Dix is my nickname, of course. Short for … well, short because my mother is weird. When she named me, she did so … um, originally. I swear my late father must have been having a Frank Zappa flashback when he went along with her on that one. She actually told me once that she’d scoured every baby name book, every telephone book, every birth announcement in every newspaper she could get her hands on — all to make sure that my name was ‘one of a kind’. And it is.
Thanks, Mom.
At the age of five, I’d sworn her to secrecy on that name. I wanted to pinkie swear (it seemed appropriate), but she said a pinkie swear wasn’t real unless we did it over chocolate-frosted cupcakes and Mountain Dew. Then we had a burping contest. She won.
Yes, my mother is weird.
But to get to the point of this preamble, I’ve been called a lot of things besides Dix over the years. Dickhead had his favorites, Dixieshit of course being a most recent addition to the ever-growing list. My first boyfriend used to call me DixieDoo. I know — gag. But I was thirteen and in love. In my defense, I called him Pookieboo, which made the love poems easier to write. But even back then when I dubbed him Pookieboo, it was largely in case I needed to blackmail him at some future point to keep him quiet about DixieDoo. (Hey, I might have been young and in love, but I was always a realist.) And then there was “the girl”. That’s what the guys at the old detective agency used to call me. And let’s not forget the men I’ve busted the last six months of business. Oh, you’d better believe they all had colorful names for me.
Yet, what Ned Weatherby called me when he came home to find me scooting around from the back of his house, hell-bent on grabbing the real estate sign and getting my butt out of there, I’d never heard before. And sincerely hoped to never hear again.
+++
“Oh, go ahead, Dylan. Just do what you’ve got to do. Just get it over with.”
“No, I’m fine. Really.” He nodded firmly, resolutely, but I could see the strain on his face.
“Dylan, you’re about to explode. So just go ahead and—”
He didn’t need anymore coaxing.
He exploded, all right — with laughter.
And not with a manly ha ha chuckle or even a curled-lip snort. He collapsed on the motel-room bed with peels of helpless mirth. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes. He held onto his sides.
Did I mention he was rolling on the bed?
He’d seen the whole lovely scene unfold outside the Weatherby house as I’d made my hasty, and not so graceful exit.
“Oh, you vulture!”
That was the name that greeted me when I came barreling around to the front of the house. I stopped — or rather, skidded to a stop — in my high-heeled tracks.
Shit, shit, shit!
Ned was back. Back with grieving parents in tow. Right freaking in front of me! With mouth gaping open, he kept looking, first to me, then to the real estate agency sign I’d propped against the house. His parents had to have grabbed an earlier flight, one that hadn’t been available when Dylan had checked for me. Or maybe Ned had chartered a private plane.
His shocked parents gave me — that is to say, the dark haired, pink-sunglasses-wearing, tight-skirted real estate agent me — a look of utter disdain. Cockroach-on-the-dinner-plate revulsion.
“Who are you?” Ned demanded.
Wordlessly, I held the real estate sign up in front of me. Partly as a shield, and partly to hide Jennifer’s journal, which I’d tucked into the (ever more tight now — circulation slowly becoming non-existent) waistband of my skirt.
“Oh, you work for that Cartsell fellow, do you?”
“Yes.” After my initial squeak of an answer, I lowered my voice to what I liked to think of as my slow, breathy, lets-have-phone-sex voice. Not because I was feeling particularly sexy. But because, apparently, Ned hadn’t yet made me. True, the night we’d met, the night he’d found Jennifer dead, he’d been somewhat distracted. But even so very cleverly disguised as I was (God, I hoped I was cleverly disguised!), I wasn’t taking any chances. “Yes, that’s right, Mr. Weatherby.” I could literally feel the words purring in the back of my throat as I spoke. “I work for Mr. Bert Cartsell. And he—”
“Well, doesn’t that beat all! That son of a bitch just doesn’t give up, does he!” Ned’s face turned so red, it looked as if his head might explode. “That no-good, rotten, money-grubbing bastard!”
‘Breathe, breathe’ I silently coached. To both of us.
“Mr. Weatherby.” I took my phone-sex voice a notch lower, added a deep-south accent. “I assure you that Mr. Cartsell—”
“I told him to stay the hell away!”
Oh shit! Of all the real estate agents in Marport City, this was the one from whom Craig had to steal the sign!
Ned continued to rant, “I’ve no intention of selling this house. Not now, not ever, and not for any amount of money. The first day Jennifer’s obituary was in the paper, you goddamned people start nosing around, trying to make a buck off my wife’s murder. Well let me tell you, missy, I’ve had enough.” Ned opened his jacket. For the briefest of moments, I thought he was going to haul out a gun. Worse luck. He hauled out his cell phone. “I’m calling that Cartsell son of a bitch! No, wait, I’ll call Luanne! She’ll get his boss on the phone. She won’t let him get away with this. She’ll—”
“M-Mr. Weatherby,” I stammered. “I really don’t think—”
I could tell by the flick of his thumb, he’d pushed number one on the speed dial. And as he waited, and waited, he pointed a demanding finger at me. “And you stand right here.”
Not in this lifetime.
There was no way in hell I was going to maneuver down the walkway, past Ned and his parents (his mother’s walker looked dangerous, like a weapon now, in her grip), so I veered off across the rain-soaked lawn, making a mad dash for the street.
Bad idea.
My spiked heels sank to the hilt in the soggy lawn, causing my hips to move in ways hips weren’t meant to. After a few more heel-sinking, Frankenstein lurches, I stepped right out of them (my shoes not my hips). Barefoot now, I pulled Jennifer’s journal from the waistband of the skirt, clutched it to me with one hand, hiked the skirt up to my ass with the other hand, and with the red blazer fanning out behind me, I ran like hell to Mrs. Presley’s Hyundai. I peeled out of there so quickly you’d think I was trying to qualify for the Indie 500.
Well, at least Dylan was getting a good laugh out of it now.
“Asshat,” I mumbled, loud enough for him to hear me. I faked annoyance even as I bit down on my own grin.
“Sorry,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “But all I can see is you trying to run across that lawn in that skin-tight skirt and those high heels. The look on your face when the shoes stuck in the lawn! Omigod, it was priceless. And when you hiked up your skirt and really ran….” He started laughing again, so hard the bed shook.
“Look who’s talking.” I sat on the red sheets beside him, giving him a poke (okay, a damn good knuckle jab) in the ribs. “You were a sight yourself, Boy Wonder. Creeping along on your hands and knees, peeking through the neighbors’ bushes.”
The laughter subsided, but the smile remained. “Oh, you caught that, did you?”
“Ha!” My turn to tease. “How could I not catch that! All six foot four of you, crawling along the length of the hedge like some kind of long-legged, studly bug or something.”
As soon as the words passed my lips — the very freakin’ millisecond — I realized what I’d said. Studly. Should I try a quick recover and say ‘ugly bug’? Like, five times really fast. That would sound intelligent!