Mean Woman Blues (17 page)

The silence was nearly intolerable until she heard someone laughing. Evidently, the laugher was inside the garage. She and Cramer returned to the front as did the two other officers. They also reported a gate.

They modified the plan slightly and put it into action. Skip approached the front and listened for a moment. Again, she heard laughing, loud talking. She banged on the door. “Excuse me. Excuse me, is anybody here?”

Inside, everything went quiet.

“Listen, I’ve got an emergency. Mrs. D’Amico’s been in a wreck. She’s gonna be okay, but she’s unconscious, and I really need…” She was going to say “…someone to give blood,” but the garage door began to go up. Quickly, she and two uniforms rolled under it while LeDoux shouted: “You are under arrest. Put your hands on your heads. You are under arrest.”

Skip came out of the roll kneeling, her hand on her gun. What she saw almost made her laugh: three horror-stricken thieves, slowly, very slowly raising their hands. One was in the splashy process of wetting his pants. “That’s it. Come on; take it easy now. Just cooperate, and nobody’ll get hurt.”

She heard Cramer behind her, making a similar croon. She got to her feet. The garage door was completely open now, and the other officers had poured in. Quickly, they patted down the three men and handcuffed them, while Skip assessed the situation.

Evidently, the men were simply sitting around having a couple of beers and a cigarette. The statue from the cemetery was still here, still wrapped in quilts, and there were quite a few others as well. But not as many as Skip had hoped.

She opened a door at the back of the structure, felt for a light, and stepped into the backyard. The sight she beheld was more beautiful than moonlight on the ocean— the biggest trove of stolen angels ever assembled, she was willing to bet Angels and madonnas and saints, iron crosses and gates, even a deer. She recognized quite a few pieces from pictures people had brought in, photos of their angels in happier times.

“Hey, LeDoux,” she said. “Hagerty. Check this out.”

Hagerty said, “Holy shit!”

LeDoux settled for “Jesus God Almighty.”

Skip called Abasolo again, and this time her own voice tingled with jubilation. “Mission accomplished. We’ve got enough angels here for our own little heaven on Earth. It’s going to take days to move all this stuff.”

“Yes! All
right,
Langdon! Like they say in the movies, ‘You de man.’”

“Gee, thanks.” She braced herself for a night of crime scene photographers. After that, she planned to seal the scene and post guards. Morning would be early enough to find a place to put the art and start the transfer process.

It was nearly one a.m. when she used her key to Steve’s house and climbed into bed with him. He woke up, startled, but not so startled he couldn’t pull her tight against him. It was the first time they’d been together since Napoleon’s death. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Well, you got me.”

He looked at the time. “You have an earlier date or something?”

“Bust,” she said. “Got the Angel Gang.”

He sat up. “The cemetery thieves? You got ’em?”

She smiled with her lips closed, trying for modesty. “It’s the kind of thing makes me horny.”

“You got ’em?” Steve took childish pleasure in her small triumphs. “Way to go! We’ve got to celebrate.” He had huge brown eyes that looked as innocent as Kenny’s sometimes. She hugged him and snuggled down for something a little more serious, thinking maybe their rift was over.

“I love you, Skip. I’m sorry I was so… um…”

“Mean?”

“I was going to say judgmental. I was just upset.”

“I know.”

“I really am sorry about Napoleon.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“Oh, sure I am. Kiss me, okay?”

“Okay.”

She was grateful to have a self-employed boyfriend. He could afford to be frolicsome, since he could sleep all morning if he wanted to, which was more than she could say for herself. For her, there was still a world of details and logistics to attend to, not to mention the hordes of reporters Absolo was going to make her talk to.

* * *

Mr. Right was furious. He’d come all the way to Texas to get away from the woman, and here she was on page one of the Dallas paper. It seemed she’d caught a gang of crooks.

Well, big deal. Wasn’t that her job? The way the paper described it, it didn’t even sound very difficult what she’d done. It was just a crowd-pleaser, one big, fat, giant crowd-pleaser, just like her. She was ugly as sin, mean as the devil, and dumb as dirt, but she was made of nonstick Teflon, and she always landed on her feet. He didn’t understand how it had come about that she was being lionized yet again. If ever anyone didn’t deserve it, it was this bitch. If he didn’t believe in the devil— and he did— this would be enough to convince him the woman was on the wrong side. She was a woman who stood between him and what God wanted from him— a truly evil woman. And yet no one could see that. Everywhere she turned, she met with success.

This deeply, deeply rankled David Wright. In his heart he felt that every bit of the acclaim that came to Skip Langdon should have come to him. She had beaten him repeatedly, and he hated her for it, felt shame for it, and knew that only Satan himself— or his nearest representative— could have caused such a feeling.

“Karen! Get me some water, will you?” He was still in bed, but he was having trouble breathing. This was probably giving him a heart attack.

He got no answer from his wife. What the hell was wrong?

He yelled again.

And then he was aware not of sound but the absence of sound, as she turned off the shower. She stepped into their bedroom, hair dripping, wrapping a soft white robe around her. “Did you call me?”

“Sorry. I didn’t know you were in the shower.”

“Are you all right? What’s wrong with you?” Her voice was urgent.

Fear flashed through his body. “Nothing, why? What’s the matter?”

“You’re red. Your face is all flushed, like you’ve been running or something.”

He wondered if he was having a stroke. Not wanting to show weakness, he said nothing.

“David? You sure you’re all right?” He hated it when she looked at him like that, like he might be old, weaker than she was. “Here, let me get you some water.”

She brought it and sat down beside him and stroked his hair while he drank it. “That’s better,” she said.

“What is?”

“Your color’s back to normal.”

Okay, so he didn’t stroke out that time. He got up and got dressed, trying to think of a way to bring down the Devil-Woman. He read the article again. It was accompanied by a picture of a warehouse into which the police were moving an entire yardful of stolen cemetery art. In a week or so, they were going to open it up like some great department store where you could shop for your own stuff— or for your late Aunt Bessie’s. Langdon was overseeing the whole damn operation, which was bound to be as popular as a tax cut.

He took the paper into his home office, cut out the article, and put it up on his bulletin board, the picture of Langdon thumbtacked right through the nose.

A plan was shaping in his head, the notion that maybe this thing was an opportunity. But he needed money to bring it off. He dialed Rosemarie, but he didn’t get her. Damn caller I.D.! She was probably ducking him, but she couldn’t do it forever. Not when she owed him the way she did.

Karen came back in, dressed in a pair of shorts and smiling, her hair still wet. “Breakfast?”

“Well, now. Aren’t you as pretty as a picture.”

She took a step toward him, and he braced for a lapful of pulchritude, but instead she peered over his head at the board behind him, staring right at Langdon’s picture. “Who is that woman?”

“What woman?” He swiveled his chair.

“That one. With the tack in her nose.”

“Hell, honey, I don’t know. What the hell you talkin’ about?” He was aware he wasn’t supposed to speak like that— to drop his g’s, to say “hail” for “hell”; today he did it anyway.

“She’s attractive.”

David didn’t even bother turning around. “She’s ugly as a mud fence.”

“You’re not even looking at her.”

“Honey, I saw the newspaper article. I know what she looks like.”

“Why did you put it up on the board?”

He was about at the end of his patience. “Karen, for God’s sake! I got bigger fish to fry than some woman’s petty jealousies.”

She made a little sound like a whimper and stared for a moment, pupils dilating. Then, apparently getting it, she whirled and fled, sandals flapping lightly on the slate floor.

For a moment he felt badly at having snapped at her, wondered briefly if he shouldn’t have been a bit more politic under the circumstances. “Bullshit,” he decided. “She’s just gonna have to learn.”

He decided to forget about breakfast. He went to a pay phone, dialed Bettina’s cell number, and let it ring once. Then he phoned back and let it ring twice— their emergency signal. Not very imaginative, but it worked. Hell, any more complicated and Bettina probably couldn’t handle it. As it was, half the time she picked up.

He went on to the office and awaited her call, which ought to be coming in approximately forty minutes from the time of the signal. An hour at the most. He was lenient about this because he didn’t want her panicking and getting careless.

This time the call came in twenty-eight minutes exactly. “Hey, baby,” he drawled. “Been missin’ ya. How’s little Jacob?”

“Our baby fine, Daddy. He a beautiful little man.”

Again, she had said “our baby,” something he’d forbidden her to do, but he decided to let it go this time. He had much, much bigger fish to fry. She seemed to sense it. “What you need, Daddy? What you need from little Bettina?”

“Bettina, I’m over these dog-killing incompetents of yours. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I need to deal with our man directly.”

“You mean Lo—”

“For Christ sake, Bettina. No names. How many fucking times do I have to tell you? Give me his number.”

“All he got’s a pager, Daddy. You know you never mess with that kind of shit. It’s disrespectful to ya.”

“You don’t have the number, do you, Bettina?”

“Daddy, I—” her voice was panicky. “Daddy, I didn’t know you wanted it, or I woulda.”

“Bettina. Listen, honey, it’s all right. Your Daddy’s proud of you. Everything’s just fine. You just get me the number by noon.” He rang off.

That would give him time to get a new cell phone under a name he’d never used before. He’d have to use a different one every time with Lobo.

When Bettina called with the man’s number, he dialed it immediately, not wanting to keep Lobo waiting. If Lobo had caller I.D., the name he’d used to get the cell phone would ring a real bell with him; it was somebody Lobo’d executed.

Lobo answered the page in about fifteen minutes, keeping him waiting, David thought, to show disrespect, gain a little power. Well, hell. Money was power. He threw some at Lobo immediately.

“Lobo, my bro’. You know who this is?”

“I got an idea.”

“Ya want another chance at that ten grand? Same money you would have made for the job you fucked up?”

“It ain’t over yet. I’m gon’ get the bitch.”

“Yeah, sure. Meanwhile you got five thousand dollars of my money, and I got nothin’ but promises.”

“Look, just forget about it, okay? I’ll send you ya money back. I never did want to hit no cop; it was a favor to Bettina, tha’s all.”

“Hold on, Lobo. We worked together before, and it turned out fine, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“This isn’t a hit. It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“Let’s just call it Plan B.”

Overnight Skip had the highest profile in town. Once again, she was everybody’s favorite Good Girl, an extremely ironic development, in her opinion, for a chronic Bad Girl. She would have gone out to smoke some weed with Jimmy Dee, just for balance, if they hadn’t both given it up when his sister died and the kids came to live with him.

Sheila huffed around, mightily unimpressed, but Kenny asked Skip to come speak to his class about police work. It was the kind of thing that made her grit her teeth. But it had to be done, and not just because the chief and Abasolo wanted it, but because Kenny had taken Napoleon’s death hard. He loved the monster. What a sweet-tempered boy like Kenny— or like Steve, for that matter— saw in that vicious animal…

Unable to solve the problem of who had poisoned the beast, she did penance by going to Kenny’s school when she should have been working.

The FBI hadn’t solved the case, either. All they really had was evidence that somebody had lobbed some poison over the fence. Steve’s neighbors were out of town, making it an easy operation. Their flower beds were disturbed, and the kind of poison wasn’t even slightly in doubt. The autopsy showed metaldehyde, a common ingredient in snail and slug pesticide handily bought at a garden center and often found on garage shelves. The perp could as easily be a dog-hating crazy as a Skip-hating fanatic.

Skip found it was altogether better for her love life just not to bring it up. She and Steve seemed to have gotten over the rough spot, he attributing his bad temper to grief, she admitting to a streak of paranoia. After that, what with the termites and increasing May mugginess, she found it best to pretend it never happened. Steve had announced a sudden trip, and that ought to help too, she thought.

She still intended to work the Jacomine case but not till after the spotlight from the angel caper dimmed. The FBI was keeping good tabs on Bettina, who was all they had at the moment. What Skip really wanted to do was get to Dallas and check out Rosemarie, Jacomine’s child bride. There was something intriguing there; she could feel it. And there was sure as hell no way to do that with the little decorating project her superiors had so kindly given her. She had an angel warehouse to set up. For that she needed an assistant and she happened to know an expert who worked free. She nipped across the courtyard to her landlord’s house and slipped into the kitchen, where she found only a pot of fabulous-smelling beans and Sheila, making a salad.