Back home, upstairs in the bedroom, I called Brett on my cell. She answered on the first ring.
“So, just sitting around waiting for me to call?” I said.
“Actually,” she said, “I’m sitting around in case my boyfriend calls.”
“Is he handsome?”
“Not particularly, but he looks great by phone.”
“Is he hung?”
“Nope, but I can dream.”
“This boyfriend, would he be me?”
“He would.”
“Thanks for lifting my spirits.”
“You know I love you, even with all your deficiencies.”
“How are things?”
“Well, pretty good for a small-blown crisis, but it’s the same crisis,” Brett said. “The one where my daughter is leading a screwed-up life, but pretends she wants to change and tells me all her woes, then goes right back to doing what she’s always done, being who she always was and is. A whore who drinks too much and buys her clothes at expensive stores in Houston, and her underwear at Wal-Mart.”
“And you’re thinking it’s your fault?”
“Some of it is my fault. Except for the Wal-Mart underwear… Oh, hell. Who am I talking to? You know I buy mine there too.”
“Your ex had a little to do with Tillie’s problems.”
“True, but I didn’t have to set his head on fire. I think it set a bad example.”
“Maybe a little,” I said.
“Are you doing okay in the private detective business?”
“Well, I’m in it. And there’s supposed to be a big check at the end of the rainbow, and me and Leonard got to hear some neat stuff about vampires, devil heads, a dog-eaten body, and a white trash winning the lottery and getting hit by a train. Oh, and a bunch of cats inherited the lottery money.”
“Say what?”
I told her all that I had learned.
When I finished, Brett said, “That’s some weird stuff.”
“You think? When are you coming home?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll be home by noon.”
“Really?”
“I just made up my mind. Tillie was the same before I got here, and she’ll be the same after I leave.”
“How is the prostitute business?”
“Booming. One of her johns asked me if I wanted to pull a mother and daughter.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah, I made three hundred dollars and there was a pony involved.”
“Is that all you made? The pony factor alone was worth three hundred.”