Free The Dog Collar Murders by Barbara Wilson Page A

It’s PR. Remember, I invited you too.”
    I didn’t know whether to let myself be mollified. Maybe she was just trying to throw me off the track.
    “Well, what are you doing here?” I asked her.
    “Me? I come here all the time. Sometimes I rent a video, or see what the new magazines are. I buy my copies of On Our Backs and Bad Attitude here. Do you ever read them?”
    “What are they?”
    “Lesbian sex magazines. They’re a lot of fun. The photography could be slicker, but what can you do? It’s low budget. The articles are interesting…. Isn’t that what men used to say about Playboy? ‘I read it for the articles.’ ”
    Miko flipped open a copy for me to see. Two very attractive young white women, bare-bosomed and in lace petticoats, were gently touching each other. It didn’t seem so bad. Then I noticed that each of them had one nipple pierced with a ring linked to a chain that the other was pulling. The petticoats were lightly spotted with blood.
    I closed the magazine and handed it back to Miko. “This isn’t my kind of thing.”
    Miko tucked it under her arm and sighed, “I can’t help it, Pam. I like you. You’re such a straight little arrow. Though I still can’t imagine what you’re doing in here. Unless it has something to do with Loie’s death. Somebody told me that’s a hobby of yours, investigation.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Well, if you’re really looking into Loie’s murder, you’re not going to be able to avert your eyes from some pretty nasty stuff I imagine. So you might as well enjoy it!” Miko whirled provocatively and sauntered to the cash register.

7
    T HE NEXT AFTERNOON AFTER work Hadley and I went downtown to the Fun Palace on First Ave to see if we could find Nicky Kay. Hadley wasn’t too sure how much she wanted to get involved with this whole thing, but I persuaded her. I didn’t particularly want to go alone and I had the feeling that if anyone knew anything about dog collars, it would be Nicky.
    Even though Hadley was along I still felt uneasy going into the Fun Palace. Just as when I’d entered The Vault, I gave a hasty but thorough glance around to see if anyone I knew was watching.
    We asked for Nicky and were told she was working. Dancing. “You’ll need quarters if you plan on watching her.”
    I was taken aback. “Oh we didn’t plan on watching … Can’t we give her a message that we’d like to see her?”
    “She don’t get a break till seven and the boss don’t like her to talk to customers on the premises.”
    No use arguing that we didn’t think of ourselves as customers for godssakes. We bought five dollars’ worth of quarters and made our way to the exotic dancing booths.
    They were arranged in an L-shaped pattern, two corridors of doors each with a light above. Some were lit up red—they were occupied. There apparently were two kinds of booths: those with a one-way mirror and those with a two-way. We stood in the corridor debating in whispers which kind we should choose. There were more with one-way mirrors.
    “How’re we going to get a message to her if she can’t see it?”
    “We should make sure she’s there first.”
    So we crowded into one of the one-way booths. It was a tight fit for two, dim and shabby, with shag carpeting on the floor and walls. Something under my feet felt wet and sticky—I tried not to think about it. On one wall was a small plastic screen with a coin receptacle under it; when we put in a quarter the screen went up slowly, revealing a brightly lit room. In front of a wall of mirrors three women were dancing naked to soft rock music.
    “Whew,” said Hadley.
    All three of them were wearing high heels and one wore a wide belt. They danced well, if a little perfunctorily, in smooth gyrations. One of the women was Nicky. Again she looked different from the times I’d seen her before, but it wasn’t just because she didn’t have any clothes on. Her soft brown hair was gathered up on her head with a