Divas and Dead Rebels (47 page)

“Yeah.” Harley picked up the pink squares of handwritten messages and shuffled through them. “She claims she got a ransom letter for him this time. He’s probably being held hostage by Neighborhood Watch until they promise to keep him fenced.”

“Or he’s locked in Mrs. Trumble’s garage again.”

“Please. Even the thought of that crabby old lady makes my hair stand up.”

“Not today.”

She looked up and caught Tootsie staring at her hair. Annoyed, she raked a hand through the short blond strands, disgusted when it fell softly over her fingers. “Yeah, I know, I got up late and didn’t have time to gel it into submission.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing. You usually look like Rod Stewart in drag.”

Harley made a face at him. “Look who’s talking—the original drag queen. Wasn’t it just last weekend I saw you dressed as Julia Roberts?”

“And I was lovely.”

“Yeah, I have to admit, you really were. It’s humiliating that you’re more beautiful than most women. Not to mention that your boobs are bigger than mine.”

“It’s magic. I could show you a trick or two, if you like.”

She grinned back at him. “Thanks, but I’ll pass. I seem to remember you once telling me that it all has to do with duct tape, and I don’t think that sounds very comfortable. Or appealing.”

He wasn’t at all abashed. “Duct tape’s not too bad,” he said. Slender, with long auburn hair that he usually wore pulled back into a ponytail at work, he dressed in slacks and silk shirts during the day, but nights and weekends often found him in sequined gowns and full makeup, a stunning female impersonator who’d once opened for the rock band KISS at a local concert. While Thomas “Tootsie” Rowell was five seven, one hundred and fifty pounds to her five six, one hundred and twenty, he’d been known to borrow her clothes at times. Not often, however. Harley preferred jeans and tee shirts to silk and sequins.

“I’ll still pass,” she said in reference to the duct tape.

“At least you don’t have hair on your chest, baby.” Tootsie pulled the wire mouthpiece of his headset forward, and then punched at buttons on the phones. “That can be a real bitch. Good morning, Memphis Tour Tyme, how may I direct your call?”

Harley went down the short hallway to her office. It’d been a storage closet in a previous incarnation, but was now used by the drivers. There was just enough room for a desk with an old computer, a chair, and a bookcase. On the wall next to the door hung a metal box containing the security system brain. Below it was a small keypad similar to one out in the receptionist area. She’d hung a large mirror on the wall next to the box, more for the illusion of space than for any sense of vanity.

She hung the van keys back in their allotted spot, signed out her daily log, and considered taking home the schedule for the coming month before deciding against it. Her New Rules for A Peaceful Life specified that she not worry about tomorrow. Today was usually enough to give her stomach cramps. It was a personal rule she hadn’t made lightly. Leaving corporate banking for a job free of stress had been a matter of survival. So here she was, in her late twenties and burned out, but finally in a job she didn’t have to take home with her at night. It was a good trade-off—most of the time. At least, when she didn’t have to deal with her family it was.

Right now, she’d find that damn dog to appease her parents, then go home and relax.

In the short time she’d been inside, heat had built up inside her Toyota. It smelled like a Mexican restaurant when she opened the door, waves of bean burrito and salsa rushing out in a gush of air. Her stomach growled audibly. She slid into the driver’s seat, started the car and let it idle a moment while she rifled in the sack. Nachos and chips in a little plastic container sat at the bottom, and she pulled it out to sit it on the empty passenger seat, flicking up the top. Gobs of unnaturally yellow cheese oozed over the sides. She scooped it up with a salty triangle of chip and popped it into her mouth. Then she put the car in reverse, backed from the slot and nosed out into the traffic streaming down Poplar Avenue, a main city thoroughfare that angled east from the bluffs of the Mississippi River all the way into the next county.

Turning at the next intersection, she scooted down Highland toward the neighborhood and house where she’d spent her teen years, an older area of town on the fringes of the University of Memphis. She had her own place now, an apartment near Overton Park Zoo that was her refuge, but this area was a lot more familiar. It was a tidy little pocket of houses just across the railroad tracks from the sprawling university, with neat green lawns and big trees shading slabs of concrete sidewalk. During the years, the area had gone through several metamorphoses, from families to hippies to retirees. At the moment it consisted of head shops, tattoo parlors, a Catholic school and church, a music store and a McDonald’s, along with the hard-core older residents, an influx of college students, and young professionals buying their starter homes.

Harley knew many of the residents, though the inevitable changes drew the pocket tighter and tighter. It’d been home since she was fourteen. Nearly fifteen years was a lifetime. Long enough, she figured, to know where to find a renegade dog.

Most of the emptied garbage cans had already been removed from the curbs, but a few still stood with tops thrown back. A trail of broken eggshells, limp paper towels, coffee grinds, and other flotsam left behind by sanitation workers littered the curbs, but there was no sign of a black and white dog gorging on forbidden delicacies. Uneasy suspicion knifed through her, ignited by Tootsie’s reminder of her parents’ cranky neighbor:
Mrs. Trumble.

Whatever it was that drew King to the old widow’s house might still hold true so she had to check, though if Mrs. Trumble had seen him first, King may well be on his way to the pound at this very moment. A quick turn down Spottswood took her to the two-story white clapboard house at the corner of Patterson, the scene of King’s worst crime to date. It looked quiet, with no sign of the dog or Mrs. Trumble. That could be good or bad. It was a toss-up.

Slowing down, Harley debated stopping and knocking on the door. Mrs. Trumble had taken out a restraining order on Yogi the month before, but it was restricted only to him and Diva and not to her. All because of that damned demented dog and a ’59 Chevy. Who’d have thought a dog could do so much damage in such a short time? Those old cars were built like tanks, even the seats, but King had been accidentally locked inside Mrs. Trumble’s garage with no way out and had made himself a nest in the Chevy’s back seat, tearing up most of the upholstery. Afterward, Mrs. Trumble had met Yogi on the sidewalk with a rake, and the problem escalated from there. Now there was a restraining order and ill will that made the two blocks between the houses seem much closer.

Still .
 . . what would it hurt to ask the old lady if she’d seen King?

“What the hell do you want?”
Mrs. Trumble greeted her through the screened door, and Harley dredged up a smile that she hoped was placating.

“Uh, I just thought I’d ask if you’ve seen my father’s dog, as he’s—”

“
No
.” Mrs. Trumble glared at her over the top of her rimless glasses. “And you tell your father that I’m calling the cops on him.”

Harley took a step back. “Why would you do that? I’m just looking for King, and—”

Shaking with fury, Mrs. Trumble fumbled with the door latch, hand quivering and gnarled fingers plucking at the metal hook. The door popped open and Harley leaped back as stiff yellow broom straws poked at her. The old lady’s white hair frizzed wildly around her head, and her eyes were narrowed and bright blue behind her bifocals.

“All that money,” she screeched, “I’m gonna sue!”

“All right, all right,” Harley said hastily, and retreated across the yard and toward her car parked at the curb. “Jeez, it’s not like Yogi didn’t pay you for the damages.”

When it looked like Mrs. Trumble intended to follow her with the broom, she got into her car and slammed the door, hitting the electric locks. Amazing how much agility and energy little old ladies could have. Age hadn’t slowed Mrs. Trumble down any—she looked like exercise guru Richard Simmons if he dressed in a blue flowered house dress and clunky, sensible shoes.

Mrs. Trumble apparently intended to be sure Harley didn’t linger. She whacked the Toyota with the broom a few times, just to speed Harley on her way. Crazy old bat.

“You tell your father I’m gonna call the cops on him,” Mrs. Trumble yelled as Harley got the car started, “and then he’ll be sorry he messed with me.”

The car lurched forward as she shoved it into first gear, and she took the corner so fast the jogger on the curb was just a blur. She saw no sign of King in the two blocks to her parents’ house on Douglass, and by the time she parked out front, it had occurred to her that Mrs. Trumble seemed too irate to still be griping about her now refurbished car. Had something else happened?

Yogi just blinked at her when she asked him that question. His worried green eyes went wide and innocent. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh God,” Harley said, and tossed her backpack to an overstuffed chair. “I have a feeling you know very well what I mean. Did you violate the restraining order?”

Yogi spread his arms out at his sides. “Now Harley, why would I go over there?”

Hands on her hips, she stared hard at him. Tall, rangy, with a potbelly not very well hidden under a ragged tee shirt that said
Flower Power
over a screen-print of marijuana plants, her father still resembled the cartoon bear of Jellystone Park fame for which he’d been nicknamed by his peers some time in the sixties. Shabby sandals and a pair of cutoff jeans that brushed his knobby knees completed his customary attire. Gray-streaked brown hair framed his angular face, short on top, long on the sides and with a ponytail down the back. Stylish.

“I don’t know,” Harley said, “why
would
you go there? Looking for King, maybe?”

Yogi raked a hand through his hair so that it stood up atop his head like a rooster’s comb. “Well, I
was
out looking for him yesterday, but that was before we got the letter this morning.”

Diva appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. Tiny bells tinkled on her long skirts, and her pale blond hair was pulled back and held in twin ponytails by strips of ribbon edged with tiny bells. At fifty-two, Deirdre “Diva” Davidson was still a classical beauty, with high cheekbones and a straight, slim nose. She looked like Bo Derek and acted like Sylvia Browne. And her wide, cornflower blue eyes also had some magical power to render Harley motionless. How daunting.

“It’s true, Harley,” she said. Her husky voice drifted across the living room cluttered with balls of yarn, half-finished dream catchers, burning incense, and chunks of crystal and wire atop tables and the slipcovered couch.
Hound Dog
by Elvis played on their CD player. Yogi must be really stressing. An Elvis fanatic, even his dog was named after the late singer, King referring to Elvis’s nickname as The King. Now Yogi played his favorite Elvis song while Diva added from her pose in the doorway, “King’s been missing since yesterday. I sense darkness, anger, and even .
 . .
danger.”

Melodramatic to the core, that was Diva.

“All of that follows King wherever he goes,” Harley said flatly. “The dog is a menace. I’m amazed no one’s shot him yet.”

“This is different. He’s been abducted this time.”

Diva glided toward her. It was spooky how she could do that, and how her naturally husky voice could get even lower, blending a tinge of mystery like Harrison Ford in drag. She stopped in front of Harley and held up a folded sheet of paper and an envelope.

“All right. Let me see the letter.” When Diva held it out, Harley took the sheet of typing paper and flipped it open, expecting a notice from the city animal shelter. Crude letters cut out of magazines and newsprint met her startled gaze:

BrINg WHaT YOU KnOw We WaNT Or ThE DoG diEs

Do iT Or YoU GEt YoUR DOg BAcK A LItTLE At a TimE

A huge clump of black and white dog hair clung to some of the pasted letters. “Oh, this is stupid,” Harley said irritably. “It must be some kind of kid’s prank. What do you have that anyone could possibly want?”

“Nothing.” Distress mixed with anger in Yogi’s voice, and he flapped his arms in the air in frustration. “There’s no reason for anyone to take my dog.”

While she could think of a dozen different reasons, Harley stuck to diplomacy. “Did you see who left this letter? Where’d you find it?”

“It was in the mailbox on the front gate,” Diva said, “but I don’t think the mailman left it.”

“Well, he’d certainly have a strong motivation to see King gone since he gets chased every time he delivers the mail,” Harley pointed out.

“It’s the cheese,” Yogi said indignantly. “He’s always delivering some kind of Cheese of the Month Club to old man Burbage down the street, and King can smell it in his bag.”

“Still, he’s had to Mace King twice just to deliver your mail. Why do you think the post office no longer delivers to the front porch like they used to? Never mind—that’s not the issue here. This may be a prank, or someone’s trying to make a point. Did you talk to the neighbors? You know Mrs. Shipley sees, knows, and tells everything that happens within a two mile radius.”