Dark Blonde Read Online Free PDF Page B

dishing out the same old graft to rob from the rich and give to the down-and-out, including those who choose to be down-and-out. Of course, I could be wrong, but the current noisy political hoopla sweeping the country almost made a guy miss those sleepy I-Like-Ike years.
    If anything, Julia played the cold-driven realist of the old order, someone who’d put on any disguise to reach her ends, or her husband’s. Was she the avaricious, power-hungry queen who would walk over any corpse to get what she wanted, or a manipulated Nebraska beauty, over her head with powerful people and sending me secret signals for help? To discern which would require a different sort of investigation than she’d hired me for. Either way there was fire between us, the kind of fire that meant I had to go slow. Given gasoline and sparks one didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see what was coming. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough to say no, though I should have after that first meeting.
    “You’d never make it in politics,” she said, gathering her things together.
    “A blessing for me.”
    She stood and looked down at the key in my hand and said: “I went to Gail’s last night to see if she’d been there. Nothing was out of place. Her bed hadn’t been slept in. I feel something’s terribly wrong. Please let me know if you find out anything.”
    She turned. I watched her hips beat music across the floor to the ladies’ room and did the easy mental work of undressing her again. I put my coat on and stopped at the front entrance. Julia’d walked off like she was finished with me, but it was dark now and raining so I felt I should walk her to her car. I also wanted to take one more look at her; call her Julia instead of Mrs. Gateswood, discover how blonde locks might reflect in those eyes.
    In a few minutes she came out, still wearing the wig. When she saw me both eyebrows went up, and stayed up when I held the door open for her.
    “Is there anything else you need?” she asked like she was excusing her butler.
    “A few, but I’ll save them for next time. I’ll walk you to your car.”
    She’d parked across the road in the parking lot of a closed nursery. Powder blue Mercedes 300 SL, one of those fancy jobs with doors that flip up like a sardine can. She got in and didn’t seem to mind that her skirt hiked up revealing plenty of white thigh. She made no move to hike it back down.
    I hung through the open door and fed my eyes. She liked carnal looks and kept her thighs open. The wig peeled off. As a blonde she would turn all the male heads in a crowd, big heads and little heads alike. There were at least ten shades of honey and ash and even a few platinum streaks that blended like a Tchaikovski concerto. I enjoyed the tune.
    My head buzzed. Maybe it was the accumulated Murphy’s. I tried not to drool, but a little editor with a hard on scurried about in my brain searching for the right words to cap the evening, or maybe extend it. He finally collapsed with the weight of sophomoric phrases, all having to do with undressing her and the fun we might have later. Where was suave when I needed it?
    “You mind if I stop by your office for that Vegas info tomorrow, Julia? I’d rather not put Miss Mathews through another osculation lesson. She might accuse me of rape the next time she decides to taste me.”
    “Call me.”
    Julia started the engine and reached to my hand in the open window. She wasn’t in a hurry to remove it. She lolled her head back against the seat rest, her face a delicious dusky glow, her blonde hair framing it too fully and invitingly, so that her face looked smaller than it should have. Her lips parted and she smiled at a nice angle. This smile was straight from Nebraska and finished all the way, her front teeth dim little angels in the dark. The engine purred politely, waiting as we held the moment, a moment that seemed to whisper clichés about destiny, the sort that makes me put down a sappy novel.
    Her eyes gleamed