Clever is as Clever Does (The Clever Detective) Read Free Page B

the song in front of a large mirror.
    “Where you from?” she sang off key, pointing at herself at the glass. “You sexy thang.”
    It was then that I noticed that behind the woman’s reflection in the mirror was a large, metallic face. No body. Just a face -- smiling and bobbing along to the tune.
    She wiggled her bottom and pointed with the other arm. “You sexy thang.”
    Now I’d seen everything.
    I eased toward the mat and called out, “You really think so?”  
    She froze. The music stopped. Must have been on a sensor.
    Slowly she turned around, brows to the sky. Instead of being flushed from the workout, her face had that pasty, too-many-surgical-procedures look. But her thick-black-liner fringed eyes bore holes into me with the precision of a dentist’s drill.
    “Who the hell are you?” She said in a thick southern accent.
    Chad stepped forward with all his debonair charm and made a flourishing bow. “Allow me to introduce ourselves. I’m Prince Thrugood and this is Detective Alexander.”
    I attempted another curtsey and nearly fell over my feet. Gotta work on that move.
    Dolly didn’t budge. Guess some royalties didn’t hobnob with other royalties around here.
    Chad straightened. “And you are?”
    “Queen Brunhilda.” She eyed us like we were lepers. “Y’all are trespassing.”
    I ignored her. “We’re investigating a murder and we have some questions to ask you.”
    Her hand went to her throat dramatically. “Murder?” She gasped the word like she’d never heard it before.
    “That’s right, uh, Brunhilda. Is that your real name?” Sounded fake to me.
    “You ought to call me Your Highness.” She pulled her shoulders back, as if trying to make herself look taller, which wasn’t too regal with that Dolly Parton shape and the tight pink sweat suit.
    Chad folded his arms across his big manly chest. “No, she won’t call you that. Not while I’m here.” Sweet boy.
    I took another step toward her. “That’s right, Brunny. We think you know something about said murder. Spill it.”
    I felt a strange tingle along my arms. I turned and saw the mirror was making a nasty face at me.
    Brunny daubed at her forehead with a towel, then strolled over to a table and took a sip of lemonade from a glass. Didn’t offer us any. Casually, she picked up the end of her hair and studied it like the answer might be in her split ends. “Well I declare. I have no earthly idea what y’all are talking about.” She’d turned from Dolly Parton to Scarlett O’Hara.
    I cleared my throat. “We’re talking about your stepdaughter?”
    She wrinkled her nose. “Who?”
    “Snow White?”
    She tapped her chin as if trying to remember. “Oh, her. I haven’t talked to her in ages. She’s such a spoiled little thing. So self absorbed. We don’t really get along, though I’ve tried my best to be good to her.”
    I inhaled slowly, trying hard to be patient. “She’s dead.”
    Brunny’s eyelashes fluttered, then she clasped her hands to her chest. Now she was Sarah Bernhardt. “No. It can’t be. Wait. I think I might faint.”
    “Don’t you want to know what happened?”
    She grimaced, like she wished she’d thought of that. “Of course, I do. What happened to my poor, poor stepdaughter?”
    “She ate a poisoned apple.”
    She waved a hand in front of her face. “Oh my. How perfectly dreadful. But accidents do happen. Where is the FDA when you need them?”
    My arms felt like they were burning. I looked back at the mirror and saw the eyes were glowing and spinning. That thing was trying to put a hex on me.
    “Somebody gave her the apple on purpose,” I said to Brunny. “Somebody wanted her dead.”
    She sucked in air. “Why it must have been one of those awful dwarfs she’s been living with. I told her not to take up with those nasty little men.”
    “I thought so, too at first. Then they told me about the Murderati.”
    Brunny sucked in more air. “Those horrible pigs in that motorcycle