paper.”
“Nah. I bet she’s too hot on the trail of lost dogs to even scope out the news.”
“Don’t forget. She’s addicted to the news and gory cable cop shows. I bet she knows as much as you about Darlene and her family, if not more.”
The lurching in my stomach? Well, it had taken a break, but now that he mentioned Bella, her hunger for news, and her unusual absence, it started to buck and roll with a vengeance.
“Gotta go,” I said. “See ya.”
I slid into my Honda, cranked it up, and pulled away from Tedd’s office. I had a nutty neighbor to track down.
Among other things.
Like Cissy’s financial situation. Anything and everything about the Weikert brothers. The skeletons in Dr. Díaz’s closet. And the perfect handwoven rug for Tedd’s waiting room.
All that while I dodged Dutch’s suspicion radar.
It wouldn’t be easy. But then again, nothing good comes all that easy. At least not to me. But still . . .
A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
The only reaction I got when I rang Bella’s doorbell was the maniacal meows of her two beasts. How a woman can wind up with two identical feral felines, each a potential clone of the other, is beyond me. I was a witness to Faux Bali’s original appearance, but I still find it hard to believe the universe can encompass more than one Bali H’ai.
It’s not as if Bella picked them out at the same cabbage patch on the same day, spawned from the same parental gene pool. No. She adopted the two at different times, several years apart, and, from what she says, in two different states of the nation.
What’s worse, both monsters have it in for me. And while I’m fine with cats as a rule, I don’t love these particular two. So I didn’t hang around Bella’s door for long.
She had to be off on a wild pet chase—I hoped. I was free to snoop . . . er . . . investigate.
And that’s how I wound up at Weikert’s Euro-Import Auto Sales. My Honda’s only a couple of years old, and I don’t want to replace it, no matter how many bucks Marge left me. But I am interested in foreign cars.
Mildly.
Minusculely.
Okay, okay. Hardly at all. But since I don’t know a thing about them, I can honestly say there’s much for me to learn. Which is what I told Tommy Weikert when he slithered out of his office.
His outfit looked just like the one of the other day, different only in color and fit—these pants bore pleats over his melon-shaped paunch.
“Hey! I know you,” he bellowed with all the charm of a hungry cobra over the million-decibel Muzak. “You’re the decorator. Too bad about my mom, huh? You didn’t get the job after all.”
Oh, Tommy charmed me, all right. He elicits the same fascination you experience during a horror movie, when you know something awful is about to happen, when you know you don’t want to see it happen but you can’t take your eyes away until it does.
Poor Darlene.
“I see you drive a Honda,” he said with disdain. “I guess you’ve realized it’s time to move up.”
“Ah . . . I’m not sure.”
“You will be after today.”
Tommy shouldn’t count chickens so soon. “We’ll see.”
He swept his shiny, maroon-satin-covered arm in a broad arc. “Anything in particular you like?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about this kind of car . . .”
And he was off. I followed him, free to let my attention roam, to scope out the place, to take note of anything and everything my heart desired. The guy loves the sound of his voice.
But there wasn’t much to notice. The showroom, while spiffy and spit-and-polish, was a Sahara but for the two of us. Tommy’s inventory encompassed all of six vehicles: two Mercedes-Benzes, one a convertible, the other a traditional boxy sedan; one lime green Jaguar with a cigar-smoke-scented interior; a beige Beemer; a black Rolls; and some red Italian creation with a name without enough loop to catch on the hook part of my Velcro brain.
A tinny rendition of “Disco
“Nah. I bet she’s too hot on the trail of lost dogs to even scope out the news.”
“Don’t forget. She’s addicted to the news and gory cable cop shows. I bet she knows as much as you about Darlene and her family, if not more.”
The lurching in my stomach? Well, it had taken a break, but now that he mentioned Bella, her hunger for news, and her unusual absence, it started to buck and roll with a vengeance.
“Gotta go,” I said. “See ya.”
I slid into my Honda, cranked it up, and pulled away from Tedd’s office. I had a nutty neighbor to track down.
Among other things.
Like Cissy’s financial situation. Anything and everything about the Weikert brothers. The skeletons in Dr. Díaz’s closet. And the perfect handwoven rug for Tedd’s waiting room.
All that while I dodged Dutch’s suspicion radar.
It wouldn’t be easy. But then again, nothing good comes all that easy. At least not to me. But still . . .
A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
The only reaction I got when I rang Bella’s doorbell was the maniacal meows of her two beasts. How a woman can wind up with two identical feral felines, each a potential clone of the other, is beyond me. I was a witness to Faux Bali’s original appearance, but I still find it hard to believe the universe can encompass more than one Bali H’ai.
It’s not as if Bella picked them out at the same cabbage patch on the same day, spawned from the same parental gene pool. No. She adopted the two at different times, several years apart, and, from what she says, in two different states of the nation.
What’s worse, both monsters have it in for me. And while I’m fine with cats as a rule, I don’t love these particular two. So I didn’t hang around Bella’s door for long.
She had to be off on a wild pet chase—I hoped. I was free to snoop . . . er . . . investigate.
And that’s how I wound up at Weikert’s Euro-Import Auto Sales. My Honda’s only a couple of years old, and I don’t want to replace it, no matter how many bucks Marge left me. But I am interested in foreign cars.
Mildly.
Minusculely.
Okay, okay. Hardly at all. But since I don’t know a thing about them, I can honestly say there’s much for me to learn. Which is what I told Tommy Weikert when he slithered out of his office.
His outfit looked just like the one of the other day, different only in color and fit—these pants bore pleats over his melon-shaped paunch.
“Hey! I know you,” he bellowed with all the charm of a hungry cobra over the million-decibel Muzak. “You’re the decorator. Too bad about my mom, huh? You didn’t get the job after all.”
Oh, Tommy charmed me, all right. He elicits the same fascination you experience during a horror movie, when you know something awful is about to happen, when you know you don’t want to see it happen but you can’t take your eyes away until it does.
Poor Darlene.
“I see you drive a Honda,” he said with disdain. “I guess you’ve realized it’s time to move up.”
“Ah . . . I’m not sure.”
“You will be after today.”
Tommy shouldn’t count chickens so soon. “We’ll see.”
He swept his shiny, maroon-satin-covered arm in a broad arc. “Anything in particular you like?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about this kind of car . . .”
And he was off. I followed him, free to let my attention roam, to scope out the place, to take note of anything and everything my heart desired. The guy loves the sound of his voice.
But there wasn’t much to notice. The showroom, while spiffy and spit-and-polish, was a Sahara but for the two of us. Tommy’s inventory encompassed all of six vehicles: two Mercedes-Benzes, one a convertible, the other a traditional boxy sedan; one lime green Jaguar with a cigar-smoke-scented interior; a beige Beemer; a black Rolls; and some red Italian creation with a name without enough loop to catch on the hook part of my Velcro brain.
A tinny rendition of “Disco
Similar Books
