Naked Frame (2 page)

"Hey! That was my dad's car."

He held up his hands. "I apologize. It was a
great automobile—in its time. But not anymore. And it's just not
you, Rebecca. Picture yourself in a brand new shiny convertible.
Imagine how hot you'd look driving around town."

"What's your point?"

He carefully and slowly reached into his
coat pocket, pulled out a thick envelope, and dropped it on her
desk.

"You're not seriously trying to bribe
me?"

"Of course not. I'd like to make a
purchase." He pointed to the envelope. "Go ahead. Count it. Make
sure there's fifty thousand in there. I think that's more than a
fair price for an amateur movie."

"Carly told you about the video."

"Wasn't that foolish of her? She even
admitted she didn't have a copy yet. Obviously, my offer is for the
original and all copies."

Rebecca slammed her empty coffee cup down on
the desk. "You're disgusting. I can't get it out of my mind—you and
her young daughter. How do you sleep at night?"

"We were two consenting adults having a
little fun."

"She's seventeen!"

"She told me she was 21. It's not my fault
she lied. How was I to know?"

"You're a dirty stinking pig."

"Can I help it if women throw themselves at
me?" He laughed. "Look, the truth is she wanted a job."

"She's a high school student."

He shrugged. "What can you do? Girls lie to
get what they want." He wagged his long, fat index finger at her,
as though it were a magic wand. "But don't you think for one minute
that Mrs. Cinaway is going to win this thing. I have some very
expensive lawyers. All she's going to do is humiliate her daughter
in open court. And for what? Nothing."

"If you're so sure about that, why are you
here offering me fifty thousand dollars?"

"Look, Rebecca, I'm a practical man. By
handling it this way, everybody's happy. Once I have all the
copies, I'll give you another fifty thousand—for your client."

"What about her daughter?"

"I'll take care of
her
myself." He
grinned.

Rebecca began to feel very
drowsy. "You
did
put something in my drink." She tried to point the gun at him.
But she could not raise her arm. Her whole body went limp and her
torso fell forward, onto the desk. She couldn't find the strength
to even open her eyes. But she could still hear him
talking.

"Put that thing down," he said.

The last thing she heard was a gunshot.

CHAPTER 2 - Monday, 10:09 p.m.

Rebecca tried to force her eyes open. Her
head was spinning. How long had she been asleep? She hadn't felt
this bad since the last time she downed a full bottle of tequila.
But she didn't remember drinking. She glanced over at her alarm
clock, but couldn't see it.

The door opened. Somebody was coming into
her bedroom. She rolled to her side, opened the night table drawer,
and reached for her pistol—but found a book instead.

A book? She wasn't at home. She was in a
motel room. Rebecca needed a weapon. But instead of a gun, all she
had was a Gideon Bible.

"Take it easy. You're going to be fine." The
man flipped the wall switch, and a lamp came on.

Rebecca's eyes were still blurry. She threw
off the covers, leaped out of bed, and ran blindly at the intruder
with all her might.

"Whoa!" He backpedaled into the door.

Rebecca slammed into him at full speed,
grabbed his wrists, and plowed a knee deep into his crotch.

He yelped, bent forward, and grabbed
himself.

She pushed him hard to the floor, and went
for the door knob.

He struggled to catch his breath. "Are you
sure you want to go out dressed like that?"

Rebecca looked down. Her vision had cleared
just enough for her to see she was wearing only a bra and panties.
"Where are my clothes? What did you do to me, you pervert?" She
kicked him in the ribs with her bare foot.

"Stop it. I didn't do anything to you."

She pulled the blanket off the bed and
wrapped it around herself. "Then why am I here? And why did you
take my clothes off?" She kicked him again—harder.

"Becca, stop! Please."

"
Gabby?
"

"Yeah, Sweetie. It's me. I rescued you. If
it wasn't for me, you'd probably be in jail right now—for
murder."

"
Murder?
"

"I'm sure you had a good reason for killing
him. Or maybe it was accidental."

Now she remembered Big Bill breaking into
her office and trying to bribe her...offering her a drink. She
remembered how she began to feel drowsy. "Bill Smotherburn is
dead?"

"Yeah. When I got there, you were passed out
across your desk—with a gun in your hand."

"I do remember having the gun. My dad's old
revolver. I was holding it when Big Bill broke into my office."

"Well, by the time I got there, he was
sprawled out across the floor with half his face blown off."

"No. No way. I didn't kill him. There's no
way in hell I killed that bastard. But now the police are never
going to believe me—since I left the scene of the crime. What were
you thinking?"

"Well, what was I supposed to do? Call the
police? Let them see you there with a smoking gun in your
hand?"

"It was
smoking?
"

"Well, maybe not smoking.
But it was still
warm
."

Rebecca racked her brain. She remembered
getting drowsy...and then going completely under. No, wait. Right
before she went under, she heard Big Bill say something...and
then...a gunshot. She sniffed her right hand. It smelled like
gunpowder. "Dammit. Maybe I should turn myself in."

"How are you going to explain it to the
police—if you don't even know what happened?"

"And how am I going to explain why I ran?"
She frowned.

"But you couldn't have killed him if you
weren't there."

"My fingerprints are all over the gun,
Gabby. And the coffee cup."

"The police don't have the
gun or the cups.
We've
got them. And I grabbed your backpack too. And don't worry. I
wiped off everything I touched."

Rebecca let it all sink in for a moment. "I
can't believe this."

"I'm sorry, Becca. Maybe if I had been on
time for my appointment..."

"Why did you undress me?"

"I thought you'd sleep better. I remembered
how you always hated to sleep in your clothes. You've been out cold
for four hours. But I was a gentleman. There was no inappropriate
touching."

She believed him. In high
school, kids assumed Gabby was gay. He denied it. But even as his
best friend, Rebecca never knew for sure. "I guess you know they're
going to throw
you
in jail, too—for helping me."

"I know. Aiding and
abetting, tampering with a crime scene, and all that stuff. But
none of that is going to matter once we catch the
real
killer."

Poor Gabby, she thought. They make it look
so easy on TV. "Where are my clothes?"

"They're hung nicely and neatly in the
closet over there."

"Of course." She let the blanket fall off
her shoulders and drop to the floor as she walked to the closet and
began to get dressed.

"Does it bother you at all that I'm watching
you put your clothes on?" Gabby got up from the floor and started
brushing off his clothes with his hands.

"Why should it? You've watched me get
dressed a hundred times."

He hesitated. "I'm not gay, you know."

"I know," she said too quickly.

"The whole high school was wrong about me."
He waited. But she did not chime in. "Just because I'm not super
macho..."

"The drama club thing is what started it."
She took her pants off the hanger.

"I wasn't the only boy in drama club."

"No. But you were the only one designing
costumes."

"Yeah, but I couldn't
understand why
everybody
didn't want that job. The beautiful fabrics
against the magnificent form of the human body..."

"Bingo. That's the kind of
talk that earned you the nickname,
Gabby
Girl
. At least you don't have to deal with
that stuff anymore." Rebecca stepped into her pants and pulled them
up.

"Well..."

"You're kidding. Where do you work?" She
zipped her pants.

"I have my own business."

"Wow, that's great, Gabby."

"It's a boutique."

"
Boutique?
"

"Ever heard of
Gabby G'Blee?"

She slipped into her blouse and began to
button it. "It's a women's clothing store. Right?"

"Yes. My own original designs."

"Well, what happened to Gabby
Garnersdale?"

"I had it legally changed to G'Blee. Nobody
wants to buy original designs by Gabby Garnersdale. It's a boring
name. And I needed pizzazz."

Rebecca grabbed her shoulder holster from
the closet shelf and strapped it on. "But now, with that name, and
the fact that you own a women's boutique, everybody in Dallas
probably thinks you're gay." She checked her pistol and put it back
in the holster.

"But now I don't care. And what if I really
was gay? Would you still want to be my friend?"

"Of course I would." Rebecca picked up her
backpack from the closet floor, set it on the bed, and opened it.
She located her dad's revolver at the bottom of the bag and took it
out to examine it. "Damn."

"What?"

"You're right. It's been fired. One shot."
She put the revolver back into the bag. "I've got to get out of
here and do some nosing around." She slipped into her shoes.

"I'm your driver."

"Oh, right. My car's still at my
office."

"The old Lincoln, right? It's just as well.
The cops would have seen you coming from a mile away driving that
battleship."

"True. But I don't want to get you into any
more trouble than you're already in."

"Oh, believe me, Honey, I'm in just as much
trouble as you are. Maybe more."

"What do you mean?"

"I owed him money."

"Big Bill? You borrowed money from Big Bill
Smotherburn? Are you crazy? How much?"

"Twenty thousand."

"Oh, Gabby."

"And every time I made a payment, he told me
it was just enough to cover the interest. Becca, I was going to be
paying him for the rest of my life."

"Gabby, what were you thinking? Borrowing
money from a loan shark?"

"I didn't know he was a loan shark. I was
three months behind on my lease. They were going to evict me. I was
going to lose my shop. I couldn't let that happen."

"So, you had a motive to kill him."

"Doesn't look good, does it?"

"Is that why you were coming to see me?"

"Yeah. I thought maybe you would have some
way to help me get out of the mess I was in."

"Well...I did help you get out of it, I
guess. Your loan has been paid in full—assuming Big Bill kept no
records. Of course, you may end up in prison. Did you sign a
contract?"

"No. He said a handshake deal was good
enough for him."

"This is too coincidental, Gabby. For him to
show up at my office right before you got there. Did anybody else
know about your loan?"

"His son, Wiley, knew about it. He's the one
who hooked me up with Big Bill."

"What did you do with the money that was on
my desk?"

"What money?"

"There was an envelope with fifty-thousand
dollars in it. Big Bill tried to bribe me with it."

"Why was he trying to bribe you?"

"One of my clients was about to file charges
against him, and he thought he could buy his way out of it."

"Well, I'm sorry, Becca. I don't know what
happened to it, but believe me—there was no money on your desk. No
envelope."

Rebecca sighed. "We've been framed, Gabby.
Big time. I can imagine what the police are going to think after
they talk to Wiley. They know Big Bill's a son-of-a-bitch. And they
know about my hot temper."

"Not a good combo, huh?"

"Let me lay it out for you. My best friend
from high school owes Big Bill Smotherburn thousands of dollars.
The three of us meet in my office to discuss the loan. Big Bill is
being unreasonable, then verbally abusive. He waves his big fat
finger in my face, and throws a few insults. He laughs at us. I
lose it and shoot the bastard. We panic and run."

"We're screwed."

"You got that right."

"But we'll figure this thing out together,
Becca. Just like in high school when we used to map out your new
basketball moves. That's how you won Most Valuable Player, three
years in a row."

"This ain't basketball, Gabby. This is life
and death. Whoever framed us is not going to like it when we start
snooping around."

"I understand. But I don't care. I'm all
in."

Rebecca almost smiled.

"But, Honey, we've got to go incognito. We
can't go prancing around Dallas as Rebecca Ranghorn and Gabby
G'Blee."

"That's for sure."

"I've got a fine little
outfit that's going to be
fabulous
on you. It'll give you a completely different
look. And I'll let your hair down. Even I won't recognize you when
I'm done."

"What about you? What are you going to
wear?"

"Well, the first question is whether I
should go male or female."

Rebecca hoped he was kidding.

He laughed. "Not really. I've got lots of
possibilities for me too. And all of them are male."