Free Greasing the Piñata by Tim Maleeny

leaned back on the towel. “You’re not shy, are you?”
    “Only when I’m getting undressed.”
    “Somehow I doubt that.” Another adjustment to her shoulders let Cape know the next move was all his—just the challenge he needed after hours of walking aimlessly around the pool and beach. He needed to kill time, and a little company never hurt.
    As he began to sit, Cape sensed movement at the corner of his left eye. Before he could react he was knocked backward onto the sand, the wind rushing out of him. Something landed hard on his chest and he blinked away spots, trying to see through watering eyes to the source of the stranglehold on his throat.
    The face looking down on him was in silhouette, but Cape instantly recognized the profile and stopped struggling. He knew he was trapped until his captor decided otherwise.
    “Did you miss me?” Sally beamed from her perch atop his chest.
    Cape moved his head sufficiently to catch a glimpse of the woman he’d been talking to shaking sand from her towel, muttering something about married men. Before he could protest she headed down the beach toward the hotel, an angry but beautiful mirage fading with the heat of the moment.
    Cape glowered at Sally, who glanced back at him with a mischievous smile and furrowed brow.
    “Did I just mess something up?” She loosened her legs just enough for Cape to draw a breath.
    “Are those your real breasts?” he asked. “Because, you know, they look too small to be implants.”
    Sally barked out a laugh and rolled off Cape. She stood, brushing sand from her legs. She was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit with a sheer diagonal strip across the torso. The muscles of her legs rippled like ocean waves as she moved.
    Cape struggled to his feet. “I’m in the middle of an investigation here,” he said indignantly. “She might have been a suspect.”
    “Looked more like a victim to me.”
    “Ouch.” Cape followed her gaze to take one last look at the receding figure of his almost-conquest. And what a figure it was.
    “You hired me to protect your equipment,” said Sally, gesturing toward Cape’s crotch. “Or did you forget?”
    “Maybe my equipment needed a tune-up.”
    “You’d regret it later,” said Sally. “You always do. Plus you weren’t really interested.”
    “How do you know?”
    Sally shrugged. “She wasn’t in trouble.”
    Cape didn’t have an answer for that one. Sally held his eyes for a moment, rubbing it in.
    “Besides,” she said, “I thought you had a girlfriend.”
    “
Had
,” replied Cape. “That’s exactly the right word.”
    “She dumped you?”
    Cape nodded. “For a dentist.”
    “Oral hygiene is very important.”
    “Not that important.”
    Sally didn’t respond and, as usual, her face betrayed nothing.
    After a long moment, Cape said, “You don’t seem surprised.”
    Another shrug. “You weren’t going to New York as often.”
    “I’ve been working.”
    “Or calling as much,” said Sally. “That’s just a guess.”
    “She’s been working.”
    Sally nodded. “I think you lost interest.”
    Cape felt his cheeks get hot. “Let me guess…because she wasn’t in trouble?”
    “She was when you met her,” replied Sally.
    “Your point?”
    “I see a pattern, that’s all.”
    Cape started to reply but caught himself. Instead he studied his diminutive friend. Jet black hair, emerald eyes that gleamed in the half-light of dusk. A body that seemed to give off a primal energy even when she was standing still. He’d argued with her more times than he could remember, but in hindsight she’d never been wrong.
    Cape and Sally preferred verbal sparring to saying hello, a ritual that acknowledged the bond between them without saying out loud what they both took for granted. For two people for whom trust was such a precious and rare commodity, the ability to count on someone was too great a gift to be diminished by words.
    “Welcome to Mexico,” said Cape. “Anything can