Red Snow Read Free Page B

dismissed him with a cold pout.
    The raven-haired goddess used mental telepathy to tell him to buzz off.
    In reply, Nick flashed them all his bison-head badge.
    “Boomer,” he said.
    When it came to cinematic thrillers, nothing irked Nick more than a director with a fetish for one color of hair. He’d sit there eating his popcorn, trying to figure out whodunit, and all the actresses in the movie would be blondes. In a long shot, the suspects were interchangeable. There should be a rule that femmes fatales must be color-coded so armchair detectives—and real detectives, in Nick’s case—can keep them straight. The women at this table—the Blonde, the Redhead, and the Raven—were how it should be.
    “What happened to your hand?” asked the Blonde. Mandy was her name, and she wore a scoop-necked sweater. Obviously, she hadn’t come in from the slopes. She made Nick think of Lana Turner.
    “A bad guy hacked it off,” said Nick.
    “Why?”
    “He was evil.”
    “How strong is the new hand?” asked the Redhead. Her name was Jessica, and she wore a fuzzy green sweater. She reminded Nick of Rita Hayworth.
    Picking up Jessica’s empty can of Guinness, the cop crushed it down to scrap metal.
    “Wow!” said the Blonde. “When you cop a feel, I bet a girl knows she’s been felt up.”
    The buxom trio tittered.
    “What’s your strangest case?” asked the Raven. Corrina by name, she reminded Nick of Jane Russell. The Raven wore a clinging creamy sweater that hung to her thighs, with a black belt, black ski tights, and black riding boots. When she sipped her Guinness, a foamy mustache lined her Cupid’s bow lip. Out flicked her tongue to lick it away like a kitten laps up milk.
    If Nick had to choose …
    (In your dreams, dude.)
    … he’d take all three.
    “You forgot your whisky without an ‘e,’” Karen said behind him, and as she bent over his shoulder to set the drink down on the table, her chest brushed against him. Nick had always been a sucker for Hollywood’s golden era. How had Bob Hope once introduced his radio guest? “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome the two and only Jane Russell?”
    Karen went back to the bar.
    “Boomer,” Nick said. “I’m led to believe you ladies knew him in the biblical sense?”
    “Everyone knew Boomer,” replied Mandy the Blonde.
    “He was key to the party circuit,” Jessica the Redhead added. “Get on his list and you were in.”
    “Were you all on Boomer’s list?”
    “Of course,” said Corrina the Raven. “The Olympics will be a blast.”
    “How did you get on his list?”
    “It’s Whistler,” said Jessica the Redhead. “Everything has a price. You pay to play.”
    “Pay what?”
    “Boomer’s entry fee.”
    “Which was?”
    “Entry.”
    The vixens laughed.
    The answer reminded Nick of a quip someone once made about Ray Charles. To be a Raelette—one of his background singers—the joke went, you had to let Ray.
    “I’m sure you all have boyfriends?”
    “Had,” corrected Corrina. “We’re currently unattached and moving up in the world.”
    “Or were ,” groused Mandy, “until Boomer got himself topped.”
    “I’ll need your ex-boyfriends’ names.”
    One by one, the social climbers provided Nick with the names and addresses of the lovers they’d ground underfoot on the steps to their own Olympic podium. Each one had a motive for lopping off Boomer’s head.
    Ah yes, Whistler!
    Gold, sex, and honey drippers.
    “So what was your strangest case?” asked Corrina.
    “Do you believe in ghosts?”
    “No.”
    “Neither did I, until I went to Ireland for an extradition case. On a dark and stormy night, I ran out of gas on a countryside road. So there I was, walking along in the pitch black, the rain so hard I could barely see five feet in front of me, when suddenly this car crept up behind me and stopped. Relieved, I jumped in the passenger’s door—but there was no one behind the steering wheel and the engine wasn’t on.
    “The AA