Femme Noir Read online

  Femme Noir

  Womanizing tough broad Nora Delaney meets her match in Max Abbott, a sex-crazed dame who may or may not have the information Nora needs to solve a murder—but can she contain her lust for Max long enough to find out?

  Dames, booze, and murder is the oldest story in the book, but this time, it happens too fast to Nora Delaney, who is a notorious womanizing college basketball coach. After her ex is found murdered, Nora chases the scent all the way from Los Angeles to Tulsa to find some right angles in this nasty business, only to be waylaid by a gorgeous, gin-swilling skirt who has information as well as an appetite for women like Nora.

  Filled with cock-eyed optimism, vivid sexual fantasy, tough broads, and big babes who know their ways around drinks, trash talk, and murder, Femme Noir is a wry homage to retro outlooks of a bygone tough guy/femme fatale age. If you like sex and humor, this book is for you.

  Femme Noir

  Brought to you by

  E-Books from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

  E-Books are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  Femme Noir

  by

  Clara Nipper

  2009

  Femme Noir

  © 2007 By Clara Nipper. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 10: 1-60282-117-8E

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-117-0E

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Bold Strokes Printing: September 2009

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Cindy Cresap and Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  Acknowledgements

  For Kristopher Kris, it’s all for you and all because of you.

  For Radclyffe, Publisher Extraordinaire—signing a contract with BSB was one of the best and most rewarding decisions I ever made. You have restored my faith.

  And Cindy, Editor Deluxe—you got mad skills. I am lucky to work with someone so talented, precise, and logical. All of life should be so painless and easy.

  For my new family at BSB: all of you are as wonderful as a sack of diamonds and as much fun as a basket of kittens. I am forever grateful and looking forward to being an asset to BSB for many years to come.

  Dedication

  For Kristopher Kris

  Together we are the spark and the path forever

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Books Available From Bold Strokes Books

  Prologue

  I was thirty-five the year I started drinking gin. It’s not a pretty story and I don’t come off smelling like a rose, but it’s time to tell it. With a story like this, gin is the only thing astringent enough to clean the dirt from my mouth. Gin is snappy and crisp and washes away my sins, at least for the night. I love everything about gin, but maybe that’s because my love affair with it is new. The smell of it is a cold wintry tang in the nose; the look of it is hard and clear like liquid diamonds, and that’s deceptive because the taste of it is smooth and sweet yet sharp too, like a beautiful woman with a knife. Gin slides down my throat like an ice snake. It’s bitter and oily, wavering in the glass like a silver mirror, and when it is a mirror is when I drink most. I’ll take it any way—neat, a shot, on the rocks, in a martini, in a Tom Collins or a fizz, with stupid fruit draped all over the glass, I don’t care. But my favorite way to drink it is with tonic because it reminds me of Her. I got the idea that gin is a disinfectant like hydrogen peroxide and if I drink enough, it will boil out the infection, which is this story I must tell.

  I found I’m a woman of excesses. I love cigarettes, I love gin, I love women, and I love winning, all to a fault. I was born for trouble without knowing it, and that is the worst kind. Suddenly, I’ve found that sometimes, a woman must drink alone.

  So I was thirty-five the year I started drinking gin. It all started one day with a call from my ex.

  Chapter One

  The ringing was insistent, urgent. I let myself into my apartment as quickly as I could because nobody calls at four a.m. with good news. I flicked on a light and ran for the phone, a heavy, corded black dial phone that I loved for its old-fashioned rebelliousness.

  “Yeah?” My voice was hoarse from lack of sleep. Karen’s appetite was insatiable. I shrugged off the sweaty T-shirt and damp cotton shorts I wore to and from Karen’s house. I never needed regular clothes there and felt it was too much bother to dress up just to go to her and come home. Underneath, I was nude.

  “Nora?” The voice was crackly and scared and chillingly familiar. Michelle. My last and worst ex.

  “What the hell do you want?” I demanded. After all, Michelle was with someone else and living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I was in Los Angeles, completely free and not obligated to lift a finger to save Michelle from her persistent destructive foolishness.

  “I, I’m sorry to call so late…to call at all—” Static blocked her voice.

  “Yeah, you have some nerve.” I wanted a cigarette badly. I needed to suck one to ash in two seconds flat. I made it out of Karen’s clutches without one, and now, I had to have that dry, hot taste to return me to myself. Sex took it out of me in a way that only cigarettes could restore. Plus, I needed to be soothed for this conversation. I spied a pack across the room. “Hold on!” I barked as I put the phone down and dove for the pack. I crumpled it and moaned. Empty. I smelled my hands with Karen’s ripeness coating them. I licked my lips. I picked up my wadded shorts, now a wilted pile of color, and checked the pockets. Nothing. I needed a shot. A shot of something. Maybe tequila. I also needed a shower and some sleep. I needed a wife to come in and clean up this place and maybe do some laundry and ironing. I padded back to the phone wearily.

  “—need you!” Michelle pleaded when I returned.

  “I can’t help you no matter what you need,” I told her acidly. I found some wooden matches, my preferred method of lighting cigarettes, and flicked one after another with my thumbnail. I felt the tiny fire was comforting, as if I were about to have a cigarette. Like the promise of foreplay. The flaming match told me that there would be eventual satisfaction. Was it possible to get a sudden ulcer? Maybe I should go back to Karen’s where there was beer to soothe this sudden c
raving, plenty of hot water, clean towels and sheets, all the cigarettes I could smoke, and of course, Karen. Karen’s cool, cocoa arms around me all night.

  Static. “—please!” Static. I angrily banged the receiver against the table, taking mean pleasure in possibly hurting Michelle’s ears. I flicked more matches, savoring the smell.

  “After these few months, don’t you have someone else to call?” I asked.

  “It has to be you. Only you can help. I need you to—” Static.

  “What? What do you need?” I scraped one calf with my other big toe.

  Crackling and hissing. “—trouble. Bad.”

  “What sort of trouble?” I was perversely enjoying this drama, so it never occurred to me to get Michelle to call back for a clearer connection. The more inconvenienced Michelle was, the better I felt.

  “Sloane Weatherly.” Static. “—hear me? Sloane Weatherly. Don’t—”

  My instincts made me write down the name. When I heard a noise in the hallway, I looked up, realizing I had left my front door open, and my upstairs neighbor stared in at me with frank appreciation. I suddenly saw myself through his eyes: a tall black woman sprinter-lean, my mahogany skull shaved clean. My ebony skin gleamed from sex sweat. My large nipples were chocolate satin on my flat chest and my belly was hard and cut into an eight-pack.

  “Jack off on your own time, asshole,” I shouted, kicking the door shut.

  “What?” Suddenly, for that one word, Michelle’s voice was clear and full in my ear, her breath hot with panic.

  “Nothing. What kind of trouble are you in?” I scratched myself lazily at various points on my body where the Karen sweat had not yet dried. Little secret pockets of wet sex energy that itched when finally exposed to air as they evaporated. I now regretted having answered the phone. I flicked more matches.

  Crackling, hissing, beeps. “—trying to tell you. Where were you? I’ve been trying to call you for hours. The phone has been ringing forever!”

  “Out,” I answered curtly. Except for tonight, this call, I always wanted to speak to whatever girl was calling at the moment she called.

  “Please, please help. I need you! Please come to Tulsa to help me straighten everything out!”

  “You’re breaking up. I can’t understand much of this. You want me to come there? ”

  “Help me, Nora! I’m coming over right now!”

  “No you ain’t, cracker! You stay right where you are.” I admired my pile of burnt matches.

  “ Oh, God, they’re after me! I’m headed to your place so you can—” The line went dead. I stood in shocked silence with only the growl of the dial tone to underscore my sudden quick fright. If there had been an after-sex glow, it was certainly gone now. Leave it to Michelle to ruin a good thing, even two thousand miles away.

  Abruptly, I felt naked. I jerked on my shorts and made sure all my doors and windows were locked. From the freezer, I removed a pack of Carltons some femme had left on an overnight that I kept around only for emergencies. I had undying loyalty for Marlboros and loved them when I could get them. In my endless attempts at quitting, I never bought cigarettes. It was a matter of principle. But these Carltons looked like cigarettes, were shaped like cigarettes, lit up and burned smoke like cigarettes, and they were here in my hand, available, and willing to surrender themselves to my mouth. Just like I was accustomed to in all things, and I loved that most of all.

  How short and how long ago it seemed that I kicked Michelle out. Only three months before. It hadn’t taken me long to get back in business. I remembered our last fight. Michelle might have been a lazy student-of-all-trades while we were together, but she possessed coiled strength in her limbs. It had gotten very physical. Michelle hadn’t wanted to leave. She resisted and threw things, breaking a lot of stuff. Michelle accused me of cheating, which I had done. I skewered Michelle on her stealing, which she had done to a compulsively embarrassing degree. Michelle seemed utterly destroyed, crying in great sobbing whoops, hiccupping and coughing, and finally throwing up. It was the worst breakup in my experience. It went on and on, the longest weekend in history. When it was finally over, Michelle stood on the sidewalk in full fury, her arms full of things she had taken from our house, hers or not, and in the interest of brevity, I let her go with all of it. Michelle screamed that I would be sorry, that I would pay. Then, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you forever.” I just nodded wearily from the porch, wishing to see Michelle drive away. When at last she had, I cleaned up the house, packed the few remaining items, and moved into my current apartment with triple locks. Then I had opened my precious little black book that had been in storage for too long.

  I heard from mutual acquaintances that Michelle had moved immediately to Oklahoma—How had she chosen there? I wondered incredulously—and that Michelle had found a girlfriend right away and they moved in together. Also, these friends told me breathlessly, Michelle was probably having a hot and heavy affair with someone else who was in a committed relationship. “Busy girl,” I said dryly. And that was it.

  I debated what, if anything, to do about this unsettling call from Michelle. She better not be coming over here. I tried call return but it didn’t work. I tried to call the Tulsa number Michelle had given me weeks ago, but now it was disconnected with no new number. In a strange desperation I couldn’t explain, I even called the Oakland phone number Michelle had told me was her parents’. But it turned out to be a Chinese restaurant’s answering machine. I felt a foreboding and didn’t know what else to do. Call the police? I could see them now, smirking and calling me “ma’am” sarcastically. “Oh, you say you got a weird phone call from your ex from whom you’ve had a messy break? Oh, yeah, we’ll get right on that, ma’am. File a report? You want us to file a report? Why sure, we’ll file a report for you. Here it is, if you’ll just sign here.” I imagined a cop holding nothing in his hands but pretending to hand me a piece of paper. And those were the male police. The women were even harsher.

  So I sat by the window until dawn, watching the street, flicking matches to life with my hard, yellow thumbnail and smoking the sissy, pissant little cigarettes. Even the smoke was thin and weak, not deep and full of the flavor and nuance and subtle language that I craved. It was a tightass anorexic cigarette, just like the girl who left them. But my nicotine brain was grateful just the same. I tried not to sleep, but fell into an uneasy catnap in the chair by the window.

  The phone didn’t ring again.

  Chapter Two

  A couple of hours later, I was awakened by the telephone. My back ached from my angle in the chair and cigarette butts were scattered on the floor. I stood and walked to the phone. My bones popped, complaining of no bed and too little sleep. I checked the time: six a.m.

  “Hello?” I hefted the weight of the receiver.

  “Hello, lover, how about breakfast?” It was Cherisse. Ah, Cherisse of the yielding body and big booty. I smiled and closed my eyes, feeling the small aches Karen had given me.

  “Sure thing, be right over.” I hung up and found some jeans that I slipped into without underwear. I tried calling all of Michelle’s phone numbers again. No answer at any of them. I again debated calling the police and again rejected it. In the light of day on my way to meet Cherisse, the danger of Michelle’s call seemed even more ridiculous. Then, as I sat heavily on my chair by the window pulling on boots, I realized I might be getting too old for this constant poon chasing. I glanced around my apartment: dead plants in one window (one woman’s idea to liven up my place), dirty plates stacked in the kitchen, unmade bed, cigarette butts everywhere, lipstick-smeared glasses on every surface as if I had just had a cocktail party.

  “Mama, have mercy.” I shook my head ruefully. I needed to get myself in hand, take responsibility for my mess, and get my life in order. But all I cared about right now was basketball and women. This was no place to bring a woman, my conscience scolded me. Women liked lace curtains and flowers and scented candles and fresh sheets and clean kitchens and s
potless bathrooms and plenty of toilet paper and bubble bath and secret hordes of cookies and chocolate. My place was simple and Spartan and dirty. I had a Corgi model Batmobile, from an ex who called me Batman, parked on an antique desk, my basketball trophies and some miscellaneous sports equipment such as golf clubs, tennis rackets, racquetball rackets and goggles, softball and glove, Frisbee, soccer ball, skis—my only belongings left from the breakup—and an ironing board, a bed and a chair that I bought a month ago, and my only indulgence, a state-of-the-art sound system with hundreds of CDs. Nothing else.

  I felt aroused at the thought of Cherisse. At the thought of making my apartment suitable for some soft, lush woman.

  “Or maybe letting that woman come in and fix me up,” I murmured, amused.

  I got off on the authoritative ring my boots made on the wood floor as I walked about, gathering keys, wallet, Day Runner, dental dams and gloves and lube, and fresh underwear. Maybe Cherisse would give me time to shower.

  Four hours later, in the bright kitchen, Cherisse served me breakfast. As I crunched toast, I asked, “What do I know about Oklahoma?”

  “More than I do, honey,” Cherisse replied, pouring coffee. Something about the way she held the pot in her hand made me newly appreciate her delicate brown wrists, her rich, meaty thighs, and her tasty rump undulating under her satin nightgown. I ran my hand up Cherisse’s leg, resting for a moment in her kinky pubic hair.

  “Uh-uh, Nora, you got to quit all that now. You wore me out.” Cherisse sat heavily and sipped coffee.

  I grinned. “You’re sweet.” I was appreciative of the breakfast. Of the generosity of all the wonderful women I knew. “You really are.”