Foxy Roxy (5 page)

He turned the helmet in his hand, examining the minor damage. “How does the other guy look?”

“Worse.” Roxy grinned and slid her hands into the hip pockets of her jeans. “I wore it to figure out who was breaking into my office for petty cash. Good thing, too, because he took a swing at me.”

“I presume he’s in jail now?”

“Why would I call the police? He’d just come back. Which he won’t now.”

“You took a shot at him?”

“Unlike you,” she said, “I don’t keep guns around. No, I belted him with a two-by-four. Sent him home crying to his mommy. He was just a methhead kid. Easy to scare.”

Flynn shook his head. “Eventually there’s somebody in this world who is going to outfox you, Roxy.”

Nooch appeared out of the darkness, along with Rooney. The dog jumped up and planted his forepaws on the door of Flynn’s truck, looking for attention. Flynn reached out and roughed up the dog’s big head.

Nooch said, “Hey, Flynn, thanks for dinner. You sure learned how to do some good cooking while you were away.”

“Glad you liked it.”

“Next time, how about some dessert?”

Flynn laughed. “Anything in particular?”

“I like marshmallows. Anything with marshmallows.”

Wagging his head, Flynn shoved Rooney away and put the little pickup in gear. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He drove off, leaving Nooch with a smile on his face. The bumper sticker on the back of the pickup read, Marine Corps: When It Absolutely, Positively Must Be Destroyed Overnight.

Rain began to spatter on the gravel.

Roxy turned away and thought about hoisting the Monster Truck up onto the lift to work on the rattle in the driveshaft, but her cell phone rang. She grabbed it.

“Yeah?”

“Roxy?”

She recognized the voice of Trey Hyde, slippery youngest brother of Julius. Although it was a surprise to hear from yet another Hyde in the same night, she said, “Long time, no see, Trey. You gonna steal from me again?”

“I thought you made me a loan.” Trey laughed musically. “For cab fare to get to the airport. Didn’t I pay you back?”

“You will,” she said. “One way or another.”

“How about another?” he said just as playfully. “Can we get together? We could talk about economic Darwinism again. Or just—you know. Screw around. My place?”

Roxy knew all she needed to know about Darwin and the strong devouring the weak. Hang up on a jerk? Or let him satisfy the urge that had been building inside her all day?

She said, “I’ll see you in half an hour.”

When she clipped the phone shut, Nooch was chewing on an already ragged fingernail. “I know that look on your face,” he said. “Are you going to do something that’ll send you to confession?”

“I’ll take you home first.”

Suddenly it was raining like hell. Typical for October—balmy one minute, then blowing sleet the next. Tonight, the rain pounded down hard, washing grit from the streets. Roxy drove Nooch home with the wipers clacking on the truck’s windshield.

Fifteen minutes after Trey’s call, she arrived at a former riverside factory that had been converted into lofts for the city’s young elite. Thomas Xavier Hyde—Trey to those who associated with him—kept one of the lofts for when he returned to Pittsburgh.

Trey spent most of his time in the Caribbean doing modern-day treasure hunting. With sonar, radar, and Inspector Gadget wizardry, his expedition team looked for sunken pirate ships and the Spanish gold they’d taken down with them in hurricanes. More accurately, Trey paid for the gadgets and stayed onshore with various American girls gone wild while others did the grunt work.

Whenever Trey did give up the fun and sun to come home, it was for the purpose of wheedling more money from his mother to pay for the next expedition. Hunting for another long-lost man-of-war seemed to need so much cash up front, Roxy often wondered why Trey didn’t just take the dough from his family and forget about using the million-dollar vacuum cleaner to suck gold ingots and brass cannons from the ocean floor.

But everybody, she supposed, needed a hobby—especially the loser third son of a powerful family.

Roxy slipped past the doorman and rode the elevator to the fifth floor. Shaking the rainwater from her hair, she walked down a long hallway to the last unit.

Trey must have been pacing inside the loft and checking the peephole, because the door suddenly opened and the Pirate of the Caribbean seized her arm to pull her inside. He snapped shut his cell phone and tried to kiss her.

Roxy fended him off with a stiff-armed block to the shoulder that sent him glancing off the doorjamb. “Down, boy. Save the mushy stuff.”

“Sorry. I forgot.” Grinning, he closed the door and dropped his cell phone on a pedestal by the door. “It’s always your rules. Great sex and no declarations of undying love.”

“Just the way you like it, too.” She put out one hand, palm up. “Before we get to the main event, I want the hundred bucks you stole from me.”

“There was less than twenty in the pocket of your jeans!”

She wiggled her fingertips. “You owe me for pain and suffering. I’ll settle for an even C-note.”

He dug out a gold money clip in the shape of a shark, peeled off a hundred-dollar bill, and slapped it into her hand. He added a few more bills with a flourish. “There. Forgive?”

“Sucking crap off the bottom of the ocean must be more profitable than it used to be.” She gave back the tip and kept the hundred.

“It could always be better.” Trey leaned back against the door to look at her. His face was pale and sweaty—excited. “You’re looking good, Roxy.”

She knew he went for classy, girly girls most of the time, so Roxy’s combination of wild black hair, no makeup, and less fashion sense wasn’t what drew him back to her. She looked great naked, that was the main thing. Sometimes she gunked her lashes with mascara and made her mouth juicier with plum-colored lipstick, but not tonight.

“You’re going to make me feel even better, right?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Trey Hyde was several inches taller than his much older brother, and he’d have been a few degrees more attractive if he’d laid off the costumes.
People
magazine had once photographed him in a skipper’s cap and full yachting regalia—the photogenic front man for the treasure-hunting venture—and he’d taken to dressing that way all the time. Tonight he wore sand-blasted jeans, deck shoes, and a collarless blue sweater with a sailboat logo. All he needed was a white cap and a long cigarette holder to look like Thurston Howell III on his way to a desert island with Gilligan.

Roxy folded his money into her pocket and walked past Trey into the apartment. Polished concrete floors, no walls. The foyer was a cool, empty space except for a pedestal with a large openmouthed pottery jar—Aztec, to hear Trey tell it. One of his expeditions brought it up from the bottom of the Caribbean, he said, but it could have come from Pier 1.

The foyer expanded into a living-dining area furnished by a decorator who obviously thought a
Moby-Dick
theme would be dandy. A harpoon on one wall, a stainless-steel table with a sailing-ship model on top—sails tilted as if catching a stiff breeze. A shallow glass case filled with gold coins lay displayed on a side table. A diver’s helmet had been converted into a lamp. The rest of the loft was dark except for the undulating underwater colors of a muted television. Gave Roxy the feeling she was inside a fish tank.

Through a doorway lay a king-sized bed, silver sheets pulled tight, gray pillows neatly stacked. Ready.

Trey hung back behind her, probably admiring her ass, but Roxy could almost feel the vibration of his nervous energy.

Across from the bed, a huge television hung on the wall, tuned to the eleven o’clock news with the sound turned off. Beside it, a window framed a spectacular view of the city—all sparkling lights and the shining blackness of the river with a glitter of rain glistening around it all. A tugboat was passing by the building, pushing three barges laden with coal upriver against the deluge.

Roxy turned back to Trey and unzipped her top sweatshirt and pulled it off. She noticed a new affectation flashing in his earlobe. “Nice earring, Captain Blood. But isn’t it supposed to be a gold hoop?”

He fingered the diamond, smiling a little nervously now that they’d reached the bed. “Do you like it?”

She flicked his earring with her finger, ignoring his question. Which was what he wanted, really. The tougher she treated him, the shinier his face got. Make him wait, she thought. Make some conversation while his imagination stimulated the rest of him. She hooked one finger behind the snap of his jeans and unzipped him. “Did you come home to help your big brother dynamite what’s left of the mansion tomorrow?”

“I guess you haven’t heard.”

“About?”

“My brother died tonight.”

Roxy pulled away, foreplay forgotten. If he’d punched her in the gut, she wouldn’t have been more shocked. “Died?”

Motionless, Trey said, “You look surprised.”

“Of course I’m surprised. Jesus Christ.” Blown away, more like it. And sick. Her last glance at Julius—walking away from his pool, looking forlorn—suddenly surged up in Roxy’s mind.

And now he was dead?

Trey said, “I thought you might have known already. Considering you were at the house tonight.”

The air in the loft was suddenly too cold for Roxy to breathe, but it snapped her back to reality. “How do you know that?”

“I was there, too.”

“You—? What do you mean?” Roxy frowned. “What happened to Julius? Did he have a heart attack or something?”

“He was shot. Somebody shot him.”

“Somebody who?”

One-handed, from underneath his sweater at the small of his back, Trey drew a handgun. A Colt 1911.

The hair on the back of Roxy’s neck prickled as he dropped the weapon onto the bed. “Jesus, Trey. Did you kill him?”

“Did you?”

She held her ground as he stepped closer. Trey wasn’t the kind of guy to be afraid of. Not usually. He was a little bent sexwise, but nothing Roxy couldn’t handle. She held still while he pulled her second sweatshirt over her head and dropped it on the bed. Then he put his face against her bare shoulder, and a moment later his fingers were under her camisole, on her skin. He nuzzled her neck. But she could feel his hands shaking.

Then his act collapsed. He said, “Oh, my God, Roxy. Julius is dead. My own brother.” He shuddered, and then he clutched her.

Roxy stiffened. It was easier dealing with the crazy Trey. Trey with a hard-on and too much coke in his bloodstream. Not blubbering Trey. “Hey, cool it.”

In the biblical sense, men were pretty much the same. Except some liked it standing up or outdoors, on the bottom, or on top. Maybe mirrors. Sometimes batteries. It didn’t matter. The only ones she said no to were the camera buffs. Even the men who despised women, they could be fun. The trick was figuring out how to provoke them all into doing what she liked, no strings, no personal shit.

Trey was crossing a line with the wimp routine.

She pushed him to sit on the bed. “Don’t weird me out like this, Trey. Tell me what happened.”

He sat, not bothering to wipe the tears from his face or to zip his pants. The blue light from the television played across his features. “Somebody shot him, I guess.”

“Who? You? Did you pull the trigger?”

His breathing got rapid again, like he couldn’t get enough air. “Not me. I don’t know who.”

“Tell me what happened. What did you do?”

“I’ve got a new deal cooking, and I pitched it to him. All I need’s a little capital, but the rest of my trust doesn’t kick in until I’m forty. So I asked Julius to help me get the financing from Dodo. But he blew me off. Said I should run it past Quentin. Like Quentin’s the boss now? So I walked away tonight, I swear. I was in my car when I heard shots. I ran back, and—look, he was already dead.”

“Jesus.”

“I didn’t know what to do. I got the hell out of there. I knew how it was going to look.”

It still looked that way to Roxy. Trey had a gun. And probably enough frustration with his brother to pull the trigger.

Roxy tried backtracking through her own timetable at the Hyde mansion. The habit of self-preservation. “When did you first get to the house?”

He frowned, struggling to focus. “I don’t know exactly. By the time I got there, lots of people were already—I mean, there were some cars in the driveway and your truck out back, too. I didn’t talk to anyone but Julius, though.”

“But you argued with him. Did you threaten him? With the gun?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” The denial came too fast, and he made an effort to look convincing. “We just yelled a little, and then I left, that’s it.”

Roxy figured he was lying. But she said, “You took off when you heard the shots?”

Trey avoided her gaze. “No, I went back. And there he was—sprawled out on the grass like he was making snow angels or something.” Trey glanced up at her, perhaps trying to gauge if she was swallowing his story. “That’s when I heard your truck leave.”

Roxy knew she couldn’t have heard the shots over the noise of the Monster Truck’s engine.

Trey’s composure loosened at the edges again. “Somebody else must have seen what happened and called 911, because in a couple of minutes I heard the police sirens coming. I didn’t want them to see me—not with the gun.” He dashed tears from his face. “So I got into my car and left.”

“And then you called me. What for?”

“Well, you were there at the house. I thought you’d—I don’t know. Help me.” He unraveled completely and began to cry. “I—I got blood on my shirt when I touched him, Roxy. So I took it off. Changed into my sweater.”

“Where is the shirt now?”

With a shaky thumb, he wiped snot from his upper lip. “I threw it out the car window on my way here.”

Roxy squinted at Trey to figure out if he was lying or in shock. “You really didn’t see who killed him?”

“I saw you, that’s all.”

“Who else saw me?”

“I don’t know.”

“The police?” Sharper.

“Really, I don’t know. Can we talk later? I really need a fuck. It might clear my head. I—I’m scared, I guess. Should I take off my clothes? I’ll do what you want, Roxy. Anything. Please. I don’t want to think about it for a while.”