Okay, even I was beginning to wonder.
Chapter 11
You know, my high school guidance counselor, Mr. LeCarrier, had suggested I be a funeral home director. Or maybe a chiropractor. “How about orthodontics?” he’d said. Of course, he suggested the latter to everyone who managed to scrape by in science. The standing joke was that he was hoping at least one of us would become an orthodontist and remember him fondly by the time his six kids needed braces. As for the other suggestions for me, Mother and I had both laughed. And I’d rejected them all. Too boring, I’d told him.
A nice quiet life, Mr. LeCarrier suggested, would be perfect for a girl like me.
That’s what he told all the female students.
Well, this girl had gone into a different line of work. Dangerous, exciting, and anything but quiet.
But right now, I was beginning to think Mr. LeCarrier might have known his ass from his elbow after all. Right now, boring and quiet sounded pretty damned appealing.
Yes, she was one up on me. No, she was two … wait, make that … oh, fuck it. Let’s just say she was a few up on me. The Flashing Fashion Queen — a.k.a. impersonator of the late Mrs. Jennifer Weatherby, a.k.a. My Nemesis from Hell — had me by the short and curlies.
She was framing me big time. Hell, she was trying to kill me big time.
Okay, she hadn’t done so great with the killing me part, but the frame job … man, it was brilliant. Calling the office to get me out to the car (I now had a pretty good idea what the thirty three hang ups were about), putting the murder weapon into my hands, and tipping off the police. It was a masterpiece of timing.
Yeah, she was damned clever.
And I was getting damned worried.
+++
The police cars screeched to a stop, arrayed strategically around me, their blue and red bar lights flashing. Not having a death wish, I didn’t wait for an order to be barked over a bullhorn. I immediately raised my hands high, stepped away from my car, then slowly bent to deposit the gun on the asphalt. Still moving slowly, I stood and kicked the Glock toward the closest car.
The doors on the two cruisers popped open and the officers slid into position behind the safety of their doors, weapons drawn and trained on me. A curse dragged my attention to Detective Richard Head, who had just heaved himself from his unmarked Taurus. Unlike the patrol cops, he didn’t unholster his weapon. Nor did he hide behind the door of his car. Rather, he strode right up to me.
“What the fuck are you doing, Dix?”
“I’m counting my limbs, dammit, because someone just tried to deprive me of a few of them.” In a rush, I told him about the attempt on my life. Told him about the crazed imposter who just tried to run me down. And told him if he’d get his ugly ass in gear, he might catch her!
To his credit, Detective Head instructed the officers to stand down. He also sent a patrol car in the direction I indicated, and radioed in the vehicle description and plates I’d supplied. Of course, I would have felt better about these developments if I thought he believed me. Or if he hadn’t put me in bracelets.
“Standard operating procedure, until we sort this out,” he said. “Now, would you like to explain why you were waving a handgun around the parking lot?”
“Sure. Right after you explain why half the police force is here staring at me when some maniac woman just tried to run me down.”
“We got a 9-1-1 call about a maniac woman waving a gun around in a parking lot. Now, spill. What’s going on here?”
Which is when Dylan Foreman showed up. He pulled up on his motorcycle right in the middle of Detective Richard Head’s grilling of/yelling at me, as I tried to explain what had happened. And as I tried to explain why he’d come upon me in the possession of the gun that had most likely — shit, shit, shit — killed Jennifer Weatherby.
I suppose I could have tried to pass the gun off as my own, claiming I’d whipped it out in self defense after that maniac tried to mow me down with her car, but under the circumstances, it didn’t seem advisable to play fast and loose with the facts. Especially since an officer had already collected the gun and stuck it in an evidence bag. Especially since they would very shortly know it was not registered to me.
No question about it. Things looked bleak. Even Dylan, always my cheerleader, couldn’t quite hide the depth of his concern. Despite all that was going on around us, I felt the tightening lump in my throat.
“Just a setback, Dix,” Dylan whispered to me. “Nothing we can’t handle.”
Come on, Dix, suck it up. I nodded an affirmative you bet. It was the best I could manage.
With a nod/grunt from Dickhead, soon there were two police officers from Ident doing a cursory search of my car. I could probably have stopped them; they had no warrant. On the other hand, they did have me brandishing a gun in a public parking lot, which no doubt gave them fairly broad scope. On yet another hand (clearly, we are dealing with a six-armed Mahakala here), if my nemesis had been in my car, she might have left trace evidence behind. If so, I wanted the cops to find it with their high tech searching gear. So I let them have a look.
Moments later, my faced flamed. And no, I’m not talking about the humiliation of standing there in handcuffs while cops searched my car. They may have been officers of the law, but they were still men. Thus, when they drew out the fake boobs I kept stuffed under the seat, the whole place went up in snickers. Eyebrows soared over the fake mustache I’d left in the glove compartment from my stint as Maintenance Man. All they needed now was to find my blow up doll (a.k.a. Betty, the decoy), and I’m sure they would have pissed themselves laughing. Thankfully, Betty was standing in the closet of my office, behind my truck-driver flannel shirts and nun’s outfit.
The first officer was pulling little plastic evidence bags out of his pocket, while the second officer was tweezering things into them. I rolled my eyes as they placed a month-old wrapper from a DQ burger into a bag. Right. Like that was going to have a mountain of clues on it.
“Got a hair here, Detective,” one of the cops called to Dickhead. He held the tweezers up like a prize ribbon, as if we could actually see from that distance. “It’s blond.”
“Well, duh. I’m blond!” I called over.
“Shut up, Dix.” Detective Head returned his attention to the men in my car. “Bag it, Edson,” he said. “Bag every damn shred of evidence you get. No, wait, even better. Call dispatch and have them send a hook. We’ll haul that piece of crap in and have forensics give it a thorough going over.”
Dylan shifted beside me. “You can’t just— “
“It’s okay, Dylan,” I said. “Let them.”
The way I figured it, the Flashing Fashion Queen had already planted the biggie, the literal smoking gun, and nothing else they found could trump that. I hoped. But I had to risk it, in the hope the CSIs would find some evidence against her. The cops already had my DNA from the night Jennifer was killed when Detective Head had scraped it from my cheek. So hopefully, something else would turn up pointing a finger toward the real killer.
“Do a good job, boys,” I called over to the officers in the car. “That car hasn’t had a good cleaning in a dog’s age. Be sure to get the vacuum deep down in the seats. And under the floor mats. And it’s kind of grungy there in the cup holder — too many spilled lattes. I’d wear gloves if I were you.”