Booty call

A short crime story

Yes, I’ve published two posts w/ in six months containing “booty” in the title. Make of it what you will.

Hello, and welcome to my late spring and early summer programming. I’ll be digging back in on Substack and Instagram, posting about cabin life so you don’t have to live it (the compost-shoveling, mouse-catching, pipe-busting parts). The main revisions for Up to Her Neck are back with my editor, and there is nothing to keep me from our parasocial relationship. I’ve been in NYC for Empress Editions events and Thrillerfest, but I’ll be back in Colorado before the end of the month and I can’t wait to share the beauty of spring in the mountains with you.

This week, I’m posting a short crime story. Is it what you can expect from my novel when it debuts next January? Not exactly. The writing style is different and Angie, the deposed Midwestern princess of “Booty Call”, doesn’t have much in common with Wendy, the self-made former flower child of Up to Her Neck. They can both be impulsive, but Angie is too busy looking over her shoulder to avoid the trouble ahead.

Another way to think about it is summarized in this tight little essay about the difference between hardboiled detective fiction and noir. (Yes, I’m muddying the waters, like many writers, by telling a noir-ish story in a soft-boiled style …) Wendy is someone you want on your team. Our friend Angie here … well, enter at your own risk.

Enjoy, and please share this post.

Photo collage made from original photos and Canva elements.

I was half-dozing in a lounger when I spotted my ex crouching next to the kiddie pool. There was no mistaking him, even across a crowded half-acre of swimsuits and umbrellas. Fred’s hair stands out like copper wire when he gets a little sun. For a ginger, he can really tan. His freckles start filling in until he’s taupe all over.

A half-hour later, he walked right past me with a full drink caddy — two Mai Tais, it looked like, and two milks in small plastic cups with lids. That seals that, I thought. I was happy not to make small talk, not to hear about his amazing kids.

I knew he was out, of course. He’d been sentenced to five years max and no one can do good behavior like my ex when he wants to. I didn’t care what he was doing in Scottsdale. Arizona’s a snowbird destination in February. It might’ve even been Fred who told me about it.

I was paying zero attention to him when a woman stood up in the shallowest end of the shallowest pool, dangling a carrot-haired toddler. Tall, honey-blonde, hips as narrow as a ladder. Just the type I always found leaning into him at the country club if I arrived a few minutes late.

I flipped through an abandoned Departures mag for another thirty minutes, then pulled a hoodie over my tankini and sauntered up to the bar. The bartender wasn’t much taller than me, with cherubic cheeks and a blue Hawaiian shirt stretched tight across a barrel chest.

I flashed my room card. “Can you duplicate the last order for the tall redhead?”

“Liquid olive branch?” he guessed.

“Wow, you’re fast.” I laughed and leaned up against the bar. “There’s no hard feelings on my end. When God closes a door, she opens a window, amirite?”

His brown curls bounced when he giggled. The name-tag read, “Anthony.” He was exactly the kind of bartender you expect at a place like this: a little too laidback, no doubt up for partying after his shift. I’d just have to drop the hint.

The tab was suspiciously cheap.

“Virgin Mai Tais. They’re half the price.” He brought his face close enough to whisper. “A lot of people just bring their own rum, like from the Liquor Vault?”

I returned his smile with a little extra warmth and asked him to keep an eye on my chair and tote bag.

The odor of damp diapers blended into the smell of chlorine and chemical coconut in the kiddie-pool area. A pair of boys in matching Sesame Street trunks were whacking each other with their arm floaties. Their father, wearing the same suit in adult, was too busy chatting up the cocktail waitress to referee.

A familiar shadow fell over me.

“Hey! Look what the cat dragged in.”

I looked up. And up. I’d minimized Fred’s height in my recollections, but he was six-four, and now he had a tall mate to match. Made sense, I guess. They say you swing like a pendulum the second time, if the first was bad enough. The toddler wavered right behind him and the older child trailed, chewing on her cup lid.

“Oh, hey.” I proffered the cardboard caddy. “I thought you guys might need more refreshments.”

Fred did the calculation in the seconds it took him to accept the drinks. I’d been watching them. His cheeks reddened under his freckle patches.

“We’re heading in soon,” he said. “The kids didn’t get my tanning ability.”

So that hadn’t changed, his way of talking as if something he was born with were an accomplishment.

“You’re sure they’re yours?”

“Oh, Ange. Still the funniest girl you know.”

“Oh, Fred. Still so predictable.” He looked good, though. A little heavier, which didn’t hurt, and faint lines at the corner of his eyes complemented their mysterious shade of green, somewhere between jade and oxidized copper. “Are you staying out of trouble?”

“It’s a lot easier without you around.” The old lopsided dimples were as deep as ever. He scanned the area behind me. “You here by yourself?”

I was deciding how to answer this when the wife ducked under his shoulder, jostling the tray. Fake Mai Tais splashed onto his forearm. She stepped half in front of him, all the lithe, evenly tanning length of her. Her lips parted in a pink lip-gloss crescent.

“Hi, I’m Michél.”

My nose could have nestled right above her cleavage.

“Michelle?” I held out a hand, friendly, unthreatening. “I’m Ange.”

“Me-shell.” She emphasized the second syllable.

“Me-shell,” I chirped. “It is so nice to meet you.”

“Ange? You mean, Angie? Fred’s …”

She pinched his trunks with two fingers and furrowed her brow, perhaps recalling stories he’d told her to explain why he could never apply to the state bar or hold a liquor license. That didn’t worry me. His version could be fact-checked in more than one midwestern precinct.

Or maybe she knew nothing.

I made little pistols with my hands and swiveled my hips in a sort of John-Wayne-at-the-disco move. “You got it, sista. Super rear-view-mirror ex. Your kids are adorable.”

“Ha!” Michél wrinkled her nose. “Especially right before nap time.” Without even looking she grabbed the older kid’s fist just as it made contact with the toddler’s temple. The little one wailed and wrapped both arms around Fred’s ankles.

“Hey, baby,” Michél said, conversationally, like a tiny tornado wasn’t attached to one hand, “why don’t you put these kids down, and I’ll help Angie put down these drinks?”

Fred slid his eyes between us. “It’s, ah, a little early, isn’t it?”

“It’s five o’clock somewhere.” Michél’s tone suggested she was used to not being questioned.

Their offspring started making enough noise to stand out from the general kiddie-pool mayhem. Fred shrugged. “Fine. I’ll do my best.”

He ditched the drinks on a table and scooped up a child in each arm. Wrestling arms. I recalled with photo accuracy the first time I’d noticed them. He had been poised above an opponent like a lion claiming a kill, his orange shag framing that anatomical dream of a jaw. He hadn’t been that good — too tall — but those long limbs were a pleasure to watch.

He looked over his shoulder once as he walked away, his expression more transactional than affectionate. Michél didn’t appear to notice. From her eleven-inch vantage point, she checked out my legs, my hoodie, and settled on my messy, sun-bleached topknot. “Want to take a load off?” she said.

We elbowed our way back to the adult pool, a good-looking Laurel and Hardy act, something for everyone. I dragged over an empty lounger and tucked my tote under my chair.

She flopped down and stretched out sun-pinked flamingo legs. “Oh, my God, have you ever done a vacation with kids? Prison has got to be more relaxing, right?” Her face flashed regret. “I’m sorry, that was stupid. I mean, obviously I wouldn’t know.”

I shook my head, no big deal. I didn’t really know, either. My parents had let me stew two nights without bail to make some point, and the defense attorney they hired took care of the rest. I signaled my bartender friend for a fresh daiquiri.

“Make it two.” She sounded about eighty percent on that.

“You sure?”

She nodded and five minutes later she was slurping her drink like a thirsty Labrador.

“Oh, my God, it tastes amazing. Fred and I quit drinking two years ago, right before Lars was born, so he could get his demons under control.” A slow sideways glance to check my reaction.

His demons? That meant I’d been downgraded, or his self-awareness had been upgraded. “Did that come out of therapy, or what?”

“He’s not exactly a therapy kind of guy, right?”

I allowed this Fred continuity with a half-shrug.

She scooted her chair closer and settled a confiding glance on me. “He’s doing TM. Transcendental meditation? His teacher is incredible.”

I don’t know a therapist who loosens tongues faster than Captain Jack, but booze has its downsides. Like the time Fred trashed our hotel room because we couldn’t find the TV remote. Turned out there wasn’t one; it wasn’t that nice of a hotel.

Michél and I were still on the upside, though, so I decided to go for it. “No more legal incidents, then, I guess?”

Her eyes enlarged in stages, until she resembled one of those funny little owls that lives in the desert. “Oh, my God! We had one, just one, but you know, epic, and I was like, no more. Figure it out.” She set down her half-empty cup and placed her hands on her knees. “But, oh my God, the kids are just like him. It kinda freaks me out.”

I proposed a drinking game to myself: Every time Michél said, “Oh, my God,” I’d gulp my cocktail. Myself accepted and I ordered another round in anticipation.

Michél caught on quickly and made sure to drop an OMG on the regular. Her eyeliner was tsunami-proof. Every other exchange ended in laughter or tears, or both, and those hard lines never budged.

Sometime into the third drink she straightened her neck in a series of small cricks and closed one eye so she could focus the remaining pale-hazel disc on me. “Fred says you turned him in,” she announced. “That’s why he took the whole … rap, I guess. And because of your dad.”

“Um, no, not exactly. Fred called me from the cabin. On their land line,” I added, in case she missed the implication. The memory still raised a murky foam of fury and fear in my chest. “That’s why the police dragged me into it.”

“But …” Michél popped forward, index fingers aimed at my chest. “You could have said you didn’t know for a fact he was at the cabin.”

I curled her fingers back into her fists and placed a hand on her forearm. “Did he tell you whose cabin he broke into?” They had surprised the owner, who’d come in late for a weekend of ice-fishing. I kept that last part to myself because maybe Fred had, too. “Anyway, Fred told me he was okay with how it worked out.” In a way. He’d winked at me in the courtroom that one time, I was pretty sure.

Michél stood up to adjust her bikini top and bypassed the chair on the way back down. She stayed on the ground next to the tote, her arms draped on our loungers as if she were taking a soak in the tub.

Our bartender materialized, bearing a tray with two large plastic cups of sparkling water and lime. He’d unbuttoned his shirt another notch. A thin gold chain glistened against his hair-free chest.

“Maybe it’s time for your friend to take a nap? Or something?”

“Yesh,” Michél agreed. “You can close us out.” Which sounded like, “clushussoot.”

He smiled in relief.

“Pushinmyruum,” Michél said. “Two. Oh. One.” Her fingers found the corresponding tally.

As soon as the bartender walked away, those washed-out hazel eyes refocused on me. “But Fred gave you all of the loot, the jewelry, the …” her voice pitched fast and high. Heads swiveled to catch a glimpse of the brewing drama. I stood up fast, dumping the last of my drink down her suit. Her face opened up into a clown gape, her brows folded into angry little tents, but not a sound came out.

“Let’s go.” I grabbed her wrist and pulled until she got her feet under her. As we walked past the bar I motioned that I’d be back and pointed at my chair.

Fred and Michél had scored a corner suite on the second floor, overlooking an Astroturf lawn ringed in palm trees. She didn’t have a key, so I tapped on the door while she monologued the kids’ bedtime preparations to me.

“They could be in the bath,” she said. “I mean, not Fred, obviously. They don’t even make tubs that big. It would have to be a trough. Or a coffin.”

She was draped over my shoulders and the weight of all those healthy bones was pushing my back into an uncomfortable arch.

“Did you say coffin?” I tried to ease her against the wall, but she crooked her arm more tightly around my neck.

Her eyes widened into that unnerving stare. “Yesh, I did.”

I bent my knees and used her skunked reflexes to shift her toward the door just as Fred opened it a few inches. Michél slid into the crack, one arm and half of one leg disappearing like a magic trick. She cramped two fingers around my wrist. I pried them loose.

Fred frowned. “Not so fast, Ange. I can’t get her into bed myself.”

“The evidence says otherwise.” But I was hooked. I wanted to see this new life, this phoenix-from-the-ashes act. Did they drive a nice car? Were the kids tiny geniuses? Was Fred really reformed?

I stepped inside.

Fred closed the door and slipped the security chain into its notch. He held a finger to his lips while Michél struggled in his other arm, an animated rag doll swinging at the small refrigerator. “Beers.” She stretched the word into two long beats.

“Ixnay.” Fred tightened his hold on her waist. “Let’s take a raincheck.”

Michél reared up, fast as a cat on the pounce, catching him on the chin with the top of her head. He fell back like a dropped rake and she sunk onto her haunches. A hand slowly went to her scalp, the fingers massaging the point of contact in a detached manner.

The curtains were closed and the only light was a small bulb over the sink, but I could see the sleeper sofa was unoccupied. A small pop-up playpen sat empty in the corner.

“Michél,” I said. “Where are the kids?”

Confusion loosened the skin on her face, softened her perky features. She looked younger like that, and innocent. My enthusiasm had done a one-eighty. The last thing I wanted was to step any deeper into this mess. But there was Fred at my feet, his eyelids flickering in the artificial twilight. His heart beat rapidly in the thin skin of his throat.

“We should probably call a doctor.” I found the switch for the overhead lights and flipped it, illuminating a room in disarray. Stuffing protruded from a throw pillow, discarded clothing lined the baseboard. An ice bucket was capsized in the middle of a large wet spot in the nubby beige carpet.

I circuited the room until I located the phone.

“Oh, ho, no, no, no. We can’t have that.” Michél pushed herself upright and staggered into the bedroom, where she started rustling something and shushing herself. Her voice swung in my direction again. “Don’t call. Anyone! I mean it.”

Fred’s fugitive days looked well in the rearview mirror, but maybe there was some other problem just crying out for a law-enforcement officer with probable cause. For instance, what kind of kids sleep through this much ruckus? Dimetapp-nap kids, that’s who. I picked up the receiver.

The front desk clerk had just answered when I felt a hard tap on my shoulder. I turned to find Michél pointing a chunky black pistol at my chest.

“Snitch,” she whispered, crisp as a fall apple. “Hang up.” She’d pulled a white crochet dress over her swimsuit and I felt at a double disadvantage, half-dressed and totally unarmed.

I mumbled something about a mistake and set the receiver back on its stand.

“Fred might really be hurt,” I said. “Someone should check his pupils and his, um, pulse.”

Michél grabbed her cell phone from the coffee table and shoved it under my nose. “You can use the flashlight on here. And keep your voice down.”

I choreographed it perfectly for her, turning toward Fred, bending my head to focus on the screen.

The first blow didn’t quite do it. I remember a second, but after that nothing until I realized my hands were brushing against someone who was dragging me by my sweatshirt. Michél deposited me on the far side of Fred’s torso and straddled me, waving the gun with one hand.

“What the fuck, Michél?” A goose egg had set its perimeter behind my right ear and was busy growing into it. I shifted my limbs, making sure they still worked, and rolled my eyes around the room. The bedroom door was closed and the sound of AM Radio pop filtered through. Mellow hits of the Seventies. Maybe there were living, breathing, safe children back there.

She prodded Fred with a foot. He grunted lightly but didn’t move. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

“You might want to tip his head to the side,” I said.

She made a disbelieving sound low in her throat and nudged him harder. “Fred, I’ve got her, you can get up.”

Fred pushed halfway up on one elbow then dropped back to the floor with a groan.

“Get up!” Michél hissed. “You have to make her tell us where the watch is.”

They couldn’t be serious. A pawn shop would pay a fraction of the price, and anyone half legit would turn it down as soon as they saw the inscription. “Where what is?” I hissed back at her.

“Shhhhh!! Don’t play dumb with me!” Michél turned her toes on my ribs. “Where’s the watch, Angie?”

I hated the way she said my name, really the way most people say it, whiny on the “n,” long on the “ie.”

“I’m sure it’s on the bottom of Lake Minnetonka.” I wiped my forehead in the universal sign for missing a close call. “Fred would still be in jail if we had the freaking watch, any of the things she said he took.”

“Oh, right, it’s so lucky Fred didn’t get any of the goods. Give me a break, Angie. If you’d given it up, they would have gone way easier on him.”

She stomped her foot next to my ear. Someone in the room below thumped on the ceiling, but I didn’t get my hopes up. This was a party hotel. You’d have to blow up a bathtub meth lab to get someone to call the cops around here.

“You mean,” I said, “if he hadn’t put an old woman in the hospital.” Old, but spry enough to cross-country ski ten miles for a little solo ice-fishing. Probably why she survived.

“Don’t change the subject! We’re talking about the watch. Solid gold, diamond bezel, Ladymatic.” She had done her own homework. Fred was never that into details. “And the ring, too. Where’s that ring, Angie?”

Feet shuffled outside the front door. Michél pressed the pistol into my sternum and shook her head. A shadow passed along the bottom edge, paused for a second and moved on. She sighed and turned her attention back to me. “Diamonds and sapphires! I mean, who even keeps that in a cabin? In the woods?”

What did my dad say about drunks? Never argue, always agree.

“It’s crazy right? I don’t even believe that stuff was really there. I don’t have the ring, I don’t have the watch. What would I even do with them? I mean, the photos were all over the place. Her husband was a senator, for God’s sake, and the watch was a gift for their …”

“Stop talking.” Michél squeezed the gun handle, causing it to dip toward my stomach. I hoped she knew how the thing fired. I really didn’t want to get shot, but to get shot accidentally? Too stupid for words.

She put a wrist to her temple, where a curtain of sweat was forming. “I mean, keep talking, but only about the watch, the jewelry. Where is it, how do we get it?”

I shook my head, loaded regret and God-I-wish into my eyes. “It’s in the lake, like I said. Or, maybe, I don’t know, it’s in some safety-deposit box somewhere. That woman saw a chance to get the insurance and she took it.” The woman had in fact received a very nice payout. I’d know, my dad was the agency president.

Michél moved over to Fred and used her free hand to untie his swim trunks and tug at the drawstring. I wished hard for a slow-motion concussion to take her down, but she was looking sharper by the minute.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to get this rope …” She was panting unevenly and not making much progress.

“I could do it for you.” The piña coladas, and the lump above my ear, were messing with my multi-tasking abilities but I was pretty sure I could undo Fred’s shorts and come up with a better plan than sitting on my ass pleading with an armed drunk at the same time. “You’ll still have the gun.”

She nodded a curt assent and stepped aside. An atonal buzz filled the air as I fiddled with his trunks. Michél was humming along with the radio. She sang the chorus in a spooky murmur. “Angie, Angie… Remember all those nights you crie-hi-hi-hied.”

“It’s ‘we cried.’” Fred and I had sung it together enough times. The drawstring was sewn into his suit. I flipped down the waistband to show her. She scowled in disbelief.

“Just figure it out, snitch. Figure it out and…”

It took a moment for us to register the tapping on the door. Maybe the downstairs neighbor had called security after all.

“Michelle?” A male voice. “Um, Michelle?” Louder. “I have your tab.”

Cherubic bartender, my new favorite person on the planet.

Michél tiptoed over to the peephole, owled her eyes at me and mouthed, “Oh, shit.”

He knocked again, this time with a hard object. “I have to close this out, my shift is over.”

“Just bill it to my room!” she called.

“We don’t have a credit card for this room. I’m sorry, it’s, um, it’s kinda weird.”

Not for Fred. I wondered what story he’d told the front-desk clerk. His face was peaceful except for the trickle of blood. I tipped his head to the side.

Michél opened the door the length of the chain. The nose of the gun wriggled behind her back, aiming at the ceiling, the floor, me, Fred. “That is weird but, I’m sorry, my husband is asleep. The kids, too. I could come down later to sign it.”

“Well, actually.” Throat clearing. “My manager said I needed to get a credit card from you before I go home?”

My window had opened and I was climbing through it. If Michél shot me, at least my body wouldn’t end up dumped behind a saguaro on the outskirts of town. “Hi, Anthony! It’s me, Angie. I can give you a card.”

“Great!” Equal parts enthusiasm and relief. “I can just …”

Michél slammed the door in his face. She refocused the muzzle on my nose. “What you’re going to do is shut up.”

She stomped back to Fred’s prone body, waving me toward the rear window. I stayed put. Anthony rapped again, rat-a-tat-tat. A manager was invoked.

Fred groaned and rolled into Michél, knocking her a little off-kilter. I threw myself on top of her, slamming her first into the kitchen bar-top, then sideways onto the entryway linoleum. The gun unloaded into the ceiling overhead, showering us in paint chips and drywall dust.

Michél screeched and dropped the gun. A two-child chorus started in the bedroom, as piercing as a fire engine, joined a moment later by a car alarm in the lot. I crawled over her, scrambling to get the pistol before she recovered from the shock. I had pinned the side of her face with my midriff and the gun was in easy reach, but my hand froze above it. Who knew where it had been, what crimes it had been involved in? Fred was curled into the fetal position and Michél was flat under me. I looked guilty by process of elimination.

“He said it wasn’t loaded,” Michél squeaked into my bellybutton. “I could’ve killed us.”

Someone rapped on the door with real authority. “Mrs. Zeman?” The Lady Darth Vader delivery was encouraging.

I jumped up and yanked the chain free as the electronic lock released. The door swung open, flooding the room with tangerine sunset rays. A tower of curves and a boss-lady bun stepped into the opening, followed by Anthony, who was waving a ticket book in front of him like a metal detector. He moved to the side and the rays spangled over the mess behind me.

“Oh, man,” Anthony said.

“Call the police.” The woman’s commanding alto cut through the din.

Michél jackknifed into a sitting position. “No, no! Do not call the cops. Please.”

I cleared my throat and pointed to the bedroom with real show-girl flair. “There are children here.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” The manager shuffled into the pistol, which skittered across the linoleum. It stopped at the edge of the carpet, just shy of Michél’s hand. She slithered fast as a snake toward it.

The manager placed the toe of a red roach-killer cowboy boot on her knuckles. “Do not even.”

“Oh, my god,” Michél whimpered.

Anthony caught my eye and smiled. My fuchsia-and-orange striped canvas bag swung behind his back.

“I can escort this guest to the office so she can make a statement,” he said.

The manager handed him a cell phone. “Do not leave me alone with these assholes. Use this.” She motioned me to step outside the room with Anthony.

I looked back at Fred, still prone, prodding his jaw. His red mane lolled in my direction and for a second I thought he caught my eye and winked. It might have been the sunset.

The exterior lights blinked on as I stepped onto the balcony. I held my hand out to Anthony. “Thanks for getting my tote.”

The bag sagged behind his back as he stared over my shoulder. I turned to face our dark reflections in the glass behind me. I watched his image set the manager’s phone on the sill and push up the cuff of my hoodie.

“Nice tan line,” he said. “C’mon. My car’s in the lot.”