“You’re really …?”
“Lesbian is the word you are looking for, I think. The same as you but the female version of it. And, yes, I am one. At least, I always thought that I was. Now I’m not so sure. A good little lesbian is supposed to hate the mere thought of being with a man. But once I got to thinking about you, well, I have to admit that I found the idea exciting. That was just in theory. In actual practice,” she rolled her eyes and grinned, “it really was a lot of fun.”
She abandoned his left nipple and sat upright beside him. “You didn’t seem to have any trouble getting interested in me either.”
This was a good time to correct her past misimpressions. On the other hand, why destroy a perfectly good delusion? If the girl wanted to think she’d accomplished a first, and maybe saved some innocent kid in the bargain, why the hell not? “Not only got interested,” he said, “I think I could be again.”
“Really?” The thought did not appear to make her cringe.
“Throw a lip-lock on that dead soldier down there and see what happens,” he suggested.
Clarice laughed. And bent her head to his middle, enveloping him in the wet heat of her mouth.
Nope, he had no trouble at all rising to the occasion.
Half an hour or so later he stretched, utterly worn out now but not minding that in the least, and reached for a cheroot. Barely in time he remembered Clarice’s prohibition against smoking, and put the cigar back into a pocket. “Damn shame you don’t live here alone,” he complained, seriously wanting the taste of a good smoke now in the aftermath of such a good blow job.
“It’s lucky for me I have a place to live at all. This isn’t my home, actually. I’m just a poor relation.”
“Oh?”
“This is my Aunt Edith’s house. You remember her, I’m sure.”
“I do?”
“She owns the ice cream parlor. You saw her yesterday at the store.”
“The older woman with the hair like slicked-back steel wool?”
“If she ever heard you say that she’d probably grab a knife and try to cut your balls off. She just might be able to manage it, too. But, yes, that’s her.”
“She isn’t …?”
“A lesbian too? Of course she is. All of us girls are.”
“All of …?”
“Me, my cousin Barb … she’s my other aunt’s daughter though I don’t know how my aunt Doris ever had a baby, hating men just as badly as Edith does … and my other cousin Louise. Louise is my mother’s brother’s daughter. My mom and her brother are all dead, of course. Only Doris is left now. And Herbert. But he doesn’t count.”
“No?”
“No. We never talk about Herbert. He’s the black sheep of the family.”
“Let me get this straight. Doris and all the rest of you girls are lesbians, and most of the family is dead, but you don’t talk about Herbert because he did something the rest of you are ashamed of. Is that right?”
“Pretty much so, yes.” She bent down and began licking a convenient nipple again but this time he was just too far gone to get much out of it. Although it did feel rather good, come to think of it.
“What the hell did Herbert do to deserve that?” he asked.
“Really, Longarm dear, we don’t like to talk about it. Does this feel good?”
“Better’n I woulda thought possible at this point.”
“What about this?”
“That’s even better.”
“And … this?”
“Oh, jeez. You better quit that or else.”
“Or else what?” There was a glimmer of impishly evil glee in her eyes when she asked that question.
“Well, uh …”
“And what about this?”
“I’ll be damned.”
“That may be true, dear. But not until I’ve had my fun again. Now hold still … no, lift your leg just a little so I can wriggle under … yes, like that … a little more, please hold still. Oh!”
She began to laugh with unabashed delight.
And Longarm, incredibly enough, began to respond, the dead returning slowly but inexorably to life one more time. He closed his eyes and let the girl have her way.
Chapter 28
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Layin’ down on the job,” Longarm answered. Which of course was considerably more true than Amos was ever likely to know.
“Well you went and missed the excitement.”
“Oh?”
“Our killer has been at it again. Or killers, as in more than one of them, which is more likely.”
“Who this time?”
“The town clerk.”
“James Deel?”
“I be damned,” Amos said. “For someone the townspeople won’t talk to, you seem to be pretty well-informed. Yeah, the man was Jim Deel. You know him, I take it?”
Longarm shook his head. “No, but that informant I told you about mentioned Deel as a possible suspect.”
“I think we can prob’ly strike him off the short list of suspects,” the scrawny Ranger drawled.
“How was he killed?”
“Same old deal. Somebody came a-tapping at his door. He opened it and, boom. Took one square in the face at a range so close the powder burn made him look like a raccoon.”
“Efficient,” Longarm said.
“Our boy, or boys, are good at what they do.”
“What time did all this happen?”
“Morning, this time. Just about dawn.”
“No witnesses, of course?”
“Not unless you count the wife, and she didn’t actually see anything. She was in the kitchen mixing up a batch of biscuit dough. She’s in hysterics now, thinking it’s all her fault. She said Deel was on his way out to the backhouse for his morning shit … well, that’s what she meant even if it isn’t quite the way she put it … and she’s the one, heard the knocking at the door and asked him to see who it was before he went out the other way. Said she had her hands all covered in flour or she would have gone and it would have been her dead instead of him.”
“I’m not so sure she’s right about that,” Longarm said.
“Chief Bender is trying to convince her. Hell, whoever it is who wants all these people dead wants them, not their families. If she’d gone to the door … and my guess is that the shooter was peeking in to make sure it was likely the right party would show up ready for slaughter … if she’d gone I bet it would have been somebody pretending to get the wrong house. Some excuse or other. He wouldn’t have shot the lady of the place anyway, I bet.”
“Or would have and then come in to finish the job properly. You never know. Whatever might have happened, she’s alive now and that’s a good thing. Any kids involved?”
“No kids.” Amos made a sour face. “I always hate it too when there’s kids left without a daddy. I guess it shouldn’t make any difference. Dead is dead. But I always think of it as being worse.”
Yeah.” Longarm fired up a fresh cheroot—he was making up for lost time now that he was out of Clarice’s house—and offered one to Amos, who declined. “You’ve found out an awful lot for a fella who isn’t supposed to be a cop.”
“Unlike you, my friend, I am a very sympathetic soul in Addington. The bereaved cousin and all that. So when I heard my dead cuz’s murderer struck again, I naturally hustled over there to see what was what. The chief and I get along just fine.”
“And Sergeant Braxton?”
“His balls aren’t the only things made of solid brass, you know. So is his brain. Solid from one ear clean through to the other. I don’t like that man. Don’t trust him. Neither does the major or I wouldn’t be here. The only problem is that he has a lot of powerful friends, and there is no clear evidence to use as an excuse to get rid of the son of a bitch.”
“So much for the camaraderie of brothers in arms, an’ all that dreary horseshit.”
“I feel toward Brass Braxton just about as kindly as you would to a deputy on the take. Okay?”
“I reckon that pretty well says it, all right,” Longarm agreed.