A Body To Die For. G. A. McKevett

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Tammy snickered. “Whatever you say, boss lady.”

      “I say…I think we should keep an eye on the creepo with the potbelly in the too-tight shorts over there.” She discreetly nodded toward a middle-aged guy on a stationary bicycle near the window. His electric-blue latex shorts announced to the world that he was neither well-endowed nor circumcised. And both facts were bits of information that Savannah would have gladly lived and died without knowing.

      “Dirk should arrest him for wearing those shorts, if nothing else,” Tammy added. “If that isn’t indecent public exposure, I don’t know what is.”

      “Yeah, really. With any luck, it’ll be him.”

      Savannah continued to hope and work the machines, as she and Tammy moved around the room, trying first one apparatus, then another.

      Dirk stuck with his weird pulley contraption, and Savannah was pretty sure he did so to remain close to the bimbo next to him. She made a mental note to mention the fact to him later, to point out what a fool he had made of himself.

      Hey, he didn’t have a wife to do it. Somebody had to build the guy’s character.

      And all the time, Savannah watched the weirdo in the blue shorts and hoped he would do something suspicious…other than dress grotesquely.

      But he didn’t.

      She kept constant tabs on him throughout his short and nonexhaustive workout, but he finished, disappeared into the men’s locker room, and left the establishment, wearing skintight jeans and a mesh tank top. And he never passed within ten feet of the women’s locker room entrance.

      Meanwhile, Savannah’s muscles were starting to complain. Bitterly. “This bites,” she told Tammy. “Whoever our guy is, he’s not here today. We might as well leave.”

      “Yeah, really.” Tammy paused and dabbed a couple of barely there drops of sweat from her brow with a towel. “I need to get out of here and go on my daily run. I want to help Dirk, but this is seriously cutting into my own personal workout time.”

      Soaking wet with sweat, hurting in every atom of her body, feeling every one of her forty-plus years, Savannah decided not to tumble off the machine, fall onto the floor, and curl into a fetal position. Doing so would lack a certain…dignity.

      “Daily run, my ass,” she muttered.

      “Huh?”

      Tammy looked so sweet and innocent. Savannah also decided not to slap her. “Why don’t you run along?” she said. “Make it obvious to Mr. Muscles and those older guys in the corner over there that you’re on your way to the locker room. Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of them will follow you. I’ll keep an eye on them while I tell Dirk this gig is over. At least for today.”

      “You got it.”

      Tammy gathered her towel, clothes, and water bottle and sashayed toward the women’s locker room door. At least, she tried to sashay. Savannah smiled thinking that she really couldn’t expect a Yankee gal to priss properly. If a girl wasn’t raised on sweet tea and buttermilk biscuits, a certain wiggle was missing from her walk. ’Twas a shame, but it couldn’t be helped.

      However, Tammy was fulfilling her duties as bimbo bait quite well. Savannah couldn’t help noticing how every set of male eyes followed her friend as she left the room. Undoubtedly, if there was a hardcore, lawbreaking, dirty picture–snapping pervert among them, Tammy’s tight, size-zero heinie would draw him out.

      Savannah picked up her gym bag, walked over to Dirk, leaned down, and said in his ear, “Okay, big boy. Your girls have enjoyed about as much of this bullpucky as we can stand. We’re pulling the plug and heading home.”

      “Gotcha,” he replied, looking as tired and disgusted as she felt. “The magic is pretty much gone for me, too.”

      She followed his eyes as he watched the girl who had been next to him walk away and head toward the locker room herself. On the way, she stopped and said something to Mr. Bulging Biceps, then gave him a quick kiss.

      “Hm-m-m,” Dirk grumbled. “And I figured he was gay.”

      “You think all muscular guys with great hair are gay.”

      His feathers instantly ruffled. “You like his hair?”

      She sighed. “He’s got hair, Dirk. Hair is hair. Frankly, I think it’s overrated, but—”

      “Go shower.”

      “I’m going to. And I’ve gotta keep an eye on the kid, in case it’s a janitor or somebody who works here sneaking in the back door or whatever.”

      “Give a yell if you need me.”

      She gave him a sweet smile. Sweeter than he deserved, considering how he’d been ogling the barely legal female next to him. “We always holler out for you, sugar, when we need to be rescued by a burnin’ hunk o’ manhood.”

      He lit up so brightly that she felt guilty and didn’t have the heart to tell him she was pulling his leg. The only time she “hollered out” for him was when she needed someone to hold down her sofa, eat her popcorn, drink her beer, and watch boxing on her TV.

      Or when she needed a dear friend.

      She left him and made her way to the door in the back marked “Women’s Locker Room.” And even though Clarissa was still screeching about the horrors of lard and cellulite, Savannah couldn’t help noticing that male eyes followed her own figure, too. Maybe not as many as Tammy’s, but she still had her share of admirers.

      A good sashay mixed with a hearty dash of self-confidence went a long way when it came to attraction and sex appeal.

      She was feeling tired and lazy and relaxed when she entered the locker room, ready to just shower, go home, and kick back.

      But the moment she passed through the dressing area and into the showers, a creepy, apprehensive feeling washed over her. The hair wasn’t exactly standing up on the back of her neck, but she had the sensation that some sort of threat was nearby.

      It was an intuitive warning that she had felt many times before as a police officer and since, as a private investigator. And she had learned, long ago, not to ignore it.

      She opened her mouth to call out to Tammy, but thought better of it. Instead she glanced around taking in the closed door on the back wall of the long, narrow room, the two rows of shower stalls on either side.

      She could hear more than one shower running. The odor of disinfectants, mixed with the floral smells of soaps and shampoos, scented the humid air.

      Only three stalls were being used their plastic curtains drawn. She walked quietly between the rows, bending over to peek at the bare feet exposed between the bottom of the curtain and the floor.

      Tammy’s perfectly pedicured, hot pink toenails made identification easy. Three stalls away from Tammy were a pair of feet wearing bright red and purple flip-flops—the senior lady from the rowing machine, no doubt.

      But it was the feet wearing the sneakers that caught her eye.

      Sneakers СКАЧАТЬ