"Troy, M E - Val Lyon - Home Wreckers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Troy M E)

Home Wreckers
By
M.E. Troy

The telephone jangle yanked me to consciousness. I flicked on the light and reached for the receiver, knocking the hotel services directory to the floor. My watch said six ten in the morning. Somebody was going to pay for this. I dragged the phone to my pillow. Mumbled something about death to whoever disturbed my beauty sleep.

"Val, something terrible has happened. You have to get down here." The voice belonged to Sherri Costello, Head Coach of the Tropical Storm.

"Where's here? What's happened?"

"Julie's room. She's dead."

"Dead?"

"Somebody shot her."

I hung up, mind reeling. The Tropical Storm sat atop the Women's Professional Basketball League. Julie Ramos was a post player on the team, first in rebounds, second in points, big in headlines -- such headlines as women received, anyway. Me, I consulted to the team on matters of security. My headline days were past. When things went smoothly nobody noticed me or my job. Now, with one phone call, that was changed. Julie was dead and the team, including me, was in big trouble.

Especially me. I had a twenty-four year old guy in my bed. He had big brown eyes, big wet tongue, and the energy of a Frisbee dog when it came to sex. He had slept through the call.

I gave his shoulder a hard shove. "Dennis! Wake up!" He made a sound like an air mattress deflating and rolled over. His breath smelled like the floor behind a bar. I shoved him again. "Dammit, wake up!"

He rolled his eyes open and gave me a cockeyed grin. Then he clamped a big paw on my left breast and glued his mouth over the other one. I pried his hand off and it snaked between my legs. I grabbed his head and stuck a thumb in his eyeball with enough pressure that he saw stars. He yelped and rolled off.

"Oww! What's the idea?"

I shoved him off the bed. "Get up, idiot. Somebody killed your wife."

It took him a while to get it. That was another thing about him: the sight of a naked breast drove everything else from his mind.

Finally he said, "Julie? Julie's dead? Where? Her room?" He got to his feet and started around the bed to the door, grabbing his pants off the chair.

I lunged for him and got his arm. "Where are you going?"

"To Julie. I gotta get down there."

"No! You can't go there. You're not even supposed to be here yet. Right now you're supposed to be on a plane somewhere over the Pacific."

"Yeah, but she's dead." He struggled into his pants.

Why do I fall for the dense ones? Just once I'd like a man with good hands and a good brain. I grabbed his face with both hands. "Listen to me, Dennis! It's a murder. The police are on their way. If they find you've been up here with me the whole time we'll both be in deep kim chee."

"So what do we do?"

"You leave after I leave. Take the stairs, not the elevator. Make sure nobody sees you. Got that?"

He nodded slowly. "Yeah, sure. Why don't I go to the airport and wait for the flight from Honolulu? When it gets in, I come back here like I just got off it."

"No! The first thing the police will check is the manifest."