"Millicent Swopes? A -- what did you say she called her?" My friend, lover, husband and one-time ski-bum George positively goggled at me after partially recovering from strangling on his coffee. "’Whore of Babylon’ and ‘harlot,’ among other things," I answered, mopping up the spewed brown liquid from the tabletop. "Millicent Swopes?" George repeated. "The Whore of Babylon? A harlot? I mean, she’s a librarian, for God’s sake!" "The very same." I waited for George to quit repeating every blessed thing I had said and crank out an answer to my request, what he knew of her from his salad days. When George’s mother was alive, the two of them had spent much time swooshing down the storied runs around Aspen, Vail and Snowmass when the powder was at its best, taking time only from this loony pursuit to sleep and eat. During those years he, being an available and aggressively handsome bachelor, had probably known well virtually every conceivable snowbunny in them thar woods, probably bedding more than a few of them. My question had been addressed with that thought in mind since Mrs. Earl P. Clymer’s target of vengeance hailed from Aspen. "Unless there is more than one librarian named Millicent Swopes in Aspen -- and I truly doubt that -- she’s either changed mightily from the Millicent I once knew, or Mrs. -- who?" "Clymer -- Pearl, that is, AKA Mrs. Earl P.," I answered, seating myself at the table again after depositing the soggy paper towels in the trash bin. "-- Clymer is absolutely off her rocker! When I was young and happily ignorant of my lack of political correctness, I called Millicent -- behind her back, of course -- ‘Chilly Millie.’ Far as I know, no male ever got into the ballpark with her, much less into her knickers, to say nothing of getting to first base. I mean, she wouldn’t even let you approach the plate, you know, or --" To stem the flow of rhetoric, I held up a precautionary paw. "Let’s knock off the sports analogies, sweetheart. In a minute you’re going to wax ribald and make some cutsy remark about waving your bat around, and I’m going to be forced to thump you one." "Such a thought never entered my mind, Babe," George said with a perfectly straight face, causing me to snort my disbelief. He tried and failed to look entirely innocent of such lowlife thoughts. Right. "The Millicent Swopes I knew -- oh, she’s about ten years younger than I am, give or take. That would make her about the age of the Clymer guy, maybe a year or two younger. She was an exceptionally pretty girl when I knew her -- tiny feet and hands, huge greenish eyes, dimples, naturally red hair --" "How do you know it’s natural, oh, wonderful one?" I inquired, pasting on my own innocent phiz over a knowing grin topped off with waggling eyebrows. "Oh, hell -- Sheila, you’d know it was natural if you saw her. Very curly, blond highlights all over it, and Millie was positively covered with pale freckles that had faded a little when she returned from college." "’Covered’?" George ignored me, knowing I was ragging him just for the sake of ragging him. "She was a fine skier, albeit a tad cautious. Never broke a bone, so far as I know, and that’s not usual for anybody who spent as much of her life throwing herself down a slippery slope as Millie did. "I do seem to remember she was -- well, she wasn’t quite as carefree and cheery when she returned to Aspen and took over the library as she had been before she went away to school, but she was older, and maybe just more mature. I don’t know." I could see by the expression on his face that apparently recalling today the change in her back then made him wonder a bit, but it wouldn’t have occurred to him to do so if her name hadn’t come up as a candidate for tramp of the year, at least in the opinionated and unyielding mind of my latest client and possibly my client’s husband, father of Millicent’s victim. "So you going to track down the lovebirds in Las Vegas?" "Oh, I don’t think so. My client didn’t actually know their itinerary, of course. For all I know, they could be in San Francisco by now, or maybe on their way back to Aspen, or possibly by now they’re bedded down in Bora Bora. I’m sure the baby boy doesn’t check in with mamma on a regular basis." I thought about the whole business for a moment, then added, "In a way, I’m more concerned about old Earl P. than I am about Harold. I could almost believe Pearl is, too, no matter what she says." I stopped talking and bounced that thought around in my head for a time, then sighed in resignation at my normal early-morning lack of mental prowess. "Think Mrs. Clymer is really hiring you to locate her errant husband rather than tracking down her son with his paramour?" "’Paramour’? My, what big dated words you use, lover," I mumbled, levering myself upright and stretching my aches and pains out with a few toe-touches, listening to my aging shoulders and knees protest. "And, yes, it’s possible. She probably wants them both back under her spatulate thumb, of course, but she came after professional help only after her husband seemed to vanish into the snake pit, as she called Las Vegas." "She’s not necessarily too far off in that assessment," commented my straight-arrow George, still lolling his trim and muscular body in complete repose while he appreciatively watched me try to cudgel and pummel my less-than-svelte one into temporary submission. "And it is a little odd that Earl P. went off on a quest of wresting their son from the foul clutches of this unworthy woman, called his Pearl a couple of times a day, or so she says, for the first week, then seemingly just stepped off the edge of the world." "How do you mean?" "Mrs. Clymer said when he didn’t call for two days, she put a call in to the MGM Grand where he’d been staying. She was told he’d checked out four days earlier, leaving no forwarding address, and that they simply couldn’t help her further. "So, again assuming she’s telling the gospel of it, for some reason we don’t know at this time he continued to call her for two days after he’d checked out of his hotel, did so without ever mentioning any change in living arrangements to her, and then with no warning, simply quit communicating with her in any way." All this was grunted between spasms of throwing myself about the kitchen, arms waving, slipper-shod feet kicking vigorously in the general direction of the ceiling, a regimen of my own devising. Fuzz had disappeared from under the table the very minute I began, his scrabbling toenails on the slick tiles betraying the urgency of his departure as he removed his fragile hide from the vicinity of stomps and kicks by big, heavy feet. "And that just doesn’t make sense to me," I added, huffing and wheezing as I finished and threw myself back onto my chair before downing the mandatory second of my eight big glasses of water daily. Yeah, and I spend an inordinate amount of time in the loo, too. "Have you asked Mrs. Clymer if he said or indicated anything during those final two days of phone calls that later aroused her suspicions?" asked George, the fellow who was now standing behind me, bless his lovely soul, massaging my shoulders and back. "No, haven’t had a chance yet," I mumbled, face down on my forearms, luxuriating in the attention. "But I’m going to call her today and ask a whole bunch more ‘fool questions,’ and then tell her I’ll do what I can -- assuming, that is, she actually answers some of those questions." "And then, my resident sleuth, are you heading for Las Vegas? If so, can I go, too, and play while you work?" "Play with whom?" I asked. "Why," he said as his hands began to wander off course a trifle, "With yoom, that’s whom." A trifle? "It’s Saturday, isn’t it?" I asked, rhetorically. "Yes, sweaty one, it’s Saturday." "That means, does it not, I don’t have to go downstairs, open up the office, and play grown-up?" "That’s what it means, among other things," growled the largest of the two resident males in my ear, his warm breath raising instant goose-flesh down the back of my arms. "Barbara ever tell you that the machine shorthand she used as a court reporter employed ‘MOINGS’ as a brief form for ‘among other things’?" Always like to drop little gems of useless knowledge to anyone who will listen. George grunted in the negative. "Does ‘MOINGS’ include returning to bed?" "After a shower, it does," he promised, hoisting me to my feet with both hands clamped firmly on interesting handholds. Once aloft, I turned around, dislodging the wandering paws only to find them regripped on my flip side, only lower down, and attached my own in a like position on him. And in that rather awkward and ungainly clinch, we sort of danced our way out of the kitchen, down the hall, into the bathroom, George freeing only one hand to turn on the shower. When I tried to get out of my clothes first, George only held me tighter and marched both of us straight into the six gushing streams of hot water. You have no idea how difficult it is to divest yourself of your clothes in such circumstances -- or how much fun. But we managed it, laughing like a couple of idiot kids. With one thing and another, I didn’t get around to calling Mrs. Earl P. Clymer until Sunday afternoon -- damned near forgot it then, truth be told. But I was busy and had my mind on other, much more enjoyable and adventuresome things. And by the time I got around to it, it was too late. Eventually I learned it would have been too late anyway. |