Rock Chick 01 (2 page)

These days, though, my parties have real,
home cooked hors d’oeuvres and bowls of cashews and nobody passes
out in my bed or pukes in the backyard anymore.

These days I’m also the owner of a used
bookstore located on Broadway (not
the
Broadway in NYC, the
other Broadway, in Denver, Colorado, US of A).

My grandmother left me the store when she
died. It would seem a rather staid profession, owning a bookstore.
You’d think I wore tortoise-shell glasses and had my hair back in a
bun. This isn’t true about my bookstore or me, by any stretch of
the imagination.

You see, my grandmother was a hellion, she’d
raised a hellion in my Mom, Katherine, and she and Dad carefully
oversaw raising the third-generation hellion that was me.

My bookstore is on the southeast corner of
Broadway and Bayaud. Not the greatest neighborhood, not the worst.
In the times of my grandmother, the ‘hood had been in decline, now
it’s on an upswing.

My inheritance came with half a duplex one
block down on Bayaud in the Baker Historical District. I live in
the east side of the duplex, a gay couple live in a west side,
another gay couple live east of me and another behind me. This is
why Baker is safe, it’s populated mainly by gay couples, DINKS,
hippies and Mexicans. When I, a single white female who looks like
(and is) a rock ‘n’ roll groupie of the highest order, moved in,
they all called each other and said “there goes the
neighborhood”.

My bookstore is named Fortnum’s. There was no
reason for this except Gram had gone to Fortnum and Mason’s in
London the year before she opened it and she thought it sounded
high brow.

There’s nothing high brow about
Fortnum’s.

In the day (that was Gram’s day), it was a
hippie hang out and still, in a way, is. Harley boys often came
there too, don’t ask me why. Now, it’s also filled with preppies,
yuppies and DINKS trying to be trendy and boarders and goths
because it is trendy.

It has a bunch of mismatched shelves, stuffed
full of all sorts of used books and tables piled high with vinyl
records. It’s a rabbits warren of organized disorganization, every
once in awhile punctuated by a fluffy, overstuffed chair. Most
people come in, find a book, read in a chair and leave without
buying the book, maybe coming back the next day to pick it up again
and read some more.

With the shop, I also inherited Gram’s two
employees which, shall we say, diplomatically, are just as
eccentric as she was.

Jane’s my romance (our biggest seller)
expert, she’s six foot and weighs in at about one-twenty, painfully
thin, painfully shy. She keeps her nose in a novel nearly every
minute of the day when she isn’t buying them off people hawking
their books for our shelves or selling them to people with mumbled
recommendations. She’s told me she’d written over forty novels
herself but never had the gumption to try to get them published.
She didn’t even have the courage to allow me to read them and I ask
all the time.

There’s also Duke. Duke’s a Harley man, all
leather and denim and a big ole gray beard and loads of long,
steel-gray hair with a bandana tied around his forehead. He talks
rough, lives rough and is tough as nails but can be soft as a
marshmallow if he likes you (luckily, he likes me). He used to be
an English Lit professor at Stanford before he dropped out and
moved to the mountains. He’s married to Dolores who works part-time
at The Little Bear up in Evergreen where Duke and Dolores own a
tiny cabin.

Gram loved Fortnum’s, looked at it kinda like
her own personal community center. She was not an especially good
business woman but she was happy to make do and play hostess to her
eclectic group of pals. Gramps brought in an okay salary and, when
he died, left her with a decent pension, so she didn’t have much to
worry about.

Fortnum’s smells musty and old and, just like
Gram, I love every inch of it.

When I wasn’t at the police station, with the
Nightingales or out with Ally, I was at Fortnum’s with Gram and
Duke, and then came Jane. It was always one of my homes away from
home and those come with being a motherless child, believe you
me.

But the way I’d inherited it, it sure as hell
wasn’t going to keep me in my cowboy boots, Levi’s and huge, silver
belt buckles attached to tooled-leather belts (my signature
outerwear, my signature underwear was strictly sexy-girlie lace and
silk, Gram said that looking like a cowboy-inspired groupie on the
outside was one thing but every girl had to have a secret and Gram
said sexy underwear was the best secret a girl could have).

Now the front of the store is where I do my
business. There are a bunch of comfortable couches and arm chairs
and a few tables. I invested in an espresso machine and I coaxed my
favorite barista, Ambrose “Rosie” Coltrane, from the chain coffee
store down the road.

Rosie’s a coffee god. Rosie could make a
skinny vanilla latte that could give you an orgasm if you just
sniffed it. Rosie’s a bit of a pain in the ass, a kind of
semi-coffee recluse (he comes in, he makes coffee, he goes home),
but his talent is undeniable.

My addition of coffee was a hit. When the
espresso started flowing, the books also started going and now I
have new furniture in my living room and a fast-growing collection
of kickass belts and cowboy boots.

* * * * *

I see all this flashing before my eyes

I learned quickly that lots of stuff flashes
before your eyes when you get shot at.

* * * * *

As I stared at my cell, trying not to have a
heart attack, I tried to figure out who to call.

I could, and probably should, call Dad,
Malcolm or Hank.

Considering those choices and this situation,
in the cop stakes, Hank would be my best bet. He’d go ballistic
when he heard I’d been shot at and would probably arrest Rosie on
the spot, but he was least likely to kill Rosie for putting me in
danger.

Hank had control. That was why Hank was such
a good athlete, why he was a good student and why he’s a good
cop.

Dad was my father and Malcolm considered
himself like a father so they’d just lose it and make a scene which
would freak Rosie out.

Rosie was a coffee artiste.

As an artiste, Rosie had a delicate
disposition. He freaks out easily. You could only give him two
coffee orders at a time or he’d have a mini-mental-breakdown. That
chain coffee shop hadn’t been right for him, Fortnum’s was his
nirvana. He could create his drinks and even when it got busy and
the pressure got heavy, someone else, Jane, Duke or me, took the
burden and just let Rosie perform.

But right now, Rosie said no cops.

And I understand why.

So even though I
really, really
wanted
to call Hank, I didn’t.

* * * * *

I could call Lee, Lee isn’t a cop. I had his
numbers in my cell, Ally put them there.

Lee would be a good bet. Lee had gone into
the Army after high school. Lee had gone on to be Special
Operations Force. Lee had done some serious shit while in the armed
services that took the good ole boy look right out of his dark
brown eyes and put something else, something colder, more serious
and far scarier in those eyes. Lee had come out and gotten himself
a private investigator’s license and opened an office in LoDo (or
Lower Downtown Denver). Lee was supposed to be a PI but no one
really knows what Lee does, I’m not even certain anyone has even
been to Lee’s offices.

I could call Lee and tell him someone shot at
me. That would take care of things pretty quickly. I mean, I hadn’t
really had much of a relationship with Lee for ten years but it
would be a kind of family responsibility, considering he thought of
me as his little sister (huh).

Lee might track them down (whoever they were)
and shoot them, though. Torture them first and shoot them. Lee had
skills I could not comprehend (at least that’s what I heard Malcolm
and Dad muttering about, more than once).

It wasn’t like when I was sixteen and Brian
Archer was telling everyone he’d gotten to third base with me (when
he’d
barely
slid into second) and Lee had found Brian and
broken his nose.

This would be serious.

Maybe Lee wasn’t a good idea.

* * * * *

This left me with Ally.

Allyson Nightingale is always up for an
adventure.

Allyson Nightingale can keep her mouth
shut.

And Ally is not a cop.

I Should Turn You over My Knee

Twenty minutes later, I found myself standing
in the living room of Lee’s condo.

I’d been there before, only a few times, but
my visits had been brief. Mainly dropping something off or picking
something up and always I was with Kitty Sue or Ally.

And always, Lee was there.

Now, Lee was not.

“This is
not
a good idea,” I said to
Ally.

Ally and I were the same height, both at five
foot nine. Ally weighed twenty pounds less than me, was a jeans
size smaller because she had much less ass and one cup-size smaller
because she had much less boobage. She had whisky-brown eyes like
Hank and thick, dark brown hair like all the Nightingales, hair
that she kept rock ‘n’ roll crazy long, just like me.

Right now she was wearing a denim mini-skirt
with a ragged, cut-off hem, a bright yellow tank top with “Sugar”
written across the chest in glitter and flip flops.

We’re both thirty years old, with Ally two
weeks younger than me. We’d be eighty and wearing denim mini-skirts
and I’m-with-the-band t-shirts, I foresaw this for our future and
even though I thought it was cool, it also kinda scared me.

Ally was talking. “Lee’s out of town. He’s
not due back for ages. Definitely not tonight. And anyway, no one’s
crazy enough to break into Lee’s condo.”

I considered her words as I looked at
Rosie.

Rosie was having a
“talented-artist-in-a-crisis” moment. His eyes were wild and he
looked about to bolt.

Rosie wasn’t my favorite person at that
particular time. Rosie nearly got me shot but it wasn’t entirely
his fault,
he
didn’t shoot at me and
he
didn’t mouth
off to the bad guys.

I’d always had trouble with my mouth.

Anyway, he was my friend and I had to keep
him safe. That’s what friends do. They don’t drink so they can
drive you home when you’re drunk. They like your boyfriends when
you’re with them and then trash them after you’ve broken up. And
they find you a safe house when people are shooting at you.

And Ally was right, only someone with a death
wish would break into Lee’s condo. Even I was having heart
palpitations at daring to enter Lee’s lair, worried he’d go all
commando if he found us there.

Not only that, it was a secure building and
Lee lived on the fourteenth floor (with an unobstructed view of the
Front Range, by the way).

Ally looked between Rosie and me. “What’s
this about?”

“Don’t tell her!” Rosie shouted.

“I’m not gonna tell her!” I shouted back,
beginning to lose patience with Rosie. I forgave myself for losing
patience. I figured that happened when you got shot at. I’d never
been shot at but I was always a quick learner.

Ally lifted her brows at me and I gave her my
“later” look.

“I need caffeine,” Rosie whined and walked to
Lee’s couch. It was soft, rich leather and faced an enormous LCD
TV. Rosie threw himself on it and rubbed his temples with his
fingers trying to find his Zen nirvana without a stainless steel
pitcher filled with frothing milk in his hand

“You don’t need caffeine, you need Valium,” I
said.

“I’ve got Valium,” Ally put in.

Ally could generally find all different kinds
of pharmaceuticals either in her personal medicine cabinet or
through her network of contacts.

“I don’t want Valium. I want to get the bag
back from Duke as soon as possible and go to San Salvador,” Rosie
said, grabbing the remote and being a bit dramatic.

“He’s an artist with an artistic
temperament,” I explained as I walked Ally to the door.

“He makes coffee,” Ally replied.

I ignored that. Ally didn’t understand the
beauty of coffee. She preferred tequila.

“You sure Lee isn’t gonna come back?”

I didn’t want to be caught in Lee’s condo
when Lee didn’t know I was here. I hadn’t been somewhat
successfully avoiding him for ten years to be found in his condo in
the middle of the night harboring a possible felon who had bad
people after him. There was a good possibility Lee would frown on
that.

“He’s in DC,” Ally replied. “I think you
should take his bed.” Her eyes got big and happy when she said this
and I sighed and rested my shoulder against the wall.

“Maybe you should call him,” I suggested.

“He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s
out-of-town on business. Only in emergencies.”

“This might be considered an emergency,” I
explained unnecessarily as I’d called her only twenty minutes ago,
hyperventilating, and telling her someone had shot at me and Rosie
and we needed a safe house. Such things didn’t happen every day, in
fact, they
never
happened, at least not to me.

Ally looked through the open plan kitchen to
Rosie, who’d turned on the TV and was watching the Food
Network.

“What bag is he talking about?” Ally
whispered.

“I’ll explain it later. Just call Lee and
warn him that we’re here, just in case.”

Ally swung her eyes back to me. “Was a time
when you’d live for that kind of ‘just in case’?”

“I’ve told you, that time’s long gone.”

Ally studied me. She’d heard this for ten
years and still didn’t believe it, the silly, stubborn bimbo.

“Right. I’ll call him. Still, I think if he
was gonna come home, he’d rather come home to find you in his bed
than Rosie.”