Spruced Up (7 page)

 
This was the ultimate topper to my day from hell.

 
A dead man in the bedroom.

 
As I talked to the operator, I walked outside.  Not really walked, trotted.  I moved fast.  I mean, no way was I staying in a house with a dead guy.

 
I was thankful for my cell phone as I stepped out onto the bright sidewalk. 

 
Perfect.

 
All that LA sunshine made it hard to believe that someone was dead a short distance away.

 
The emergency operator continued asking me questions.  The company’s name, my name and address, etc...

 
Personally, I sort of zoned out.  I think I answered him all right but couldn’t be sure.

 
Actually, I didn’t want to be sure.

 
I just wanted to go home. 

 
The police arrived, followed by an ambulance.  They stopped and talked to me a minute, then hurried off to check on Mr. Banning. 

 
I wondered how long I had to wait around.

 
I wanted to go home now.

 
I mean, I didn’t even want to hunt for the perfect pair of bargain shoes or stop for Ben and Jerry’s.  That just shows how hard I’d been hit by this.

 
Anytime a woman passes up Ben and Jerry’s or new shoes...well, it’s moved beyond a bad day and turned into a found-a-dead-body-on-the-bed sort of day.

 
I was wondering if I could just sneak out.  The authorities had my information already, so they didn’t need me.  But then
He
walked up to me.

 
He
was tall, lean and oh-so-yummy.  Dark hair with just a touch of grey at the temples.

 
Not one of LA’s boy-toys who are a dime a dozen.

 
No, this was a real man walking toward me like some hero out of a movie.

 
Maybe he was here to take me away from all this.

 
Maybe he’d seen me from across the street looking fragile, yet still beautiful.

 
Okay, so beautiful was a bit unattainable.  I’d settle for fragile and cute.  Yeah, I could pull off cute on a good day and I felt very, very fragile at the moment.

 
Ah, my hero.

 
I sucked in my baby-pooch, pulled out my old acting class skills and concentrated on looking even more fragile and cute.  It worked.  He walked right up to me, shot me a concerned look, then...he flashed a badge. 

 
I realized that his concerned look was more of an assessing look.

 
My hero was a cop.

 
Okay, so maybe
He
was a cop who was concerned because I looked so fragile?

 
“Ma’am?  You’re,” he flipped open his little notepad in a very Adam-12 sort of way, and that particular mental-analogy really dated me I realized morosely as he finished, “Quincy Mac?”

 
“Yes.”  I thought about fluttering my eyelashes but decided to give up before I embarrassed myself. 

 
“You’re the one who found Mr. Banning and called 911?”

 
“Yes.”  I wanted to say more, so much more.  But even a gorgeous knockout cop couldn’t make me forget I’d just found a dead body, at least not for long.  And thoughts of Mr. Banning, sitting on his bed, covered in blood with his eyes open, well, that sort of froze the words in my throat.

 
“The officer over there said that the house has been pretty much wiped clean.”

 
I had professional pride in my job well done.  “Not
pretty much
, all the way.  Other than the bedroom, which I didn’t clean for obvious reasons.”

 
The cop quirked his eyebrow.  “He said the bedroom was wiped clean as well.”

 
I think the hunky cop just called me a liar. 

 
Actually, I didn’t just think it, I could see it in his eyes.  The man actually thought I’d gone into a room with a dead body in it and cleaned it up?

 
My attraction to him slipped more than just a notch.  It evaporated.

 
“Not by me,” I assured him.  “I took one look at the body on the bed, called 911 as I got the heck out of there.  I guarantee that I didn’t stop to clean the room first.”

 
“But you admit you cleaned the rest of the house?” the cop asked.

 
“Of course I admit it.  I’m the maid.  That’s what they pay me to do.  Don’t you think that if I’d have known someone had died, I’d have simply called the cops first?  If you’d seen what a state the house was in when I arrived, you’d know I’d have welcomed an excuse not to clean it. But I did clean it and I did a fine job of it.” 

 
Cleaning houses is an honest profession.  I might have been a bit befuddled, but even in my present state I wasn’t going to let some cop make me feel less than the professional that I am.

 
He didn’t answer my question.  He simply asked, “And the other officers said there were footprints you steamed off the carpet?”

 
“Yes.  I’m good at what I do.  When Mac’Cleaners cleans a house, it’s totally clean.”

 
“Ma’am, the coroner says that Mr. Banning probably died sometime last night.”  He paused a moment and sort of gave me a hard stare with his charcoal grey eyes.

 
That stare did things to me...my knees felt rather weak and my heart rate sped up.  I don’t think it was shock. 

 
Lust.

 
That’s what it felt like.

 
I hadn’t had a good case of lust in a while.  But I was pretty sure that I remembered how if felt and this was it.

 
“Quincy,” he said, soft and low.

 
Yes
, I wanted to say. 

 
Oh, yes
.

 
I’ve read that when someone experiences death they want to make love just to prove they’re still alive, to prove that they can still feel something.

 
I think my lust for this cop went deeper than just a need to prove I was alive.  It might have been a need to prove I still had a libido, but mainly I think it had something to do with a long, hard orgasm.

 
I was almost forty and I’d read enough magazine articles to know that meant I was reaching my sexual prime.

 
Only it had been a long time since I’d been primed.

 
This guy was making remember how much I enjoyed a good priming.

 
“Yes,” I said out loud.  Hoping he’d say,
let’s forget about the dead body and get you home to bed
.

 
Oh, yeah.  I wanted him to tuck me in, then tuck himself right next to me.

 
Naked.

 
“Quincy,” he said again, “by any chance you have an alibi for last night?”

 
“An alibi?” I squeaked, all lust-filled thoughts fleeing from my head.

 
Alibi?

 
Rats. 

 
I knew what that meant.

 
I watch
Law and Order
,
Law and Order SVU
, and
Law and Order Criminal Intent
.  Is that all?  I might be forgetting one, but that’s understandable, given my circumstances.

 
Oh, and I watch
CSI
. 

 
All that television meant I knew that cops didn’t ask witnesses for alibis.

 
They asked suspects for them.

 
I was a murder suspect.

Check out Book #1
Steamed: A Maid in LA Mystery

Quincy Mac is a maid in LA--a maid who's accidently cleaned a murder scene.  Now she's a murder suspect with only one option--find the real murderer before she ends up in jail for a crime she didn't commit.  Quincy came to LA looking for fame and fortune. What she's found is infamy and misfortune. There's a killer out there, and Quincy's going to them...or die trying.

Did you miss Quincy’s second book,
Dusted
: A Maid in LA Mystery
?
Here’s an excerpt:
 

I looked in the mirror and felt nothing but…horror.

 Orange? 

 
I have never owned any orange clothes, so I must have suspected all along that orange might not be my color, but looking in the mirror, I was positive—orange was soooo not my color.

 
Frankly, I don’t know that orange is anyone’s color.  I mean, Tiny could keep calling it
rustic pumpkin
until the cows came home, but the fact of the matter was, my maid-of-honor dress was orange.

 
The other fact of the matter was, I looked like giant pumpkin.

 
“Quincy Mac, you are absolutely stunning.”  Tiny’s voice was all breathless  wonder.

 
The last two weeks she’d gone from wedding-itis to full blown wedding-fever.  Everything she said was breathless. 

 
Breathless wonder. 

 
Breathless excitement. 

 
Breathless anticipation.

 
“Breathe, Tiny,” I reminded helpfully as I had countless times the last few weeks. 

 
“You look so…” She stared to cry.

 
Breathless and crying.  Those were Tiny’s two modes of communication as her wedding day drew nearer.

 
I filled in the blank while I waited for her to compose herself.

 
You look so…
much like a pumpkin
.

 
You look so…
scary
.