Dandy hadn’t done much beyond installing a bathroom and enough of a kitchen to allow his girlfriends to cook for him. The floor was hardwood with a couple of thick sheepskins scattered around for effect. A king-sized bed dominated one corner, with nightstands on either side with drawers big enough to accommodate condoms in bargain-size boxes and a weekend’s worth of clean clothes for sleepovers. In another corner there was a wide, long brown leather couch next to a Barcalounger, which sat in front of a 32-inch television. There was also a combination VHS/DVD player, and a set of shelves with an extensive selection of movies, most of them starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. Dandy didn’t bother with satellite television, as he wasn’t into any sport you couldn’t play from a horizontal position and everything else was blood and gore. Women didn’t like blood and gore, as a rule. Dandy was willing to watch anything that got women into the mood, and he was continually expanding his movie library with that end in view. Audrey Hepburn was a recent discovery. The scene with Peter OToole under the museum stairs in How to Steal a Million had in recent testing proven itself to be fail-safe. He was hoping it would come out on DVD before his VHS copy was completely worn through.
Hands behind his head, he frowned at the ceiling. He was still annoyed with Jim for blowing off his efforts in the Len Dreyer case, but he was willing to forgive him because he knew what it was like to be led around by his cock, and he sympathized.
He was more annoyed with Kate, and he couldn’t decide if it was because she was the one leading Jim around, or if it was because she’d never tried to lead him, Dandy, around.
Easily sidetracked, he wondered about that. It wasn’t like Kate was a nun, she’d had her share. There was Ethan Int-Hout, and that doofus Anchorage investigator with more and blonder hair than Farrah Fawcett, and then there was Jack Morgan. The Kate-and-Jack thing went way back. Jeeze, Jack had been an okay guy, but sticking to one partner for, well, hell, he guessed it had been years. Years, for crissake. Dandy’s mind boggled. A real man wanted a little variety in his life. Sleeping with the same woman for years, years, that wasn’t variety, that was monotony, that was boredom. Dandy loved undressing a woman for the first time, loved the small discoveries that came with the act, the placement of a mole, the bony knees, the pillowy thighs. He loved finding out that a natural blonde wasn’t. Was she or wasn’t she? Only Dandy and her hairdresser knew for sure.
The trouble was, you could only undress a woman for the first time once. Fortunately, there were many, many women out there, and equally fortunately, many of them were happy to take a month’s romp at face value. Dandy Mike scorned to break hearts; he wanted whatever woman was in his life to have as good a time as he was, until it was time for both of them to move on. He prided himself that they almost always did. Oh, he’d had his failures, including one horrific experience when the girl of the month introduced herself to his mother and asked for help in planning the wedding, but on the whole he was fairly pleased with life in general. He attended the marriages of his classmates and friends with a smiling face, but privately he couldn’t imagine why any sane man would feel it necessary to settle on just one woman. It wasn’t natural, he thought, and just look at nature, while we’re on the subject. Why, he was reading an article just the other day, all about how new DNA studies were showing biologists that geese weren’t as monogamous as had been previously thought. The male of every species was designed to spread his seed as far and wide as possible. It strengthened the gene pool, insured the survival of the species. Dandy hadn’t finished college, but even he knew that.
Not that Dandy ever wanted to have children. He shuddered at the thought. He didn’t know how Bobby and Dinah were going to manage, always supposing for some unfathomable reason they still wanted to sleep together at all, in that big open house with a rug rat crawling all over it.
Nope, no question about it, old Jack must have been half a bubble off, as they said in the contracting business.
Where had he heard that saying? Oh, yeah. Len Dreyer. On the deck of the Freya last September.
Which reminded him of his grievance. Kate had old Chopper Jim on the hook, no doubt about that, she was just waiting until it was good and set before reeling it in. Thought she had the job landed at the same time, probably.
No two ways about it, Dandy was going to have to solve this Dreyer thing on his own just to get Jim’s attention. Once he had it, why, Jim would just naturally see what an asset Dandy would be to the local constabulary. And hopefully Dandy would never have to work this hard again.
The information he’d collected from his ex-girlfriends hadn’t made much of an impression. His face screwed up in thought. Well. He’d done a lot of jobs with Dreyer. Maybe he could put together the list of names he’d scrounged from his girlfriends, and maybe put in dates when he’d worked with Dreyer. Then maybe he could go talk to the people who had employed the two of them. They’d call that something on television – constructing a timeline, that was it. He’d construct a timeline for old Len Dreyer, was what he’d do, charting all old Len’s activities leading up until the day he died. Dandy didn’t know what day Len had died, but he dismissed that as a minor problem.
He swung out of bed, refreshed, and took a quick shower. He was scrambling some eggs when there was a knock at his door. He opened it to find Stacy Shumagin on his doorstep.
Well, shoot. Len Dreyer was dead, wasn’t he? He could wait.
The white Cessna with the gold shield on the side touched down neatly in a perfect three-point landing. It rolled to a halt in front of George Perry’s hangar, who waited for the prop to stop turning before ambling over to open the door. “Hey, Kate.” He looked across Kate at Jim. “Hey, Chopin. Taking business away from me, taking the food out of the mouths of my children.”
Since George had no children, this was taken for the jest it was.
“Hey, George,” Johnny piped up.
“Hey, squirt. How was Anchorage?”
“Educational,” Johnny said promptly, without the trace of a smile.
Kate grinned. “Think I can get out of this flying tin can, Perry?”
George stepped back and she hopped out. “Well. From the expression on your faces I’d say it was a successful trip. So, who did kill Len Dreyer?”
Jim paused, one foot in the plane, one foot on the ground. “Oh, shit.” And it had been such a nice ride home.
Kate turned to him. “That’s right, you said you were picking up the autopsy report.”
He frowned at her. “Not in front of the civilians.”
“You people are just no fun at all,” George said, and ambled back into the hangar, where his Super Cub could be seen, cowling peeled back and engine exposed. Even from where they were standing, it gleamed with the care George lavished upon it.
The airstrip was dark with overnight rain, but not enough to be muddy. A low, thin layer of cotton-puff clouds was dissolving beneath the noon sun. There was a flash of white in the brush across the strip and Mutt gave a joyous bark and shot off in pursuit. Johnny gave a sigh of pure joy and headed for the post office. They’d only been gone overnight, and on a weekend at that, but like every other Bush dweller Johnny lived for the mail, and he had new clothes coming. If there was a package slip he could always go round to Mrs. Jeppsen’s house in back of the post office and talk her into opening up long enough to get it for him.
“So?” Kate said to Jim.