Slay Belles

by Nancy Martin

  “I’ll help you,” said Santa.

  They walked away, leaving me in front of Cindie Rae’s apartment door holding shopping bags. I listened for voices, but across the hall a new burst of game-show music began.

  Suddenly the door opened from inside. Cindie Rae stood there in a tank top, flannel pajama bottoms, and flip-flops, holding the door for Calvin as if she’d just ordered him off the premises. She had a sleeping mask pushed up on her forehead and circles under her eyes. Without makeup, her face looked even more surgically ballooned than ever. Her breasts defied the laws of gravity inside the tank top.

  “If you can’t remember the salad dressing, what good are you?” she asked.

  Calvin continued to mope for another instant until he realized I stood in the doorway. He said, “Hey. It’s her.”

  Cindie Rae’s head whipped around, and she stared at me. “It’s you.”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  Cindie Rae grabbed my arm, pulled me into the apartment, and slammed the door.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “How did you find this place?”

  Her apartment looked like an entire sorority house had exploded. Discarded clothes, shoes, and take-out containers littered the floor. A glimpse toward the kitchen convinced me the health department should be making a call very soon. But the living room was draped in luminous curtains—a television-friendly background for the round honeymoon bed in the center of the room. In the middle of the bed stood a hand-lettered sign that read, BE BACK TONIGHT! The letter i was dotted with a heart.

  A mounted camera stood in front of the bed, its red light blinking softly. Two large lamps with photographer’s reflecting umbrellas bounced ambient light onto the bed. Electrical cables ran all over the makeshift studio—even hanging over doors. Around the bed, someone had abandoned a variety of predictable props—handcuffs, a ratty feather boa, and a life-size cardboard cutout of a German shepherd.

  Stacked within handy reach stood several dozen packing cartons. I saw one of Cindie Rae’s fluorescent sales items sitting on the topmost box, looking like the horn of a radioactive rhinoceros.

  “You asked me to help get Alan out of jail,” I said, delicately pretending not to notice my surroundings. “I came to report what I’ve learned.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You proved the Pinkerton lady did it?”

  “Um, not exactly.” I indicated Calvin. “Perhaps your friend should leave so we can talk?”

  Calvin’s jacket hung open far enough for me to see his sidearm. To Cindie Rae, he said, “She must have followed me here.”

  “Really?” Cindie Rae blinked at me. “Why?”

  With luck, Libby and Santa had made contact with the police by now. It was only a matter of keeping Cindie Rae occupied until the cavalry arrived.

  “Because she knows,” said Calvin.

  He unsnapped his holster and drew the gun. My heart skipped, and I froze as he leveled it at me. He spread his legs and supported the barrel of the gun with both hands as if preparing to mow down a squadron of Columbian drug dealers in a made-for-TV movie.

  “Calvin,” I said, “let’s stay calm.”

  “How does she know?” Cindie Rae asked.

  “You probably said something dumb.”

  “Me?” she demanded hotly. “What about you, Einstein? If you hadn’t gone wandering around the store that night—”

  “That’s my job! I’m supposed to patrol.”

  “Look,” I said. “Why don’t we sit down and relax for a minute?”

  “Good idea.” Cindie Rae pushed me to the only spot to sit—the edge of her round bed. “Get comfortable right here while we think up what we should do.”

  I dropped the shopping bags and sat down hard on the honeymoon bed.

  “Tie her up.” Calvin pointed the gun at me.

  “I don’t have any rope.”

  “Use the handcuffs!”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the gun, which bobbled in Calvin’s hand as he scratched his ear. “Look, there’s no need to get carried away. Let’s just—”

  “Shut up,” said Cindie Rae.

  “Don’t move,” Calvin ordered.

  Cindie Rae got down on her hands and knees and began groping through all the junk on the floor. “I should have figured out Alan was up to something when he sent me to you in the first place. He told me you’d dig up dirt on the Pinkerton lady! Why am I a sucker for cute guys?”

  “He’s not so cute,” Calvin said.

  “Are you kidding? Half the sales clerks in that stupid store were sleeping with him.” She came up with the handcuffs.

  “Well, duh! He’s rich! And you’re not going to get any of his money if you can’t figure out a way to get married, Cin.”

  “You expect me to marry that jerk now? I’m not sharing him with all those other women! That’s disgusting! Hold still,” she said to me. “Cal, she won’t hold still.”

  Calvin stepped closer and pointed the gun at my nose. “Hold still.”

  I allowed Cindie Rae to fasten the handcuff on my left wrist. She snapped the other bracelet around a leg of the nearest light stand. I said, “You must be devastated, Cindie Rae. To learn your fiancé has been unfaithful must have been a terrible blow.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed with a pout, “a really terrible blow. I mean, last month I sat through eight performances of Phantom of the Opera for that guy. All those people shrieking the same song over and over? I deserve a really big wedding for that alone!”

  “And to learn Popo was one of his paramours—”

  “His what?”

  “One of his girlfriends. You must have been furious.”

  “Yeah, especially because she was jerking me around about the Lettitia McGraw handbag. I mean, what does it matter if I pick it up at the store or not? She was such a bitch. When Alan said we had to get rid of her, I—”

  “Alan suggested killing her?”

  “He said we had to get rid of her before we got married because she could make trouble. I thought he meant killing her. But when I visited him at the jail, he started blubbering about firing her, and who could have killed her, and I—”

  “Didn’t Alan know you killed her?”

  “Pookums thinks I’m his sweet babydoll. And when I told him what really happened, he . . . he said you could help, that you could prove the Pinkerton lady did it because everybody thinks she already murdered her doddery old husbands. She deserves to go to jail for that anyway.”

  “She never—” I thought better of arguing. “So it was you and Calvin who figured out the plan of shutting off the security system?”

  “It was mostly my idea.” Calvin waved his gun around the room. “It was the least I could do to help Cin land the big fish. We’ve got bills to pay around here. All this camera stuff doesn’t come cheap, y’know. Every caller we get on the nine-hundred line pays us a few bucks, of course, but we aren’t moving the product fast enough.” He pointed to the boxes of dildos.

  “You are Cindie Rae’s business partner as well as her cameraman?”

  “I’m her director,” Calvin corrected. “And her brother. The security guard gig is just my day job.”

  The phone rang. Startled, Cindie Rae bolted upright. “We’ve got a caller! And I don’t have my false eyelashes on yet!”

  She scampered for the bathroom while Calvin headed for a multiline telephone and hit a button. I suddenly became aware that the camera was pointed directly at me, solo, handcuffed in the middle of the bed.

  “Hello, uh, Cindie Rae?” said an uncertain, amplified voice. “It’s, uh, Dick again. Remember me?”

  From the bathroom, Cindie Rae called, “Hi, Dick! Of course I remember you!”

  “Uh, I really like your girlfriend,” said the caller. “When does she take her clothes off?”

  I gave up on the plan to keep things calm until the police arrived. “Forget it!” I shouted in Cindie Rae’s direction. “No clothes are coming off! None!”

  Calvin
dropped the gun beside the phone and hurried to the camera. He peered through the lens and began to make adjustments.

  I yanked at the handcuff. “I don’t want any part of this!”

  The caller said, “Are you girls going to do some nasty stuff together?”

  “No!” I said. “We’re not doing anything together! Cindie Rae, get in here right now!”

  “Here,” said Calvin. “Hold this and look like you’re turned on.”

  He held out the fluorescent dildo to me.

  Instead of reaching for it, I plunged my free hand into the Williams-Sonoma shopping bag and came up with Libby’s rolling pin. I swung hard and knocked the dildo out of Calvin’s grasp. Like a home run headed for the bleachers, it sailed over the camera and hit the kitchen wall. The momentum of my swing combined with my left hand being trapped by the handcuff sent me falling back on the bed.

  “Hey!” Calvin yelped.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Dick on the telephone.

  While Calvin went to retrieve the dildo, I struggled to sit up. I dropped the rolling pin and rummaged in another shopping bag. One-handed I came up with boxed perfume. Frantically, I tore open the box and fumbled with the bottle. By the time Calvin came back to me, I was ready. He bent to put the dildo on the bed, and I squirted him in the eyes.

  He screamed and fell onto the bed with me, clutching his face.

  “Oooh, yeah, baby!” Dick yelled.

  Cindie Rae dashed into the room with one false eyelash hanging drunkenly from her eye. “What’s going on? Calvin! Calvin! What are you doing?”

  She leaped on the bed and rolled her brother over. “Let me see, Cal, honey. Are you hurt?”

  “Hurt him some more!” bellowed Dick.

  Cindie Rae straddled him and began doing chest compressions on her brother. Calvin choked on the perfume and wept streaming tears. The fluorescent dildo rolled into my lap. I reacted as if it were a Molotov cocktail and threw it into the air.

  Which was when the police burst through the door. The first cop snagged the dildo out of the air like a football.

  Libby and Santa burst in right behind him.

  “Oh, my God.” Libby surveyed the scene with me front and center. “You get to have all the fun!

  Chapter 9

  Later that evening, Michael arrived at Blackbird Farm bearing steaks and wine. He opened the bottle first, and we sipped a very nice Beaujolais in the kitchen while I told him everything. Reluctantly, I even told him about the tussle on Cindie Rae’s bed.

  He listened with a suspiciously straight face while preparing a potato gratin, complete with cheese shaved from a chunk he’d been saving in the fridge.

  “You think maybe Calvin made a tape?” he asked when I finished the tale. “Because I’d pay a lot of money to see it.”

  “There is no tape,” I said firmly. “I had Libby and Santa double-check.”

  Michael cocked his head toward the living room, from where Libby’s giggle and Santa’s lower-timbred laugh floated back to us. “What’s his real name, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think it matters.”

  “He’s not the lasting type?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” I said. “I just hope he doesn’t break her heart before Christmas. She’s already on the edge.”

  Michael sipped some of his wine. “And the police arrested Cindie Rae and her brother?”

  “Yes. But it looks like Alan was the mastermind all along. He planted the suggestion of getting rid of Popo with Cindie Rae and let her plot the murder with Calvin. It was his way of getting rid of both Popo and Cindie Rae. He figured she’d be too inept to get away with the crime. To help the investigation along, he told her to get me involved.”

  “So the cops got the right man this time?” Michael shook his head in disbelief. “I guess it’s time to break out the snowshoes in hell.”

  “Michael,” I warned.

  He slid the gratin in the oven and put a sauté pan on the stove to heat. He doused the pan with a splash of olive oil, adjusted the flame with care, then came over to the table, where I sat on one chair in the dress he’d bought for me from Darwin, the dress Popo chose and set aside with my name pinned to the low neckline. She’d been right—I looked fabulous in it. To tone down the glamour, I had my sock feet propped up on the opposite chair.

  Michael picked up my feet and sat on the chair, warming my toes with his hands. “You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you. I love the dress. But it’s too expensive. You have to take it back.”

  He shook his head. “It’s a Christmas gift, and it’s worth every penny. Popo really knew what she was doing. It makes me think about what you’ll look like when I take it off.”

  “What will I get for you? I’m completely broke.”

  “You’ll think of something.”

  We heard Libby laugh again; then a loaded silence told us Santa was well on his way to giving Libby some Christmas cheer.

  Michael smiled. “You can’t stop love.”

  I smiled, too. “You sure about that?”

  “I am,” he said with conviction. “Nora—”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I should have waited instead of chasing off on my own. But I saw Calvin coming out of the store and knew it was my chance. I had to follow him.”

  He nodded. “I know what you’ll do for the people you care about. But when somebody loves you the way I do, you have a responsibility. You have to take care of yourself now. For me.”

  I put my glass down and reached for his hand. I squeezed. “I will. I promise I’ll be more careful.”

  He accepted that by kissing my fingertips. “Are you sorry your friend is going to jail?”

  “Not if he really planned Popo’s death. I think he actually wanted Haymaker’s to fail. If he no longer had the store, he would be free to go to the theater as much as he liked. Cindie Rae said he even hoped to buy a theater for himself.”

  “Maybe he’ll still get his chance. He can afford good lawyers. That makes a big difference.”

  I allowed that observation to hang in the air for a moment.

  Michael caught my eye and gave a wry smile. “I’m doing what I can, you know.”

  “Are you, Michael?”

  He focused on gently kneading the arches of my feet. “I look at my life and know I’ve wasted a lot of time. I want to come home to you every night with a clear conscience. But I can’t clean up a lifetime overnight.”

  Quietly, I said, “I heard about Pinky Pinkerton’s granddaughter, Kerry. It was on the news. She hurt her hand.”

  Michael looked up, but his face betrayed nothing. “She did?”

  “On her way to the airport. A car-service driver slammed her hand in a door. She’s hurt badly. The surgery is complicated and may take over a year to heal. She won’t play golf for a long time. And the car-service driver has disappeared. Nobody’s even heard of the company before.”

  “No kidding,” he said.

  “The good news is that she got a job offer. A sports network starting up in California wants her to do golf commentary. So she’s moving to the West Coast.”

  “Lucky for her grandmother, huh?”

  “Michael,” I said, “we both want to start our lives over. More than anything, I want us to end up together every night, too. But there are things I can’t accept. I have some experience with men who live by their own rules, who are self-destructive, and it’s . . . it’s too painful to go through again.”

  “The last thing I want to do is hurt you,” he said. “I’m going straight. I promise.”

  “All right,” I said. “I trust you.”

  “That,” he said, “is the best Christmas gift I’ve ever received.”

  He kissed me as if to seal the bargain.

  The long wait is over!

  Nora Blackbird and her wacky sisters return in

  NO WAY TO KILL A LADY,

  a brand-new full-length Blackbird Sisters Mystery

  Available st
arting August 2012 in hardcover and e-book.

  An excerpt follows. . . .

  When a long-lost relative bequeathed us a fortune, I found myself locked in an epic battle with the most fearsome adversaries any woman can face.

  My sisters.

  “It’s not as if I’m going to buy breast implants with my share of the money,” my sister Libby said over brunch at a sun-splashed table at the Rusty Sabre in early November. “I’m blessed in that department already, of course. But I need investment capital, Nora. I have a plan.”

  Our Great Aunt Madeleine Blackbird had died at the age of seventy-five or eighty-two, depending upon whose story you believed, and not at her Bucks County mansion in the mahogany cannonball bed given to the family by Ben Franklin for reasons best swept under the rug of history. No, she died during an Indonesian volcanic eruption that blew her luxury teepee off the side of a mountain—according to the obituary page of The Philadelphia Intelligencer.

  Libby said, “And I promise I won’t run off to some exotic island with a cabana boy. Although nobody would blame me if I did. My children are driving me bonkers, and the best cure for motherly frustration is an exciting new relationship, right?”

  My biggest fear for my sister Libby was that she was going to end up featured as the lead character in a tabloid sex scandal. I was pretty sure it was an item on her bucket list.

  My sister Emma had been the lead character in a scandal, but the NFL hushed it up to save one of their players from looking very silly. Nowadays, though, she was looking less like a sex bomb than usual. She sat across from me at the table in grubby riding breeches, muddy boots, and a large sweatshirt that strained over her pregnant belly, not caring if the other, more civilized restaurant patrons cast disapproving glances at her disheveled appearance. Her short auburn hair stuck out at all angles, as if she’d just rolled out of bed.

  Deadpan, Emma said, “You’d probably kill a cabana boy, Lib.”

  “Well, yes, endurance is key.” Libby had taken her compact out of her handbag and was checking her plump décolletage in the mirror. She wore a low-cut red paisley frock that gave her the look of a Playmate on her way to a royal wedding. “I need somebody strong, but sensitive, too. I have very complex needs. All my followers say so.”