Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries) (22 page)

For a minute he didn’t say anything. Harley wondered if it bothered him, but even if she’d wanted to, there was no way to undo what she’d said. After a moment of silence, she figured he’d had time to get over the shock and said, “I’m not usually the kiss and tell type. I just kinda forgot for a minute that you know him.”

“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”

His grin let her know he wasn’t that bothered. Another mark on the plus side. Damn. If the past was any indication, right around now she’d find out his divorce wasn’t final yet or his mother wanted him home by midnight to massage her feet. She hated waiting for the other shoe to drop. The suspense could get unbearable.

“Has it occurred to you,” she said to change the subject, “that Harry Gordon’s car wasn’t at the shop when he was murdered? How did he get there? And who has it now? Dead men don’t usually drive.”

“Probably the murderer. Or it’s been ditched somewhere, sold to a chop shop and is in ten different counties by now. The police haven’t found it yet. But they will.”

“If it was the murderer, that lets Aunt Darcy off the hook, wouldn’t you think? She can’t drive two cars at once.”

“And she can’t account for all her time, either. She could have come back for it. Taken a taxi out there. Gotten someone to pick it up. Gave it to a crack dealer.”

“Now you’re bordering on the ridiculous, but I get your point.” Obviously, the police had already investigated all those possibilities. There had to be another explanation. One that she liked a lot better. One that didn’t make it so plausible Aunt Darcy could have murdered Harry.

Harley settled back against the car seat and tried not to think about it. The night was gorgeous, not to mention the man sitting beside her. The top was down on the car, the smell of magnolia blossoms was heady, and Diva had said everything would turn out all right in the end. Right or not, Harley was going to go with that promise for the evening.

Numbers was full of gorgeous women who weren’t. Lucky for her that her self-esteem was pretty healthy, Harley thought, or she’d feel extremely intimidated by these
ladies
who’d been born with a Y chromosome. How could men look as damn good as women? It didn’t seem fair somehow.

“Hey baby,” a familiar voice said right behind her, and Harley turned, then jumped back when confronted by what looked very much like Madonna in her Viking queen costume. Silky blond hair that fell around bare shoulders framed a carefully made-up face, complete with the tiny mole at the corner of red lips. He wore black leather, fishnet hose, and carried a short whip, and the bra had huge brass brads along the straps, band, and the tips of very pointed cups.

“Good God, Tootsie, those things are dangerous. You could poke someone’s eyes out.”

He laughed and wiggled the sharply-pointed bra cups. “Like ’em?”

“They’d make great oil funnels. You look very Goth. Is that
cleavage
?”

“Of course, dahling,” Tootsie said with a laugh. “A little bit of false advertising never hurts. So, is this the hot boyfriend?”

He was looking behind her, surveying Morgan through long false eyelashes that did nothing to hide his obvious assessment.

“Oh. Yeah. Mike Morgan, this is Tootsie Rowell, Madonna’s evil twin sister.”

“No, I’m Madonna’s
better
twin sister.” Tootsie shook hands with Morgan, and it was odd seeing him look like a woman and act like a man as he made eye contact and offered a firm hand grip. He seemed to size Morgan up, but Morgan was doing the same. Harley tried not to roll her eyes. Even men in bras had that male territorial thing going on, it seemed.

“Okay, now that the introductions are over,” she said in a chirpy voice meant to convey reassurance to both men, “show us where you want us to sit.”

Their version of arm wrestling ended, and Tootsie smiled. “Very nice.” He looked back at Harley. “There’s been a wardrobe malfunction—don’t get excited, it’s nothing like Janet Jackson’s—so instead of wearing my black velvet evening gown and long white gloves, I’ve dressed as the Viking queen. It just seems so very appropriate anyway, don’t you think?”

He seated them at a table in front and ordered them a complimentary beer. Then with a promise to return after the show, he disappeared into the back. Harley watched him go, admiring how good he looked in spike heels and the black leather bikini studded with brass buttons.

“Nice guy,” Morgan commented, then frowned and said, “Or nice girl. Which does he prefer?”

“He’s not sensitive about it. He’s come to terms with his lifestyle and doesn’t really care what everyone else thinks. He’s very well-adjusted.”

“That’s good to know. Not many in his position are so lucky.”

This was totally weird. A conversation about the lifestyle of a cross-dresser and gay adult in current society was not something she’d ever envisioned having with a man like Morgan. Or anyone else. Thankfully, the show started and four black guys dressed as the Supremes in soft rainbow shades of chiffon came on-stage and did a great job with
My Baby Love
, then segued into
Where Did Our Love Go
before relinquishing the stage to Tootsie-Madonna.

With his blond wig, Viking queen costume, and alto vocals, Tootsie was a hit, as he’d promised. Just like in Madonna’s video, some well-built young men in tight black leather pants hefted Tootsie onto their shoulders and carried him around while he belted out
Material Girl.

Harley sighed. “He’s got great legs. And he might be wearing the wrong costume for that song, but he’s much prettier than Madonna.”

Morgan just grinned.

After the show and Tootsie’s standing ovation, he came to sit down at the table in front, still in drag. “You were great,” Harley said. “And I mean that sincerely. You’re fantastic.”

“I don’t have Madonna’s range, but I do all right.” Tootsie lifted a beer. “Here’s to all our friendships, may they endure everything that life throws at us.”

They clinked beer bottles together and Harley said, “
Sláinte.
”

“Did you just say something naughty?” Tootsie asked with a lift of his carefully plucked eyebrow.

“No, it’s Gaelic for ‘to your health.’. My great-grandmother taught it to me years ago. She likes to take a wee nip now and then of what she refers to as her beverage, but I happen to know it’s a quart bottle of beer. PBR. Warm. Hidden between the washer and dryer in her laundry room.”

“PBR?”

“Pabst Blue Ribbon.”

Morgan looked amazed. “Do they still make that?”

“They do.”

Laughing, he clinked his half-full beer against her second one. “Then slaw—what?”

“Slawn-cha m’hor, cor-deh,” she enunciated, “or great health, friends.”

“
Sleinte cairde!
” they all said in unison, and Harley smiled happily. The evening was going along much better than she’d dared hope. Warmed by friendship and two Coronas, she felt almost giddy.

It was bound to go downhill.

A little past midnight, when the club had thinned out some and even those unemployed were considering going home, Harley made one last trip to the bathroom before they left. The lights had gone out in the long hallway. It was pretty dim except for the glow from the bar and an exit sign, but she had already made a few trips and figured she could find it even in the dark.

One glance in the mottled bathroom mirror was enough to convince her that four beers were past her limit; she looked like something out of Fright Night, with her hair in wispy spikes on one side, limp on the other. And she had what she referred to as Christmas Eyes, green orbs surrounded by bloodshot red. Yep. Time to call it a night.

Just as she was getting her jeans pulled back up and tucking the ends of her tee shirt into the waistband, the bathroom light went out. “Hey! I’m still in here!”

Man, these guys closed early. Most bars stayed open until two, the cutoff time for serving alcohol. Muttering to herself, she fumbled with the latch on the stall door, then eased out and felt her way along the tiled wall. She bumped into the sink and ricocheted off the opposite wall, swearing loudly as she careened toward the door. She felt like a pool ball. That thought made her giggle.

“Six-ball in the corner pocket,” she sang out as she wrenched open the bathroom door, and ran right into a solid wall of muscle. Before she had time to apologize, a smelly bag was yanked over her head and her arms were pinned in a viselike grip as she was dragged a few feet down the hallway and out into the alley. She knew that last only because she felt a warm breeze on her bare arms and heard the noisy rattle of the central air unit that cooled the club. There was something else, too—a car motor close by. It sounded like it had bad gas, the pistons knocking loudly.

Whoever had her meant to put her in that car, and she was just as determined not to go as he was to force her into it. It was a fierce struggle. Somehow, Harley got her legs up, bent, and one foot braced on each side of the open door, resisting his efforts to wedge her inside. Breathing hard, he swore at her in an unfamiliar language that didn’t need an interpreter to understand, then grabbed at her legs. To do that, he had to release one of her arms. She made instant use of that flaw in his plan, and blindly grabbed for a handful of his clothes to pull him off-balance.

Fortunately, she’d grabbed a handful of his anatomy that effected her immediate release. He made a high-pitched sound like a loose fan belt and dropped her, and she gave a hard twist of her wrist just for good measure. His family jewels were probably missing a few stones by now, she figured as she crawled away and stumbled to her feet, ripping the bag from her head to yell for help.

That was when someone smacked her on the side of the head and she saw stars explode in front of her eyes. A veritable meteor shower of them. She hit the ground in the alley hard, felt her palms scrape on asphalt, and heard bells ringing and drums thumping loudly.

Music? How lovely . . .
Unable to move, she just lay there staring up at the stars rotating in the sky like pinwheels.

Then someone bent over her, squeezing her cheeks together and peering into her eyes. “Hey, are you all right? Talk to me, honey. Focus . . . that’s right, both eyes looking in the same direction at once, now.”

A face slowly came into focus. She blinked. Diana Ross? “Why’d you break up the Supremes?”

Diana laughed and said to someone else nearby, “She’s coming around. She’s just not making much sense yet.”

“Trust me, she doesn’t make much sense when she
hasn’t
been hit in the head,” a familiar voice said. “I’ve never met anyone who can’t even go to the bathroom without getting into some kind of trouble.”

That would be Morgan
, Harley thought hazily.
He sounds upset.

While Diana Ross helped her sit up, Tootsie came back from the mouth of the alley. He was breathing hard like he’d been running. “I couldn’t catch him. She okay?”

“Except for being hit in the head, she’s just fine. Maybe it knocked some sense into her, though that’s not likely.” Morgan knelt in front of her, examining her head.

Sounding sympathetic, Tootsie said, “I can’t believe someone tried to kidnap her. That’s never happened here before.”

“It was only a matter of time with her running loose. Look at her. She’ll have a huge lump on the side of her head. She’s lucky that’s all she got.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Harley said crossly. “I can still hear, y’know.”

If Morgan hadn’t looked so worried, she might have been really mad at him, but the look he gave her said a lot more than his words. “Can you get up?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I think.”

But she was so wobbly he had to grab her before she hit the pavement again. He slid an arm around her back and held her against his side, while Diana Ross fluttered around with his hands outstretched saying, “She looks like she’s going to pass out.”