Bad To The Bone (26 page)

"What do you say we go roust my
ex-mother-in-law instead?" I suggested. "I have no problem with
leading those yahoos to her front door."

"I can only think of one other thing I'd
rather do more," Bill agreed.

"Really?" My tone was hopeful.

"God, no, woman, I'm kidding." He groaned.
"I'm not even sure I can drive." 

Clarissa herself opened the door. She was no
happier to see me than she had been the afternoon before. She
glared, but plastered a phony smile on her face when she spotted
Bill. He wasn't wearing a silver thong, but I guess he passed
muster anyway.

"Oh, my," she said, ever the horn dog in the
middle of disaster. "Who might you be?" She waved us in, her eyes
never leaving his, then wouldn't let go of his hand after she shook
it. I could almost feel the wind from her batting eyelashes.

"I'm Casey's second husband. Didn't she tell
you?" Bill gave her a huge grin.

Clarissa's smile faded and her eyes drifted
to mine, a dangerous spark glinting behind her cold stare. I did my
best to look blissfully married. I know I had "sexually satisfied"
stamped on my forehead, thanks to my party-pink complexion. She
recognized the glow and hated me for it.

"I guess she forgot to tell you," Bill said
cheerfully into the silence. "She's quite a gal, isn't she? Mind if
we come in?"

He walked past her without waiting for an
answer and headed for the nearest couch. "Nice digs." He sat down
with cop confidence and crossed his legs, the crease of his khakis
sharply defined. I'll say one thing for Bill Butler. You'll never
find a wrinkle on him. Or, at least, not on his clothes.

"What do you do, Mr.…” Clarissa said, her
voice trailing off faintly.

"Bill Butler. I'm a cop." His words hung in
the stillness of the room. Clarissa turned pale. "I'm here in an
unofficial capacity," he added. "For now."

Clarissa glanced at me and sat on one arm of
an overstuffed easy chair, her movements as brittle as those of a
sandpiper pecking for food along the shoreline.

I plopped down next to Bill, holding his
hand for good measure. "Bill's helping me out," I explained. "Did
you get in touch with the people hiding Tawny?"

Clarissa stared back and forth between us.
"You're a police officer with what... organization?" she asked Bill
in a faint voice.

"I'm a detective in Casey's hometown. I
guess you know she prefers to keep the exact location confidential
on account of your son's business associates." He took out his
wallet and flipped it open, giving her a glimpse of his badge. She
looked at it and glanced nervously away.

I didn't want to be ungrateful, but I'd have
given up my favorite pair of black leather flats to have been able
to hear Bill say, "I'm with the FBI. Up against the wall and spread
'em," at that moment.

Bill waited her out. The more he smiled, the
more Clarissa frowned. Her fingernails dug into the upholstered arm
of the chair, turning her knuckles white.

"I investigate major crimes," Bill added
after a moment of silence. "Drug smuggling. Kidnapping. Felony
theft. Evading prosecution. I mention those particular crimes only
off the top of my head, of course."

"I see." Clarissa stood, swaying slightly.
"Would you excuse me for a moment, please?" She left the room. I
figured she was headed for the bar and a stiff drink. Bill was not
exactly being subtle.

"My hero," I whispered goonily, rolling my
eyes. "Frisk me, please."

"I hate mothers-in-law," he said grimly.
"This is going to be fun."

Clarissa surprised me. She returned a few
moments later with a tray filled with glasses of iced tea and
chicken salad sandwiches. She set the tray on the coffee table in
front of us. "Please help yourself," she said politely, though only
to Bill. "They'll be here in a moment."

"Who will?" I mumbled, my mouth already
crammed with food. Not bad. Sure as hell Clarissa hadn't made the
chicken salad. Her idea of cooking was to glare at the chef.

"The people who were..." She hesitated. "The
people who were assisting the woman you call Tawny."

"I knew you were helping to hide her," I
said in disgust, tossing the rest of my sandwich on the tray. "You
idiot."

Bill put a warning hand on my thigh. "You
used the past tense, Clarissa," he said. "Why?"

Clarissa stared at the window. "She
disappeared yesterday. With her daughter. I'll let my friends
explain the situation."

Ah, man. I should have tied Clarissa down on
her patio without sunscreen and threatened to fry her liposuctioned
ass unless she coughed up the info when I still had time. I'd
gotten so close. Someone had warned Tawny. Who?

There was nothing we could do but wait, so
wait we did. A clock ticked loudly nearby. Clarissa's shoes drummed
nervously on the side of her chair. The high-pitched drone of a
weed whacker filtered in through an open window. And a flock of
gulls pitched a bitch over some bread a boneheaded tourist was
tossing off the bow of a party boat on the bay. Gulls are nothing
but rats with wings, I thought with disgust. More scavengers in a
garbage-filled world.

Not one of us said a word.

Bill closed his eyes and took a catnap, a
faint smile curling the corners of his lips. I knew what he was
thinking and nudged him back to wakefulness, but he ignored me and
kept on daydreaming. Pig. I'd known that the Australian doubleback
flex maneuver would knock his socks off. He was reliving past
glory.

Clarissa picked up a
magazine and pretended to read it, but it was called
Oil & Gas Weekly
so
I knew it belonged to her husband. She was only going through the
motions.

I passed the time thinking about who had
warned Tawny I was near. Either Clarissa herself, Jeff—or possibly
a cop in the department who knew that Bill had headed this way. The
most likely candidate was Dick-Dick, the big-mouthed detective. A
man that desperate to get laid would be Tawny's pawn, and there he
was right in the middle of the investigation knowing every move
that anyone made. I also wondered if maybe Bobby D. was doing a
little double-dealing, keeping the police department abreast of my
movements without telling me. He was adamant on the subject of
staying in their good graces, and if he had called around for
backup, word had probably gotten out. On the other hand, the
department was filled with horny men desperate to get laid. So it
could be anyone in cahoots with Tawny, a friend from the good old
days when she had worked there. The only one I didn't suspect was
Bill. No way it was him. Not given the way he was helping me find
her. Besides, I knew him, and knew he was better than that.
Sometimes you have to go with your gut.

The doorbell finally rang and Clarissa
scurried to answer it.

Bill whispered into my ear, "How badly do
you want to scare them?"

"Not much. If Tawny's had her claws in them,
they've suffered enough. Let me do the talking. Just sit there and
look scary."

He tried an evil grin on for size.

"That's good," I said. "It scares even me.
You look demented in a very official sort of way."

We were interrupted by the arrival of two of
the most miserable-looking people I have ever seen. They were
comical in their discomfort, and more out of place in Clarissa's
house than even I was. The man was the color of a catfish's belly,
no small feat when you live in central Florida. His checkered shirt
was tucked into baggy shorts that drooped to his knobby knees. He
had a gap between his front teeth, and his black hair was brushed
damply against his scalp like that of a three-year-old boy getting
gussied up for church.

His wife had her hair teased into a short
brown helmet that set off her plain face like a cheap plastic
picture frame. She was wearing a polyester dress that clutched her
ample middle at exactly the wrong spot. Both blinked at us like
apprehensive owls from behind thick glasses.

I felt sorry for them. They were probably
just regular, churchgoing, middle-class stiffs who had tried to do
the Christian thing by helping out a poor abused woman. Instead,
they'd been fleeced and discarded.

"Where is she?" I asked, skipping the
preambles. I knew no one much cared what anyone's name was. On the
contrary.

"She's gone," the woman announced and burst
into tears. Her husband gave her shoulders an ineffectual pat and
stared miserably at his shoes.

"She stole my wife's car," he mumbled.

"When?" I asked.

"Last night. But we knew we were in trouble
before then."

"Start from the beginning," I suggested,
knowing they were bursting to spill their moral indignation, not to
mention their guts. "Clarissa, go get them something to drink," I
said as an afterthought. Oooh, that felt good. I searched for more
ways to order her around.

She glared at me, but obeyed. The terrified
pair perched on the edge of a wicker love seat and clamped their
knees together.

"She seemed like a lovely woman at first,"
the wife began, sniffling. "Going to church with us, playing with
her daughter. And then..."

Her husband took up the story from there:
"Then she began to take off at night, after the girl was in bed.
She said she needed to get away and think about her future. She
claimed to love looking out over the water at night. So we lent her
our car, but the next night she just took it without even asking.
She did it again the next night. And again and again. My wife had
to start bathing the child and putting her to bed because the
mother was never there. I'd hear this woman coming home at three
and four o'clock in the morning, and I'd find beer bottles in my
car when I drove to work the next day."

His face grew tighter with each word. He was
having trouble comprehending that someone who looked so respectable
could be so despicable. His villains had dark faces, or sinned in
some heinous way, or came from the wrong side of the tracks. I
don't think he was used to someone evil who looked and acted just
like his friends on the surface. It scared him.

Clarissa returned with iced tea. The man
took a glass and gulped most of it before continuing. "I started
keeping track of the mileage," he said. "She was driving fifty,
sixty miles a night. One day, I found a dent in the fender. I'm
sure it wasn't there the night before. Then late last week, she
didn't come home at all. I had to drive my wife's car to work the
next morning. And my wife had to babysit the child all day until
she turned up late in the afternoon. When, this... this woman
returned, she gave no explanation for her absence."

His wife flushed and nudged him. “Tell her
about the thingie," she said.

He looked embarrassed. "I found a... birth
control device in the car earlier this week. A used device."

What the hell was he talking about? An IUD
looped over the rearview mirror? A diaphragm nestled in the ash
tray? "Could you be more specific?" I asked.

"It was a..." he said, mumbling the final
word. I could guess what it was, but his wimpiness annoyed me.

"A what?” I asked.

"A condom!" Clarissa snapped, losing her
patience with me. "A rubber. A sheepskin. A rascal wrap. Got
it?"

Well, wasn't she the expert on party hats?
She saw me biting my lip to keep from laughing and glared. Of
course, this only made me want to laugh harder.

"Exactly," the man agreed, gulping for air.
"A condom. On the floor of my car, where I put my feet in the
morning."

The poor guy was as pink as the prime rib
I'd eaten the night before. Tawny had made mincemeat of him and his
wife.

"It stuck to the sole of my shoe," he added
in a whisper, reliving the horror.

God, that was disgusting. And the perfect
image for what I thought about Tawny Bledsoe. I couldn't wait to
scrape her off my shoe.

"He followed her the next night," the wife
explained, sensing a need to uphold her husband's honor. “Tell them
what you saw."

"She was... bar-hopping," he said in a tone
of voice I reserve for describing the activities of necrophiliacs.
"Going from one disreputable establishment to another, staggering,
clutching on to various... escorts. And all this after assuring us
she did not touch alcohol at all."

"She said it was against her religion," the
wife butted in. "But I kept saying I could smell liquor on her in
the morning. He would not believe me."

The look she gave her husband told me that
Tawny had been up to her old tricks. She had flirted shamelessly
with the poor schmuck in front of his wife, using her usual methods
to divide and conquer. She was like the Johnny Appleseed of
disaster, sowing unhappiness wherever she went.

"Barhopping where?" I asked, hoping to pick
up her trail.

He named a part of north Tampa notorious for
its dive bars, in a neighborhood that catered to the circus
roustabout crowd during the off-season. God, but it was low-class,
even for a road whore like Tawny. It was the drugs, I suspected,
and her need to stay off the beaten track.

"Was there one place where she hung out more
than the others?"

He gave my question a lot of thought,
anxious to be of help. "There was one place where she stayed a
fairly long time, it had a neon animal in its front window. I can't
remember what it was. An alligator, maybe. But it was green."

That was better than nothing. "Did she give
you any reason to suspect she might be using drugs?" I asked,
wondering if I could trace her through the drug world. Thanks to my
life with Jeff, I'd probably still know some of the players.

I thought they'd both keel over at the
mention of drugs.

"Oh my god," the woman whispered, her hand
flying to her mouth.

"Drugs?" the man repeated dumbly.