Free An Affair to Dismember by Elise Sax Page A

didn’t look like the potato sack kind of man. Or your sexy neighbor, either.”
    I pawed the ground. “Can I know what’s going on now?” I asked.
    “Okay.” Lucy sat on my bed and flipped her hair. “Randy Terns was no ordinary man. Randy Terns was a bank robber.”
    “A what?”
    “A bank robber. A criminal. A thug. A murdered ex-con. Gladie, the plot thickens.”
    My mind raced. Did Randy Terns’ family know of his criminal past? Maybe Peter was actually looking for gold in the walls, like my grandmother said. Didn’t bank robbers hide their loot in walls and floors? Maybe the family was in danger, and that’s why they needed my help.
    “I recognized his name when you mentioned it yesterday at lunch,” she said. “Already a murder in our sleepy town got my attention, but there was something about his name. I knew it was important. I couldn’t remember where I had heard his name before. It bothered me all night. Randy Terns. Why did his name sound so familiar? Then, around two-thirty this morning it hit me like a ton of bricks. Of course, Randy Terns was a bank robber. A little-known bank robber, obviously, but a bank robber all the same. I had no idea he lived here. Gladie, this is really big.”
    Lucy pulled out a red dress from one of the garment bags.
    “This will do nicely,” she said.
    “Where are we going?”
    “We’re going to Uncle Harry’s house. He knew Randy Terns, and he’s going to help us solve this case.”
    This case? Were we on a case? Was this an episode of
Law and Order
?
    I unbuttoned my blouse.
    “Years ago there was an idiot walking around dressed like a tree and robbing banks,” Lucy said. “You’re probablytoo young to remember. I’m a few years older than you, and I was just a child then, and it got national news. Uncle Harry mentioned it to me only recently. That’s why it was fresh in my mind.”
    “A tree-dressing bank robber?”
    “Randy Terns painted his face green and stuck branches and leaves to his body with duct tape. Then he went into a bank with a gun. He got a bunch of cash, but he had trouble running away. Trees don’t move fast, you know.”
    I tried picturing Randy Terns dressed as a tree, robbing a bank. It wasn’t something a person saw every day.
    “What a rack,” Lucy announced, eyeing my cleavage. The red dress was cut a little low with cap sleeves and flowed down to just above my knees.
    “You think it’s too much?” I asked.
    “Are you kidding? You can rule the world in that dress. That’s the original va-va-voom dress. But be careful. You don’t want the va-va-voom to bust out altogether and take someone’s eye out.”
    WE DROVE out of the historic district on Pear Lane and up farther into the mountains, where a gated community had taken root against the wishes of the Cannes Historical Preservation Society. Cannes citizens had an aversion to McMansions in their otherwise quaint town, but the McMansions fed the town with much-needed property taxes, and not everyone was against them.
    We had gotten off to a slow start. Grandma was right about it being a bad day for driving. Lucy’s Mercedes had a flat about a block away from my grandmother’s, and the auto service ran into a fire hydrant on its way to help us. Luckily, Ruth Fletcher was walking by at thetime and changed the tire for us, muttering something about how many worthless cappuccino drinkers it took to screw in a lightbulb. We made a promise to switch over to Earl Grey and visit her at Tea Time as soon as possible.
    The mountains were beautiful in summer, filled with wildflowers and virtually untouched by civilization. It was hard to imagine that a bank robber would live in a town like Cannes, let alone that a murder had taken place here.
    “You like dogs, right?” asked Lucy.
    “I love dogs. I worked as a groomer in Long Beach for five days, and I was a dog walker in Pittsburgh for two weeks.”
    “Good. Uncle Harry has two dogs. The important thing is not to show fear.