Getting Rid of Bradley Read online

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Lucy said, pulling away from Anthony. “I’ve been here since Thursday. I’m going stir-crazy. At least take me with you.”

  “Not a chance.” Zack grabbed his jacket. “Bradley’s been shooting people. I’m not taking you into that.”

  “Which Bradley, yours or mine?”

  Zack shrugged into his jacket. “You don’t have a Bradley. Remember that. Come on, Tony.”

  Lucy put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Don’t you think you should narrow down who you’re chasing before you go charging off like this?”

  “We’ll argue about it when I get back.” Zack started for the front door, and Anthony kissed Lucy on the cheek. Zack backtracked, grabbed his arm, and pushed him toward the door. “Why don’t you cook dinner for a change?” he said to Lucy on his way out.

  Lucy leaned against the back of one of her overstuffed chairs, defeated. “I’ll order a pizza,” she said, and Zack stopped and said, “No, you won’t. I haven’t gone through all of this to get you wasted by a pizza delivery man.” He followed Anthony out the front door, and Lucy felt like killing him.

  “Maybe Phoebe will get him again,” she told the dogs, and then the door opened again.

  “I almost forgot,” Zack said, and grabbed her and kissed her, bending her back over the chair in his enthusiasm. She clutched at him to keep from falling, and that relaxed into his kiss, relieved that he was kissing her again and reveling in his heat. “I will definitely be back,” he said to her and kissed her again, pulled her back upright and left.

  “Oh, good,” she said, but he was already gone.

  By noon, the silence had gotten to Lucy.

  She’d made a big pot of vegetable soup, and talked to the dogs, and turned on the radio, but the silence was still there, even though there was enough racket for anybody.

  There was nobody talking to her.

  It had never bothered her before. But now, after days of Zack’s constant rambling, it made the house seem empty.

  “It’s not like he’s not coming back,” she told the dogs. “Actually, I don’t think it’s him at all. I think it’s just that I haven’t been out of this house for days. I need to get out.”

  She caught sight of herself in the mirror over the fireplace. Her hair was even shaggier than before. She looked awful.

  “I could go out and get my hair fixed.” Even as she said the words, she knew she would. It was too awful not to. And how many people got killed in beauty parlors, anyway?

  The dogs looked skeptical.

  “This is so ridiculous,” she told them. “People Wowing up my car and shooting at me. This makes no sense. I’m going out.”

  LUCY WAS CAREFUL. She called a cab to pick her up three houses down so that the patrol car out front and any miscellaneous killers lurking around wouldn’t know she was gone. She felt guilty about the patrol car, but she was tired of arguing with policemen. Granted, Zack was probably the worst of the bunch, but she was fairly sure that the one in the patrol car wouldn’t be any more understanding.

  And she left a note for Zack, so if he came home early he wouldn’t panic. “Dear Zack,” she wrote. “I can’t stand the thought of you waking up to see my hair like this anymore so I’m getting it fixed. And I’ll get something for dinner, too. Don’t go to bed without me. Lucy.” Then she stuck it on the mantel where anyone coming into the room would see it.

  She just hoped that anyone was Zack. If it was Anthony she was going to be embarrassed.

  LUCY ASKED THE CABBIE to recommend a good beautician, and he dropped her at a dingy strip mall paneled in peeling redwood and rusted chrome. It had a bar, a convenience store, a drugstore, a secondhand clothing shop, and a beauty parlor. The basics.

  The beauty parlor was Thelma and Lou’s.

  It was dim inside the pink-and-orange salon, so it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the light and to the young amazon who walked forward to meet her.

  “Hiya,” the girl said and cracked her gum, and Lucy’s eyes swept up, startled, to her hair.

  It was purple, shaved at the sides, and gelled until it stood straight up. Since the girl must have been close to six foot before the hair, the effect was riveting. So riveting that the nose ring and the skull tattoo on her chest were hardly noticeable.

  “Are you Thelma or Lou?” Lucy asked, unable to take her eyes off all that purple hair.

  “I’m Chantel.” The girl stared at Lucy’s hair, fascinated. “Thelma and Lou are in Florida. Like, permanently. What can I do for ya? As if I didn’t know already. Jeez.”

  Her own eyes still fixed on Chantel’s hair, Lucy said, “I have a hair problem.”

  “No kidding.” Chantel cracked her gum again. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

  They had to look like Harpo Marx meets the Bride of Frankenstein on a bad color TV. Lucy started to laugh.

  “Well, at least you still got your sense of humor,” Chantel said. “So, you want me to fix you or not?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have any experience fixing this kind of mistake?” Lucy touched her hair and it crackled under her fingertips.

  “I don’t, have any experience at all. I just got out of beauty school yesterday.” Chantel cracked her gum and smiled cheerfully. “If you don’t want to take a chance, it’s okay. I mean, somebody obviously did a number on you once. Why take a chance again?”

  Chantel’s smile was as open and honest as a child’s, which Lucy knew was no reason for her to put her already ravaged head into her hands.

  Or maybe it was.

  “Somebody did do a number on me,” Lucy agreed. “I ended up with the most awful bleach job you’ve ever seen. And then I tried to fix it with shampoo-in color, but that didn’t work.”

  Chantel looked at her hair again and nodded. “That explains the green.”

  Lucy took a deep breath. “Can you fix this?”

  Chantel looked cautious. “I can try. You sure you don’t want to try one of those big places downtown?”

  Lucy hesitated. “Yes. Yes, I’m definitely sure. What are we going to do first?”

  Chantel’s eyes narrowed, and she became all business. “Condition. We’re gonna megacondition that mess and hope it doesn’t fall out from relief.”

  Lucy swallowed. “And then?”

  “A cut. Real short to cover up the breakage. And some color. I suppose you want brown or something.”

  “Brown.” Lucy looked up at Chantel’s purple hair and swallowed again. “No, not brown. That’s not me. I’m the spontaneous, independent type.”

  Chantel cracked her gum. “Oh, yeah. I could tell that right off.”

  THE HOTEL ROOM WAS generic: bad paintings, worn green carpeting, tan flowered bedspread, and beige curtains at the sliding-glass doors.

  Unfortunately, it was also clean. One of the Bradleys had checked out four hours earlier.

  “The desk clerk recognized John Bradley’s picture but not Bradley Porter’s. So John Bradley was here using Porter’s credit cards.” Anthony surveyed the spotless hotel room. “Bradley Porter was probably never here. This makes no sense. This should be such a simple case. We have Porter’s credit-card numbers. We have his house. We have his ex-wife.”

  Zack started guiltily.

  “So why don’t we have him?” Anthony went on, tactfully ignoring him. “Why hasn’t anyone seen him? If he’s innocent, why can’t the Kentucky cops find him? If he’s guilty, why did he give John Bradley his credit cards? I don’t get this.”

  “We’re not going to find anything here,” Zack said. “It’s got to be the house. Although I’m telling you, there are no government bonds there. I even took up the kitchen floor, which is the only floor that’s not plain hardwood. If something’s there, it’s small.” He folded his arms and sat down on the chipped edge of the desk. “You know, Bradley Porter’s a banker. He wouldn’t keep bonds in his house. Not for more than a night, anyway. What do you think?”

  “A safe-deposit box,