The Hot Ladies Murder Club

The harsh words hurt way more than they should have. Campbell couldn’t account for it, didn’t want to account for it. He’d never known anything but pain from his father.

“I know we didn’t get along in the past—but you’re sick now. Maybe you need somebody.”

Maybe I do, too. Did they have to hate each other forever? Then he remembered his mother. Yeah, maybe they did.

“Are you deaf? And crazy, too?” His father picked up a bedpan and threw it at him.

Campbell ducked as he hadn’t been able to duck as a kid, and the pan whizzed past him out into the hall.

“Get the hell out of here,” the old man said.

When Campbell hurled himself outside into the brightly lit hall a dozen patients stared blankly at him and the bedpan.

“You killed her. Remember that. Just like you’re killing me. Don’t come back.”

Campbell told the nurse the old man smelled bad and needed a bath. She told him three orderlies had tried, but he’d fought them so hard, they’d given up.

Campbell walked down the hall, his spirits lifting, but only a little, when he saw the exit sign.

The trouble with old people in nursing homes waiting to die was they slammed you into your own mortality. Campbell couldn’t come here without taking a long, cold look at himself.

What the hell was he doing with his own life? Would anybody care if he died tomorrow?

Yes, they would. A lot of people would be glad.

War Party.

The red neon letters of the hotel sign flickered like flares against the red sky and bay. In the distance a lone sailboat rode the waves. Not that Hannah noticed the yacht. She was too busy wondering why she’d let Taz talk her into this.

One glance at that hotel sign had her pulse in overdrive. The huge motorcycles gleaming in the red sunlight in the jammed parking lot didn’t help her mood, either.

“Taz, let’s go home.”

“We just got here, girl. Georgia’s fine. Lilly’s a great sitter.”

When Taz wheeled into the lot, a burly pair of bikers in black vests with chains belted around their waists hooted, “Women—over here!”

Grinning at Taz, they gunned their engines and then rolled their big chopped hogs out of a parking space beside the hotel entrance.

The bikers’ burly arms had tattoo “sleeves.”

“Taz, I want to go home.”

With a jaunty smile Taz zoomed into the empty spot. “Jesus, I wish we were on my bike.”

Hannah buried her face in her hands.

Taz laughed. “You need this recharge way more than I do. Your life is too bo-oring.”

“Which is exactly the way I want it.”

“Why?”

Because I want to be safe. Because I want Georgia safe. Because I’ve learned lessons I never wanted to learn.

Not that she could tell Taz any of her story. Not about her crazy, superfamous parents or their highly publicized squabbles. Not about the wall between their two houses. Not about her little-girl dream of wanting them to simply be happy. Not about her own fame at too early an age. Not about her own need to rescue bad handsome men, either. Not about the terrible experiences her husband had had in boarding school.

She’d loved the wrong men with a big open heart. She’d paid a huge price for her naiveté. And so had Georgia. No more. For Georgia’s sake, if not her own, she had to make more prudent decisions.

Inside the hotel, Hannah had barely had one long slim foot with badly painted orange toenails across the threshold of the jammed bar, before she knew for sure she was in the wrong place at the wrong time again.

Then Veronica showed up in a hot pink miniskirt and a revealing blouse looking wild beside a radiantly pregnant Zoë.

Every outlaw in the smoke-filled din lifted a beer and saluted the four women in the doorway.

“Three cheers for the Hot Ladies.”

Veronica laughed as if oblivious to the undercurrents in the room.

“Doesn’t look like there’s a table for four,” Hannah blurted. “Taz, let’s go.”

Taz grabbed her by the elbow and held her fast. “Looky—Over there—By the pool tables—Four gentlemen—”

“Not exactly,” Hannah murmured as four guys in tight, greasy jeans and dark wraparound glasses shot clumsily off their stools, knocking a couple over as they pointed at the table and beckoned them.

Taz’s braids shook as she laughed in delight. “What did I tell you? Bikers—my kind of guys. Is this place great or what?”

Zoë and Hannah rolled their eyes.

“Are you crazy?” Hannah asked.

“It’s my makeover that’s got ’em so wild.”

Don’t forget Veronica with her platinum hair and low-cut outfit.

“You’re a high school principal,” Hannah said.

“Don’t remind me.”

“Maybe you should do volunteer work at an all-male prison,” Hannah suggested as she clutched her purse against her nipples, which were standing at attention in sheer terror. Then, like a duck following her mama into a deep pool, she stayed glued to Taz’s ample hips as her friend plowed through the men and the haze of cigarette smoke to their table.

Why had she worn a white T-shirt that glowed blue and clung to her flesh like shrink wrap? Hannah wondered. Better question—why hadn’t she at least worn a bra and a blousy shirt that hid her belly button?

“Table or not, I still want to go home,” Hannah repeated as the women squeezed themselves onto four short stools and Taz signaled a waitress and ordered four beers.

“No beer! I—I want a diet cola,” Hannah blurted, but the waitress had already left. “Taz, this is a mistake. These guys are in lust.”

“We just got here,” Taz said. “Chill. Okay? I can handle the situation. Like you said, I’m a principal. And where I grew up, girl, these guys would be pussies.” Taz smiled her huge smile and began to clap and writhe along with Veronica to the jungle beat.

Since Taz, her ride, seemed hell-bent on staying, Hannah turned to Zoë. “Why didn’t you tell me the hotel was overrun with a motorcycle gang?”

“It’s some kind of convention. The manager says they do this every year. I’m sure they’re all dentists and doctors and lawyers. Veronica met one of them on the beach earlier. He said he was a stockbroker. She even had a beer with him and a doctor.”

Veronica did not strike Hannah as a reliable judge of men’s characters.

Veronica laughed. “Mr. Moneybags is over there trying to be invisible. We may get together…later.”

Veronica waved at her new friend, who was long and lean and slouching in the darkest corner of the bar.

“You said you were going to write…later,” Zoë reminded her.

Hannah eyed the bar’s denizens uneasily. “Dentists? Doctors? You’re kidding.”

Veronica nodded and fluffed her puffy white hair.

“Right,” Hannah said. “The three-hundred-pound Goliath over there with the grizzled eyebrows, swollen black eye, potbelly, long red hair and the golden loop in his right ear is a dentist? He’s staring holes through my T-shirt every time I lower my purse—and you’re telling me the big bear does root canals for a living?”

“Well, maybe not him,” Veronica admitted. “It’s your fault. You should have worn a bra.”

The ape adjusted his yellow bandanna as he leered at Zoë. There was a gap in his crooked smile.

“Don’t encourage him, Zoë.” In desperation Hannah lowered her lashes, clutched her purse tighter against her chest for coverage and sipped from her mug. The beer felt cold and tart going down, but it heated her blood and calmed her a bit. For the first time all day she relaxed a little.

Good stuff. Too good. Hannah swigged some more. Then she wet her napkin, tore off little bits, wadded them up to use as earplugs and stuffed them into her ears.

“You pointed Goliath out to me,” Zoë reminded Hannah.

“Forget I said anything. Just quit looking at him.”

“He’s cute,” Taz said. Lifting her beer, she smiled at him. “Cheers, everybody.”

“I really think we should go,” Hannah began again.

“Relax,” Taz growled. “Shoot some darts or something. Drink. Hey, I brought you a target.”

“No way am I getting up and making a spectacle of myself before this wolf pack.”

Before Hannah could stop her, Taz waved Goliath over. “We want to shoot some darts…er…What’s your name, big boy?”

“The Charger,” he purred. “What’s yours, hot lady?”

She gave him a look. “Okay, Charger, can you get us some darts and pin up this target…?”

When he glanced at the newspaper picture, the biker looked a little startled.

“You got a problem, big boy?” Taz asked.

“No problem, hot lady.” His broad hand slapped the clipping of Joe Campbell against the dartboard, pinning it there with four darts.

“Draw a circle around his crotch,” Taz ordered. “Here—use my lipstick.”

She handed the Charger a tube of the stuff, and he drew crude red genitals instead of a circle. The bikers roared approval.

“First guy to hit the big red pickle where it hurts standing from behind me gets to dance with the Egyptian hot lady here,” Taz yelled. “On my table!”

The men nearest Taz got off a few earsplitting yells. A squabble broke out and a table was turned over before the issue of who got to throw the first dart was resolved.

A guy in a black vest with a scorpion tattooed on his arm and a patch over one eye went first. When he hit Campbell in the eye, everybody booed. The next guy got a turn. The dart hit the mark but bounced off without even tearing the paper. Hannah hid her face in her hands and said a prayer.

“Me—I go for men with balls of steel,” Veronica mused, winking at her friend in the dark corner. He lifted his hand and signaled her to come over. When she didn’t jump up, Hannah felt his hostile gaze fix her, and she shivered. Not that she could really see him. But she could feel him. And he gave her a bad feeling like she’d had in the garage.

The next biker took his turn and missed as well. The mood in the bar turned brutal.

Goliath had the deadliest aim. A few darts thrown from his meaty arm put a gaping hole where Campbell’s lipstick-smeared pickle had been.

“Ouch,” Taz said as she climbed up onto a table to dance and beckoned the Charger.

Hips undulating, the Egyptian hot lady and her gap-toothed Hun from Hell put on a show to a loud song with a wild beat. He stomped; she wiggled and twisted and ate him with her dark eyes, showing caramel-colored legs every time she twirled. Their dance was pure raw sex, and she stirred the men to a frenzy. When they were done, every man in the bar rushed over to help Taz down from the table. They were all clamoring to dance with her when the Charger told them she was his and asked her to dance with her again.

“I ain’t nobody’s,” Taz said.

He was climbing back onto the table, when she crossed her arms and said no in her loud, school principal voice. He glared down at her in surprise. Since he was on the table, and she was short, she barely came to the tops of his muddy motorcycle boots.

The silence grew tense. His bottom lip bloated sullenly, and he flushed purple. Hannah half expected Charger to grab Taz and tear her apart, or to at least kiss her to thrill their gaping audience, but he merely growled good-naturedly, “You heard her. The lady, she said no.”

Hannah couldn’t believe it when he jumped off the table with a resounding thud and swaggered heavily to the dartboard and ripped Campbell’s picture off the wall. Then he yelled, “No more dancing. No cussin’, either. We got ladies present.” Then his eyes locked on Taz’s face with respect and shy affection.

Taz beamed at him.

There were grumbles as the men sat and resumed their drinking, but the Charger hovered nearby their table, a silent hulk making sure the other beasts left his lady friends alone.

Heck, maybe the Charger did do root canals for a living. During the table dance, Hannah had drained her mug, and when another was placed in front of her, she sipped from it, too. Maybe it was the beer that eased the tension in her. Instead of pleading to go, she relaxed and began to chat with her friends in their dark corner.

“So, you’re Veronica Holiday,” Tasmania said. “Hannah was telling me you were here. I’ve read your books.”

“If I’d known I was going to meet a fan, I would have worn my glasses and tried to look intelligent.”

Taz laughed. “I’m not disappointed.”

Veronica didn’t look like the sophisticated woman in her publicity stills. In those photographs, she wore power suits and demure shades of makeup.

“Zoë said you were being sued, too,” Tasmania said.

Hannah frowned as she sipped more beer. “So, who’s suing you, Veronica?”

The music was so loud they had to yell to be heard.

“This thief, this idiot from my hometown, who’s been jealous of me since I sold my first book. Her name’s Camille. She married my old boyfriend right out from under me when we were kids. Then she ran me out of town. Now she has the gall to say I stole her body and wrote the story of her life. Her life! In her dreams.”

Tasmania’s black eyes gleamed. “Stole her body?”

“I had a boob job. We’re the same bra size now.”

Tasmania snorted. “Give me a break. Did Zoë tell you I’m being sued because of damage to a man’s eenie weenie done by a pickle I nuked?”

“This could be your next novel,” Zoë said.

“If I wrote about it, Camille would really sue.”

Hannah looked up. “So how can we stop these frivolous lawsuits? In this city, all the judges are bought off.”

“It’s called—campaign contributions,” Zoë screamed over the music. “It costs a lot to run for office. Politicians and judges don’t make much.”

“Under the table they do,” Taz said.

“You don’t know that for sure,” Zoë countered.

“What planet do you live on?” Holding her mug up, Taz eyed the waitress and tapped her mug and held up four fingers. “They make huge contributions to political action committees, PACs they call them. Wouldn’t it be fun to turn the tables on these jerks?”

“But how?” Hannah asked.

When more beers arrived, the four women were about to raise their mugs and clink them when the fight started.

“But I want to dance with a hot lady!” a biker yelled. “You danced with her! Why the hell can’t—”

“This is why the hell why, you son of a—”

The Charger let a beefy fist fly, and it landed smack, square in the loudmouth’s jaw. As if a bomb had gone off, the bar erupted. Cigarettes were squashed out on the floor. Everybody started shouting and ramming one another with their heads. Tables and chairs crashed to the floor. Beer bottles smashed as they rolled off tables.

“Let’s go!” Hannah screamed, ducking.

“We could do room service in my suite,” Veronica yelled.

“Sounds like a winner,” Taz agreed, keeping low, running after them.

“Why can’t we just go home?” Hannah pleaded.

Not that Taz or anybody else paid the least bit of attention to her.

Six

The wave loomed over Campbell’s bowsprit like a solid brown wall. “Hold tight for a sec, Paul—”

Campbell jammed his cell phone into the pocket of his windbreaker fast. Instead of slamming into the wave, Victory surfed up its side with the gathering speed of a roller-coaster car.

Foam sprayed across the bow. Water frothed the length of the yacht. Charged to the max, Campbell wanted to yell.

With a grim smile, he swiped the burning salt water out of his eyes. Blinking, he studied the roiling swells for a calm patch and then jammed the phone to his ear again.

“Still there, Paul?”

“Settle with that Smith bitch? Whose side are you on?”

Campbell remembered her smile and the way she’d looked at her kid on the beach.

Paul couldn’t stop screaming. “You out of your mind? You saw those mold pictures! You visited me in the hospital—”

When Campbell made no reply, O’Connor burst into a stream of profanity that was so abusive, Campbell stuffed his cell phone back into his pocket.

“Are you there?” The thunder and venom of O’Connor’s voice was mostly smothered now. “What’s all that noise?”

“The wind,” Campbell replied in a mild tone. “It’s pretty raucous out here.”

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