Armed and Glamorous

by Ellen Byerrum

  Lacey, Stella, and Brooke clinked their margarita glasses in a toast to themselves. “That’s true, Stella, you totally rocked the range,” Lacey said. “And you still have all your fingers and toes, and so do I.”

  “And so do I,” Brooke chimed in. “We all rocked the range tonight.”

  Anita’s Mexican Restaurant, a few blocks from the range, was cozy and unpretentious, with red and gold glass lampshades glowing over the booths and some of the best Mexican food in Northern Virginia. The sound of sizzling fajitas and the spicy Tex-Mex aromas were making Lacey hungry. The margarita was making her feel warm and lazy. Target shooting had pounded the stress out of her. She leaned back against the booth and closed her eyes to let go of the awful sight she’d seen that afternoon. This moment was her reward for getting through this long strange day.

  Stella and Brooke chattered happily about how rockingly they had all conquered the pistol range that night. Not surprisingly, Stella thought maybe she still had a spent cartridge stuck in her cleavage somewhere.

  Brooke and Stella, bonding over gunpowder and margaritas! Who would have thought?

  “You’ll get better with practice,” Brooke was saying.

  “The better you get, the more fun it is. Next time we’ll set the target a little farther downrange.”

  “Next time?” The evening had turned out great, no blood was spilled, but Lacey hadn’t planned on making girls’ night out at the gun range a regular event.

  “Of course we’ll have a next time. This was badass fun.” Stella grabbed a tortilla chip and loaded it with salsa. “Know what? They have Ladies’ Night twice a month, I saw a poster. Half-price lane rental! Lots of hunky guys with big guns too, I bet,” Stella purred. “Course it would be nice if the place wasn’t practically in West Virginia.”

  “Fairfax County!” Lacey protested. “The burbs. Hardly West Virginia.”

  “Ha! Practically beyond the known universe,” Stella insisted. To Stella, Washington, D.C., was the known universe, and Dupont Circle was its center.

  Lacey waited for Brooke to make some snarky comment about how the District wasn’t even part of the United States proper, or that Stella should spend more time in the red-blooded red state of Virginia, where men were men and women were dead-eye shots and everyone still believed in the Second Amendment. It didn’t happen. Brooke sipped her margarita and gazed fondly at Stella like they were old pals.

  This is weird.

  “What about trick shooting? You ever do that stuff?” Stella asked. “You know, like shooting backwards over your shoulder with a mirror on horseback?”

  Lacey visualized Stella blazing away backward on horseback and choked on her margarita. Brooke thumped on her back until Lacey put up her hands in surrender.

  “I’m okay,” she squeaked. “Just something I tried to swallow.”

  “I saw it in a movie!” Stella protested. “Could you really do that?”

  “If you’re Annie Freakin’ Oakley,” Lacey managed to say.

  “I am! She’s my new role model.”

  “You did hit the target, Stella,” Brooke said. She lifted her margarita glass. “Here’s to Annie Freakin’ Oakley.”

  The waitress arrived with red chili enchiladas for Brooke, tacos for Stella, and steak fajitas for Lacey. “Good night at the range, I see?” She smiled. “Enjoy.”

  After the adrenaline rush and emotional release of shooting together, they ate as if they were starving. But even great Mexican food couldn’t quiet Stella for long.

  “Guess what! I discovered the most awesome romantic place way out here in Virginia! Well, Nigel took me there. Great Falls, way up the river? Can you believe it?” Stella grinned. “Me, crossing the Potomac? Except to go to Lacey’s place, of course. Nigel knows all sorts of out of the way places. I never even knew it was there. It was gorgeous. We must be pretty close to it way out here.”

  “Great Falls? Of course,” Lacey said. “It’s beautiful.”

  There were Great Falls parks on both sides of the Potomac where the river ran through a narrow rocky canyon upstream from Washington. In the spring the Virginia bluebells grew wild there, carpeting the green woods and the winding riverside trail with brilliant azure. The Virginia side was the more dramatic, with craggy cliffs high above a very different Potomac from the wide, slow-moving river that flowed past Washington and Lacey’s Alexandria balcony. Kayakers paddled the treacherous whitewater below the Falls while hawks and eagles soared overhead. It was the most dangerous section of the river. Nearly every year someone fell from the rocks into the swirling foam and drowned.

  The cherry trees around the Tidal Basin and their blizzard of pink blossoms were the springtime tourists’ favorite, but Lacey preferred Great Falls when the bluebells were in bloom. Maybe she would plan a picnic there with Vic in the spring; at the moment spring seemed very far away. So did Vic.

  “We did it there, you know. At Great Falls. Nigel and me.” Stella giggled. “It was awesome—totally, rockingly awesome. Trust me.”

  “You did it at Great Falls?” Brooke blinked. “You had sex there? In the park? Where? In a car, or out in the woods?”

  “It was out of this world, though we didn’t exactly bring the satin sheets. We were out on one of those observation decks over the river, like the highest one, I think. It was just getting dark and there was no one around but us. It was so romantic. And so dramatic! What with the falls right down there and everything. Who knew water could be so loud! Nigel may be very English and kind of tweedy, but he is also like, very adventurous, if you know what I mean, when he wants to be.”

  Lacey wondered what was in her margarita. She was seeing strange visions. Stella on horseback, guns blazing. Stella having sex among Lacey’s personal bluebells. No more for me, please.

  “Aside from giving me a mental image I’ll never forget, Stella, it’s January!” she said. “Did you both freeze your buns off giving the whole park a free show? Or did Nigel just let you freeze your buns?” Stella laughed so hard she spilled her pink margarita.

  “That was adventurous of you,” Brooke said. “Not to mention illegal.”

  “Oh, come on, honey. You mean to tell me you’ve never done something fun that was maybe just a little bit over the line?”

  “I’m invoking the Fifth Amendment.” Brooke sipped her margarita demurely. Lacey knew Brooke wasn’t a prude; she simply thought sex on anything less than 640 thread-count sheets was roughing it.

  “Different strokes, I always say.” Stella pointed her fork at Lacey. “Lacey never does anything adventurous and illegal either. She just stumbles over dead bodies and murderers and stuff.”

  “Let’s leave me and dead bodies out of this, Stella.”

  “Hey, if you don’t want to hear about me and Nigel making love on the rocks at Great Falls with the river roaring in our ears,” Stella said, “you can read the whole thing on my blog. So there.”

  “You have a blog?” Brooke’s interest was piqued. “I love blogs.” And the more bizarre the better. She started each day with her favorite blogs, along with a latte and way too much sugar. And Damon’s DeadFed dot com.

  “Like, duh. My new nom de blog is TotallyStellariffic! I’ll send you the link.”

  Lacey thought “Radio Free Stella” had already broadcast far too many secrets of Stella’s clients, hers included. Gossiping at the salon seemed so natural, under the influence of warm shampoo suds, Stella’s excellent scalp massage, and the cozy just-us-girls atmosphere. But a blog? Stella? On the Web for all to see? Oh, dear Lord! Stella would soon be in league with the likes of Damon Newhouse.

  “What do you write about?” Lacey had a queasy feeling in her stomach. It was fighting with her fajitas.

  “Only my totally true most innermost thoughts,” Stella said. “What I do all day at the salon, who I see, what I hear, what I’m thinking. Me and Nigel. Oh and some poetry too. Cool stuff. You know. You’ve read it.”

  “No I haven’t.” Lacey didn’t recall Stella dropping
this particular conversational tidbit. “I never knew you had a blog.”

  “You did too! I keep telling you about it! I can’t believe you haven’t read it!”

  “I’ve never even seen it!”

  “Come on, Lacey, I mean I blog about you all the time.” Stella mock pouted. “Well, once or twice anyway. Every time you trip over a dead body.”

  “I’ll have to check this out.” Brooke was laughing. “Just to keep tabs on Lacey.”

  “If you write about me on your blog,” Lacey warned, “it better be accurate. No embroidering the truth. Or I’ll have Brooke here sue you.”

  “Wait a minute,” Brooke said, “I might have a conflict.”

  “Not to worry,” Stella pledged. “One hundred percent accurate.”

  “Couldn’t you just leave me out of it completely?”

  “Are you crazy, Lace? People read my blog for the real deal, the Stellariffic scoop! Things you can’t print in your paper. But you know, if I gave you a different name, only people in the know would know. You know? That would be cool, huh?”

  “Getting warmer,” Lacey said cautiously.

  “Like a code name?” Brooke suggested.

  “Yeah, a code. I’ve been thinking—” Stella slurped her strawberry margarita, which coordinated nicely with her Sandra Dee outfit. “We’re like a club, the three of us, like in that movie, you know with the English guy? Not Nigel, but he looks kind of like Nigel? The one who says, ‘We happy few, we band of brothers’?”

  “You saw Branagh’s Henry the Fifth?” Brooke asked, surprised. Stella nodded.

  “Cool battle scenes, but super talky. Like it was Shakespeare or something.”

  “So our club should be, ‘We happy few, we band of sisters ’?” Brooke suggested.

  “Exactly.” Stella raised her glass. “And we need more than just a name for Lacey; we need names for all of us. Ladies, we need a code. A secret code.”

  “You already speak in code,” Lacey said. “I never know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, like that, that’s what I’m talking about, but even more so!” Stella was building up steam now. “Nobody’ll know what we’re talking about. We’ll invent this code. For us, so only we understand it.”

  “A secret code. For just the three of us?” Stella had said the magic word. The word that tickled Brooke’s appetite for intrigue: secret. “I like it.”

  “You like it?” Stella looked surprised. “Wow, that’s awesome. Terrific!”

  “Please don’t encourage her, Brooke,” Lacey pleaded.

  “Go ahead, encourage me!”

  “What kind of code?” Brooke asked.

  “The kind of code only a woman would understand.” Stella took a sip of her rosy pink margarita. “A pink code.”

  “Aha. A pink collar code.” The attorney pulled a legal pad from her bag. “Pink collar, for the women in society who get no respect. Women need the advantage of a secret code. Men have their own code. The Old Boy Code.”

  “Yeah, just for us girls,” Stella said. “No boys allowed in this clubhouse. So like the first thing we need to do—”

  Lacey rolled her eyes and communed with the rest of her steak fajitas. She heard the chatter, but she stopped paying much attention. Stella liked to talk, Brooke liked to talk, neither one liked to listen, and they were actually getting along.

  It was some kind of bonding miracle, gossip, guns, and margaritas, so who cared what they were talking about?

  “ ‘Permanent solution,’ like we use in the salon?” Stella was saying. “That could mean death.” She made a throat-slitting gesture.

  “I like it,” Brooke said. “So ‘giving somebody a perm’ could mean killing them, right, like murder?”

  This conversation was sounding to Lacey a bit like “Salon of Death,” the game Stella’s hairstylists played sometimes at Stylettos when they were bored, dreaming up creative ways to knock off annoying customers and management with improvised weapons found in the salon.

  “Salon phrases could all have double meanings,” Stella continued. “So if you say, ‘My curls are too tight,’ it means, ‘The bad guys are closing in, I’m in big trouble!’ ”

  Brooke’s margarita poised in midair. “Of course. The terminology of women’s work is perfect for a code, because men trivialize female employment and don’t understand its true significance. Code Pink Collar.” She put her drink down and started writing.

  “Using the ‘perm rods’ means ‘guns,’ get it?” Stella continued. “And Wednesday means Washington, Monday means Maryland, and, um, Valentine’s Day could mean Virginia, because ‘Virginia is for lovers,’ right? I can testify to that one.” Stella gave Lacey a wink. “Any kind of permanent means ‘This is like deadly serious,’ and ‘buzz cut’ means ‘You better get over here quick.’ ”

  What a good game, Lacey decided as she dug into her fajitas. The “Pink Collar Code” was keeping the two of them laughing and distracted and off Lacey’s case. Maybe she wouldn’t have to discuss the body in the parking lot with her best friends while trying to eat her dinner. Here’s hoping.

  “And by the way, Lacey, I think your PI course is totally radical.” Stella pointed a pink-tipped nail at her. “I’d have loved to go with you to keep you company, but you know. Pretty busy right now with my Mr. Wonderful. So what’s it like? All cops and robbers?” She twirled the gold key that hung from her throat. “You expecting somebody to drop dead in class? You are such a murder magnet, you know.”

  Lacey dropped her fork. It clattered off her plate.

  “Yes, Lacey.” Brooke’s lips broke into a wicked grin. “Tell us all about today’s murder.” Brooke had been biding her time, one of her lawyerly skills. “You remember, the woman who died today in the parking lot outside your class? Damon might have mentioned something about it in passing.”

  “Murder! Never joke about murder with Lacey, Brooke. She’ll murder us both—” Stella stopped laughing when she saw Lacey’s face. “Murder? No way! Way? Lacey’s got another murder going on? Oh my God!” Stella dropped her fork too.

  Lacey eyed them both coolly. “The last I heard, it was still being called a suspicious death. It might have been a suicide.” She smothered her last sliver of steak in guacamole and rolled it up in a warm tortilla. “It was not necessarily a murder. Just a coincidence that I happened to be there. And I am not saying another word about it.”

  “Oh my God.” Stella slapped her forehead. “I should have known. Marie told me I was stepping toward something momentous tonight. The beginning of something big, she said. She was talking about a murder! I just thought she meant I should wear my hot new outfit to go shooting. Oh my God.”

  Marie Largesse was Lacey’s friendly neighborhood psychic. She owned a tiny store in Old Town Alexandria called The Little Shop of Horus, where she purveyed candles, metaphysical books, tarot cards, and psychic advice. Lacey hadn’t seen her for a while, but Stella obviously had. It’s probably all over her blog.

  “Suspicious death, Stella,” Lacey said. “We don’t even know if it was a murder.”

  “Just for the record,” Brooke said, “I do believe there may be true psychics in the world, but your friend Marie? Call me crazy, but any so-called psychic who faints at crime scenes because she is, quote, ‘overloaded by psychic vibes’? Please.”

  “I’ve seen it happen, she faints dead away. Pretty spooky,” Lacey said. “Probably a blood sugar thing, if you ask me.”

  “So she’s a happy psychic,” Stella said cheerfully. “Marie can foretell mildly bad stuff, like, you know, the weather, but she can’t handle really tragic stuff. Which is okay, I think. Who wants to find out the really tragic stuff anyway, at least before you have to? Course, if she ever fainted on me, I’d totally freak.”

  “One thing about Marie though, she is dead on about the weather,” Lacey added between bites. “The woman is a human barometer. What else did she tell you? Storm front coming in?”

  “Oh yeah.” Stella closed her e
yes to recall Marie’s predictions. “Be prepared, she said, we’re gonna have a ‘thunder snow.’ And it’s gonna change things big time.”

  “Did she say when?” Lacey asked.

  “No, but soon, maybe. Sooner or later. And Marie said she saw ‘multiple snow dogs’ last night before sunset, and that’s like an omen or something. What’s a snow dog?”

  “I think she must’ve meant a sun dog,” Lacey offered.

  “Sun dog? Like a dog laying out in the sun? But it’s the middle of winter! Okay already, so what’s a sun dog?”

  “It’s kind of like a rainbow around the sun, like smaller suns in a halo around the sun. It’s a refraction of sunlight through ice crystals in the air,” Lacey said. “I saw them with Vic once. Looks like multiple suns in the sky. Pretty amazing sight.”

  Brooke looked up from her notes. “Multiple suns? Pretty ominous. Like something out of Revelations. It’s the End Times. We should order more margaritas!”

  “I hope it doesn’t mean multiple murders!” Stella looked around the restaurant.

  “It probably means,” Lacey said, “we’ll have a tremendous snowstorm, maybe with thunder and lightning, a ‘thunder snow.’ Sooner or later. Someday. Big deal. That’s my prediction, and I’m no psychic.”

  “Start talking, Lacey.” Stella’s eyes shone with excitement. “Tell us about this murder! You think you’re in danger? Can we help? Annie Freakin’ Oakley at your service!”

  “Hold your horses. And your guns.” Lacey had been having such a nice time until Brooke let the cat out of the bag. “Isn’t there anything else we can talk about but that poor dead woman in the parking lot?”

  Lacey knew, despite all her denials, she was going to be involved in the awful mess of Cecily Ashton’s suspicious death. She happened to interview Cecily. She happened to be at PI class when the woman happened to die a few yards away. The PI who taught the class happened to have had a relationship with Cecily. Even Hadley, the “crazy kid” in class, knew Cecily! Lacey couldn’t avoid this story.

  Vic was always telling her cops didn’t believe in coincidence. She didn’t either. Maybe this was the “big story” she’d been waiting for. Maybe the big story had come looking for her.