Never Happened. Debra Webb

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СКАЧАТЬ in the only chair besides the one behind Alex’s desk, heaved an impatient breath as if the boss’s arrival was long overdue.

      Brown wore a double-breasted black suit reminiscent of the one Madonna had donned in her Vogue music video. The platinum wig and heavy makeup, including blood-red lips and a black mole, completed the sultry image.

      “Good morning, Brown.”

      He cut Alex a withering look.

      “Excuse me. Madonna,” Alex amended as she scooted around the corner of her desk and dropped her bag onto the only vacant spot on the floor near her chair. After grabbing a quick sip of her latte, she pushed aside a stack of papers and set the cup in the cleared spot. To say her office was cluttered would be a monumental understatement. Files, including incoming shipment invoices and outgoing payment receipts, were stacked on the corners of her desk, but it was the test products, many still in their boxes, sitting here and there around the room that made maneuvering the most difficult. Shannon hated it. Threatened Alex all the time about the chaos. But Alex knew where everything was. She rarely lost anything.

      “So.” Giving Brown her undivided attention, Alex propped her elbows on her desk and laced her fingers. “What seems to be the problem this morning?”

      Brown lifted his chin defiantly. “I need Friday off and Shannon refuses to okay my request.” The thick Latino intonation made his every word more resounding.

      That was odd. Unless something came up, giving him a day off with advance notice wasn’t generally a problem. Unless Shannon knew something Alex didn’t, she didn’t see the problem. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised. Didn’t sound like a big deal. She relaxed. This had certainly proven far easier than she’d expected. Generally if Brown had a problem, it was a little more daunting.

      Unfortunately, judging by the look on Brown’s face and the fact that he made no move to leave her office, Alex had counted her chickens before they hatched.

      He leaned forward and warned, “It’s because of the convention. She doesn’t want me to participate. She can’t do that.” He tapped his chest in the vicinity of what Alex could only imagine was a heavily padded bra providing the hill and valley effect of breasts. “I know my rights,” he warned.

      Alex snapped her gaze back up to his irate expression; a bad feeling churned in her gut. “What convention?”

      “The Ms. Miami convention. I’ve been signed up for weeks. Don’t you remember? You sponsored me. Friday is the first day. Registration and screening. I have to be there.”

      Alex struggled to swallow back her first reaction. She vaguely remembered sponsoring him for some sort of convention, she just didn’t remember it was this particular convention. “Not—” she cleared her throat “—a problem. I’ll take care of it.”

      “Fine.” Brown stood. Smoothed a hand over his elegant and decidedly feminine jacket. “I hope you’ll come to cheer me on.”

      Alex managed a nod.

      Brown hesitated at the door. “I’ll send Shannon in to see you so you can tell her right away.”

      Alex felt her head move up and down again, the smile frozen on her lips.

      Twisting his narrow hips with all he had, Brown flounced out of her office.

      Alex took a breath, told herself she was cool with this. It was a free country after all. No reason Brown shouldn’t go after his heart’s desires. It wasn’t as if she was ashamed of him or had a problem with his alternative lifestyle.

      Okay, that was a lie. She didn’t have a problem with it as long as he didn’t bring it to work in a way that would hamper business. There simply was no way to have him, without having his eccentricity—it was a package deal. But using his stint in the Ms. Miami pageant as a possible means of advertisement was definitely previously unexplored territory.

      Shannon walked in, closed the door behind her. “He told you.”

      Before Alex could stop the words, she demanded in something that should have been a whisper but came out more like a muffled shout, “Don’t you have to be a woman to enter that thing?”

      Shannon shrugged her shoulders dramatically. “How the hell do I know? Should I call and ask?”

      Alex shook her head adamantly. “We don’t want to draw any attention to him or us. Let’s just stay calm and pray someone notices at the registration and screening.”

      Shannon’s head bobbed. “How could he win or even get in? I mean—” she lowered her voice to the whisper Alex had been aiming for “—I’ll admit that he makes a somewhat attractive woman, but this is a beauty pageant, right? With rules and judges?”

      Alex did the bobbing this time. She told herself it wouldn’t matter that Brown had killer legs or that his unusually high cheekbones were to die for. “Of course you’re right. We have nothing to worry about. No way he’ll win. He’ll probably be disqualified before the pageant even officially begins.”

      “Probably.”

      For about two minutes after Shannon left Alex’s office, she pondered the question of why Brown seemed to be confused about his sexuality. Some days he appeared completely happy with his masculinity, others he wanted nothing to do with it, showed up for work as some Hollywood diva. Maybe the good doctor next door could shed some light on the subject. Alex was certain he’d noticed Brown’s unusual fashion sense on his feminine days.

      Putting her curiosities aside, she turned her attention to the day’s schedule. An elderly couple, dead two weeks, had been found in their Coral Gables home. Cause of death was listed as natural by their attending physician so the police wouldn’t be holding up the scene. Apparently both had suffered from serious heart conditions. There was no way to be sure who died first, but the death of one of them, evidently, was brought on by the other’s fatal attack. With no family in the state to look in on them and the neighbors under the assumption the couple had gone on vacation, no one had realized there was a problem until the stench reared its ugly head.

      Brown and the Professor would head out around eight to take care of that one. The family, who’d arrived in town just yesterday, had requested additional services to include cleaning the carpet throughout the home and washing down all walls and ceilings.

      Thank God the couple’s air-conditioning had kept the house below seventy-five degrees. The mess would be bad enough, but there was nothing as bad as a body that had roasted in Miami’s summer heat. The July climate turned a closed-up, non-climate-controlled house into a virtual oven. Not a pleasant situation.

      The Professor poked his head through her door. “Have you read the Herald this morning?”

      Alex tossed the work order aside and picked up her latte to cradle it in her hands. “Haven’t had time. Did you find something interesting?” She savored the sweet concoction as she waited expectantly for him to share the news she’d missed.

      “I think perhaps you should read this for yourself.”

      He made the short journey to and around behind her desk. Alex leaned back out of the way while he spread the paper in front of her. He tapped the headline Detective’s Death Under Investigation.

      “Isn’t he a friend of yours?”

      Somehow СКАЧАТЬ