Dial M for Mascara

by Bevill, C. L.

  Kid’s a smart-ass, Brogan thought affectionately. A smart, smart-ass. They’d divorced and went on about their lives, only interacting when Jason came and went between the two of them. Brogan had been happier. Living in an emotional war zone had been trying in a way that he hadn’t even known was happening. So he dated, worked, spent time with his kid, who he happened to like.

  Staring at Mary Grace’s front door, Brogan thought, So when did I become so rottenly cynical? He couldn’t name the exact time and place, but it had happened. When he was the detective who had ‘caught’ Mary Grace’s case, he’d read the preliminary forensics report and talked to a number of people, including neighbors and Mary Grace’s ex’s, but initially he already had formed an opinion. Mary Grace must have done something illegal. Then she had pissed someone off. They’d tried to get back. No one was that innocent.

  99% of the cases Brogan worked on involved those kinds of issues. Drugs, money, revenge. Mary Grace had a killer body and at the outset seemed like a good person, but there had to be a reason. Sure. People weren’t really guiltless anymore. Not at all.

  Brogan had blown Mary Grace off. Forensics wasn’t sure if there was an accelerant on the beamer. The crime scene tech said some of the tests would take two months and besides it would be a big chunk out of their budget. Also, there was no guarantee that the exploding BMW hadn’t been merely a freak accident. Besides which no one but the poodle and some shrubbery had been injured.

  And so what if Mary Grace had mentioned that her brakes had mysteriously failed a week or so before the exploding BMW incident? Her mechanic had maybe said the lines were cut, but he wasn’t an expert and the flatfoot cop who had come to take the report wrote as little as possible on his report. He hadn’t even talked personally to the mechanic. Brogan probably wouldn’t have done so either. The cops had more important things to do. It was most likely an accident and only a Ford Explorer had to suffer for it.

  Then someone had tried to shoot Mary Grace as she left her place of employment late one evening. Die, Mary Grace, you little bitch. Someone didn’t say that unless they really wanted Mary Grace Castilla to die.

  Brogan wiped his forehead, thinking of Mary Grace’s incredible body paired with her sweet, wry sense of humor, and speculated as to just what the hell she had gotten herself involved with. Someone might as well have been trying to knock off a nun.

  A nun with really bodacious palookas.

  Brogan groaned. And the really, really, really stupid part was that it was probably his fault that it happened.

  Chapter Three – Saturday, June 18th

  I find a supply of gum kept in one’s brassiere is helpful for morning-after breath when one is about to be engaged in wondrous morning after carnality. Of course, it won’t work for those of limited cleavage. Perhaps a supply of Tic Tacs would be best for those poor unfortunates without access to a capable plastic surgeon. – Aunt Piadora’s Beauty Hints

  Mary Grace spent half of Friday night checking and re-checking windows and doors. She didn’t want to admit to anyone that she was sincerely frightened. She especially didn’t want anyone to know that her legs felt like warmed over Jell-O and the contents of her stomach would give a serial killer’s acid bath a run for its money. If a thing could and would go bump in the night, it did at her cottage that night. Every little noise had to be investigated and every shadow eliminated. By the time she crawled out of bed on Saturday morning, she felt like she’d done twelve rounds with Muhammad Ali’s daughter and maybe his sister, too.

  When she ambled carefully outside, Mary Grace stopped to take a long look for rampant snipers, kamikazes, or psychopathic killers intent on doing her body imminent harm. All she found was a pile of steaming dog pooplets and her newspaper. The dog poo, apparently, was not booby-trapped.

  The rest of the world seemed at ease. The air was mild. The sky was clear. Planes weren’t dropping out of the clouds. Mad mass murderers weren’t leaving corpse strewn trails as they marauded their way to her doorstep. Even the headlines of the newspaper were unexciting. “‘Man hit by lightning faces battery charge,’” she muttered. “Very slow news day. Slow day for the guy checking for errors, too.”

  She could have cheerfully chucked the paper at the dog poo. Except that she wanted to make sure that the previous night’s activities were not mentioned. Or perhaps mentioned as little as possible. After all, no one had called last night. No reporters. Not Meredith Viera. And certainly not Matt Lauer. There hadn’t been anyone waiting on her doorstep to ask questions this morning. And most importantly, there hadn’t been someone…related to her, say, in a maternal manner.

  Nothing. No one. Not even a measly, obnoxious, overrated, would-be killer.

  Mary Grace tucked the paper under her arm and sighed. There was only Mrs. Harvard’s lawn boy mowing the yard of the second house down from hers. There was a plain brown sedan parked under the shade of Mr. Flagg’s giant mulberry with a single person sitting in it. There was a candy-apple red corvette parked outside of Mr. Lofts’ 1930s Craftsman bungalow. (His boyfriend was visiting from Oklahoma City.) Two of the Peterson’s brood was playing in the front yard. The younger one had shed not only his shorts but his diapers too and was running up the sidewalk bare-assed naked hollering as if cannibals were about to eat him. (Mary Grace wasn’t particularly shocked at the nakedness or that the kid was streaking while shrieking. It had happened many times before.) He probably was intent on peeing on Mrs. Frasier’s azaleas. That had happened before as well. And…well, wait a nose-picking minute.

  Mr. Flagg didn’t have a plain brown sedan. He had a silver VW Beetle with a bumper sticker on the back that said, ‘It IS as bad as you think and they ARE out to get you!’ His wife had a pink Moped with a bumper sticker that said, ‘Dangerously under-medicated.’ Only their son visited and he owned a vintage Plymouth Barracuda that sounded like a purring tomcat on crack and you could hear a mile away. It didn’t, fortunately for the rest of the world and Bayou Moon Avenue in particular, have a bumper sticker. Who the hell is sitting under the mulberry tree in a plain brown sedan?

  Mary Grace went inside, trying to look benign and uninterested. As soon as she shut the front door she sidled up to the window and peeped out. The sedan was parked in direct line of sight of her door. Whoever it was, sat there unmoving and watching as she checked the headlines of the newspaper. Just as audacious as a cold hearted bastard that he probably is, she thought irately. Suddenly, she was mad. Not a little mad, but really ticked off.

  There was a brass umbrella stand by her front door. Mary Grace took a step over to it and reached down. In the stand were three umbrellas. There was a Lippencott yellow silk umbrella with a zebrawood handle that she would never use in a million years lest she damage it. There was an umbrella with Monet’s water lilies that she’d bought at the Dallas Museum of Art. (She used it when she felt like making a statement. What kind of statement? Even Mary Grace didn’t know that.) For the times when no one was looking there was a plain black umbrella from Wal-Mart. (Although she would never admit to shopping there.)

  There was also a baseball bat, located unobtrusively and innocently in the umbrellas. It was a Louisville Slugger made of ash and nicely weighted. Mary Grace’s father had given it to her with the instructions that if anyone tried to invade her home she was to make them into a soprano for the remainder of their lives. She was also to pound their little pea brains in, aiming for the soft spot on the top of their skull. Finally, if the intruder had managed to crawl outside her door in course of her attack, then she was to drag their twitching corpse back across the doorframe so that there would be no question that she had acted in defense of home and body. Her father, being an explicit man, had been most specific in his directives as he had given her the baseball bat.

  Picking the bat up, Mary Grace thumped it against her palm, and decided she’d sneak out back and come around through Mrs. Harvard’s back yard. Unless her buff yard boy had stopped his mowing and they were presently putting the ‘
Lew’ in Lewinsky, the older, very much married Mrs. H. wouldn’t care.

  Mary Grace slipped out the back door, taking a moment to check that there weren’t any nasty surprises waiting for her. She quietly slipped the latch open to the gate and padded into the alley. A thrill of anticipation was coursing through her body. It wasn’t like the one she got when she put the right-amount of postage stamps on the last of her monthly bills. It wasn’t like the one where she finished balancing her checkbook to the penny. It wasn’t like taking the protective wrapper off a brand new tube of Lancome Definicils High Definition Black/Noir Mascara and breathing in that wondrous scent of new eye makeup. It wasn’t like the one when she finished dusting the house and knew that the Queen of England could come waltzing inside at anytime and Mary Grace wouldn’t have anything to be ashamed about. (Maybe not the Queen, she considered. Definitely the President of the United States, though.) Instead, this thrill was the sharp cut from the very tip of a razor-like knife. It was sitting on the edge of an airplane’s door as she waited for that single moment to skydive into 12,000 feet of pure air. It was…excitement personified.

  A minute later she was letting herself into Mrs. Harvard’s back yard. The yard hottie was standing about ten feet away, coiling a length of electrical cord around his not unsubstantial biceps. He was also shirtless and showing off a rack of abs that could have been slathered with barbeque sauce and slapped on a grill. She caught herself ogling and he turned to see what the heck was up.

  Standing there in her silk robe with a baseball bat in her hand, Mary Grace could see his big blue eyes widen in sudden surprise and a little bit of appreciation.

  “Listen,” he said amicably to her, as if strange women accosted him on a daily basis. Perhaps they did, Mary Grace thought as she hesitated. He is awfully cute. She couldn’t remember his name. But she could remember what Mrs. H. had said about him on a previous occasion when she had had one too many mid-afternoon margaritas. Yardboy was twenty-two years old, attended Tulane in New Orleans, was home in Dallas for the summer, made some money by doing yard work, and had the stamina of a bull. He said nonchalantly as she stood there, “I don’t have time for any horizontal monster mash with you. Mrs. H. is expecting me.”

  Mary Grace twisted her delicate nose. “Eww. As if. Please.”

  The kid looked offended. “Well. Maybe later?”

  “I’m passing through, yardthing,” she gritted. “NOT interested. See the bat?”

  “What do you do with the bat?” he asked curiously, throwing a sexual innuendo on it.

  Mary Grace stared at him. “What do you go to Tulane for, anyway?”

  “Well, duh. I’m going to be a lawyer.”

  With a groan that indicated complete understanding, Mary Grace found her way around the pool and let herself through a side gate. Thankfully, Mrs. Harvard hadn’t seen her. But the yardboy would probably tell her anyway. She sighed. Perhaps she could explain over a pitcher of very potent margaritas that someone was trying to kill her and she’d had enough. Maybe Mrs. Harvard might even understand.

  Maybe unicorns will shoot out of my butt, too, Mary Grace thought. The hell with Mrs. H. and her yardboy, too. She peeked around the corner of the house and saw the plain brown sedan. The driver was still sitting in the front seat, doing nothing at all.

  “Payback time,” she muttered. “Bee-atch.”

  Quietly Mary Grace scooted up beside the car. The driver didn’t even notice her. He was staring at her house. The window was rolled down. He had his elbow resting on the steering wheel and his chin braced on his hand. She lifted the bat and just as she was about to introduce her stalker/psychopathic would-be killer to kingdom come, he turned his head and saw her.

  Brogan’s eyes were so wide the optometrist wouldn’t have needed a machine to check to see if he needed a prescription. Abruptly, he said, “HOLY dog poop on a stick.”

  Mary Grace said a nasty word. She lowered the bat. “What the hell are you doing watching my house?” Then she noticed Mrs. Harvard and the yard gigolo watching from the front porch. “Watching me? Or the house? Or maybe you think my little friend’s coming back for round number 4?”

  “Is that a Louisville Slugger?” Brogan asked inanely.

  “The giveaway is the big word, ‘Slugger,’ on the side,” she snarled. “I’m going inside. Are you coming?” She realized what she said, knew that her mind had descended into the deepest depths of the nastiest gutter on the face of the planet, and blushed. “You can have some coffee,” she all but growled. “Just coffee.”

  Somehow half the people living on Bayou Moon Avenue had suddenly wandered out to see what was going on. They couldn’t see someone cutting her brake lines or planting a bomb in her rental car, but this they could witness. Mary Grace wanted to scream at them. Mrs. Frasier was holding her huge tailless poodle in her arms and glaring. Mr. Lofts and his boyfriend were sitting on their porch in Adirondack chairs sipping Mimosas. Two Peterson kids had become four and were standing on the very edge of their property line staring at her as she stomped up the sidewalk to her cottage. Mr. Poteet was across the street surreptitiously trying to peek over his rose bushes.

  Mary Grace’s inclination to scream almost overwhelmed her. When she reached her front door she realized that not only was it locked but that she was still wearing her favorite silk robe. It was, needless to say to the seemingly countless observers of the street, nearly transparent in the bright morning light. Furthermore, she didn’t need to tell any of them that she slept in the altogether. As starkers as the day she was born in her birthday suit. Naked as a jaybird. The full Monty. Wearing only a smile and toting a baseball bat, except Mary Grace wasn’t really smiling.

  Turning back to confront her audience with a grim look on her face, Mary Grace raised her chin up as high as it could go without banging the back of her head on her front door. A smugly smiling Detective Frederick Brogan was sauntering up her walk way. Mr. Poteet’s mouth was about to catch a few dozen flies. The Peterson kids were elbowing each other and giggling. Mrs. Frasier was still glaring, holding a struggling Attila the appendageless poodle in her arms. Mrs. Harvard was whispering something in Yardtoy’s ear that he found infinitely entertaining. Mr. Lofts and his boyfriend were smiling with wicked delight. As a matter of fact, when Mary Grace looked toward Mr. Lofts he raised his Mimosa in a silent salute. Then he called, “If only I weren’t gay, darling!”

  Brogan reached the bottom of her porch’s steps and grinned broadly.

  Mary Grace then discovered that her front door was locked and remembered she had automatically locked the back door behind her as she’d left. Of course she was forced to scream.

  •

  After a half-hour, Mr. Poteet found the spare key Mary Grace had given him. “It was in the tea cozy along with Mrs. Poteet’s spare keys for her office,” he told her, holding out the key with the little key chain sign that said, ‘Give me ambiguity or give me something else.’ Mary Grace came out from behind the charred crepe myrtle she had been hiding behind and took it. Brogan had stood there shuffling his feet and attempting to not smile, but failing miserably.

  The only good thing about waiting was that most of the neighbors had lost interest and gone inside or to Brazil or wherever that wasn’t within Mary Grace’s sight. She went inside, changed into faded blue jeans and a Rangers baseball jersey. With a deep soothing breath, she finally invited Brogan into her living room.

  Brogan took a moment to look Mary Grace over. His mouth opened to say that he liked her better in the silk robe, but one glance at her face with thunderous portents a-blooming everywhere and he abruptly changed his mind.

  Mary Grace wasn’t in a mood to appreciate the finer semantics of the situation. “What the bleep do you want, Detective Brogan?”

  “May I sit down?” Brogan said politely, wondering if he should go for his gun. Dealing with Mary Grace was like dealing with something very much unknown. He didn’t know what was going to happen and it was probably going to be very much
a surprise to him.

  Her eyebrows came together in a frown. “Why not?” she said saccharinely. “Why shouldn’t you be comfortable? You’ve been sitting in your uncomfortable car what for…hours? Minutes?”

  “All night,” he muttered.

  “Maybe you should use the bathroom,” she replied sweetly.

  Brogan coughed into his hand. “Not necessary.”

  “You…ah…peed on the sidewalk?”

  “No. Not there.”

  “On Mr. Flagg’s mulberry tree?”

  “Only once,” Brogan admitted. “Long night. I don’t think it will hurt the tree.”

  “Why did you watch my house?”

  Brogan shuffled uncomfortably. He felt uncomfortable. Hell, he was uncomfortable. How did a man, no, a police officer, no, a police detective, explain to a victim that he was probably at fault for the third attempt on her life in less than two weeks? He should have listened to her when he had come out to ask her about the BMW’s tragic fate. But no, he hadn’t. He’d been hung-over from having a farewell party for another detective. He’d been caught up in the vision of one of the most-beautiful women that he’d ever seen in his life. For God’s sake, he didn’t think he’d taken his eyes off her magnificent breasts for the first ten minutes that he’d spoken with her. And the rest of her was really nice, too.

  Then Brogan had been so disappointed in her story that he had very nearly left then, without saying another word. It had sounded like pure paranoia to him, and consequently, he’d dismissed her as a kook or a crook. The time that it was going to take forensics to check for any sign of a bomb on the beamer made everything moot. Checking into the incident with the so-called cut brake lines had been put on the back burner. After all, either it was a ditzy ex-boyfriend who was a boob at attempting to kill Mary Grace, or she had done the whole thing herself as a way of crying out for attention. Or she was a criminal and she deserved it.