Foxy Roxy (12 page)

“Face it, Kaylee. Somebody doesn’t like you.”

“Who?”

“Besides me?” Roxy shrugged. “I don’t know. One of Julius’s friends? Or his family? His wife? Somebody who’s pissed about all the stuff he gave you?”

Kaylee’s face scrunched into a surly pout. “There was lots of stuff. Not just jewelry. Big stuff.”

“Such as?”

“A building, for one thing. A warehouse or something down on the river. He took me to see it once. He said I could sell it, if I wanted to, as soon as I got the title. Why a building needs a title, I don’t know. He wanted the best for me. Said I deserved a break in life. He actually said that.”

“You’re still a kid if you believe the pillow talk.” Roxy didn’t feel like explaining how come a rich man’s family might be unhappy that their heir apparent had been generous with his tattooed ho. Chances were, they wanted to repossess her car and everything else he’d given her. And what easier way than scaring her first?

Or maybe there was more to the story.

Kaylee suddenly looked forlorn. “I shouldn’t have quit my job at the salon. Good jobs like that are hard to find.”

“Look, Kaylee, you don’t have to take my advice, but unless you want your pretty red car to be further air-conditioned, I think it might be a good idea for you to disappear for a while.”

“Disappear?”

“Don’t go home. Do I have to spell it out? Find someplace else to stay for a few days, until the police figure out who killed Julius.”

“Where am I supposed to stay?”

“With friends?” When Kaylee looked blank, Roxy said, “What about your family?”

The girl’s expression loosened. “Except for Nooch, they’d sell me out for the price of a pizza.”

“So stay at Nooch’s place.”

Nooch chose that moment to let out a bodily noise. He looked sheepish, and Kaylee rolled her eyes.

“I see your point,” Roxy said, then began hating herself for being such a soft touch. “Oh, hell, I’m going to regret this. There’s a house I’ve been renovating across the river. Nothing fancy, but at least you won’t get shot at over there. How are you with a paintbrush?”

Kaylee blinked. “Paintbrush?”

“I don’t suppose you know how to fix a leaky toilet? I haven’t gotten around to that yet, either.”

“What kind of house is this?”

“A nice house. Or it will be eventually.” It was a waste of breath explaining the lack of furniture. Or the missing floor in the kitchen, either. Kaylee would find out all the shortcomings for herself. “If you want to crash there for a little while, it’s fine by me. But I’m not your babysitter, understand? If you need anyone to bring you bonbons and fashion magazines, Nooch can do it.”

Kaylee mulled over Roxy’s offer, the steam practically shooting out of her ears while her brain processed the situation. Finally, she must have decided she didn’t have any other choices. “Okay. Maybe just for a night or two.”

“I wasn’t asking you to be my permanent roommate.”

Kaylee stuck out her tongue, then asked, “What about my car? Everybody knows my car. Should I ditch it?”

In a city as small as Pittsburgh, a dingbat blonde in a red Mustang with a
SEXY BABY
plate was pretty obvious, Roxy had to admit. “You can leave it here. Nooch can take you over to the house in my truck.”

Nooch looked astonished, as if she’d suggested he should run for president. “You’re gonna let me drive the truck?”

“I don’t have time to play taxi service.” Roxy turned to Kaylee. “If you want to make yourself useful, take Nooch to the mall first. Find him something to wear for his probation hearing on Friday.”

“Something to wear? Like a suit?”

“Make him look like normal.”

Together, they looked at Nooch.

Kaylee said, “He’s never going to look like anything but an ape.”

Roxy almost socked her. “Just get him some nice pants and a decent shirt. A belt, maybe.”

“Shoes?” Kaylee glanced at Nooch’s gigantic boots.

“Sure, whatever.”

“What am I supposed to use for money?”

Roxy searched her pockets and peeled off Trey’s C-note. “See how far this goes.” She handed the bill to Nooch.

“Okay.” Kaylee wrestled with her thoughts for a moment and finally said, “Thanks, I guess.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Roxy replied.

Because if Bug Duffy came around looking for ways to connect Roxy with any part of Julius’s death, she knew what diversion she could toss in his path. Add a bad temper and some expensive gifts from the dead man, and the cops would have lots of reasons to put Kaylee into the center of their investigation. Maybe they’d spend less time wondering what Roxy and Nooch had been doing at the Hyde house.

When the truck rumbled out of the yard, Roxy went into the garage and walked deeper into the vast building past her inventory—a couple of staircases, a slew of doors, a bunch of garden urns, and a lot of stuff she should have unloaded by now. She unlocked a door, passed through a tunnel and another door before she entered the old fur storage. In the back of a vault where water dripped down the wall, the statue stood under his splotched canvas tarp.

Roxy tugged the tarp down and took another look at him. His face looked empty, just the way she liked her men. But, God, he was beautiful. Probably worth a fortune.

“Are you going to be a lot of trouble?” she asked. “Because I prefer to get rid of trouble fast.”

8

On the phone from her bed in the nursing home, Dorothy Hyde said, “Can we pin it on Monica?”

Henry nearly choked on his morning coffee. “I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t get the vapors,” Dorothy snapped. “Pretend it’s my dementia talking. If Monica killed my son, a lot of problems would be solved. The insurance company would have to pay us the settlement on the house, and the share of Julius’s estate that would have gone to his wife could stay in the family.”

“Have you suggested this scenario to anyone else, Mrs. Hyde?”

“Of course not. I’m old, but I’m not crazy. What do you think? Can we come up with some evidence?”

“I’m not entirely comfortable with—”

“Comfortable! I’m the one they tie to the bed at night! Don’t talk to me about comfort. I’m getting irritated with your lack of enthusiasm, Henry. I don’t suppose you’ve found my Achilles yet either, have you?”

“I have some promising leads.”

“Leads! What are you—Philip Marlowe? Leads are not good enough. Call me when you’ve got something worthwhile to say for yourself.”

She banged down the telephone and left Henry’s ear ringing.

He turned off his phone and threw it onto the sofa with more force than he intended. The old bat was a menace to his mental health. A few calming breaths, and then he could think clearly again.

It occurred to him for the first time that perhaps he had miscalculated.

But with Monica settled into a suite of rooms at Hilltop and her wishes attended to by the hastily reassembled staff of the estate, Henry decided he could leave her for a day. In fact, it might be smart to let the widow contemplate her options for a while. She seemed entirely unaware that the family was putting up with her only as long as it took them and the insurance company to decide her role in the settlement of the house fire.

Not to mention Dorothy’s brainstorm.

When Henry told Monica he needed to make a trip into the city, she got teary-eyed all over again. “Oh, Henry, you’re going to find Samson for me, aren’t you?”

He assured her Samson was his highest priority, and Monica nearly kissed him good-bye. He’d seen the impulse glowing in her eyes. Perhaps a little Texas two-step was in his future.

Armed with a list of people Julius Hyde might have contacted to sell off his art—a list Monica had been happy to collaborate on as long as Samson was still in the picture—Henry made only a few phone calls from the car before he realized he was going about his investigation far too straightforwardly. It would be much smarter, he decided, to ambush people.

Which is how he found himself pushing through the plate-glass door of a pizza parlor at lunchtime. A plate-glass door, in fact, that had obviously been kicked in by burglars and was now held together with duct tape.

The heavy smell of garlic hung in the humid air of the shop. A heart-stopping menu was posted on the wall above the antique cash register. The printed prices of various cholesterol-heavy items had been crossed out with a marker and replaced with new numbers.

The patrons of Bruno’s Pizza and Subs—most of them hunched over sandwiches at small, wobbly tables and watching
Judge Judy
on a small television behind the counter—turned to look at Henry when he entered. He made a mental note to leave his Burberry raincoat behind next time if he had any hope of blending into the neighborhood. Everyone including the proprietor—who had just skimmed a hot pizza onto the counter with a big wooden paddle—seemed to favor multiple layers of the hooded sweatshirt as their sartorial statement.

One guy with his mouth full of calzone and a severe case of plumber’s butt gave a particularly loud snort at Henry before turning back to his lunch.

At the counter making conversation with the swarthy proprietor stood a leggy brunette in jeans and boots and a shapeless sweatshirt that somehow managed to convey a spectacular shape beneath its folds. Her derriere was a thing of beauty. A crucifix dangled on a thin chain around her neck, and she leaned one elbow on the counter with the confident air of a woman who knew every male eye in the establishment had lingered on her for a moment’s fantasy.

Henry took a second to formulate on an appropriately working-class pickup line and headed across the pizza shop toward her. But in a heartbeat, the scene of blue-collar lunchtime tranquillity turned to chaos.

A man sitting at one of the small tables struck a flame on his plastic cigarette lighter and stuck it under the brunette’s beautiful bottom.

And with the speed of a striking rattlesnake, she scooped one hand under the pizza and flipped the whole pan—hot cheese and all—straight into the side of her attacker’s head. He howled, dropped the lighter, and used both hands to claw the steaming cheese out of his facial hair. His dining companion—snickering one instant, then leaping to escape a similar fate—was no match for the brunette. She clocked him with her fist. He grabbed his nose and fell straight back into his chair, which somersaulted over backward. Two soft drink cups flew into the air, and the customers at nearby tables jumped up to avoid getting splashed.

Everybody in the shop was suddenly cussing like truckers.

Henry stepped over the man who’d been punched—he was writhing in pain as he clutched his nose—and he took the elbow of the furious brunette.

Henry said, “May I escort you outside?”

She socked him in the gut, and Henry doubled over. When he could breathe again, he realized she had charged outside. He staggered after her, and arrived on the sidewalk in time for her to spin around with one fist cocked.

He grabbed his stomach and braced for another blow. “Miss Abruzzo?”

She withheld the punch and stared at him. “Who the hell are you? Prince Fucking Charming?”

“My name is Henry Paxton,” he replied, his voice strained. “And if I’m not mistaken, you are Roxy Abruzzo.”

Her dark eyes narrowed to slits. “Do I know you?”

“Not yet.” He straightened cautiously. “But we have a mutual acquaintance. Julius Hyde.”

“Had.” She took a step backward and lowered her fist. “I get it. You’re another cop? Boy, Bug does fast work.”

“I’m not a cop. But I’d like to talk to you about Julius.”

“If you’re not a cop, you can take a hike.” She turned on her heel.

Unaccustomed to being summarily dismissed by women, Henry experienced a dumbfounded moment before following her down the sidewalk. One hand still protectively clutched his stomach, so he made a conscious effort to stop the milquetoast business. “Miss Abruzzo, I think you and I have a similar stake in Julius’s death.”

Over her shoulder, she snapped, “I doubt it.”

“We’re both interested in his property,” Henry said. “And we’d both like to turn a buck, so to speak.”

She spun around at that, and he realized she was potentially beautiful. Her eyes were a fathomless black and disconcertingly direct. She had good bones and an athletic carriage. Not to mention a show-stopping body and those dark, velvet-lashed eyes that were probably best appreciated in intimate circumstances. But her hair looked as if it had been plugged into a light socket. And her clothes needed to be burned.

She jammed her forefinger into his chest, however, with all the charm of a longshoreman. “Listen up, chum. I’ve heard enough about Julius Hyde’s death to last the rest of my life. So you can pussyfoot around somebody else for information, got it?”

He grabbed her hand hard and didn’t let go. Two could play the tough game. “Let’s talk, Miss Abruzzo. You and me. About the things you got out of his house before he died.”

It wasn’t the manhandling that got through to her. Because he felt her tensile strength and knew she could knock him down like a fly. But she stared directly into his face—her own going poker blank as she took stock of the situation.

Rather than confirm or deny, she said, “Not here. I don’t need the whole damn neighborhood knowing my business.”

“Excellent.” Henry regained his good cheer. “Where should we go?”

Roxy Abruzzo glanced down his body, perhaps taking in the Burberry or his neatly pressed shirt, his newly dry-cleaned trousers, his pair of Gucci loafers. Or maybe she took an entirely different measure of his manhood.

She disengaged her hand from his. “You live around here?”

Did her question suggest a different kind of meeting than the discussion Henry had proposed? “Unfortunately, no.”

She shrugged. “Okay, then, come with me.”

Henry had already identified her vehicle. He’d staked out her place of business a little before noon and followed her when she left the property. The little red Mustang had been easy to tail, and he’d watched her stroll into the pizza shop ten minutes ago. Sexy baby, indeed.

She’d left the car parked next to a fire hydrant.

He opened the passenger door and froze at the sight of an ugly speckled dog growling murderously on the front seat.