Foxy Roxy (6 page)

The television screen changed, suddenly filling the room with the flashing lights of police cars. Light-headed, Roxy watched and saw the familiar hulk of the Hyde mansion. White noise hummed in her head as the news of Julius Hyde’s death unspooled on the news. Trey sat forward and reached for her. When he slid his hand up under her camisole, the cops were roping off the crime scene. The camera zoomed in on the face of a bearded vagrant being dragged from the bushes.

Roxy had the psycho sensation of floating up on the ceiling at that moment, watching from a distance as Trey tried to coax her detached body into action. She thought of Julius sipping from his silver flask with the odd smile on his face flicking back and forth between bravado and fear. Had he guessed he might be dead within the hour?

Roxy pushed Trey’s hands away, in no mood for sex now. He pulled his halfhearted erection out of his pants and tried to peel down her jeans. Then someone knocked on the door of the loft.

Trey jumped to his feet, his face ludicrous with surprise.

Roxy yanked down her camisole and reached for her sweatshirt. “Somebody joining us?”

Trey gulped. “No, Roxy.”

In the hallway, somebody knocked again, harder this time.

Police, Roxy thought. Her head cleared fast. She pulled her sweatshirt over her head. Then she grabbed a handful of Trey’s sweater and pulled him around to face her as he tried to get his penis put away. “Get a grip,” she commanded.

“But—”

“Don’t open the door yet. Just look. And ask.”

Before she could stop him from picking up the gun, Trey snatched the weapon from the bed. With his pants still open, he went out into the foyer, where he crept to the door. He swiped one hand through his hair as he peeked through the peephole. The gun hung in his other hand, his finger on the goddamn trigger.

“Hey,” he said, surprised. “It’s Kaylee.”

“Who the hell is—?”

At least Trey had the presence of mind to drop the gun into the open mouth of the Aztec pot before he opened the door.

Midknock, a young woman tottered into the foyer on a pair of high-heeled shoes tall enough to make her interfere with incoming airplanes. Her toes looked blue with cold. She was almost as tall as Roxy and skinny in a pair of stovepipe jeans. A pink sweater the color of bubblegum slid off one shoulder. Mascara smeared her face. A cloud of cigarette smoke engulfed her figure like exhaust from a tractor trailer.

“Trey!” She threw herself into his arms.

He barely dodged getting his ear burned on her cigarette, but he hugged her automatically. “Kaylee—”

She burst into sobs. “He’s gone! Dead! What are we going to do? Everything’s ruined!”

“It’s okay.” Trey patted her bare shoulder. “But we have to be smart now.”

Tears poured out of her like water from a faucet. “Oh, God. I miss him already! What will I do?”

“Take it easy. Calm down.”

“I had to get out of there. I ran away. I saw—I saw—”

“You did the right thing.”

The girl had a baby-doll voice, ratched up high and strangled. “Oh my God, I’m so scared!”

“I know. Me, too.”

“I ran away. I took a bus back to my place. I can’t believe it! He’s really—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t!” She hit Trey on the chest with her fist. “How can you say that? Julie—my Julie!”

“Easy now.” He tried to subdue her with a tighter hug.

But she fought him, punching harder, eyes squished shut. “No, no—it’s awful! He’s gone!”

Trey dodged blows. “Kaylee—”

She stopped fighting just as suddenly as she’d started. “Wait a minute. Who is she?”

She looked over Trey’s shoulder at Roxy, and her tears dried up. But her one hand remained knotted in a fist. The other managed to hang on to her cigarette.

Roxy said, “Let me guess, Trey. This is your big brother’s pop tart.”

Roxy had read the newspaper and seen the pictures of Julius Hyde’s manicurist girlfriend—the one he’d been wining and dining the night his wife came home early and discovered her marriage was kaput. Since then, the local media had had a field day with Kaylee—the barely adult sex kitten who’d slept with a man old enough to be her grandpa.

Gently, Trey disengaged himself from the hysterical girl. And he finally zipped up. “Roxy, this is Kaylee, my brother’s—uh—friend.”

“Fiancée,” Kaylee corrected, frowning at Trey as he snapped his fly.

“Right. She’s—Julius was very fond of her.”

“He loved me.” Kaylee took a puff of her cigarette and blew a stream of smoke out the side of her mouth while she did the math of Trey’s zipper and Roxy’s presence in the loft.

“You were there tonight?” Roxy asked. “At the house when Julius was killed?”

“I wasn’t anywhere.”

“You’ll need a better story than that one, honey.”

The girl suddenly lunged as if to claw Roxy’s face with her pink talons. “You bitch! Who do you think you are?”

Trey managed to hold her back. “Kaylee, please. Roxy’s a friend. She can help.”

Roxy had a hard time imagining what a man like Julius Hyde might see in a teenybopper, let alone one with a hair trigger. “Now what, Trey?” she asked. “Is this temperamental cutie a part of your inheritance?”

Trey pinned the girl’s arms to her side. “That’s not the way it is. Kaylee’s just a friend.”

“Who are you, exactly?” Kaylee asked with a sneer. “Besides badly dressed? I think my brother wears those boots.”

“Does he use them to kick your ass? Because—”

“Please.” Trey raised his voice before a catfight broke out. “We’re all upset. It’s been a terrible night. Let’s take a deep breath, shall we?”

“How can I calm down?” Kaylee broke into tears all over again and slumped against Trey. “My Julie is gone!”

Roxy saw the fat tears spurt down Kaylee’s face again and figured they were fake. She was no theater critic, but the scene didn’t exactly look like an authentic family drama.

Trey spun the girl gently around. “Kaylee, why don’t you powder your nose?” He gave her a harder push in the direction of the bathroom.

“Before I do,” Roxy muttered.

Kaylee threw an anatomically impossible suggestion over her shoulder, but she went into the bathroom. Her jeans rode low enough that the tattoo on her lower back was revealed—a tramp stamp with Chinese characters and an arrow pointing down the crack of her butt. Like an invitation.

When the door closed behind her, Trey turned back to Roxy. “Baby, listen.”

“I don’t think so.” Roxy zipped up her sweatshirt tight around her neck.

“I don’t know what she’s doing here, but I’ll get rid of her. Give me ten minutes. Please. I need you. What if the police come? What will I tell them?”

“Oh, so this is why you called me? Not for slap and tickle. You want my special insight into crime prevention.”

“Hey, I only thought—”

“I know what you thought.”

“What do I know about this kind of stuff? What should I do?”

“For one thing?” Roxy hooked her thumb at the jar containing the gun. “The cops will be here faster than you think, and the first thing they’re going to find is your weapon. So get rid of it.”

He blinked, surprised. “It’s brand-new. My grandfather had a big collection at our summer house. He always said the Colt .45 models are the best investments. I want a collection of my own.”

“I don’t care if it’s a priceless family heirloom, idiot. Lose it. Permanently. Don’t hide it or sell it, either. Throw it in the river. Make sure it’s gone for good.”

“Will you take it for me?” Trey grabbed her by the arm. “Please, Roxy?”

Roxy recoiled. “No way!”

“Please. I’ll do it wrong, I know I will. Take it.” He let her go and reached into the pot to pull out the Colt. “Get it out of here before Kaylee sees it. Please, I’m already in a jam.”

“And you’re pulling me in.”

“You’re already in. You were there tonight. But I won’t tell the police.”

His tone wasn’t quite right, and Roxy’s temper rose. “What are you saying, asshole? You’ll keep me out of this if I take the gun for you?”

“Hey, I’m not threatening. I just— Please. Here. I trust you.”

Against her better judgment, Roxy took the gun from his hand and checked it. Unloaded, thank God. She glared at him. “You’ll forget I was at the house?”

“Sure, anything.”

“I’m going to regret this. But I’ll get rid of your toy. If you double-cross me, though—”

“I won’t, I swear.”

She tucked the weapon in the back of her jeans and pulled down her sweatshirt to cover it. Better to have the gun than knowing Trey might be waving it around and blabbing. She gave him one last quelling glance and turned to go. “Have a good time with your little friend.”

Kaylee gave a wail from the bathroom, causing Trey to turn.

While he was distracted, Roxy scooped his cell phone off the pedestal and slid it into her pocket, too. She went out and pulled the door closed behind her. Then she took the stairs and walked out of the building into the rain.

In her truck, as she drove across the Sixteenth Street Bridge, she rolled her window down. She pitched Trey’s cell phone over the railing and into the river. No sense helping anyone pinpoint who the murder victim’s screwy brother had called right after ditching his bloody clothes.

The gun, though, she kept.

5

On Saturday morning, Henry drove across the suburbs to Teed Off, a golf shop owned by a former stockbroker. The broker had already made his millions on a sweet retirement bonus and now spent his days telling other golfers what was wrong with their game. After picking up his golf clubs subsequent to their being regripped, Henry listened to a condescending lecture on his backswing. Fortunately, a more important customer soon entered the store, and the owner hurried off to bully that poor slob into buying the latest and greatest titanium driver.

Henry took a leisurely browse through the new selection of Calloway shoes before putting his clubs into his trunk and climbing back into his BMW.

His dad had been a cop, back in Buffalo. Sitting in his car with autumn sunshine warming him through the windshield, Henry thought again about how Dad might have started an investigation. He tried to summon up the voices of Dad and Uncle Rodney at the dinner table on Saturday nights, bitching about the job. But it was no use. The two brothers had inevitably squabbled about their gambling debts—they took turns owing big money to someone Henry knew only as “Sal”—while getting stupid on Miller Lite. Had they ever talked about procedure? Ways of tracking down information? If so, the memory had been washed away long ago.

Henry took out his cell phone and made a few calls. Then he stopped at a strip mall liquor store for a fifth of Glenlivet and dropped in on a friendly judge. The whiskey helped take care of Dorothy’s injunction.

Finally driving into the city, he tracked down Monica Hyde by cell phone. She agreed to meet him at the museum, where she had been allotted a small office. In the years before she’d met Julius, she’d been a pretty little divorced church mouse transplanted from Texas and working in the museum. Some department or other required her to write catalog copy and entertain a lot of big donors at cocktail parties. She’d encountered Julius at a splashy museum function. The clever minx must have danced nude on a tabletop, because he dumped his previous wife and married Monica faster than most men get off a golf course in a thunderstorm. The museum graciously allowed her to keep the office—perhaps a reward for landing the biggest donor in the institution’s history.

By the time Henry reached the museum, Monica wasn’t in her office as she’d promised. On a hunch, Henry bought a ticket and followed a throng of parents and their yelping tots as far as the turn to the dinosaur exhibit. Henry proceeded a little farther down the cavernous corridor and found Monica standing in the hall of architecture at the back of a group of committee ladies who were discussing plans for decorating Christmas trees. The ladies all carefully ignored Monica and instead focused with intense concentration on their committee chairwoman.

Monica was looking fierce, but a little weepy around the edges.

Nips, tucks, Pilates, and an impressive force of will had kept Monica’s true age at bay so far. She looked about forty, which meant she was at least fifty. Her absurdly conservative tweed suit was a uniform of political wives or women under suspicion of murder. She had a diamond pin lanced through one lapel, and a stately string of pearls tangled around her throat with the folds of a silk Hermès scarf—perhaps too much froufrou for a petite woman, but she was making an effort to carry off the look. On her forearm she steadied an ugly handbag no doubt worth thousands. Being from Texas, she likely carried a lady derringer in it.

Monica snuffled up her tears when she laid eyes on Henry.

She reached out, seized his arm, and pulled him around a pillar for some privacy. “Henry, I’m so glad to see you.”

“I couldn’t stay away.” He cupped her elbows to convey steadfast support. “Monica, you shouldn’t be here. Let me take you home where you won’t be on display like this.”

She trembled with suppressed emotion. “Things are so awful at the hotel where I’ve been staying. The press has staked out the place. They’re always shoving microphones in my face. But it’s even worse here. My so-called f-friends are acting as if I k-killed my husband with my b-bare hands.”

She began to lose her considerable composure. Botox prevented her forehead from crumpling, but her eyes filled with woeful tears. A cooler head needed to prevail.

Henry tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and drew Monica out of the hall of architecture and away from the eavesdropping committee. He kept his voice low. “I’d have come to you last night, you know. You should have picked up the phone, Monica.”

“The last thing I need right now is to be seen with another man, right?”

“I—”

She suddenly blushed. “Oh, Henry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I’ve never thought of you as—well, you’re a friend. A family lawyer and a—my good friend.”

“All of the above,” he said stoutly. “I’d have a heart of stone if I stayed away. I’m sorry about Julius. You must be devastated.”