---

Chapter 8

Jo Bright’s arms tightened around Pendergast’s waist and she murmured and pressed closer to him. Her body was warm and soft—as soft as he hoped Helen II’s would be when he finally got the recipe right. Soft, but firm...in all the right places...so devastatingly feminine...and she smelled wonderful...and she would taste—oh, no.

Pendergast realized that he’d better wake up or Jo was going to think Alice was packing a sawed off shotgun in her underwear instead of the peashooter that really lurked there. He brought all his stupendous intellect to bear, opened his mouth, and said, “Oh, my.”

His mind, usually busily working on several different complicated, difficult tasks at once like a supercomputer (except when he was working a case and honed it down to laser focus), was as confused as a blond at a spelling bee. So he brought all his amazing physical and metaphysical power, and his feet remained rooted to the floor. Jo kissed his neck, soft, open-mouthed kisses that made him want to squirm against her like a worm on Ecstasy.

“Alice...Oh, Alice...I don’t...I can’t...I don’t know what...” Jo Bright stood on her tippytoes and kissed him full on the mouth, her soft lips moving against his, her questing tongue sweet and tantalizing, thereby cocking the already loaded shotgun in Alice’s underwear. He hadn’t been kissed like that since...since...

Still kissing, Jo pressed her body tightly against his and he stooped reflexively, retracting his pelvis, which cursed him for every kind of idiotic wimpy fool that had ever drawn breath. So intent was he on keeping his shotgun away from Jo that he inadvertently let his mouth make its own decision, and that decision was to stay locked on her mouth and to return her kiss, with interest.

The front door slammed and a cheery female voice called, “Anybody home?”

Their lips separated suddenly with a sound like a horse pulling its foot out of the mud. Each looked toward the stairs, then back at the other, then away, only to glance askance at the other and start zeroing in on the other’s lips again. Footsteps on the stairs finally made the decision for them, and they backed away from each other as a rather sultry brunette carrying a handbag and a shopping bag appeared and headed for them.

“Hi, I’m Amber! You must be Alice! Welcome to our humble abode!” Wide smile, dark eyes, knock-out figure, and fingernails like the claws of a tree sloth. Surely this woman wasn’t a nurse.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” he managed to Alice, just catching himself in time to refrain from bowing and air-kissing her hand. He shook his head slightly, glancing again at Jo, whose eyes looked glassy, with way too much white showing, like a mare scenting a rattler.

“Well, come on, see what I bought!” Amber headed for the room with the purple vibrator. Jo glanced at him and followed her.

He tagged along, trying and failing to keep his eyes off Jo’s delectably rounded rear end. Off both their delectably rounded rear ends. Had dressing as a woman somehow released some inner sex demon? Just because he liked black silk and sometimes had dreams in which he was a giant French chocolate and hoards of women were attacking him, licking and moaning and nibbling, didn’t mean he was...kinky, did it? He’d been hit on before by beautiful women and had felt nothing. Perhaps Vincent had been half-right. Oh, Lord, was he a lesbian trapped in a man’s body? No, no, a transvestite...no, that wasn’t quite right, either. Exactly what...?

Amber threw her purse on the bed and rummaged in the shopping bag, extracting a frilly pink something. “You guys are going to compete to borrow this!”

Jo glanced at the purple vibrator, then at Pendergast, and colored visibly. Pendergast felt his own face flushing. Now it matched the rest of him, which already felt broiled, especially his pelvis, which was ranting and raving and generally making a dire nuisance of itself. While maintaining an interested expression on the outside, he turned his gaze inward, using an ancient Tibetan mind-over-matter technique to try to rein himself in. But his mind was on one track, and it didn’t seem to matter, because he couldn’t derail it. It did not help his efforts when Amber yanked her knit top over her head and her knit skirt right behind it, revealing a purple bra and panty set that a stripper would’ve felt bashful in.

His face must’ve given away his surprise, shock, appreciation, and lust, because Amber laughed and said, “Alice, you look like you want it first.”

He peeled his tongue from the roof of his mouth and, befitting all his education, upbringing, and class, managed a soft, “Oh, urk.”

Amber lifted the pink concoction over her head, then let it fall down around her in a swirl of frothy lace. It came to the edge of her purple panties. Pendergast guessed that this garment was what one meant when one referred to a “baby-doll nightie.” Though he could not imagine any little girl’s doll wearing such provocative attire. Well, maybe Barbie. An announcer in his head boomed, “Yes, it’s on sale now! Every little girl should get one for Christmas! Barbie’s Whorehouse! Accept no knock-offs! Ask for it by name!”

Amber twirled once, then yanked the vision of pinkiness off and tossed it to Pendergast. “Here, try it!”

Jo’s eyes were white saucers, each centered with a slice of kiwi. “Yes, try it on,” she said. “I want to see you in it.”

He stood frozen, the eyes of both women upon him, thinking that he’d rather be back in the cave with Job; back in the subway tunnels with the Wrinklers; even back in D’Agosta’s arms in the murky hallway, than to be here, wondering what an ordinary woman would do in such circumstances. He consulted his own version of the What I’ve Figured Out About Women list that all men carry around in their heads and found that, as far as he knew, any normal woman would acquiesce. Luckily, the strangeness and stress of the moment had at least decocked his shotgun, which was returning to its usual calm 0.38 Special state. Oops, its usual 0.45 caliber state. Make that a nine-millimeter. Oh, for God’s sake, shut up and just do it!

Luckily for him, Alice was as bitten by the cold as he himself, and had worn a lacy white camisole over the lacy white bra under the lacy white shirt. He unbuttoned the shirt slowly, watching the women watch him, and shrugged out of it, unpleasantly surprised to find that he didn’t mind it. Not at all. In fact, watching two attractive females watch him undress was quite...pleasant. Okay, so he was unpleasantly surprised by the pleasantness of it. He started to slide the nightie down over his head and Amber said, “No, honey, you gotta take off that cami. It won’t look right.”

Thanking the stars that he’d chosen full-coverage bras, the better to keep his breasts on his person, he caught the hem of the cami and lifted, thanking the stars again that he’d shaved his pits. Though the hair there, like everywhere, was almost translucently white, each pit sort of resembled a tiny cloud in the sunshine, which wouldn’t have worked with the red wig at all. He knew women sometimes bleached their facial hair, but had never heard of them bleaching their pits. Still, anything was possible... Oh, for God’s sake, shut up and just do it!

He let the pink nightie drift down over his head and felt it swirling around him. Once again consulting the manual in his head, he wiggled his hips to make it swirl a little more and exclaimed, as Alice, “Oh, it’s divine!”

“Take off your jeans!” Amber laughed. “It doesn’t work with the jeans! And you can’t feel how silky it is.”

Drat. The thought was automatic, but he found he really didn’t mind. In fact, he was looking forward to feeling the silky material swirling around his legs. Only...the garment had barely come to the bottom of Amber’s panties and he was at least a foot taller than she. That meant that it wouldn’t cover Alice’s panties. The Derringer was secreted in the elastic at the top and wouldn’t be a problem. But he had not hidden his candy. He tried to think. “I...I...”

Jo Bright, chest heaving just enough to be obvious only to someone trained in observation, murmured, “Yes, take off the jeans. Take them off right now.”

“I...I...I can’t. I’m er...having my period and I’m afraid I may have, er...flooded my tampon. I’m afraid I’ll mess it up.”

The women frowned and blinked and he realized that if Alice had that problem, she probably should take steps to correct it. He murmured, “Excuse me,” jerked the nightie over his head, handed it to Amber, grabbed his shirts, and made his escape to the bathroom that adjoined the bedroom Jo had assigned him.

Safe behind its locked door, he drooped a little in relief. His silver eyes met Alice’s cornflower blues in the mirror. Perhaps this whole endeavor was a mistake, especially moving in here. But he really wanted to pop...er, catch this guy, and the guy had struck so nearby! Living in this house would probably be his best chance.

He knew he was upset by his attraction to Jo Bright, an attraction he hadn’t felt since... And she was obviously attracted to him, or, rather, to Alice. He thought it highly ironic that, when he finally met a woman who attracted him enough to draw him out of his self-imposed shell, she was a lesbian.

Forget drat. Shit.

***

---