1 The Reluctant Dick - The Case of the Not-So-Fair Trader Read Online Free Page A

The eight-inch pane is boarded up; way too high to be a burglar’s doing and out of reach for a maid’s mop handle during a fit of scrubbing. I make a mental note and continue on.
    After her stint as an interpreter, Tiffany informs me, “That woman could never work for me. She uses bleach on all the whites.”
    She follows me through the upstairs of the house and goes through one conniption after another at the design choices made. “Can you believe this, multi-colored carpeting? My God, we should be looking for a murderer with a sense of style.”
    I find one room especially curious.
    The master bedroom has a bed big enough to sleep the entire von Trapp f amily and still have room for the dog. The custom sheets alone must have cost a couple of grand, with enough pillows to stock a sultan’s harem. The mattress is rock hard on the left and soft on the right. The one blanket is actually two, one side being fat with a duvet cover and the other side thin. There are two plasma-TV screens, one on each side of the room. One nightstand has a phone, an alarm clock radio, and a box holding three prescription bottles. The only label I notice is Ambien. The other nightstand has a reading lamp and little else.
    “Like the place, Tiffany?” I ask.
    “No, I’m a penthouse kind of a girl.” She yawns.
    I sense Tiffany has had enough of this peculiar brilliance. “Why does that not surprise me?”
    “If we leave now, I can still catch a couple of clubs before closing time,” she says.
    Norbert is coming our way. I sense he’s not far behind Tiffany in his desire to exit.
    “Coming back tomorrow?” I ask.
    Before he answers, he asks, “Are you?”
    “Unfortunately.”
    “Damn,” he says. “What time?”
    “After church.”
    Norbert is surprised. “You go to church?”
    “No, but some people do; so I’ll wait for them to get home.”
    “I go to church.” Tiffany loves to fill in little tidbits about herself. “The Church of Saint Mattress, I worship upon it every Sunday until noon.”
    The telephone on the kitchen counter rings. As if on cue, Tiffany picks it up.
    “Hello.”
    She pauses between responses. “Hello. What? No. He’s here, but not available. Because he’s dead. Yeah, dead. She’s not here, either. If she is dead, she’s not dead here.”
    I speak up. “Ask who it is.”
    “Who is this?”
    There is a longer pause; then Tiffany says, “They hung up.”
    “What did they say when you asked who it was?”
    “They said ‘they didn’t know since they couldn’t see me.’”
    I lean against a table and cross my arms. “You know, that was probably the murderer on the phone.”
    “I thought it was a telemarketer.”
    “Why?”
    “Because there was a pause before they started to speak. Somebody’s about to try to sell you something when you hear that pause.”
    “They paused because they didn’t recognize your voice.”
    “Oh.”
    “Was it a man or a woman?”
    “I should have asked that, too?”
    “You couldn’t tell?”
    “ It was probably a man; but it could have been a woman with a voice like a man.”
    “Did the voice have an accent?”
    “Well… it sounded kind of weird, now that I think of it. Kinda like someone who’d make dirty phone calls.”
    “You have a lot to compare that to?”
    “I’ve had my share, although a lot of those were planned.”
    Steve Burrell comes to where we are standing. “You answer that phone?”
    “Yes,” Tiffany confesses.
    “Who was it?”
    “Wrong number,” I tell him.
    “Telemarketer,” Tiffany adds.
    Steve tells Tiffany, “You’re a lousy liar.”
    “No, I’m not,” Tiffany says. “I’m an excellent liar.”
    “You always make a habit of answering other people’s phone calls?”
    “Only if I’m dating them seriously.”
    I pick up the receiver, dial *69, listen and write on the pad of paper next to the phone what a computer is telling me, hang up, and hand the paper to Steve. “Here’s your caller.”
    Steve dials the