Here's (most of) Chapter 13 from the upcoming "BRETT GETS HAMMERED" (Brett Cornell Mystery #6). I've omitted only the first few paragraphs of the chapter in the interests of avoiding some pretty unnecessary spoilers.
And so, here's a sample chapter from "BRETT GETS HAMMERED" ---
Chapter 13 - "BRETT CHUGS DOWN THE BOOZE"
A little while later, with my dirty work
with the trash bag completed, I found an old bottle of scotch in my kitchen
cupboard, opened it, and immediately downed a considerable portion of it,
straight. My head was beginning to clear, and I knew that that was exactly what I needed to have happen if I expected to pull
this off. They didn’t call me an inscrutable bastard for nothing –
“unscrupulous” is what I meant, of course. Damn, was I already so drunk that I
was having a freakin’ identity crisis all of a sudden? At least, I could still
name all of Shakespeare’s plays by heart and in the order in which they were
written, too: “Hamlet” – “Pinocchio” – and there were two other ones, but they
weren’t very important or very popular, otherwise I’d have no trouble
remembering them.
Before I knew it,
the apartment buzzer sounded, and I carried my half-empty bottle of scotch with
me into the living room and admitted Tammy Rankin into my private domain.
The girl had a
moderately tight expression on her face when she walked into the room, and her
right hand wasn’t totally clenched
into a fist – yet – so, I suppose this all amounted to a pretty good omen.
Waving her to a seat, I tipped my bottle of scotch a couple of quick turns and
then got seated on the couch.
“Well?” she
demanded, leaning forward in her chair and gazing across at me with eyes that
were dancing with anticipation. Was she all excited because she expected me to
inform her of the real details of her father’s death – or was it because she
had suddenly found herself to be alone with me in my apartment and she was just
dying for the two of us to make our way over to the bedroom just as soon as
possible? Which was it? Hmmm.
“Nice day, ain’t it?” I responded, and with
a big, Chestershire-cat type of grin, I even extended my bottle in her
direction and invited her to have some.
“Sorry,” she said with a little curl to her lips,” but I
didn’t drive all the way over here just to sit and watch you drink yourself
into a stupor. My time is much too valuable for that, thank you very much.”
“And mine is,
too, thank you very much,” I mimicked her, then I threw my head back and
laughed when I saw her right hand turn itself into a definite little fist.
“Take it easy, honey,” I assured her, continuing to beam away at her. “Things
are going great.” Then I offered once again to let her take a swig from the
bottle I was drinking from, and for the second time, she refused and even kept
her lips firmly shut when I nodded my head solemnly and continued, “I get it
now. I’m fired. So, you can’t even afford me the courtesy of sharing a friendly
drink with me. Is that it?”
“As I said,” the
girl informed me, barely prying those tight lips of hers apart in order to get
the words out, “my time is much too valuable for this nonsense.”
“Oops, I forgot
how busy you are, doing nothing,” I said, quite innocently, I thought.
“Stop that!” she
yelled, finally losing it just as I knew she would. “How much more mileage do
you expect to get out of that tired old song-and-dance about how I’ve got
nothing to do all day, and about how poor working stiffs like you have it so
bad, and –“
I held up my
right hand and smiled again.
“Relax,” I said to her. “If you’d give me a chance to explain – “ One
more heated look from her, and then I continued,” I think I’ve actually figured out a way of pinning a murder rap on your
wicked witch of a stepmother –“
“You what?” she
cried out, and THAT was when I should have asked her to take off her blouse for
me, because she was suddenly thrown into such a good mood, that I might very
well have succeeded in taking advantage of her in her good humor.
“Now, calm down,
baby,” I went on, after taking another big swallow of scotch. “This ain’t gonna
be no cakewalk, you know. Or should I have said ‘tango’ just now?” Still another
burning look from the bimbo, but this time it was tempered by a smidgen of good
humor. “In order to pull this off,” I said,” it’s gonna take a bit of
co-operation from you. In other words, I’m gonna be depending on you, babe, and
you’re gonna have to put aside this stupid hostility you feel towards me if we
expect to make this thing work.”
Tammy then quite
calmly lifted a hand and ran her fingers briefly through her tawny hair before
saying,
“And what, may I
ask, has occasioned this sudden brainstorm of yours?”
“Never mind
that,” I told her, real easy-going. “First, I want the dope on your stepmother.
I want to know what she usually does all day long. And don’t sit there and tell
me she does absolutely nothing all day long like you do.” Another brief but
stupid burning look. “I need to know all the specifics on this one. I need to
know precisely what she’s been doing all day long today and what she plans on doing later on. Can you help me on
that, babes?”
I suppose I was
being rather vague about the whole thing because Tammy’s stupid brows began to
crease into a frown, and she threw her glance around the room hurriedly before
saying,
“There’s not much
I can tell you, I’m afraid. Without belaboring the point, it’s true that she
does do practically nothing all day long. But I can tell you that on a typical
day, she rises out of bed often as late as nine o’clock in the morning, and
bathes for an hour or so. After that, she has Rebecca come into her room and
lay out her clothes for her and do her hair up. Then she has a bite to eat in
her bedroom, takes a pill, files her nails” (Insert one big yawn from Yours
Truly right about here.) “But if it’s sunny out,” the girl continued, a bit
more animatedly than before,” she gets into her bathing suit instead of putting
on her regular clothing and goes out to the pool, usually around noon or one
o’clock. She sun-bathes most of the afternoon, takes a little dip in the pool
only if the temperature outside is eighty-five degrees or higher, and after
that, she goes back up to her room, has Rebecca lay out a different set of
clothing for her, and sits up there alone reading a historical romance novel
until it’s time for dinner. After that –“
“Would you say
it’s eighty-five degrees out today?” I asked her, fondling the fringes of my
beautiful bushy blond mustache and trying not to distract her too, too much
when I did that. At the same time, I tried to make my question sound as casual
and breezy and nonchalant as I possibly could.
“It’s
supposed to climb into the nineties today, I believe,” she replied, growing
somewhat testy all of a sudden. “Must you sit there and play with your mustache
like that while I’m talking to you? Just
what exactly are you trying to accomplish by such outrageous
behavior?”
“So, you noticed
the mustache, huh?” I said, grinning at her once again. “Ever notice what a
great ass I’ve got?”
“Honestly! Just
when I thought –“ she started to flare, but then she stopped, still infuriated,
and gawked at me when I started chuckling, and then taking another drink of
scotch.
“Do you really
have to act like a total bitch twenty-four/seven?” I said to her, still
laughing. “Don’t you realize that every time you get all riled up and start
screaming at me like you just did, your tits start bouncing up and down and –“
“Enough of that!”
she snapped in a really vicious tone of voice. “You wouldn’t be talking that
way to me if Jerry were here!”
“If Jerry were
here,” I chuckled, “he’d be licking the shit off my boots right about now.” I
tilted the bottle again, took a few more swigs, brought the rim away from my
lips, and continued,” I got a little job for you to do today, babes, and if you
do the job right, you’ll get to see your stepmother put behind bars in the very
near future.”
Tammy eased up on
the hysterics she’d been seized with long enough to emit a little mirthless
kind of laugh when she heard what I’d just said. Then she turned her head aside
to avoid looking at me and said,
“Suddenly, I’m
getting the feeling that I’m about to enter into a pact with Satan himself!”
“Don’t be such a
lousy tight-assed hypocrite,” I retorted, and now it was my turn to crank up
the emotions. “With or without me, you’d be doing the same damned thing. You
and that weasel of a brother of yours are itching to throw your stepmother to
the lions whether or not she’s guilty of anything more serious than itching in
the wrong places.”
“You’re mistaken.
My brother and I are not like that.”
And that’s when I
had the biggest laugh of the day.
“Bullshit, baby.
You and your brother are exactly like
that – and that’s how I know that you’ll do what I tell you to do, and you’ll
do it with a smile, too, on account of you’re nothing but a greedy little bitch
and you won’t get your stinking paws on half a million clams unless Vanessa’s
out of the way for good.”
“I don’t need the
character analysis,” she said tartly. “Just spill it.”
When I finally
got around to explaining what I wanted from her, she sat quietly, not really
meeting my intent gaze with one of her own but kind of throwing her eyes around
the room in little fits and starts.
First, I received
a positive response from her when I asked her if she had any sleeping pills in
the house. Then, I told her to crush two or three of them into a powder when
she got home, to dump the powder into a shot-glass behind the bar counter in
her living room, and to make sure nobody saw her do it either.
“That sounds easy
enough,” she said with a little smile, and she started to rise from her chair.
“That ain’t all,”
I told her, getting her to sit back down when she detected a note of urgency in
my voice. “I’m going to be dropping by your place shortly after you get back.
I’ll give you just about enough time to take care of business with that
shot-glass. When I get there, you make sure nobody sees me.”
“Impossible!” she
hissed at me. “Matthew will answer the door –“
“No way,” I said.
“You get Matthew and Rebecca busy upstairs in your room, cleaning up, tidying
up, hiding all your vibrators away in your bureau drawers, whatever you can
think of. You ask them nicely, and they’ll do it. And you leave the front door
unlocked before you get them up there, too.”
“What about
Little Stevie?” she enquired, her brows knit once again.
“Oh, great! I
forgot all about that stupid little tadpole!” I said to her.
“Little Stevie
happens to be my nephew, one of the nicest kids –“ she instantly started
railing at me.
“Yeah,
yeah, I used to be a nice kid, too, and look how I turned out,” was my
response. But in all honesty, there wasn’t much truth to that. If what my old
lady told me about my early childhood were true, and she really had wondered
there for a while whether I wasn’t the spawn of Satan – Well, anyway, suffice
it to say that the words“unscrupulous bastard” were often used to refer to me, when
I was barely out of diapers even!
“Well, what are
we going to do about Little Stevie?” she insisted. “He’s just a kid. I don’t
want him involved in any of your shady dealings.”
“I don’t know,” I
said in some frustration. “Send him to his friend’s house. Keep him occupied by
showing him some skin flicks. Stuff him in the garbage can. Do whatever the
hell you want with him, just keep him out of my way.”
“With pleasure!”
she agreed, using a tone of voice which firmly put me in my place, or so she
thought.
“Now how about
your brother?” I prodded her. “Know where he is?”
“He was still in
bed when I left the house to come here,” she replied a bit testily. “Heaven
knows, after the way you manhandled him last night and humiliated him right in
front of his own wife, I’d be greatly surprised if he ever finds the strength to
pull himself out of bed and face the world, ever again!”
“Good,” I said.
“Keep him in his room then, and tell him to stay in bed forever and ever – or
at least, long enough to keep him out of my way while I’m doing what needs to
be done. Then, with that fat porker closeted in his bedroom with you making sure
he stays put, your two slaves will be out of the way at the same time, cleaning
your room.”
As I finished my
last sentence with my deliberately crass allusion to Matthew and Rebecca’s
station in the Rankin household, it came as no surprise to me when the tension
began to mount in every fiber of Tammy’s voluptuous body, and the blood began
to suffuse her face as she said,
“I resent the way
you constantly refer to my beloved servants Matthew and Rebecca as –“
“Beloved?” I
snorted, tossing my now empty bottle of scotch to the side of the couch where
nobody was sitting, and bringing the back of my hand across my mouth to wipe it
dry. “You trying to tell me that you love
them?”
“Yes!” she
indignantly retorted. “I truly do, although I’m sure that that small bigoted
brain of yours can’t absorb the information that people of different races and
nationalities can possibly get along and, yes, even LOVE one another.”
“Uh – Speak English,
please,” I said, continuing to bust her nuggets, figuratively speaking of
course.
She swept my
little comment aside as if not even worthy of a response of any kind, and
continued,
“Perhaps you were
unaware of this, but Matthew and Rebecca have worked with us and been a part of
our family for years and years. Why, seven or eight years ago when their little
boy was run over by a truck right outside our home, I – I almost cried.”
“Almost, huh?” I
said, and then I laughed right in her face and said,” You crack me up, baby.
You really do.”
It was at that
point that she decided to end the whole conversation, if it can accurately be
called that, and rose to her feet with a purposeful air about her. At the same
time, I moved in closer to her – closer than I’d gotten to her since she
arrived a short while ago. Once the two of us were standing and facing each
other – at a pretty close distance, too – she actually lowered her eyes after a
time and spoke slowly in saying,
“You should be
happy right now, Mr. Cornell. I’ve agreed to co-operate with you this morning,
so that in itself should be enough to make you realize that – I’m not really
the awful, terrifying monster you seem to think I am.”
“No?” I said with
a little smirk beginning to crease my lips.
“Not in the
least,” she replied, and she lifted her eyes to the level of mine once more. “I
have nothing personal against you. This hostility that you seem to feel that I
have towards you – Believe me, Mr. Cornell, it’s of no real consequence, as far
as I’m concerned.”
“Sure,” I said,
not really believing a single word of her whole spiel, and I held her gaze with
mine and asked her,” How about the hostility you feel towards Faye? Or am I
just imagining that?”
“I
really don’t know what you’re talking about,” was her reply, and it struck me
as being significant that she had to swerve her eyes away again when she spoke
just then. “The way I feel about Faye should be
of absolutely no importance to either one of us. I certainly
hope you don’t think I could possibly be jealous because you two –“
“Nah,” I said
off-handedly. “I was just wondering, though: Will you be helping her when she
moves into her new apartment?”
“No,” she said
quickly and crisply, without any hesitation at all.
Then I moved in
even closer to her and kept my eyes riveted on her expression as I asked her,
“Did she ask you
if you’d help, when I dropped her off this morning?”
Unfortunately, I
couldn’t read her mind or her expression, basically because she was already
pretty tensed up throughout most of our conversation together, so it was
impossible for me to determine exactly how she was reacting to the question.
“I wasn’t even
aware that you’d brought her back home,” she replied, trying to sound
disinterested – Or was she really as disinterested as she sounded?
But
the strain of getting my plan to work and having to rely on Tammy’s co-operation
was starting to take its toll on me. Before things got a little too sticky for
me to handle, I decided to get rid of her so as to give myself time to think – and act – and drink
-- alone. So, as I escorted her over to the front door of my apartment, I
casually said to her,
“You know what to
do, right?”
“It’ll all get
done,” she promised with a timid smile. “Only I wish you’d tell me how this all
ties in with Vanessa.”
“You’ll see,” I
told her, calmly and softly as we neared the front door. “Early this afternoon.
While Vanessa is out by the pool. While you and Andy are up in his room and
while Matthew and Rebecca are busy in your bedroom –“
“And while Little
Stevie’s playing at his friend’s house,” Tammy added in a calm voice of her
own, although she sounded somewhat uncertain.
I looked her
straight in the eye and continued,
“While your
boyfriend the accountant is busy at the office, right?”
“And while Faye is
–“ she began, and then we both came to a halt, with my front door opened wide
in front of us.
Tammy Rankin
looked intently into my face, and her brows were once more knit in perplexity
as she said to me,
“What will Faye be doing this afternoon? You
never got around to telling me that.”
Giving her a firm but gentle push to send her out the door
and on her way, I said to her as she departed from my view,
“Faye will be
taking a little dip in the pool.”
Then I shut the
door and fished around inside the refrigerator for a much-needed Heineken.
Thanks for reading this, & I hope you get a chance to read the whole novel when it gets published !!!
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