Page 32 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

Any woman, herself included, would have found Bandeaux sexy enough for a roll in the hay—Sugar would admit that much—but it took a really dumb one to marry him. Pregnant or not. Tying yourself to that prick only spelled trouble of the worst order. And Caitlyn had found it. Big time. Not that Sugar cared. Sugar had always thought Caitlyn was a few eggs short of a dozen when it came to brains. Caitlyn had inherited plenty in the beauty department, but lacked something when it came to smarts.

Blessed with smooth, white-Southern-belle skin, plump lips, and wide hazel eyes, Caitlyn was tall and athletic-looking except that she had big tits. Great tits. Sugar always noticed, not because she was into women, but because she always sized up the competition. All women, even rich society types, were competition.

Especially relatives.

The picture on the screen flipped to a shot of Josh Bandeaux with his wife and daughter. The kid was probably eighteen months or so at the time the photograph was taken. They seemed the perfect family aside from the fact that Caitlyn’s smile appeared strained as she stood next to her husband in an obviously posed family portrait. “Perfect, my ass,” Sugar said, tossing back the remains of her vodka and biting on a piece of ice as she scrounged in the second drawer of her dresser and found a decent tank top. She tugged it over her head and smoothed out a few wrinkles so that it hugged her figure.

The reporter was saying something about the suspicious circumstances of Bandeaux’s death when she heard an engine—a truck from the sound of it—pull into her drive. Who the hell would be showing up now? Inwardly groaning, she made an educated guess that her brother was paying her a visit. Dickie Ray was the last person she wanted to deal with.

She snapped off the old set with its crummy reception and walked into the living room, where she opened the door of her double-wide before her brother could start pounding the hell out of it.

Her dog, part pit bull, part lab, and one hundred percent bitch, was on her feet and let out a low growl.

“Mornin’,” Dickie said, one eye on Caesarina. The dog didn’t like him. Never had. But then, she had good taste.

“It’s nearly seven at night and I’m late for work. I’ve got a job,” Sugar reminded him, pointedly checking her watch, thinking that she didn’t want to let him inside. Once flopped on the old couch, Dickie Ray had an inclination to park it and down a six-pack while staring at some kind of sports program for hours. Once he got inside, it would take a crowbar to get him out. He wasn’t a bad guy, just lazy as hell.

“You call what you do a job?”

“Legitimate work,” she said. He didn’t so much as flinch. Thought collecting disability was as good as work. “I perform a service.”

Dickie Ray snorted. “So now giving drooling, drunked-up losers a hard-on is a service.”

“I dance.”

“With your clothes off. Face it, Sugar, you’re a stripper. Period. You can call it what you want, but what you do is show off your tits and ass so that the guys in the bar want to jerk off.”

“That’s their problem.”

“They don’t see it that way.”

“Neither do I. Let’s drop it.” She hated it when Dickie Ray was surly, or as Mama would say, “in one of his moods.” He was certainly in one now, tweaking that nerve of hers that always showed when she discussed how she earned her wages. She wasn’t proud of what she did, just the way she did it. She was good at her job, in great shape, and, when she’d socked enough money away, or when she ever got her hands on the inheritance she’d been promised, she’d give it all up, go to school, learn to run a computer and become a receptionist in some big corporation. But she just couldn’t swing it yet.

“Hear about Bandeaux?” Dickie Ray asked as he walked into her kitchen, opened a cupboard and found a half-eaten box of Cheez-Nips.

“I was just listening to the news.”

“A shame.” Dickie Ray tossed a handful of the crackers into his mouth. He could have been a handsome enough man if he ever got rid of the beer gut and stringy hair hanging down to his shoulder

s. He kept the sides short, but let his blond curls fall free, probably in the hopes of disguising the fact that he was thinning on the top. To offset that problem he was always wearing a baseball cap, pulled down low over his eyes, the bill nearly touching the top of the aviator sunglasses forever on his face. Probably to hide the redness in his eyes. Dickie had a tendency toward benders, alcohol and cocaine whenever he could get his hands on it. His goatee was untrimmed. “You think he was kilt?” Dickie had found himself a plastic Big Gulp cup in one of her cupboards. He opened the refrigerator and hung on the door, letting the cool air blast over his face as he surveyed the meager contents. Finally he settled on a Dr. Pepper.

“Murdered?” Sugar asked.

“Isn’t that what ‘suspicious circumstances’ usually means?”

She turned that thought over a couple of times. “That’s probably what happened. Bandeaux pissed too many people off in this town.”

“Wonder who did it.” He took a sip and wrinkled his nose. “You know this here soda is flat?”

“It’s Cricket’s,” Sugar explained.

“Where is she?” Dickie looked around as if, for the first time, he realized that his younger sister wasn’t on the premises.

“Working. You know, earning her keep. She doesn’t get off until eight.”

He glanced at his watch, then searched in the cupboard over the refrigerator for a bottle. “Got any scotch or rye?”

“No.”

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