone between her paws. I called her, and she looked up, tongue lolling, beef scraps between her teeth. She thumped her tail twice and went back to the bone. Traitor.

  “Nice look.” The guy gave my getup a once-over. “What are you going hunting for? It’s quail season, I suppose, and rabbits, they’re always good with a little cabbage.”

  “Why am I here?” I wondered aloud, thinking this whole escapade might do for another episode of The Twilight Zone.

  “To get your dog.” He smiled.

  “Come on, Cab.” I reached for the door handle. It was locked.

  “After you give me an interview,” he added genially, hopping out and coming around the car to open the passenger-side door.

  “Why do you even want one?”

  “I’m a disc jockey by trade, but I’ve always had a dream, a dream to be part of the news de
partment. They never would give me a chance. If I get this exclusive interview, they have to give me a chance, now, don’t they?”

  If it hadn’t come at my expense, his determination might have impressed me. I forced my best saleswoman smile. “You know, you really don’t have to go to this extreme. My gran always told me that true passion for something is an unbeatable advantage. Surely if you do some volunteering in the news department, they’ll recognize your passion for the business. We all had to start at the bottom and work up—”

  “I’m too old to start at the bottom,” he interrupted. “Besides which, I hand over this interview, and it will say passion with a capital P.”

  I hate it when people turn my arguments to their own advantage.

  Grinning, he held out his hand. “Roy Gene, W-H-A-T FM.”

  I shook it reluctantly. He knew who I was, obviously. “Nice to meet you,” I muttered instead. Why do we do that—us well-mannered people? He’d kidnapped my dog, yet my manners were so ingrained I couldn’t not respond in kind when he was polite. It smacked of parental brainwashing. Beware, all moms and dads, what you drill into your kids.

  We settled in his car. He extracted a tape recorder and microphone. “You know,” I said, “my aunt Big does a show on radio every Sunday.”

  “Talk radio? What’s her subject?” he asked as he fiddled with some wires.

  “Bertha Talks Big. She deals with being plus-size in a minus-size world,” I answered, remembering the time she took me to the Brenham radio station where it was taped in the middle of the week. It sounded like we were going out live. Then I was taken aback when I heard it on the radio Sunday morning two weeks later. It sounded so live, even I was almost fooled.

  Cab was moaning in ecstasy over her bone. I wondered how that would play in the background. I guessed with modern technology, they could delete her before they played the tape on the air. As Roy Gene started his tape, then talked into the microphone about the events of the last couple of days—about the hellacious murder of a society scion, the arrests of a headbanger band on Austin’s Sixth Street, and the shooting of a beautiful makeup artist who was rumored to be involved with the husband of the society scion—I got an idea. He had a big, soothing, low tenor, and I imagined he’d be a terrific host for one of those radio call-in shows. Too bad he’d never get his big break, because I was going to nab his tape just like he’d nabbed my dog. All was fair in love, war, and journalism.

  I relaxed.

  “Reyn Marten Sawyer, hairdresser by trade and sleuth by accident, finds herself involved in yet another murder investigation involving a friend. You will all remember she tracked down the murderer of salon king Ricardo Montoya last spring. Reyn, how do you find yourself mixed up in another one?”

  “Trying to help a friend.”

  “You’d think you’d learn your lesson.”

  “Good for you I didn’t, since what I’m doing right now is helping you.”

  “What she means, folks, is helping all of us understand what’s going on inside this case. We appreciate that, Reyn, really we do. That friend we were talking about is Alexandra Barrister, daughter of the murdered society woman. Word on the street is she is an oddball who finally cracked.”

  “I’d say she is a sensitive, caring young woman who had a difficult childhood.”

  “She grew up in one of the richest families in San Antonio. That’s real tough.”

  “Money isn’t everything. You’re not doing this for money, are you, Roy Gene?”

  “She’s got me there, folks. I’m doing it to inform you as a member of the esteemed fourth estate. So, Reyn, you don’t think like the Alamo Heights cops do, that Alexandra helped her daddy and his girlfriend get rid of moneybags by dolling her up like Bozo on a bad hair day and spraying her stiff? Or that maybe it was a drugged-up assassin who thought he’d come up with a new hip style along with a body?”

  “No, I don’t, Roy Gene. I think the killer is someone the police haven’t even thought of yet. Someone who hated Wilma Barrister with an uncommon passion.”

  “But Wilma Barrister was a saint among women, raised money for charities, saved little children from starvation.”

  “Often, Roy Gene, things are not what they seem. Few people want to look below the surface, beyond the obvious. The police in this case apparently are not willing to do so either.”

  “Any names, Reyn?”

  “If I had names, Roy Gene, I’d give them to the police, not to you.”

  “Nobody said this girl wasn’t smart. Reyn, the two loves of Percy’s life are gone, he’s behind bars. Do you think it was someone who had it in for the drug-running tax lawyer?”

  “It could be, Roy Gene, although it would be someone who’d be inclined to take great risks in order to make him suffer.”

  “Then it would have to be a woman, because, folks, I don’t know anyone more vindictive than a dame who’s been crossed.”

  As I listened to the DJ enjoy his chuckle, I considered Annette again. She was a possibility, although I just didn’t see her having enough emotion. I’d have to see if Charlotte could get her to provide a list of Percy’s old girlfriends. Maybe angry Charis of the Junior League was on that list.

  Roy Gene was wrapping up his report with a great deal of verbosity. “…And so, make note, folks, that Reyn Marten Sawyer is standing by the innocence of her missing friend, and thinks the nameless, faceless killer is still on the loose.”

  He turned the tape recorder off and smiled.

  “Can I take my dog home now?”

  “Sure thing. Drive safe. Thanks for the interview.”

  “You bet.” I reached back, grabbed the dog bone, and clobbered Roy Gene on the head with it. His eyes went wonky, and he collapsed against the steering wheel. I ejected the tape and jumped out of the car. I opened Cab’s door and ran her over to the truck, letting her chase the bone into the backseat. I felt a little guilty, Lord only knew why. I guessed it was another one of those brainwashing things my parents did to me. I ran back to check the DJ’s pulse. It was strong. I started to leave, then grabbed his pen and wrote “Sorry” on his blank pad of paper.

  Sliding in behind the wheel of my truck, I peeled out, relieved I had my dog and my tape. I turned on the radio in the car and heard my voice.

  Uh-oh.

  I called Trudy. “I’ll forgive you for abandoning me last night if you let me hide at your house. Just for a little while.”

  “Uh, I’m sorry, Reyn, you can’t. Not tonight, anyway. But we heard you, all over the radio and TV just now—”

  No wonder the damned reporters had let me leave the house. Roy Gene had made a deal to feed them the interview live.

  “—sounded like an orangutan having an orgasm in the background—but, overlooking that, you were so brave and principled to stand by Lexa. She’s so grateful. Of course, Scythe is going to kill you, but—”

  “What did you say about Lexa?”

  “I said she was going to be so grateful.”

  “No you didn’t, you said she was grateful. How would you know that?”

  “Barnacles’ balls and jellyfish jowls, Reyn. I’ve got to go. Talk later. Bye.” Trudy was rattled. Little liar.

  My cell phone rang before I could get my finger off the end button. It was Scythe’s number.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Nineteen

  “DID YOU THINK you were helping the investigation? Tell me your thought process on this, given you had one to begin with.”

  Scythe’s voice was eerily calm. He was angrier than I’d ever known him to be.

  “He kidnapped Cab. That was the deal to get her back.”

  “You do come up with some doozies, Reyn. Points for creativity. Deductions for not using it properly.”

  “Really, Scythe. He had her, ask any of the reporters staking out my house. I know they must have seen him do it, probably helped him; then he made the deal to transmit the interview back live.”

  “Only to
you would something like this happen. Who the hell would think of kidnapping a damned dog?”

  “Not just any dog. This was Cabernet, Scythe.”

  He blew out a sigh into my ear. I fidgeted on my seat. His breath did that to me, even over the phone. “Okay, so why didn’t you call me when you found out ‘not just any dog’ was…gone?”

  “Held for ransom,” I corrected. “And, anyway, I did call and had to leave a message because you were obviously ‘otherwise engaged.’ ”

  “All you said was ‘Please call me back when you get a chance,’ ” he mimicked. “You didn’t say, ‘This is an emergency.’ ”

  “I didn’t think you’d think it was an emergency.”

  “Stop thinking for me,” he snapped. “You need all the help you can get to just think for yourself.”

  Showing great restraint, I kept quiet until he finally added, “So why didn’t you call someone else in the PD?”

  “Because he gave me a deadline and he said he’d kill her if I didn’t come alone.”

  “And you didn’t think we badge-wearing types have plans for things like that?”

  “I had my own plan.” Well, came up with one on the fly, anyway.

  “Worked well, I see.”

  “I stole his tape. How was I supposed to know the interview had already gone live?”

  “How did you steal his tape? It sounded like someone was having sex during the interview. Was that how you did it?”

  “No, that was Cab chewing! I bashed Roy Gene on the head with a dinosaur-size dog bone!” I really hadn’t intended to admit it, but he’d caught me off guard.

  “Oh, super.” Giant sigh. Louder finger drumming. Pause in which he likely ran hand through trailer-park-trash hair. More drumming. “So now I can expect this Roy Gene character to come in and charge you with assault.”

  “Then I’ll charge him with kidnapping.”

  “Good, then we can all spend our time investigating assault with a deadly bone and kidnapping of a Labrador named after a kind of wine, instead of finding the real killer.”