Talk Nerdy to Me (Nerds, #5)(12)
Author: Vicki Lewis Thompson

"No, but I’m a… an engineer."

She swung to face him. "You were going to say it’s because you’re a man, weren’t you? Then you thought better of it at the last minute."

"Maybe." He had the decency to look uncomfortable. "Sorry about that."

"Damn straight. For all you know I’m a black belt who can take somebody out while you’re still standing there figuring the odds."

"Are you a black belt?"

"No." She’d thought about taking self-defense classes when she’d lived in New York, but now it seemed unnecessary.

"Then I wish you’d lock your door."

"I refuse to live like an inner-city person when I’m not one anymore." But she turned around and checked the peephole before she opened the door. Some habits were hard to break.

"It’s Manny and Kyle." She opened the door. "Hi, guys! I thought you were frosting cookies."

Manny stomped the snow from his shoes. "We were, but when we didn’t hear back from Rick, we thought we’d come over and check to make sure everything’s okay."

Eve glanced at Charlie, who gave a noncommittal shrug. No help there. "Rick and Eunice went over to her house for a little while," Eve said. "They’ll probably be back any minute."

"Where does she live?" Manny asked.

"Right next door," Eve said. "They should be back any time. Would you like to come in and wait for them? We have extra pizza, and I might have a couple of beers in the refrigerator."

"No, thanks." Manny started to turn away. "We’ll just go check on Rick."

"I’m sure that’s not necessary," Charlie said.

"We think it is necessary," Kyle said. "We just heard from an important client of his. We’re talking big money. Rick would definitely want to respond personally to this. He’s given us strict instructions to let him know whenever this client calls."

"Then I’ll go get him." Charlie reached for his boots and shoved his feet into them. "I wouldn’t want him to lose a valuable client."

"I’ll go, too." Eve started putting on her boots and coat. She had an urge to talk to Eunice, anyway. Maybe the subject of hovercraft notes could be broached, to see whether Eunice looked guilty. Eve couldn’t believe that her neighbor had taken anything, but now that the thought had been planted, it had taken root.

"Then I guess we’ll all go," Manny said.

Before they left, Charlie took Eve’s keys from the metal key holder she had mounted by the front door. Silently he handed them to her.

"I was going to lock it, you know," she said, feeling a little belligerent.

"Glad to hear it."

She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. Instead she opted for maturity as she stepped outside and locked the door behind her. Before all of this came up she might not have locked it, though. Running next door hadn’t seemed like reason enough. She hated the idea that her concept of small-town living might be naive.

On the way across the snowy yard, she leaned close to Charlie so Manny and Kyle wouldn’t hear. "There aren’t any lights on in the front of the house."

"I noticed." Charlie’s boots crunched through the top layer of frozen snow.

"Do you really think he wants to be interrupted, no matter what?" Eve tried to match her stride to Charlie’s but came up a little short. They’d never walked anywhere together before, and she hadn’t realized what big steps he took.

"The Rick I used to know wouldn’t want to be interrupted, but maybe success has changed his priorities. That’s why I want to handle this instead of leaving it to those X-rated cookie frosters."

"X-rated? What do you mean by that?"

"Uh, nothing."

"Come on, Charlie. Don’t make me ask Manny and Kyle."

"They’re for a bachelorette party." Charlie sounded uncomfortable. "They’re on the explicit side."

Eve lowered her voice. "Your mom and aunt are baking explicit cookies?"

"Yep."

"I guess I shouldn’t laugh, but that’s too funny."

"Yeah, it’s hilarious."

Obviously Charlie didn’t appreciate the humor in it. "Now I have to see one. I can’t believe those two women convinced the guys to help frost. I love that."

"My mom and Aunt Myrtle could charm the birds from the trees. Listen, when we get there, you and I will block the doorway so that if Rick wants us all to go away, that’s what we’ll tell these overzealous assistants."

"I, urn, would actually like to have a word with Eunice."

Charlie gave her a sharp glance. "So you don’t think she’s so innocent, after all?"

"I think she’s innocent," Eve said quickly. "I just want to make sure."

"You’d better get that key."

"I suppose." She hated the idea of mistrusting anyone and couldn’t imagine asking Eunice to return the key.

"Any other keys floating around?" Charlie’s breath fogged the air.

"I sent one to my parents, and another one to my sister, Denise." Six months ago she’d been so proud of owning her own little house that she’d mailed the keys in a flourish of imagined hospitality. Her parents had not visited, which was probably just as well. Denise had been here once, right after she’d moved in, when she’d been able to blame the chaos on moving. Six months later she had nothing to blame but inertia.

"I guess we can eliminate them as suspects."

"Suspects?" She said it way too loud, loud enough for Manny and Kyle to hear. Instantly she lowered her voice again. "We don’t have suspects. This isn’t like a police investigation. The notes will turn up."

"I don’t think so."

Eve didn’t think so, either, but she didn’t want to start accusing people. "If you’re so intent on playing Joe Friday, you can grill my sister tomorrow night. I’ll get out the rubber hoses and the spotlight."

"Your sister’s coming to visit?"

"Yeah." Then Eve remembered Denise’s reaction to the hovercraft. She’d told Eve to stop working on it immediately. Surely Denise wouldn’t drive down here, use her key, and steal notes in a misguided attempt to save her baby sister from bodily harm. Surely not.

"Does she know about the hovercraft?"

"Uh-huh."

"What does she think?"

"Oh, she loves the idea." Eve wondered if her nose would grow. Charlie would find out soon enough what Denise thought of the project, but at the moment Eve didn’t want to give him information that would land Denise squarely on his list of suspects.

As she climbed the steps to Eunice’s snow-covered front porch, Eve wished Rick hadn’t mentioned the hovercraft Monday night at the Rack and Balls. Everything had been running smoothly, with the slight exception of the explosion, until she’d unveiled her project. Now her notes had disappeared. No matter how much Eve wanted to believe otherwise, she didn’t think that was an accident.

Charlie rang Eunice’s doorbell and tried to concentrate on the matter at hand, but instead he kept thinking about those missing notes. He was convinced someone had swiped them. The project was a potential moneymaker that had no patent protection yet, and now several people knew about it. That put Eve and her invention in a vulnerable position.

Eunice came to the door wearing a pair of glow-in-the-dark antennae and not much else. Her black thong and tiny black bra might get her kicked out of a nudist colony, but she’d still be booked on charges of indecency if she stepped out of her house looking like that. The X-Files theme song floated from somewhere inside.

Eunice looked startled. "What is this, a posse?"

Although distracted by the bobbing antennae and the vast expanses of goose-bumpy bare skin, Charlie managed to stay on topic. "One of Rick’s important clients wants to talk to him."

"And it took four of you to deliver that message? Oh, never mind. It’s too cold to stand here and discuss this. Come on in." She stepped away from the door, shivering

Charlie stomped the snow from his boots and took off his jacket as he walked into the dark living room. A shaft of bluish light from an open door down the hall indicated where the action was. No telling what kind of action involved green fluorescent antennae, though. The music came from that room, too. Charlie was afraid to speculate.

Once everyone had gathered in the cavelike atmosphere, Eunice closed the door, which shut out the light from the porch and made the room even darker. "Rick’s tied up at the moment, so make yourselves comfortable while I go get him." She hurried down the hall and everything that could bounce, did bounce.

As they all stood around in the living room, the only sound besides the X-Files music was the rasp of zippers on everybody’s coats. Charlie figured they all were busy processing the sight of Eunice in that getup. He started to take off his glasses to clean away the condensation and then stopped himself. Sometimes a little protective condensation was a good thing.

Finally Manny cleared his throat. "Seeing her reminds me of a Star Trek convention some woman dragged me to years ago."

"In that case, sign me up, Scotty," Kyle asked." ‘Cause I could go for some of that, especially after painting those cookies. They got me in the mood, you know?"

Manny snorted. "Give me a break. You are always in the mood."

Charlie edged closer to Eve. "Does she wear those antennae a lot?"

"I’ve never seen her in them. I’m guessing they’re reserved for special occasions." Eve lowered her voice to a murmur. "Do you think Rick’s tied up as in busy, or… ?"

"Could be both." His cousin had never been able to resist a wild woman, and Eunice definitely qualified.

Rick appeared more quickly than Charlie had expected.

Thank God he’d at least pulled on his slacks and wasn’t wearing antennae or trailing any velvet ropes. Too bad he hadn’t grabbed a shirt, though. A shirt would have spared Charlie a view of Rick’s n**ples adorned in concentric circles of fluorescent green paint. Charlie’s glasses had chosen this moment to clear up.

A few steps behind him came Eunice tying the belt of her black silk bathrobe. She continued to wear the antennae. Charlie wondered if she’d skipped the bathrobe on her first trip out because the tie had been in use.

Rick barely glanced at Charlie and Eve. All his attention was focused on his assistants. "What’s up?"

Manny’s gaze, which had been directed at the fluorescent circles, moved slowly upward. "It’s, uh, Peterson."

"Yeah, Peterson." Kyle continued to stare at Rick’s chest. "I’m not so sure you should go painting things on yourself, Ricky. The skin absorbs whatever’s in that paint, you know. Most paint is loaded with toxins. You could be poisoning yourself."

"Kyle, forget about the damned paint," Manny said. "Rick, Peterson wanted to make sure we were still on for that deal next week."

"Absolutely!" Rick stepped closer to his assistants. "You told him everything was in the works, right?"

"He wanted to hear it from you," Manny said, "but it seems you weren’t answering your cell."

"Oh." Rick looked around, as if trying to locate his phone. "I might’ve accidentally turned it off. Want me to give him a call?"

"I think you’d better," Kyle said. "You know how he gets."

"I do know." Rick turned toward Charlie and Eve as if finally realizing they were in the room. "Temperamental chent. It’s important to keep guys like this happy, though."

"I guess so." Charlie found it difficult to think of Rick as a highly paid professional while he sported green rings around his n**ples. But maybe green rings were all the rage back in L.A.

Charlie could only imagine the egos that Rick had to work with in the fashion world. He supposed they expected Rick to be available twenty-four/seven. But the Rick he used to know wouldn’t have been so accommodating, especially if he happened to be in the middle of a hot episode.

People changed, though. Charlie had always thought of Rick as calling all his own shots, yet here he was coddling some prestigious client. Maybe Rick’s success didn’t equal freedom, after all.

"I’ll get my cell." Rick headed back toward the blue-lit bedroom.

"Look under the electronic muscle stimulator," Eunice said.

Charlie’s eyes widened. Maybe he was misinterpreting what he’d heard. He glanced at Eve to get her reaction.

She was staring at Eunice in alarm. "Uh, Eunice, I know Rick’s a consenting adult and everything, but—"

"Don’t worry," Eunice said. "It only administers a mild shock, the kind used for muscle therapy. Gonaug, that was my chief instructor from the planet Titillium, taught me that certain kinds of electrical stimulation used at the right moment can be very exciting."

Manny shifted his weight and looked uncomfortable, but Kyle listened in openmouthed wonder. "Yeah? You got abducted?"

Eunice smiled. "I did. It was wonderful."

"Damn." Kyle shook his head. "Why can’t I ever have stuff like that happen to me?"

Rick walked through the shaft of blue light spilling out of the doorway as he returned to the living room and

Charlie shivered. This whole business was getting too weird.

"I called Peterson," Rick said. "Everything’s cool." "Good," Manny said. "Better keep that cell phone on." "Will do. Thanks, guys."

Manny crooked a finger at Kyle. "Let’s go. We promised to finish the cookies tonight."

"I know we did." Kyle glanced longingly at Eunice. "But threesomes can be nice. I could work the stimulator for a while."

"Kyle." Manny’s expression darkened. "We’re leaving. Now."

"Right." Watching Eunice over his shoulder, Kyle followed Manny to the door. He bumped into the jamb on his way out and stumbled out into the snowy night without closing the door. Manny had to come back and do it.

Charlie was ready to leave, too. Not only were the green circles freaking him out, the whole kinky-sex scene was giving him ideas he shouldn’t be having, ideas about Eve spread-eagled on her round bed. Charlie wouldn’t need anything electronic to turn that into a major experience. Seeing Eve nak*d on that bed would be plenty of stimulation.