Kill Smartie Breedlove (a mystery) (27 page)

Guiding Shep to sit on the edge of the table, Libby spanned her hands again to measure from his sternum to his spine, prepped half a dozen strips of surgical tape in appropriate lengths, and suspended them from a cupboard door. Shep didn’t think about Suri’s claw marks on his back until he felt the sting of antiseptic and an ooze of antibiotic ointment being applied.

“Looks like quite a night,” Libby said dryly.

“Lib, I can’t talk right now.”

She taped his ribs and told him, “You need to cough. Often. Even if it hurts.”

Shep coughed feebly, and it hurt like hell.

“I can’t ask Sandy to call in a prescription if you won’t go for the X-rays. That’s not cool,” she said. “But I might have some Vicodin leftover from that root canal.”

“Thanks, Lib. I’m sorry I screwed up your date last night.”

“It wasn’t going great anyway,” Libby sighed. “He didn’t want to hear word one about Charlie. Got all handsy during dinner. I was like, geezes, can I eat my pork chop before you dive down my dress?”

“Maybe don’t look so gorgeous next time,” Shep tried to smile.

“Whatever.” She bundled the blood pressure cuff and tucked it in her tote.

“Can you give me a ride home?” Shep asked.

“You need to stay here today so I can keep an eye on you. Get in my bed. I’ll crawl in with Charlie until he wakes up. He slept all week in his big boy bed. He’s pretty jazzed about it.”

“Great,” said Shep, trying not to sound too profoundly weary to care. “Libby, the DA’s going to be looking for me in a little while.”

“They can pound it. You’re not here.”

“No. I don’t want you getting in trouble on my account.”

Libby’s cell vibrated on the kitchen counter. She glanced at the caller ID.

“It’s Claire.”

Shep took the cell and said, “I guess this makes us even.”

“Oh, ya think?”

“Claire.” Shep coughed again, pausing to groan and catch his breath. “There’s going to be a warrant out on me. Aggravated sexual assault. Murder. Conspiracy. I’d appreciate it if you’d process me so I don’t have to deal with those other assholes.”

“What the hell is going on, Shep? Your employers have closed ranks around your little girlfriend. Internal Affairs is crawling up my ass.”

“Just be cool and keep an eye out for the warrant. Please.”

He clicked off without waiting for her to answer.

Libby’s eyes were wide with questions, but she set the cell aside without asking, and for that, Shep was more grateful than she would ever know. He eased off the edge of the table, and Libby limped him down the hall with his arm draped over her shoulders.

At the bedroom door, Shep kissed the crown of her head and tasted a sad little skiff of leftover hairspray.

He knuckled her chin and quoted a line that raised a lump in his throat every time he reran
The Maltese Falcon
: “You’re a damn good man, sister.”

\\\ ///

28

“H
errick, it’s me,” Smartie said, but the call disconnected with an almost instantaneous
click
.

She bit her lip and hit the redial.

“Herrick, please, let me—”
Click
.

“Herrick, I just want to say—”
Click
.

“Herrick,
please
—”
Click
.

“Herrick, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it when I said your book was unpublishable, and what do I know anyhow, right? I’m not the grand arbiter of what should get published. Why, just look at all the stultifying books that get published and win big awards and get all kinds of glory. Look at
Summons to Memphis
, for goodness sake.”

“Smartie, it’s Casilda.”

“Oh. Casilda. Hello. How are you? How’s Herrick?”

“He doesn’t want to talk to you. I’m sorry. And I’m fine. How are you?”

“I’m thrashing a bit,” Smartie confessed. “Things have been so strange lately.”

“I’ll talk to him,” said Casilda. “He’ll come around.”

“Tell him I feel terrible about all those things I said.”

“He needs a little more time, that’s all.”

“Tell him I’m almost ready to send this rough draft to Fritz and Dove,” Smartie said, “and I’ve never turned in a manuscript without Herrick reading it first and telling me what a piece of worthless dratch it is, and… I miss him.”

“The manuscript,” said Casilda. “You’re finished already?”

“Almost. There’s one more thing I have to do tonight for research.”

“You have to feel how it feels,” said Casilda. “Out on the balcony.”

“Yes.” Smartie started to ask, “How did you know?” But she already knew the answer.

Phyllis must have told Casilda about what they’d been reading in critique group, which meant that Phyllis had decided to be a Buchan, and that broke Smartie’s heart a little. Phyllis would run with the literary crowd now, eating sushi instead of Fig Newtons. The reviewers would read her books and saying things like “The convolution of her luminescent prose evokes a Plathian otherness, like peering into a vagina and seeing the face of God.” And Phyllis would eat that up because reviews like that are so very edible.

“How is your book coming along, Casilda? The Oliver La Farge biography.”

“Oh, I had to set it aside for a ghostwriting project.”

“I’m sure it’ll be wonderful,” said Smartie absently, her attention drawn to the e-mail that had popped up on the screen of her laptop, heralded by a tiny doorbell. It was from Gwynn Salinger of Salinger, Pringle, Fitch & Edloe.

Re:  spousal support hearing

Ms. Breedlove:

Due to a family emergency, Suri Fitch is out of the country for an extended period. I’ll be handling the dispensation of your case. I’ve reviewed your file, but we need to meet prior to the support hearing Wed AM to clear up a few questions. Please call my assistant at your earliest convenience to arrange. Looking forward to meeting you.

Yours,

Gwynn Salinger

P.S.  My husband is a big fan! Would I be imposing to ask for a signed copy of your latest?

S
hep woke up in Libby’s bed, sweating under the weight of a nightmare. He coughed, as he’d been told to, groaned and swore, coughed and swore some more.

Struggling upright against the headboard, he found a spavined posture that allowed him to sit and breathe without feeling a meat cleaver under his shoulder blade. Afraid to move, he remained still for a long while, sorting and matching things, trying to make the necessary connections.

Everything had a place except the toss of Smartie’s office. That didn’t fit. Barth wasn’t one to waste effort, Suri had said. If he’d had it done, there was a reason.

But there was no reason. Not even the wrong reason.

If he’d acquired Smartie’s gun, he would have used it.

But he didn’t.

Revisiting the scene as it stuck in his mind—the blood evidence and wreckage and Twinkie’s pulped head—Shep saw someone who’d been searching. But something more. There was a grasping in the way the books had been unshelved, a clenched determination in the close-range way the dog’s brains had been blown out.

Reaching his cell was an act of will. No answer at Smartie’s house. Her cell went directly to voicemail. Shep looked at the missed call log: three messages from Smartie and several calls from Paige Edloe’s office.

“Un go shit,” Charlie said from the doorway.

“Hey, Ponch.”

Shep held out his hand, and Charlie toddled a drunkard’s path over to the bed. Libby came in a moment later with her blue canvas bag and stethoscope.

“Your writer friend is here,” she said. “Let me check your vitals before you get up.”

“Did Claire call?”

“No warrant yet.” Libby wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm. “She said hang tight and she’ll let you know if she hears anything.”

Libby listened to Shep’s lungs, prodded his aching midsection and retaped his ribs. Then she had to pretend to take Charlie’s blood pressure so he would stop squawking. Leaving a pair of cargo pants and a clean tee-shirt folded on the end of the bed, she left Shep alone to get himself out of bed and dressed, and Shep let her go without asking where the men’s clothes came from.

“I thought you’d want to see this,” Smartie said when he came out to the living room. She handed him the folded printout of Gwynn Salinger’s e-mail.

Shep stared at the paper, and Smartie stared at Shep, wishing she genuinely was the adroit reader of people he seemed to think she was. He finally raked his fingers through his hair and puffed his lower lip. She figured that meant
well, dang
, but there were definite undertones that remained a mystery.

“I took a cab here this morning,” he said. “Could one of you ladies please give me a ride downtown to get my bike?”

“Absolutely not,” declared Libby. “I’m not letting you ride your donorcycle with those rib fractures, you pinhead.”

“I can take you where you need to go,” said Smartie. “Or you could drop me off and take Schatzi.”

“I’ll take the car, if you don’t mind,” he said. “It would only be a couple of hours.”

They left Libby’s and drove in silence for the first little while.

“I need you to drop me at the Bonham,” said Smartie.

“What for?”

“I’m going to spend the night in the Lady Bird Johnson Suite.”

Shep looked at her sideways. “Is that really necessary?”

“I need to feel the air up there,” said Smartie. “I need to see the city and the stars and whatever there is to see.”

“Smartie, when I bring the car back this evening, we need to talk.”

“Not if it’s about—”

“Bean didn’t kill Twinkie, and Suri didn’t know anything about it. There’s something we’re not seeing here, and we need to figure out what that is.”

He pulled into the parking lot at the Bonham Hotel, but Smartie didn’t get out of the car.

“You were right about why I let the Bovets off the hook,” she said. “But I wish you could understand, Shep. It’s not about the precious public.”

“I know. I’m sorry I said that.”

“I’ve worked very hard to erase every conceivable connection between Smartie Breedlove and that girl in the ditch. My life depends on it. My sanity. My ability to work.”

“He’ll never be paroled, Smartie. You don’t have to be afraid. That sorry fuck will die in the Huntsville state penitentiary without ever seeing the free light of day. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that, Shep. And it’s not only that he might get out someday. It’s that wherever he lives, however he dies, he does not get to be famous for that. For being the one who did that to Smartie Breedlove. He is not allowed in my story, and I refuse to be a stage prop in his.” She looked at Shep, dry-eyed, calm, compartmentalized. “That girl he took—she’s dead. He killed her. He never touched Smartie Breedlove. Never breathed the same air as me.”

Shep thought about that, then nodded and quietly said, “Okay.”

“Are you still angry?”

“No, but we still need to sort some things out.”

“I’ll leave you a key at the front desk.” She squeezed his hand and smiled. “We’ll order pizza.”

\\\ ///

29

I
n the elevator at the Bonham Hotel, Smartie took particular notice of the frosted mirror walls, the rabbit-shaped stain on one corner of the carpet, the
click-clicka-ping
click-clicka-ping
of the floor counter. She felt each step in her heel as she trekked slowly down the long hallway, listening for the sounds on the other side of each doorway, touching the wallpaper to see if it was textured with white-on-white brocade or just shaded to look that way.

Pausing at the last door that was opened for Charma Nicole Bovet, Smartie moved her thumb back and forth over the edge of the keycard before she slid it into the electronic lock. There were yellow roses and a little fruit basket on the glass coffee table with an embossed note welcoming her to the Lady Bird Johnson Suite. A silver tea service had been arranged on a pretty little cart with another embossed note inviting her to call when she was ready for refreshments.

Smartie took her overnight bag to the dressing alcove outside the bathroom and put on the silk night slip from Victoria’s Secret. At first she was going to keep her jeans on with it, but to be true, she shucked out of them. Then she decided she needed to know what it felt like without panties, and when she stepped out onto the balcony, she was wickedly glad.

S
hep stopped by home, and with difficulty got into his dick shtick, gritting his teeth as he pulled on the machine-ironed shirt and cinched a necktie under his chin, but walking into the reception lobby at Salinger, Pringle, Fitch & Edloe, he felt protected somewhat by the armor-gray suit.

The girl at the front desk ticked her thumb toward the clock on the wall and said, “Nice you could make it.”

It was a little after five. She was gathering her things to go. She handed him three pink message slips from a spindle.

“Here’s these,” she said. “Nothing urgent. Paige said she wanted to see you if you showed up before five-thirty, so you can go on back. Also, Darcy in paralegal had her baby this afternoon, so we’re collecting for a gift basket.”

She looked at Shep expectantly, not the way a young woman would look at a man wanted by the police for murder and rape. Shep dug in his pockets and came up with a twenty, then made his way down the hall to Paige Edloe’s office.

“Close the door,” Paige said, and he did.

D
istant sound carried up from the city. As the sun disappeared behind the skyscrapers, a cool wind shifted through Smartie’s hair and teased up the silk between her bare legs. The vented brickwork that made the balcony wall was a gritty white circle-in-a-square design with drainage ports dotting along the bottom. Smartie knelt down and peered through the openings, ran her hands along the rough edges.

Running the length of the wall was an iron safety rail set up on leafy wrought iron elbows etched with rust. She put her nose to it and smelled the tarnished penny smell, touched her tongue to it and tasted the rainy, industrial tinge. The way it was set—up and out several inches from the brick wall—it did form the invitation to lean forward, and she readily understood how Charma had seen a sidesaddle of sorts.