Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split Read Online Free

right?”
    He turned and took the zipper in his teeth and moved it down an inch, kissing between her breasts. “I can’t. I got a thing.”
    Cookie went to the mirror. She took a lipstick out of her purse and touched up her face and combed her hair. It was a mess.
    “What about our thing?” she said, pouting. “We never go anywhere when we’re together, Michael. Am I that awful, you can’t be seen in public with me?”
    “Something wrong with this setup?” Michael asked, gesturing at the room around them, with its heavy damask draperies, the patio that overlooked the Gulf of Mexico. “A two-hundred-fifty-buck room isn’t good enough for you?”
    “Nooo,” she said, “but—”
    “This is work tonight, doll,” Michael said.
    He wondered idly how old Cookie really was. She was older than the twenty-eight she had once claimed, that he was sure of.
    “I guess,” she said, shrugging, acting disinterested.
    Michael went to the closet, got out a dark blue sport coat and slipped it on. “Next time. Okay?”
    Cookie picked up her purse, looked inside, and frowned. “Next time. You guys don’t seem to understand, a girl likes a little attention. I’m cooped up all day long in that dump downtown. And this new guy, the preacher who bought the place? He gives me the creeps.”
    “So get another job,” he said, shrugging. “What’s the big deal?”
    She smiled, catlike. “Not just yet.” Then she changed the subject. “So what’s this thing you have working at the track tonight? If you don’t mind my asking,” she said quickly.
    He shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “It’s just a thing I’m working on. This guy, he’s got a system. A system of picking dogs. Says it’s ninety percent accurate. So I’m gonna check it out.”
    “So you’re going to the track after all?”
    “I told you. It’s business.”
    Cookie looked dubious. “He can pick winners ninety percent of the time? What is he, a Gypsy? Why’s he gonna sell it to you?”
    Michael picked up the big diamond-studded gold watch from the dresser and slid it onto his wrist. He picked up the gold money clip, some change, and the room key and put it in his pocket. It was cute, the way Cookie was interested in business. She was a cute kid.
    “He needs a backer, someone who can finance him,” he said. “That’s all. Hey, maybe if this thing pans out, we could work something out. I could set you up in your own place. How’d you like that?”
    Cookie got out her car keys and glanced at her watch. She’d really have to go now, before all hell broke out down at the Fountain of Youth. “Maybe. That’s all I ever get, Michael. A lot of maybes.”
     
    Curtis Goolsby ran the vacuum-cleaner nozzle over the front seat of the white Ford Escort for the third time. He’d already picked up one whole bag of trash from the front seat. Old newspapers, a half-full bottle of Sea & Ski, and a mildewed Holiday Inn bath mat.
    But the sand. Jeez, that powder-fine white sand. It was everywhere. And it did not want to come up.
    “These people must have slept on the beach, you know that, Dad?”
    His old man, Butch, was not really listening. Butch sat in a wooden chair at his desk in the garage of Sun Bay Auto Rentals. He was reading. Butch was a great reader. He liked Harold Robbins and Louis L’Amour and Jacqueline Susann. Hell of a book, Valley of the Dolls . His specialty, though, was true-crime books. Had a shelf at the trailer with nothing but Ted Bundy books. Today he was reading the sports section.
    The radio was on. Curtis could not work without music going. He was humming along to something, like always.
    “What’s that, son?” Butch asked, looking up from the sports page.
    “Sand,” Curtis hollered over the whine of the vacuum cleaner. All Butch could see of him was his butt sticking out of the front seat of the Escort. “The damn sand won’t come out.”
    Butch glanced at the clock on the maintenance-bay wall.
    “Just get the big chunks,