He grinned.“You forget.I saw her.And she looked like a stripper.”
Had she really?It’s hard to tell that from a drawing of a face.Although she’d certainly been very pretty, at least the way Zachary had described her.Blue eyes, long blond hair, Slavic cheekbones, plump lips.If she had the body of an exotic dancer on top of it, it was no wonder he’d been dazzled when he came back to the car last night.
“Did you happen to mention that to Mendoza?”I asked.
Zachary nodded.“We did a full-body sketch, too.I guess he didn’t show you that one?”
He hadn’t.Trying to protect Diana’s feelings, perhaps.
“She didn’t just have the body,” Zachary said, and added, pensively, “although boy, did she have that…”
“But?”
His eyes cleared.“She dressed like a stripper.Like she does her shopping at Fredericks of Hollywood or Hustler.Cut down to here and up to there—” He demonstrated, “and like it was painted on.Four inch heels with platform soles.The kind girls use when they hump poles.”
Mendoza had definitely been trying to spare Diana’s feelings.
“So…” I said.“You’re saying she might actually be a stripper?”
He shrugged.“She dressed like one.Or like I figure a stripper might dress.Not like I hang out in those places.”
No.He wasn’t old enough, was he?And looked younger than he was, with his freckled face and red hair.
“I’m old enough,” Zachary said.“They let you in when you’re eighteen, as long as they don’t serve alcohol.”
“Don’t those places always serve alcohol?”
He shook his head.“A lot of them don’t.Less chance somebody’ll try to touch the merchandise, I guess.”
Perhaps.“So you’re familiar with the Nashville stripping scene?”
He squirmed.“I wouldn’t say familiar…”
“Could you take a guess as to where a Russian girl might take her clothes off for money?Is there a Russian, or maybe an East European, part of town?”
“There’s a Russian grocery on Thompson Lane,” Zachary said, “near Nolensville Road.”
“Would they have strippers?”
He shook his head.“Although I’ve heard the owner’s a former ballet dancer.”
Really?
“The girl I saw was not a ballet dancer.Too well endowed.”
No doubt.I was familiar with the type of girls who appealed to middle-aged, married men, and young, perky breasts seemed a big part of it.“Nolensville Road and Thompson Lane is sort of on your way home, isn’t it?”
Zachary shrugged.It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no, either.
“Maybe you could drive slowly and take a look around for places the girl might frequent.And if you happen to see a Russian strip club, and they’ll let you in, maybe see if anyone knows her?”
His eyes opened wide.“You’re asking me to go talk to strippers?On duty?”
“I’ll pay you,” I said.“I mean, it’s part of the job.If we can figure out where the girl is, maybe we’ll find Steven, too.Diana’s pretty worried.”
And she deserved to know something solid one way or the other.Even if it was that Steven was leaving her for a twenty-year-old Russian stripper.It had to be better than this deafening silence from a man who, for all intents and purposes, had just dropped off the face of the earth with no warning.
The least the coward could have done, was tell his wife the truth.After fifteen years of marriage, didn’t she deserve that?
