EQMM 2005-09-10 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Naked Flame

by Cheryl Rogers

Department of First Stories

Five years ago, Australian Cheryl Rogers won a summer fiction contest sponsored by the English magazine Woman’s Realm, and her winning entry was published. Normally, this would exclude the author from our Department of First Stories, but her contest winner was a romance, not a mystery, so we’ve made an exception. She’s created a fireball of a heroine for her mystery debut. Be prepared for lots of Aussie slang.

Mix a new squeeze with an old flame and you risk creating a lethal cocktail.

’Specially if it’s your new squeeze. And his old flame.

And ’specially if the bitch has bad habits.

Like showing up when it’s least convenient.

Like when you’re sharing Death by Chocolate, warming up for the real dessert.

Like dying in your house — and bleeding all over your recently steam-cleaned white shagpile.

Take Joylene, my partner’s ex-significant other. Almost everyone calls her Joy, and I use the term loosely.

V-e-e-e-e-ry loosely.

She’s a Botoxed blonde with big hair and an even bigger attitude. The sort who eats men for breakfast. Preferably with lashings of tomato sauce and a plate of fries on the side.

Tasty? Maybe.

Once.

Tasteful? Oh yeah, a real class act: lower class.

Before the split, Joy worked for Nino, my hair stylist, doing manicures in a haze of acetone at the front of his salon.

Nino, despite his faux-European accent, loved taking the mick. And Joy, with her well-developed internal focus, was easy bait.

“Don’t you go lighting no cigarettes, Joylene.” Nino always used her full name. Real loud. He knew she hated it. “Else you’ll blow this place sky high.”

Nino had a point. All those solvent-based nail treatments. Those acetone-soaked wads choking the bin. And Lord only knows how much lacquer supporting that enormous swelling of hair.

Joy’s reaction — a one-finger salute and a tart smile that was pure Starlet Frosted Ice — was conveniently reflected in the mirror at Nino’s work station.

He was giving me the once-over with a blow-dryer. I was pulling out all the stops to make a big impression at a job interview that afternoon.

Ed Gillespie, chief-of-staff on the daily rag where I’d cut my teeth as a journo, was scouting for a new crime reporter. And after two years on the women’s-interest pages, I was baying for blood.

This is all history now, but I remember the incident clearly. Partly because it was later the same week that Joy scarpered with one of Nino’s talented young apprentices, an accessory barely half her age. The same day I heard I’d got the job I’d coveted for longer than I cared to remember.

Nino was a mess when I turned up that afternoon with a magnum of brut to thank him for the blow-job. Hair all over the floor. He was usually such a stickler for cleanliness.

“It’s that Joy-leeeen!” He screamed the name when I forced him to open the solid brass security door and let me in. “She’s had her sights on Troy for weeks! Been making eyes at him in my mirrors!” He ripped a scented tissue from the box I offered and dabbed his eyes.

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