Sprayed Stiff by Laura Bradley Page A

to make sure Lexa didn’t open it before I blabbed about it.
    “Sure.” He knew I was lying by omission, but didn’t call me on it. Not yet. “You knew this servant couple? Or was it like our friend Tanno and you’d just met?”
    “I’d met Maria once when she brought Lexa to a hair appointment months ago. I’d never met her husband.”
    “Uh-huh.” He didn’t sound convinced.
    “Look, I am not a friend of the family. I am Lexa’s friend. I was Wilma’s enemy.” Oops, that was a bad word choice. Again.
    “Really?”
    “Well, she thought of me that way. Once she came and tried to talk me out of doing Lexa’s hair. It was more a control thing than anything about me. I knew that.”
    “So, how does her brother feel about you?”
    Was he still stuck on that? Geez. I was tempted to tell him about some wild sex orgy we’d shared, but I doubted I could do it without spoiling the fib by bursting into gales of laughter, so I fell back on the truth.
    “Hairdressers aren’t the focus of long-distance family conversations, so I doubt the guy knows about me and I wouldn’t know him if I fell over him. From what I’m told by Lexa, he’s gay. He lives his own life in Houston with a devoted partner and has as little as possible to do with his parents. He’s friendly but not close. Lexa respects him for that, envies him for it, too.”
    “What about Mr. Barrister?”
    “What about him? Lexa never says much about him except to mention his lifelong disappointment that she won’t be a lawyer or marry one. I’ve only seen him once before tonight, and that was at a charity function a date dragged me to.”
    From my rearview mirror perspective, I watched Scythe’s eyebrows shoot up. I wasn’t going to tell him that had been my last date and it had been a year ago. Let him think it had happened last week.
    “You might be interested in my opinion, as a beauty professional, of the way the victim was arranged. I think it shows a great deal of hostility, and the killer was making a statement about appearances.”
    “You might be interested in my opinion, as a law enforcement professional, of the way you were found in the presence of the victim, carrying what might prove to be the murder weapon, all on the pretense of helping a friend.”
    I was ticked off he was ignoring my evaluation of the situation. After all, I knew a helluva lot more about the aesthetic industry than he did. We exited the freeway, and I could see the high-rise that was the Bexar County Jail about two blocks away. “And your opinion is?” I finally asked frostily.
    His voice was hot and tight when he finally spoke. “Reyn, you need to learn to say no. If you’d said no when Lexa called and asked for help, then you wouldn’t be in trouble. I wouldn’t be forced to take you to jail.”
    “Good advice. I’ll start practicing saying no to you.”
    The way his neck stiffened, I knew I’d hit home.

Seven
    D ON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU that going to jail is no big deal. Every emotion imaginable mixes thick in the stale air of the bullpen that is the Bexar County receiving room. Cops laugh with each other over their children’s latest escapades as they register the effects of a one-legged Vietnam vet booked for vagrancy. Street-walkers hike up their spandex skirts to show they have nothing on underneath to the officer taking down their vital information. A deputy sheriff flirts with a rookie SAPD officer. A detective argues with a social worker as they fingerprint a sobbing teenage mother arrested for letting her boyfriend drown her baby. A man arrested for five rape/robberies stares at a lovely heiress kleptomaniac shoplifter, planning his sixth. A Boy Scout troop leader falsely accused of fondling a charge stares hopelessly into space. A goth freak details his latest cult animal killing to his benchmate, who looks ready to vomit.
    This or another version of it happens every minute in the room where Scythe led me. I knew he’d taken me to jail