“Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

A strong hand clasped my shoulder and spun me face-to-face with my favorite local law enforcer. Serras’s dark gaze came down hard on the bruised line of flesh across my throat. He shook me a little as he muttered a curse.

Before I could answer, that mouth came down on mine. The kiss was as hard as the man, without a touch of tenderness that would have had me pushing him away and sorely disappointed.

We indulged ourselves for thirty seconds, maybe a minute, his hands fisting into the length of my hair and my body meeting his, sensation for sensation. When it was over, I released him as suddenly as he’d grabbed me. I took a ragged, dissatisfied breath, knowing I would yearn for more for a long time….

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

You won’t be able to resist a single one of our May books. We have a lineup so shiver inducing that you may forget summer’s almost here!

 Executive Bodyguard is the second book in Debra Webb’s exciting new trilogy, THE ENFORCERS. For the thrilling conclusion, be sure you pick up Man of Her Dreams in June.

 Amanda Stevens concludes her MATCHMAKERS UNDERGROUND series with Matters of Seduction. And the Montana McCalls are back, in B.J. Daniels’s Ambushed!

 We also have two special premiers for you. Kathleen Long debuts in Harlequin Intrigue with Silent Warning, a chilling thriller. And LIPSTICK LTD., our special promotion featuring sexy, sassy sleuths, kicks off with Darlene Scalera’s Straight Silver.

 A few of your favorite Harlequin Intrigue authors have some special books you’ll love. Rita Herron’s A Breath Away is available this month from HQN Books. And, in June, Joanna Wayne’s The Gentlemen’s Club is being published by Signature Spotlight.

Harlequin Intrigue brings you the best in breathtaking romantic suspense with six fabulous books to enjoy. Please write to us—we love to hear from our readers.

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

Straight Silver
Darlene Scalera

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Thanks to all, much too numerous to name,

that have taken me here to this tenth book.

With gratitude.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A native New Yorker, Darlene graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University with a degree in public communications. She worked in a variety of fields, including telecommunications and public relations, before devoting herself full-time to fiction writing.

A charter member of the Saratoga Chapter of Romance Writers of America, she served on its board for five years. She is also a member of the Capital Region Chapter of Romance Writers of America. She has presented writing workshops at national and regional writers’ conferences as well as at local universities and colleges.

She lives happily ever after in upstate New York with her husband, Jim, and their two teenage children, J.J. and Ariana. Visit her at www.darlenescalera.com.

Books by Darlene Scalera

HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

739—UNMARKED MAN

848—STRAIGHT SILVER

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Silver LeGrande—Born with a stripper’s name and a brick-house bod to fulfill her certain destiny, she’s left the daily bump and grind to go community college coed. But when someone strangles her former colleague, and no one seems to care, Silver turns from the classroom to the only cop she knows who will give a damn.

Detective Alexi Serras—The last thing he needed was a partner. Especially a five-foot-eleven ex-stripper with a yard of crayon-red hair and attitude to match her assets.

Billie West—Owner of Memphis’s most infamous nightclub, Billie ran a clean joint, keeping the customers and the cops happy. Silver had been her top draw, and Billie had suspected it was only a matter of time before she came back to the club. But neither had imagined the reason would be murder.

Della Devine—By the time she was murdered, she was working the poles in a sleazy operation on the lower side.

Paul Chumsky—Resident pro at a country club for Memphis moneybags, Chumsky had a charm that kept him in the good graces of the club’s male members and in the firm beds of their wives. But the evening before she died he’d spent with Della Devine.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

I should have known better. No one gets away scot-free. Certainly not ex-exotic dancers. Not even ones with fifteen and a half community college credits and a legitimate chauffeur’s license. Auntie always said it had taken four generations of LeGrande women to produce another as tough as my Great-Great-Grandma Bettina “Brass Buttons” Mae. Four generations plus a thick-lipped midway worker from Quebec blind in the right eye, my momma’s weak knees for a foreign accent her legendary downfall. But as the officer pulled back the sheet on Della Devine, I feared not even the blood of four generations of LeGrande women and a one-eyed Canadian carny would save me this time.

Not that I hadn’t seen death. Before my breasts fully developed and my age advanced to legal level, I’d cashiered part-time at the Piggly Wiggly, and I was working on the morning Florence Sutton went in to use the public toilet and never came out. After a period of some patience, her acquaintance, Loris Martin, who the meaner folks in town liked to speculate was Flo’s unnatural lover, alerted the day manager. Fire trucks, police cruiser, ambulance came lights whirling, sirens wailing into the lot. The door was broken down, and there was Flo, dead as the Christmas hog come smoking season. Wilson Bintliff, Tipton County’s most eligible undertaker heard the call over his scanner and arrived in a less flashy but equally timely manner only to stand around with everyone else, tapping his polished Florsheims to the tune of “She’ll Be Coming around the Mountain.” Not much else could be done until the body was pronounced, but seeing it was now lunch hour, which Doc Flaherty and his fleshy nurse, Suzie Toomis, always spent with the answering machine on and their pants off, it was going to be a wait.

The rest room was yellow-taped off but if you snuck in behind the bakery counter and cranked your neck, you could get an eyeful of poor Flo. The more irreverent of us took a peek. Even in death Flo had a way of looking at you as if she’d smelled the silent fart you’d let at last Sunday’s service. Stood to reason the same people who whispered about Flo’s sexual partialities would add this comeuppance was well deserved, but I’d imagined a person had to do a lot more than flare her nostrils extrawide to deserve to pass away with her pantyhose around her knees in the public rest room of the Piggly Wiggly.

I looked down. Della stared straight up at me but saw nothing. Oh girl, what’d you do to deserve this?

“Cleaning lady found her next to the dumpster behind the club where she was working.”

“Billie’s?”

“No, the Oyster Club.”

I raised my gaze to Detective Alexi Serras. The Greek genes in his hard-boned face gave him an edge to stare strongly at any woman and get away with it. Except me. Corpses and cops made me cranky.

“Cleaning woman didn’t recognize her, but–” Serras lifted the middle of the sheet. “The tattoo jogged her memory.”

I looked at the rose-vined double D high on the buttock. Billie herself had had strict policies on body art and piercing along with other excesses of “tastefulness.” She’d approved Della’s choice, although made it well-known that in her opinion tattoos were for sailors and convicts.

“Cleaning woman remembered one of the day girls talking about a new girl at the club, working prime time. Della Devine. You were listed as the emergency contact in her employee file.”

Classic case of the blind leading the blind.

“It’s Della.”

He reached to draw the sheet over her face. I grabbed his wrist. Serras shot me a look that could have curdled cream. I held on. Great-Great-Grandma LeGrande would have been proud.

“Give me a moment, will ya.”

His expression went bland as if to say, “It’s your dime.” I let go of his wrist.

“She was working at the Oyster?” I asked. When I’d hung up my boa, Della had still been at Billie’s.

“For about three months, according to records at the club. When’s the last time you’d seen her?”

“Eight, nine months ago.” As an emergency contact, I stunk.

“How long did you know Ms. Devine?”

He said her name as if it’d been hers since birth. I’d noticed he had uttered my name, too, without the usual smirking skepticism, although in my case he would have been correct. Baptized Silver LeGrande, I was born with a stripper’s name and a body that past puberty clinched my destiny.

“About four years.” I’d been working the circuit seven years when I came to Billie’s. I’d developed a respectable following and feature status. Della had just been promoted from the floor to the poles. As soon as I’d heard the young girl’s tag, I’d known we’d get along fine. Baptismal advantage aside, I liked gals with the brass to call themselves Della Devine.

“We both worked at Billie’s.” The Oyster wasn’t as bad as some joints, but in the hierarchy of strip clubs, it wasn’t even close to Billie’s. Seems like Della had been working her way down the ladder. I looked at her still body. Looked like she’d gotten there.

“You know why she left Billie’s?” Serras asked.

A greenish tint above Della’s eye spoke of an old bruise. The new bruises along her collarbones said she’d struggled. The purple horizontal stripe across her throat said she’d lost.

“No.”

“You’re no longer employed at Billie’s, either?”

I’d left the daily bump and grind about a year ago and gone collegiate. Maybe that’s why Della had decided I could shimmy to an SOS with the best of them. She’d been wrong.

“Career change.”

Not even Della’s two-pack-a-day habit had etched any fine lines in her face yet. The skin was as smooth as a newborn’s butt with only a slight bluish undercast.

I leaned forward, drawn by a mark on Della’s throat more defined than the other signs of struggle.

“You’re no longer in the entertainment industry?”

“I go to community college.” Let Serras stick that in his Krispy Kreme. I moved in closer, outlining the mark without touching it. Force had branded the shape of a double D into the tender flesh of Della’s throat.

“You see this?”

“Double D,” Serras confirmed. “Bartender at the Oyster Club said she had this gold piece she used to slip on her G-string?”

“A gold double D. Kind of like a signature.” I straightened, looked Serras in the eyes. “Called it her lucky charm.”

Serras was clever enough not to raise an eyebrow.

“Did she have any unusual sexual practices?”

He was referring to the horizontal line across Della’s throat. Cut off the oxygen at the moment of climax and achieve the ultimate orgasm. Unless something or someone went wrong. Then it became a matter of finding a plausible explanation for the well-wishers at the wake.

“Scarfing wasn’t her style.”

“You sure?”

I wasn’t sure of anything at this point.

“Maybe it was someone else’s?” Serras ventured.

I narrowed my gaze. “That how you guys are going to write this off?”

Serras’s pupils dilated. He was getting interested now. He said nothing.

“This was more than a night of sexual fun and games gone awry.” I had just finished my second semester of English comp.

He looked at Della on her steel bed.

I waited until he lifted his gaze. I met the black in his eyes. “She was murdered.”

He played it cop cool. “There’ll be an autopsy.”

Way too much information before lunch.

“What about her family? She have anyone in the area?”

“Her younger brother was in the service. Last I knew he was stationed right near here at Fort Grant. She once mentioned a grandmother in Pittsburgh raised her. Never said what happened to her real parents.”

“She didn’t mention anyone else?”

I looked at Della’s pale lips. Most gals were only too happy to give you a blow-by-blow of how they’d been done wrong or hung out to dry–more times than not by their own flesh and blood, but not Della. She didn’t confide much, but she didn’t bitch, either. Grousing was not her style. She had dignity. If Jackie O had been a stripper, she would have been Della Divine.

“No.” I answered Serras.

“What about boyfriends?”

“Sure.”

“Anybody special?”

“Strippers don’t usually go steady.”

“How ’bout friends, enemies? Anyone stand out?”

I shook my head. I’d never have a career as an emergency contact.

“Ms. Devine have any problems with any of the other girls at Billie’s?”

I shook my head again, returning my gaze to the corpse. I remembered a bright blonde with fake breasts, a whole lotta leg and a corn-pone wholesomeness not usually associated with someone from Pittsburgh. Her specialty had been tassels. I felt lousy.

“What was her real name?” I asked Serras.

“Doris Mickel.”

I reached for the sheet and drew it up over her face.

Serras smoothed a wrinkle in the sheet, then slid Della/Doris back before stepping away from her. If he’d been the pencil-pushing type bucking for Administration, I’d have written the gesture off as anal. But it being not even noon yet and already too long a day, I decided to allow myself the delusion this cop might really care what happened to a twenty-seven-year-old stripper with a violet choker and green bruises for eye shadow.

“Got any other thoughts on what happened to her?” I wasn’t deluded enough to think he’d start spouting out theories, but my motto is “You Can’t Fault a Girl for Trying.”

“We’ll be investigating all possibilities.” He gestured for me to precede him out of the morgue.

I didn’t move. “Maybe someone was trying to rob the Oyster and Della got in the way?”

“How ’bout a cup of coffee, Ms. LeGrande?”

It was July in Memphis. Just breathing made you sweat. Officer Serras wanted more than to extend hospitality. I glanced at my Rolex knockoff. I was taking a few summer courses at the college, catching up on credits. “I’ve got Principles of Macroeconomics in ten minutes.”

Serras didn’t crack a smile. Della could have done worse for a homicide detective.

“Was she killed in the club, then dumped out back?” I probed.

This time Serras took my elbow, steering me toward the door.

“We’ll investigate all angles.”

“The bruises on her body, the pooling of blood suggest she was moved from the original crime scene.”

Serras glanced at me. I was bluffing, and he knew it, but it was a good bluff, and I sensed he liked my style.

“There’ll be a preliminary report filed later today. You can give me a call.”

I took his card. “Thanks.” I meant it.

“If you remember anything, think of something that might help us learn who did this to Ms. Devine, you can get in touch with me at that number or leave a message. I’ll get back to you.”

He had used Della’s stage name as if he knew it’d please her. And me. He was right.

He led me up one floor. At the public entrance door, he tapped the card still in my hand.

“If you remember anything—”

I nodded. I knew the routine. You don’t strip for eleven years without participating in a few police procedures. This was the first time it was this personal, though.

I stopped on the way out to hold the door for a young woman coming up the sidewalk pushing a stroller. Serras was heading toward the back of the station house. As a stripper, I’d become a student of the body but I wasn’t even using that excuse this time. I watched him for the pure pleasure. His glutes tightened. His backside became even firmer. Finer. I didn’t know if his cop radar sensed I was watching him or he just wasn’t taking any chances. I did know one thing though. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d see those prime-time buns flex. Like gals called Silver LeGrande and Della Devine, some fates are unavoidable.

Chapter Two

Three miles from campus I pulled a 180 and headed into the heart of the city. Billie’s held center stage in a renovated warehouse two short blocks from Beale Street. Only a small sign near the double doors advertised Adult Entertainment. The club’s owner, Billie West, ran a clean joint. Topless only, no lap dances, no drugs, and Billie never missed a contribution to the Policemen’s Benevolent Association. I parked, went in through the back employees’ entrance. The club wouldn’t be open for hours, but Billie did her paperwork in the afternoon. She didn’t look surprised when I came to the office door. Billie had always expected it was only a matter of time before I’d be back.

“Silver.” She welcomed me in her rich contralto as she enfolded me in the reassurance of two hundred pounds plus. She rocked me a little and was kind enough to let me hang on tight. Billie was a mulatto from New Orleans with golden marcel waves and a variety of lovers. Her mama had sewn the costumes for many of the burlesque stars of Bourbon Street while Billie had listened to the triumphs of “Lottie the Body” and “Tajmah the Jewel of the Nile” and other stories of the glamorous life in the French Quarter clubs. When still on the sweet side of thirty, Billie had convinced one of her boyfriends, an ex-racketeer, to invest in her dream, and Billie’s was born–a nightclub in the forties’ French Quarter style. Billie’s featured an emcee, comics and singers, but it was the girls that brought in the customers.

“So, you finally ready to come back to work? I can start you on the floor, strolling and getting drinks.” Billie smiled, showing a gold cap.

I cocked a hip. “When did I ever wait tables?”

“That’s only ’cause you never could learn to take orders.” Billie’s smile split wider, adding another lush fold to her chin. Billie had caught my show one night in an upstart club in Jackson. I’m five-eleven with a yard of crayon-red hair and miraculously not one freckle plus big breasts that even unsupported still look happy. She promised me one-third more than my current nightly take. By the time we finished, she’d guaranteed double my salary and headliner status. I have the attitude to match my assets. The next night I was on her stage.

“You hear about Della?” It was a rhetorical question. Billie had probably known about the murder before I’d even gotten down to the morgue. Part of being a successful club owner was keeping the cops happy…and vice versa.

The dance in her eyes disappeared. “Bit of bad business, this with Della.”

She reached for a candy from an inlaid bowl on her desk. She pushed the bowl toward me. I shook my head. Normally I ate like a linebacker, but a dead body did wonders to suppress the appetite.

“I didn’t know she’d left the club. You have to let her go?” Della had been known to dabble—coke, crystal meth mostly, but besides a four-day toot when the rest of us girls covered for her, she’d kept her act together and her vices limited to off-club hours. Still, little went on in the club that Billie didn’t know about and would only tolerate to a point.

The huge gold hoops in Billie’s ears jangled as she nodded. “She’d been on a bender since her brother’s death—”

“Her brother’s death?” My breath seemed to go. I sank back into the chair.

Billie reached for another candy, unwrapped the foil slowly and slipped it between her lips. “Ugly incident. Not far from where the child was stationed.” Billie sucked on the candy.

“What happened?”

“Seems he was out with the boys, whooping it up. You know G.I.s, give ’em a weekend pass and they think they’ve got a one-way ticket to Sodom-and-Gomorrah land. When the others decided to call it a night, the boy, Della’s brother, either hadn’t had enough yet or maybe he just got separated from the others. When he was ready to go home, he must have decided to walk back to the base. He either got lost, stumbled and fell or passed out on the train tracks. By the time the conductor saw him, it was too late.”

“He was run over by a train? Lord.” The breath left my body again.

“I turned a blind eye to Della’s behavior the first couple months, but when things began to get worse instead of better, I realized I wasn’t doing the child no favors. I gave her a choice. Get herself into a program and clean herself up or I’d have to let her go. She left. Ended up at the Oyster.” Billie’s nostrils flared wide. I thought of Flo.

“It was the last time I saw her.” Billie tapped an inch-long acrylic fingernail with a crystal in its center on the candy dish’s edge.

“Until today I hadn’t seen her since I’d left the club. She had me listed as an emergency contact at the Oyster. Makes a little more sense now that I know about her brother.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. She always did look up to you. After I confronted her about her drug use, she felt the girls here had betrayed her. You know a junkie.” Billie’s fingernails skimmed the air. “They’ve always got someone else to blame for their own messes.”

“I had to go down this morning, identify the body. A Detective Serras called me.”

Billie brought her hands together, steepled her fingers. “Ahh, Lexi.”

“You know him?”

Billie gave me a tolerant look. “Father was an officer, too. Killed during a robbery attempt. In his own home.”

“His own home?” I echoed.

Billie waited to see if I was finished interrupting. “Royce had just made sergeant then, took the boy under his wing.”

Royce was Royce Ealy, now chief of police with, according to the newspapers, an eye toward running for police commissioner next fall.

“What kind of a cop is he?”

“Some say if it wasn’t for Royce, Serras would have been busted back to flatfoot years ago.”

“Truth or jealousy?”

“Little bit of both. He’s got a reputation as a wild card. Hasn’t learned to play by the rules yet.”

I myself was a work in progress along those lines. Serras and I would have no problems in that area.

“Got busted early on for excessive force. Charges didn’t stick. But be careful, chère, he’s a dangerous man. Not hard to look at.” Billie smiled slim, sly. “You look, chère?”

“I looked.”

Billie released a luxuriant laugh. “You’re still one of my girls, you know that, darlin’?” Billie’s smile disappeared into sadness. “Della was, too. Despite everything. One of my girls ends up like this. I don’t like it.”

“What do you think happened?”

Her eyes on me, Billie reached for another candy. “Drugs, the Oyster Club…”

“She was strangled with her own G-string.”

Billie sucked silently, for the second time showing no surprise. With her pipeline to the police, she probably knew more details about the murder than I did.

“Kind of an eloquent statement.” My English comp acted up again.

“Or a practical one if the killer needed a weapon.” If Billie did know anything about the murder, she wasn’t telling.

The phone rang. I stood. Billie motioned me to sit as she glanced at the number on the caller ID screen. “The machine can get it.”

I stayed standing. I only had one question left—who killed Della Divine? Billie either didn’t have the answer, or if she did she wasn’t sharing.

“I’ve got to go, Billie.”

She leaned her impressive bulk back against her chair and nodded as if she understood, just like the first time I’d told her I had to go. She got up to walk me out.

“How’s school? Getting straight A’s?”

“I’m getting by.” I wasn’t ready to admit that a dyslexic going to college is equal to a stripper wearing her thong backward onstage–fully exposed and no idea what the hell you’re doing.

“Good girl. You do my taxes after you become legit?”

“If you give me the real set of books.”

Her laughter became richer. “Still one of my girls, Silver.”

She made my name sound like a symphony.

We embraced at the back door. “You hear anything about this thing with Della, you give me a call?” I asked her.

Billie put her hands on my shoulders as if to steady me. “Sometimes, chère, a thing like this happens. And there’s nothing you or I could have done to stop it.”

I left, my body still warm from Billie’s embrace, the faint sweet smell of her breath in my nostrils. And an unsettling sensation that she had just lied to me.

I WAS CHECKING the temperature of the chocolate when Adrienne came in. If the chocolate was too cold, you got splinters. Too warm and you got mush. I drew my knife across the square’s surface. With a satisfaction like a long sigh, I watched the chocolate curl. Adrienne eyed the orange chiffon cheesecake. “What’s wrong?”

I used to drink when I worried. Now I bake. Adrienne scooped a dollop of whipped cream from the mixer bowl and sucked it off her finger while I told her about Della’s death. She pulled her finger slowly out of her mouth when I finished. Her lips stayed set in an O. Adrienne is a university student and the daughter of my divorced dentist, Herb Bloomberg. Last year Momma had finally made good on her threat to sell Great-Great-Grandma LeGrande’s gorilla of a house and head to Biscayne Bay, and for the first time, I got sentimental. I’d worked the circuit for eleven years, eleven very profitable years, but the town of Snake Fish twenty-two miles south of Memphis was home. Sentimentality isn’t cheap. Adrienne rents the finished basement. I get a little extra cash to keep this hulk of a house and my childhood illusions alive plus twice-annual free dental cleanings and checkups. Adrienne hasn’t had to buy herself a drink in a bar since she moved in with an ex-stripper. We were a match made for the Memphis suburbs.

I placed chocolate curls around the cake’s top with a finesse I don’t usually possess. Adrienne was seeking comfort from a beater off the mixer when the back door slammed. Great-Aunt Peggilee came in from her pool aerobics class at the Jewish senior center, singing Frankie Laine. She was either still in the throes of exercise endorphins or Charley Diamond had worn his Speedo again.

She eyed the orange chiffon cheesecake. “What’s wrong?”

Auntie came with the house. She teases her hair so high it could be a way station for migrating geese. She also favors heavy eyeliner, clip-on earrings, male crooners and fake fur…in Memphis. If Barbie needed a great-aunt, Auntie Peggilee would have been the prototype.

“One of the girls Silver used to work with is in a bad way.” Adrienne extended the other beater to my great-aunt. The mutual adoration between Adrienne and her I could only credit to their complete antithesis of each other.

“Pregnant?” Auntie’s eyes narrowed, slid to my waist while her tongue flicked at a blob of cream.

“Dead.”

We weren’t a subtle household.

Auntie licked the beater. Her slitted gaze on me didn’t say, “That could have been you.” Her eyes with their turquoise lids had seen enough to know it could have been any one of us instead of Della laid out on cold steel this morning.

“That for after the funeral?” Auntie nodded toward the cake. Practicality was Aunt Peggilee’s way of coping.

“I guess it could be,” I answered, not realizing it until now.

“When is it?”

“I don’t know. The police are looking for family. Della had a younger brother in the military, but he was killed in a train accident a few months ago.”

“Train accident?”

“He was on the tracks after a heavy night on the town. Not far from the base. They think he was walking home and either fell and knocked himself out or plum passed out. They couldn’t stop the train in time.” I handed them each a chocolate curl.

“And now the sister is dead?”

Auntie shaved her eyebrows and painted on new ones. They headed beehive level. Auntie doesn’t believe in coincidence.

“Strangled.” Adrienne supplied, moving on to a spatula.

“Della never really mentioned anybody but her brother, and a grandmother who raised them in Pittsburgh. I suppose if they don’t find anybody, the girls at Billie’s will take up a collection. Bintliff should give us a fair price.”

“You want me to go with you to the service?”

“I don’t see any reason.”

“Neither do I.” Aunt Peggilee put the licked-clean beater in the bowl soaking in the sink, took a swig of her sport drink. “But I will.”

I adored my great-aunt Peggilee, too.

I CHECKED IN with Luxury Limousines after my class in fundamentals of info processing, but midweek was always slow. Any jobs that came in went to the old-timers. They didn’t need me until the weekend. Adrienne was at her summer job at the university science library where she spent most of her time scouting out premeds. Auntie would be leaving for salsa class followed by Margarita Mania at the Elks. I headed into Memphis, going against the tide of rush-hour traffic. The Oyster Club was in a corner of the city that made respectable folks shake their heads, and campaigning politicians favor for catchy photo ops. But an upward transformation had begun, thanks to a new condominium complex three streets over, whose towers could be seen from the T-shirt stalls on the corner. Come in from the east, and you’d pass a freestanding zone of new construction that took up almost the whole street. The centerpiece was the residential towers that included a health club and underground parking. Enter from the west and you’d see the transvestite hookers, the homeless waiting for St. Francis’ shelter to open for lunch, and the exotic dancer marquees, the largest of which was the Oyster Club.

The club was quiet. Peak patron time was hours from now. A thin-haired man sat at the bar, stirring his drink with his pinkie, more interested in the clear liquid than the women dancing on the catwalk. A woman in her cruel forties slapped a cardboard coaster down as I slid onto a stool.

“Ginger ale.” Elixir of the reformed.

She brought the drink, cast me a resigned look and waited. Thirty-one-year-old community college coeds, even ex-strippers, don’t stop in at Club Oyster at the end of the day for a soft drink.

“I was a friend of Della Devine’s.” I held out my hand. “Silver LeGrande.”

A flash of recognition sparked in her pale eyes. She took my hand, didn’t give me her name, but she left my money on the bar. “I heard you left Billie.” Her gaze took me in and spit me out. “You looking for a gig here?”

I shook my head. “I’m going to college.”

She nodded, no expression. Enough years behind a bar and you heard it all. She wiped the counter. “Sorry about your friend.”

“Were you here this morning?”

Her eyes lifted to mine. “My shift doesn’t start until noon. As it was, by the time the cops got done scouring this place, we didn’t open until four.” She looked around. “Not that it matters. Something like this scares people. Business will be off for a while.”

“Police said the cleaning woman found her.”

“Cindy.”

A calico cat jumped on the bar. I started. The bartender backhanded the cat off the counter with a surprisingly elegant swat.

“Damn stray. Throw it out every night, but the girls keep feeding it, leaving it milk.” The bartender moved away and, with a similar grace, grabbed a bottle, poured another several clear inches into the empty glass of the man at the bar with the pinkie swizzle stick.

“Cindy works mornings. She doesn’t know many of the girls,” the woman said as she came back to me. “Couldn’t reach the manager. Called 911.

“Police said the woman saw the tattoo. Made her remember Della’s name.”

“Della Devine.” The woman smiled, her bridge work not bad. “I liked that name.”

I smiled back. “Me, too.”

“Police had Cindy find her file to see if there was family, friend, somebody to contact.” The woman paused. “Silver LeGrande,” she pronounced with the same surprising elegance she’d used to backhand the cat off the counter.

I sipped my ginger ale. “Did you know Della?”

“I knew her, but I usually work the early shift. She danced second shift. Better money.”

“How ’bout the other girls?”

The woman shrugged. “Sure, the late-night girls knew her. They’ll be coming in all shook up for a while, sipping something strong between sets. The ones that called in to see if we were open tonight said she was a good kid.”

“I heard she had her problems.”

The woman’s second shrug said, “Don’t we all?’

“Some of the girls will be here in a couple hours. They might be able to tell you more.” I couldn’t fault the woman for clamming up. Self-preservation comes before sympathy.

“What about them?” I looked at the girls working the poles. “They know Della?”

“Lucy worked with her.” The bartender tipped her head toward a blonde, her breasts disproportionate to narrow hips and fireplace-poker legs. “The other girl hasn’t been here that long.”

“Anybody else called? Been by? Family maybe?”

“You and the cops. That’s it.”

I finished my ginger ale and felt forlorn even with bubbles up my nose.

“Get you something else?”

I snapped the rubber band against my wrist. Two years ago I’d been on the cusp of being a drunk. Some people twelve-stepped their way out. I’d snapped myself sober. Today the skin above my pulse was a mean black and blue.

“Thought I’d wait around, maybe talk to Lucy when she goes on break.”

“I’ll send her over.” The woman walked away.

“The girls have lockers? Some place to store their stuff in the dressing room?”

The woman turned back to me. “There’s a few lockers. Not enough for everyone on the busy nights. The girls share.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

“Don’t know that you’ll find much, but go ahead. Police have already been in there, but that don’t mean squat. Strung-out stripper strangled with her own G-string. The boys downtown have probably already chalked it up to karma.”

She was probably right. I doubted even Officer Serras with his sheet-smoothing hands would lose any sleep tonight over Della Divine.

The back room smelled of smoke and hairspray. Three wooden tables with large rectangle mirrors were covered with makeup bottles, hairspray cans, brushes. A stained couch occupied one corner. The coffee table in front of it was littered with overflowing ashtrays. The lockers were a line of five, industrial brown and scratched. The first held an oversize man’s shirt, a black bowtie and a cowboy hat. Two whips and a dog collar hung in the second one. It was a stroll down memory lane. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. If there had been any clues, some cop in the crime lab was earning his daily wage going over them now. I opened the third locker, peered inside. It felt better than doing nothing. On a hook hung a long red wig.

“Jane said you wanted to see me.”

I jumped, hit my head on the door edge, and swore like a sailor. A girl slumped into a seedy-looking chair in the corner, lit a cigarette, exhaled. She crossed her bony legs, her foot swinging. She’d seen me jump like a scared rabbit. She was one up on me, and she knew it.

“Silver LeGrande.” Emergency contact.

“Lucy.” She didn’t give a last name. “Jane says you knew Della?”

“We worked together at Billie’s.”

“You dance at Billie’s?”

“Used to.”

“Where do you dance now?”

“I don’t. I’m going to school.”

“What for?”

“I want to be an accountant.”

The girl studied me with a half-lidded gaze. Her robe was loose, adding an untidy air about her. She was much younger up close than on the stage. She inhaled, exhaled, didn’t offer up anything.

“How well did you know Della?” I asked her.

“We weren’t bosom buddies.” The words were tough. So was the girl’s face. Caring cost you in a club.

“You work the second shift?”

“Usually. I’m pulling a double tonight, filling in for one of the regular girls who got spooked by the whole deal.”

“What happened didn’t scare you?”

“I got three kids to feed.” The girl inhaled hard. “The show goes on.” She tapped an ash, ground it into the worn carpet with her foot.

“I heard she was pretty broken up about her brother’s death.”

“First I heard about it.”

“He was run over by a train few months back. Over near Fort Grant where he was stationed.”

The girl dragged on her cigarette until the end burned hot orange.

“Something like that, well, it could make a person…” I waited for Lucy to fill in the blanks. She didn’t. I tried to make it easy for her. “She was using when I knew her.”

The girl shrugged. “I’d seen worse.”

So had I. “You know why she came here?”

“The ambiance.” The girl gave a tight smile, proud of herself.

“Anybody she was seeing?”

The girl stood and went to the washroom.

“Maybe somebody special?”

“Yeah, they line up at the door here to sweep us off our feet.” I heard a small hiss as she pitched her cigarette into the toilet.

“How about any of the customers? Maybe one of the regulars? Someone who likes to get rough?”

Lucy came back into the room, plopped herself down at a dressing table, started applying blush with force. She caught my gaze in the mirror. “I already answered all these questions earlier for the police. What are you looking for anyway?”

I told her the truth. “I don’t know.”

I had surprised her this time. She smiled. For a moment she was just a young girl enjoying a grin. She reached for a hairbrush. “We worked together, that’s pretty much it. She was pretty tight-lipped, didn’t go around giving you her life story like there was some fat chance you’d be interested.”

“How about the other girls? Anyone she hung out with outside of work?”

“This is a strip club. Not a sorority house.” Lucy got up, went over to the lockers. “Listen, I wish I had something to give ya, but I don’t. There’s a lot of freaks out there. It happens every day.”

She opened a locker door, took out a fresh pack of cigarettes.

“So last night just happened to be Della’s turn?”

The girl glanced at me over her shoulder. No one had thought of me as naive for a long time…until now. “You got a better explanation?”

“Not yet.”

The girl gave a crooked smile, slammed the locker door. “I gotta get to work.” She opened the fresh pack of cigarettes, tapped one out and lit it. She didn’t move.

“Della was always bumming cigarettes off everybody at Billie’s. She do that to you?”

The girl went to the couch, sat on its edge. She crossed her legs and eyed me through the smoke. “Yeah, she was a pain like that.”

“She was always trying to quit.” I went on, hoping I’d hit a nerve. “Thought if she didn’t buy ’em, she wouldn’t smoke ’em.” Della flashed too real in my memory.

“Yeah, she did that here, too. Never helped her none. Don’t matter much now, anyway, does it?”

I couldn’t hold my gaze anymore on the girl with the swinging foot and the slack robe. I turned to leave.

“She used to let a lot of the girls borrow money though. She do that at Billie’s?”

I stopped, nodded.

“She’d never harass them about paying her back. She was good like that.” The girl tapped the ash off her cigarette and looked at me. “It was as if she didn’t care about the money.”

“You know anything she did care about?”

Lucy leaned forward and set the cigarette in the ashtray. She picked up a cosmetic bag, took out a lip pencil. “She was meeting someone last night. After her shift.” She lined her lips as she talked.

“You know who?”

She smacked her lips together twice. I snapped my rubber band.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t eavesdropping or anything like that. I came into the dressing room and heard her talking on the phone. Whoever it was, she was telling them she’d meet them after work.”

I schooled my features, concealing any excitement. Lucy could be playing me, after all. Some girls have a natural mean streak.

“Did you tell this to the police?”

“I’m telling you.”

“Why?”

“You go to college. You’re a smart woman.” Lucy picked up her cigarette. She took a long draw, stubbed it out and stood.

I found a pen, ripped a blank page out of my pocket planner which was easy since all the pages were blank. I scribbled numbers down. “This is my cell, this is my house.” I heard the hope in my voice and didn’t even care. I held out the paper to Lucy. “Just in case you or maybe one of the other girls wants to get in touch with me.”

She folded the paper, slipped it inside the cigarette pack’s cellophane wrapper. Ten chances to one it’d be thrown away with the empty pack, but those odds were all I had. I’d take them.

On my way home, I called the number Serras had given me.

“Serras.”

“LeGrande.” I answered as an equal. “What’s the current status on the Devine case?” Lesson I learned long ago—fake it and most people will follow your lead.

“We’re about to crack it wide open, doll face.”

Serras wasn’t most people. He was police.

“You find any family?”

The pause told me Serras was deciding exactly where I fit in. Not easy to waylay a cop. They’re paid to see right through you.

“How ’bout you?” He came back at me.

“What about me?”

“You got something for me? You learn anything at the Oyster you’d like to share?”

So they were cruising the Oyster. Good for them, although the manpower and case’s stature wouldn’t let it go on for more than a day or two.

“Yeah, I got a lecture on ‘life is a bitch’ from a chicken-legged number named Lucy.”

He chuckled. “You’re one up on us.”

“Trying to make me feel better?”

“No.”

I hadn’t thought so. I debated telling him about the phone call Della had made. Only because he’d tucked Della in as if wishing her sweet dreams.

“I did learn one thing.” Or maybe because I remembered his backside rumba and appreciated the effort. Still I was going to make him bite. A girl had to have standards.

Two seconds of silence passed until I heard “I’m here.”

I’d take it. “Della was heard making plans to meet someone after work.”

Another silence. “And?”

“That’s it.”

Serras wasn’t the type to sigh. He was the type to swear. Professionalism prevented him from doing either. Maybe Billie was wrong. Maybe Serras had decided to play by the rules. Damn waste of man if that was the case.

“I appreciate the vital information, Ms. LeGrande.”

He had a right to sound sarcastic. The tip had lost something in the translation. Still it was something for an ex-stripper, dyslexic, college coed on her first murder case.

“What do you got for me?”

He chuckled. He was warming up.

“There was a brother—”

“I knew that by lunch.” I took a turn at the sarcasm.

“Then you know he was recently killed.”

“A train hit him.”

“Investigation ruled it an accident.”

“This one won’t be so neat and tidy, though, will it, Detective?

“We’re trying to locate the grandmother through Social Services. If the adoption was never formal, there’ll be no formal record of it. We did find the victim’s birth record. No history found yet on the name listed under father.”

“What about the mother?”

“Last-known address showed nothing. No other listing has come up yet. She might have remarried, moved away. We’re still looking.”

“So far, a dead end, then?”

He shouldn’t have hesitated.

“C’mon, Serras, I gave you something.” I said it as if I believed that would work.

“You gave me nothing, LeGrande.”

“Okay, if I do find out something more, you get it first. Deal?”

“What exactly is your interest here?”

“Emergency contact.”

I liked his laugh.

“All right. One of the neighbors saw a guy leaving the victim’s apartment this morning. We ran the description of the man and the make of the car. We’re talking to him now.”

“Who is he?”

Serras didn’t answer.

“I could know him. Might know something about him that you guys could use.”

I was thinking up another lure to get Serras to give up the information when he said, “Name is Paul Chumsky.”

It was my turn to pause.

“You know him?”

“Sort of.”

Serras waited. I was becoming impressed by the man’s patience.

“I was married to him.”

Chapter Three

I figure everyone is entitled to one major mistake per lifetime. Mine was Paul Chumsky.

I got to the station and found Serras. He was looking as if he should have one of those warning stickers on him: Caution: Extremely Flammable Contents. May Spontaneously Ignite. Obviously Serras didn’t like surprises.

“You were married to Paul Chumsky?”

“I kept my own name.” Nobody queues up for strippers named Silver Chumsky. “You think Paul had something to do with Della’s death?”

“We’re asking him a few questions.”

Della may have been on a downward spiral, and Paul could have been riding shotgun, but murder? It wasn’t Paul’s style. Too messy. The final residue of the matrimonial sacrament kicked in. “Paul’s not a murderer.”

A drunk, yes. An unfaithful husband, definitely.

“That’s what he says. Says the victim and he had dinner at her place before her shift. She suggested he hang out. If it was a slow night, she’d get off early and they could get together back at the apartment. She’d give him a call from the club.”

“You already knew she was planning on meeting someone after work?” So much for my hot tip.

“I figured you were trying to impress me.”

“Would it be that easy?”

“No.” Serras’s glance told me I was getting under his skin. At this point, a win-win situation any way I looked at it.

“Said he waited at her apartment. Said he was pretty tired.”

Interpretation: Paul’s happy hour had started at noon instead of three. Youth, brashness and a slightly above-average talent had gotten my ex-husband to the semipro golf circuit, but he’d lacked the discipline and true genius to go further. When I met him, he’d had one mediocre season and knew it was his last. When I found myself pregnant, he proposed to me in what I always figured was one last desperate stab at immortality. He wasn’t with me when I lost the baby, but when I told him, it was the first time I’d seen a man cry. We lasted two years. We weren’t friends but we weren’t enemies. We just weren’t meant to be. Last I heard he was the resident pro over at the Meadows, a country club for Memphis moneybags. An ex-stripper with an ex-husband who’s an ex-semipro. If life were a tic-tac-toe game, I’d have it made.

“Claims he must’ve fallen asleep because next thing he remembers is waking up on Ms. Devine’s divan.”

A cop who could be cute. Serras was getting under my skin.

“He doesn’t remember anything else.”

Since my husband’s idea of sobriety is adding lime to his tequila shooters, for once he could be telling the truth. Blackouts can do that to you. I knew.

“He has a lawyer?” Ex or not, the man had rights—just not in my bed anymore.

“He hasn’t been charged with anything yet.”

Police lingo for “no evidence.” “You’ve got nothing to hold him?”

“He’s got no alibi.”

“And no motive.”

“He’s nervous. He put in a call to Michael Kingsley’s office. They sent an associate down to hold his hand.”

I raised an eyebrow. Michael Kingsley was a high-priced mouthpiece to white-collar criminals. Not washed-up golf semipros.

“So, maybe Della’s murder is more than an unfortunate incident?”

“Let’s just say, your ex-husband has already phoned for a ride home.”

“Can I see him?”

“Why?”

Cops. Always a question. “Catch up on old times.”

Five foot eleven ex-strippers. Always an answer.

Serras cocked his head toward the benches in the hall on either side of the front desk. “You can wait, but he might be a while.”

“Not if Michael Kingsley has his back and you guys have nothing on him but a sleepover.”

Serras assessed me with a lean gaze and looking as good as an underwear ad. “What’s your stake in this, LeGrande?”

I tried to decide if behind that hooded gaze I was a suspect. “You mean besides the fact my ex-husband was sleeping with a friend of mine who was murdered last night?”

He added another weapon. Silence.

Suddenly I felt truly tired. “Maybe it’s just a small, small world after all, Serras.”

A door opened. A group of men came into the hall. I saw Paul before he saw me. He was tan, fit, looking like a vote for the charmed life except for the puffiness around his eyes and a viciousness in his gaze that only a hangover and being held by the police could cause.

“Somebody else here to give you a ride, Chumsky.” Serras said as the group approached.

“Popular fellow,” one of the cops in the group remarked.

Paul turned, gave me the good smile that told me I’d already given him a ride. I didn’t smile back. Being reminded what a chump I’d been makes me testy.

My ex-husband dismissed his hotshot lawyer and came toward me. He stood too close. The viciousness left his face. “Hey.” His voice was low and for a moment, I forgave myself for falling in love with him once. I turned my head as he leaned toward me. His mouth fell onto my hair instead of my flesh with its still-intact nerve endings. I can be suckered by dogs, children and fools—but at least I know it.

“Good to see you still care, Silver,” he murmured into my hair.

“Don’t go getting all sloppy on me, Paul. What do you know about Della’s death?” I whispered.

“Nothing.”

I pulled away.

“Heard you got a new gig, Silver.”

Yeah. Emergency contact. I glanced at Serras and the others watching us.

Paul turned to them. “Am I done here, gentlemen?”

“Make sure you stay where we can find you, Chumsky,” a cop built like a side of beef said.

Paul raked his gaze over the cop, stopping at the skinny red scratches on his forearms. “She must have been a hellcat.”

The cop took a step. Serras put a halting hand on the man’s arm, across the scratches.

“Take your ex-husband home, LeGrande,” Serras advised.

I pushed Paul toward the door. We reached the exit, stepped out into the moist heat.

“Still the charmer.” I gave him that much.

“It’s a gift.”

“Pretty impressive legal counsel.”

“Kingsley plays at the club. I cut ten strokes off his game. He’s grateful.” Paul smiled. If an actor, he would have been cast as a gigolo or a second-rate hood. “You look good, Silver.”

“I didn’t come here for compliments.”

“Why did you come here?”

Good question.

“Feeling guilty?”

That’s the problem with marriage. People get to know you.

“You’re not responsible for Della’s death, Silver.”

“Then who is?”

“The police are trying to find out.”

“Della was a stripper who snorted in her off hours. The only family that has come up was run over by a train several months ago. They won’t even have her buried before the case comes off the role call, and you know it.”

“Listen, all I can tell you is Della and I used to get together, have a few laughs. Yesterday afternoon, we’d gotten together. She said she was going to try and get off early at the club. Why not stick around? I waited. When she didn’t call, I fell asleep.”

I stopped short. “Della didn’t call you?”

Paul gave me the same patient look he’d given me the first time I’d told him I wanted a divorce.

“It’s been a long day, Silver. C’mon, we’ll pick up my car, and I’ll buy you some dinner.”

“One of the girls that worked at the Oyster overheard Della make a phone call last night from the club to meet someone after work.”

“She probably did call me. I fell asleep and didn’t hear the phone.”

“Was there a message on her answering machine this morning?”

“Now that you mention it, it was beeping.”

He was lying. That marriage-getting-to-know-someone deal is a two-way street.

“C’mon.” He smiled. “You can interrogate me over Italian.”

Translation: pasta for me, a bottle of burgundy for Paul. But he was hiding something and I wanted to know what. I stretched out my rubber band to the point of breaking, let it go.

“Dino’s is still good,” I suggested.

“Fine,” Paul agreed. Food wasn’t his primary concern anyway.

We headed to my car. Paul folded himself into the compact. “How’s Aunt Peggilee?” He put on the country club charm.

“She’s at Margarita Mania at the Elks.”

Paul went all teeth. “She’s a live one, your aunt Peggilee.”

I had to agree.

“I thought Della was yanking my chain when she told me you left Billie’s for higher education.”

His sidelong gaze told me he was picturing me in a short plaid pleated skirt and loafers with ankle socks. Paul liked fantasy in and out of the bedroom.

“She might have been yanking some things of yours, but that was the truth. When you’d two get together anyway?”

“Met up with her one night at Silky’s downtown about six months ago. She was finishing her night. I was just starting mine.” He looked out over the dash. “Two old friends, that’s all. She’d call me every now and then. If I was free, we’d get together, have a few drinks, a few laughs.” He looked at me. “When’s the last you’d seen her?”

I steered into a one-way street. “A while.”

“She’d mention you now and then. She was all gung-ho on getting out herself.”

“Leaving Billie’s to go to the Oyster wasn’t exactly the direct route.”

We picked up his car. I insisted on separate cars. He followed me to the restaurant. Inside, the dim lights and the candles flicking in Chianti bottles made all the waiters look soulful. We were ushered to a round table for two. I ordered eggplant; Paul ordered a bottle of burgundy. I began another bruise on my wrist.

“After her brother’s death…” Paul shook his head. “Della wasn’t having an easy time with it.”

“Billie told me about it. Said police ruled it an accident.”

Paul said nothing, watched for the wine.

“Auntie says there is no such thing as an accident.”

The wine came with the bread.

“Is that what you think?” Paul tasted the wine. Satisfaction smoothed out his face.

I shrugged. “All I know is Della’s dead, and a few months earlier her brother dies also.”

Paul took another large swallow. “Coincidence.”

“Auntie doesn’t believe in coincidence, either.”

Paul smiled closemouthed, raised his glass. “To Auntie.”

“How was Della really, Paul?”

“You know Della. She always liked a good time, but when I caught up with her, after her brother’s death…” he stopped, drank. “Sometimes it stops being fun.”

Been there. Paul had never left. Della had. The hard way.

“Did she talk about it? Her brother’s death?”

“No.” He poured another glass of wine, drank half of it. I pushed the basket of bread toward him. He ignored it.

“She never said anything about it?”

I met his gaze hard. His pupils dilated. Could be the booze. Or he could be lying. Both, I decided.

“Maybe, once in awhile. After a night of it, when the speed was wearing off but the shakes hadn’t set in yet. Problem with junkies. If they don’t cut it with booze, they get high-strung.”

My ex-husband, lifestyle coach.

“What’d she say?”

He waved his glass. “The usual.”

“What would that be?”

“How unfair it was, what a good kid he was, how it should have been her,” Paul singsonged.

Last night it was, I thought. The waiter set my antipasto before me. I popped a cherry tomato, chewed a hot pepper until tears blurred my gaze. My ex-husband drank. Things were beginning to blur for him, too.

“Why do you think she wanted to see you last night?”

I received the choice smile that put him in the good graces of the country club’s male members and in the firm beds of their wives. “The usual.”

This time I didn’t have to ask him for a definition. Our meals came. Paul ordered another bottle of wine, pushed the pasta around his plate. I hadn’t eaten all day. I finished my salad, entree and several more bread-sticks, heartened by the return of my normal, lusty appetite. Obsessions seem to revolve around three main categories—drugs, sex or food—and presently the last one was the safest for me. Fortunately, at thirty-one, my five-foot-eleven frame with one-eighty curves could handle it for now although I knew it was only a matter of time before things would spread and soften and I’d be left with cats and cross-stitch and the weekly tabloids for relief.

I ordered espresso, Paul a double brandy. Paul was a drunk but he wasn’t a sloppy drunk. I’d never seen him get abusive or belligerent. He just sat up straighter, and I could tell by that gleam in his eyes he believed himself somebody significant. Paul couldn’t have murdered Della Devine.

I finished my espresso, caught the waiter’s eye.

“Another, ma’am?”

“You can bring the check.”

“No rush.” My ex-husband handed his glass to the waiter.

“Another double, sir?”

Paul nodded. “Have another espresso, Silver. It’s not often we get together.”

“That would be because we’re divorced.” I shook my head at the waiter. He left to get Paul’s drink.

“Not by my choice.”

I pushed my chair from the table. “I’ve got an early class tomorrow.”

“And I’ve got an early tee time. One more drink and then we’ll go.”

It was an old refrain, one I’d sung often before, too. Still Della was dead, my ex-husband was a drunk and my dreams were as tenuous as the rubber band on my wrist.

The waiter returned. “Give me another espresso,” I ordered. “Make it a double,” I decided, sounding cavalier, feeling crazed.

Paul’s smile said, “That’s my girl.”

Old husbands like old habits are hard to break.

An hour and a half later, careening on caffeine and Paul unsteady when he stood, we walked to our cars. He’d set his keys on the table when he’d taken out his wallet to pay the bill. I’d lifted them when he’d gone to the men’s room. He was patting his pockets now.

“C’mon, Paul, I’ll give you a ride home. You can pick up your car in the morning.”

He opened his mouth to protest.

“I’ll swing by before class, give you a ride.”

“No need. Just sleep over.”

A drunk is bad enough. A leering drunk was pure sorrow. I might never need another rubber band again. “Let’s get you home.”

“The night’s young, Silver.”

He was right. Eleven forty-five was when the fun began in the clubs. I continued to my car. I looked back. Paul wasn’t following me.

He shrugged, gave me a thin smile. “An empty house. An empty bed.”

An empty bottle, I thought.

“I’m going to hang out a little longer. Give me my keys.”

“You’re in no shape to drive.”

“Sweet that you care, honey, but you aren’t responsible for me any longer.”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t feel guilty if something happens to you.” I unlocked my car and got in. I rolled down the window.

“Admit it. You still care, Sterling.” He used my favorite nickname.

“One funeral per week is my limit.” I started the car. “Last chance.”

He came toward the car, although I knew he wasn’t coming with me. He was beyond persuasion. He leaned down. “Give me a kiss goodbye.”

I took it on the mouth this time. I felt he deserved that much. I watched him walk away, the man I’d once legally vowed to love. He headed toward a neon martini glass with a winking olive.

I WOKE WITH a caffeine headache. Auntie was sitting at the kitchen table with her soy milk and muttering to herself over the day’s stock market report. I poured a cup of black coffee. In for a penny, in for a pound. She let me take a sip before she asked with a skinny gaze, “Where were you last night?”

“Not shimmying to salsa.” Caffeine headache or not, I was mean in the morning. I sat down, instantly contrite. “Sorry.”

“Honey, you think I pay any mind to you in the morning? I know you’re ornerier than a gut-shot she-boar. It don’t faze me none, because you get it from me. Carl burped at the breakfast table one morning over fried eggs, and I stuck my fork in his arm. It stood right up on its own. Had to change his Sunday shirt and we were late for ten-o’clock service. Had to tiptoe and squeeze in next to Loretta Knolls with her big behind and her husband who smelled of pork fat. Carl didn’t burp at the breakfast table ever again.”

Carl was Aunt Peggilee’s third husband. Matrimonial mistakes are another thing I inherited from the Le-Grande women. Except Momma, who said she loved men too much to marry one. As I get older, Momma gets wiser to me.

“You’ll mellow with the years, Silver.”

I rubbed my forehead.

“Rough night?” Aunt Peggilee’s gaze was on my black-and-blue wrist.

“Paul was seen leaving Della’s apartment yesterday morning. The police picked him up for questioning. I went down to the precinct. We had dinner.”

Aunt Peggilee shook her head, her beehive wobbling and threatening to give way. “Silver, Silver,” was all she said, but she looked at me like I was a calf being led to slaughter.

I took a swallow of coffee. “He drank to you.”

“The man would toast Beelzebub himself if it meant a good gulp.”

Must have been the fact I’d been foolish enough to marry him that made me feel compelled to defend him. “A lot of gals have done a lot worse.” It was a weak argument, but it was all I had.

“Silver, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind the man myself. I just mind him with you.”

“He’s not with me. We had pasta together.”

Auntie raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, I had pasta. He had several bottles of red. He and Della had been running into each other—”

“Like Mack trucks, I imagine.” Auntie took a delicate sip of soy milk.

“And I wanted to talk to him about her.”

Auntie eyed me over her glass. “Did you learn anything?”

I shrugged. “Pretty much what I expected. She was really shook up by her brother’s death and in a bad way.”

Aunt Peggilee studied me. “It’s not your fault, Silver.”

“I know. I just don’t know why…” I shook my head, too much caffeine and too little sleep making me sappy. “I wish I’d called her. Or she’d gotten in touch with me.”

Auntie Peggilee put her hand on mine, squeezed. “She did, honey.”

I DRANK ANOTHER CUP of coffee while I dressed. I went to my underwear drawer, opened a small box next to a dried-out honeysuckle sachet and took out an elastic. A new day, a new rubber band. I closed the drawer, picked up Paul’s keys from my dresser top. I jangled them. Besides his car keys, there were others, house keys, office keys, a smaller one that probably opened a locker. I dropped the keys into my purse on the kitchen counter and grabbed two Tootsie Pops out of the cupboard. I locked up, Auntie having left for breakfast bingo and Adrienne knocking off a despised but required phys ed credit with an early-morning fencing class. I started the car, got the air conditioner blasting. I unwrapped one pop, stuck it in my mouth and headed out.

By the time I’d gotten to my second candy-coated chewy center, I’d called Paul on my cell phone twice to tell him I was on my way but there was no answer. If I couldn’t rouse him before Macro, I’d leave the keys, and he could call a cab.

Paul lived in a small but well-designed modern home on the edge of one of the tony neighborhoods. Tips on the greens had gotten good.

I went to the back door, didn’t even bother to knock, twisted the doorknob before pawing through my purse for the keys. The door clicked open. The house had a security system, but the alarm hadn’t been activated. Liquor might make the old pathetic but it gave the young a sense of invincibility. Paul, at thirty-five, was on the cusp.

I called out hello, not expecting an answer. “Paul?”

The back door opened into a kitchen with stainless steel appliances whose constant reflection would make a woman past forty take a sharp object to their surface, but was a perfect panorama for a premiddle-age country-club pro. The room was arranged for a House Beautiful spread, the uneven trio of chairs around the table instead of the expected four the only touch of whimsy. Paul was a fastidious housekeeper. I’d watched him cotton swab a heating grate once for twenty minutes and still didn’t understand. Funny the things that endear a person to you.

As I walked into a spacious, open living room with a vaulted ceiling, I saw the bleached white briefs first. Directly eye level, Fruit of the Loom, waist size thirty-two. Paul always wore Fruit of the Loom, waist size thirty-two. Mundane details such as these allowed me to step toward the body in the white briefs hanging from the ceiling rafters.

“Damn.” I fumbled for my phone in my purse as I ran into the kitchen. I grabbed a knife from the end of the built-in butcher-block cutting board, found my phone as I ran back into the living room, dialed 911. “Damn,” I told the woman’s voice as I righted the missing kitchen chair under Paul’s dangling body in the spotless white underwear. I climbed onto the chair.

“Ma’am, do you need…”

As I reached high for the rope, I saw the red garter necktie with the gold double D around Paul’s throat. I sawed at the rope with the knife.

“Ma’am…”

The body spun full circle. I looked down from the rope, directly into Paul’s dead eyes, sputtered the only other recent savior I’d met. “Serras.”

I sawed harder, my weight pushing against the body. The body swung back. I lost my balance. The chair tipped. The phone dropped from the tuck in my shoulder. I clutched Paul’s red-gartered neck with the gold double D charm, wrapping my legs around his hips in a position that we’d actually both been quite fond of in our past. We twirled Cirque du Soleil for several seconds, then our weight ripped us loose. We went down, me clinging to my dead ex-husband as if climaxing. My head struck something hard, sharp. Until death do us part. Hell, like I’d ever meant that literally. Down I went into darkness.

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