Read Online Death on Heels by Ellen Byerrum - Free Book Online Page B

said, hunting for her folks’ house keys. “If Dad doesn’t have it, it doesn’t exist. Not at a hardware store, anyway.”
    “Do you know what time it is?” Lacey asked. It was only eleven p.m., but one o’clock in the morning in Washington. She had to get up early.
    “It’s not that late. And it’s Saturday night!” Cherise lifted the garage door. A metal-on-metal screech cut through the silent night. Lacey held her hands over her ears.
    The garage was Steven Smithsonian’s man-cave. Tools and supplies were neatly organized on shelves and hung on hooks on the walls. There were ladders and drills, shovels and rakes and trimmers, and all manner of axes and hammers. There were wrenches and screwdrivers, buckets and old coffee cans full of nails and screws and metal hooks, all sorted by size and purpose. There were sheets of plywood and two-by-fours, everything a home handyman might require. And even though Steven rarely produced any particular
thing
with his hands—once there was a birdhouse, Lacey recalled—
he liked to putter in the garage and listen to sports on the radio. His man-cave even contained a television, a green wooden Adirondack chair, a space heater, and a microwave oven to heat his coffee. And the Oldsmobile wagon.
    Rose assured everyone the man-cave was essential to the health of her marriage. She didn’t interfere with Steven’s male habitat, and he didn’t have a choice in her interior decorating.
    “I feel like I’m trespassing,” Lacey said.
    “Don’t be silly. Dad doesn’t mind.” Cherise pointed to her father’s rope collection. At least a dozen different ropes were coiled and hung on a special Steven-made rack on the far wall.
    “What on earth does he use all this for?” Lacey asked. Her dad had a mania for tools, the way some women had for shoes: collecting them, filling a closet with them, but never wearing them, simply admiring their sparkling high-heeled kingdom, or queendom.
    Cherise thought for a moment. “He uses some of it to tie the Christmas tree to the roof of the wagon.”
    “Right.” Lacey remembered their annual trip to fetch the Christmas tree…until Rose had found the perfect vintage aluminum tree with a rotating color wheel, to set on the floor near the unused fireplace. She thought it was the perfect holiday decoration for a midcentury modern home, hung with all silver ornaments. The effect was chilly, something the cartoon Jetson family might gather around. Her mother’s idea of vintage and Lacey’s were two very different things.
    “What about this?” Cherise picked up one of the ropes and hefted it. “Ride ’em, cowgirl!”
    “I give up. Here, this one is better.” Lacey selected a rope that felt heavy enough to toss like a lariat, and she took it to the backyard. Cherise bounced along beside her. Lacey tied the knots and looped the loop. She showed Cherise how to tie the lariat knot, the honda.
    “It’s named after a Japanese car? Why?”
    “Because Japanese cowboys use it to rope Honda Civics in Japanese rodeos.” Cherise looked doubtful, but right on the verge of taking her big sister’s word for it. Lacey couldn’t help laughing. “Come on, Cherise! It’s Spanish.”
    “Spanish for what?”
    “Spanish for this knot you tie in a lariat! Now what do you want to throw it at?”
    “Dad’s lawn chair.” Cherise dragged the Adirondack chair from the garage to the middle of the yard. Lacey turned on the back door light that stabbed into the dark like an aircraft landing light and illuminated almost the whole lawn. She demonstrated to Cherise how to twirl the lariat and throw the lasso. She had to try it several times before even hitting, but not lassoing, the chair.
    “I blame the altitude,” Lacey said. “Everything is lighter this high up.”
    “Cool! Let me try!” Cherise was dogged, if nothing else. Cherise hit, but did not lasso, one of her mother’s potted geraniums, and she dissolved into giggles.
    “Girls, what on earth