Kill Smartie Breedlove (a mystery) (9 page)

He pulled Smartie close and brushed his mouth down her salty neck. For a moment it seemed like she might settle into it, but then she shifted and said, “I need to get inside.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Shep, I told you that was a one-time thing.”

“Right.” He nuzzled her bare shoulder. “This would be a one-time thing, too.”

She was on the fence. He could feel it.

“Blink once for yes, twice for no,” he murmured in her ear. “And don’t blink twice.”

Smartie looked into his eyes without blinking at all. “You already struck out with your first choice tonight, didn’t you?”

He took one last breath of her neck and settled back into his seat. “Oh-for-two now.”

“You are an honest man, Shep. I admire your candor.”

“That’s rewarding.”

“Have you given any further thought to Charma’s case?”

“No, but I’ll bet you have.”

“I’ve narrowed it down to three basic theories,” said Smartie.

“What are they?”

“Do you really want to know? Or are you trying to work your way upstairs?”

“Both.”

“You’re not getting upstairs.”

“Let’s have the theories then,” Shep sighed. It was still better than soup for one.

“Theory A.” Smartie tucked one foot under her and framed each hypothetical between her hands. “
I Love You to Death
: She was having an affair, and her lover killed her. Maybe she tried to break it off and he went crazy, or maybe it was an accident. Remember that case over in San Antonio, where the guy was making love to a woman on the balcony? In the heat of the moment, he lifted her hips up on the railing, and next thing he knows, she’s
ker-shplunken
. My problem with this scenario is that I simply do not believe she was having an affair.”

“Why not?”

“If she was in love, she would have told me,” said Smartie. “And if she wasn’t in love, why in the name of Queen Anne’s panties would she risk it? It makes no sense. So we move on to Theory B:
Killer in the Mist
. Some random deviant dragged her up there and took her underwear and killed her for the heck of it, and it had nothing to do with who she was or what she was doing.”

Shep shook his head. “Like I said: I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“Plausibility is always a problem with a random killer,” she conceded. “Logistically, it’s a stretch to make that work as a plotline. And Charma wasn’t dumb. She wouldn’t have gone up there with some stranger. According to the police report, the room was registered to her and there was no forced entry, no sign that anyone else was ever there. This leaves us with Theory C:
The Best Little Divorce Lawyer in Texas
.”

“Here’s the problem with that theory,” Shep interrupted. “It’s ludicrous.”

“An extremely proficient investigator at Salinger, Pringle, Fitch & Edloe finds no evidence of Charma having an affair. The pre-nup guarantees her half of the old man’s fortune, and the remaining half is about to be divided with yet another child. So Attorney Fitch, as a service to her client, the bazillionaire’s daughter—”

“Smartie, you’re completely ignoring what is by far the most likely scenario: Charma killed herself like the coroner said, based on an airtight, fact-based assessment of the evidence.”

“Three other cases in five years. Filthy rich clients walked away with one hundred percent of their assets intact because their gold-digging spouses turned up dead. That didn’t pique your natural born curiosity enough to go back and take a look?”

“Not one of those deaths is an open homicide. The first two were ruled accidental, and the anesthesiologist was a completely credible suicide.”

“What about the new photo evidence?”

“What new photo evidence? As of yesterday, not one shred of additional—”

“Ha! You did go back.” She slapped the steel strongbox with the palm of her hand. “That was the
go back
test, and you flunked.”

Shep had to bite down on that. “Fine. I looked into it. You succeeded in making me a little uncomfortable. You raised some questions, which have been answered to my satisfaction. Suri is not a murderer.”

“Prove it. Prove it to me, Shep. And to yourself.”

“The burden of proof is on guilt, not innocence. How am I supposed to prove that a wildly improbable thing for which there is no evidentiary support did, in fact,
not
happen
?”

“Here’s my idea. And it’s so much better with spy toys.” Smartie presented her plan with palpable relish: “
Kill Herrick
.”

Shep choked out a vehement reaction to that.

“Don’t get your baubles in a bunch,” she said. “I don’t mean
kill him
kill him. Just plot
to kill him. We make her think he’s nutty and awful. Planning to take me for everything I own. I make it clear to her that I want him taken care of by any means necessary. If you’re right, she’ll serve me up a regular ol’ anticlimactic divorce. But if I’m right, Shep, she’ll step up and name her price for the, ah…” Smartie made a glottal noise and slashed the side of her hand across her neck. “She’ll offer to have him whacked, and we’ll record the whole thing.” She held up a sleek silver object, eyes sparkling with conspiracy. “With
this
.”

“Suri Fitch does not whack people,” said Shep. “And that is a nose hair trimmer.”

“Fine.” Smartie daintily set the object back in the box. “Let’s hear your idea.”

“My idea is that you get your divorce and leave the ridiculously implausible plots to Smack Wilder.” It came out sounding harsher than Shep had intended, but he was enormously weary and uncomfortably out of words.

“You don’t have to help me if you don’t want to,” she said, “but don’t try to tell me I’m a bad writer. I am a good writer. You can’t take that away from me.”

“Smartie, you are a good writer. Too good,” he said quietly. “You’ve created this story and convinced yourself it’s real.”

“I should get going.” She opened the car door, but Shep caught her wrist.

“Smartie.”

He cupped his hand under her chin, drawing her face close to his in the half-light. At first, Smartie thought he was going to kiss her, and it terrified her how much she simultaneously did and did not want that. But all Shep did was look into her eyes.

And then he blinked. Once.

\\\ ///

10

“T
hat’s right, Smack. Your gal pal was playing around like a cocker spaniel in a lawn sprinkler,” said Nash. “So unless somebody invented a new motive for murder and forgot to send out a memo, I’d say our baby billionairess is off the hook.”

Smartie paced in a circle around her desk, stepping over Twinkie, stopping every once in a while to peck a few phrases into her computer.

I cringed from the truth I’d known all along. Confronted with a nice package in a pair of leather jeans, Twyla had the self-control of a fork in a light socket.

Lying on the floor with her head on Twinkie’s flank, Smartie puffed smoke rings and tried to think in straight lines, but thoughts kept crowding, rubbing up against each other, tripping on things in her head. The lasting image of that punch bowl that went right through Charma’s neck vied with the unique shape of Shep’s earlobes. Bloggers and deadlines conflicted with the faint hairs around Shep’s wrist bone and his cell phone number.

“She’s a beautiful woman. Smack. And a damn fine attorney.”

“You’re in love with her, Nash. Admit it.”

No. That couldn’t be right.

“You’re not in love with her, Nash. Now get up here and

“If you’re so in love with her, Nash, why were you in my

“Love, Nash? You’re incapable of love, you granite-breasted bastard. You’re in this for the money. In it up to your thick neck.”

Smartie wondered if Shep was already sleeping with Suri or just wanting to. If they slept together, Suri would say his name with her Oxford accent, and it wouldn’t sound like someone calling a dog.

“
Shep
,” Smartie said softly to see what the smoke version looked like coming out of her mouth. “
Shhhhhhhhep-puh
.”

Twinkie’s stomach rumbled beneath her shoulder.

“Don’t judge me,” she said, scratching under his chin. “I didn’t invite him in. I get credit for not inviting him in.”

Twinkie rubbed his wet nose on the inside of her elbow.

“You got it all wrong, Smack. The bimbo took a swan dive, and that’s the truth.”

“Truth?” I flayed him with a sharp glance. “You wouldn’t know the truth if it stood up and tucked a dollar in your G-string.”

“Why would he lie about Charma having an affair?” Smartie asked out loud. “To protect Suri? To cover his own tracks?”

Maybe Belinda was off the hook, but Otis Bovet was famous for two things: being incredibly rich and being incredibly vain. This thirty-something trophy wife was supposed to advertise what a manly man he still was. In the balls-out, big oil, good ol’ boy business world of Texas, virility mattered. So if Charma was having an affair—possibly pregnant with another man’s child—

“Talk about motive,” Smartie said. “People get killed for less than that every dang day of the week.”

She curled onto her side with Twinkie’s lugging heartbeat drumming in her ear.

“I have to take a Lunesta tonight, Twinkle Dinkle. You’re on sentry duty while I sleep, okay?”

Twinkie raised his Tonka truck head and lapped wet kisses up the side of her face. Smartie put out her cigarette in a teacup, even though the cleaning lady hated it when Smartie did that, and Smartie was a little afraid of the cleaning lady. There was a can of Diet A&W Root Beer left on the desk. Warm and flat now, but still serviceable. Smartie took it into the bathroom to chase the Lunesta and was lying in the bathtub waiting for the Lunesta to kick in when Herrick called, reeling drunk, still spitting indignant about the post on
Galley Oop
.

“
Hubby and hanger-on
,” he huffed. “And then he spells Herrick with one R.
One R
. That mouth-breathing community college piss midget.”

“Herrick, no one who matters thinks you’re a hanger-on,” said Smartie, though in truth he was a hanger-on, and this was well known by everyone who mattered or didn’t, including both of them. “You know how bloggers are. They just say whatever makes them sound clever. They don’t know you. They don’t know anything about you.”

“Why would they?” he said bitterly. “I’m not one of the
Hottie Literati
.”

“Herrick, I’m hanging up. I took a Lunesta. I’ll drown in my tub.” She yawned and stood. “Go to bed. Take some Advil with a big glass of water or you’ll be hung over.”

“Oh, thank you for your concern,” he said acidly. “It would have been nice if you’d cared enough to speak up when Satan’s fuck finger was there taking notes on what a monumental bore I am.”

“Herrick? Before you go. In your Narrative Craft class, you told us that Margaret Atwood said the detective story is not about murder but the restoration of order.”

“That was P.D. James,” he said in the eye-rolling tone he usually reserved for undergrads. “Your mind is completely polluted with crap and Hammett.”

“Oh, yes. P.D. James,” said Smartie, trying to dry herself with the phone hitched up on her shoulder. “The restoration of order…”

“And man’s innate yearning for justice.”

“Tell me again about the three kinds of justice.”

“Reparative, restorative, and retributive. Reparative involves reparations, compensation to the injured party. Restorative involves restoration, obviously. You return to the status quo. Retributive involves retribution. Revenge.”

“People kill for one reason: money, love, and power.”

“That’s three reasons, Smack.”

“Not for this dame.”

“The killer wants justice,” said Smartie.

“Ironically, yes,” said Herrick.

“It has to be
justified
in his own mind, or it wouldn’t be worth the risk. That’s the only way it makes sense.”

“Since when was genre fiction required to make sense?” Herrick smirked. “It’s all about car chases and incestuous metaphors.”

“The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter,” said Smartie.

“Don’t you quote Sam Spade to me. Hammett was a hack. An abomination. Meanwhile, Chandler, the true artist, labors in obscurity.”

“Obscurity?” Smartie laughed. “Hardly. And anyway, they’re both dead. They’re not arguing about it. Why should we?”

“What else do we have to talk about?” Herrick asked, drunk and sullen.

“You have a great passion about books, Herrick. You know everything about words, language, literature. That’s what’s wonderful about you.”

“Yes, well, there’s nothing wonderful about you,” Herrick sighed bitterly. “You’re unpasteurized evil. Incapable of love.”

“Herrick, I love you to pieces. You know that. You were my mentor when I started telling stories, and I’m grateful, Herrick, but us getting married like that was ridiculous. You’re not the man who gets stoned and marries some young thing in Vegas.”

“I would like to be that man,” Herrick whispered.

“No, you would not like it. You
didn’t
like it. You had to be rushed to the hospital with panic-driven angina,” Smartie reminded him. “You were dead drunk and had a horrible stomach the entire four days we tried to live together. Herrick, we never even consummated.”

“Oh! Nice of you to remind me. As if I was going to forget after you
used
the entire miserable episode as grist for your little pulp mill.”

She had. Smack Wilder #6:
Unholy Matrimony
. One of her most popular titles.

“You’re bloodless.” He hurked in disgust. “Bloodless!”

“You’re right. I’m a vampire. You’re lucky to be rid of me,” Smartie said, small and abashed. “Except Wednesday nights. And Sundays. We’ll still do Scrabble and coffee on Sundays, won’t we?”

She listened to the ice clinking against the rim of his glass.

“Won’t we, Herrick?”