Sarah Booth Delaney 13.50 - Shorty Bones Read Free Page B

station got an anonymous tip at six a.m. that an attempt on Lovey Jensen’s life would be made this morning. The station called Lovey, who laughed it off but managed to give them her schedule. Lovey is in this up to her eyeballs.”
    “Again, why? What is she gaining from this?”
    “Maybe she’s going to kill Curtis and claim self-defense,” she suggested.
    “Not the most original maneuver. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman married to a rich man tried to turn the death of a spouse into profit. The battered-woman defense often works, too, if the defense lawyer paints a sympathetic-enough picture.”
    “Some men just need killing,” Tinkie said. “I’ll bet living with him is hell. He married her because she was hot stuff in porn flicks. The reality of a flesh-and-blood woman and not some sexually wild celluloid image might have left him abusive.”
    Tinkie sounded like a witness for the defense. “This is all supposition. Curtis and Lovey may be happy as pigs in mud.”
    “She did a porno involving mud wrestling. I looked up her entire history on IMDB. It was called
Mudslide Delight
.”
    “Anything else you’d care to disclose about Lovey’s past?”
    “She did another film where she was a Southern belle married to a cruel slave owner. Her drawl was enough for justifiable homicide. The title was
The Master of Discipline
. I call it
Fifty Shades of P.U
.”
    “Enough!”
    “Her biggest seller was
Dapper Diaper Diablo
about a Latin dictator who smells of sulfur and likes to pretend he’s a baby.”
    “Tinkie, stop it or I’m getting out of the car and I’ll walk.”
    “But my all-time favorite was
Sweet Cheeks
.”
    I groaned and put my hands over my ears. It was too damn hot to walk, but she was pushing me hard. “I wonder who carries the insurance policies on the Jensens.”
    “Harold would probably know.”
    “And he can’t really tell us. The bank can’t disclose personal info like that.”
    “Of course he can’t outright tell us,” Tinkie said as she dialed him. “Harold, who in town is most likely to write big, big life insurance policies?” After a moment she thanked him and hung up. “It’s Too Tall Walter at Destiny Mutual. I think I can find out what I need to know from him and he won’t even realize he’s spilled the beans. Why don’t you check on Graf, and we’ll meet at Dahlia House after lunch.”
    “Shouldn’t one of us watch Lovey?”
    “Why? She had her moment of drama this morning. Now if we could put some cameras and a bug in the Jensen household, we might get down to the bottom of this.”
    She dropped me at my car and I returned to Dahlia House to make lunch for Graf. The physical therapist had put him through his paces, and he patted the bed for me to crawl in. I did so gently. He was doing great, and while Doc had warned me that he would inevitably slip into depression as he realized how long and hard his recovery would be, for the moment he was in good spirits.
    “Why don’t
we
make a porno, Sarah Booth?”
    I knew he was teasing, but the idea still made me blush. “I don’t think so.”
    “I’d love to see Lovey’s contracts. The porn industry is lucrative for the filmmakers, but often the stars are screwed, pun intended.”
    “But she’s out of that business. She’s a respectable wife now.”
    “Depends on her contracts,” Graf said. “She was a money maker. Someone could be putting the heat on her to do another film. You know, scare tactics.”
    “Which might explain the cheesy trench coat and fedora of the character Tinkie and I saw. Now that you bring up the point, he looked like a porn film version of a noir detective.”
    “That’s a great film idea.
Private Dick
. An excellent play on words.”
    “Stop it! Or I’m going to lock Tinkie in this room with you and the two of you can kill yourselves coming up with horrid titles.”
    After lunch, his eyelids began to droop and I left the phone beside him on the bed. The afternoon nurse