The Hot Ladies Murder Club

The red neon letters of the hotel sign flickered like flares against the red sky and bay. In the distance a lone sailboat rode the waves. Not that Hannah noticed the yacht. She was too busy wondering why she’d let Taz talk her into this.

One glance at that hotel sign had her pulse in overdrive. The huge motorcycles gleaming in the red sunlight in the jammed parking lot didn’t help her mood, either.

“Taz, let’s go home.”

“We just got here, girl. Georgia’s fine. Lilly’s a great sitter.”

When Taz wheeled into the lot, a burly pair of bikers in black vests with chains belted around their waists hooted, “Women—over here!”

Grinning at Taz, they gunned their engines and then rolled their big chopped hogs out of a parking space beside the hotel entrance.

The bikers’ burly arms had tattoo “sleeves.”

“Taz, I want to go home.”

With a jaunty smile Taz zoomed into the empty spot. “Jesus, I wish we were on my bike.”

Hannah buried her face in her hands.

Taz laughed. “You need this recharge way more than I do. Your life is too bo-oring.”

“Which is exactly the way I want it.”

“Why?”

Because I want to be safe. Because I want Georgia safe. Because I’ve learned lessons I never wanted to learn.

Not that she could tell Taz any of her story. Not about her crazy, superfamous parents or their highly publicized squabbles. Not about the wall between their two houses. Not about her little-girl dream of wanting them to simply be happy. Not about her own fame at too early an age. Not about her own need to rescue bad handsome men, either. Not about the terrible experiences her husband had had in boarding school.

She’d loved the wrong men with a big open heart. She’d paid a huge price for her naiveté. And so had Georgia. No more. For Georgia’s sake, if not her own, she had to make more prudent decisions.

Inside the hotel, Hannah had barely had one long slim foot with badly painted orange toenails across the threshold of the jammed bar, before she knew for sure she was in the wrong place at the wrong time again.

Then Veronica showed up in a hot pink miniskirt and a revealing blouse looking wild beside a radiantly pregnant Zoë.

Every outlaw in the smoke-filled din lifted a beer and saluted the four women in the doorway.

“Three cheers for the Hot Ladies.”

Veronica laughed as if oblivious to the undercurrents in the room.

“Doesn’t look like there’s a table for four,” Hannah blurted. “Taz, let’s go.”

Taz grabbed her by the elbow and held her fast. “Looky—Over there—By the pool tables—Four gentlemen—”

“Not exactly,” Hannah murmured as four guys in tight, greasy jeans and dark wraparound glasses shot clumsily off their stools, knocking a couple over as they pointed at the table and beckoned them.

Taz’s braids shook as she laughed in delight. “What did I tell you? Bikers—my kind of guys. Is this place great or what?”

Zoë and Hannah rolled their eyes.

“Are you crazy?” Hannah asked.

“It’s my makeover that’s got ’em so wild.”

Don’t forget Veronica with her platinum hair and low-cut outfit.

“You’re a high school principal,” Hannah said.

“Don’t remind me.”

“Maybe you should do volunteer work at an all-male prison,” Hannah suggested as she clutched her purse against her nipples, which were standing at attention in sheer terror. Then, like a duck following her mama into a deep pool, she stayed glued to Taz’s ample hips as her friend plowed through the men and the haze of cigarette smoke to their table.

Why had she worn a white T-shirt that glowed blue and clung to her flesh like shrink wrap? Hannah wondered. Better question—why hadn’t she at least worn a bra and a blousy shirt that hid her belly button?

“Table or not, I still want to go home,” Hannah repeated as the women squeezed themselves onto four short stools and Taz signaled a waitress and ordered four beers.

“No beer! I—I want a diet cola,” Hannah blurted, but the waitress had already left. “Taz, this is a mistake. These guys are in lust.”

“We just got here,” Taz said. “Chill. Okay? I can handle the situation. Like you said, I’m a principal. And where I grew up, girl, these guys would be pussies.” Taz smiled her huge smile and began to clap and writhe along with Veronica to the jungle beat.

Since Taz, her ride, seemed hell-bent on staying, Hannah turned to Zoë. “Why didn’t you tell me the hotel was overrun with a motorcycle gang?”

“It’s some kind of convention. The manager says they do this every year. I’m sure they’re all dentists and doctors and lawyers. Veronica met one of them on the beach earlier. He said he was a stockbroker. She even had a beer with him and a doctor.”

Veronica did not strike Hannah as a reliable judge of men’s characters.

Veronica laughed. “Mr. Moneybags is over there trying to be invisible. We may get together…later.”

Veronica waved at her new friend, who was long and lean and slouching in the darkest corner of the bar.

“You said you were going to write…later,” Zoë reminded her.

Hannah eyed the bar’s denizens uneasily. “Dentists? Doctors? You’re kidding.”

Veronica nodded and fluffed her puffy white hair.

“Right,” Hannah said. “The three-hundred-pound Goliath over there with the grizzled eyebrows, swollen black eye, potbelly, long red hair and the golden loop in his right ear is a dentist? He’s staring holes through my T-shirt every time I lower my purse—and you’re telling me the big bear does root canals for a living?”

“Well, maybe not him,” Veronica admitted. “It’s your fault. You should have worn a bra.”

The ape adjusted his yellow bandanna as he leered at Zoë. There was a gap in his crooked smile.

“Don’t encourage him, Zoë.” In desperation Hannah lowered her lashes, clutched her purse tighter against her chest for coverage and sipped from her mug. The beer felt cold and tart going down, but it heated her blood and calmed her a bit. For the first time all day she relaxed a little.

Good stuff. Too good. Hannah swigged some more. Then she wet her napkin, tore off little bits, wadded them up to use as earplugs and stuffed them into her ears.

“You pointed Goliath out to me,” Zoë reminded Hannah.