Dirty Harriet Read online

  Dirty Harriet

  by

  Miriam Auerbach

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-302-3

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-259-0

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2006 by Miriam Auerbach

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  A mass market edition of this book was published by Harlequin in 2006

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites – BelleBooks.com and BellBridgeBooks.com.

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  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo credits:

  Background graphic(manipulated) © Les Cunliffe | Dreamstime.com

  Woman (manipulated) © Branislav Ostojic | Dreamstime.com

  Bullet holes (manipulated) © Robert Adrian Hillman | Dreamstime.com

  Tropical scenery (manipulated) © Martin Maun | Dreamstime.com

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  Dedication

  Big-time thanks to: Paige Wheeler of Folio Literary Management; Pat Van Wie, Deborah Smith, Debra Dixon, Brittany Shirley, and Danielle Childers of BelleBooks/Bell Bridge Books; and especially my husband, David Rafaidus.

  Prologue

  I CONFESS. I said it. When my husband raised his fists at me that last time, I said, “Go ahead, make my day!”

  He obliged. So did I, putting a .44 Magnum bullet through his heart and putting him out of my misery. Permanently.

  Hey, it was a clear case of self-defense, as attested to by the five hundred witnesses at the scene, a wedding reception at the Boca Raton Beach Club (BaR-B-Cue for short). Okay, so I ruined the bride’s big day. Give me a break, will you? The SOB had it coming, trust me.

  Well, the press had a field day, dubbing me “Dirty Harriet” in honor of Clint Eastwood’s notorious Dirty Harry character. That suits me fine—there are a lot of similarities between old Harry and me. We both speak softly and carry a big gun.

  My real name is Harriet Horowitz. I’m a recovering Boca Babe. No, those aren’t the opening lines of a Boca Babes Anonymous meeting. There is no such beast, and even if there were, groups aren’t my bag.

  So what’s to recover from, you ask? Let’s start with personal appearance. The Boca Babe needs: a weekly manicure, biweekly pedicure, monthly highlighting and razor-edge trimming, lip and brow waxing, bikini waxing, a truckload of cosmetics to keep Estée Lauder and Lancôme in business, twice-weekly trips to the mall with the personal shopper, daily sessions with the personal trainer. Had enough? We haven’t even started on household maintenance.

  The Boca Babe must be in possession of a McMansion—the six-bedroom, five-bath faux Mediterranean palazzo situated in one of the euphemistically named “gated communities” (translation: walled fortresses). And does this household take care of itself? Of course not. You need a gardener, a housekeeper, a pool service person—minimum. Those are your regulars. Then there’s the other help you call in for special occasions, such as hosting your son’s bar mitzvah or your parents’ golden anniversary. This requires a party planner, a caterer, a wardrobe consultant. Well, you get the picture.

  Now, let’s face it, most women cannot acquire all of this themselves. But there’s one surefire way to achieve this fairy tale, and that’s to marry a rich American prince.

  My prince was named Bruce. I’d met him when I was attending one of those prissy women’s colleges up in New England. My mom had sent me there, not to get any useful education, mind you, just to become the right kind of woman to snare the right kind of man. And Bruce was it. He was a law student at Yale. He was hot, smart, charming, connected, and soon to be rich. A budding Boca Babe’s dream. Sure, there were the usual warning signs of incipient abuse—the moodiness, the possessiveness, the volatility. But just like most women, l didn’t put two and two together, or maybe I repressed whatever doubts I may have had, because I just had to have him. After all, you can’t be a Boca Babe if you’re manless.

  I brought Bruce home to Mom in Boca. She thoroughly approved, so we got married and started living the high life. Bruce became an associate, then a partner, in Boca’s leading law firm, representing pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, and the tobacco industry against people who claimed they’d suffered injury or loss of a loved one due to the corporations’ negligence or malfeasance. Was it lucrative? Hell, yes. Moral? I didn’t want to go there. I was too busy spending the money. Every time a little voice of conscience started nagging at me, I’d suppress it by going on a shopping spree with my friends.

  While I was shopping, Bruce was working and hanging with Boca’s power brokers, fueling his energy and ego with cocaine. And as his blow use increased, so did his blowups and put-downs. In his eyes I’d gone from being a brainy babe to a babbling bimbo. Pretty soon the shoving, slapping, hitting, and kicking started. But while he was addicted to the coke, I was addicted to the money and the image it brought. So for ten years I put up with his verbal and physical abuse to “keep up appearances.”

  My road to liberation started when my personal trainer suggested I take up the Israeli martial art Krav Maga to get my ass into shape. In the process of toning my backside, something else happened. I began to grow a backbone. As my self-defense skills increased, I started to ask myself: Did I really need to be a punching bag in order to keep the McMansion, the Mercedes, the manicures, the whole shebang? For that matter, did I really need the McMansion, the Mercedes, the manicures, and the whole shebang in the first place?

  Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t I just divorce the schmuck—did I have to whack him? Easier said than done. You know the story. I left a couple times, he came and dragged me back, threatening to kill not only me but my mom if I ever left again. And then there was the response of the cops and the courts.

  One time Bruce was arrested after he threw me to the ground outside a five-star restaurant. But he was buddies with the police chief, who personally went to the jail at three a.m. to release him and drop the charges. Another time he beat me so badly I had to go to the hospital. We almost made it to court on that charge, but then the hospital records documenting my injuries mysteriously disappeared, and the case was dismissed for lack of evidence.

  By then Bruce had incurred some serious debts with his drug habit. Some really shady characters started hounding him. Bruce bought himself a gun. He just didn’t figure that someday I’d use it on him. Neither did I. Until that night.

  That was four years ago, when I was thirty-five. After the shooting, I spent a few nights in the county jail overlooking Donald Trump’s golf course in West Palm. Finally, the D.A. decided it was justifiable homicide and let me go. So, I unloaded my Boca Babe lifestyle—the house, the car, the clothes, everything—and decided to start over as far from there as I could. Well, inasmuch as l hate winter and love Florida, I didn’t venture all that far. Just to the edge of the Everglades.

  Now, home is a two-
room wood cabin up on stilts in the Glades just west of Boca. Basically, I’ve moved from swank to swamp. You know that magazine you see in checkout lines at the grocery store, Real Simple? That’s just for starters. I’m talking the real thing. No electricity lines (just my generator), no land phone (just my cell), and no neighbors (just Lana, the six-foot gator that lurks around my front porch). No roads, either—just my airboat.

  Now, if all that seems like a drastic change, it is. Here’s why: with any kind of recovery, you’ve got to go cold turkey. You’ve got to change playgrounds and playmates. There’s no doing it half-assed, or you get sucked right back in to where you started. So I had to reinvent my life. And just moving to a different city wouldn’t cut it. I wanted to meet the challenge of total independence.

  The only obstacle was money. I had no kids—neither of us had ever wanted them—so that’s one worry I didn’t have. But as a Boca Babe, I’d spent my husband’s income as fast as it came in. And he did, too. Even the house was mortgaged to the hilt. So I was left with nothing but my jewelry, which I sold to buy my one treat to myself, my Hog—a 2003, 100th anniversary, 883cc Harley Hugger. That Evolution engine represents my own personal evolution. For some people there’s therapy, for me there’s my Hog.

  Anyway, I needed to support myself, so I went back to school and learned some skills for real life, as opposed to the twisted fairy tale I’d been living. Then I answered an ad in the paper for someone with computer skills, which turned out to be for a private eye agency, doing skip traces and background checks. When my boss learned that I also possessed a whole slew of Boca Babe skills, he sent me out on cases as a decoy, enticing cheating husbands into making a pass, then getting the whole thing on tape. It was pretty sleazy, but it gave me a start in the business. A year or so later I was able to get my own license and open my own agency, ScamBusters. And I set out to expose the steamy underbelly of Boca.

  I’ve been in business a little over a year now, and let me tell you, it’s booming. Boca has scams aplenty. This is South Florida, after all. You didn’t think all that crisp new money floating around here was earned by honest hard work, did you? Insurance scams, investment scams, immigration scams—you name it, we’ve got it.

  But the last thing I expected that February day when the Contessa von Phul walked into my office was a murder case. I guess even I hadn’t known just how ugly things could get in beautiful Boca Raton.

  Chapter 1

  THE CONTESSA walked into my office on a Tuesday clad in Chanel from head to toe—the pink suit with white trim, the pearls, the black-toed shoes, the white quilted bag with the chain strap—with her Chihuahua, Coco, ensconced on her left arm. The scent of Chanel No. 19 wafted in with her. Eau de parfum, eau de dog and eau de dollars hit me at once. My sinuses rebelled immediately, and I went into a sneezing fit.

  Glancing around imperiously at my barren office as she flipped back her mahogany pageboy hair, the contessa pronounced, “Harriet, what you need in here is some foliage. You know, the leaves absorb the toxins, oxygenate the air, clear those allergies right up.”

  I just love it when people tell me what I need, don’t you? She could take that little rodent-disguised-as-a-canine and—

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” I said. I learned long ago that you don’t mess with the contessa. She was aristocracy, after all. The Boca version, that is. Her true origins were unknown. Whether she had acquired her title through birth, marriage, or purchase, no one knew. There was no count in her present, and she didn’t speak of her past. Many believed that she had to be the real thing, since who would actually pay for a name like von Phul? Personally, I wasn’t so sure. I happened to know she was a crafty one—she could well have bought the name, figuring people would think exactly that—there was no way anyone would buy it. Faking everyone out with a double negative, so to speak.

  I knew the contessa from my former Boca Babe life. We had served on several charity committees together. She was the senior version of the Boca Babe—the Botox Babe. Seventy going on fifty. Yep, we have some of the world’s best surgeons right here in Boca.

  She hadn’t finished with her critique of my lifestyle yet. Her eyes did a full-body scan as she checked me out. A Babe compulsion—they just can’t help themselves. She took in my buff butt and biceps, big boobs, big dark hair, and big dark eyes. She did miss my big-ass Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum gun, which I had license to carry concealed and kept stashed in my boot.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to spiff up your wardrobe a little,” she declared, peering at me down her hawkish nose.

  I had on my usual post-Babe uniform—all black, all stretch tank top and boot-cut leggings. She clearly wasn’t impressed.

  “I’ve simplified, Contessa,” I replied. “Besides, S and L are a girl’s best friends.”

  She looked confused. Her brow would have wrinkled, but the Botox wouldn’t let it.

  “Savings and Loans?” she asked.

  “No—Spandex and Lycra.”

  She rolled her green eyes and looked around for a place to sit.

  She brushed some imaginary dog hairs off of one of the two Naugahyde chairs in front of my desk and gingerly placed Coco on it. Coco did a body shake and deposited some non-imaginary hairs. The contessa settled her tall frame into the other seat.

  “Harriet, I have a case for you,” she said, cutting to the chase. “An unsolved murder.”

  “But Contessa,” I said, “I don’t do murder. I do scams. My motto is ‘They scam ’em, I slam ’em.”’

  “But Harriet,” she said, “this is a case that cries out for justice. And you are just the person for it.”

  “Why is that?” I asked, astounded.

  “You will care about this case like no one else. You won’t let go until you’ve solved it, because a part of the victim is a part of you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Which part is that?”

  “That’s for you to discover.”

  She was trying to get to me, I could tell. And she was succeeding, damn her.

  “Go ahead,” I said grudgingly.

  “As you well know, I am benefactress of the Central American Rescue Mission.”

  How could I not know? For that matter, how could anyone in Boca not know? The contessa’s name and face were plastered all over the place promoting her pet charity. She was in the papers, in Boca Raton magazine, on flyers in the Publix grocery, everywhere. The Central American Rescue Mission provided assistance to refugees who had fled to Florida from the war-torn countries of the south. The contessa’s interest was thought to derive from her own childhood experiences in wartime Europe, though of course no one really knew.

  “Maybe you remember from the papers, Harriet, that one of my girls was killed about a year ago,” she continued. All the Rescue Mission’s clients were her “girls” and “boys.”

  “Yes, I do vaguely remember something. A body was found in the tomato fields west of here?”

  “Not a body,” she admonished. “A person. Gladys Gutierrez. Yes, they found the poor soul strangled last February. Just think of the irony, Harriet. This sweet girl had escaped the killing fields of Guatemala only to wind up dead in the tomato fields of South Florida. And she was just on the verge of starting a new life. She was learning English, she’d just gotten a new job, her future was bright. Tell me, where is the justice in that?”

  “What about the police?” I asked.

  “Well, of course they tried. But you know how it is. More pressing matters came up, and Gladys has been shelved.”

  I knew what she was talking about. Boca had been rocked by a few upper-crust scandals lately. The former president of the local public university had been accused of accepting a brand-new, red Corvette bought with university foundation money that had been laundered through his wife’s interior decorator, while the local private college was accused of illegally procuring cadavers for i
ts funeral services program without the families’ consent. So I could see how a pesky little problem like the murder of a Guatemalan refugee had taken a back seat.

  “I didn’t want to interfere with the official investigation,” the contessa continued, “but it’s been a year now, and I had my own internal deadline. I decided I’d give the police that long, and if they didn’t make an arrest by now, I’d take matters into my own hands. Now I’m putting it in yours.”

  There were plenty of other P.I.s in town she could have picked. But she was getting to me. I could see the writing on the wall—if I didn’t solve this case, no one ever would. Not that I have an ego or anything.

  There was another thing, too. I figured I kind of owed the contessa. When I’d been in the slammer after offing my husband, most of my Boca Babe friends had dumped me like toxic waste, but not the contessa. She had been one of the few to visit me and had even made public statements in my defense. In fact, I sometimes wondered if she’d had anything to do with the charges being dropped.

  “Okay,I’ll consider the case,” I muttered.

  “Of course you will,” she said. She whipped a sheaf of papers out of her Chanel bag. “Here is a copy of the police summary of the case. I will see you at the Rescue Mission tomorrow morning at nine.” She picked up Coco and headed for the door.

  The gall! She had obviously decided before even coming in that I would take the case. I glared out the iron bars covering the plate-glass window as she pulled out in her Rolls.

  I took a deep breath. The contessa had put her faith in me, big-time. No one had ever done that before. Trust me to attract someone’s adulterous husband? Sure. Catch a con artist? Sure. But solve a murder? Not. The contessa was putting me to the test, and I had to meet the challenge. I couldn’t let her down.

  IT WAS GETTING late in the day, so I decided to pack it in and head home. I would read the case file tonight. I shut down my computer, turned out the lights, and stepped outside. I locked the door, then the wrought-iron gate that serves as my security.