The Hot Ladies Murder Club

“Forget I said anything. Just quit looking at him.”

“He’s cute,” Taz said. Lifting her beer, she smiled at him. “Cheers, everybody.”

“I really think we should go,” Hannah began again.

“Relax,” Taz growled. “Shoot some darts or something. Drink. Hey, I brought you a target.”

“No way am I getting up and making a spectacle of myself before this wolf pack.”

Before Hannah could stop her, Taz waved Goliath over. “We want to shoot some darts…er…What’s your name, big boy?”

“The Charger,” he purred. “What’s yours, hot lady?”

She gave him a look. “Okay, Charger, can you get us some darts and pin up this target…?”

When he glanced at the newspaper picture, the biker looked a little startled.

“You got a problem, big boy?” Taz asked.

“No problem, hot lady.” His broad hand slapped the clipping of Joe Campbell against the dartboard, pinning it there with four darts.

“Draw a circle around his crotch,” Taz ordered. “Here—use my lipstick.”

She handed the Charger a tube of the stuff, and he drew crude red genitals instead of a circle. The bikers roared approval.

“First guy to hit the big red pickle where it hurts standing from behind me gets to dance with the Egyptian hot lady here,” Taz yelled. “On my table!”

The men nearest Taz got off a few earsplitting yells. A squabble broke out and a table was turned over before the issue of who got to throw the first dart was resolved.

A guy in a black vest with a scorpion tattooed on his arm and a patch over one eye went first. When he hit Campbell in the eye, everybody booed. The next guy got a turn. The dart hit the mark but bounced off without even tearing the paper. Hannah hid her face in her hands and said a prayer.

“Me—I go for men with balls of steel,” Veronica mused, winking at her friend in the dark corner. He lifted his hand and signaled her to come over. When she didn’t jump up, Hannah felt his hostile gaze fix her, and she shivered. Not that she could really see him. But she could feel him. And he gave her a bad feeling like she’d had in the garage.

The next biker took his turn and missed as well. The mood in the bar turned brutal.

Goliath had the deadliest aim. A few darts thrown from his meaty arm put a gaping hole where Campbell’s lipstick-smeared pickle had been.

“Ouch,” Taz said as she climbed up onto a table to dance and beckoned the Charger.

Hips undulating, the Egyptian hot lady and her gap-toothed Hun from Hell put on a show to a loud song with a wild beat. He stomped; she wiggled and twisted and ate him with her dark eyes, showing caramel-colored legs every time she twirled. Their dance was pure raw sex, and she stirred the men to a frenzy. When they were done, every man in the bar rushed over to help Taz down from the table. They were all clamoring to dance with her when the Charger told them she was his and asked her to dance with her again.

“I ain’t nobody’s,” Taz said.

He was climbing back onto the table, when she crossed her arms and said no in her loud, school principal voice. He glared down at her in surprise. Since he was on the table, and she was short, she barely came to the tops of his muddy motorcycle boots.

The silence grew tense. His bottom lip bloated sullenly, and he flushed purple. Hannah half expected Charger to grab Taz and tear her apart, or to at least kiss her to thrill their gaping audience, but he merely growled good-naturedly, “You heard her. The lady, she said no.”

Hannah couldn’t believe it when he jumped off the table with a resounding thud and swaggered heavily to the dartboard and ripped Campbell’s picture off the wall. Then he yelled, “No more dancing. No cussin’, either. We got ladies present.” Then his eyes locked on Taz’s face with respect and shy affection.

Taz beamed at him.

There were grumbles as the men sat and resumed their drinking, but the Charger hovered nearby their table, a silent hulk making sure the other beasts left his lady friends alone.

Heck, maybe the Charger did do root canals for a living. During the table dance, Hannah had drained her mug, and when another was placed in front of her, she sipped from it, too. Maybe it was the beer that eased the tension in her. Instead of pleading to go, she relaxed and began to chat with her friends in their dark corner.

“So, you’re Veronica Holiday,” Tasmania said. “Hannah was telling me you were here. I’ve read your books.”

“If I’d known I was going to meet a fan, I would have worn my glasses and tried to look intelligent.”

Taz laughed. “I’m not disappointed.”

Veronica didn’t look like the sophisticated woman in her publicity stills. In those photographs, she wore power suits and demure shades of makeup.

“Zoë said you were being sued, too,” Tasmania said.

Hannah frowned as she sipped more beer. “So, who’s suing you, Veronica?”

The music was so loud they had to yell to be heard.

“This thief, this idiot from my hometown, who’s been jealous of me since I sold my first book. Her name’s Camille. She married my old boyfriend right out from under me when we were kids. Then she ran me out of town. Now she has the gall to say I stole her body and wrote the story of her life. Her life! In her dreams.”

Tasmania’s black eyes gleamed. “Stole her body?”

“I had a boob job. We’re the same bra size now.”

Tasmania snorted. “Give me a break. Did Zoë tell you I’m being sued because of damage to a man’s eenie weenie done by a pickle I nuked?”

“This could be your next novel,” Zoë said.

“If I wrote about it, Camille would really sue.”

Hannah looked up. “So how can we stop these frivolous lawsuits? In this city, all the judges are bought off.”

“It’s called—campaign contributions,” Zoë screamed over the music. “It costs a lot to run for office. Politicians and judges don’t make much.”

“Under the table they do,” Taz said.

“You don’t know that for sure,” Zoë countered.

“What planet do you live on?” Holding her mug up, Taz eyed the waitress and tapped her mug and held up four fingers. “They make huge contributions to political action committees, PACs they call them. Wouldn’t it be fun to turn the tables on these jerks?”

“But how?” Hannah asked.

When more beers arrived, the four women were about to raise their mugs and clink them when the fight started.

“But I want to dance with a hot lady!” a biker yelled. “You danced with her! Why the hell can’t—”

“This is why the hell why, you son of a—”