Foxy Roxy Part 8

"I'm working on it," Adasha said, and she sprinted ahead to a footbridge on the path.

Roxy sucked in some air and chased after her friend.

When they reached the opposite end of the bridge, Adasha settled into a slightly faster pace than before. Her breathing seemed no different when she asked, "How was your night, sister friend? Anything you want to tell me about?"

"Nope."

Adasha laughed. "Who was the guy? Anybody interesting?"

"n.o.body you know."

"C'mon, honey, you gotta give me some vicarious s.e.x. Was he hot? Good in bed? Don't hold out on me. I haven't had a man in over a year. My best lover requires double-A batteries."

"The guy was no good at all last night, as a matter of fact."

Adasha shot her an amused look, still running easily. "A game player? Wounded cowboy and strong Indian maiden? I know you hate that stuff."

Roxy didn't answer. She pretended she had to catch her breath instead. She wasn't sure what she'd been looking for when she paid the visit to Trey Hyde last night.

After another couple hundred yards in which Roxy decided what to say, Adasha spoke again. "I know you, Rox. When you don't talk, you're off the bead. Things getting weird again? No longer going to bed with guys just for the fun of it?"

"I'm great. Everything's great."

"Shut up," Adasha said without malice. "What's wrong? Flashbacks?"

"Nothing I can't handle."

Adasha snorted. "You think you can handle anything. But I know better. I was there, remember? When your family imploded? So don't play the tough lady with me. I don't need my stethoscope to hear there's something wrong inside your heart."

"I'm okay, Dasha."

"Sage?"

The mention of her daughter's name made Roxy grin. "She's great."

"How's your business?"

"A little slow."

"You broke?"

"You bet."

"I could lend you a few bucks."

"You've got the scariest student loans I ever heard of," Roxy managed to say. "So forget it. Jobs come in cycles. I'll come up with something soon."

"Oh, boy. Something like doing another little favor for your uncle Carmine?"

Carmine Abruzzo was the guy you called when you needed an arsonist to torch your failing but well-insured used-car dealership. But sometimes he needed jobs done that were a little less felonious-like asking for repayment of debt or settling disputes among other employees. Those things Carmine didn't like taking care of personally.

"I'm not that desperate," Roxy said. Not yet, anyway.

"Okay," Adasha said. "But let's get together soon, all right? You need somebody to talk to besides Nooch. You keep him around because he doesn't ask any questions. Just lets you alone. Not me. I'm going to push your b.u.t.tons till you give it up, girlfriend. I have a couple of days off next week. Let's do some shopping. Surely you need a new pair of jeans, right? Or maybe it's time to buy yourself some girl shoes? Heels for once?"

"I need heels like a fish needs a bicycle."

Adasha laughed, sounding relaxed at last. "C'mon, Rox. Let's get some real exercise, what do you say? Ready to start running?"

Roxy begged off and let Adasha go ahead, probably headed for a ten-mile run that would allow her to sleep through the day until her next shift. Roxy turned around and jogged back to her neighborhood.

As Roxy stepped through her front door, her cell phone rang. She grabbed it off the newel of the staircase and opened it.

Her daughter's voice was loud and clear. "Mom, hey, can you come over here today?"

"Why aren't you at school?"

"I'm home sick."

"Senioritis?"

Sage said, "I don't need the third degree. I just need you to sign a permission slip."

"In high school, you still need my permission?"

"Can you come or not?" She sounded testy. The constant mood of the teenager.

Roxy said, "Sure. I have to stop by the yard first. I'll bring lunch."

Sage disconnected without saying good-bye, which meant Roxy was in the doghouse again. What her latest parental infraction was, she couldn't guess. She closed the phone.

Parenthood had come to Roxy early. She'd been seventeen, pregnant, and the size of a cow at her own high school graduation. When Sage was born, they were both lucky to have Roxy's aunt to live with. Even now, Sage lived at Aunt Loretta's place, and Roxy moved in and out, depending on the houses she renovated. Maybe the three of them together were a family therapist's dream team, but the arrangement worked most of the time. Adasha came around now and then to spread some calm if things got tumultuous.

Roxy ran up the stairs. Her current house was a construction site. Her furniture consisted of a bed and a tattered Salvation Army armchair, plus a couple of Tupperware storage containers for her clothes. As usual, a heap of library books was piled on the floor around the bed, their late fees growing daily.

She showered, threw on her jeans, a camisole, a T-shirt, and a couple layers of sweatshirts, then drove across the river. Chewing on a Slim Jim she sang along with Gracie Slick on WDVE. n.o.body could rock and roll like Gracie Slick. Except maybe Aretha, but that was another stratosphere. At the first commercial, she flipped from cla.s.sic rock-the traditional music of everyone in the construction business-to an all-news station. The headlines hadn't changed. Julius Hyde, philanthropist, shot and killed.

Some pathetic homeless guy was the suspected shooter. The police had found a gun in his nest behind the Hyde garage.

Roxy turned a corner and saw Nooch waiting nervously at the gate of the salvage yard.

Behind him, a rattletrap squad car sat in the middle of the yard, the idling engine sending up a noxious cloud of blue smoke.

Nooch hustled over to the truck before Roxy shut off the engine. His eyes were round with anxiety. Through the window, he said, "It's the cops. They want to talk to you. What did you do?"

Roxy killed the engine and climbed out of the truck. "Walk down the street and buy us some bagels. Some of those pecan-flavored ones. Take your time."

She handed over twenty bucks. Nooch grabbed it and obeyed, glad to get away before any trouble started. He glanced over his shoulder as he went.

Roxy slammed the door of her truck and crossed the gravel, still humming the old Jefferson Airplane.

Bug Duffy got out of the pa.s.senger side of the cruiser, balancing himself on two crutches. In high school, Bug had once punched Roxy, but he had since matured, gone to college, worked as a subst.i.tute teacher in the city schools for a while, then joined the Pittsburgh police force and worked his way up to detective. He didn't seem to regret punching her, though.

"You deserved worse than a fat lip," Bug said after they'd shaken hands. "You called my mother names."

"You were picking on Nooch, remember? You almost knocked out my front teeth. One's still crooked, see?" She showed him the damage.

Bug gave her teeth a closer look, grinning. "You took care of Nooch, even back then. What's he doing for you now?"

"Heavy lifting."

"What did he lift out of the Hyde mansion a couple of nights ago?"

Roxy eyed Bug sideways. "Nothing I didn't tell him to. What? You missing something? Or do you think Nooch killed Julius?"

"You know about the murder?"

"h.e.l.l, Bug, it's all over the news."

"I just wondered if maybe you have some information we hadn't heard yet."

Although his tone was still jaunty, Roxy gave Bug a once-over. He'd gotten his name in elementary school when he showed off for cla.s.smates by eating insects on the playground. Now he had a wife and a couple of redheaded little boys, Roxy knew, and a reputation for being a good cop. He was stubborn and thorough-exactly the kind of detective she didn't want hanging around her place of business.

She pointed at his crutches. "What did you do to yourself? Get wounded in the line of duty?"

His leg was encased in a blue strapped-up thing. "I tore up my knee playing touch football a couple of weeks ago. Nothing permanent. But the Hyde case brought everybody back on duty-even the ones in worse shape than me. You have time to talk a little, Roxy? Your name is on the list of contractors who were hauling junk out of the mansion. I drew the short straw, so I'm here to interview you."

Best to make like she was happy to see him. Roxy hooked her thumb at the garage. "Sure. I've got the Hyde job paperwork in my office. Want to take a load off while you read it?"

"That'd be great."

Bug's partner got out of the driver's side of the cruiser. She was a middle-aged woman with a ponytail that seemed to yank her face so tight she looked like a hawk. With obvious distaste, she glanced around the yard.

The place was littered with the usual stuff Roxy collected-piles of building materials, a few Victorian toilets, and some broken garden accessories, all sitting in mud. A lion's head fountain, propped against the fence, was going to bring in a couple of hundred bucks as soon as the right customer drove by. Some general refuse was lying around, too. Roxy hadn't had time to make a trip to the dump lately.

The centerpiece of the yard, however, was the old hydraulic Al-jon car crusher, a piece of heavy equipment once used to smash automobiles down to stackable size. The rusting hulk hadn't been used in over ten years-back when some of her uncles had run a junkyard on the same property. The whole setup was a city block in length, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped by razor wire to keep out the druggies and the homeless looking for a place to camp.

Roxy acknowledged that maybe the yard didn't look very tidy.

The neighborhood was what some people were calling "postindustrial." The streets were laced with bone-jarring potholes. A couple centuries of soot coated the cobblestone streets with a greasy black layer of crud. Surrounding blocks featured no-name warehouses, a restaurant supply house, and some "collision repair" shops that probably included at least one dealing in stolen car parts. Half of the other buildings sat empty while their owners hoped a developer might come along and convert them into trendy condos. But the ballet theater's rehearsal s.p.a.ce and a flower wholesaler-signs of hope for the gentry-lay several blocks eastward. The smell of the nearby Allegheny River hung around most days. But the city had installed fancy new streetlights-high-tech and green-with hopes that good things might follow.

Bug said, "Roxy, this is Crystal Gaines. She's stuck driving me around today. Crys, this is Roxy Abruzzo."

The lady cop didn't acknowledge Roxy except to say, "What are you? Some kind of junk dealer?"

"Read the sign." Roxy pointed at the board that swung over the open door of the garage: Bada Bling Architectural Salvage.

"Looks like junk to me," the woman muttered.

"Crystal," Bug said, "why don't you wait with the car? I'll talk to Roxy alone."

"You better stay in the car," Roxy said. "My dog doesn't like girls."

Crystal opened her mouth, but Bug shot her a look and she shut up.

"This way," Roxy said, leading him toward the garage.

Her office had once been a barbershop that opened onto the side street, but she'd blocked off that door with some sheet metal, then busted through the wall to the garage to connect the two. Which made for an almost civilized s.p.a.ce for her desk, dusty computer, and files. The office was warmed by a temperamental electric s.p.a.ce heater. The floor was pockmarked linoleum. The barbershop mirrors had been broken long ago, but the counter remained and now functioned as a place to heap the mail. She kept a broken hockey stick on the counter in case trouble walked through her door.

Inside, Bug said, "Don't hold anything against Crystal, Roxy. She just got her promotion, but she's stuck playing chauffeur to me until the Hyde case cools down. She thinks of it as Driving Miss Daisy in reverse, so she's feeling p.i.s.sy."

Roxy closed the door. "Does she suspect Nooch, too?"

"Aw, c'mon, we're just asking around for information, that's all."

Roxy grabbed a couple of Red Bulls out of the case on the floor. This time of year, the office was usually cold enough that she didn't need a refrigerator. She handed a can to Bug. "Sorry. Best I can do. A methhead stole my coffeepot. Sit down while I find the paperwork."

Bug leaned his crutches against her desk and eased himself down onto the sprung leather sofa that had been part of the original barbershop. It hadn't gotten any more comfortable, but Bug didn't seem to mind. He stretched his bad leg out in front of him. "I hear Nooch's probation hearing is next week. He ready for that?"

"Sure, why not? He's behaved himself for ten years."

"Except for that thing last Christmas. He helped his cousin steal an old lady's Toyota?"

"That was a mix-up. Nooch thought they were helping Mrs. Sedlak find her car in the Macy's parking lot."

"But the cousin drove it off and sold it two days later."

"Hey, a judge decided Nooch was innocent in that situation. Even Mrs. Sedlak said so. He carried her shopping bags, for crying out loud. He stays out of trouble."

Bug c.o.c.ked an eye at her. "That first conviction of his? Nooch beat up Poskovich real bad, Roxy. Brain damage and everything. Okay, Poskovich was a lowlife, but still. Everybody figures the only thing keeping Nooch from doing something like that again is you."

"He won't go nuts again."

"Unless he thinks he needs to protect you. He's as bad as that dog of yours-loyal and vicious. Not a great combination."

"Don't worry about either one of them." She shuffled some papers, counting to ten. Then, "You still married to Marie?"

"Yeah, eight years."

"She okay? I heard..."

"She's doing all right. Lots of tests."

"What do they think it is?"

"Maybe just exhaustion. Or that, whaddayacallit, Epstein-Barr." He ran his thumb around the top of his pop can. "Or MS."

"You tell her I said hi, okay?"