Sprayed Stiff by Laura Bradley

are having an affair and you are taking revenge for your lover.”
    I shook my head. “Weak. You guys all have those lesbian fantasies. It’s really sad. You think a woman cop would ever come up with that one out of the blue with no supporting evidence? No way. If you got a woman on the jury, that one would be toast.”
    In the rearview mirror, I could see him grimace at the road.
    “Have you arrested Lexa?”
    “None of your business.”
    “I guess it’s also none of my business that you let some hack chew on your hair the last time it needed a trim, huh?”
    “Damn right,” he snapped. Then his gaze went reflexively to the rearview mirror for a quick check before he caught himself and stuck it back on the road. He ground his jaw and tried not to ask. A minute ticked by before his ego couldn’t stand it anymore. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
    “Nothing’s wrong with your hair.”
    His shoulder muscles dropped as he relaxed.
    “It’s your cut that’s embarrassing.”
    Oops—those shoulder muscles rose, higher than before. It’s fun to mess with the mind of an egomaniac, which is, of course, most of the male species. They can’t help it, it’s testosterone induced.
    Scythe held his tongue. He had impressive willpower. I goaded him more. “Number-two clipper cut on the sides, and long enough in back to maybe make a ponytail. I don’t know, maybe you want to look like a Bubba who lives in a trailer park and has a rifle rack on the rear window of his Ford. Hey, have you been working undercover?”
    I really had to remember the guy was armed. Still, I knew that cut and who did it. I just wanted him to admit it. Just one more try.
    “Or maybe you’re dating the girl who cut it. You know, when a man loves a woman…”
    He shook his head, but didn’t open his mouth. We were between streetlights and I couldn’t read his expression in the reflection off the dash, so I didn’t know whether to push a little harder or drop the subject altogether. It was that touchy with Scythe. Not that I didn’t usually enjoy pissing him off, but his current state of mind might make the difference in the kind of jailer I got for the upcoming strip search.
    I decided changing the subject would be the safest course of action.
    “I took a couple of shots of Wilma—” He nearly ran off the road. Oops, leave it to me to pick the wrong word. “I mean, shots with a camera.” Scythe shook his head and got us back on track. I continued, “Anyway, I took the pictures for you guys before I fixed her hair. It was straight out like this.” I pulled my artfully messy locks out by their ends in a poor illustration. He cocked his left eyebrow. “Oh, well, you’ll see in the photos. I hid the camera back in the bookcase. Don’t tell Lexa I took them, she’ll freak out. Oh, also, I recognized the kind of hairspray the killer used—it’s Main Mane by Hair’s Breadth.”
    He sat up straighter and shot me a glare through the rearview mirror. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
    “I forgot. Apparently, being handcuffed and stuffed into the armpit of a suit of armor impairs my memory.”
    Scythe grunted. “While you are in the remembering mode, why don’t you tell me what the Carricaleses told you before I noticed they’d arrived home?”
    I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
    I watched his jaw flex. “Why not?”
    “It really wouldn’t help you any. It was all a bunch of small talk. You know…‘Why are you here?’ ‘Oh I’m kind of locked into the situation, ha-ha-ha’…. That kind of thing.” The truth was, I didn’t know what to tell Scythe. He could use any of the “hims” and “hers” in the servants’ scenarios to make his case against Lexa. And while I thought some of the “hers” the Carricaleses mentioned might be her, I knew not all the “hers” were her. Got it? Until I understood more of what they meant, I wasn’t telling Scythe jack. Plus, there was the open gate thing. I wanted