Don't Make Me Choose Between You and My Shoes Read online

  Don’t Make Me Choose Between You and My Shoes

  Dixie Cash

  Contents

  Chapter One

  He stuffed his shirt into his pants, zipped up and…

  Chapter Two

  Debbie Sue Overstreet was doing her dead-level best to balance…

  Chapter Three

  Celina Phillips lifted two teaspoons of sugar from the porcelain,…

  Chapter Four

  Late in the day, after all of the Styling Station’s…

  Chapter Five

  Thank you, Mr. Scurlock…. Yes. Yes, I understand…. Nope, no…

  Chapter Six

  Debbie Sue rolled over and plumped her pillow for the…

  Chapter Seven

  Celina adjusted her pillow and sighed. She had been on…

  Chapter Eight

  Good Lord, Debbie Sue, that’s the Empire State Building.” Edwina…

  Chapter Nine

  The cab’s backseat was covered with a plastic protective barrier.

  Chapter Ten

  Celina stretched out on the bed for a while, staring…

  Chapter Eleven

  The banquet room was packed. Sitting even remotely near Dr. Wray…

  Chapter Twelve

  At the end of happy hour, Celina excused herself and…

  Chapter Thirteen

  Having an escort who had an NYPD badge to flash…

  Chapter Fourteen

  On Thursday morning, Debbie Sue awoke in a less frivolous…

  Chapter Fifteen

  Thirty minutes later Celina excused herself to go up to…

  Chapter Sixteen

  Trying to appear cool and detached while looking around, Celina…

  Chapter Seventeen

  Edwina counted only five contestants besides herself.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “…came here…a drink…the offer, wasn’t…”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Debbie Sue and Edwina stopped at the door to Room…

  Chapter Twenty

  Detective Matt McDermott sat on the edge of one of…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Edwina worried as the squad car approached the Anson Hotel.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  For the second time this morning, Debbie Sue watched Matt…

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Refusing to look down, Debbie Sue squeezed her body through…

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Debbie Sue could see the crowd below. They didn’t exactly…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  With practiced skill, the man ushered all four of them…

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  By seven o’clock that evening Matt had herded his bevy…

  Epilogue

  Debbie Sue and Edwina bid a fond farewell to New…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Dixie Cash

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  chapter one

  Manhattan, July 2006

  He stuffed his shirt into his pants, zipped up and looked one last time into the mirror. The bathroom lighting was hardly flattering, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t come here to impress.

  He opened the door leading to the bedroom and watched the prostitute slide her cell phone into her purse, pull out a tissue and blot the red color from her lips. He hated that greasy red shit and he had told her he wouldn’t tolerate lipstick stains on his clothing or anything else.

  He approached her from behind, wrapped his arms around her and jerked her body against his. His hands were large. They encircled her throat with ease. Her eyes displayed a flash of panic and a thrill rushed through him. Her head turned toward him, a questioning look on her face.

  He grabbed her by the hair and threw her onto the bed. She screamed, but then he was on her, straddling her and muffling her sounds with his hand. She kicked and bit, was stronger than she looked. Before she could do more damage, he went for her throat and crushed the sound from her.

  Seconds later she ceased to struggle, but he didn’t let go. He knew she had only lost consciousness. It would take several minutes for her to lose life. Thank God he was strong.

  Meanwhile, in a brownstone several blocks away, the prostitute’s only friend received a text message sent fifteen minutes earlier from the familiar cell phone number.

  B home soon. No prob. He’s a cop.

  chapter two

  Salt Lick, Texas, July 2006

  Debbie Sue Overstreet was doing her dead-level best to balance the business checkbook before customers began to arrive. Her friend and business partner, Edwina Perkins-Martin, refused to touch the computer bookkeeping, excusing herself from the chore by declaring she didn’t want to catch a virus.

  Debbie Sue and Edwina co-owned the Styling Station, one of two beauty salons in Salt Lick, a town of 1,232 Texan-to-their-souls citizens. The salon was different from the competition in many ways, but the most glaring difference was that one end of the Styling Station was home to a private investigation agency, the Domestic Equalizers, also owned by Debbie Sue and Edwina.

  As Debbie Sue fiddled with the numbers on an Excel spreadsheet, she listened with one ear to Edwina’s phone conversation on the Domestic Equalizer phone line. Everyone had a talent, and her partner Edwina Perkins-Martin’s was surely talking. Curiosity was not only killing Debbie Sue, it was interfering with her ability to figure out what had gone wrong in her bookkeeping program. Shit!

  “Uh-huh,” Edwina said. “I see…uh-huh.”

  No longer able to stand the suspense, Debbie Sue left her spot at the computer and walked over to the desk they had installed in the Domestic Equalizers end of the beauty salon. “Ed,” she mouthed, “who is it?”

  Ignoring her, Edwina said, “Hold on, let me get a pen.” The tall brunette grabbed a pen from a coffee mug that held an assortment of writing tools and scribbled something on a piece of notepaper. “Okay, thanks. I’ll talk to my partner and we’ll call you back. Thanks.”

  “What?” Debbie Sue asked as Edwina placed the receiver back in its cradle. “Who was it?”

  Edwina fanned the piece of notepaper in the air. “Wow, partner. I think we just hit the big time.”

  Debbie Sue made an attempt to grab the note, but Edwina pulled it close to her chest. “I’ll read it out loud.”

  “Fine.” Debbie Sue returned to her chair in front of the computer and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Edwina cleared her throat. “Paul Scurlock, 212–555–2431.”

  Debbie Sue waited for more, but nothing else came. “That’s it? A name and a phone number? Who the hell is Paul Scurlock?”

  “He just so happens to be the current president of NAPI. National Association of Pri—”

  “Private Investigators,” Debbie Sue finished, starting to feel an ominous anxiety. She was familiar with the professional organization. At her insistance she and Edwina had joined it soon after establishing the Domestic Equalizers. “The president of the National Association of Private Investigators is calling us? Oh, hell. What have we done wrong? We’re in trouble, aren’t we?”

  “We are not in trouble. He called about their annual conference in two weeks. He—”

  “The one in New York City? Ed, I visited the site online. I even went so far as filling in the registration form, but I never hit the ENTER button. I swear I didn’t.”

  Edwina looked earnestly at the note in her hand. “Maybe you should have.”

  “Nope. Number one, we can’t afford it. Number two, we’d have to close the shop for five days. Number three, Vic wouldn’t like it. Number four,
Buddy would divorce me again if I even mentioned it. And number five, we can’t afford it. No, ma’am. I didn’t hit that ENTER button.”

  Edwina planted a fist on one skinny hip, her attention still focused on the note. “This Scurlock dude said one of the speakers dropped out at the last minute. He’s wondering if the Equalizers would fill in. He says NAPI will pay our way up there and back. They’ll pay for our hotel and our meals, and they’re offering a small honorarium.” Edwina leveled a look at Debbie Sue. “I didn’t want to show him my ignorant side on the phone, but what’s an honorarium?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious. How would I know what an honorarium is? I never heard that word in my life.” She leaned back and leveled a smug look at Debbie Sue. “Unlike some people I know, I didn’t go to college for a year.”

  “It’s a fee, Ed. It’s a fee. What I meant is, are they serious about the invitation?”

  “Sounded serious to me. But if you want my opinion, I’d say they’re nuttier than squirrel poop. What would we say to professional investigators?”

  “Why, what do you mean? Didn’t we get written up in Texas Monthly? Didn’t we investigate two murders? Didn’t we find the bad guys? We’ve hardly had a case go unsolved. We’re good at what we do, Ed.”

  “Debbie Sue, that sheriff in Haskell called us clowns. It’s a wonder he didn’t lock us up and lose the key. That whole thing with Quint Matthews and Monica Whoever was a mess. I haven’t seen Buddy so pissed off since back when he divorced you.”

  Debbie Sue frowned at hearing the truth. Her husband, Buddy, was a trooper in the Texas Department of Public Safety, on a mission to become a member of one of the most revered law-enforcement organizations in the country—the Texas Rangers. It was true he had divorced her once because of her hard head, but she had reformed and they had remarried a few years back.

  She had slightly slipped off the track with the Haskell fiasco and Buddy had taken a very narrow view of the chaotic episode. He had called it an unnecessary risk, an embarrassment and just all-around dumb.

  Debbie Sue’s eyes misted over. Validation of her and Edwina as private investigators meant more to her than anything had in a long time. She had always needed something to show for her efforts. Years ago that same need, and the mile-wide competitive streak she’d had since infancy, had driven her to become a champion barrel racer in ProRodeo.

  “My God, Ed, it just hit me. I can’t believe it. Us, the Domestic Equalizers. Invited to New York City to speak to a bunch of people. I’ve always wanted to go to New York City.”

  “Yeah, but—” Edwina stopped and pursed her mouth. “I, uh, I…well, I just can’t imagine getting up in front of a crowd and talking.” She got to her feet, moved to her station and began rearranging her curlers, clippies and combs and brushes in her work tray, getting ready for the day. The beauty salon would open in fifteen minutes.

  Debbie Sue stared wistfully into space. “I wish we could go. It would be great marketing for us. We’ve talked about going to one of these conferences and…” A new thought brought her back to reality. “Wait a minute. You’re acting funny. I know speaking in front of an audience does not bother you. I’ve seen you do an impromptu five minutes in the grocery store checkout line. What’s going on?”

  “If you have to know, I don’t appreciate being invited at the last minute, only because somebody else backed out. That’s just rude. You know I don’t tolerate bad behavior.” Edwina continued to move items in her tray.

  “What do you mean, ‘bad behavior’? You married your third husband when he got stood up at the altar.”

  “Don’t rub that in. I was young and stupid. Besides, I already had on that damn bridesmaid dress that had cost me a month’s pay and I was holding a bouquet. It seemed like the most logical thing to do.”

  “You didn’t even have a marriage license.”

  Edwina’s jaw dropped. Her eyes widened in an aggrieved expression. “Well, we got one…eventually.”

  “I know, I know. What’s really wrong, Ed? You know I won’t give up ’til you tell me.”

  “How long would it take to drive to New York City?”

  “From here? Are you out of your mind? It’s so far I can’t even imagine it. It’s practically in another country. Why would you even wonder that? Mr. Scurlock didn’t say we had to drive, did he?”

  Edwina plopped into her hydraulic chair, picked up a comb and began teasing the flurry of bangs on the front of her beehive hairdo. “He said they’d fly us up there and back. I might think about going if we didn’t have to fly. I don’t like flying. There, I said it. Happy?”

  “But Ed, you’ve flown before. I’ve even flown with you, that time when we went to the National Finals in Vegas.”

  “Yeah, but that flight ended before I got out of the bathroom. Less than forty-five minutes. I’ve had yawns that lasted forty-five minutes.” She laid her comb on her station counter, picked up a can of hair spray and clouded the air with lacquer. “It would take, like, two thousand hours to fly to New York City. I don’t think stewardesses are allowed to serve that much liquor to one passenger.”

  Debbie Sue looked at her old friend with a frown. “Why, Edwina Perkins-Martin, I never knew this about you. I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.”

  “Hell, I’m not afraid. But I can’t stand the thought of losing my lunch on some bald guy’s head. I get airsick. I’ve had motion sickness my whole life.”

  “There’s medication for that, Ed.”

  “Oh, really? Why hasn’t someone told me this before? I’m over forty fuckin’ years old and I’m just hearing about this? Medication, what a breakthrough.”

  “Oh, hush. Have you ever tried it?”

  “Of course I have. But I have to take a lot and it makes me drunk for hours. I’m talking really drunk, without the fun.”

  Debbie Sue shook her head and laughed. “But you seemed fine when we flew to Vegas and back.”

  “That flight was so short I decided to risk it with no drugs. Just booze. Worked fine.”

  Laughing, Debbie Sue rose, walked over and put her arm around the shoulders of her partner and friend. “But you do want to go, don’t you? You think it would be fun, don’t you?”

  “Maybe. But I’m not kidding. You’d have to put up with me medicated all to hell.”

  “Ed, I’ve broken horses and ridden a wild bronc. I think I can put up with you medicated.”

  “You’re acting like the only obstacle is taken care of. You seem ready to go home and pack.”

  Debbie Sue returned to her chair in front of the computer. “Not entirely. I’ve got to finish up with this blankety-blank bookkeeping before my nine-o’clock appointment comes in. I don’t know why they call this QuickBooks. There’s not one damn thing about it that’s quick.” She began to slowly type numbers onto the spreadsheet. “And we still have to call this guy Paul Scurlock tomorrow and get more details.”

  “Don’t forget Buddy Overstreet tonight,” Edwina said. “He’s the one you’ve got to talk to. Compared to Buddy, this NAPI dude’s bound to be a lightweight.”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten. But I suppose if you can be in denial about your problem of barfing on strangers, I can be in denial about how loud Buddy’s gonna yell. For the time being anyway.”

  Debbie Sue’s voice trailed off as she typed more information into the computer, tapped ENTER and watched the flurry of numbers turn into thousands instead of hundreds. “Sonofabitch! Dirty no-good, lousy, rotten, worthless piece of microchip shit!” She followed the outburst with a slap against the side of the monitor.

  “My, my,” Edwina said. “And here you promised Buddy you’d quit cussing. You’d better be careful, hon. You’ll chip a nail. Or nail a chip. Or some damned thing.”

  chapter three

  Dime Box, Texas, July 2006

  Celina Phillips lifted two teaspoons of sugar from the porcelain, rose-patterned sugar bowl and stirred them into her black coffee. As s
he sipped, she stood at the kitchen sink looking outside through the window at nothing in particular, thinking of everything in general. She felt twitchy. Unsettled. Not at all her usual self. Her usual self was levelheaded and prone to being too serious.

  Her restless state of mind puzzled her. She had worked hard and succeeded at reaching her goals. Why couldn’t she just be happy with her accomplishments? Why was she now, a short year later, standing here looking out the window, thinking, Okay, now what?

  She moved the flimsy ruffled curtain that veiled her view of the big outside world. Rubbing the fabric between her fingers, she thought back on a dozen different pairs of ruffled curtains that had covered this window over the twenty-three years she had shared this home with her grandmother, Darlene Phillips. Polka dots, gingham, pastels and plaids. Her grandmother’s first choice in home décor fit her cute, small home. And Darlene’s preference in dress—ruffles and bows—suited her.

  Celina couldn’t imagine dressing in frills and frou-frou. A bow on Celina Phillips would look as out of place as hair on a frog.

  Her father, now deceased, was her grandmother’s only child, and like him, Celina was tall and slim with an athletic build. Most of the time she wore her shoulder-length, straight black hair twisted on top of her head, a banana clip holding it off her face and out of her eyes. She used little makeup—only a hint of blush and lip gloss. Her clothing was simple and relaxed. Jeans and T-shirts in spring and summer; jeans and sweatshirts in fall and winter. In spite of her dull attire and her less-than-stylish hairdo and makeup, she had been told often she was the prettiest girl in town.