The Case of the Flashing Fashion Queen: A Dix Dodd Mystery (Dix Dodd Mysteries)

by Norah Wilson

  I glanced in the car window.

  There was something there.

  “Holy shit.”

  On the seat, rested a plain brown envelope. Dix Dodd was printed on the package in wide black marker. It was thick—just thick enough to be a wad of bills equaling five thousand dollars.

  Or possibly a bomb.

  The thought froze my hand on the door handle. Softly, slowly, I started to back away. That’s when I heard the squeal of tires as a car came speeding around the corner. The engine revved as it changed gears and shot forward. It took me all of a heartbeat to realize it was coming straight for me. It took another heartbeat to realize it was her behind the wheel. She wore the same floppy hat, same blond wig and wide sunglasses. And a mile-wide evil grin as she sped toward me. The damned envelope, the call, it was all a set up to draw me out here!

  I dove across the hood of my car, half on my elbows and half on my side, landing hard on the asphalt on the other side. I sat up, and watched as the car sped off. It had barely missed me.

  YPC 389, YPC 389, YPC 389. I repeated it another half dozen times until it was burned in my memory.

  “Shittttttttt!” I climbed to my feet, swearing as I looked at my bleeding elbow. “Okay, bitch,” I muttered. “I’ll bite.”

  I opened the passenger door and retrieved the envelope, which was surprisingly heavy. I was so shaky I wanted to slip into the passenger seat, but I didn’t think that was prudent in case YPC 389 came roaring back to take another swipe at me. Instead, I closed the door and leaned on the car’s fender, letting it take some of the weight off my trembling legs. Ears tuned for a racing motor, I ripped the envelope open.

  Of course, I was no longer expecting a bomb. Because—duh—had the Flashing Fashion Queen wanted me dead by means of a car bomb, she’d have slid it under the seat and used her phone call to prod me into hopping into the car to race off somewhere, triggering the big ka-boom when I keyed the ignition.

  Nor did I expect the other five thousand dollars. And I sure didn’t expect a plate or warm cookies. But what I really didn’t expect was what slid out onto my hand as I opened the envelope.

  A gun. A gun that I had no doubt had been recently fired.

  I heard the sirens again, but this time, I had no illusion that the sound of them would drift off into the distance. And as I held the gun, the very gun that I knew had to have killed Jennifer, I could see the flashing red and blue bar lights of a squad car turning into my parking lot. It came to a stop squarely in front of my car. At the squeal of tires from another direction, I turned to see an unmarked Taurus barreling towards me. Instinctively, I raised my hands in the age-old gesture as the unmarked car swung in behind my vehicle, effectively blocking escape. And then—oh, God, my day just kept getting better and better—a snarling, toothpick chewing Detective Richard Head emerged from the second car.

  She’d set me up. The Flashing Fashion Queen had planted the evidence, lured me to my car, and called the police to tip them off. And she had left me with the literal smoking gun.

  And I couldn’t help but hear her words flipping me off in my brain: “You’re not all that smart, are you, Dodd?”

  Okay, even I was beginning to wonder.

  Chapter 11

  You know, my high school guidance counselor, Mr. LeCarrier, had suggested I be a funeral home director. Or maybe a chiropractor. “How about orthodontics?” he’d said. Of course, he suggested the latter to everyone who managed to scrape by in science. The standing joke was that he was hoping at least one of us would become an orthodontist and remember him fondly by the time his six kids needed braces. As for the other suggestions for me, Mother and I had both laughed. And I’d rejected them all. Too boring, I’d told him.

  A nice quiet life, Mr. LeCarrier suggested, would be perfect for a girl like me.

  That’s what he told all the female students.

  Well, this girl had gone into a different line of work. Dangerous, exciting, and anything but quiet.

  But right now, I was beginning to think Mr. LeCarrier might have known his ass from his elbow after all. Right now, boring and quiet sounded pretty damned appealing.

  Yes, she was one up on me. No, she was two... wait, make that... oh, fuck it. Let’s just say she was a few up on me. The Flashing Fashion Queen—a.k.a. impersonator of the late Mrs. Jennifer Weatherby, a.k.a. My Nemesis from Hell—had me by the short and curlies.

  She was framing me big time. Hell, she was trying to kill me big time.

  Okay, she hadn’t done so great with the killing me part, but the frame job... man, it was brilliant. Calling the office to get me out to the car (I now had a pretty good idea what the thirty three hang ups were about), putting the murder weapon into my hands, and tipping off the police. It was a masterpiece of timing.

  Yeah, she was damned clever.

  And I was getting damned worried.

  The police cars screeched to a stop, arrayed strategically around me, their blue and red bar lights flashing. Not having a death wish, I didn’t wait for an order to be barked over a bullhorn. I immediately raised my hands high, stepped away from my car, then slowly bent to deposit the gun on the asphalt. Still moving slowly, I stood and kicked the Glock toward the closest car.

  The doors on the two cruisers popped open and the officers slid into position behind the safety of their doors, weapons drawn and trained on me. A curse dragged my attention to Detective Richard Head, who had just heaved himself from his unmarked Taurus. Unlike the patrol cops, he didn’t unholster his weapon. Nor did he hide behind the door of his car. Rather, he strode right up to me.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Dix?”

  “I’m counting my limbs, dammit, because someone just tried to deprive me of a few of them.” In a rush, I told him about the attempt on my life. Told him about the crazed imposter who just tried to run me down. And told him if he’d get his ugly ass in gear, he might catch her!

  To his credit, Detective Head instructed the officers to stand down. He also sent a patrol car in the direction I indicated, and radioed in the vehicle description and plates I’d supplied. Of course, I would have felt better about these developments if I thought he believed me. Or if he hadn’t put me in bracelets.

  “Standard operating procedure, until we sort this out,” he said. “Now, would you like to explain why you were waving a handgun around the parking lot?”

  “Sure. Right after you explain why half the police force is here staring at me when some maniac woman just tried to run me down.”

  “We got a 9-1-1 call about a maniac woman waving a gun around in a parking lot. Now, spill. What’s going on here?”

  Which is when Dylan Foreman showed up. He pulled up on his motorcycle right in the middle of Detective Richard Head’s grilling of/yelling at me, as I tried to explain what had happened. And as I tried to explain why he’d come upon me in the possession of the gun that had most likely—shit, shit, shit—killed Jennifer Weatherby.

  I suppose I could have tried to pass the gun off as my own, claiming I’d whipped it out in self defense after that maniac tried to mow me down with her car, but under the circumstances, it didn’t seem advisable to play fast and loose with the facts. Especially since an officer had already collected the gun and stuck it in an evidence bag. Especially since they would very shortly know it was not registered to me.

  No question about it. Things looked bleak. Even Dylan, always my cheerleader, couldn’t quite hide the depth of his concern. Despite all that was going on around us, I felt the tightening lump in my throat.

  “Just a setback, Dix,” Dylan whispered to me. “Nothing we can’t handle.”

  Come on, Dix, suck it up. I nodded an affirmative you bet. It was the best I could manage.

  With a nod/grunt from Dickhead, soon there were two police officers from Ident doing a cursory search of my car. I could probably have stopped them; they had no warrant. On the other hand, they did have me brandishing a gun in a public parking lot, which no doubt gave them fa
irly broad scope. On yet another hand (clearly, we are dealing with a six-armed Mahakala here), if my nemesis had been in my car, she might have left trace evidence behind. If so, I wanted the cops to find it with their high tech searching gear. So I let them have a look.

  Moments later, my faced flamed. And no, I’m not talking about the humiliation of standing there in handcuffs while cops searched my car. They may have been officers of the law, but they were still men. Thus, when they drew out the fake boobs I kept stuffed under the seat, the whole place went up in snickers. Eyebrows soared over the fake mustache I’d left in the glove compartment from my stint as Maintenance Man. All they needed now was to find my blow up doll (a.k.a. Betty, the decoy), and I’m sure they would have pissed themselves laughing. Thankfully, Betty was standing in the closet of my office, behind my truck-driver flannel shirts and nun’s outfit.

  The first officer was pulling little plastic evidence bags out of his pocket, while the second officer was tweezering things into them. I rolled my eyes as they placed a month-old wrapper from a DQ burger into a bag. Right. Like that was going to have a mountain of clues on it.

  “Got a hair here, Detective,” one of the cops called to Dickhead. He held the tweezers up like a prize ribbon, as if we could actually see from that distance. “It’s blond.”

  “Well, duh. I’m blond!” I called over.

  “Shut up, Dix.” Detective Head returned his attention to the men in my car. “Bag it, Edson,” he said. “Bag every damn shred of evidence you get. No, wait, even better. Call dispatch and have them send a hook. We’ll haul that piece of crap in and have forensics give it a thorough going over.”

  Dylan shifted beside me. “You can’t just— “

  “It’s okay, Dylan,” I said. “Let them.”

  The way I figured it, the Flashing Fashion Queen had already planted the biggie, the literal smoking gun, and nothing else they found could trump that. I hoped. But I had to risk it, in the hope the CSIs would find some evidence against her. The cops already had my DNA from the night Jennifer was killed when Detective Head had scraped it from my cheek. So hopefully, something else would turn up pointing a finger toward the real killer.

  “Do a good job, boys,” I called over to the officers in the car. “That car hasn’t had a good cleaning in a dog’s age. Be sure to get the vacuum deep down in the seats. And under the floor mats. And it’s kind of grungy there in the cup holder—too many spilled lattes. I’d wear gloves if I were you.”

  Detective Head dug in his pocket and pulled out one of the mint toothpicks. I held off on any remarks about comparative phallic symbolism here.

  “You just don’t realize what shit you’re really in, do you, Dodd?” he said.

  I snorted. But actually I did fully understand the severity of the situation.

  I was being framed for murder.

  And well, even on the best of days, that sucked.

  “You all right, Dix?” Dylan asked.

  “Fine.”

  Detective Head did a dramatic double take. “All right? You want to know if she’s all right? Let’s see what we got here. Obsessed, love-sick stalker who not only followed the husband of the murder victim around for a week taking pictures, taping conversations, crying herself to sleep, wringing her hands and moaning ‘why me’—”

  I growled. I mean, I growled. This guy was pulling my chain and it was working. I would have liked nothing better than to rip a strip off him. And unfortunately that just would not do. Not now, at least. Beside me, Dylan tensed. I could tell he wanted to rip something off Detective Head himself. I shot him a look that said ‘wait’, and thankfully, he picked it up.

  Detective Head continued, “And now what do we find in the possession of this lonely spinster? The very same gun that killed Jennifer Weatherby.”

  “We don’t know that it’s the gun that killed Jennifer, Detective. That’s merely what I’ve speculated. And as I told you, that gun was left in my car by the woman who came into the office posing as Jennifer Weatherby. That’s the woman you should be harassing, not me.”

  “Right,” he said sarcastically. “And you just happen to be the only one to have seen her.”

  “I saw her,” Dylan answered.

  “Today?” Detective Head asked, but he knew the answer. “You saw this blond today as she put the gun in the car? As she tried to run down your boss?”

  Dylan shook his head. “No. Not today. I saw her the day she came into the office. But, holy hell, just look at—”

  Dickhead’s lip curled. “Let’s move this party along, shall we? We’ll get to the bottom of this downtown. I got a nice cozy interview room I can house you in until we get around to asking you a few questions.”

  Downtown? This I couldn’t allow.

  If Detective Head got me locked up, I could be there for days. As long as he could possibly keep me. And I had no doubt that during my detention, the Flashing Fashion Queen would keep her blond self busy planting more evidence against me. If this woman was to be caught, it was going to have to be by me.

  Thus there was no way in hell I could go downtown. I sent a sideways look at Dylan, who, with an almost non-existent flash of eye contact and a barely perceptible nod, signaled his understanding.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “I’ll be thrilled to ride downtown with you and answer your questions. But first, I have some business to take care of in the office, some stuff I need to hand off to my associate before I go. It’ll only take a few minutes. So if you’d take the bracelets off...” I angled myself to present my cuffed hands to Detective Head.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because no one’s arrested me yet?”

  The toothpick bobbed. “I could rectify that. Hell, I probably will.”

  “Come on, Detective,” Dylan interjected. “I appreciate you guys felt you were coming into a potentially hairy situation, so I understand cuffing her until you secured the scene. But everything’s under control now. No firearms, no resistance. Dix consented to the search of her car, and has said she will answer questions. You don’t need to arrest her and you sure as hell don’t need handcuffs.”

  “Whether to cuff or not is my call, and mine only.”

  “Precisely,” Dylan agreed. “But you’re supposed to use the minimum force necessary to accomplish the mission. Do you really think you need handcuffs to get Dix downtown?”

  “Huh!” I put in. “He probably figures he has to cuff a woman to get her in the car with him.”

  “Dix,” Dylan warned, putting me behind him.

  Detective Head’s eyes bulged, and his jaw clamped so tight, I’m sure I heard his molars cracking. But after a few seconds, he produced his keys and removed the bracelets. “Ten minutes, Dix. If you’re not back down here by then, I’ll drag you out.”

  “Okay, ten minutes.” I grabbed Dylan’s arm and we headed for the office. “See you then.”

  “Hold your horses there, Dixiepicker.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “Oh, what now!” With a huff of exaggeration, I turned toward him again.

  Detective Head took the toothpick out of his mouth long enough to bark an order at one of his junior boys in blue. “Go with them. Make sure she comes back out.”

  “Come on, Detective,” I said. “You can trust me.”

  He couldn’t of course, but that wasn’t the point.

  “Not as far as I could throw you, Dodd.”

  I chose to make that statement a reflection on his manly strength rather than my size. “Fine!” I shouted at the young officer. “Just hurry up, Junior, I have work to do.”

  I felt half bad when the young guy paled.

  “On second thought,” Dickhead said. “Why don’t I escort you myself? Yeah, that would work much better.”

  Damn.

  I’d left the office door open, but pretended to fumble with keys in the lock so I could cast another look at Dylan. This is where a smart employee would start rethinking his commitment to his em
ployer and start thinking about covering his own ass. But what I saw in his eyes was a clear, steady message. I’m with you, Dix. And oh, Jesus God, my throat got all tight and painful again.

  While Detective Head waited behind us, I winked at Dylan in what I hoped he would interpret as an I-have-a-plan message.

  The moment we walked into my outer office, I turned to Dylan. “Get my lawyer on the phone.”

  “Now wait, Dodd—”

  “I know my rights, Detective. And yeah, I know yours too. You can take me downtown and I’ll go. I’ll answer any and all your questions, but be damned if I will be downtown without my lawyer waiting there. I have the right to call her, and I’m calling her now. Dylan’ll get her on the phone.”

  I didn’t have a lawyer. And of course Dylan knew this too.

  “Sure thing, Dix.”

  Dylan sat down at his desk, picked up the phone, and starting pushing buttons—to nowhere.

  I walked from the outer office into my own.

  Dickhead had never been into my office. I didn’t care about the dust in the corners, or the clutter on my desk. I didn’t give a rat’s ass what he thought about the one aloe vera plant dead in front of the window. But I knew that his presence, rather than one of the junior officer’s, would make my disappearing act harder.

  “Geez, Dixie,” he said, “what stinks in here?”

  “Funny,” I answered, crinkling my nose. “Didn’t smell a thing till you walked through the door yourself.”

  He chuckled. Which meant he felt he could afford to chuckle. “You got ten minutes, Dodd,” he said. “Then it’s downtown with me.”

  He studied my desk. As I’ve said, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the mess left there, but I didn’t want him to see my notes. As if reading my mind, Dickhead picked up the yellow legal pad off the desk. He snarled/laughed/made some guy guttural sound. “What do you do here all day, Dix,” he asked eyeing the pad, “draw dirty pictures?”

  He truly was an asshole. I ripped the pad from his hand. “These notes are none of your business.”