The Hot Ladies Murder Club

Katherine was a sleek, elegant doctor’s wife on the wrong side of forty, who worked hard not to look it. She had a good body. When she wore skirts, she showed a lot of leg.

From what Katherine had told her, Hannah had gathered she’d been the other woman in the doctor’s nasty divorce ten years earlier and didn’t want to be blindsided by a younger, hotter version of herself.

“So, is he leaving you for another woman?” Hannah had asked when they’d been touring the garden of the house in Country Club.

“No, he said he just doesn’t look forward to coming home to me at night anymore.”

“Oh, Katherine…”

“It’s so unfair. He’s no prince. He’s overweight, older. He has nose hairs. He’s always clipping them when he follows me around yapping at me. And he’s no big deal in bed.”

“Then maybe he’s doing you a favor.”

“He’s leaving me!” Katherine had shrieked. “I’ll be all alone…again. He makes money. I was a lousy nurse before…”

After the phone call Hannah tried to unwind again, but Katherine’s restless energy had infected her. Hannah felt as uprooted as Katherine. She didn’t belong in Texas, but she couldn’t go home. The window over the sink was cracked an inch, so the roar of the surf and the smell of muggy, salt air and pungent, rotting sea things permeated the tiny kitchen—alien scents. She was used to grass and trees, to big-city life, to a cooler, softer climate. To glamour. To horror.

Hannah clenched her fingers. Who was she to judge Katherine? There was a big hole in her own life. Huge. Only her problems weren’t as simple as Katherine’s. Hannah couldn’t fix them by a divorce. If only Dom would give her a divorce.

They say if a frog hops into a kettle of water and you light a fire under it, the frog won’t jump out as the water warms up. He’ll die.

That had happened to Hannah twice before with men.

Sometimes she felt like she was that frog, dying, little by little. For nine months she’d been in exile, living, if you could call it living, while she waited for a miracle. Away from her friends, Georgia had become increasingly bored and unhappy, and that made Hannah feel guilty.

But you’re still alive, and Georgia’s alive.

If you want things to change, you have to do something, kiddo.

I ran away—that’s something!

Now it’s time to do more!

She opened her newspaper and recoiled when Joe Campbell’s avid white grin gleamed at her from the front page. Billboards, telephone book and now the newspaper! His black eyes burned through her defenses and made her feel totally vulnerable. Worst of all, he looked a little like Dom.

The article that ran beneath Campbell’s picture had to do with large medical malpractice awards in the county attracting big names like him to the city. The good news was that he’d just lost a big medical case to a Dr. Albert Crocker. The press about Campbell was unflattering, and neither he nor the partners of his firm had agreed to be interviewed for the article.

Beneath his story ran a headline, Neurosurgeons in Short Supply.

“Due to soaring malpractice insurance rates, doctors and insurance companies are fleeing Texas.…”

She was in no mood to read further. There was another story on mold litigation. Mold claims were paying off big in Texas, too. Homeowners’ insurance rates were soaring. Lots of people could no longer afford to insure their homes.

Hannah wadded up the paper. Then she unwadded it and snipped out his picture. Not knowing why she did that, she flung the rest of the newspaper aside and rushed to her refrigerator, where she eyed her half-full bottle of chardonnay on the lower shelf for several minutes before removing a milk carton. She couldn’t let Mr. Billboard and his hot eyes and the litigation-crazy world she was forced to do business in drive her to drinking alone.

Not that she was alone. The beach house was so small and the walls so thin she could hear Georgia in her room, her fingers tapping on her computer keyboard.

Georgia being home only makes it worse, and you know it.

How many more long, lonely and sometimes terrifying evenings without the intelligent companionship or solace of another adult could she endure? Then there were the nights when she couldn’t sleep, and worse, those when she could and had nightmares.

When her cupboard proved empty of clean glasses, she splashed milk into a white cup with little blue seagulls on it. She loved her dishes. After a sip, she went out to the mailbox. Again, there was no mail. That had been happening a lot lately. Which was odd. Not that it mattered, really. Almost nobody from her real life knew where she was, so there wouldn’t have been anything but bills and junk mail, flyers to pitch in the trash along with the newspaper and the brightly colored Big Burger wrappings.

Finishing her milk, Hannah stuffed the cup into her sink, which was overflowing with dirty dishes. She should cook and clean house, go downstairs to the washing machines with a load of clothes, maybe. But where to begin?

How ill prepared she was for ordinary, middle-class life. She was used to a man doing the heavy work, to a maid and a nanny, to long glamorous dinners with family and friends, not to tasteless fast food or housework in a remote beach house at the end of a long day. Oh, how she missed her beautiful things, her social life.

But there were things she did not miss.

At least, while here, she got to live on the gulf. Maybe the fragile barrier island was a thirty-minute commute from downtown Corpus and Georgia’s private school, but as soon as she’d seen the For Rent sign on the gray beach house at the edge of the dunes, the house had spoken to her.

When she was frightened or lonely, all she had to do was step outside to breathe in the smell of the gulf and to hear the seabirds, which she’d come to love…especially the brown pelicans and blue herons. Tonight there would even be a full moon. She would look up at the stars and know how small and tiny she and her problems were. The island with its rustic beach houses built on pilings and the glamorous high-rise condos and looser ambience attracted all kinds of people—tourists from all over the world, artists, rebels, runaways…like her.

She ran a damp rag across the counter to clean off the hamburger bun crumbs and headed toward the sink with the wet grit. She sighed. Then her thoughts turned to home again. Was her mother all right? He wouldn’t hurt her mother, would he?

He never had before.

You never left him before.

Her mother was famous. Even if she were impaired now, people would notice if Claudia Hayes had an accident. The story would make the papers. Hannah would know if her mother wasn’t all right.

Hannah glanced toward her phone and felt almost desperate enough to dial the home where her mother resided. But the roar of a motorcycle in the drive and then the sound of light footsteps and the jingling of tiny bells on her stairs saved her. Then she remembered. Taz still thought they were going to dinner.

“Knock, knock,” rang a cheery, determined voice.

Hannah started silently for the door.

“You’re supposed to say who’s there,” the voice jeered.

For once Hannah was almost glad she had a pushy, overly friendly neighbor.

A plump dark arm pushed the door open, and Hannah gave a little shriek of delight when she saw the wild creature gilded in her doorway by the fiery sunshine.

“Taz, is that you?”

“Sister Tasmania!”

The short black woman in her late twenties looked older than she was and tougher, too, but in a good way. People took Taz seriously in spite of her tendency to be flamboyant.

Tonight Taz had bells on her gold, strappy sandals, so she jingled when she pranced across the threshold. “Don’t you dare say you’re too busy to go out and eat again!”

Taz whirled to a chorus of more tinkling bells. “How do you like the new me?” Taz shot her a hot white smile. Waist-length black braids danced about her wide, golden face. She barely came up to Hannah’s shoulders; still, she exuded the presence of a woman ten times her size. Unlike Katherine, she wasn’t scary or intimidating. Taz was plump and inviting, and men of all ages, classes and races threw themselves at her.

“Not that any of them have ever been someone I can take home to my grandmother,” Taz had confided to Hannah one afternoon when Taz’s phone hadn’t quit ringing. Like Hannah, Taz had a weakness for bad boys.

“Whoa. What did you do to your hair?” Hannah asked.

At least a hundred braids fell about Tasmania’s voluptuous shoulders. A pleated gown that made her look Egyptian swirled around her hips as she danced about the kitchen.

“You definitely got carried away this time.”

“I told my man to take a hike. Then I got me a massage and a makeover.” She wiggled a foot and showed off painted green toenails.

“You don’t look much like a high school principal.”

“Don’t want to, either. Not tonight, anyway.” Taz laughed.

“Tinkerbell with Egyptian braids.”

“Who rides a motorcycle, too.” She pushed past Hannah and slapped a hot pink card onto the counter. “Got my new business cards. You got a beer?”

“Just chardonnay.”

Taz frowned. “How did your deposition with Mr. Billboard go?”

Hannah’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Bad, huh? Well, you got to him. A friend of mine who works for the handsome no-good told me. He was so upset after you left, he kicked a door.”

Hannah beamed. “He fixed my flat, too.”

“Better watch yourself, girl. He definitely wants you in bed.”

Hannah shrugged. “He is handsome.”

“No man ever does the slightest thing to help you if he isn’t enticed.”

Hannah rolled her eyes and guzzled a big sip of wine.

“Test my hypothesis some time. You’ll see I’m right. But I want to talk about this lawsuit stuff. Did I tell you—I’m being sued, too?”

“What? Why?”

“As if you need a why in south Texas. But…okay…you want the details. You know I broke up with Sid.”

“Right.”

“Well, the night before we broke up, we’d had some pretty raucous sex. Sid was hungry, so I nuked him a leftover hamburger. The damn pickle fell out of the bun and burned his…er…member. The man did carry on. He turned beet red. I’m afraid I started laughing and couldn’t stop.”

“You burned his pickle with a pickle and laughed and then you dumped him?”

“Yeah. ’Cause he got so mad when I laughed. I can’t stand a man with no sense of humor.”

“You shouldn’t have laughed.”

“You should have heard the mean things he called me. It wasn’t fair. If he wouldn’t have been talking and eating at the same time the hot pickle wouldn’t have…So, it’s his fault! But his lawyer, he says it’s my fault Sid can’t make love to his new woman.”

“If you go to court, lose the braids.”

“Hell, now I wished I’d bobbed his pink pickle or something. Then he wouldn’t be worried he can’t put it where he shouldn’t.”

“You are mad.”

“I got served with a bunch of legal stuff at school today. What I need is to go out and distract myself. Where are we going to supper? What about a bar, too?”

Hannah opened the fridge and got out the bottle of wine. Then she sifted through her sink and washed two wineglasses.

“Don’t bother drying.” Taz grabbed a wet glass and poured. She took a sip and choked. Then she emptied a teaspoon of sugar into her wineglass and swirled it.

Hannah read Taz’s new hot-pink business card. “Let Sister Tasmania make your wishes come true. Defeat your enemies. And your rivals. If you have a problem with the past, present, future, marriage, business, finance or health, Sister will help you out. There is no burden too great for her to lift from your heavy heart. She succeeds where others fail.” Hannah set the card down and laughed. “You’re supposed to be a school principal.”

“Not for long. That was my grandmother’s dream. I’m opening myself a little business on the side, something more spiritual, so I have more time to stay in touch with whatever’s out there.”

Hannah lifted the pink card again. “Oh, boy, do I have a burden.”

“Mr. Billboard?”

“He’s one problem, yes.”

“You want him off the case? Jump his bones. The man has a weakness for the ladies. Get him on your side.”

“I loathe him.”

“Baby, don’t you know that’ll just make the sex better? I hated Sid half the nights we did it.”

“I’m not like that,” Hannah said. “I want to love the next man.”

“You’re one hot lady. I can tell that about you.” Taz pursed her lips. “Even with sugar, your wine is so-o dry. It doesn’t quench my thirst at all.”

“Sugar! I can’t believe you put sugar in—”

“Let’s go out for a beer. And no salad bar! I could do with something tasty like a burger, too.”

“No more burgers.” Hannah crossed her heart. “I made a vow. Besides, after your hot-pickle adventure, I wouldn’t think you’d want—”

“I blame Sid—not burgers!”

With a shake of her head, Hannah pointed toward the back of the house. “I’m sorry Taz. We already ate. You know I can’t go because Georgia’s—”

“You ate already? That’s just like you. Since I’ve known you, you have never gone out. Not once. You’re going to go crazy if you don’t get out of the house at night at least once. You’re going to snap. I’ve seen it happen.”

Hannah could almost feel it happening.

“I’m really sorry, Taz.”

“I have a girlfriend with some kids two houses down who’ll sit.”

“Taz, no—” Just the thought of leaving Georgia alone with a stranger at night scared her.

The phone rang before Hannah could say no again. She covered the phone and mouthed to Taz that it was Zoë. “I’ve got to schedule an appointment with her.”

“Zoë?” Tasmania’s eyebrows arched as Hannah rummaged through her purse for her calendar. “The doctor’s wife?”

Hannah shook her head.

“Oh, right, the new client…the shady lady from Shady Lomas, who’s here looking for a house in town, Veronica Holiday’s editor? She’s here? Now?”

Hannah nodded as she pulled out her calendar. “In that new beach hotel.”

“Ask her to meet us at the bar in her hotel.”

Hannah covered the mouthpiece. “I’m not going out. Besides, she’s married and pregnant.”

“All the more reason for her to get out—before the baby comes and ties her down. This is fate.”

Hannah sighed. “You’re hopeless.”

She flipped her dog-eared calendar to the right page and jumped. Stuck between the pages was that darn picture of her in the thong bikini that she’d accidentally given Joe Campbell.

“Tell her we’re going out,” Taz insisted. “This feels destined. Besides, we had a date.”

Why had she ever mentioned Zoë to Taz? As a Realtor, Hannah was alone with her clients in her car long hours. While they drove or walked through empty houses, people tended to share their most intimate secrets. Zoë had told her most of her incredible story the first thirty minutes they’d known each other.

Then this afternoon while they’d checked for mold on a waterfront house, Zoë had filled in the last gaps in her tale. Not that Hannah had paid as much attention as usual since the deposition had been looming over her.

The scene replayed itself in her mind. Her most trusted carpenter, a retired navy guy with a bad knee, Tommy Thompson, had been on a short, wobbly ladder sawing a hole in the ceiling. Zoë had chattered underneath him about her new husband, Tony, a rancher, who’d been her high school sweetheart. Their ranch was sixty miles south on the outskirts of a gossipy town called Shady Lomas. Apparently, they’d had a lovers’ quarrel as teenagers. To get revenge, Zoë had gone to a pig race at a rodeo, and Tony’s scandalous Uncle Duncan had gotten her drunk there. Uncle Duncan had had his own plane, and when Zoë had awakened in Vegas the next morning, she’d had a ring on her finger and was married to the old reprobate.

Zoë had been in the middle of her tale of woe when a hunk of drywall had fallen out of the ceiling and shattered, spraying both women with white bits of wallboard. Tommy had yelled “no mold,” triumphantly, and Hannah had grabbed his ladder to steady it.

“I’ll make an offer tomorrow,” Zoë had said, clapping.

“Everybody ready to go? I’m late,” Hannah had said.

“The deposition?” Zoë had asked.

“Joe Campbell is like an ax hanging over my head.”

On the way to Zoë’s beachfront hotel, Zoë hadn’t stopped talking. “Duncan knew he was dying all along. He married me so he’d go out with a bang.”

“For this reason he ruined your life?”

“No, he was sweet.” She’d paused. “He died a few weeks after the wedding and left me everything. Unfortunately, the inheritance included the ranch Tony leased and believed should have been his. Then Duncan’s daughters sued me, too.”

By the time Hannah and Zoë reached the hotel, Hannah was thirty minutes late, and Zoë was still talking about the gossip, lawsuits and spite that had driven her from Shady Lomas and the man she’d really loved to Manhattan, where she’d become an editor.

“Not a very good one, though, I’m afraid, and I was so lonely,” Zoë had admitted sadly. “My only claim to fame is that I discovered Veronica Holiday and edit her books.”

“The Veronica Holiday? I’ve read all her books. She’s fabulous.”

“Well, I’ll tell her I met a fan. She’s here, you know. At this hotel. On tour…and…writing.”

“What?”

“Thought I’d kill two birds.…Shop for a house and help her.…Long story.”

Still, Zoë hadn’t gotten out. “Oh, I almost forgot—the adoption papers on Noah came through.”

The entire conversation flashed in Hannah’s mind as she jotted 2:00 p.m. on her calendar for tomorrow.

Zoë needed a house in town because the schools in Shady Lomas didn’t challenge Noah, her nine-year-old stepson.

Never one to be left out of a conversation for long, Taz punched the speaker phone button while Hannah slid her calendar back into her purse.

“So how did your deposition go?” Zoë’s voice blared into the kitchen.

“He’s got the hots for her,” Taz said. “He fixed her flat.”

“Who’s this?” Zoë sounded both surprised and curious to hear a new voice.

“Joe Campbell does not have the hots for me!”

“I’m her next-door neighbor—Taz. Her spiritual adviser. She’s trying to stand me up for supper.”

“Did he or did he not hit on you, Hannah?”

Flushing, Hannah glared at Taz.

“The…the only thing he tempts me to do is murder—”

“Lawyers. The only good lawyer is a dead lawyer,” Taz said.

Zoë laughed. “Joe Campbell’s partner, Bob Africa, is suing me.”

“What?”

“Tony called me about it today. Bob Africa had Tony served today. Apparently, my stepdaughters hired Bob. They’ve gone through all the money I gave them when we settled the first lawsuit. Now they say I suckered their lonely old father into marriage and killed him for his money. People have stopped speaking to Tony and me. Tony hung up so tense he would barely speak to me. I’ve been crying ever since.”

“What kind of lowlife sues a pregnant lady?” Taz began. Then she told Zoë she was being sued, too.

Zoë giggled after she’d heard the story. “He’s going to tell the judge he’s mad because a hot pickle burned his pink pickle?”

Everybody laughed.

Zoë said, “We’ve got too many lawyers, or at least the wrong kind. In South Texas, anyway.”

Taz chugged a second glass of wine. “Hey—I say we adjourn to your hotel bar and have a serious discussion about this issue.…”

“No,” Hannah said.

“Yes! And the more the merrier,” Tasmania persisted. “I’ve just been dying to meet the shady lady of Shady Lomas.”

“I’d love to meet you, too, but this is sort of a work night. I’m with a writer. She’s here on tour for her latest book, Four Wishes, but her work-in-progress is late. And she’s blocked. And when she’s blocked she gets so crazy there’s no telling what she’ll do. Tomorrow, she’s got a television show and a book signing, and she’s publicity shy. I promised her tonight I’d play Muse.”

“Sounds like you both could use a break,” Tasmania persisted. “Besides, I swear I’ll inspire her. Have you been to that great bar in your hotel that overlooks the beach?”

“I can hear the music all the way up here. Okay, if you really want to come…but just for a little while.” Zoë gave them her room number.

“No way am I driving back to town,” Hannah began.

But Zoë and Taz had already hung up.

“I’ll drive then,” Taz said. “A writer,” she mused. “This is great. She’s got to have a creative mind. She’ll know just what to do about Mr. Billboard and Mr. Hot Pickle whose pickle wasn’t all that hot if you want the truth.”

“Murder,” Hannah suggested.

“But how? Honey, we need specifics…a plot.”

“It doesn’t take a genius to shoot a guy in his parts, grind him into hamburger meat and sell it to Big Burger to feed the natives,” Hannah said. “How’s that for specifics?”

“Honey, I know you’re off burgers and mad as all get out, but, please, don’t ruin my appetite. I’m dying for a burger, cut the pickles, please, even if every bite decides to live on my thighs. Besides,” Taz said, “Joey boy is too cute to shoot, and you don’t have a gun.”

“That’s no problem in Texas.”

BOOK TWO

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Five

Campbell’s head pounded as he wheeled into the nursing home parking lot so fast he spun gravel. His headache got worse as he parked his gleaming black Porsche near the front doors of the red brick building. Twice a month he came here, and he hated every minute of it, even as he hated himself for being such a sap as to come.

A group of old men and women, their wheelchairs jammed together in a tight little semicircle, were smoking and telling stories until they saw him. Every one of them set his cigarette aside and stared at him blankly—as if he were someone interesting.

Campbell cut the ignition and got out of the car. Poor devils, didn’t they have anything better to do? No, they were out here every time he came to visit. He smiled and they smiled back, just like always. Hell, at least they had one another. Who the hell did he have?

When he got nearer, they waved and he waved to each one, scanning each wrinkled face. But his father never left his room.

His mood darkened as he headed inside, striding down a long hall past limp, corpselike figures in recliners on wheels, past the nurses’ station, where the head nurse eyed him warily.

He wasn’t the most popular visitor. Too many lawyers had won huge judgments in Texas against nursing homes by charging neglect for bad results that were nothing more than the natural consequences of old age. Not that Campbell ever took such cases, but the old battle-ax didn’t know that.

He stalked down the hall and into his father’s room. As always, the shades were drawn. Still, he made out two beds squashed together in the gray light. The bed nearest the door was empty, yet the floor and bed linens and chairs reeked of old man and dried urine and pine-scented disinfectant. Vaguely he wondered what had happened to the old fellow who’d been here last week.

When a thin stick figure with grizzled hair and a wizened face that somehow still resembled his own stirred in the bed by the window, Campbell snapped on the light.

“Dad?”

The old man hadn’t been washed or shaved that day. He blinked a couple of times and then held up a thin hand that was spotted with age.

At the sight of Campbell, the old man’s expression darkened just like it used to. “Turn out the damn light and get out of my sight! Nobody invited you. You ain’t no son of mine.”

Campbell shrank from him just like he had when he’d been a boy.

“I came by to see if you needed anything.”

His father snorted. “As if you give a damn.”