Family Jewels (Dix Dodd Mystery #2)

He came over and kissed her on the cheek. “There’s your birthday kiss!”

“Ah, Eddie,” she gushed. “You know my birthday’s not for three more days. You’ve been laying a kiss on me every day for the last two weeks.”

He winked. “Just practicing up for the real thing.”

He turned his attention to Beth Mary. “All set for our golf lesson, BM?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Eddie,” Beth Mary said. “I don’t seem to be making much progress. I’m just about ready to give up on those balls.”

“I’ve got just the thing then. We’ll use the lucky balls.”

Beth Mary smiled. “The orange ones?”

“The very same. I got a lucky orange one here, I’m warming up for you.” He rolled his hand around a golf ball in his deep pocket (God, I hoped he was rolling his hand around a golf ball deep in his pocket).

They had to be doctored or course. Weighted or some such thing to send them farther. And painted orange to distinguish them from the non-weighted balls. What the hell, wouldn’t hurt. And if Beth Mary thought they brought her luck, then maybe they did.

When he stood upright again, I got a full view of Big Eddie. All five foot two of him — in platform shoes. Wearing heavy socks. I half squinted my eyes as he moved closer. The sun reflecting off the several layers of chains around his neck was almost blinding. Okay, maybe not blinding, but the guy definitely had a thing for bling. The chains he wore were gold — well, gold in color. And he had more trinkets hanging from them as if he was wearing a charm bracelet around his neck. Four leaf clovers, medallions, the obligatory diamond- studded horseshoe. Or, I suspected, diamond-ish. One thing for certain, whoever was pinching the jewels at the Wildoh would not be hitting Big Eddie’s place any time soon.

Mother had told me Big Eddie lived in the staff quarters. Had his own tiny bachelor apartment in exchange for bi-weekly golf lessons and generally taking care of a few things around the Wildoh. Not all the employees had apartments on the premises, but Big Eddie was more than a golf instructor. He was kind of a social director at the Wildoh, from what I’d heard. This was Florida, and most staff were young and transient. But Big Eddie had been with the Wildoh for a while now.

“Who’s the little lady?”

I waited for someone to answer.

Oh me.

I extended my hand. Please just shake it. Please just shake it.

He wiped his hands on his pants, depositing the bit of white powder there that had to be from a sugar donut, held my dangling fingers a little too long in his damp grip, then pulled my hand forward and kissed it loudly.

“Dix Dodd,” I said, pulling my hand back and fighting like hell to keep from wiping it on my jeans. It wasn’t an Eddie thing. It was a slobber thing. “Pleased to meet you, Edward.”

“Please call me Big Eddie. Heavy on the big.”

Men in polyester pants shouldn’t say those things.

“Are you moving in to the Wildoh?” he asked. “I know they’ve been renovating the C Complex. Fixing up some cute little places there. Are you looking at one of those apartments?”

Okay, that’s it — I wiped my hand on my pants. He didn’t notice. Crap. I hardly thought I looked old enough for a retirement home. After all, wasn’t forty the new thirty?

Mrs. Presley laughed out loud. “Well, there you go, Dix. Nice little retirement home all ready for you.”

“This is my daughter, Big Eddie. She and Jane,” Mother nodded towards Mrs. P, “are staying with me for a few days.”

“Well, that’s just lovely. But are you sure she’s not your sister, Katt?”

“I’m sure Big Eddie.”

Mother wouldn’t blush in a million years, but she grinned a Cheshire cat grin. I had to admit, Big Eddie was a charmer with the ladies. With the older ladies.

“Good Heavens,” Harriet hmphed again. “Edward, you’re full of yourself again this morning, I see.”

He chuckled, but a little too deeply with just a tad too much time between the ha-ha’s. There was no love lost in either direction.

“Harriet, dear, you’re looking well this morning.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why it is that you think you have to flirt with every woman who comes into the Wildoh is beyond me.” She glared at my mother. “And especially those of … the criminal persuasion.”

What the f —

“Now, just wait a minute,” I said. “My mother is not a criminal. She’d not guilty of anything. From what I hear, there’s nothing but circumstantial evidence and unfounded rumors floating around. That’s hardly a conviction in my books.”

Mother put a cautioning hand on my arm. Or maybe it was an appreciating one.

“Oh, I’m surely not interested in your books, Ms. Dodd.”

It took me a minute to realize she was referring to my erotica. Or my supposed erotica.

“Well, maybe if you’d get the broom handle extracted from you backside, you would be.”

Well, that shut her up. In fact, that shut everyone up. Except for Tish, that is. She snorted a laugh.

Wiggie squirmed in his seat.

“Now, ladies, please,” Big Eddie said. “Let’s not have any more craziness around here. We’re all just under a bit of pressure with the … things going missing and such.” His eyes more than slid to my mother before quickly sliding away. Why the hell was everyone thinking my mother guilty? There had been no trial! There was no evidence against her! It was that damned Frankie Morell. This was all his fault, with that disappearing act he’d pulled.

“Big Eddie’s right,” Mona said. “We’re all just tense and—”

“Some of us more so than others.” I glared at Harriet as I said this.

“Why don’t we all just cool down?” Mona jumped from her seat. “I know! I’ll grab the crib board. Nothing like a good old-fashioned crib game to ease the tension. You know fifteen-two, fifteen-four—”

Her crib talk was interrupted — loudly and strangely musically — by a car horn. One of those musical ones like the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazard. But this one didn’t play those few notes from Dixieland. The driver of this vehicle played a few unmistakable sounds from a Rod Stewart tune. And if the leaping and squealing of the ladies at the table was any thing to judge by, yes, they did want his body and thought him sexy.

“It’s him!” Beth Mary shouted. She tipped her chair over and left it on the floor as she raced to the picture window, thumbing her teeth back in as she went.

“Who?” Mrs. Presley asked, but she herself was already on her way across the room. “Him who?”

Tish grabbed under her boobs, adjusted them left-right-center in one deft motion. “Lance-a-Lot. Golf lessons were yesterday; ball retrieval today.”

“Oh.”

Mona grabbed Mrs. P by the hand, ‘Come on, you got to get a look at our Lance.”

Even Big Eddie sauntered his way over to the window.

“It’s time for us to go, Wiggie.” Harriet grabbed her husband by the shoulder (and I couldn’t help but wonder what she grabbed him by when they were home).

For all that, Harriet was taking her sweet time leaving. And with each step, she craned rotated her neck around just a little more until I thought she might snap it clear around (and if there was one demon-possessed woman in that room, my money was on her).

“Leaving so soon, Harriet?” Mother asked sweetly.

Harriet stopped short. “I am not going to lower myself to your level of entertainment, Katt.” She spat my mother’s name out as if it spoiled in her mouth. She waved a flustered hand to the window. “And this … this … spectesticle I do not need to see.”

She practically pushed poor Wiggie through the door and it swung firmly shut behind her.

I leaned in to Mom, “Did she say spectesticle? Now there’s a slip of the tongue.”

Mom looked up at me, trying to give me a genuine smile, and it broke my heart that she didn’t quite pull it off.