Bad To The Bone (6 page)

It took me three more beers, but I finally
left my bad mood behind and slept. I woke before dawn and dressed
quickly, then walked a couple of blocks to the main beach. A
spectacular sunrise was unfolding over the pewter-colored ocean.
The sun's deep yellow yolk pulsated in the thin winter air,
surrounded by fingers of red-orange fire that reached across the
pale January sky. Seagulls wheeled above the water, searching for
the silver flash of fish surfacing in the morning sun. I felt
better after watching the new day arrive, a little less burdened by
the unhappiness around me. But then it seemed a shame to waste such
a fine morning on going back to bed. So I decided to keep an eye on
Robert Price, just to make sure he didn't decamp for new pastures
before Tawny arrived.

This time I parked my car beneath the deck
of a deserted house at the corner of the main tum-off. I pulled it
all the way forward, well under the deck, where shadows hid its
shape. A bathtub Porsche is not what you would call an
inconspicuous vehicle. I opened a coffee from McDonald's and
slumped down to wait. If Robert Price tried to leave with his
daughter, he'd have to come out this way. And if Tawny Bledsoe came
after him with a truckload of gun-toting cousins, I'd know that,
too. 

If you don't count my quick trip behind the
dunes to pee, nothing happened until just after ten o'clock, when a
red Ford Probe made a right turn onto the sandy lane. There was a
beefy man with dark hair at the wheel, and a blond seated in the
passenger seat that could have been Tawny. They went by too fast
for me to get a good look, but I knew enough to get my ass in gear.
I checked my gun and slipped it into the back of my waistband. I
jogged down the sandy lane, then cut through the pine woods when I
got close to the gray-shingled duplex. Although I couldn't see the
house, angry voices marred the morning quiet, inspiring a flock of
gulls to chime in with their own indignant cries. Hoo boy. I had a
bad feeling about this one.

I like to think that, being female, I have
an edge over my male counterparts. I'm a bitch under stress, not a
bozo. Instead of rushing in under the influence of adrenaline, I am
smart enough to think before I join the fray. I hid behind a narrow
toolshed at the edge of the yard where I could wait unseen, just in
case the adults worked it out on their own. It wasn't looking
good.

Robert Price stood on the front porch of the
duplex, dressed in a pair of gym shorts and a sweatshirt. His face
was contorted with anger and his hands trembled at his side.
Tiffany stood behind him, her little girl arms wrapped around his
thighs for comfort as she peered out at the scene before her.

It was some scene to see. Tawny Bledsoe
stood with her back to me, screaming at the top of her lungs. Her
companion was even bigger than I'd expected, with short dark hair
and clothes that proved he had money. He stood beside Tawny in
menacing support as she called Robert Price every name in the
library—never mind the book—including my personal favorite: "you
cowardly, limp-dicked, pecker-headed pus face."

I shook my head, disgusted. How two people
can go at it like this and still think they're acting in the best
interests of their kid is beyond me.

"Let's stop this now, Tawny," Price finally
shouted. He had waited until his wife's fury ran out of steam. From
long practice, I suspected.

"No," she yelled back. "You stop this.
That's my daughter you're hiding. She should be with me."

"She's my daughter, too," Price countered.
"And I have every right in the world to spend—"

"Rights! You have no rights!" Tawny took a
step forward like she was going to smack him. He flinched, leaning
away from her reach. He was probably the cowardly type, I figured.
The kind who would never dare hit his wife in front of witnesses.
Tawny's companion was keeping him in line just by being there.

Unfortunately, Tawny's companion decided to
take a more active role. Without warning, he pulled an ugly-looking
handgun from his overcoat pocket and pointed it straight at Price's
face with total disregard for the child cowering behind him. What a
macho asshole. He would have a Colt .45. Personal experience has
taught me that the length of a man's barrel is in inverse
proportion to the length of his dick. Tiffany began to cry, her
pitiful sobs mingling with the retorts of the seagulls circling
above.

I was just about to step from behind the
shed and make a bad situation worse when Robert Price gave in.
Without ever taking his eyes from the gun, he held his hands up and
spoke calmly. "Fine, take Tiffany. Just put that thing away. I
don't want her to get hurt."

"He's not going to shoot her, you moron,"
Tawny screamed. "He's going to shoot you if you give me any more
trouble." Her face had healed remarkably since I had last seen her,
but her hatred made it ugly in a much different way.

Price remained calm, I had to give him that.
"No need to shoot anyone," he said. “Tiff, get in the car with your
mother. Do as she says."

The girl took a few steps, stopped and
looked back at her father.

"Get in the car now, Tiffany," her mother
snapped. "I'll buy you new clothes and new toys when we get
home."

The girl still seemed reluctant to leave. I
didn't like it. Maybe she knew something I didn't.

"Daddy?" she said, her voice quavering.

"Go with her," Price commanded. "I'll call
you tomorrow."

"No, you won't." Tawny's beefy companion
spoke up. "You won't be bothering her ever again. At all.
Understand?" He walked up to Price, gun still in hand, and crowded
him against the closed door of the duplex, thrusting his chest
against his opponent like a male gorilla warning off a rival. "Call
Tawny's house ever again and I'll kill you," he warned Price, then
his voice dropped so low I couldn't hear what he said next. But I
was pretty sure he wasn't pleading that they all just get along.
Price flinched at the words, but he didn't back down.

"Put the gun away," Price begged. "I don't
want my daughter hurt."

"Sure, I'll put it away." Tawny's companion
raised the gun and brought it down hard, splitting Price's forehead
with an ugly thunk. Price crumpled to the ground and the big guy
began kicking him.

"This is for Tawny," he said, landing a blow
near Price's kidneys. "And this is for me." He stomped on his legs
and kicked him in the head.

God, but I hated domestic cases. I couldn't
stand by and watch this. But I didn't like combining guns and a
kid.

Tawny Bledsoe made up my mind for me. "Come
on, Boomer," she ordered him. "He's not worth it. We have Tiffany.
Let's go."

The little girl was sitting in the backseat
of the Probe, sobbing. She didn't even look up as her mother got
into the car. Tawny glanced at her daughter, then stared out the
window at Price's inert body. The aptly named Boomer was reluctant
to leave the scene of his triumph and stood over Price, gazing down
as if trying to decide where to kick next.

"Boomer, I said to let it go!" Tawny
screamed out the car window. She sounded like the head harridan
from hell when she issued her orders, and Boomer finally turned
away. He slid into the driver's seat and gunned the engine in
victory. I half expected him to hop back out and piss on Price as
the final insult, but he leaned over to kiss Tawny instead. The
kiss lingered. I could practically hear the saliva being swapped as
they sucked on each other's tongues. When he was done marking his
territory, Boomer put the car into gear and pulled away so quickly
that the rear tires gouged the gravel, hitting the soil layer
beneath and sending plumes of sand spraying as they sped away.

I was waiting by the side of the shed when
the car passed by. Tawny had her head turned for a final peek at
her badly beaten husband. She saw me standing in the bushes and her
eyes locked on mine. She held the gaze, then reached up to her
mouth and slowly wiped away her lover's kiss. She flung the spit
out the window onto the ground at my feet, then smiled, as if to
say, "So what? I got what I wanted."

Robert Price lay slumped on the ground,
immobile, and I was furious with myself for letting it go that far.
He had a steady pulse and didn't seem in immediate danger, but I
couldn't bring him back to consciousness. Nor did I particularly
want to. What would I say? "Hi, I'm Casey Jones, a private
detective who got you into this mess. So sorry. How many bones are
broken?"

Instead, I found a phone in the duplex. I
dialed the emergency number and anonymously reported an injured
man. As soon as I gave the address, I hung up and started running.
I reached the safety of my car just as the first police cruisers
turned off the main road onto the sandy lane. As soon as the first
wave of officials disappeared down the turn-off, I got the hell out
of Dodge, observing all speed limits on the way home, but not even
stopping for a bathroom break.

By the time I was back home in my Durham
apartment, three and a half hours of blasting music had pretty much
erased the memory of Robert Price being kicked like some junkyard
dog in front of his daughter.

But I didn't think I was going to forget the
sight of Tiffany's crumpled four-year-old face any time soon.

A few days later, my Monday morning was
ruined when Bobby announced with "I told you so" satisfaction that
the one-thousand-dollar retainer check from Tawny Bledsoe had
bounced higher than a superball.

"Insufficient funds?" I asked, figuring
maybe the out-of-state commission check just hadn't cleared
yet.

"Account closed. I called my guy at the
bank. She closed it a month ago."

"That bitch." She had used and abused me to
do her dirty work.

"I told you I had a hinky feeling about
her." Bobby's voice made it clear that he was getting more than our
lost money's worth of satisfaction from my mistake.

"I'll take care of it." I went to work
dialing all of Tawny's phone numbers. No luck at any of them. Well,
she'd have to surface sooner or later. I could wait. I couldn't
forget, but I could wait.

I did a quick accounting and figured out
that we had spent a couple grand of our time tracking down her kid.
We'd been burned for more than that before, but I wasn't in the
mood to cut the little lady any slack. Not after seeing her cheer
her Neanderthal boyfriend on to violence in front of her own
daughter.

The rest of the week was a madhouse and
Tawny Bledsoe got put on the back burner. I didn't hear from Jeff
again and figured he had given up and gone back to Florida for his
own funeral. I didn't much care. More important matters replaced
him. First, the Garner cops asked me to go undercover for a drug
buy and there's nothing I love better than dressing up as a biker
slut. Thanks to my spectacular cleavage—which could conceal a video
camera, much less a microphone—they were able to bring down a
280-pound drug-dealing speed freak who was cooking batches of
highly volatile methamphetamine on his trailer stove with the help
of his spaced-out wife and two young children. I think everyone
involved felt better after that disaster-in-the-making was
diffused.

Next, a prominent local businesswoman asked
us to investigate her wealthy fiancé. I did her one better. Not
only did we discover that he was in hock up to his toupee, I nailed
him as a sleazeball. I tailed him to a topless bar and watched him
tip the dancers twenty-dollar bills as payment for lap dances (a
euphemism if ever I've heard one). He spent hundreds of dollars of
my client's money on static cling while I took photos. Then the
dunce tried to pick me up at the bar. I got him on tape insisting
he was single, unattached, hot to trot and willing to swing with
the best of them. I figured we saved our client a whole lot of
money with that extra effort on my part. She agreed and insisted on
a bonus, then promised to steer some corporate work our way. Music
to Bobby D.'s ears.

This last client was so nice, in fact, that
she almost made me forget about Tawny Bledsoe and the dozen useless
phone calls I made trying to track her down for payment. But on
Saturday morning, something happened to remind me that I had been
taken in by a 105-pound blond dressed in pink cashmere.

I was sitting at my desk, savoring the smug
feeling of accomplishment that a busy week gives me and wondering
if Burly's mood had improved any in the few days since I'd last
heard from him. My diet had gone belly-up (and out) and there was a
box of warm Krispy Kremes and two double lattes at my elbow. I was
reading a tabloid and laughing over a photo of Rod Stewart being
tongue-lashed in public by his soon-to-be ex-wife when Bobby came
into my office, puffing from the exertion of walking the thirty
feet from his car to my desk.

“Touch those doughnuts and you draw back a
bloody stump," I warned him.

"Relax. I got my own box on the way in."

More like his own truckload, I suspected.
"What brings you in on the weekend?" I asked. "Fanny give you the
bum's rush?" Fanny was Bobby's wealthy girlfriend. She spent most
of her time in Florida, but had been in town for an extended
holiday celebration.

"She's headed back to Lauderdale. I'm
joining her next week so we can try that new crab joint everyone's
talking about."

Fanny and Bobby were on a personal journey
to eat at every restaurant in America, without regard to quality or
location. A roach coach in San Diego was every bit as desirable as
the Four Seasons in New York. Eating was their hobby, eating
together was their passion. It was a match made in the kitchens of
heaven.

"So, you're in the office because you're
bored?" I asked. "Does this mean you're actually going to do some
work for a change?"