#15 
So….I was looking at everyone’s sales to Hard Case Crime….and it reminded me I always wanted to write like that, but never did, and I said…huh — see how I worked the icon in?
I was elbow deep in a cooler of ice-cold beer and drowning in boredom when she stepped up beside my beach towel. I started at her legs and followed the well-curved road to a distracting detour at her hips, before traversing the mountains of heaven and latching onto a matched set of ice blue eyes.
She looked like someone’s idea of a wet dream gone dry. It was probably the sun, but I’d swear mist rose off her skin like the smoke from dry ice and crackled coldly from the depths of her smile. She was dressed to kill, heels, stockings, short, tight skirt, and as out of place on the white sands of Blackbird beach as I was at home.
I glanced up and down the beach, but we were alone. I pulled my arm out of the cooler, popped the top on a chilled brew, offering the bottle to her without a word. She stared at it, then at me, and waited. Shrugging, I took a long pull off the beer, smoothed my towel, and gave her what passed for a smile during interrupted days on the beach.
“Can I help you?”
“I certainly hope so.”
Her voice was edgy and her words poured out too fast. Her clipped sentences were punctuated by compulsive glances over her shoulder, back toward my place – down the beach – out at the water. She only met my eyes on the first glance; the rest of the time I got the feeling she found eye contact distasteful. Apparently intimacy and beer were not on her top ten favorite things list, which I marked in my mental notebook as a shame. I always carry a notebook, sometimes in my head, sometimes in my jacket pocket. On the beach, the jacket would have been overdressing.
“I stopped at your office first,” she said.
I sipped my beer and waited.
“I need your help,” she continued. I could tell the admission galled her. She also didn’t like my beer, or my silence, so I held tight to both. It’s always better if the other person is on edge and you are relaxed. Barring that, the appearance of relaxation can go a long way to giving you a measure of control. I like to think I appear relaxed about ninety percent of the time. The rest I’m asleep.
“I don’t work weekends,” I said. “I’ll be in the office first thing Monday morning.”
“I can’t wait,” she said. She met my eyes again, and I marked a slash on my score card. She looked away.
“What seems to be your problem?” I asked. “Husband running around? Bank foreclosing on the ranch? Missing person?”
“A man I intended to kill is missing,” she said. Her voice was soft. “I think he might be dead. I want you to find him for me.”
“I don’t kill people miss…”
“I didn’t ask you to kill him,” she said, her voice a little sharper. “I asked you to find him. If he’s not already dead. If he is, I want to know who did it…and why.”
I took another drink of my beer.
“I didn’t catch your name,” I said.
She gave me a third and last glance into those eyes. “Call me Star,” she said. “That’ll do for now.”
I rose, drained my beer, and tossed the empty bottle into the cooler. I folded my towel, slipped into my sandals, and put on my shades. With the cooler in one hand and the rest of my ruined day in the other, I started up the beach toward my cottage. She followed. I heard her cursing, but didn’t turn to watch, though I would have loved the sight of those long, curvy legs battling the soft sand from atop her perilously spiked heels. It wasn’t professional courtesy that kept me from looking…I just couldn’t hide an erection in bathing trunks, and figured discretion was better for business.
–How ’bout THAT huh? HUH?
Written by David Wilson - Visit WebsiteFollow me on Twitter
