Murder Is My Racquet by Otto Penzler Page A

private investigator? Like, really?”
    “Really.”
    “Oh, wow. And you’re even cute.”
    “And you’re even Ms. Tucker?”
    “Right, right. Shirlee Tucker. But with two Es. My mama couldn’t spell real good. So, what are you doing here?”
    “I’ve been hired to look into Solomon Schiff’s death.”
    “Ugh. Tell me about it. I was the one found him.”
    “Where?”
    “Just like on TV, huh?”
    “Let’s start there, anyway.”
    Tucker led me through a living room that seemed sparsely furnished except for shelving that held more tennis trophies than books, but then Naomi Schiff had told me there’d been a lot of breakage and that she’d cleaned up the house. By the time we reached the bedroom, Tucker’s gait, enhanced by the fit of her Capris, had started to hypnotize me.
    “In here.”
    I moved past her in the open doorway, something musky coming off Tucker that I didn’t think originated in a bottle. The room was fifteen by twelve, a king-sized brass bed against one wall, a master bath through another. There were no sheets or pillows in sight, and just an overhead light fixture hung down from a ceiling fan.
    “Where exactly was Mr. Schiff’s body?”
    Tucker now moved past me to the footboard of the bed, which had a pattern of sturdy, vertical pickets between lateral top and bottom pieces the diameter of bar rails. She grasped the top rail as support and lowered herself to the floor until she was faceup and lying flat, head toward the bed and feet toward the door.
    Tucker said, “Sol was like this?” the lilt making her statement sound like a question.
    “How about his arms?”
    She moved hers to a more exaggerated version of my “Don’t Shoot” in the foyer, her fingernails almost touching the base of the brass footboard.
    “What else did you see?”
    Tucker did a partial situp, now resting on her elbows, which pushed the doctored bust more aggressively forward. “His bed had been slept in,” now a coy cocking of her head, “but not with me.”
    “Meaning with somebody else?”
    “I didn’t get any perfumy smell. Ugh, Sol’s was bad enough.”
    When people die, their muscles relax and release a lot of unpleasantness. “You didn’t see anybody else?”
    “No. And Sol had pajama bottoms on.”
    “Bottoms, but no top?”
    “Right, right. That’s how he dressed for bed when I wasn’t here.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because,” the head now cocking the other way, though to the same effect, “when I was with him, he’d sleep naked.”
    Not exactly logical, but the last part struck me as pretty probable. And probably enjoyable.
    Tucker said, “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
    I decided not to lie. “Yes.”
    Her tongue came out, moistened her lips. “Me, too. Minute I saw you in the foyer back there? I was hoping it wouldn’t come to shooting you.”
    Reassuring. “Had you and Mr. Schiff been sleeping together much recently?”
    A frown, like that wasn’t my next line in her script. “No, truth to tell. Oh, Sol was no great shakes in the sack, but he was—Sol liked to call himself ‘inventive.’”
    “Inventive.”
    “Yeah. Loved going into the sex shops, buying me things like teddies or bikini thongs.” Tucker stretched the top of her Capri pants to show me some red lace. “These, for instance.”
    My throat felt a little tight. “How about sex toys?”
    “Oh, he had just a drawerful of those.” Another frown, directed toward the bureau. “But I think his prudy niece must have gone and thrown them all away when she cleaned up the place, account of that’s what I wanted to take back with me, and they aren’t there now.”
    I couldn’t see somebody ransacking the house for one of those. “Shirlee, did Mr. Schiff have anything in the house that somebody might have searched for?”
    “Searched for? You mean like treasure or something?”
    “Jewelry, cash, anything somebody else might want.”
    A third cocking of her head. “Just me.”
    Actually