Read Online Film Strip by Nancy Bartholomew - Free Book Online Page B

“Marla thought you still had her gun?”
    Ricky nodded eagerly. “But Marla don’t have it. It’s gone.”
    The sap couldn’t figure it out that the cops would just think Marla took the gun, used it, and lost it. Or, a second and third explanation arose, that Little Ricky or someone else took Marla’s gun and used it to kill Venus Lovemotion. Better yet, maybe Marla’s gun wasn’t used by the killer at all. It would just help if we had it, then we could rule her out. But I had a feeling. When something can go wrong, it usually does, so the gun that killed Venus and winged me was probably Marla’s. It just figured. It was just the way things tended to run in life.
    I looked back at the worm and tried my best not to let my true homicidal feelings seep out. Ricky found my leg again and rubbed his foot up against it. He had kicked off his shoes and was running his sweaty, smelly toes all over my calf. I waited a second, until I knew for certain where his other foot rested, and then jabbed the point of my heel into the meaty flesh of his big toe.
    Ricky screamed with pain and gained an audience. Even the stripper who was doing her best to wrap her tits around the pole had to stop and stare.
    â€œOh God, sugar,” I said, “was that your foot?” Ricky couldn’t answer. He was clutching his foot, pulling it up into his lap and moaning. I guessed steroids didn’t dull one’s pain threshold.
    â€œI am sooo sorry. I thought that was the table base. Oh, is it bleeding?” Steroids did not add IQ points to Little Ricky’s marginal intelligence. He looked up at me with big cow eyes, believed me instantly, and said: “That’s all right, baby. I’ll be fine.”
    But his foot was swelling and he couldn’t slip it back into his fake leather cowboy boots. When he tried to signal the waitress and have her fix him an ice bag, she ignored him. I stood up, looking very concerned.
    â€œYou sit right here, Ricky,” I said, “and I’ll try and find something for you.”
    Ricky sat there like a big, hurting baby as I turned and walked off, right through the back hallway, out the back door, and to my car. The little blond waitress said later that when he asked for me, she told him I had run out to the drugstore and probably gotten into an accident while trying to rush back. This was right before she handed him a supersized condom from the men’s room, filled with crushed ice, and told him to stick it where it could do the most good.

Eleven
    Marla lived in a high-rise condo right out on the Gulf of Mexico in the center of the Miracle Strip, Panama City Beach’s tackiest few miles of souvenir shops, bars, and gooney golf emporiums. Unlike me, Marla liked to flaunt that she made good money. She drove a hot red convertible and ate out every day. She was a local fixture, well-known in the tackier dress shops, the kind that sell clothing covered in beads and sequins.
    I took the glass elevator up to her apartment, my stomach lurching with each floor. It was a long way down and I have trust issues with man-made equipment.
    I pounded on her door and listened to her singing along to a Cher track. She sang off-key and loudly all the way to the door, and only stopped when she realized her caller was female.
    The door swung open and she stood there in a flimsy white dressing gown trimmed with fake ostrich feathers. In the daylight, even with her makeup on, Marla is a scary-looking creature. I think it’s all that makeup and the way she tweezes her eyebrows so that they’re kind of triangular, like Dr. Spock’s on Star Trek.
    â€œWhat?” she asked. “Is it all over?”
    I pushed past her, out of the thickly carpeted hallway and into her foyer.
    â€œNo, hardly. I need to ask you some questions, and this time you’d better be straight with me and not leave nothing out.”
    Marla widened her eyes. “Well,