Elaine Viets & Victoria Laurie, Nancy Martin, Denise Swanson - Drop-Dead Blonde (v5.0) (pdf) by Unknown (howl and other poems .TXT) 📕

started to hit me.'' He brushed at a stray white pellet clinging to his navy uniform pants. ``I should arrest her for assaulting an officer.'' DEAD BLONDES TELL NO TALES 181

``But you won't,'' Skye coaxed. ``After all, you'd look pretty silly charging a middle-aged woman with assault by plastic bowling pin.''

``Who are you calling middle-aged?'' Bunny challenged.

``I'll let it go this time, but she needs to watch it,'' Wally declared, ignoring Bunny.

``So what will you do now?'' Skye asked, also ignoring the redhead.

``Obviously Ruby will have to come back for her car. I'll nab her when she does.'' He put his hand on the door and added, his expression stern, ``And you two better let me know if she turns up.''

Bunny sketched a cross on her chest and said, ``I promise.''

Skye rolled her eyes, then gave Wally a ``what can you do?'' look.

After he left, Skye said to Bunny, ``Do you want to call Simon and fill him in, or shall I?''

``We don't really need to bother Sonny Boy, do we?'' Bunny wheedled.

``Yes, we do. You or me?''

Bunny heaved a put-upon sigh. ``I'll do it.''

``That would be best,'' Skye said, then went back to the storeroom. She needed to finish sorting out the mess in there, since she had a feeling she'd have a new mess con- cerning Ruby and Bunny to sort out in the near future. Chapter 3

The Case of the

Disappearing Blonde ``Okay, where is she?'' As soon as Bunny called him at the funeral home, Simon had hurried over to the bowling alley.

His mother was preparing her monologue as emcee for Monday night's talent show and didn't raise her eyes from her clipboard. Tuesday was Team Trivia, Wednesday was karaoke, Thursday afternoon they were having an Easter- egg hunt, and Friday's Marilyn Monroe look-alike contest would cap off the alley's Spring Break Bash. ``I told you, I don't know.''

Simon looked over at Skye, who was draping the stage with pink, purple, and yellow bunting. ``Do you have any ideas?''

She stapled a fold of cloth to the side of the wall and tried to think where a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound blonde dressed in red capri pants and a matching halter, could hide. ``Wally looked in all the obvious places, but if she was married to a magician, Ruby might be able to fit into smaller spaces than we thought.''

``She's double-jointed, too,'' Bunny contributed. ``And her third--no, fourth husband was a contortionist.''

Skye cringed. She could tell Simon was nearing the end of his patience. His usually crisply styled auburn hair was standing in spikes like the crown on the Statue of Liberty, and the lines radiating from his golden-hazel eyes were not caused by laughter.

She spoke quickly to divert his attention from his mother. ``Let's think about this logically. We were standing by the entrance. There are lockers an one side of us, and the coa-

182 DEAD BLONDES TELL NO TALES 183 track and bathrooms on the other. If Ruby had left through the door, we would have heard the swooshing sound it makes, so she had to have gone either right or left.''

``The lockers are only two-feet-by-two-feet cubes, so there's no way she could have fit in one of those, contor- tionist or not,'' Simon said. He shrugged off his charcoal- gray suit coat and hung it on the back of a chair.

Skye sat down the staple gun and went over to him. ``Then it has to be the bathrooms, but we checked them.''

``Even the men's room,'' Bunny added.

``Let's look again.'' Simon rolled up the sleeves of his buttercup-yellow shirt.

As they approached the bathrooms, Skye examined the area carefully, but could see no trace of the missing blonde. Of course, by now the woman could be in Chicago or points south; nearly an hour had elapsed since she had disap- peared. Skye wisely refrained from pointing this out to Simon, who did not seem in the mood to receive helpful observations.

Having inspected the men's lavatory and found nothing, Bunny, Skye, and Simon crowded into the ladies' room. To their right a sink, soap dispenser, and paper-towel machine hugged the wall. To their left were two stalls. There was no sign of any recent occupation.

Skye let her gaze wander, starting at the floor and travel- ing slowly upward. Suddenly she gasped and pointed to the ceiling. A telltale swatch of red Spandex clung to the white acoustic tile.

Simon left the room to fetch a chair from the bar. He returned, loosened his tie, and climbed on. He pushed the white acoustic tile aside and poked his head into the open- ing. Less than a second later he descended and said, ``She was there, all right. The dust's been disturbed, and there's another sliver of red cloth caught on one of the struts. But she's gone now.''

``At least we know where she hid.'' Skye took his arm as they all moved out of the bathroom. ``I was beginning to think she really had vanished into thin air.''

``That's right.'' Simon squeezed Skye's hand. ``And she can't have gotten far without her car.''

Bunny grinned, sitting back down and picking up her clipboard. ``You never know. Ruby's very resourceful. You 184 Denise Swanson should hear about the scrapes she used to get us out of when we were in the big show together at the Golden Nugget.''

``It's too frightening to contemplate.'' Simon looked at his mother through narrowed eyes,

``Don't tell me one of her husbands was also a car thief.''

``No, but she dated a cop who worked the stolen-vehicle squad.'' Bunny's voice was dreamy. ``That man could pick a lock and hot-wire a Corvette faster than a professional car thief.''

Simon heaved a sigh, then headed to the bar. ``I need a drink. Anyone else want something?''

Before either Skye or Bunny could respond, a throaty voice from the