Maxie Steele swished the long celery stalk around in the bottom of her second Bloody Mary. Two men got up from a nearby table and went past her and out through a doorway shaped like a basketball hoop. She caught a glimpse of their blue and silver Realtor pins as they went by. No surprise, since Lefty’s bar was just across the boulevard from Prescott-Cole’s College Park branch office. Their training center was in the basement of the building.
Maxie had spent time at that branch. The previous sales manager, Peter Mathos, had come to her with an article from REALTOR NEWS, citing FBI crime statistics on assaults against real estate agents. Assaults had risen 50%. The manager had no clue that 272 agents had been raped last year until one of his went down at an Open House. Then he started paying attention.
Maxie, who held a black belt in Karate, had been giving self-defense courses in the training center for all the firm’s Maryland branches. She knew many of the agents well, especially the women.
At that instant Liz Haviland appeared in the doorway. She’d had her chestnut brown hair recently done in the new short, sleek hairdos so popular in Europe. It looked stunning on her. She smiled across the crowded corner at Maxie, her usual warm smile that made everyone who received it feel special. No wonder she was so popular. Everyone craves approval.
“Sorry I’m late. The Beltway was a parking lot. Getting across the bridges from Annapolis was excruciating. I’ll be glad when they get Route 50 repaired. Peter’s on his way. Got held up at the last minute.”
“So what else is new?”
“You know real estate.” She looked up at Paul still hovering over the table. “I’ll have a banana daiquiri.”
“I can sneak you one double. Happy Hour is officially over.”
“Thanks, Paul. I need it.”
“Your hair is sensational,” Maxie told her, taking out a steno pad.”
“Thanks. Morale booster. That outfit you are wearing is a knock-out,” she returned.”
In contrast to Liz, Maxie never looked well-bred, but, rather, tried to look stunning. She favored daring contemporary clothes and adventurous colors in harmony with her Scorpion nature. Dressing well was one more challenge she had accepted and she knew she succeeded in looking sexy and mysterious.
“Have you found anything about Rhonda’s partner?”
“Plenty. I’ve also found out Rhonda Twomey was a Scorpio, like me. Born November sixth.
“What does that mean?” New-age think left Liz cold.
Strange new ideas intrigued Maxie. A fan of P.D. James, she had never forgotten the mystery writer’s advice in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman,” Getting to know the dead persons can lead you directly to their murderers.”
This advice played a pivotal part in Maxie’s successful last adventure, the murder of a Rehoboth Beach Priest, and ultimately her decision to apply for her private investigator’s license. Although she had not yet received it, she hoped one day to be a successful P.I. The thrill of the hunt and the need to go beyond these repetitious self-defense seminars attracted her.
“We don’t have a whole lot of time, Maxie. That gumshoe, Nick Berra, is hot on my tail.”
Maxie laughed. “Very apt description. As a matter of fact I am not laboring under the delusion that we can sit around forever in Lefty’s while you consume enough banana daiquiris to waste a banana tree. Do you know anything about Detective Nicolas Guido Berra?”
“I know he’s a hunk, as the teen-agers say.”
“Don’t let that fool you. First of all, he’s a bastard. He not only had a mistress the whole time he was married, but he ran around on her. He hasn’t got a straight bone in his body Nick’s love life is not important. What is important is that he has no scruples about convicting an innocent person if it will make him look good.”
Liz looked properly intimidated.
“He was a cop in Baltimore and transferred to the Anne Arundel County homicide section in the mid nineties when he was almost forty years old. He turned out to be the best investigator the Criminal Investigations Divisions ever had. He has solved more cases in the two years he’s been there than all the other detectives combined. But he doesn’t care who he destroys in the process.”
Lefty’s vibrated. University students wearing Maryland sweat shirts and young people in Redskins jackets jammed the bar. All the tables downstairs overflowed. Maxie sighted two female Prescott-Cole agents inexorably making their way up the mezzanine stairs toward the only two empty chairs—at their table. Anxious to clue Liz in on her adversary, Maxie rattled on like a truck racing to beat the drawbridge across the Severn River on a summer Friday.
“Nicky-boy is smart. Brilliant, in fact. If he had a decent education there would be no stopping him. He’s a paisan from a poor Italian family in Baltimore. Murders the King’s English. His father carried a bottle of dago red to work every day. Drank the whole liter at lunch. Every night he picked up where he left off at noon and drank himself into oblivion. Poor Nick, he couldn’t afford a coke till he was twelve. He had a paper route and had to fork over all the money to his mother so he and the other six kids could eat.”
“How did you find out all this?”
Maxie batted her liquid brown eyes. “Well, it’s a long story. He is a pretty hard fellow to resist. All I want to say.”
She glanced up. The two women agents bore down upon them. “Anyway,” Maxie wound up breathlessly, “he’s definitely a thinker. Knows all about the Italian writers and poets. Can talk as well about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire as he can about wound tracks and bullet calibers. Witty as hell, but dangerous. No morals.”
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