The Sassy Belles Read Online Free Page B

without hesitation. “Not on my life, sweetie.
Not on my life.”
    “Blake,” she said. “Thank you.”
    “For what, honey?”
    “For always being my Swiss Army knife.”
    I smiled at her. I knew what she meant. I also knew how much
she was counting on me to get her out of any mess that lay just on the other
side of the river.
    Vivi would be a person of interest simply because she was the
last person to see Lewis alive. She wasn’t guilty of a thing. They were just
screwing, for God’s sake. But Vivi is a reactionary. She will think the absolute
worst and in the most dramatic way possible. It’s just part of being Vivi.
Regardless, I was bound and determined to make sure she would never be charged
with anything.
    Vivi broke the conversation in my head. “I’m a nervous wreck,
Blake.”
    “Why, honey?”
    “It’s just that, well…uh, we had a little friend with us in the
motel room.”
    “What? You were in a threesome?”
    “Oh, my good God, no, honey. I meant—you know…a sex toy. I
named him Deputy Dick.”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake…I thought you were fixin’ to really
shock me. I know you and Lewis can be a bit on the kinky side, no big deal.”
    “I just don’t want the police to discover him. It. I will just
die of embarrassment. But I have no idea where he got to. I was in such a panic
when I ran for help.”
    “Don’t worry, I’m sure you aren’t the only woman in the world
to play with toys in the bedroom. I’m sure he will turn up.” I tried to get my
thoughts together as we drove, and wondered if Vivi had any other interesting
details she needed to divulge.
    Though we rode in silence, I never let go of her hand. The
emotions were stuck in our mouths. Vivi and I have never really needed words. In
moments we had crossed the bridge over the Warrior River to the Fountain Mist
motel. We drove in and parked as Harry made his way over to us. He opened Vivi’s
door and helped her out.
    The Fountain Mist was one of those old, side-of–the-highway
kinds of motels. The kind that could charge by the hour. It had a red neon sign
out front and a lighted fountain, like one of those old silver Christmas trees
from the sixties that had the colored lights spinning underneath. The fountain
changed colors and definitely helped to cheapen the motel’s appearance. Inside
the lobby, the green carpet was threadbare and fading. The entire place needed
painting. And sanitization.
    Harry had his legal pad in hand and was standing with the
police and the paramedics outside room 106. Everyone was in a panic, and Harry
looked like he’d gone into shock.
    “Where’s the body?” a paramedic yelled out at us as we
approached. “There’s no body here!” Vivi and I walked over to the door at a
clip. The dust from the gravel parking lot swirled in the air.
    A frenetic chaos filled the room. The motel manager was
standing on the dusty carpet, answering questions while a police officer took
notes. I couldn’t see for the glare as the sun bounced from the mirror of the
cheap dresser. Two officers and two paramedics had turned the room upside down.
The frustrated sounds came again from the first paramedic. “Where the hell’s the
body? We got a call from someone saying that her boyfriend had stopped
breathing.”
    “I left him right there, dead on the bed, buck naked and blue
as blue blazes,” Vivi said with fear and panic in her eyes. I looked at Harry
and he looked at Vivi.
    “Vivi!” Harry said. “Where the hell is Lewis?”
    In a split second, a breathless silence fell over the room and
Vivi fell over backward right onto me. I caught her just as she slumped
sideways, and a paramedic rushed to her while a policeman radioed the
station.
    No body, I thought. Is Lewis possibly alive? Or is someone hiding
evidence? I held Vivi up till the paramedics got hold of her.
    I looked at my stoic Harry. I knew he was thinking of his
public image and trying not to show any emotion. At the same time, I knew he