Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  Over all the racket, I asked her, “Why Denise? Why did you try to kill me?”

  In between sneezes, she screamed at me. “You ruined everything. All my plans. I had to kill you.”

  My fingers tightened reflexively on the pistol grip. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m very much alive, and you’re going to jail. That is if you don’t die from sneezing to death.”

  Denise let loose a litany of cuss words that blistered my ears. “I was so close. Why did you give Charlie an alibi for the night of the bank guard shooting? I almost had it all.”

  “You’re wrong, Denise. You had it all, only you didn’t place any value on what you had.”

  “Can’t you get this dog off of me?” she whined.

  “Nope.” I smiled bitterly. “I figure that’s the least I can do to repay you for almost torching me.”

  “You must be part cat. How did you get out of there?”

  “I used my head, which is something you should have done before you became a murderer. What did I ever do to you? Why did you have to go and kill Dudley? He was just getting his life back together. And the bank guard. What did he ever do to you?”

  “Go to hell. I don’t owe you any explanations.”

  The sirens were closer now. I saw the flashing lights in the distance. The cops and firemen would be here any minute now. I wanted to kick Denise. And puncture her inflatable boobs. And rip every strand of bleached hair out of her head.

  Instead I stood there aiming the loaded pistol at her, watching Madonna drool incessantly as she barked. Slime trails of doggie spittle decorated Denise’s stocking cap and black shirt like strands of gleaming tinsel on a Christmas tree.

  Denise wiggled and Madonna closed her massive jaws around Denise’s neck. My eyebrows shot up. Remind me never to cross this dog. When Madonna got pissed, she meant business.

  But she was definitely on my team. She wasn’t the type to transfer her loyalty to a bleached blonde with inflatable boobs.

  After helping me catch Dudley’s killer, Madonna could sleep in my bed for as long as she liked. So what if I smelled like a dog for the rest of my life? Madonna had saved me from being shot between the eyes. I’d saved us from being toasted. We were a great team.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I had just given my story to the police and the mayor when Rafe arrived. His penetrating gaze never left mine as he strode to my side. “What are you doing here?” I asked, shivering.

  “I work here, remember?” He gave Madonna a quick pat on the head. “What are you doing here? The cops say the course is closed again today while they investigate the fire. I can’t make any money if the golf course is closed.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “It wasn’t my choice to meet at the course.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I didn’t much care for his imperious tone, but I had ruined his shed. Would he hold that against me? As I repeated the events for him, he grew agitated. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. “Why didn’t you call me? Did you think you could take on a killer by yourself?”

  I struggled to get away from him, but he held me fast. Why didn’t my wonder dog attack him? “I have to get home to my kids and explain what happened to them.”

  He glared at me again, and then he kissed me. Hard. My head started to spin and I think the earth may have moved a time or two.

  I’m pretty sure I melted against him, the kiss was so hot. Maybe my clothes incinerated. I couldn’t tell.

  I opened my eyes when I realized he’d stopped kissing me. Catcalls from the assembled police officers rang in my ears. I said the first thing that popped into my head. “That was no first-date kiss.”

  He grinned and my toes curled. Again. “This isn’t our first date. We may never have one if you keep doing harebrained things like meeting serial killers at daybreak.”

  I waved him away. “Don’t start on me. Britt has already fussed and read me the riot act. I want to go home.”

  He pinned me with a look. I may not have known him very well, but I recognized that look. It was the “we’ll talk about it later look.” Daddy had perfected that look on Mama. That look said “you’re not off the hook,” but most of all it said he cared.

  Was I ready for a relationship with Rafe? I was still emotionally vulnerable from Charlie’s betrayal. Letting this physical attraction flame out without ever indulging our apparently very mutual passion was a good idea.

  Fortunately this wasn’t a game show and I didn’t have to choose door number one, two or three.

  With trembling hands, I rooted through my purse for my keys. I couldn’t make my hands stop shaking. Madonna nudged me with her head, and I would have toppled over except for the tight grip Rafe had on me.

  “I’ll take you home, Cleo,” Rafe said.

  “You don’t have to do that. My car is over at the maintenance shed.”

  “So are about twenty other vehicles. It will be tomorrow before you can get the Beast out of there.”

  “I’ve got to take the girls to school,” I said.

  “The golf course is closed for the day. I can help you out there.”

  Britt winked at me as Rafe led me back down number two. I could just imagine what he’d be telling his wife about that hot kiss Rafe gave me. It’d be all over the grocery store before lunchtime. It would be headline news by evening.

  I envisioned the kiss taking on such legendary proportions, that folks would forget to give me credit for flushing out the killer. They wouldn’t even bat an eyelash at my detecting skills or give me an ounce of credit for saving myself.

  On the other hand, maybe they’d remember that I’d been a pillar of the community for years. That I did their taxes on time and that not one of my clients had ever been audited by the IRS.

  One could only hope.

  ~*~

  Madonna and I were just starting in on our second cup of coffee that afternoon when Jonette walked in. After reassuring Mama and the girls that everything was all right, then sending the girls off to school with Rafe—in a cool car, no less—I’d slept for a couple of hours.

  The excitement had been too much for Mama. After she fixed me a bowl of chicken soup for breakfast, she popped a sleeping pill and went to bed for the day. When she came to, I expected to be blasted for my reckless behavior.

  Work was out of the question. I’d declared today a holiday, but the truth was I couldn’t get any work done because I still didn’t understand why Denise had killed Dudley and the bank guard. I should have pressed her for more answers this morning.

  “There you are.” Jonette greeted me with a warm hug and then joined me at the table. “You’re the topic of conversation all over town. Joan at the beauty shop couldn’t stop talking about your flaming affair with Rafe this morning, Buck over at the gas station thought you and Madonna ought to get some kind of award for getting that killer off our streets, and Edna at the grocery store says your problem is that there’s too much sex on TV. Edna says it’s no wonder that you’re sex starved.”

  My coffee went down the wrong way and I coughed it out. “Sex starved?”

  Jonette’s grin was so smug I wanted to wipe it off her face. Trouble is she had a right to grin and she knew it. She had insisted adamantly that it wasn’t natural for a woman of my age and previous sexual proclivities to have such a long period of abstinence.

  “Yup. Sex starved. She said you wouldn’t be jumping men in public if you weren’t all revved up by those racy TV programs. Doesn’t that make you wonder which programs she’s watching? Doesn’t sound like they’re the family programs.”

  I smirked. If I didn’t laugh about this, I was going to spend too much time thinking about being sex starved. Which I most certainly was. “My guess is that she’s jealous. She wishes she could lure a man like Rafe Golden into her bed.”

  Charlie and the girls came in just then. The girls swirled through the kitchen for a few minutes foraging like locusts, then swept out to watch TV. Charlie fixed himself
a cup of coffee and joined Jonette and me at the kitchen table. “What’s this I hear about Rafe Golden taking the girls to school this morning?” Charlie asked.

  “He brought me home from the golf course because my car was blocked in. It was nice of him to offer,” I added defensively. I didn’t know if Charlie had heard about this morning’s kiss or not, but I didn’t need him doing any macho stuff in my kitchen right now.

  Charlie crossed his arms and scowled at me. “I don’t like him hanging around here, especially in the mornings. People might think he slept over or something.”

  “That’s not really your concern,” I murmured into my coffee. It occurred to me that Charlie’s wife had just been arrested for murder and that she’d tried to frame him to take the blame. His day hadn’t been that much better than mine. “About Denise. Why did she do it?”

  “You’ll have to narrow it down a bit, Clee,” Charlie said. “Denise did a lot of things, and none of them were good. I found out today that she’s been playing me from the get-go. I was her ticket to computer access to unlimited funds at the bank. What my computer passwords couldn’t get for her, she used Dudley’s to obtain.”

  “I thought her alibi for Dudley’s murder was solid. I saw that logbook myself.”

  “Her mother lives on the first floor. Once her mother went to bed, Denise went out the window and no one was the wiser.”

  I ran my finger around the rim of my daisy-splashed coffee mug. I wasn’t surprised that Denise didn’t have any love in her heart for Charlie. She hadn’t minded sleeping with him and taking him away from me because that furthered her own interests.

  How did Charlie feel about being used in such a callous manner? I’d never liked her and now I felt completely vindicated about my distrust of her.

  “Was that what this was all about then? She killed Dudley because of money?”

  “Not just some money. Millions of dollars. Dudley found out what she was doing when he checked into Ed Monday’s bank problem. She’d been authorizing loans in Dudley’s name and siphoning the funds to an offshore account in her mother’s name. I’ve spent the day combing through our records for the police. The bank guard could place Denise at the bank the night of my supposed fishing trip, so that’s why she killed him.”

  Charlie’s hand reached out to cover mine. “She’d have killed you too if you weren’t so quick on your feet. I’m still in shock over what she tried to do.”

  I edged my hand out from under his. I felt sorry for Charlie. His life had been turned upside down by Denise. But if he’d been content in our marriage, he never would have strayed in the first place. I was absolutely positively certain I didn’t want him back.

  Charlie cleared his throat. “I was wondering if I might speak to you for a moment, privately.”

  His tone of voice was carefully calculated. He and I both knew that I had always melted whenever he lowered his voice and put that sort of heat in his eyes. But it wasn’t happening today.

  Hallelujah!

  I had finally exorcised the man from my thoughts and desires. I was a free woman. “Anything you have to say to me can be said in front of Jonette.”

  “Dammit, Clee,” Charlie said. “I wanted to do this right. The thing is, I hardly know what to say. I’ve used really bad judgment these past two years. I should have listened to you in the beginning. You said Denise was a two-bit hustler when Dudley hired her as a bank teller. You were right. I was wrong, so wrong that it almost cost you your life. Can you ever forgive me?”

  Forgiveness was cheap, and surprisingly, I didn’t want to snap Charlie’s head off any longer. He’d made some whopper mistakes, but he’d paid for them too. “No problem.”

  Charlie shot an imploring look at Jonette to leave the room, but Jonette sat as if her butt was glued to the chair. I didn’t mind Jonette hearing this conversation. We’d shared so many private conversations over the years, she knew Charlie as well as I did, better even because of her objectivity.

  Charlie leaned closer to me. I was glad the dog lay on the floor between us so that he couldn’t scoot his chair next to mine. “I want you and the girls to move back home, Clee. I want us to try again.”

  His ludicrous suggestion made me laugh out loud. “You’re joking, right?”

  Unfortunately he didn’t crack a smile. “I’m serious. This whole thing made me realize that there’s no substitute for family, and you and the girls are my family. I need you, Cleo.”

  This was what I’d been secretly hoping for over the last year and a half, to have Charlie beg me to come back to him. But now that he’d come to his senses, I wasn’t the least bit interested in his offer.

  Denise may have led Charlie out of the rose garden, but he’d gone under his own power. What Charlie and I had had in our marriage, though it had been enough for me, it obviously hadn’t been enough for him.

  And even if I had a brain seizure right here and now and actually thought moving back in with him was a good idea, I’d always be wondering where he was when he was out of my sight. Every month, I would be scouring the charge card bills for evidence that he’d been cheating on me again.

  No, the situation we had right now was best for all concerned. Charlie was here on the rebound. Once his wife was sentenced he could move on with his life and he’d forget that he’d been over here groveling.

  My silence must have unnerved him. “I swear I’d never so much as look at another woman,” Charlie pleaded. “Please, Cleo. I’ve missed you.”

  It took me about three seconds to formulate my reply. “I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m moving on with my life. I’m seeing someone now and I don’t know if I’ll ever marry again.”

  “You can’t mean that.” From his dark expression you’d have thought I wanted to leap off the cliff at Hogan’s Glen Overlook Park.

  “I do mean it.” I held his gaze so that he’d know I was firm in my decision.

  He leaned back in his chair and didn’t say anything for a few long moments. Then he grinned his special sexy grin. The one he always flashed when he had sex on the brain and about ten minutes until blast off. The one that used to curl my toes.

  I noticed right away that my toes weren’t curling. I was absolutely impervious to “the look.” No matter what was in my future, it wasn’t being Mrs. Charlie Jones again.

  He rose from his chair. “I can see you just need a little more time. I’ll be back.”

  Unexpectedly, he leaned down to kiss me on the mouth. I turned my head so that his lips brushed my cheek. I rejoiced because I wasn’t awash in gooseflesh.

  I stood with him. “What we had is over, Charlie. Get that through that thick melon head of yours. The entire police force witnessed another man kissing me this morning, and you want to know what? I was kissing him back. Right there in broad daylight.”

  “So what? I got married. But I still think of you all the time. We were meant to be together, Cleo. Just like the original Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.”

  I ushered him to the door. “Now you’re scaring me, Charlie. Since when do you know anything about ancient history?”

  His eyes twinkled. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get my woman back.”

  “I’m not your woman,” I hollered to his back.

  He grinned from his Beemer. Charlie Jones always rose to a challenge and my refusal to take him back had awakened his competitive instincts. I might as well have lit the Olympic torch and proclaimed, “Let the games begin.”

  Jonette put the empty coffee mugs in the sink. “Well that was entertaining. Who would have thought he’d be here begging for you to take him back?”

  “It’s not going to happen. I’m so over him.”

  Jonette eyed me dimly. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to here. I know how sex starved you are and how lonely you’ve been. If you mess this thing up with Rafe, you’ll be thinking of pulling Charlie off the injured reserve list.”

  “I’ve never thought of men as interchangeable. I can barely handle them one at a time.
I can’t imagine stringing Charlie along while I date Rafe.”

  “Honey, you’re not going to have to string him along. Charlie finally wised up. He was a better man when the two of you were together. Now that he knows that, he’s gonna try to get you back.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Ruth. I kind of got that on my own.”

  There was another knock at my kitchen door. I peered out the window and recognized a now familiar red convertible. Rafe’s car. “When it rains, it pours.”

  Jonette headed for the front door. “This is my cue to leave. I wouldn’t be complaining too loud if I were you. Most women would kill to have it raining men.”

  Raining men. Did that mean I could reach up and catch the one I wanted? Interesting concept. I opened the back door and stepped into Rafe’s embrace. “I thought you’d never get here,” I murmured in his ear.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from On the Nickel, Maggie Toussaint’s next Cleopatra Jones Mystery.

  On the Nickel

  ONE

  Numbers flowed in satisfying streams through my ink pen onto the Sudoku puzzle. A nine here. A two there. I scribbled a possibility in the corner of a grid square and sipped my coffee. Patterns emerged. I inked a seven in the top row, leading to three other filled-in numbers.

  Without warning, Mama upended her oversized purse on the kitchen table. Junk clattered. Loose coins clinked. A tube of mulberry-colored lipstick rolled on top of my folded newspaper. Alarmed, I studied her as she pawed through the mound of personal items. A can of hair spray tottered on the edge of the table, and I caught it a moment before it fell.

  “Lose something?” I asked, placing the can squarely on the table.

  Mama muttered out of the side of her mouth. “My car keys.”

  Her color seemed a bit off. I set aside my puzzle to help sort through the jumble. I lifted the umbrella and plastic rain bonnet and moved them to the side. Her wallet was large enough to give birth. No keys hiding under it. I checked beneath her new hairbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a pack of breath mints. Nothing under the mini-photo album, tissue packet, or her dog-eared credit card bill.