Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries) (18 page)

“I have been since we got here yesterday.”

It took longer than either of them wanted to get away from the crime scene, but finally they made it out to the parking area and Cami’s car. News teams were setting up again, vans with their logos crowding each other. They had to be scanning police radios to get here so quickly.

On the way to Cami’s house, Harley reflected, “Amanda doesn’t like staying home.”

After a moment, Cami said, “You mean at all, or instead of having a boyfriend?”

“The last one. Funny, I never thought about her minding it. She always seemed happy. I guess she isn’t really.”

“Well, you don’t see them very much. It’s not anything you’d notice right off.”

“No. I guess not. Sometimes I think I’m too self-absorbed. You know, just think about how I feel and not anyone else.”

“That’s not quite true. Besides, it’s human nature to see things from your own perspective rather than anyone else’s.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Know what you need, Harley?”

“I’m afraid to hear this.”

Cami laughed. “You need a pet. Something to take care of besides yourself.”

“I have a pet. He comes by and brings food and pretty play toys.”

“Right. Great sex is certainly fun, but it doesn’t keep you grounded.”

“I thought that was the point of it. You know, that feeling you get when it’s really good and your eyes roll back in your head and all you can see is stars.”

“And when he leaves?”

“I enjoy my solitude.”

Cami was quiet for a minute, then she said, “After Jace and I divorced, I didn’t do much except sit around the house and think how miserable I was. Then a friend of mine asked if I’d look after her dog while she went out of town. It was nice coming home to a house that wasn’t empty. Even though it wasn’t my dog, he jumped all around, wagging his tail and barking when I walked in, and it was companionship.”

“I think you’ve carried it a little too far now. You’re harboring a zoo.”

“Maybe. Most of them are temporary, just waiting for a good home to come along. That’s how I felt for a long time. Just waiting for someone to show up and rescue me. It took a while to figure out that I had to rescue myself first. I’m luckier than the animals. I have options. So do you.”

“I’m happy,” Harley protested, “a lot happier than I’d be picking up doggy doodles from the floor. Sometimes I’m gone long hours. I don’t want anything I have to walk or that’ll miss me.”

“So that includes Morgan, I suppose?”

“Well, I don’t have to walk him, and he’s never hinted that he misses me that much, but I guess that includes him. What are you getting at, Cami?”

“Has it occurred to you that neither one of us is getting any younger and our biological clocks are ticking?”

“The only internal clock I have tells me when I’ve missed breakfast. Turn in to that Taco Bell up there on the right.”

“There’s no way I can eat tacos for breakfast.”

They settled on the drive-through at a chicken and biscuit chain, then Cami dropped off Harley at her apartment and went home to feed her animals. Harley let herself in and thought how nice it was not to have to worry about feeding anyone or anything but herself. No nuggets on the floor to clean up, nothing but silence and solitude. Perfect.

The message light on her answering machine was blinking furiously, and she hit the button, then rummaged through the Mrs. Winner’s sack for a biscuit while she listened. Tootsie had called three times and complained that she wasn’t answering her cell phone and how did she expect him to give her the information she wanted if she wouldn’t pick up. There were two calls from Mike Morgan, the last one a terse, “Call me when you get home” that indicated he’d talked to Bobby. Damn. That could get very inconvenient. The last call was a wrong number. A male voice that sounded foreign said, “Hello” a couple of times, then hung up. Foreign accents could be delicious and exotic. Maybe she should ask Morgan to pretend he was Russian the next time they played bedtime games. She returned Tootsie’s calls first.

“It’s Monday morning, do you know where your employees are?” she chirped when he answered the phone with his Memphis Tour Tyme spiel. “So what’s up?”

“I could ask you the same thing. Mike Morgan called here looking for you.”

“I have a feeling he knows where I am by now.”

“So where are you?”

“Home. Just got here. You won’t believe this—”

“Damn baby, I hate it when you start off a sentence like that.”

“Right. Well, I hate spending the night in a dark cellar with Cami and a dead body.”

Silence greeted that remark, and after a moment, she heard Tootsie make a wheezing sound. She smiled. It wasn’t easy to rattle him, so she always counted it as a small victory when she managed to leave him speechless.

“So,” he said after a minute, “I guess that explains why Cami never answered her cell phone either.”

“It does. Shall I fill you in on the gory details?”

“God, yes.”

It didn’t take long. Then she asked, “What did you find out about Cheríe Saucier?”

“She died about eight years ago. Or at least, that was the only one I found.”

“Hah! I knew that scrawny bitch was a fraud. Aunt Darcy is always right on the money when it comes to sizing up another female. Which makes her opinion of me a bit uncomfortable.”

“So why did you want to know about her?”

“She worked with Harry Gordon. You know, it just occurred to me that Harry’s dead and now the guy who worked for him is dead, and that leaves only Cheríe who might still know why. If I could talk to her, I might just learn something.”

“Baby, your track record isn’t so good. Leave that to the police.”

“Well, I did pretty good last time.”

“You almost got killed last time. This time, you’ve only spent the night in a cellar with a dead body. Think about it. You’re still ahead.”

“True. I’ll think about it. I don’t know where to find her anyway, so it’s probably a moot point.”

“Things have a way of happening for you, baby. Just when they shouldn’t. That’s not always a good thing.”

“What did you find out about Harry Gordon?”

“Do you know how many Harry Gordons there are just in Tennessee alone, much less the rest of the US? I’m trying to narrow it down for you. It’d help if I had a birth date or his Social Security number. I’m trying to backtrack all references to Harry and designers, antiques, things like that at the moment. If I got paid by the hour, I could retire.”

“You’re an angel. A darling. Precious.” No response. She sighed. “I’ll give you a percentage of the five thousand.”

“Now you’re talking my language.”

“So tell me about this dead Cheríe. Where was she from and what did she do? Maybe if I know something about her, I’ll know something about the woman who stole her identity.”

“I don’t know if this is the same one, it’s just the only logical one I could find. Not too much to tell. Her maiden name was Plotz. She married Luke Saucier in 1989, died in 1996 of cancer. Last mailing address was in Atoka, Tennessee. Left behind no children, two sisters, one brother.”

“Sisters’ names?”

“Anna Plotz Merritt, and Frieda Plotz. Brother’s named Bernard.”

“Do you think you could find out anything about the two sisters?”

“You’re a pain in the ass, baby.”

“I know. But you love me. So how’d you look as Liza?”

“Stunning. I suppose that’s a not too subtle reference to the fact you gave me all those Minnelli-style clothes.”

“Well, I do try to pay my debts.”

Tootsie said something rude, then sighed. “All right. But you have to come to one of my shows. I want an honest opinion.”

“Don’t you get that from Steve?”

“Please. He’s in love. He says whatever he thinks I want to hear.”

“Not so very different from the boy-girl thing, I see. A pity. You’d think there’d be more advantages since you don’t qualify for marriage.”

“Why would you think marriage is an advantage?”

“It isn’t?”

“Hardly.” Tootsie laughed. “It’s not like two guys together are conventional anyway. Why bother with a legal ceremony when you can pay an attorney to do things the way you really want them done? It doesn’t change anything, just puts money in the pockets of all the wrong people. But I appreciate the sentiment, baby. Are you coming in at all today? This week?”

“Tomorrow. Put me down for something local. Right now, I want a hot bath and some sleep. I’m beginning to feel like a mushroom.”

“A mushroom?”

“Yep, knee-deep in shit and left in the dark.”

Laughing, Tootsie hung up. Harley thought about calling Morgan, then decided to get a bath first. She really did feel icky. And she’d need to feel human and awake when she talked to him, or she’d end up saying something she shouldn’t.

Baths, Harley reflected as steam rose in waves that fogged the bathroom mirror and deep-cleansed her pores, were a necessary element of survival. Showers were just to get the dirt off. A bath was luxury. Especially with something sweet-smelling in the water, and all the water out of the hot water tank and into the tub. If she ever bought a house, it was going to have one of those big round Jacuzzis in it. A deep one, with lots of water jets.

She didn’t leave the tub until the bubbles went flat and the hot water ran out. Then she wrapped herself in a sheet-size fluffy towel and wore it like a sarong. Not bothering to do more than finger-comb her hair, she padded barefoot into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She needed to go shopping. There wasn’t much in there but some leftover Chinese, a bottle of wine, a beer, and a half dozen eggs. She opted for the Chinese. Mike had brought it, refusing to eat Taco Bell. The fried rice was really good, not too sticky, just enough seasonings so that a generous splash of soy sauce made it perfect. She piled it on a plate, heated it in the microwave, and went to the living room to eat. Twelve hours of fasting could hardly be appeased by one biscuit, even one with butter and strawberry jelly.

It took some work, but she finally got her apartment back the way she liked it. Tidy, no clutter, the white-striped slipcovers back from the cleaners, fitting snug on her fat chairs. She sank down in one of them, liking the way it seemed to close around her.

Cami was wrong. Harley didn’t hear the ticking of her biological clock at all. Maybe she didn’t have one. Or the batteries had run down. Whichever, she’d never dreamed of having kids and the mess that went with them. It wasn’t that she didn’t like kids, necessarily, it just wasn’t a priority. Or even a remote desire.

When girls her age had baby dolls and played house under a tree, she was with the boys playing stick ball or skinny dipping in the nearest pond or creek, depending on where they’d parked their van. Sometimes they’d parked near a beach in northern California, a place that still seemed more like heaven than anywhere she’d ever been. Foamy surf breaking on black rocks, stretches of sand soft as sugar, air that smelled fresh and clean . . . a feeling of complete freedom that she hadn’t had since then. The sixties era of free love and protesting against the Vietnam war were behind when she was born, and the promise of the seventies with civil rights struggles resolved and a fresh determination to change the world in full bloom. Her earliest memory was riding atop her father’s shoulders in a protest, her best memory releasing helium balloons that said PEACE on the rubber faces from the cliff above the Golden Gate Bridge. At that moment, she’d felt as if she was on top of the world and it was waiting below for her like a golden apple. California had good memories, as well as the ones about tarantula-sized spiders and rats the size of raccoons.