Kicking It

didn’t really have it in him to be. Not just yet.

But puppies do grow up.

With things in hand—I wouldn’t say stable or good or trustworthy, but in hand nonetheless—I left. I had a long way to go. Maybe I’d fly. I loved to fly . . . the world distant below, heaven just as distant above, and you had a chance to own everything between. I’d been in Vegas less than a year, but the roots were already cramping. I still had things to do, though, and at this moment . . .

Elizabeth was first on my list.

* * *

When traveling is in your genes, you tend not to carry things with you. It was why I liked all the shinies of the world. I knew eventually I’d have to leave them behind and find new ones wherever I landed next. If I didn’t, I’d get so weighed down that one day I wouldn’t be able to take a single step, much less run or fly. So I treasured my trinkets and gewgaws, as Mama called them, as much as I possibly could. It made them all the more precious for the short time I had them. Sometimes, though, you come across something so perfect and special you can’t just leave it for strangers to find and loot. Those things you squirrel away, hide them from greedy eyes. Safe-deposit boxes would be nice, but as I’d noted, the banks don’t trust you, so why should you trust them?

That’s how I ended up in an old rock cellar with the house a hundred years gone. I’d sealed this particular precious thing very carefully wrapped in a hundred layers of silk and tucked away in a stone box buried in that cellar where no one could find it or touch it or even see it.

I do hear you, you know, judging me? No, I don’t have delusions of pirates, doubloons, and gaudy treasure chests.

I’m not a peculiar strain of hoarder, either.

Why are you making that doubty, pouty face?

I am not a hoarder.

I’m not.

Truly.

Pinkie swear.

Ha! You caught me. I really, really am.

I held the wondrous thing I hadn’t seen in ages in my hands, heard the river in the distance, heard the rustle of trees so green it made Vegas look like a boneyard. I felt the bite of the chilly air and watched a single ray of sun set my iridescent hands alight like a thousand burning rainbows.

Yes . . .

If this didn’t change Elizabeth’s life, nothing would.

* * *

Finding a bootmaker wasn’t difficult exactly, although these days when ninety-nine percent of footwear is made of the devil spawn of plastic and some sort of biohazard offspring from China, they are few and far between. To find one willing to do the work in two days, and with the material I was providing, would surely make these the most expensive boots Elizabeth had ever worn. Marie Antoinette had diamond-encrusted shoes that were less expensive, but it would be worth it. I’d made a client a promise, and while I broke promises if I had to, I, as I’d told Elizabeth, never broke one related to my work. I had standards . . . just ask my health inspector.

I called home to make sure my boys, all three of them, hadn’t in fact set the bar on fire. Leo snorted, told me Zeke bit a customer but that he had it coming, get off his back already, and hung up on me. He was having a good time. I could tell. Sometimes Leo needed a distraction to keep him from returning to his bad old ways. It was why I poked and prodded him so much. Leo had been my first fixer-upper and he was still a bitch in upkeep, but he was worth it. He’d be good for Zeke and Griffin. There wasn’t anything they could do that would faze him, including burning down the bar.

After that, I killed time on a beach in an only mildly scandalous scarlet bikini and watched as a man—with far less manscaping than needed for the Speedo he was wearing—strutted up and down, flirting (he would say flirting, anyone else would say sexually harassing) with anything female and/or remotely approaching legal age. Later I laughed in the water, tasting salt, as a horny dolphin humped the guy into a near drowning. All right, perhaps CPR was involved and it was a close call, but as concerned as the lifeguard was, I didn’t see any women on the beach crying tears for the pervert. In fact I saw a few waving and taking pictures of the dolphin-love in progress. That and a few banana daiquiris, and my day was finer than frog hair . . . which is something I say only when I have a few banana daiquiris in me. One doesn’t want to be too much like their mama.

The next day I went to the zoo, where I saw a man climb into the lion enclosure shouting that like Daniel in the lion’s den, the Lord would send an angel to save him. I’d always personally been of the belief that those lions Daniel was tossed to simply weren’t hungry that night. But I might’ve been wrong, as the zoo lions looked well fed, almost plump, not hungry in the slightest, and they ate this faithful follower before a single employee could get inside.

You live and you learn.

Well, to be more accurate, I lived and I learned. Our Daniel was less fortunate.

What if I bought a stuffed lion toy as a souvenir on my way out? It reminded me that there were seize-the- day moments all around. Cages, no matter the size, didn’t change that—not for us lions, anyway. Then it was time to pick up the boots, gift the maker with honey-drizzled chatter over the masterpiece they were—and that was an understatement—a kiss on each cheek for the artiste, a very large payment, promise of future business, and finally it was time to go home. I couldn’t wait to see Elizabeth’s face, for her to see what could’ve been a boring job turned into a work of art that I knew we’d both appreciate.

* * *

Or not.

“This is it? These are supposed to be the answer to my problem? How exactly is this going to do anything, you stupid bitch?”

Elizabeth wasn’t quite as lovely or the embodiment of grace when her face was splotched red with rage, her mouth twisted with derision, and her hand slapping the table hard enough to kill a spider—the bird-eating, plate- sized South American kind.

“Bethy”—that’s what they’d called her before she’d married money, when she lived down in the trailer park where her mother worked two jobs and her father was in the wind—“if you call me a bitch again, I’ll solve your problem in an entirely different way. One that will involve prison and police, because I know all about you. Why, I had to know all there is to know to get you what you wanted, didn’t I? But while I said I made no judgments, sweetie, I never once said I tolerated disrespect.”

Her mouth snapped shut, but the anger still boiled under her skin. I could almost see it, looking for a way, any way, out. Her eyes flickered to the full champagne bottle on the table, and for a second I could see her picturing how nicely it would splatter my brains on my favorite silk shirt. I wasn’t surprised by that. That’s who Bethy was. Who she’d always been. She’d told me what she wanted—a rich man to marry who would conveniently die with or without her help, made no difference on that score to her. I said happy to deliver and named my price. Her price. Semantics.

What she hadn’t told me was her path to that want and desire. It was paved with the very same: four rich, older men who died not long after marrying Bethy Rose, the girl who’d polished up her accent, sanded away the trailer park from her skin, made herself into something a shallow person would want to own and pay to own it. Shallow or not, every one of those four men had been kind to her, as kind as they had it in them to be. They’d done their best to make her happy. Not everyone’s best is equal in all ways, but if you give your all, even if you have less to give than the more saintly, you still tried. It still counts. That made Bethy the murderer of four innocent, if not particularly bright, men.

I sold information all the time. I know how to do my research.

I’d found Bethy’s pattern and I found out the root of her problem. It was never enough. First a rich man and then a millionaire and then a multimillionaire, but, oh, times were hard and millions weren’t what they used to be when you’ve grown accustomed to maids and pool boys and drivers and country clubs and Learjets. Bethy spent it all and had to find herself a new husband. Trouble was, best effort expended or not, the men she wanted were as shallow as I’d said and Bethy wasn’t twenty-two anymore. Or thirty-two. Or forty-two. Billionaires are a special