Darlene Scalera - Straight Silver

“Got busted early on for excessive force. Charges didn’t stick. But be careful, chère, he’s a dangerous man. Not hard to look at.” Billie smiled slim, sly. “You look, chère?”

“I looked.”

Billie released a luxuriant laugh. “You’re still one of my girls, you know that, darlin’?” Billie’s smile disappeared into sadness. “Della was, too. Despite everything. One of my girls ends up like this. I don’t like it.”

“What do you think happened?”

Her eyes on me, Billie reached for another candy. “Drugs, the Oyster Club…”

“She was strangled with her own G-string.”

Billie sucked silently, for the second time showing no surprise. With her pipeline to the police, she probably knew more details about the murder than I did.

“Kind of an eloquent statement.” My English comp acted up again.

“Or a practical one if the killer needed a weapon.” If Billie did know anything about the murder, she wasn’t telling.

The phone rang. I stood. Billie motioned me to sit as she glanced at the number on the caller ID screen. “The machine can get it.”

I stayed standing. I only had one question left—who killed Della Divine? Billie either didn’t have the answer, or if she did she wasn’t sharing.

“I’ve got to go, Billie.”

She leaned her impressive bulk back against her chair and nodded as if she understood, just like the first time I’d told her I had to go. She got up to walk me out.

“How’s school? Getting straight A’s?”

“I’m getting by.” I wasn’t ready to admit that a dyslexic going to college is equal to a stripper wearing her thong backward onstage–fully exposed and no idea what the hell you’re doing.

“Good girl. You do my taxes after you become legit?”

“If you give me the real set of books.”

Her laughter became richer. “Still one of my girls, Silver.”

She made my name sound like a symphony.

We embraced at the back door. “You hear anything about this thing with Della, you give me a call?” I asked her.

Billie put her hands on my shoulders as if to steady me. “Sometimes, chère, a thing like this happens. And there’s nothing you or I could have done to stop it.”

I left, my body still warm from Billie’s embrace, the faint sweet smell of her breath in my nostrils. And an unsettling sensation that she had just lied to me.

I WAS CHECKING the temperature of the chocolate when Adrienne came in. If the chocolate was too cold, you got splinters. Too warm and you got mush. I drew my knife across the square’s surface. With a satisfaction like a long sigh, I watched the chocolate curl. Adrienne eyed the orange chiffon cheesecake. “What’s wrong?”

I used to drink when I worried. Now I bake. Adrienne scooped a dollop of whipped cream from the mixer bowl and sucked it off her finger while I told her about Della’s death. She pulled her finger slowly out of her mouth when I finished. Her lips stayed set in an O. Adrienne is a university student and the daughter of my divorced dentist, Herb Bloomberg. Last year Momma had finally made good on her threat to sell Great-Great-Grandma LeGrande’s gorilla of a house and head to Biscayne Bay, and for the first time, I got sentimental. I’d worked the circuit for eleven years, eleven very profitable years, but the town of Snake Fish twenty-two miles south of Memphis was home. Sentimentality isn’t cheap. Adrienne rents the finished basement. I get a little extra cash to keep this hulk of a house and my childhood illusions alive plus twice-annual free dental cleanings and checkups. Adrienne hasn’t had to buy herself a drink in a bar since she moved in with an ex-stripper. We were a match made for the Memphis suburbs.

I placed chocolate curls around the cake’s top with a finesse I don’t usually possess. Adrienne was seeking comfort from a beater off the mixer when the back door slammed. Great-Aunt Peggilee came in from her pool aerobics class at the Jewish senior center, singing Frankie Laine. She was either still in the throes of exercise endorphins or Charley Diamond had worn his Speedo again.

She eyed the orange chiffon cheesecake. “What’s wrong?”

Auntie came with the house. She teases her hair so high it could be a way station for migrating geese. She also favors heavy eyeliner, clip-on earrings, male crooners and fake fur…in Memphis. If Barbie needed a great-aunt, Auntie Peggilee would have been the prototype.

“One of the girls Silver used to work with is in a bad way.” Adrienne extended the other beater to my great-aunt. The mutual adoration between Adrienne and her I could only credit to their complete antithesis of each other.

“Pregnant?” Auntie’s eyes narrowed, slid to my waist while her tongue flicked at a blob of cream.

“Dead.”

We weren’t a subtle household.

Auntie licked the beater. Her slitted gaze on me didn’t say, “That could have been you.” Her eyes with their turquoise lids had seen enough to know it could have been any one of us instead of Della laid out on cold steel this morning.

“That for after the funeral?” Auntie nodded toward the cake. Practicality was Aunt Peggilee’s way of coping.

“I guess it could be,” I answered, not realizing it until now.

“When is it?”

“I don’t know. The police are looking for family. Della had a younger brother in the military, but he was killed in a train accident a few months ago.”

“Train accident?”

“He was on the tracks after a heavy night on the town. Not far from the base. They think he was walking home and either fell and knocked himself out or plum passed out. They couldn’t stop the train in time.” I handed them each a chocolate curl.

“And now the sister is dead?”

Auntie shaved her eyebrows and painted on new ones. They headed beehive level. Auntie doesn’t believe in coincidence.

“Strangled.” Adrienne supplied, moving on to a spatula.

“Della never really mentioned anybody but her brother, and a grandmother who raised them in Pittsburgh. I suppose if they don’t find anybody, the girls at Billie’s will take up a collection. Bintliff should give us a fair price.”

“You want me to go with you to the service?”

“I don’t see any reason.”

“Neither do I.” Aunt Peggilee put the licked-clean beater in the bowl soaking in the sink, took a swig of her sport drink. “But I will.”

I adored my great-aunt Peggilee, too.

I CHECKED IN with Luxury Limousines after my class in fundamentals of info processing, but midweek was always slow. Any jobs that came in went to the old-timers. They didn’t need me until the weekend. Adrienne was at her summer job at the university science library where she spent most of her time scouting out premeds. Auntie would be leaving for salsa class followed by Margarita Mania at the Elks. I headed into Memphis, going against the tide of rush-hour traffic. The Oyster Club was in a corner of the city that made respectable folks shake their heads, and campaigning politicians favor for catchy photo ops. But an upward transformation had begun, thanks to a new condominium complex three streets over, whose towers could be seen from the T-shirt stalls on the corner. Come in from the east, and you’d pass a freestanding zone of new construction that took up almost the whole street. The centerpiece was the residential towers that included a health club and underground parking. Enter from the west and you’d see the transvestite hookers, the homeless waiting for St. Francis’ shelter to open for lunch, and the exotic dancer marquees, the largest of which was the Oyster Club.

The club was quiet. Peak patron time was hours from now. A thin-haired man sat at the bar, stirring his drink with his pinkie, more interested in the clear liquid than the women dancing on the catwalk. A woman in her cruel forties slapped a cardboard coaster down as I slid onto a stool.